Word on the street is, you have some pretty bomb ideas but, for whatever reason, you just keep them in your pocket, you sit on them, you hold onto them, and you don’t launch them. What the heck? What are you waiting for, lady? There is a valuable opportunity there that can earn you some real cash dollar bills for your business. So many of you come to us saying that you have this amazing dreamy idea, but you are frozen, you are stuck, and you are on the fence. A lot of you live in Sitting-on-the-fence-ville, right? But the reality of it all is, it is not comfortable or really beneficial for anyone.

We want to help you to get into the launch mindset and so we have created the 5 Days to Launch Challenge to arm you with the strategies and the steps you need to get there. We have determined that launching something and launching it well really just comes down to five steps. That’s it. Five steps. You can do one step a day and at the end of five days, you will have launched a product and made actual money. So get ready to jump into your very own launch by signing up for the challenge today!

Today on the show, we have Becca and Jake Berg of Dubsado. We are super excited to have them on! They are a husband and wife team that are the brains, power, and genius behind Dubsado, which is a client management system for creatives. They have built one amazing and beautiful platform for all of those things that you have 75 different logins for, including your contracts, how you get paid, and how you respond back to clients after they book with you. All of those pieces are neatly tied up in one amazing software bow.

In today’s episode, you are going to get a peek behind the curtain. We are walking you through the steps they took to build the software company, from idea to launch, and how they did it while building a family and working full time jobs. They share with us how they have been able to grow and scale their business, and how Becca had to make sure it was her own. They also dive into exactly how they were able to make this awesome idea into an actual product, get it launched, and then how they have been able to scale and grow their team. We are even talking about some inside scoops on how to better perfect your client based business and get paid faster. So we are excited for you to jump in, listen, and learn!

Today, we are chatting about the good old pivot; the pivoting to your passion, the figuring out what the heck you can work on right now to start getting your feet wet. It is all about testing the waters of this whole creative biz ownership thing, making some actual money, and then transitioning to whatever keeps the fire in your soul burning. We want you to dive in to where you are getting paid to do something that you are good at, even if that thing is not what your business is going to be in the next year or two.

So in this episode we are going to dive into starting with your MVP and what that means, and then explain to you kind of how we kept that top of mind in our own creative business journeys. Now, we are not talking about the most valuable player on your baseball team. No, it is your most viable product. What is the thing that you can sell today without having to learn a new skill, without having to go to school or take a class? What can you bring to market right away that you can sell and make money off of? This is exactly the thing that people need to be focusing on instead of other fluff.

Today on the podcast, we have Amy Northard CPA, accountant for creatives. Amy has been a friend of ours for what feels like centuries at this point, and we have known her longer than we have known each other. She is awesome and makes everything sound so simple that you think maybe you could do it yourself, even though you can’t. Amy is so knowledgeable about all things taxes, bookkeeping, making things stress free, and making things easy to understand.

You are going to learn a lot in today’s episode, like what type of business you should be and how to even form it. She also shares her favorite apps, tools, and softwares to keep track of all your numbers. We go over the questions you should ask before you are ready to hire a CPA, things that you guys are forgetting to deduct, and stuff that you actually cannot deduct, that you might have thought you could. We also talk about the icky quarterly taxes and how to make that process super simple for you moving forward so that you are not scared and stressed out come tax season. So just relax, settle in, and give this one a listen.

Alright guys, we are back for another tactical throwback. Today, we are taking it back and sitting down to interview Abagail about all of the lessons she’s learned, the mistakes she’s made, and how the heck she got clients when she was doing one-on-one client work for branding, design, and website business building. So today we are going to give the quick version of what Abbie did before TCC, because not everyone knows that she has not been doing Think Creative Collective forever. We will learn a bit more about what she used to do, and dive into the tactics she used to grow her business.

Prior to TCC, Abagail worked in the corporate design world. After completing her fine arts degree, she went straight out of the gate and started working for big and small businesses alike. She worked with businesses of all shapes and sizes, anywhere from billion dollar, to nonprofit, to educational businesses. She even worked for a startup and then eventually was laid off, which is really where she faced her crossroads and had to make a decision about whether to start her own business or simply look for another job. Abbie was definitely ready for a challenge and decided to pursue her dream of having her own business. So get ready, get your socks on, it’s going to be a good one.

Today on the podcast, we have our good friend Steph Crowder from Courage and Clarity
Podcast and Fizzle. If you have not yet seen Fizzle and its amazing membership platform full of
incredible courses for small business owners, you guys should definitely check it out. Steph is
one of our podcasting buddy friends. We meet with Steph and a couple of other ladies, twice a
month and chat all things podcasting, growth tactics, marketing, guest ideas, and all that good
stuff in our podcasting mastermind. She is an incredible human being, and we love her to
pieces. Steph is super knowledgeable, super kind, and we can’t wait for you to learn from her
today.
 

Inside this episode, Steph is giving you a step by step of all the things you need to do to
interview potential customers in order to validate your kick ass business idea. We are also
getting a behind the scenes look of a thriving membership site, and Steph is talking all about
creating amazing customer service in your business and the step-by-step creation process of
creating courses inside of Fizzle. It’s a great episode, we get really in depth especially on that
membership piece and the business idea piece, so we are really excited for you to dive in and
take away some awesome knowledge bombs from Steph.

Today on the podcast, we are taking you all back to the days before TCC even existed. It is kind of crazy but, believe it or not, we both used to run different businesses. Emylee used to be a photographer and she was pretty darn good at it, so we are doing a little interview style throwback with her today. She left a five figure photography business to form TCC and before that, Emylee graduated with a degree in fine art photography, minors in a whole bunch of other areas and kind of went ahead on her own, always carrying that entrepreneurial spirit.

Emylee started her entrepreneurial journey with her very own cupcake business, which turned out to be a big, fat failure, but then she went back to photography and turned it into a business. We are going to talk about what it was like to run a photography business, what it was like to get clients, how to package, how to price, how to just get your business up and running, the gear she used, and so much more.

Today on the podcast, we have Jordan Ellis of Jordandené. Oh my gosh, this girl! She is so awesome. We have known Jordan for what feels like forever, but really it has only been two years. She was the first student ever for both of us, and since then, Jordan has gone on to grow a giant geek-chic business where she sells goods of all different types. She has shirts and aprons and the cutest little kids clothes ever and it just warms our hearts to see how much she has been able to accomplish in just two years, and she shares so much knowledge with us today, all about growing a product-based business online.

She talks to us about the changes that her business has made since she first started on Etsy way back in the day, how she is now on Squarespace, and how that works for her. She also shares the mission behind her business, how she creates an experience for her customers, a unique way for her to have scarcity in a product-based business, how blogging works for her, and all about hiring your first employee. She goes deep and gives some tips for those who are just getting started in the product world as well as those who are wanting to up-level what they already have.

Hello little business babies! We are so excited to chat to you about reaching our first 100K downloads on the podcast in just four short months. We absolutely cannot believe how great you guys have been, and we are so thankful for the amazing support that we have been given. Each and every download, share, and review makes a huge difference to the impact that we are able to have on all of you creative biz bosses out there.

For today’s episode, we are going to be talking about how we got to a 100,000 downloads, the effect that having a podcast has had on our business, our marketing game plan, and some strategies that we think have helped and made a difference. Keep in mind, there is one major caveat to all of what we are going to be talking about today — with podcasting, there really is no one-size-fits-all formula. It is still such a mysterious medium and people are continuously trying to understand how it works and how to interact with it, which makes it really hard to measure. So please keep that in mind as we are sharing some of our experiences, and find out what you can take and apply to your own podcast.

Today on the podcast, we have Kelly Parker Smith of Hello World Paper Co. For those of you who don’t know, Kelly is a retired third grade teacher who started an Etsy shop and has had a booming business ever since. She has over $400,000 in sales on Etsy and even started her own podcast where she talks all about what it’s like to be an Etsy shop owner and run a product-based business. Kelly has been on Etsy for almost a decade, so she knows the ins and outs of why the platform is such a total rock star for product-based businesses.

On today’s episode, Kelly shares with us why she chose Etsy to sell on in the first place and how to build an audience when you are first getting started. She even talks about some pros and cons of Etsy and how some of those cons can actually work in your favor. Kelly lets you know how to stand out in the sea of many Etsy shops and gives some strategies to communicate with your customers outside of Etsy. She also gives some secret tips and tricks to maximize your presence, improve your SEO on Etsy, and get found quicker. So get out your notebook, especially if you are considering hopping over to Etsy, because there is a lot of good stuff in this episode.

For today’s episode, we are going to have some therapy. We are going to get real today. So kick up your feet, lay down, get a glass of wine, get some coffee, sit on the sofa, whatever it is that you want to do, because today we are talking about that feeling of intense overwhelm. You know, that anxious feeling of looking at what you have to do and avoiding it with all your might. We dive into the different ways that we like to avoid things, like being afraid of the big fat failure, or being afraid of success. Often this kind of overwhelm and avoidance leads to a whole lot of planning, but a little less doing. You can even go as far as saying that planning is more fun than actually doing.

We have been hearing from a lot of you lately that this is a really big piece of why you sometimes just cannot seem to move forward in your business. So we thought we would give our two cents on the matter and let you know how we used to think about these exact same things in our business, plus some of the ways that we avoid these feelings and what we do differently today. Perhaps you just like to get organized as a way of covering up the fact that you are not getting any work done. Oftentimes we tend to love the process of getting everything in a row more than actually doing the work itself. If that sounds like you, then this episode is a must-listen. So sit back, and find out exactly how to get back on the productive track.

Today on the podcast, we are super excited to have Elise Cripe of Get to Work Book. For those of you who do not know, Elise lives with her husband and her two young daughters in San Diego, California, and not only has she launched the Get to Work Book daily planner, but she has been online since 2005 and she has done a lot! Elise has been a blogger, she has shared DIY projects, and she is quite the artist.

In this episode, we dive into more on the Get to Work Book, an actual, physical book that she created from an Instagram challenge. She is going to tell you exactly how she made that happen and cover some cool Instagram strategies, where she finds a lot of her audience for Get to Work Book. We’re finding out how she built her product-based business from Instagram, why she stopped blogging, and ideas on y’all getting creative again. We go over finding your creative identity and how important that is for us to stay inspired and motivated every day. We can’t wait for you to dive in and get re-inspired today, so go ahead and give this one a listen.

Inside today’s episode, we are talking all about launching and specifically a launch we just had where we made $37,000 in a matter of a week. We’re going to talk to you all about what changed, what we did differently, some systems we added on to try our new take on Facebook ads, and exactly how we got the results we did. We’re even going to dive into some data and what worked and what didn’t.

We have been waiting to do this episode because we wanted to come back with all the final results and it would be helpful for you guys to know perhaps how we launched before so you can really see the value of the changes that we have made and how we approached it differently this time around. Really, it comes down to two things that we changed, so stay tuned as we dive into the details in this episode.

Today on the podcast, we have Stacy Tuschl, who is a high-performance business coach, mentor, bestselling author, speaker, and creator of the She’s Building Her Empire Podcast and Community. Stacy helps purpose-driven women entrepreneurs and business owners break through their challenges and operate at their highest potential. She is highly passionate and she loves helping women unapologetically be themselves and create a legacy they are proud of.

Stacy is pretty awesome, and on the podcast, she is going to talk about her journey of building a business to over seven freaking figures, all from her parents’ backyard. Today, you are hearing about that journey and how she finally felt like she needed to pour her energy somewhere else and build a personal brand on top of that seven-figure business. There is definitely a lot you are going to learn today! We are talking about being a mompreneur, juggling all the things in your life, self-doubt, confidence in your business, and so much more. So dive in, get started, and give this one a listen.

Blogging may be one of the things at the top of the list in our business. The blog was part of the early stages of our business, and existed pre-TCC. We first started blogging before we were even in business together, when it was still just a passion project of Abby’s to educate small business owners on growth strategies. She was blogging five days a week, and literally never skipped a beat. After we met, we then decided to see if we wanted to work together on a longer-term basis. We decided that Emylee would guest blog for what is now the TCC blog, to essentially share the platform, and continued to put out content five days a week.

Together we would brainstorm ideas for the blog, browse Pinterest, ask our audience what they needed help with, and write about exactly what we had just learned the week before. It definitely was not any of this big picture concept stuff yet because we just weren’t in that place in our business at the time. We kept blogging five days a week for almost a full year, at which point we had significantly grown our website traffic, but we were feeling burnt out. In this episode, we walk through exactly how our blog has transitioned into what it is today, and the strategies we used along the way to get there. So tune in to hear all about our ever evolving blogging journey!