We’re pumped to do another Boss Talk episode today! Our question for today is, “Did you have any fears when you first started your business?” Before we jump into this though, it’s worth mentioning that Emylee has a habit of conveniently forgetting all the negative memories of an experience, looking back at them with rose-colored spectacles! Nonetheless, we’re talking about fears and what it was that drove our decisions in those early days of starting our own businesses.

Many factors played a role in those decisions, including long-distance relationships and being desperate to move closer to our families. In this episode we share some of our fresh-out-of-college experiences trying to navigate new phases in life and trying to figure out what our next steps would be. We also chat about confidence and what motivated us to start our own businesses and the many considerations involved, so join us to find out more about our early days as startup entrepreneurs!

Here at Boss Project we remember being young in the game; it was not that long ago! It is easy to look around and feel frustrated at everyone else's success, the success you are so badly lusting after. We usually try and figure out what our heroes are doing and how we can mimic it to get to where they are. Something that flipped this whole dynamic for us was the idea that you should never be comparing your beginnings to someone else's middle. This sentence stuck with us for a long time and helped us to take down our guard and look backwards to where other people started instead of where they are now.

Try this with us; think about a popular business or business person that you admire, one that makes you think, 'Damn! I want a piece of that!' If you want a business like theirs or something similar, the chances are you keep them in mind pretty often. Now believe us when we tell you that almost all of them started with services! That's why we have launched our new program this week! It is called Start with Services and it is the bomb! We know that for most of you, the biggest hurdle is not that you have nothing to sell or no great ideas, but rather that you need more leads and buyers. We teach the exact methods for these things. We want you to be able to go to your inbox and find new and interesting leads there every morning! Wouldn't that be great? So we made this program just for you to get there. Let's start this journey together!

Hey everybody and welcome to a really, really epic episode! We are so excited to share some amazing stuff with all of you today, we can barely control ourselves! Okay, so we have a brand new program that we are launching and it is probably the best thing that has ever existed, anywhere, at any time. It is called the Start with Services Program and we are going to be digging into all its great benefits and telling you exactly why you should be signing up yesterday. We do not say this lightly, you could just go straight over the website and sign up immediately, it's that good! So if you are interested in getting booked out in your business, which you obviously are, look no further!

The thing that we have noticed is that most of you have amazing services, that is definitely not the problem. You have skills, ideas and all the rest in bucket loads. You know your craft and we would never claim to be able to teach you that side of things any better. We just want you to have more opportunities to share these gifts with more people and more clients. That's where the program comes in, it will guarantee and we mean guarantee, you more leads. In fact you will most probably have more leads than you will know what to do with, so what are you waiting for?

Last time we shared a lot about our personal journey and the mishaps we had. Everybody makes mistakes, but we hope to learn as we go. So today we’re talking about the things that you might be getting wrong in trying to scale your service based business. Regardless of where you are in the process, these mistakes can be made at any and every level. So the episode today is going to involve a conversation that no one else is talking about. You might have incorporated some of the most popular strategies with the hope of landing more clients but have discovered that they are ineffective.

Trust us when we say we’ve tried and tested every trick in the book! Sometimes the problem is that we are aligning the wrong goal with the strategy. Other times, we try something just because everyone else is doing it and it seems to be appropriate for the service we offer. We are bombarded with information about how we should run our businesses, and sometimes this just clouds our judgment and overcomplicates everything. Get ready to find out how to fix these bugs with some practical examples from our own experience, so be sure to tune in for this episode!

Welcome back to the show everyone, today we are giving you the scoop on the lessons we have learned from our failed businesses from the past and talking about how much you should lean into your dreams. We start businesses for a number of reasons, maybe you were laid off, want your own identity back, can't find another job, hate your current job, whatever it is, it is valid! So when we start something we usually tell ourselves a story of why we are starting it, we might want to be our own boss, make more money or any other of a plethora of reasons. The problem is that our strategies often do not match this initial motivations and we can find ourselves in our 'dream job', but also in a nightmare arrangement!

In our experience, this is the number one cause of burnout and panic attacks. If you do not allow yourself the space and grace to live the life you wanted when you set out on this journey, you might find yourself hating your biz more than any other thing you have done. Why would you want that? Some of us make big sacrifices in the beginning, telling ourselves that we will get to where we need to be one day and that this discomfort is only temporary. This usually lasts a long time and the hole only gets deeper, so do not dig yourself into it in the beginning! Why not guarantee your business and lifestyle of your dreams from the start? Take control and make the life you want, you do not need anyone's permission for that!

Today on the show we welcome Melissa Megginson! She is the Community Manager and resident Cat Lady at Tailwind, a company that is dedicated to helping brands with their visual and Pinterest aspirations. Tailwind can really help you and your biz conquer Pinterest in a way you might never have thought was possible. We really love Melissa and the work she does as Tailwind has helped us out a lot over the years! They offer organic and free ways for you to get more engagement, traffic and customers on the platform and that is exactly what we are going to be talking to Melissa about today! She will also be filling us in on what is new and exciting on Pinterest and what we might expect for the future.

We have pretty much loved Pinterest since the beginning and were definitely part of the 'Pinterest wedding' generation! You know what we mean! Over time we have watched it evolve and change, thankfully not as much as some other social platforms out there but there has been some definite development and growth since we started using it. We began using Pinterest for business pretty early on in our company history and definitely found that Tailwind helped tremendously with our efforts, so let's hear what Melissa has to say!

We did this kind of crazy thing and started up yet another Facebook group, while everyone else is shutting them down left and right! What we’re talking about today is the thought process behind it, who the group is for and how you can get your booty inside. This group is specifically designed for service-based entrepreneurs who deliver a creative tangible product, so designers, photographers – listen up! You would have to apply first, but don’t be put off, this is just to make sure that only the most relevant peeps have access, so simply head over to bossproject.com/booked.

In this episode we let you in on where we got this idea from and tell you exactly what we are aiming to achieve with this new platform. It is about our business, but it is just as much about helping you and other creative entrepreneurs grow and get the most relevant, helpful input you can get. Be sure to join us for this episode of Strategy Hour to get all the details!

Today on The Strategy Hour we are joined by the amazing, the wonderful, the gifted, Melissa McGraw! Melissa is the founder of The Creative Potential, an agency dedicated to helping online business owners increase their traffic and revenue through improved SEO. She and the company have aided countless brands grow their audience by millions and applying her strategies can multiply your organic search results tenfold in just a few months! With Melissa's help we are going to be breaking down SEO in the simplest of ways, not getting too nerdy but also not skimping on great, actionable plans and ideas. We want to get you ranked on Google ASAP! Get your notebook ready so we can start getting more traffic and customers and have that reflect in your bank account!

It's been a while since we have talked about SEO and just as a reminder it is very important for all, and we mean all, businesses! If we are honest, SEO is still a foreign language for some of us, while others of us have kind of got the hang of it. Our goal today is to get your site search engine friendly and high up in the rankings! We will be going from the simplest questions about what SEO is and how it functions, how to utilize it for your biz and even touching on some of the higher end stuff that will get you to the top of the first page! These strategies are super accomplishable but it is also worth noting that you are able to hire someone like Melissa to help you out with this task, get an expert to do the work for you, so there is that option too! Now, let's get you found online!

Gift giving might not be your love language, but you should pick out any opportunity to dazzle your client with something special! Sometimes the biggest gift you can give is communication: being 100% clear about where you are in the process, at all times, because most clients just want to see results and that they’re getting the best quality. When we land new clients, we often quickly forget about them when we go back into our little cubby holes to dig into the job they’ve given us – and perhaps we don’t even see them again. We need to stop this weird behavior! There is so much to gain from staying in contact when we get paid or once we have completed the job. What can we do so they don’t forget us, allowing us to make a lasting impression?

There are three main parts to any relationship with a client: the beginning, middle and end. It’s important to remember that your client can choose to get out at any stage of this relationship, especially if they feel like you’re not holding their hand throughout it. It has happened to all of us: you land the client, get going with the work, but then you get busy with other clients and trying to build your business and you end up ghosting them. So how do you prevent this from happening? Be sure to join us for this episode to find out how to absolutely optimize your client experience from beginning to end!