Strategy Hour | Online Marketing for Business Growth

In today's episode, I’m sharing what you need to know about the strategy of kickstarting your business from scratch, even if you think you have no existing audience. I’ve found that we tend to underestimate our existing network. From family and friends to colleagues and acquaintances, you likely have a web of up to 1,000 connections waiting to be tapped into. You’re probably not actually starting from zero— it's just a matter of harnessing those connections to build the life and business you’re wanting.Join The Co-op - The Membership for Online BusinessesConnect with Abagail Instagram All the Links! In reality, the size of your audience doesn't actually dictate your revenue potential. I encourage you to put yourself out there and show up authentically, despite feeling vulnerable. Fear of judgment often holds us back, but stepping into the spotlight isn't just about gaining followers— it's about creating genuine connections and building a supportive community. Shifting my focus from numbers to nurturing meaningful relationships has not only been eye-opening but also empowering, and I'm eager to share this transformative journey with you on the podcast today!Tune in to learn how to: Convert Strangers to Buyers With a Digital Product  Build Your Perfect Audience Leverage Digital Products & Increase Your Audience Use DMs to Communicate Directly With Your Followers Balance Attracting New Followers With Nurturing Your Audience Thank you for listening! Please subscribe, rate, and review The Strategy Hour Podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated. For show notes, go to thestrategyhour.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to part three of our four-part series on diversifying your income! If you haven’t checked out the past two episodes, go back and give them a listen. In part one, we dove into what you need to know before you add new income streams, and in part two, we learned how to leverage where you are to get to where you want to go. Join The Co-op - The Membership for Online BusinessesConnect with Abagail Instagram All the Links! In today’s episode I’m sitting down with Melodee Fiske, a second-grade teacher turned food photographer, who went on to use her experience to educate others on how to build their own successful food photography company! Like other creators I‘ve interviewed, Melodee started by answering questions that were coming from the people around her. During that time, she balanced building her photography client base and sharing knowledge one-on-one before finally turning that knowledge into a course.Tune in to hear about Melodee’s journey managing this transition, and find out where the tipping point lies between maintaining that balance and going all in on teaching. This episode was sponsored by Teachable.Episode Highlights From Teaching Second Grade to Food Photography [0:03:51] How Sharing Her Knowledge Snowballed Melodee’s Career [0:10:29] Finding Her ‘Why’ by Changing Careers [0:16:47] What it’s Really Like to Balance Your Business with Teaching [0:20:11] The Most Challenging Part of Launching a Course [0:24:59] What Melodee Wishes She Had Known From the Start [0:32:17] Key Advice For Anyone Who Wants To Create a Course or Start Teaching [0:37:31] Thank you for listening! Please subscribe, rate, and review The Strategy Hour Podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated. For show notes, go to thestrategyhour.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode forms part two of a series on obstacles that are preventing you from launching your first or next digital product. Listen to them in either order. It’s totally up to you. Part one was mostly about the fear, worry, and time involved in launching your product. This time, we’re mostly talking about marketing and tech. Join The Co-op - The Membership for Online BusinessesConnect with Abagail Instagram All the Links! Episode Highlights Where to Begin When You Don’t Know How to Build What You Need [0:01:34]  What to Do When You Don’t Have an Existing Audience to Sell To [0:02:42] How to Make Your Digital Product Look Professional and Polished [0:07:35] One Way to Choose Which Idea to Actually Move Forward With [0:10:29] When You Shouldn’t Move Ahead With Your Digital Product (Yet) [0:14:10] So You’re Not a Tech Person, What Now? [0:18:20] Thank you for listening! Please subscribe, rate, and review The Strategy Hour Podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated. For show notes, go to thestrategyhour.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we get into part two of our four-part series on diversifying your income! Joining us today is solo traveler turned travel expert, Shakeemah Smith. In 2015, she created her course, Travel Like a Bawse, and since then, she has taught over 2000 women in eleven countries how to master the art of solo travel. Even though her professional background wasn’t in the travel industry, she was able to pull from personal experiences to give people the knowledge they were craving. Join The Co-op - The Membership for Online BusinessesConnect with Abagail Instagram All the Links! Each and every one of us has a huge opportunity to take the experiences we've had in our lives, be it personal or professional, and transform that knowledge into something teachable that people are eager to learn. Creating digital products may feel like starting over, but it’s important to remember that we all carry with us the wisdom and experiences that brought us to this point. I want you to take a step back and think about what got you to where you are today. What lessons have you learned? What would you do differently if starting anew? What would you skip? Chances are, you’ll find you have a lot more knowledge than you think.Join me today as I talk with Shakeemah about how she took her knowledge and built a thriving business from it. Discover how Shakeemah approached the shift in her career, not as a total overhaul, but as a starting point to build on all the knowledge and experience she already had!Episode Highlights From Investigator to Traveler, to Course Creator [0:03:55] Evolving Your Digital Products [0:07:02] What Happened When The Pandemic Hit [0:11:52] Unpredictability and The Challenges of Entrepreneurship [0:16:34] Why You Have What It Takes To Succeed [0:19:37] How to Leverage Where You Are At Instead of Starting Over [0:24:23] Thank you for listening! Please subscribe, rate, and review The Strategy Hour Podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated. For show notes, go to thestrategyhour.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Right now, you have free opportunities to be seen by an organic audience and get free traffic to your offers from people all over the globe. What a time to be alive! What an incredible chance to grow your business! Today's episode of the Strategy Hour Podcast is part one of a two-part miniseries that covers the obstacles that might be preventing you from launching your next (or even your first) digital product. Join The Co-op - The Membership for Online BusinessesConnect with Abagail Instagram All the Links! This miniseries was developed in conjunction with Digital Product Fast Track, a free challenge to take you from idea to launch in just one day! Sign up at bossproject.com/launch and tune in today to learn about the fear and the worry that often creep in and the time it takes to get your product launched. Episode Highlights How to Overcome the Overwhelm that Comes with Launching  Why Visibility is So Scary (and Why You Should Do it Anyway!)  One Way to Take All the Pressure Off Your Product What it Really Means to Serve a Past Version of You The Unexpected Way You Can Create the Time You Need Thank you for listening! Please subscribe, rate, and review The Strategy Hour Podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated. For show notes, go to thestrategyhour.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dara Denney, a performance creative expert who works with direct-to-consumer brands, shares her journey of transitioning from agency work to consulting, launching a successful course, and earning over $50,000. She discusses the mistakes she made along the way and offers insights on creating a business based on sharing expertise. Tune in to learn how Dara diversified her income streams and why she wishes she had started sooner.

Today I’m sharing the strategy of how I got those people on the list, what’s working, what you should be paying attention to, and what it means for you and your business. An email list is incredibly important to your business because it will allow you to reach your audience more consistently and it’s something that you actually own, unlike your social media followers. Email lists are a long-term strategy that adds to the stability of your business. Join The Co-op - The Membership for Online BusinessesConnect with Abagail Instagram All the Links! In the past, I have avoided talking about email lists because I worry that they can become too much of a distraction. Utilizing a list will get you sales but if you are so focused on marketing to bring people onto the list instead of focusing on actual, tangible sales. I’m pretty confident that the majority of these new email subscribers came from seven different kinds of activities that I was doing in my business to attract those leads. I’m having a significant increase this year – way more so than in 2023 because of my focus on visibility. So, let’s dig into how I managed to do it! Episode Highlights Utilizing Old Training Programs to Attract Quality Leads [0:08:40]  Keeping Up with Trends (When You Feel Inspired to!) [0:10:02] The Number One Way I Want You to Start Building Your Email List [0:11:50] How Refreshing Old Content Can Bring You Leads Today [0:13:38] Working Backwards to Gain Better Insight into Your Clients [0:16:37] The One Thing that Surprised Me the Most When I Started My Program [0:18:34] The Power of a Generic Sign-Up [0:23:13] Using Activation to Add to Your Email List [0:24:35] Thank you for listening! Please subscribe, rate, and review The Strategy Hour Podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated. For show notes, go to thestrategyhour.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you get one thing out of the pep talk I’m about to give you, it’s this. The decisions that you make today are not ones that you are marrying forever. Regardless of what you launch, you have an opportunity. Whatever you put out into the world, whether it works or it doesn’t, is an opportunity to learn. The world is going to tell you something! And you get to listen. As business owners, we often don’t slow down and listen to this nearly as often as we should. Join The Co-op - The Membership for Online BusinessesConnect with Abagail Instagram All the Links! Not everything I have done so far has worked, and I am okay with that! I often learn more from the moments that I would deem as a failure. Today, I don’t want you to focus on what could be the most shareable digital product or what would be the most trendy thing; instead, focus on how to solve a whole problem. A template, a script, a guide, or anything designed to make a real difference. The more concrete results you can get for a client, the more they will assign value to you and your business.Episode Highlights The Story of An Early Failure That You Can Learn From How I Came Back From One of the Biggest Flops Ever What You Can Learn From My First Ever Launch A One-Step-At-A-Time Approach To Doing All the Things Your Heart Desires  Thank you for listening! Please subscribe, rate, and review The Strategy Hour Podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated. For show notes, go to thestrategyhour.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, I want to tell you about the process that helped me create an Instagram Reel that got me 364 free leads in under 24 hours. A Reel that has since gone on to generate more than 771 leads, and counting. Even I’m still struggling to grasp how this happened!Join The Co-op - The Membership for Online BusinessesConnect with Abagail Instagram All the Links! I'm not here to claim that I've cracked some universal marketing code or boast about one simple trick that will get you unbelievable results. Yes, what I did was incredibly simple and yielded exceptional results, but it wasn’t where I started and it’s not what made this work. It took several months of strategic planning, brainstorming, and taking action before things took off the way that they did. That’s why I’m using today’s episode to tell the full story of how I got here, and how you can take the next step in building your list of dream clients. Let’s get into it!Episode Highlights Helping Small Business Owners Become Financially Free [0:05:21] How I Discovered What My Clients Needed [0:08:21] Where The Majority of My Leads and Growth Came From [0:10:59] The Biggest Sticking Point For My Clients [0:13:23] How I Helped My Clients Get Over Their Biggest Hurdle [0:14:40] Staying Focused [0:18:23] Why My Post Generated So Much Engagement [0:19:51] One Day Launch: Digital Product Fast Track [0:27:01] Thank you for listening! Please subscribe, rate, and review The Strategy Hour Podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated. For show notes, go to thestrategyhour.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What if, instead of worrying that you are running out of time in your business or that your plans are delayed, you accepted that you are right on time for your own destiny? Today I am joined by Amber McCue, a woman who went from being an 18-year-old single mom to owning three companies that allow her to work from anywhere in the world. Join The Co-op - The Membership for Online BusinessesConnect with Abagail Instagram All the Links! Amber grew her first business to a multi-million-dollar company from just a side hustle! She knew her business was going to be a success when she encountered what she calls ‘right on time’ moments that nudged her in the right direction and she still looks out for them 14 years later! In this episode, she and I talk about the concept of being ‘right on time.’ This conversation is so life-changing, I can’t wait for you to hear it. Episode Highlights You Cannot Be Late for Your Destiny Detaching from Outcomes in Your Business The ‘Try it on’ Visualization Gifting the Idea of ‘Right on Time’ to Other People How Being ‘Right on Time’ Ties into Resilience Thank you for listening! Please subscribe, rate, and review The Strategy Hour Podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated. For show notes, go to thestrategyhour.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices