Hey everybody and welcome back to the Strategy Hour Podcast! Today we are very, very excited to have Jane Lu as our guest. Jane is the founder of Showpo and has been in Forbes, Cosmopolitan and won numerous awards for her business! What started as a small clothing store in her parents garage in 2010 has grown and grown to the huge online store that is today. Their goal is to reach $100 million in revenue by 2020 and boy do we think they will achieve it! Jane is so inspiring and we love the way her brain works, she makes fast decisions and is such a visionary; qualities that have taken her company to amazing heights.

In our conversation Jane breaks down the milestones, learning curves, mistake, strategies and almost every important step in the process, so get ready to take some notes! This episode is a great insight into the turning points that any business faces and how to ride them out to success. Jane admits that some of the strategy she now espouses she has only seen in hindsight, quite an achievement for a business that now has 150 staff members and started with two racks of clothing less than nine years ago! Now, let’s get into the show.

Hey all of you strategists and biz queens! If you haven’t heard yet, we have been going through a big rebrand! All of of our work will now fall under the Boss Project banner. That’s right, TCC is now a thing of the past and we are onto even bigger and better things! Since we have started this process we have been getting so many questions about the new photos we have been taking and sharing sporadically. We have to admit they look amazing and we are so proud of how they have come out. We look pretty good in the them, if we don’t say so ourselves!

So today we wanted to share some tips and tricks for organizing a great shoot! After this experience we have loads of opinions and ideas to give you. In the past we mostly went pretty DIY with the process with varying degrees of success and have learned many lessons, and this time we applied a bunch of that knowledge! This was the first occasion that we went full professional and the experience was so fluid and we were so prepared! In our discussion we get into these preparations, budgeting, roles, and things to to remember. So let’s get to it!

Hey everybody we are super excited to have our friend Nikki Porcher on the show today! Nikki is the owner and founder of Buy From a Black Woman, which is an online non-profit organization that is bringing awareness and funding to businesses owned by black women! Nikki has had an amazing journey since starting this initiative and she now showcases a large number of black women business owners in her directory, Instagram, and in her shop. A fearless and natural creative, Nikki is so much fun to talk to and we know you are going to love this conversation too! During the episode we hear about this incredible journey that she has been on, starting with a blog, which became a hot Instagram account, then a directory and now a non-profit organization.

She currently gives out grants to black women to start their business and get off the ground, providing a network of support and knowledge to aid them in their pursuits. We have to admit we learned a lot in this conversation and Nikki is so open in sharing with us and we ended this chat just wanting to know more, support more and spread the love! There are so many great businesses in her directory and we should all be buying from them! It is so easy to do a little research, branch out a little further and diversify your world! Nikki is such a great example of turning your passion into something amazing and impactful and to be honest her story really reiterates a lot of what we always say!

Hi guys! Today’s episode is a really big deal. We are busting with excitement to share with you our motivation behind changing a key aspect of our business—the name! When you start a new company, the last thing you think about is changing it. Even though change can be terrifying, we hope that you will be equally as enthusiastic about the new direction we are moving into as we are. We assure you that we will do everything possible to continue serving you to the best of our abilities, and we can almost guarantee that you will love this change as much as we do.

Part of the name changing process involves making our brand more inclusive by collaborating with online entrepreneurs who will be educating you on a wide range of topics. You will not be hearing from only us in future but will be enriched by the knowledge of a plethora of experts in various fields of business. Be sure to tune in today to join in our celebrations and to find out all the cool new things we are going to be offering you.

Today we welcome Erin Abernathy & Steph Pulido from Out of Office Media. We are so excited to have them here on the Strategy Hour Podcast to talk about working with micro-influencers and how brands can create strong content and build a really engaged audience. Our guests are best friends, the co-founders of their company, and they have recently been recognized by Forbes! Their goal is to serve and interact with female millennials and they are now based in New York City. In their business they work with micro-influencers, or those that have less than about 10k followers on social media, to grow their following and in turn aid a brand’s goals. This is really about building a small yet strong tribe whether you are a solopreneur, budding influencer or big brand.

So if you are what may be called a micro-influencer and would like to dabble in working with brands and companies, creating another revenue stream, this episode might be just the thing you have been looking for. Erin and Steph offer a bunch of great strategies to get started, boost engagement, and niche down your market. So no matter what business or field you are in this can help you get to where you need to be. So without further ado, let’s dive in!

Hi everybody! On today’s show we are talking about one of our favorite things — personality tests! If you know us at all you know we can’t get enough of these kind of exercises and understanding where we fit into each and every system. Today we will be discussing Enneagrams, our types, and Emylee’s controversial opinion that Abagail was mistyped in her first assessment. Enneagrams are relatively new to us, with Abagail doing hers first, just under a year ago. However, Emylee still feels she has enough expertise to assert some claims over Abbie’s type and what it really is, contrary to the results.

We are doing this episode in the lead up to the Enneagram and Coffee Summit that is happening very soon, which we will be speaking at! So to get you excited for that, we will be spilling the beans on everything we know about the subject and how we relate to it. Remember to go get your tickets for the summit while you still have time! And if you haven’t already done the test, go take it immediately. You know you want another way to understand yourself! In the meantime, tune in to today’s episode for an in-depth look at how it all works.

Welcome back to the podcast all of you wonderful listeners! Today we have a great show in store for you, one that is less about how you make money and more about how you spend it. We know that most of us quite like doing that! Bethany Tran of The Root Collective is here to tell us all about how to spend your money in more positive ways to create a better world around you. She is a problem solver and entrepreneur who started the company to help serve struggling communities through job creation. She actually left a stable job to pursue this work and we applaud her for that. She explains The Root Collective’s business model as well as gives some general ideas and information on wiser ways to spend your bucks!

Essentially, this episode is all about how we as women can spend our money in better ways and make a conscious impact on the economy and communities. Bethany has lots of ideas for how to implement these ideas and changes at a reasonable speed and we are pretty sure that after this episode you are going to want to buy some boots from her shop. You have been warned! She talks branding, community, sustainability, and we ask her why she has the best hair in the world! Here at TCC we really believe women rule the world and we need to step into the role as much as we can!

Can you believe we have made it to Episode 300 of the podcast? How is this possible? We are so grateful to have had all of you along for the ride and cannot wait to do the next 300! As we go into our third full year here at TCC, we wanted to celebrate another milestone besides that one. Some time during the last six months or so, without us even really being aware, we made our first million! We know, this sounds crazy but it’s true!

Hey everybody and welcome back to The Strategy Hour Podcast! Today we are joined by Kimberly Crossland who is the former founder, owner, and operator of Savvy Copywriters, a communication and digital marketing agency based in Tucson, Arizona. However, she has now transitioned into a role as Content and Marketing Manager at Rocket Source and she is going to be talking to us all about this transition and how she went from a business owner to working directly and solely for one client. You might recall that this is the second conversation we are having of this type but today we are offering a slightly different perspective on the idea. We will be talking work-life balance, mental time and space, motherhood and creativity.

This episode will hopefully show you a way that you can trim the fat off your work, if that is something you have been considering, and this roadmap might be just the inspiration you need to keep moving forward. This conversation is applicable to both service and product based businesses and from Kimberly’s specific journey, many applicable lessons can be extrapolated. These types of ideas definitely seem to be popping up more and more since we did our first episode on the subject and the online biz community is increasingly interested in scaling back and working more directly and with more focus. We hope you enjoy!