Top Business Podcast • over 4 million downloads • 900+ episodes
The Strategy Hour Podcast
with abagail pumphrey
Recognized by INC and Forbes as one of the best podcasts for entrepreneurs, join our twice-weekly show as we share business strategies, interviews, and actionable advice for building an online business your way.
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Our Episodes
Is a Course, Group Program or One-on-One Coaching Your Next Step in your Business? with Christine McAlister
Today on the show we are so happy to welcome back Christine McAlister! If you are not already familiar with Christine, she helps high achievers replace income and continue to grow their businesses and be generally awesome! This episode is a look behind the scenes on coaching, group courses and one-on-one programs. We want to help you decide which might be the right one for you at any particular time. All of us on the show believe that different times require specific approaches, the trick is to know what you need and then follow that path to success!
In order to do this, you need to establish expectations and clarify your goals. This relaxed conversation will feature all of us sharing our opinions and experiences in this realm, seeing our students progress and helping you figure out what is the best fit for you. We are going to hash it all out for you listening, so sit tight and do not forget to hit up our Instagram and DM us any thoughts, questions or reflection you might have!
Think Inside the Box: Constraints Drive Creativity
If you have not already heard of the law of diminishing returns, it states that everything we do is on a bell curve and as we do more work so the results improve. But once we pass a certain point or amount of work, the results begin to lessen and the work we do becomes less effective. After a certain amount of time and effort, our results can even start to decline and drop off to a point below our earlier work! The main lesson we want to extrapolate here is that more work equals better results up to a certain point.
As we work on projects, we have to find these points and understand how far our effort is going. We have to be able to apply this theory to our business otherwise we run the risk of shooting ourselves in the foot through overwork and time-wasting. We need to focus on productivity, how to spend our time wisely and when we are done with a specific task. Learning the answer to this question might take time but we can start to notice patterns if we are sensitive to this dynamic. This law will apply to physical as well as digital work and remember that your creativity and energy is subjective, we never really know for sure, but we can work on our mindset and perspective to minimize these negative effects.
Owning & Changing Your Deeply Rooted Beliefs
Welcome back to another episode of the Strategy Hour Podcast! Today, we dive into the topic of owning and changing your deeply rooted beliefs. Imagine you are a tree and you have an abundance of beautiful fruit hanging from you, but you also have fruit that is rotten, that you feel ashamed of and that you don’t want others to see. The only way to determine what the problem is, why there is this bad fruit, is to go through the entire system to see where the change needs to happen.
On this episode, we talk about behavior, values, and beliefs using the metaphor of a tree – a helpful way to better understand ourselves and others. How do you bring about change in your life, where do you begin? We talk about where our values come from and how we can begin to not only change ourselves but our entire communities. Regardless of how ingrained you think your behavior is, we all have the ability to grow and improve and to even do a complete 180! This episode brings you inspirational stories and lots of practical advice for business, raising kids, and life in general, so be sure to tune in!
Life Updates: What Really Happens Outside of Boss Project
Today on the show we are giving you a little break from the norm and offering a few updates on things besides Boss Project. That's right, this episode is dedicated to all those things outside of work, although some of it is more work! We both have a lot going on behind the scenes, in our personal lives and we wanted to share some of what keeps us inspired, busy and our occupied when we are not doing our main thing!
This conversation includes a lot of life changes because that is what has been going on for both of us, personally. Hopefully, you will find it insightful, useful and show you just a little bit more of our world. We sure do love sharing it all with you, so let's go ahead and dive right in!
Boss Talk – What Failure Really Means
Today on the podcast we have a Boss Talk about a topic that’s been on our minds a lot lately, probably because we’ve been going through all these transitions. So today we discuss what failure is to each of us and how it makes us feel. We felt that it was really important to open up this conversation because there’s a lot of shame that can come with failure, and that makes us not want to talk about it! But sharing ideas around this topic will hopefully build even stronger support in our community as it is something that all of us have gone through at some point in our lives.
As cliché as it sounds, failure is always an opportunity to learn – even though this is not what we want to hear when it happens to us. It’s true though, failure gives us another opportunity to try again and brings us one step closer to that thing that we’re supposed to be doing and that feels good! Don’t miss out on this episode and join in the conversation by sending us a DM on Instagram!
7 Things You Didn't Know About Us Starting Our Business
With all these transitions going on lately, we’ve had to do some reflection because as we move forward, it’s important to figure out what we want and where we’ve been and so we decided to share some things you probably didn’t know about us starting our business. Emylee might be remembering everything as perfect, but it definitely wasn’t!
On this episode we make a few confessions and share some of the behind the scenes info that we haven’t talked about before. You might find these seven things surprising, you might find them relatable, but maybe you find it encouraging to hear that we did not have everything figured out before we started our business. A lot of stuff we had to learn along the way – stuff we’re happy to share with you, so be sure to join us for this episode!
4 Lessons About Business From The Bachelorette
So as you may or may not know, Abagail is completely addicted to The Bachelorette and all the associated shows! She has been following them for ages and seems to know almost all of the rotating cast of characters from each season and the ins and outs of this huge TV show. So she thought, why not use the show as a way to draw out some important life and business lessons seeing as though they are exemplified so well during the action of the latest season and the format in general?
Even if you are not particularly in love with or follow the show that closely, there is a whole lot here for you! We draw out a few of these lessons and explain how they can impact your business in the long run, and all thanks to The Bachelorette. So make sure to tune in to a new twist on the regular Strategy Hour Show!
Living Beyond Society's Standards: Working Mom Life & Working With Your Spouse
As you know, all of our lives are ever evolving and the schedules and routines that organize our days are constantly in motion. A big part of this, for us, is obviously our business and we have learned some big lessons about riding the waves of change so that everything doesn't go terribly wrong any time something comes up. Today we will be talking about two major curveballs that life has thrown at us, one at Emily in the form of childcare and one at Abagail in the form of her husband's uncertain career.
In the episode we will be unpacking these stories and sharing the silver linings of each for your listening pleasure! The biggest takeaway that we want to share with all of you from this topic is that the choices you make as life changes must be the right ones for you and for your family. Not for others' standards or by their advice or opinions. Do not let the norms of society manipulate how you live your life! We are sharing all of this to support you and remind you that the right way is your way and with enough thought and time you will find it! With all that said, let's get into some strategy!
Our Favorite Systems, Tools and Apps for the Creative Entrepreneur
So, we get questions all the time about which app is the best for each task. On today's episode of The Strategy Hour, we thought we would give you all of that and break down all of our favorite tools and tips for getting the most for your biz! We will go through each section of our business and give you a selection of what we use, recommend, do not like, and even some things that might be beyond your scope right now.
Remember, just because we use it does not make it the best or the one you should use. Often you have to patch together a toolbox that is best for your specific needs, but we are here to show you the lay of the land! We want to be as transparent as possible and often the reason we use a certain tool at this time is that it was just the one we selected first! So all that being said we are sure you will get a lot from this episode and might just find your new favorite thing out there! Let's get into some strategy!
What Not to Do When Pivoting from Services to Courses
Something that we repeatedly get asked about is content, specifically around what should be free and what should come at a cost, which platforms should be used to deliver the content in the best way. This is especially relevant for those of you who want to transition from services to digital offerings where you teach what you know. Truth is, there are so many different ways to approach this and this gets us overwhelmed very quickly. First of all, we’re going to give you permission to do less! So if you feel like you are doing too much and overcomplicating it, you probably are.
If you’re running a strictly service-based business and you do not have a consistent income in that $5000 to $8000 range yet, then creating content is a massive distraction that is taking your time away from getting more clients. But if you have reached that six-figure goal, there’s really two main ways you can progress from here. One, you create an agency model, take yourself out of the work and hire people to do the work and scale from there by adding more people. Or two, you start doing less of what you’re doing now by transitioning to teaching other people how to do what you do. And this is what we’re talking about today: dos and don’ts when pivoting from services to courses, so stay tuned!
How to Have Deeper Relationships Even if You’re An Introvert
Welcome back to the Strategy Hour y’all! A couple of weeks ago we had a workshop and we got a few comments that caught us totally off guard. This came after we spoke about using referrals and tapping into the resources of your inner circle to jumpstart your business. We know what we are talking about when it comes to network marketing, but there is the icky side of this that involves random messages from people you haven’t been in contact with for ages and then they suddenly need something from you. That is not what we are advising you to do!
These “Hey Girl” messages are simply not the way to go! You don’t even need social media to have the conversations we are urging you to have. But if you are using social, here is our ten cents about it: respond to others in the way that you want to be responded to. Building our business came down to personal relationships and conversations and today we’re sharing more of our personal experiences and successes on this front. So be sure to tune in for this episode of Strategy Hour, and find out how to create those meaningful business relationships!
Becoming a Product Boss with Jacqueline Snyder and Minna Khounlo-Sithep
Today on the show we are so happy to welcome the combined force behind the The Product Boss Podcast, Jacqueline and Minna! Through their show, they teach business owners how to grow product-based businesses with strategies and a strong community. Each of them have their own business as well and have taken their personal work into their joint venture, offering their expertise as a great service to other creatives out there!
Today's talk is all about taking your products further and the idea of going deeper instead of wider. Although Jacqueline and Minna mainly focus on product-based business, these strategies can be applied to whatever you are working on with the basic idea being to make more of the customers you already have rather than going to find new customers from scratch. So let's dive in and hear what they have to say!
It's Easier Than You Think to Make $100k from Your Services
Today on The Strategy Hour we’re diving deeper into what exactly we mean when we say that is should be easy and fun to make $100k from your service based business, within a year. There’s a misconception that money cannot be earned without really hard work, and to an extent this is true, especially for certain types of businesses. But you also have to be smart about it! Just to reiterate, when we say it’s easy to make six figures, we are talking about offering services like copywriting, designing and photography. And this is by doing the basic work only, aside from all the other side offerings like podcasts and training courses.
In fact, you should keep it as simple as possible, focusing on doing one thing really well instead of doing a bunch of different things. These other ideas are not bad, but until you’ve done the one thing properly, you won’t enjoy its full benefits. We’re also guilty of this and we’ve seen many of our mentees battling with the same thing. Today we’re breaking this down in a way that we hope will help you not to fall into the trap of believing that diversifying will necessarily expand your business and make you more money. Whether you’re thinking of adding on products or offering more services, you think that the single solid service you’re offering will not get you to your financial goals. Today we’re busting that myth, and we’re going to show you have it is totally possible to achieve your goals by sticking to the basics.
What We're Digging: In Life, Health & Home
Hey, everyone! Welcome to another episode of the Strategy Hour Podcast. Today's show is dedicated to chatting about all the latest things we are addicted to, the things we are digging and what we are into right now! Sound exciting? We hope so! Luckily for all of you, most of these things are all things you can buy, so you can use this as a fantasy shopping list if you so please, no one is stopping you!
So basically, in this episode we are going to chat about stuff today; stuff that helps you get one step closer to your own personal success. Take your cues from us! We have scoured our lives to find what is making them better and are bringing them to you. We are talking the last six or so months in gadgets, ideas, aids and plans. And believe us, there is no shortage of it! So without further ado, let's get to the list!
Boss Talk: Did You Have Any Fears When You First Started Your Business?
We’re pumped to do another Boss Talk episode today! Our question for today is, “Did you have any fears when you first started your business?” Before we jump into this though, it’s worth mentioning that Emylee has a habit of conveniently forgetting all the negative memories of an experience, looking back at them with rose-colored spectacles! Nonetheless, we’re talking about fears and what it was that drove our decisions in those early days of starting our own businesses.
Many factors played a role in those decisions, including long-distance relationships and being desperate to move closer to our families. In this episode we share some of our fresh-out-of-college experiences trying to navigate new phases in life and trying to figure out what our next steps would be. We also chat about confidence and what motivated us to start our own businesses and the many considerations involved, so join us to find out more about our early days as startup entrepreneurs!
meet your host
I don’t believe there’s one right way to build a business.
I’m your host, Abagail Pumphrey. And I’m dedicated to supporting online businesses.
I’m here to help you build business your way: one that supports not only the life you have but the life you want. I’m on a personal mission to help you become financially free.
I’m talking about all the lessons learned as I turned a layoff into a 7-figure online business. I’m here to help you prioritize your life every step of the way, whether you’re creating your first digital product, growing an email list, or scaling an already profitable business.
I want to hear your hot takes, your biggest takeaways, or the genius ideas that pop in your head as you’re listening to the show.
My DMs are always open on Instagram, so head over and introduce yourself so I can get to know you!
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