No BS Mastery Podcast

Do you embrace marketing and selling? Do you relish the chance to share what you do with the people who need it?   Or are you hoping to pass off marketing and selling to someone else as quickly as possible?   Hiring an expert to help with marketing and sales can be a great idea, but only if you’ve gotten your hands dirty and taken the time to learn–and embrace–it first.   Maybe you read some books, take a course or two, or hire a coach to help you beef up your marketing and sales skills. Jumping in the deep end with marketing and sales might just be your first step in showing your business who's boss.   The truth is that there’s a whole marketing racket waiting to take advantage of you and your cash flow just because you want to get marketing and sales off your plate. But a real boss invests time and energy into knowing what works before you outsource it.   I sat down with my friend Ciara Pressler–an amazing entrepreneur and successful author–to talk about marketing your business, the allure of outsourcing, how to not get taken advantage of by the marketing racket, and so much more.   Ciara is the founder of Pregame and author of Game Plan: Achieve Your Goals in Life, Career, and Business. She advises entrepreneurs, business leaders, and creative professionals on creating their personal Game Plan for success and is disrupting the coaching industry with an innovative model that makes expert business and marketing coaching accessible to game-changers at all levels of business.   Listen to the full episode to hear: The allure of outsourcing and whether delegating is a good thing or just an attempt to get out of something you don’t want to do How the marketing racket makes hiring services such a crapshoot and how to protect yourself from getting taken to the cleaners What the difference is between hobbies, jobs, and freelancing and being a business (hint: an LLC or website isn’t it) How premium pricing leads to the premium clients you want And how you can never do things like raise your prices or ‘make more money’ unless you get to know your business’ numbers   Ciara’s Links: ciarapressler.com Pregame HQ YouTube Channel LinkedIn Instagram: @pregamemag Twitter: @pregamemag   Pia’s Links: No BS Agency Owners Free Facebook Group The Show Your Business Who's Boss Crash Course Start reading the first chapter of my book Piasilva.com  

Going viral can make or break a business. It’ll make it if you’re prepared to cash in on the attention. It’ll break it if you don’t have the balls to follow through.   My guest today was not only prepared to cash in but to take a big leap of faith into a new dream for her brand and her business.   Pia Malani is one of my earliest Brandup clients, who has since become one of my besties, Rebel of Wall street, and boss of her business.   Priya is the owner of Stash Wealth, a financial firm for HENRYs™ (High Earners, Not Rich Yet) She’s a sought-after thought leader in the Millennial Money arena by some of the nation’s largest publications. She has been featured hundreds of times everywhere from mainstream news sources like Fortune, Wall Street Journal and CNBC, to entertainment and lifestyle brands like the NYPost, Bustle, SiriusXM, and Refinery29.   Listen to the full episode to hear: What Priya did to go viral and how you can follow her example What the “problem with having overnight success” is and what it took for Stash Wealth to weather the storm How even if you want to build an empire, being loved by some and disliked by others is STILL the key to success And how consistency and persistence pays off when entrepreneurs do exactly what I say   Priya’s Links: Stash Wealth Instagram: @priyamalaniofficial   Pia’s Links: No BS Agency Owners Free Facebook Group The Show Your Business Who's Boss Crash Course Start reading the first chapter of my book Piasilva.com

Your business can either force you into a life you don’t love. Or, it can bankroll a lifestyle that allows you to do the things you love, visit the places that excite you, and take control of your long-term goals.   On today’s episode, I’m talking to fellow New Yorker, dear friend, and boss of her business Stacey Brooke.   Stacey’s company, College Essay Advisors, helps college applicants present their most polished and intriguing selves by crafting effective college essays to get admissions to their dream schools.   She started her business as a freelance advisor in 2004 and took it full time in 2014. She now has one full-time employee and 20 independent advisors she brings on for projects. While keeping her operation lean and efficient she’s been able to grow 50% year over year!   I personally wouldn’t trust my kid's essay with anyone else!   Listen to the full episode to hear: How Stacey sent one strategically placed email that landed her a guest article in a top publication and what she’d done to set the stage for that win When to hire--and how to know which things can only be done by you... and why that's a good thing! Whether SEO is still a thing in 2020, and the difference between keywords and good content The real key to creating a great customer experience that most people don’t focus on What you need to know if you want a successful business that makes money with no regrets   Stacey’s links: College Essay Advisors Instagram: @collegeessayadvisors YouTube   Pia’s Links: No BS Agency Owners Free Facebook Group The Show Your Business Who's Boss Crash Course Start reading the first chapter of my book Piasilva.com  

Every business owner suffers from Impostor Syndrome--that feeling that you’re a fraud and it’s only a matter of time until everyone else finds out.   Yes, believe it or not, even I feel that way on a regular basis.   And so does my guest today–my dear friend and the founder of NY Book Editors--Natasa Lekic. Despite those fraudy feelings, Natasa knows how to show her business who’s boss.   Natasa is one of my only business owner friends who, whenever I text her midday, midweek, I’m surprised if she’s actually working.   Her business is lean and full of automation and systems that, as she puts it, renders her basically useless. She has one full-time employee, one part-time employee, and 35 contractors. Her business gives her a beautiful lifestyle – she brings in about $750,000 a year and last year she did it while taking 2 full months off to travel to 7 different countries.   NY Book Editors is the premier affiliation of professional editors and copy editors that help authors meet their writing goals. Her editors have worked for Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, their booklists include New York Times Bestsellers, winners of the Pulitzer Prize, and my book–Badass Your Brand. I can personally attest to how badass her business really is.   Despite her badassery, Natasa isn’t immune from feeling like a fraud or even making mistakes. None of us are–and that makes today’s conversation an important one.   If you are thinking about writing a book or have one in the pipeline, definitely go to newyorkbookeditors.com for their amazing articles, and maybe even to find an editor for your book! Plus you should definitely check out Natasa on their YouTube channel for stellar writing advice and inspiration.   You'll also find her interview with me there, where I share all kinds of juicy details about how I self-published and then self-marketed my book and got 100 reviews on Amazon in the first month.   *Note* That quote at the end of the episode about the meaning of life (that I couldn’t remember who said it) it was Picasso that said that after all!!   Listen to the full episode to hear: How “Imposter syndrome” is something almost every entrepreneur I meet struggles with including both of us Why Natasa built her business without using her face or name and why she’s starting to put herself in front of the brand How mistakes hold us back and how they can propel us forward And “The benefits of knowing what you value in life” so you can prioritize your business and life   Natasa’s Links: NY Book Editors Twitter: @nybookeditors Instagram: @nybookeditors Facebook YouTube Channel   Pia’s Links: No BS Agency Owners Free Facebook Group The Show Your Business Who's Boss Crash Course Start reading the first chapter of my book Piasilva.com    

It was 2014, and I had been hustling trying to build my branding agency for 3 years. From the outside, I looked like I was succeeding. I had a super cool office in Brooklyn, NY, two full-time employees, and the last project I was invited to pitch for was a 20,000 square foot restaurant in Times Square that wanted that cool Brooklyn vibe.   I had all the glitz of a successful owner, but behind the scenes, things looked very different.   I was networking every day, hoofing it around NYC to meet with whomever would have coffee with me, I was pitching project after project and either not hearing back or just losing them. And my overhead was high. By March 2014, we had maxed out all of our credit cards, were overdrawn on our bank accounts, and had no idea how we were going to make payroll in two weeks.   I was desperately trying to figure out how to bring money in. Not only did we need money to live, but we needed to pay back this $40,000 we now owed. Tell the prospects with proposals that we would bargain with them? Network… MORE? Just cry in the corner with my fingers crossed that one of these proposals would close in the next week and pay a deposit? And if none those things worked, I assumed the only option left would be to give up, admit that I FAILED to all my friends and family, and get a regular job.   I was working SO hard to get clients and busting my butt 24/7 to be at the beck and call the few clients we had, so why couldn’t my business at least support itself?   I had the best intentions, I had done my homework, read every book, studied other success stories, pounded the pavement networking, took courses, and was willing to work round the clock on my business while giving my all to deliver for my clients… I was doing everything that every expert, guru, mentor, and colleague had recommended. I had even thrown money at my problems by hiring other service providers to solve them for me and not only did that not work either, but it also cost me more money I didn’t have.   But despite all my knowledge, experience, and effort, none of it was showing up in my bank account. It felt unfair. I was depressed and felt more and more like a failure.   And one night, while having dinner with my husband and business partner Steve, I was in a catatonic daze over the crushing burden of my failing business while he was just chatting along as if everything was fine, making me even more anxious! Just as my anxiety was turning to rage, the adrenaline must have heightened my senses and I snapped out of my failure coma to hear him say   “...why don’t we just let the employees go?”   For all my butt busting and desperate efforts, I am embarrassed to admit that I had not even considered that as one of my options and that was a wake-up call.   Because I was trying to create an agency, a big business that looked like what I imagined success was, in my mind, letting our employees go would be failure and the end of my business. Because I was on a trajectory of building an agency, I refused to entertain any ideas that felt like backtracking and saw any of my efforts that didn’t achieve that goal as failures. I was so set on a specific idea of what a successful business looked like, that I was actually entertaining closing our business to get a normal job instead of entertaining the idea of running a different kind of business.   Now Steve had my attention and he was saying more great stuff… he said we had built a LOT of value in our business, had a lot of experience, great work to show and happy, satisfied clients. We weren't at a dead end, we actually had tons of options of what we could do with what we had created and achieved.   He forced me to entertain the idea that there were infinite options available to us, and just because they were different from what I had originally planned, didn’t mean they were inferior.   My lightbulb not only went off – it popped.   A huuuge weight had been lifted off of me and I was able to see my business with a ruthless, cutting clarity that was unencumbered by my previous fears of failing (because I already had!).   Now I was free to do ANYTHING.   Immediately, my new terminator vision was assessing my business problems.   Fact: We couldn’t afford the employees right now and hadn’t been able to for some time, hence the debt, so keeping them was no longer an option. I had been avoiding that fact for months. The second I accepted it, relief washed over me.   We won’t need to find $8,000 for them this month. WOW. I had just made $8,000 in a moment of clarity.   I’m gonna date myself here but you know that game Minesweeper? Where you’re clicking the boxes without clicking the mines? And every once in a while you click an empty box and the whole area opens up all at once? That’s what this was like. Everything broke open for me.   THAT was the moment I became the boss of my business & my whole demeanor changed   We started looking at our business as a clean slate and started brainstorming like crazy all the possible ideas of what we could do next. We started listing all the skills and assets we had and how to make money off them. We questioned why we had done everything the way we had, and why we felt we had to do it that way.   We were EXCITED for the first time in a long time. It was like when we first started our business and anything was possible again. We were no longer desperately trying to do what we thought we had to succeed. We were asking ourselves what we really wanted out of our business and how we could structure it to get it.   In that MOMENT, I went from being at the mercy of my business and the situation I was in, to stepping up and showing my business who’s boss.   Before that moment... I thought MONEY was my biggest problem.   So I thought if I just had more money, more clients, more work, things would be better.   Before that moment... I blamed all the people I was pitching for my business’ problems.   They would take our proposals and then end up hiring other, less expensive companies... how could I compete with that?! So I thought they’re just ignorant of the value of my services.   Before that moment... I thought I was doing ...

Make the leap from an overworked, underpaid employee of your own business to a badass authority that has plenty of profit and freedom because you are finally the boss. Host Pia Silva will shift your perspective and help you build a business that works for you instead of the other way around. Double down on what makes you awesome by badassing your brand and business, being smart about your marketing so you can shout it from the rooftops. She’ll tell you how it really is when it comes to ignoring the crap that’s holding you back and what it really takes to be the boss of your own business, one that gives you the life of freedom you wanted when you went into business for yourself in the first place.