Hello all you wonderful listeners and welcome back to The Strategy Hour! Today we will be talking about a big step we took recently and when we say big, we mean really big! That’s right, we hired our first full time employee here at TCC and we are going to be talking all about the first part of this process and helping you think about this idea for yourselves. Before this everyone we have hired has been part time as a contractor and we were their client. To tell you the truth, we have been itching to get someone on board with more time and commitment to our business and this is when we decided to do it!

When someone is an actual full time employee everyone can get a lot more out of the relationship and knowing boundaries and how and when to do what can be a lot clearer. We do have to admit that there was some hesitation on our part due to going into the unknown. We had some concerns about what this would mean financially and legally and so we asked ourselves and others a lot of questions before getting serious. When we felt like these were answered and it was the right time, we got serious! As we cover during today’s conversation, our favorite book at the moment, Traction, came in handy for some helpful ways in which to go about this process. So join us as we break down this big step and hopefully get you thinking about your own big steps too!

Hey everybody and welcome back to The Strategy Hour! Today we are talking PR, media, and marketing with Christina Nicholson of the Media Maven. Christina was in news broadcasting for many years before she decided to start her PR firm and now helps businesses grow their brands by gaining exposure and using it wisely. Today’s show has Abagail riding solo as Emylee is away with a sick little one, but do not fear! It promises to be just as jam-packed and dynamic as usual with such an amazing guest.

Inside this episode, we will be talking about how to get more media coverage and how to utilize it, getting comfortable in front of a camera and much more! Christina also talks about common mistakes and simple tips for getting the most of out of your PR. As an industry expert from the other side of the fence, Christina has a lot of wisdom to share on how to get noticed and present well. We get into reaching out, who are the best people to speak to, and ways to make the process of marketing yourself more enjoyable for better results. For all of this and a whole lot more, you know what to do!

On today’s show we’re doing things a little differently and taking you through a process that we believe can make a world of difference in your life! This episode will be all about inventing a new possibility in your life, and you’ll see just what a shift this can make. Abagail tried out this exercise recently and found it super helpful and enlightening, so we could not resist sharing it with our listeners. Full disclaimer though, it might be a bit of bumpy ride because let’s face it, most things that help you grow are not pain free. But we promise you’ll thank us in the end!

Emylee will be going through the guided exercise for the first time during the episode and you can join in with he. We can all get down to the nitty gritty together! A lot of the time we deal with the positive and negative aspects of our lives in repeated patterns of behavior that do not allow for very much progress. The process we will be detailing is simple and straightforward, yet it provides a lot of insight and hope into how small adjustments can change our lives in big ways. So if you’re game, grab your favorite notepad and buckle in, we’re going deep!

Today on the podcast we have our work husband, Parker Stevenson. Parker is our bookkeeper, our CFO, business adviser, our friend, our friend-enemy and everything in between. You have probably heard us mention Parker throughout this podcast series. He is like the Where’s Waldo? of TCC and an absolute hoot. Today, we are revealing the mystery of Parker Stevenson and are going to be talking all about scaling a service-based business. Instead of teaching you sexy bookkeeping things, Parker is actually going to talk about his own business and give you a peek into some of his own business strategies.

Parker went down the same rabbit hole many entrepreneurs do, where he thought creating a passive online course program was going to be the solution for his business growth and scalability. But you’ll learn in the episode, how they decided it wasn’t going to work for them and why they decided to scale the service side of their business instead. Parker has a wealth of experience and is here to share with you why service-based businesses are severely underrated. If you are a new business owner or in the process of re-thinking your current online business model – this is definitely an episode you won’t want to miss!

Hello all of you wonderful listeners! We are so glad to have you back for this very important episode of our podcast! You know what time of year it is and you know we have done this before. Yes, it is time for us to each choose a word of intention for the coming year and to make sure that 2019 is the best one yet! While preparing for this episode we listened back to some of our previous words and New Years’ ideas and got some serious flashbacks! They feel so long ago but at the same time are still fresh in our minds.

Now we have to be honest, we came up with these words this morning! But at the same time we have probably been mentally preparing these ideas for ages now and in the episode you will hear all the background to why we chose our specific words and the pieces that came together to make this quick decision. We would also love to hear your own words for the coming year, so when you are done listening to this episode please share them with us, we would love to connect and affirm your choices. It is so impactful to communicate these ideas, it creates a sense of accountability and commitment!

On today’s episode we are super-duper excited to host Ashley Knight of The Hello Boss Community. Ashley founded the community as a means to support and bolster other businesswomen who were in the same boat as her. Through her group she is able to teach and coach strategy to an ever growing number of dedicated members and she loves it! And we love her for it! Here at The Strategy Hour Podcast we know the value the of groups we have run and been a part of, they can be the lifeboat bringing you back in when you are out at sea, so we know exactly what Ashley is talking about!

In our discussion we cover the early stages of starting a supportive community, relationships within this space, real world events, social media, sensitivity masterminds and much more. Ashley is one of the most dedicated community founders we have spoken to and we are sure her attitude and advice is going to be wonderfully useful and inspiring to all of our listeners. So whether you are part of an online community or looking to start one yourself, this is definitely the episode for you. Listen in to get the low-down.

In this episode we dive into seven habits we believe lead to a more productive life and a more productive business. These seven habits will ultimately help you achieve the goals and dreams you are seeking – whether those are personal or financial. You are one person, with multiple facets, and you can’t play blind to the fact that you have a life outside of work! We want to incorporate that into living a lifestyle that gets you where you want to go. These seven habits have been monitored over time in our own business. Whenever we are incredibly productive, we take a look at everything that we were doing over that time and ask, “What was a constant? What habits combined aided our productivity?”

A lot of people ask us what is it that makes us so productive, and everyone seems to be waiting for that miracle answer. But the reason why we are covering seven habits is because it is never just one thing. It’s never just one thing you do that helps you sell more, or get more people on your list, or land more clients. It is a combination of things that helps to create a successful business and a successful human being. So take a listen and learn more about the seven habits we focus on that have led to more productivity in our lives and how it can lead to more productivity in your life too.

We have such a great episode for all of you today, we literally cannot wait to share it! Today on the Strategy Hour we host Nathan Barry from ConvertKit! Now it may come as a bit of surprise he is not actually here to talk about email marketing and funnels and all that good stuff that we all love him for, but rather he is going to explain the big changes that almost happened at ConvertKit this year. We say almost because for those who might not know, ConvertKit, the hugely successful and constantly growing company almost changed their name during the summer and then decided not to. So Nathan is here to give the low down on this experience, how it all transpired and the lessons he and the company took away from it.

There is so much to learn in the episode so grab whatever you need. Maybe even some tissues because it gets a little emotional! We chat about handling audience reactions, moving forward with ConvertKit, difficult conversations, the big lessons, and much more! This conversation is such a true and honest reflection on a difficult and potentially disastrous process and it is not often we all get to have such an inside scoop on a true industry leader. So without much more ado, let’s dive right in!

Hello and welcome everybody to another episode of your favorite podcast! We are doing all the end of year round ups, reflections and strategy activities and today is all about getting that planning in for next year. We cannot believe 2018 is basically already over; it has just flown by and we are pretty sure you feel the same way! So if you have not yet got down to planning things for you and your biz, this is just what you need to get started and crush that session. We all need things on our calendars so we do not go stumbling blindly into the next rotation around the sun. So why not get down to it with us? We got you!

We will also be giving a few sneak peeks into what we will be doing next year, so you are not going to want to miss that juicy info! We chat about making time for your planning session and how to prepare successfully as well as getting into some of the key aspects of realistic and inspiring goal setting. A key takeaway from today is how to look at the drivers of your goals and using this information to make more accurate and helpful plans. On top of this, we give a few frameworks and suggestions, things that have helped us immensely in the past and we finish off today’s show with some failsafes, so you don’t do a lot of planning only to forget about it a few months into the new year. So for all that and more, join us on today’s episode!

Hello all of you beautiful people and wonderful biz queens! Today on the show we are super happy to be speaking to our friend Indigo Colton about the recent switch she made from running her own business to become a full time employee at someone else’s company. We think this topic has not been covered enough and it is really an important subject to understand if this question ever arises for you. We will be hearing from Indigo about her thought process, the deciding factors and some of the potential red flags. For Indigo, the change was the right move and we will try and unpack why it was the case so hopefully you can keep making the right choices for yourselves!

Some of you may already know Indigo but this peak inside her mind is a great way to get to know another side of her. We have a really interesting conversation we know you are going to love! We have noticed people seem to be a little hesitant to share their own experiences and inner workings on this subject, so it is just great to have an open and honest conversation about these things. We will be covering the feeling of going from being your own boss to the position of an employee, benefits and things that can be learned from another business, networking possibilities and all of Indigo’s ideas and feelings in-between! So let’s get right down to it!

Hey everybody! Welcome to our round up of the lessons we learned in 2018! As usual we learned a lot, if not more during this last year, so we have so much to share with all of you. You also know we love reflecting and reviewing and this podcast will basically be a fleshing out of all the important steps we took and progress we made in our business. We are hoping that you will follow along with us and do the same sort of thing with your biz! Hopefully ours will give you some ideas of how to reflect on the past year and the important points that came out of it.

A quick reminder that if you have been enjoying the podcast over the last 12 months (or more!) to leave us a review online, or tag us in your Instagram post or story. We love hearing from all of you and this is a great time to show our mutual appreciation. We love to repost and share content from our listeners, so get going with it! In our talk today we cover scaling, pivoting, hiring a CFO, summits, Traction, refueling creativity and much more. Are we all ready? Good! Let’s get into it!

Hello everyone and welcome back to the The Strategy Hour! Today we are once again joined by our friend Steph Crowder for a Boss Talk session and we will be discussing the role of mindset in defining success. These episodes are definitely some of our favorites and it is always a pleasure having Steph sit down for a dive into an interesting subject. We actually stole this topic straight from her and she dug into her deep archives and pulled this one out just for our listeners. We will really be considering how to get past mindset issues and how differently we combat these problems. It is such a great question and we cannot wait to unpack it right here on Boss Talk!

The discussion covers a meditation on different kinds of mindsets and attitudes and how these impact levels of success. We then go on to talk about grit, determination, and perseverance and how vital these qualities are in any type of achievement. The topics of nature and nurture are also relevant and a large takeaway from today is that we do not start on an even playing field but we do get to decide how we play the game and when we get back up from a fall. For an inspiring chat with a great soul-sister of ours, be sure to tune in!  

Hello everybody and welcome back to our podcast! Today’s show is almost like a grown up book review project, so just imagine us handing in a report and giving a presentation at the front of the classroom! The reason we are going back to school for this one is because since we recently read the book in question, it has made such an impact on both of us and TCC as a whole that we just could not wait to share it with all of you. Today we will be talking about Traction by Gino Wickman and how it immediately changed our trajectory and gave us so many tools for our biz. We know you are going to love them all! We cannot say this enough, whatever stage of your business you are in, go read it! The book has so many great strategies and this is the Strategy Hour after all, so there you go!

Today we will be looking at a few of the exercises and frameworks that Wickman offers in the book, which cover goal setting, company roles, vision and loads of other good stuff. We guarantee that these tools will change your biz for the better, forever! The book contains fun and engaging quizzes and activities and we really recommend that you use it as a kind of work book, moving through it with your own projects and departments. We will definitely be following this episode up sometime in the not too distant future with a report back on the effects of the framework, so keep your eyes and ears peeled for that some time next year. So without more fuss, let’s get down to it!

Hello listeners, and welcome back to The Strategy Hour Podcast. Today we are so lucky to have our friend Megan Hale with us to chat about the newest goal setting method she has adopted! What better time to talk about goal setting than November as we reach the end of another busy year and look forward to the next one. If you haven’t already started planning for 2019 then this episode is a great place to start! Megan found a way through one of the most challenging and action-packed years of her life and somehow managed, through all the commitments, to have her most successful and profitable calendar year yet, which we think is just crazy!

Having a baby at the beginning of January and her husband leaving on military deployment soon after was not quite the comfortable start to the year many of us might hope for. Let’s just say that with her business to boot, she had a lot on her plate! Anyway, prompted by this chock-a-block schedule she decided to start laying out some goals and what followed, quickly became her Good, Better, Best model, which immediately helped Megan achieve and exceed her minimum goals. Sound great? We think so! Megan does a great job of unpacking all of the juicy and useful parts of this. So stay tuned to hear how you can get a complimentary template from Megan to start you off!

Welcome back to another episode of the Strategy Hour Podcast. Today we are diving into why we take every December off. Now the truth is, we love you all, but we are tired! Our brains hurt, our throats hurt, and it’s time to take some time away. Life can get incredibly busy, especially around the holiday season, and sometimes that can be just too much to handle on top of running a business full-time. We all know that as Murphy’s Law would have it, everything happens all at once; business picks up, family events are scheduled, big life changes happen, you name it!

So inside this episode we are diving into exactly why we have adopted this strategy of taking the month of December off, and what it has done for our business and our personal lives. We also dig into exactly how we manage to prepare and plan ahead with our team to be able to pull it off. Finally, we share all the juicy details to help you do it too. That’s right, you can do it too! Just take what you learn here from us today, see how you can apply it directly to your business, and jump on the magical train to free Decembers!