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, Services Abagail Pumphrey Podcast, Services Abagail Pumphrey

My “I’m Done” Moment

In this episode, I want to remind you that business can be fun, exciting, empowering, and encouraging! Following your intuition to make your business feel good is going to inspire you in so many ways. It’s going to give you the kind of contagious energy to pursue things in a way that will not only improve your mood but also attract people who want what you’re offering.

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Podcast, Leadership Guest User Podcast, Leadership Guest User

How a Partnership Can Make Your Business Go Down in Flames

We’ve been asked countless times about our business partnership and our take on whether we feel that partnership is a good route. We’ve been in a partnership from the get-go, and clients are often curious as to how we manage communication and generally maintain a healthy working relationship. In this episode, we tackle the cons of partnership: why you should never get into one and why, and the next episode will explore the pros. Naturally, there are potential issues that can arise and cause tension in a partnership, and today we identify what to look out for if you’re considering partnering up with someone. You’ll discover a few of the, dare we say, many drawbacks of partnership, the requirements for maintaining a successful partnership, and the principal cause of partnerships (and subsequently, businesses) going down in flames!

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Podcast, Mindset Guest User Podcast, Mindset Guest User

Inspired to Do Less: A Lesson in Showing Up in Alignment

How to live more and do less is one of our favorite topics of conversation. If you’re a natural people pleaser, it can be really hard to consider taking some things off of your to-do list. But people-pleasing can be rooted in a manipulative reflex. It can also be a trauma response. During the conference that Abagail recently attended, she heard from three speakers with one underlying message-- do less!

While this sounds counterintuitive, it's something we truly believe, and we want to share some of the nuggets of wisdom that helped us to prioritize this in our own lives, within a productivity-obsessed culture. Three inspiring speakers shared very different insights from their own personal journeys and the research they have done to understand the lives of others. Today, we’re sharing them with you.

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Podcast, Scaling Guest User Podcast, Scaling Guest User

The Difference Between Growing and Scaling

If you follow us on social media, you might have seen that we have been on quite the podcast roadshow! One theme that kept coming out of our conversations is the things that service providers need to think about before scaling. We realized we need to take a step back and talk about it: what is scaling actually?

A lot of business owners misconstrue scaling and growth. Today, we want to talk about the actual definitions of these two processes, and how you can apply them in your business. You can have one without the other. You can have both. You can have neither. What does that really look like, intentionally, in your business? Tune in to find out!

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Podcast, Marketing Guest User Podcast, Marketing Guest User

5 Signs You Might Need a New Website in 2023

We’ve been building websites for over a decade and have really honed in on what’s working (and what isn’t) in the service world. Your website might look impressive, but if it’s not representative of who you are today, it’s not serving you. In this episode, we outline five signs it’s time to consider a new website design. And we’re not merely talking about branding! In many cases, major reconfigurations are in order, taking into account everything from your site architecture and user interface to your messaging; what you’re saying, how you’re saying it, and who you’re connecting it to. Tune in to find out which pitfalls to avoid and how best to make your website work for you.

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Podcast, Leadership Guest User Podcast, Leadership Guest User

The Hiring Strategy We Suggest for the 2023 Climate

Today we are talking about hiring in the current economic climate. The biggest layoffs since 2008 are taking place at the moment, and layoffs in the technology industry have actually surpassed those that took place during the Great Recession.

The common trend that we are seeing amongst business owners who have been operating for more than four years is a collective desire to move away from being the “doers” in their business and shift towards a leadership position where they can focus more on strategy and creative direction. This means needing to hire people who can take up the “implementer” type of work. A lot of the work we are doing with our clients is around how to make this pivot as smooth and successful as possible! It’s a challenge, but it’s such an important move to make if you are going to take your business to the next level.

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Podcast, Mindset Guest User Podcast, Mindset Guest User

How to Identify and Prioritize Your Third Place

Today’s discussion is about an idea that has had a resurgence recently for a number of reasons. The concept of finding a Third Place is nothing new! It’s actually been around for a long time; it is just popular at the moment. No matter how trendy it is, it is worthwhile to discuss and integrate into your life. The ‘Third Place’ was coined by a US sociologist who wrote a book called The Great Good Place describing a place outside of your home or work where you can relax.

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Podcast, Leadership Guest User Podcast, Leadership Guest User

5 Ways to Build Trust in Your Growing Team

A lot of our clients are currently in a space where they are wanting to add to their team but have concerns over how to make the right choices while maintaining the character and values of their company. We’ve recently expanded our team, and while it has come with some lessons, it has been an incredibly rewarding experience for our company and our team! In today’s episode, we unpack the five biggest barriers to trust, as outlined in an article by Fast Company called 5 Barriers To Break in Order To Build Trust Between Coworkers. We discuss the rules that all high-trust companies follow to ensure employees feel secure and confident in their work environment.

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Podcast, Leadership Guest User Podcast, Leadership Guest User

12 Questions to Ask Your Current or Future Bookkeeper to Make Sure You're a Good Fit

We talk so often about financial literacy and creating sustainable businesses online that we’ve had a handful of clients ask us questions about bookkeeping. Based on all of the questions that come in, there are some things we want to share with our listeners about how to make sure that you have a bookkeeper that’s really well suited to you. Whether you’re interviewing someone for the first time or looking to get the most out of your existing relationship, this episode is for you.

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Podcast, Services Guest User Podcast, Services Guest User

Group Coaching vs. 1:1 Coaching vs. Done-For-You Service: Which is Right for Your Business?

Something we feel is getting a little bit confused in the realm of being a service provider consultant, learning from other people, hiring contractors, having employees, and serving clients, is the question of how we serve said clients, how we learn, and how we get work done in our own business. The conversation around working one-on-one with people, using done-for-you services, and learning in different aspects by buying books, hiring a coach, or being in a group coaching program, all start to get a little muddy when we’re also service providers in that very business.

We want to clear this up and provide some perspectives and clarification on the buckets we see us providing, our clients providing, our clients hiring for, and really how things can be structured to have purpose within these different containers. Today, specifically, we’re talking about what the heck group coaching is and when it’s actually beneficial, versus one-on-one coaching and done-for-you services, both as a provider and the consumer.

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Podcast, Services Abagail Pumphrey Podcast, Services Abagail Pumphrey

Introducing the Freedom Era: The Must-Attend Event for Industry Experts and Consultants

If you follow us on social media you may be aware that we have just announced our first virtual conference! While the conference will no doubt share some similarities with our online summits, we anticipate that previous attendees will be shocked by how incredibly different this experience truly is. One of the developments that we are most excited about is the fact the entire event will be live, giving us the scope to connect with attendees in real-time! We are also deeply aware that our participants are incredibly busy which is why we’re so proud that the entire conference will take place over the course of one day within four sessions!

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Podcast, Leadership Guest User Podcast, Leadership Guest User

You’re Overpaying Your Staff: Here Are The Consequences

This is the second hottest take of a conversation we’ve ever had publicly! We are so passionate about this topic, and we really want to pass on this valuable information to you because we deeply care about you and your team! When the mistakes that we are going to talk about today are made, we know that it’s coming from the best of places, but because the future of your company is at stake, and because we care about that, we really hope you’re going to listen to this episode!

The fact of the matter is that you are most likely drastically overpaying your staff. We so often see owners hardly taking a salary for themselves, but then paying their staff six figure salaries. We also see people hiring super cheap labor. There is so much wrong with both of these phenomenons, but the good news is that there is another option!

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Podcast, Leadership Abagail Pumphrey Podcast, Leadership Abagail Pumphrey

Why You Should Never Hire You 2.0

Today we are going to be sharing some thoughts and some hot takes about hiring! There are so many people out there saying all sorts of things that make our insides squirm, and we don’t want you to waste your time and effort on strategies that definitely do not work. We also got sucked into the sexiness of the idea of hiring duplicates of ourselves, so we speak from firsthand experience when we tell you that this is a BIG mistake!

When people get to the point where they know they need to bring on someone else, it’s usually because of one of two main reasons; either that they need to hire for a very specific role for their company, or they’re burning the candle at both ends and therefore if they hire “another me” they’ll be able to get twice as much work done, but if you keep listening you’ll understand why you should never hire another you!

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Podcast, Branding & Design Guest User Podcast, Branding & Design Guest User

What You Call Yourself Matters: If You're a Creative Small Business Serving B2B You're Missing This Shift

There’s a problem that we’re seeing in this space and it’s causing people to miss massive opportunities! You’re losing out on revenue and you’re losing out on tapping into familiar industry terms, and so much of this can be solved by simply re-labeling who you are to become well-known to the rest of the world. For years, small business owners, especially those in the creative space, have continued to label themselves as such. “I’m a small business owner”, “I run a small creative business”, “I’m a creative entrepreneur”, we’ve seen these terms run rampant.

But the thing that is missing right now in this space is that you are not utilizing terms that the rest of the world recognizes and already uses and, because of that, you’re missing out on business. If you have previously identified as a creative small business owner, especially those of you who are running a B2B service-based business helping other small businesses, we have an uplevel for you. We can change the game!

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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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Software & Services We Swear By

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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Digital Product Jumpstart

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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