This year, for the first time ever, Boss Project is taking a summer break! We’ve taken vacations in the past, and while we’ve navigated time off before, this time is different. This year we have a full staff of nine employees, who will all be taking time off, and the company will be closed for two entire weeks! In today’s episode, we walk you through the steps we’ve taken to prepare for our time off and show you how any business can prepare for a substantial and regenerative summer break.

Tuning in you’ll hear us break down how we’ve structured our work and our launches around designated time off, why we chose to do it this way, and what we’re planning to do for our break. We unpack some of the logistical steps we’re taking to maintain communication while we’re off, and why we wanted to prioritize our staff and give everyone a chance to rest and get away from it all. Thank you for joining us as we prepare for our summer break and discuss what it means to be a life-first business!

What does it mean to cultivate a culture of curiosity? That’s what we’re going to be discussing today! “Culture of curiosity” isn’t just a fun phrase. It starts with the way you talk about your work with all the people who are in your support system. It should be all-encompassing because if you use different language with different people it can derail you (in our opinion).

One of the very first switches that we made when we were first growing our team was to speak openly with our team members about the things that we used to only speak about during our private conversations. As soon as we started thinking out loud, and sharing our fears and excitement with the people around us, they could see the evolution in our thought patterns which is such a valuable and inclusive tool!

How many times have you struggled to make a decision in business out of fear that you’d make the wrong decision? What if instead, you viewed every decision as an opportunity to learn, rather than succeed or fail? Today on the show we unpack what it means to have an experimental mindset, how to foster that for yourself and within your team, and how it can free you from regret and help you make decisions that will help you learn and grow.

Tuning in you’ll get a taste of what we've been chatting about with our clients inside the incubator; from how unrealistic expectations can warp your mindset, to how to figure out what you really want. We’ve seen so many of our clients struggle to react to success and failure and as a result, we wanted to discuss examples of actionable strategies. Learn what you can implement within your company and your team so that if you're in a similar situation, you have strategies to help you adapt to any situation!

Today we are going to have a fabulous conversation! When working with our current clients inside The Incubator we always talk about levers. What lever do you need to pull in order to get the result that you want? There aren’t actually that many levers that you have the option of pulling but people like to complicate things. We are here to simplify them for you! Sometimes the things that people think they need to do to scale and grow are actually just the opposite of what they should be doing.

This conversation is all about what you should be thinking about before you start scaling. We want to give you insights into what scaling looks like in reality, so that you can decide if scaling your business really is something you want to do at this current stage of your journey.

As much as we’d love to wave a magic wand and bestow confidence upon others, unfortunately, confidence isn’t something you can gift to other people. It’s often so much easier said than done, but we’ve whittled down a list of things you can do to create your own confidence if you weren’t naturally born with it or nurtured in that area! Confidence can be created, it can be learned. In this episode, we look at how our respective upbringings allowed us to forge confidence and create the lifestyles of our choosing, and how you, too, can nurture your confidence and change your beliefs!

When you’re trying to express a complex psychological feeling or event, but you aren’t familiar with the agreed-upon terms that experts use to describe it, the experience can be incredibly isolating. Today on the show we discuss a recent conversation we encountered that unpacks the differences between having a cognitive bias towards either action or thinking, and the consequences of that bias.

Anyone who has spent some time listening to our show will likely be familiar with the terms being a ‘doer’ or a ‘be-er’. Tuning in, you’ll hear us discuss how being a doer correlates with a cognitive bias towards action, while being a be-er strongly resembles having a cognitive bias towards thinking. We also cover some of the traps that action takers can fall into, including hasty decision-making and why you need to be able to take action while also making time to process and strategize. Tune in for a breakdown of these fascinating topics, as well as insights into some of the steps you can take to shape your cognitive bias!

A common thread that we’ve been noticing is that so many business owners we deal with have excelled in most facets of their life for a long time, but then all of a sudden they’ve hit a wall which has made them start to second guess everything they’ve done in the past, including their ability to be a business owner going forward.

When you get to the point where you realize you are working hard and not reaping the rewards that would make it worth it and you’re feeling stuck about how to change that, we have the solution: The Incubator! When you’re deeply involved in something, it can be really difficult to understand how you can tweak it to make it work better for you. We can provide you with that perspective.

The theme of needing more time is a common one that we are seeing amongst our clients, which is why we started off today’s conversation with a discussion about gardening and candle making! Our thoughts on this topic have changed a lot over the last 6 months because of the unexpected outcomes that we’ve witnessed, and we want to share them with you.

Our advanced training is called “How to Double Your Income by Working 20 Hours a Week or Less.” Service providers, we see you, we know you’re burnt out, and our goal is to help you make more money and get your time back! Our strategy works, we have proof through the lives that have been changed as a result, so come and see how it can change your life too!

The current market is shifting. There’s no doubt about it. What do you think the future of marketing looks like online? Maybe we’re at the next stage of marketing, and the next iteration hasn’t revealed itself yet. A lot of the things that people consider ‘marketing’ may not even be helpful for the majority of service-based business owners. For the majority of you, marketing is a huge distraction! It’s also an ego-killer.

The ‘work smarter not harder club’ tells you that the only way to work smarter, not harder, is to have a low-priced digital offering, and all of a sudden all your dreams of riches will come true. Fact: the reality is you will actually end up working harder, not smarter! We believe in customizing your approach to your business in order to scale. This is something we talk about in the incubator, and the amount of compliments we get out of the gate is nothing short of impressive. If you’re accepted, you’ll get access to some of our best tradings, to help you to double your income by working twenty hours or less per week.

Our goal is to never make anything ‘one size fits all.' Making these decisions by yourself can be so scary. And if you don’t feel comfortable, and the people in your current circle can’t serve you in that way, it’s time to outsource! When you put too much emphasis on other people’s opinions, you are going to get answers guised with keeping you safe. The Incubator’s goal is to show you the options, and the consequences, and then you get to choose what’s right for you.

Most of us have a set of preconceived notions about what it takes to grow and scale our businesses. We’re often convinced that in order to make more money we need more clients, which means we need to grow our team. But we can’t grow our team until we have more money. The situation can feel impossible and even send you on a doom-spiral of dread. But it doesn’t need to be this way! Sometimes all you need is a new perspective and a gentle nudge in the right direction. In today’s episode, we share the incredible story of our wonderful client, Bonnie.

We unpack how the Incubator Program helped her understand her business, readjust her pricing structure, and transform her life and her company in the process. We take a deep dive into the preconceived notions around growing and scaling your business, and how small shifts can bring about dramatic changes. Discover how Bonnie managed to double her revenue in five months, find ease within her business, and take a 10-day vacation in Costa Rica, without a laptop! We’ve loved seeing the Incubator community grow, and it’s so rewarding to see members flourish, share, and support one another. Tune in to learn more about the program and how it helped Bonnie transform her business!

Having discovery calls, going for coffee dates, and holding pitching meetings with potential clients is something that we’ve noticed that many service-based business owners struggle with in the early years. They feel like they either don’t say enough or they say too much, and this causes a lot of stress and anxiety. In this episode, we want to equip you with the confidence to go into these scenarios feeling like you know exactly what you’re doing!

After serving clients one-on-one, we ultimately changed the entire landscape of our business, yet we didn’t even realize that’s what we were doing! If we could go back in time, there are so many things we would do differently, and today, we’re going to share them with you. When we got to a certain stage of business, we froze up and felt like we were on an island. We had no idea what the next step should be and it felt like everyone else had all of the answers. So many of our clients reach the same phase where they hit a milestone marker and feel like there's something that they’re missing, like a missing piece of information; a formula, or a blueprint.

If you feel like million-dollar businesses are gatekeeping this information, the truth is, some of them are! If you’re at the stage of hitting a quarter of a million dollars and don’t know where to go from here, we’re here to tell you. Consider us your Fairy Godmothers of Business Past, telling you your future so you can really decipher what you want to focus on in this phase! Tune in to find out which things you’re tying to success that need to be let go.

As most of our listeners at Boss Project know, Abagail is our CFO and sits in HR as well. She has worked hand in hand with plenty of amazing people in HR to learn about the hiring process for a company. She has single-handedly shifted her team from just Emylee and Abagail, to exploring contractors, part-time employees, full-time employees, and pretty much everything in between! Inside the incubator, she has started to have conversations about hiring, and she has plenty of wisdom to share from all of this experience.

Most business owners struggle with follow-through. The reason why Boss Project has been successful is that where Abagail struggles to see things through, Emylee excels! This formula, along with having the team to support it, has been a winning recipe for us. If you’re a solo business owner, you could be leaving money on the table for this reason. That’s where the magic of having help, even for ten to fifteen hours a month, comes in.

You don't have to be good at everything you try. And you don't have to only do things that you’re good at. As kids, we’re often far more comfortable with experimentation and trying new things, than we are as adults. When we get older we increasingly feel pressured to stick with what we’re good at and not ‘waste our time’ on things that aren’t directly related to productivity. For perfectionists, it can be particularly difficult to try new things, which can have an adverse effect on decision making abilities.

The term consequences might be rife with negative connotations, but we’re determined to take it back and make it a neutral word! Examining the potential consequences of our decisions is hugely valuable. It can help us determine what we want and fully understand what each choice can offer us. There is no one-size-fits-all solution that will work for everyone, nor should there be. Many of us think we should be pursuing relentless growth because that’s what the world tells us we should want, but when you consider the consequences of constantly scaling it becomes apparent how unrealistic (and unpleasant!) that is. Tune in today as we discuss how to unpack the consequences of our decisions, how to make choices based on the season of your business, and much more!