On today’s episode, we welcome Marissa Pane. Marissa is a life coach for women with depression and anxiety, who works to heal and inspire others. We have both struggled and continue to struggle with mental illness throughout our lives. In this episode, we talk through some of our own personal struggles with mental illness and give you some tactical ways to help you get through it while running your own online business.

We focus on your ‘why’, how to deal with frustrated customers, and how to not have them affect you so emotionally. We also get into journaling, what happiness means, and finding out what is taking away from your joy. Marissa has 15 ways to combat mental illness and today’s episode is about solidarity with women who “get it” and equipping you with actionable steps to improve your well-being, your business and your life! So grab the tissues (or the wine) and take a listen!

Boss babes, you are in for a treat today. We are doing what we normally do after a launch. We are giving you all the nitty gritty details you won’t hear anywhere else. You are going to hear about ad spend, what we did, what we didn’t do, how much we made, and all of what happened in our most recent launch, which happens to be an affiliate launch for someone else’s course (not even our own program), that we just wrapped up in July 2017. If you have no clue what we’re talking about, go back to some of our older podcasts and give them a listen.

After having so much success with FB Everything, we thought it would be beneficial for our audience to hear how we went about doing an affiliate launch. We spent money on marketing someone else’s program and that’s what we’re going to talk about today, so if you’re even a tiny bit curious, keep listening!

Today on the podcast we have Amanda Boleyn of the She Did It Her Way podcast. Have you heard of her? Well, if you haven’t, she is a rockstar. She Did It Her Way has been named one of the "12 Best Podcasts for Entrepreneurs" and "Top 100 Best Websites for Entrepreneurs" by Forbes. Her podcast is dedicated to featuring savvy female business entrepreneurs from across the globe. These women share their insights and journeys so that others can do it their way too.

In this episode, Amanda is sharing about something other than her podcast. We’re diving into how she’s been able to take her podcast journey and leverage it to further grow her business. In fact, she’s opening up her first ever in-person summit — the doors are open and we’re talking all about the amazing experience that you can get in on this October at the She Did It Her Way Summit. We’re also talking about pivoting and the challenges of growing a business and everything that comes with that.

Holy moly guacamole! It’s episode 100! On today’s milestone episode, we have one of the most integral behind-the-scenes members on The Strategy Hour: Nicholette von Reiche. You might not hear her (or see her), but Nicholette is always buzzing around in the background as our business manager, graphics guru and tech ninja. Today, we’re talking all about growing a team, the state of TCC, what’s coming up for the podcast and all about the future of the biz.

We want to break down the TCC journey and let you know who has a role in the business. We can lift the curtain a bit to show you that it isn’t just us in here – but that it was just us for a long time! We have laid a lot of foundations over the course of our first business year and if you are currently laying the foundations in your own business, hopefully this will give you a glimpse into your future. We’re so excited about our first 100 episodes and we can’t wait to do a hundred more! Send the champagne, people! And let’s get into some strategy.

Today we are here with the lovely Ashley Gartland. Ashley helps passionate creatives and driven entrepreneurs like you, who feel like they’re drowning in to-dos and just want someone to tell them where to focus to make their business work. She teaches them how to stop overcomplicating things and simplify their approach so they can make more money in their business and experience more freedom in their life.

If you haven’t listened to our episode with Rachel Hofstetter, way back in episode 003, do yourself a favor and listen to it BUT listen to this one first. They are interlinked in that they both talk about your approach to press but Ashley breaks down the first steps you need to go through. She gets into all the befores and afters of getting press for your business and she’s helping you get ready to get your business featured.

Ever wondered, “How do they work together?” Well, this is a question we get asked a lot on the show and the answer may not be as simple as you think! How do we divide tasks? How do our personalities work well together and where do we struggle? How do we deal with stress? Today, we are embarking on a journey of self-discovery – digging into personality types, astrology and just a bit of “woo-woo-ness.”

Knowing how your brain, body and personality work can be an empowering tool to strengthen yourself, your team and your business. So we hope that by the end of this episode you might have learned something about your own self; your characteristics and how they affect the way you make decisions and interact with others in your business. If you are looking to improve your relationship with yourself and with others, then this episode is for you! Take a listen.

We are super excited for today’s episode with Becky Mollenkamp. Not only is Becky our friend, but she is a business mentor for women entrepreneurs. She helps them write down all those words that are stuck in their head so they can make some big changes and push forward in their businesses. Becky is also an absolute rock star at landing corporate clients and today we’re lucky enough to be getting the inside scoop from her.

Ever wonder, “How the heck do I, as a creative, get into the inboxes of corporate businesses and land those bigger projects?” Well, today Becky is sharing her tips and tricks with us. She’s also telling us how we can utilize programs like LinkedIn to up our connections, up our chances of getting in front of those people and so much more. If you’re interested in finding out more about this, keep listening to the show.

Lately, we have gotten some questions from our students, audience members and community about how we have evolved in our course creation journey, and so we decided to take you back. Not all the way back, not necessarily to our client days, but at least from the beginning stages of creating our first course all the way through to today. We’ll tell you what has changed and how we have been able to grow and better serve our community.

The purpose behind doing this is to really showcase to you all that you can start small (we did).  Nothing has to be perfect, just run with something and run the heck out of it until you add on something else. Dive into this episode if courses are something you’re interested in trying and learn from our mistakes. Keep listening so you can take some of our advice and see some bomb-ass results a year into it applying it.

Today on the podcast we have Ashlyn Carter of Ashlyn Writes. Are you multi-passionate? Well, this boss babe is and she has grown her business as both a copywriter and a calligrapher. She took her background as a corporate agent working with corporate clients and transitioned that into her current business, working with big name clients. We are so excited for you to hear how she’s been able to keep both her knowledge from her corporate days and add that onto her creative passion with calligraphy.

Do you want to have a business that serves two different people? Today we’re going through how to navigate your homepage, how to set up your services, products and offerings, and how to manage your social media and your email list if you’re talking to two different people. If that’s you, keep listening to find out more!

You all know by now that we have built Think Creative Collective on the “free-free-free marry me” model. We talk about it all the time. It is basically built on a foundation of giving a whole bunch of content, knowledge and strategy away for free so we can build a community of addicted and raving fans. People often think that if they give too much away it is going to decrease the number of sales they are ultimately going to get, but we have seen literally the opposite effect. It has only helped us grow our audience and our sales. It has also enabled us to create a community where our audience can be sure to find the answers they need instead of a dead-end, and people really value that.  

So what we want to talk about today is why we decided to use that model and how you can structure your own business to do the same. We also want to go over why it is very important to bust the myths behind giving away content for free. Inside this episode, we will focus on answering all of y’all’s questions surrounding the topic. We’ll give you the inside scoop about the actual effects to our business that this model has created for us so you can be more confident in what you are providing your audience, for free.

Today we are bringing on Wedding and Portrait Photographer, Katie Doherty of La Rousse Shoppe. Katie is a service and a product-based business babe. She started out as a teacher, had a passion for photography, saw a gap in the market and filled it with a $200k+ business that is as passive and automated as possible while continuously growing and expanding.

In this episode, Katie is sharing with us on how her dream was born. We get a peek into some of the resources and tools she uses to make it all happen and we find out more about what she actually sells. We are super excited about what she’s spilling in this episode, so keep listening.

We are here for a hot topic today. Today on the podcast, we are talking about why we did NOT decide to close our private Facebook group, which has roughly 12k+ people in it. This is one smokin’ topic, as there are a lot of Facebook groups run by business owners who are similar to us and in our circle that have been closing down left, right, and center.

Today, we want to highlight the fact that we are not going to speak for the people who have decided to close their groups; we are literally just here to talk about why we decided to keep our group open and go over some of the adjustments that we’ve made since that “change” in the Facebook group world. If you want to hear more about how we run our Facebook group and why it works for us, keep listening.

They call her The Entrepreneur’s Secret Weapon, and yes, we have her on the show today. Tracey Osborne, CEO of Empowered Fempreneurs, is here! Tracey has had a decade-long career as a Virtual Assistant and grew her business from $15,000 to 6-figures in only two years. During that time she has authored and co-authored three books, her latest being, Becoming A VA.

Inside this episode, we go over the exact systems that Tracey used to get her business off the ground, from the very beginning. We look at how she was able to leave her full-time job in 60 days, start her VA business and get off to the races in no time. We also talk about how Tracey was able to build relationships and eventually build an agency model where she brought on other VA’s inside her own business so she could grow and scale. Keep listening to learn more.

Today on the podcast we are doing Q&A style episode, but can you guess what the theme is? Yeah, that’s right — Facebook! We asked in the group for y’all to send us your questions about Facebook strategy and being successful on the platform. Now that we kinda know a thing or two, we feel that we can answer your questions and make sure you guys are on a good solid foundation and that your Facebook game is strong. We are jumping right in, so keep listening if you would like to know more about Facebook and how to use it as a tool in your business.

Today on the podcast, we have Dr. Beth Brombosz. Beth is an author, copywriter, content creator, and the host of the Blogger to Author Podcast. In 2015, she turned some of her own blog posts into a book titled Yoga for Runners, which is now available on Amazon. Beth’s book has helped her build a platform as an expert in her field. She is passionate about helping fellow bloggers turn their content into books so they can build authority in their niche, share their passion with the world, and earn passive income.

In this episode, you’re going to hear all about that process. From repurposing your content to creating a book, to self-publishing, pricing, layout and sales, Beth really breaks it down into an easy step-by-step process. She self-published her book in just 30 days! She proves that it’s totally doable, with no publishing experience needed. If you’ve never written a book in your life, but are thinking about it, then today’s podcast is for you.