We have this theory that you can make less revenue and walk away with more money in your pocket if you do a few very strategic things. Like many of you, we came to a point in our business where we were ready to see big growth—and we don’t mean make a little bit more money, but exponentially more! Who doesn’t want that, right? And we managed to do that. In the first six months, we made $100,000, doubled it four months later, and we went on to have a multiple six-figure business in our second year, and over $500,000 the year after that. We just kept going after bigger dreams and pursuing more.

But we believe there are some things you can do to help you along, and it doesn’t include focusing on that top-line number—which you can shoot yourself in the foot with. We know people who look like they are super successful online, but when you dig a little deeper, you would discover that they set themselves up in such a way they get to keep very little of the money they make. We were headed in this same direction. In this episode, we talk about this learning curve we experienced in 2018 and 2019 during which we thought we needed to do XYZ when we didn’t! Besides, what’s the point of reaching your big goals when you are not personally making any more money? Stay tuned to find out.

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!

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!

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!

In this episode, we’re excited to do the profit report for April because we don’t know about y’all, but for us, April felt much better than March. When the pandemic first escalated in the US mid-March, everyone was freaking out and didn’t know what to expect. But when April swung by, people got more accustomed to the changes and things started coming into a rhythm again. Businesses were pivoting and finding ways to keep at least a portion of their income steady. We decided to lean into what was already working—to focus on what was performing well naturally. We could easily have tried new things but instead, we stayed focused on growing the shop rather than pushing our $2,000 signature program—which would have been a hard sell in the context of an uncertain economy.

In contrast, the Creative Template Shop is a $47 commitment that helps people with their marketing, which they desperately need now to stay afloat. But for us to approach the crisis with the focus and energy that we are, we needed to make some good choices early on. We avoided mindlessly consuming media and thought carefully about how we were spending our time and who we were surrounding ourselves with. Negativity was the order of the day but we just decided we weren’t going to get sucked into it. This shift in headspace had a huge impact on our business because we spent less time worrying and poured more time into what was already working. In this episode, we once again tell it all—and we are thrilled with the results!

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!

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!

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!

Emylee recently decided to migrate from Squarespace to Shopify for her side hustle website, which got Abagail questioning hers too. She had some issues with Squarespace but she didn’t want to go through the hassle of moving from one platform to another. But since then, Squarespace has released its 7.1 version which is not quite an iteration because it is almost an entirely new platform. Some aspects have remained the same but mostly it is different.

Abagail has gone through the process of comparing 7.0 to 7.1, so, in this episode, she walks listeners through the differences so they know what to expect should they consider migrating to the updated version. If you are still on the fence about whether you should opt for Squarespace or Shopify or want to learn about everything the new version of Squarespace offers, this episode is a must-listen—don’t decide before hearing us out!