We know our listeners are super smart, and there are tons of cool things you do every day, so maybe the best thing you can do today is to outline your group course! We have been in the teaching space for a while now, and Boss Project has recently celebrated its fifth anniversary. Go us! Interestingly, even though we have taught tons of people over the years, we haven’t shared that much about what we put out into the world. We teach a lot about business and marketing, but we have not really gone into course development that much. This is mostly because this is not everyone’s primary job.

We have, however, noticed an influx of coaches, and actually, the majority of the people in the Creative Template Shop are coaches. While this is surprising, it is also really incredible because people are looking for connection and transformation, and they want someone to guide them in that process. Before we get started, we want to invite you to a party. All you need to do is open the Strategy Hour Podcast up in your favorite podcast app, give us five-star reviews only, and then share these screenshots on Instagram. You can win one of two great prizes, either a free copy of Trello for Business or a whole month free of the Creative Template Shop.

Today on the podcast we are joined by our wonderful friend and all round badass, Sarah Peck. Sarah is the founder of Startup Parent, a New York City based company dedicated to documenting women’s leadership. She is a writer, yoga teacher and hosts Startup Parent’s weekly podcast too! Her goal is to amplify women’s voices and promote their business through her work and she definitely has one of our favorite brains in the game! We share a lot of her business philosophy and will be using this episode to geek out on some strategies for listening to your audience as a way to help grow your product or service.

This super under-utilized and somewhat simple strategy can help you and your biz so much! By paying closer attention to your audience, you can really improve what you offer and make the direct connection between those paying you and what you provide for them. Quite a straightforward equation, right? This is the second time Sarah is joining us on the Strategy Hour and if you haven’t heard her previous appearance, go back and check it out immediately! It’s Episode 185. Today’s episode’s topic was sparked by a conversation a few days prior where we were chatting to Sarah about business philosophies and implementation. We really believe in these ideas and they are so in line with our core values that we could not resist having her on to talk all about it! So stayed tuned to hear it all.

Today on The Strategy Hour we’re diving deeper into what exactly we mean when we say that it 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 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. Today we’re busting the myth that the single solid service you’re offering will not get you to your financial goals, and we’re going to show you it is totally possible to achieve your goals by sticking to the basics.

Today, we are so excited to have this conversation, mostly because one of our favorite things in the world is to either learn, do something, or unlock a strategy, and then, in two seconds, turn around and start talking about it! We don’t like to let things fester for too long and want our listeners to take a peek behind the curtain as quickly as possible! Some of you might have seen on Emylee’s personal Instagram (@emyleesays) or our stories @bossproject, that she just did a rebrand! It’s so different in an amazing kind of way!

Part of why Abagail loves it is because for the first time in forever, she didn’t do it herself, so it turned out nothing like it would if she had done it. It’s modern, woo, and earthy! For the first time in forever, Emylee was the client, so today, she gives some behind the scenes insights into how her rebranding process went. She talks about how long it took, what she did herself as far as preparation, the relationship she had with her amazing designer, and a whole lot more!

Today, we have Amanda Boleyn back on the show! She is the founder of She Did It Her Way, where she coaches women how to quit their jobs, replace their income, and build an online business they love. In this episode, we are talking about the four steps she has developed that you can implement right now to start landing clients and offering your services!

We know that considering current circumstances these steps might need to be expedited a little bit and they could feel a little hurried and rushed, but the point is they work so implementing them effectively could be just what you need. So, today we are giving you a lot of ideas on who you can be reaching out to, how you can figure out what to offer, and how to actually market and get your product or service sold!

Spoiler alert! This whole episode is a giant spoiler alert because you are finding out something before it launches – and we are stoked! We are seven days out from doing the biggest thing since our signature program came out. We hope for your sake you’re listening to this after the launch so you don’t have to wait seven whole days for it. And we can tell you, we’ve been working on this project for more than a year, and we were pretty sure it would be a huge surprise to all of you, so we wanted it perfectly polished. 

We’ve given it tons of thought and came up with the solutions for all your design worries. If you’re not a graphic designer and are always fretting over getting your branding right and looking professional, don’t worry, the dark days are over. Tune into this episode for the big reveal that will be a game-changer for your business in 2020! 

Today our guest is Claire Diaz-Ortiz! Claire is an author, renowned speaker, and startup investor. She was an early employee at Twitter and has taken that essential expertise into her work as a consultant and authority on social media and online branding. Her books have been published in 12 countries and won many awards. She has been featured widely in both print and broadcast media. Today we are referring specifically to her latest book, Social Media Success for Every Brand and unpacking some of the lessons she has compiled in its pages. 

When we say Claire is a social media genius we really mean it! In our conversation, we unpack the difference between direct marketing and brand marketing and why you should not be targeting an immediate sale on social media platforms. Claire breaks down a few common mistakes made by brands and big businesses on the various social sites we all use and shares some very easy and quick strategies you can start implementing today to get things going!

On the Strategy Hour Podcast today, we are joined by the wonderful and amazing Rachel Green! She is one of the first people we connected with when we were starting out in the online business world. She has been in business for the last seven years, helping hundreds of businesses grow and succeed. As a brand strategist, designer and educator, Rachel has generated over 5 million dollars in sales for her clients and her focus on empowering female business owners is truly inspiring!

In this episode, we are breaking down what a brand strategy is, why it is important to start there and the questions that you need to ask when figuring this all out. Rachel offers some great thoughts to work through in order to help you make sure your story and brand are pushing you forward. She is all about progression, not just pretty branding and logos! We really respect Rachel's perspective on the strategic part of branding and we know you will all find it very useful. So buckle up and let's get into some strategy!

In the creative entrepreneur world, there are so many talents and you guys are doing great! But the one thing we’re seeing, and we’ve done the same thing, is that design work sometimes falls a little short. You might be a photographer, fine artist or wedding planner but do not necessarily have the expertise when it comes to your branding — that’s a set of skills entirely on its own. It could be an email header, a social media announcement or an infographic you need to whip up, and it’s not as easy as it looks. Graphic designers are trained to know what works and have a sharp eye to identify off-balance designs, but we regular folk don’t have that same skill. 

So, today Emylee gets to direct questions at Abagail who, as you all know, is a kick-ass designer. Wearing her designer hat, she will advise you about representing your brand in the most professional manner even though you lack professional skills. As much as we focus on teaching you guys about increasing profit, the way you show your brand to the world can be a make or break aspect. The bottom line is this: when you use the same styles, colors and fonts consistently, you become recognized as a brand, and that is your goal. 

This week on the Strategy Hour, we welcome a great friend of ours. Alexis Teichmiller is here on the show for the first time, which is kind of weird and surprising! We have known each other for over 3 years and we are super happy to have her, finally! Alexis is currently in Texas, although Illinois is definitely her home, and she works at ConvertKit where she creates, explores and inspires entrepreneurs through her position as the manager of ConvertKit's affiliate program. She loves building relationships with influential creators and got in the game as an online entrepreneur and blogger herself! So she knows the game and its frustrations. She wants to help bloggers find the right fit at ConvertKit and how they can be more human in the communication and branding!

In this episode, Alexis gives us some great tangible action steps. The script she offers can easily be used to do what she does and we guarantee you will see some great results! We can all improve our communication with all those who are close to us; this means partners, friends, family and those we work with. Alexis also shares two amazing tactics that ConvertKit has adopted as a company which are a bit scary but pretty revolutionary! There are a bunch of cool takeaways for your business, as well as some book and podcast recommendations that we know y'all are going to love! We are so excited to be talking about the human element to business and how you can show up as vulnerable, relatable, real and strong all at the same time!

Today we have our first roundtable discussion of sorts! We are joined by Parker Stevenson of Evolved Finance and Amy Northard of Amy Northard CPA! Both of our guests are people we work with and they are here to tell us about their experiences scaling service-based business scaling service-based businesses. Parker is our resident bookkeeping and financial guru and Amy is our tax accountant and so much more! Now you might be thinking that these topics might not make for the most interesting episode but we promise this is going to be super fun and not at all dull!

Both of our guests spoke at our recent summit about growing a team and productizing your services and we wanted to pick their brains just a little bit more on the subject! So they are here to give you some suggestions on realistic scaling and how they have found it possible to move things upward in their service-based businesses. So if you love client work but also want to keep growing and cannot quite imagine how it might all work, this is the episode for you!

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!

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! 

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!

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!