Relationships can make all the difference in your business and as many of us have learned, focusing on connections and networking in the right way can take your biz from quiet to booming! Our guest today is Jaclyn Mellone and she helps entrepreneurs exponentially grow their businesses by becoming an authority in their space. One of the ways she helps them do this is through authentic relationships. Jaclyn is a coach, strategist, keynote speaker, momma, guac lover and host of the Go-to Gal Podcast! In this episode, she shares how to create strategic relationships and how to utilize them as more than friendships without being weird about it!

For Jaclyn, it all starts with an authentic connection and she breaks down exactly what that looks like. We also talk about how this translates into creating more friends in your own space and work environment and how to utilize these to continue to grow your business in the long term. We cover leveraging relationships, creating intimate connections that fill your cup, and how to jumpstart your biz in a big way!

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!

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!

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!

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!

We remember our first good sales experiences so well! It can be one of the best feelings in the world and it does not have to have that slimy and sleazy feeling to it at all. Today we are talking about what we are actually doing and the process for having more efficient, successful sales meetings, that just feel better. No one one wants to feel icky and coercive when they are pitching and the truth is you really do not have to! What you really need to learn how to do is to let people fall in love with your offer, so it is less about selling and more about showcasing your process. If you follow these simple pointers the actual sales pitch will be a home run, we promise!

We have spoken at length recently on the podcast about locating your ideal and appropriate clients and this episode is essentially what to do once you have found them. Bad experiences in this department can make you feel terrible so we are trying to steer as far clear from these as possible. You do not want to be word-vomiting your way through nervous, un-researched meetings. These can leave you feeling like a wreck and with no more money to your name! Let's rather get strategic and get selling!