Top Business Podcast • over 4 million downloads • 900+ episodes

The Strategy Hour Podcast

with abagail pumphrey

Recognized by INC and Forbes as one of the best podcasts for entrepreneurs, join our twice-weekly show as we share business strategies, interviews, and actionable advice for building an online business your way.

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Our Episodes

Podcast, Mindset Guest User Podcast, Mindset Guest User

How Your Values Shape Your Business Strategy with Lindsay Hotmire

Today on the podcast we have Lindsay Hotmire. She loves to work with female creatives, entrepreneurs, and CEOs to help them discover a non-formulaic version of authenticity. She’s helped over 200 clients and counting ditch the one-size-fits-all formulas and frameworks and helps them genuinely align with their message. In this episode with Lindsay, we break down what being authentic actually means and how to be authentic in a way that feels good for you and with your audience.

We talk a lot about business values, your core values as a person, and how to not only identify them but then use the results in marketing, branding, messaging, and in your overall strategy to grow your business and sell your product, offer, or service. There are so many examples we talk about today, everything from messaging and Instagram presence to how you build community; so many different ideas! It’s a really good one and we hope you love it!

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Podcast, Marketing Guest User Podcast, Marketing Guest User

Our Take on Tiny Offers — It Might Surprise You!

Tiny offers … what are they? Small, inexpensive products that are supposed to blow up your business. At least that’s what we think people are saying they do: start with a tiny offer, grow your audience exponentially, and make a ton of money. Those people suggest that it’s possible to create a six-figure business on the back of a $29 product; that you can launch with a tiny offer and make the big bucks. But hear us out: while we have a tiny offer (Trello for Business), this only came much later in our business—we didn’t start with it.

We made a tiny offer before tiny offers were a thing, and now people ask us about it all the time since it became the cool thing to do. This is what we’re talking about in this episode. We’re walking you through whether or not a tiny offer makes sense for your business right now. The pros, the cons, the whole shebang. But take note: these are just our opinions and experiences; you might not agree with them. Still, there is always something new to learn. Grab your go-to Strategy Hour drink and let’s go!

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Podcast, Marketing Guest User Podcast, Marketing Guest User

How to Land Over 100 Podcast Interviews with Christine McAlister of Life With Passion

Today, we have serial entrepreneur and business coach Christine McAlister back on the show! She is an amazing friend of ours. We love having her on the show and we hope you get some really good nuggets from today. Christine has a unique skill where she gets people to say yes to pretty much anything she puts out there, including coming back on our show all the time! What she is teaching you today is how to pitch yourself and how to be an amazing guest on other peoples’ podcasts, and why this strategy – being interviewed for other peoples’ shows – is one she recommends over actually having your own show.

She is going to walk you through how to use it to network, how to leverage, how to grow your audience and increase sales, and it’s just an all-round good, honest conversation about to-dos and not to-dos! So get out your notebook, jot some of the amazing strategies shared in this episode down, and we cannot wait to see what episodes you land your booty on!

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Podcast, Marketing Guest User Podcast, Marketing Guest User

Marketing that Feels Good, Is Marketing that Works with Brit Kolo

Today on the show we are so excited to have Brit Kolo joining us once again! She is the creator of the Marketing Personality Type Framework to be found at marketingpersonalities.com. Through her framework, Brit has designed a match up system that works to find the best marketing strategies built for you based on your Myers-Briggs personality test! You guys know we love personality tests, so it is not shocking that Brit is back on the show but today, there’s a twist!

In this episode, we are throwing out a lot of what we have been raised to believe in this online marketing world about finding your ideal avatar. Today, we explore how maybe the concept of an ideal avatar is actually not what we should be paying attention to at all! So, be sure to listen to this episode to find out what Brit thinks you should value more than your ideal client or avatar, and how you can best filter marketing strategies that feel comfortable, good, and fun, so you can be super effective!

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Podcast, Marketing Guest User Podcast, Marketing Guest User

How to Never Have to Think About Your Marketing Again (+ We Need Your Feedback!)

As of this week, we are officially five months into the launching of the Creative Template Shop and it’s so exciting, still! There are so many different moving parts and really cool aspects behind the scenes that are going on with this product of ours, and what’s more, they have never been a part of the process for other products we have developed! So, we wanted to share an update with all of our people!

We want to share some things we are thinking about developing – new features – and we want to hear from you too! So, we are officially opening our project to the public airwaves for your guys’ feedback and we are talking shop about the really cool things we think are so special about our baby. After today’s show, maybe our shop can become a nice little home for you on the internet as well!

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Podcast, Marketing Guest User Podcast, Marketing Guest User

Using Tailwind to Organically Grow Traffic and Sales with Danny Maloney

Today on the show our guest is Danny Maloney, CEO of Tailwind, and we are so excited to have him here to talk about what his company has done for online business and how you can utilize it to drive more traffic and sales on your own! It’s important that you know before we even started using Tailwind we were using Pinterest. We had been on Pinterest for five years and had created a ton of content at that time.

Back in the day we hacked it so we could explode on that platform and we had a strategy we shared all over the internet. We wrote a blog post about it, but then, we found Tailwind and were like, “What is this? This is a lifesaver!” So, we are really looking forward to chatting to Danny about the changing landscape of content ranking algorithms and how to increase traffic while driving sales on Instagram and Pinterest using Tailwind!

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How to Have Amazing Customer Service and Implement Product Feedback Loops with Ward Sandler of Memberspace

Today we are super excited to welcome Ward Sandler to the show! Ward is the co-founder and CEO of Memberspace, where he and his team help entrepreneurs and organizations turn any part of their site into a members only area. They make it so easy, anyone can do it! Our topic for today's conversation, however, is customer service and feedback loops and we were over the moon when Ward pitched this idea to us and we cannot wait to share it all with you. We get into all the helpful and authentic ways you can keep in contact with your clients and customers, and Ward talks about the ways he does this every day, all week long!

This kind of proximity to an audience is what has helped Memberspace grow and grow in such an exciting way. They have raving fans and Ward explains what has contributed to this. Spoiler alert, its the feedback loops and great service! These lessons can be applied to whatever kind of business you run, whether it is for services, courses or products, you do not have to be a software company for these strategies to be implementable. We really recommend that you check out Memberspace and give it a shot if you have been considering something like this. Without further ado, let's get into some strategy!

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Podcast, Marketing Guest User Podcast, Marketing Guest User

Marketing Strategies that Work and Tactics to Try if You’re in a Rut

Okay guys, we finally stopped putting our things off and worked on some marketing strategies we told you we would test out to see what would happen, and they worked! We’re just a little disappointed at ourselves, but also proud at the same time! We knew they would work and so we’re really glad we did them, even after putting them off for an obscene amount of time! We know everyone listening has their own version of, ‘I put this off,’ when it comes to a marketing strategy they have heard about that works.

So, today we’re talking about simple marketing strategies we finally put into practice and proved! The only thing you need to do is spend some time setting these strategies up, putting some things in place to prepare, and then actually doing it! Listen along and hear some of the amazing marketing tricks we tested and proved to be a great success!

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Podcast, Marketing Guest User Podcast, Marketing Guest User

Switching from Squarespace to Shopify: New Features & Who It Doesn’t Make Sense For

We have exciting news! Word on the street is that Emylee is trying something new—gasp! Because, as you may know, she isn’t stuck in her ways at all…But before she shares her news, we have to state upfront that Abagail is going to be fulfilling the role of devil’s advocate on today’s show, poking holes in Emylee’s gutsy decision to switch from Squarespace to Shopify. We’ve been using the former since 2014 and we’ve been incredibly loyal, building our entire business on this site. At one point we considered having the site customized because we thought we were getting too big for the platform, but we ended up proving that Squarespace really can work for large businesses. And we still love Squarespace!

But then Emylee started this whole product-based business venture and it’s been a learning experience par excellence: of course, it is completely different from running a service-based business like Boss Project. So, Emylee called Abagail a few days ago and let her in on the secret: she was rebuilding her website on a new platform—Shopify. Now she’s getting messages from friends saying, “Welcome to the club! You’re doing what every e-commerce person should be doing.” In this episode, Emylee is going to walk you through the reasons for her decision, the features she’s excited about and the ones she misses, who she thinks Squarespace is right for, and more. Be sure to listen in as the two of them hash it out!

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Podcast, Services Guest User Podcast, Services Guest User

4 Things to Do Right Now if You’re Starting a Business from Scratch with Amanda Boleyn 

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!

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Podcast, Marketing Guest User Podcast, Marketing Guest User

How To Tweak Your Messaging and Serve Clients Right Now with Courtney Chaal

Today on the podcast we have Courtney Chaal, the founder of The Rule Breaker’s Club where she teaches women to package and sell with brilliance and offers awesome products, and her work has been featured in Inc., Creative Live, and The Huffpost to name only a few. She is crazy-talented when it comes to messaging specifically, so this interview is right on time. We get that we shouldn’t necessarily be changing our offers or postpone our launches, but how do we talk differently about our services, so that it appeals to people at this moment?

What messaging do we need to tweak to make it relevant, and where is the balance between being empathetic and helpful versus making sales because we’ve got businesses to run? Courtney shares the top tips that she herself is implementing in her business, from getting your mindset right and brainstorming ideas, to asking your audience what they need and putting it all together in a project plan, so strap in and let’s dive in!

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Podcast, Marketing Guest User Podcast, Marketing Guest User

What's Working Right Now in 2020 for Pinterest with Melanie Fountain

On today’s show, we interview Melanie Fountain, a blog and Pinterest strategist who started her virtual assistant business a while ago and has since equipped herself in the area of all things Pinterest. We hopped on a call with her to chat about all the changes 2020 brought to the business landscape, and we were so blown away by her knowledge that we asked her to record an episode of The Strategy Hour with us. She talks about the behind-the-scenes strategies for getting your content discovered and seen by more people. Earlier this year, Pinterest underwent a shift toward different looking content but fortunately, it does not mean you have to go out and make a bunch of new content.

Melanie walks us through their adjusted policies and how you should adjust your approach, how Pinterest can work for product-based businesses, and what it means to be discoverable on the platform, including the ins and outs of hashtags, keywords, and descriptions. We adore Pinterest and have since its inception when it was all about planning dream weddings. In the early days, you saw more lifestyle content than business blogs, so using it for business purposes was still fairly new. But fast forward five years: we’ve been terrible at keeping up with Pinterest, but now they’ve done a major update that is very much applicable to your business. Stay tuned to learn everything about creating the strongest Pinterest profile in 2020!

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Podcast, Marketing Guest User Podcast, Marketing Guest User

Best SEO Practices for 2020 with Meg Clarke

Today on the show we have Meg Clarke of Clapping Dog Media. She is an SEO strategist who teaches creative small business owners how to grow their organic traffic and rankings so they can make a great impact and reach more people. She is also a sourdough bread baking genius, so you can look forward to several bread references throughout this episode! In Episode 45, we interviewed Meg where she talked about SEO for newbies, but today we’re taking it a step further by addressing intermediate and advanced issues that are more applicable to listeners who are somewhat experienced in this area. A lot has changed since 2017, so she discusses updated SEO practices, stuff you can do to prep your business and brand for launch and what to do if you are pivoting and need to start tackling different topics on your existing website. She also dishes out resources for finding targeting keywords and hidden SEO within your website and shares what she reckons is worth spending time on.

Before we get into the meat of the episode, it’s worth mentioning the incredible strides we have made with our SEO since a few years ago. But, while we’ve done well, we also desperately need maintenance. Our traffic used to be at a low 5 to 10% from Google despite our volume of content, but now over 50% of our traffic comes straight from search. But, as we said, we also need to brush up on our SEO, so we’re just as eager to hear what Meg’s got for us. So, pull your notebook closer and get ready for some fresh SEO strategy!

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Podcast, Scaling Guest User Podcast, Scaling Guest User

February Profit Report: We Nearly Reached Our Goal Profit! 

It feels like it’s been 87 months since February, both in business and life, but we are going back in time to revisit that month and stay consistent with our profit reports. We’ve heard that these episodes are super helpful to you. For those who are unfamiliar with profit reports, we started them in August of 2019, sharing not income reports but profit reports, including the exact percentages of gains, losses, and so on. Our goal is to chase higher profit margins and we share what that looks like for us and the processes we go through to get there. These episodes give you a peek into our business, which will hopefully encourage and help you in setting up your strategies without any comparisons.

Today we talk about how we used the Five Days to Launch challenge to feed Strategy Academy, why we’re okay with Trello for Business breaking even, how The Creative Template Shop blew our socks off, and why we are permitting you to pivot a little right now! Intending to double down on this learning experience, we will also be hosting a live workshop to practically guide you to implement the same things in your business. Stay tuned till the end to hear where to go to learn more about crunching the numbers!

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Podcast, Marketing Guest User Podcast, Marketing Guest User

How to Share a Story Your Audience Actually Cares About with Jessica Rasdall

Today on the show we have Jessica Rasdall, a motivational speaker, bestselling author, public speaking strategist, and host to the Speak to Scale Podcast to talk to us about crafting your story for the virtual stage. Now that we are homebound and communicating with our audiences online, we can do with some help when it comes to showing up as ourselves and helping people rather than just have a self-serving online presence. You’ve heard the vulnerability piece – that you need to be relatable and reveal your “humanness” to your followers, but what is the right amount of sharing?

Jessica walks us through a formula for breaking your story down into three acts so it is most helpful to people - a structure that outlines the before, middle, and after phases of your story. Each of these three phases is important: from hooking the audience and relating to their experiences to showing them how the significant event changed your life and the difficult decisions you have had to make. For Jessica, the most important aspect is the motivation behind sharing your story, and if its primary purpose is not to help your audience in some way, you might want to reconsider. Be sure to tune in to hear the rest!

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Woman leaning on back of chair and smiling at camera

meet your host

I don’t believe there’s one right way to build a business.

I’m your host, Abagail Pumphrey. And I’m dedicated to supporting online businesses.

I’m here to help you build business your way: one that supports not only the life you have but the life you want. I’m on a personal mission to help you become financially free.

I’m talking about all the lessons learned as I turned a layoff into a 7-figure online business. I’m here to help you prioritize your life every step of the way, whether you’re creating your first digital product, growing an email list, or scaling an already profitable business.

I want to hear your hot takes, your biggest takeaways, or the genius ideas that pop in your head as you’re listening to the show.

My DMs are always open on Instagram, so head over and introduce yourself so I can get to know you!

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Meet Our Partners

The links below are affiliate links. We receive a commission (at no additional cost to you) when you purchase through these links.

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Build your list and grow your revenue at the same time!

I’ve kept these details to myself for far too long. I’m ready to spill everything and give you the exact steps that’ve helped me generate tens of thousands of qualified leads and MILLIONS in low-ticket digital product sales. I won’t just show you what I did, I’ll teach you how you can do it too.

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