Strategy Hour | Online Marketing for Business Growth

Any business that is selling through a one-to-many system is going to, at some point, debate whether or not their strategy is worth their time and energy. That’s why today, we are going to talk a little bit about why we decided to roll out our affiliate program, as well as some of the logistics behind setting it up. When it comes to affiliate programs, there are a few mysteries that need solving, like what kind of software is out there and how to make it work in your business. We are also going to focus on some of the aspects that didn’t make sense for us in the past, because like we said: affiliate programs aren’t always the best idea. So join us and get the lowdown on the dos and definitely don’ts of setting up an affiliate program. 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 on the podcast we have Kaye Putnam. Kaye is is a psychology-driven brand strategist for entrepreneurs. Through work with over 100 clients, from Fortune 50’s to entrepreneurs, she developed the In Demand Brand method. She has had some crazy success though with her famous opt-in. 55,000 people have taken her psychology quiz all about branding and ya’ll need to take it too. Inside this episode, all three of us nerd out pretty hardcore. We talk about the psychology behind understanding your competition and establishing your brand presence. We uncover a couple of the most popular archetypes and the least popular ones.Kaye brings to the conversation a different way of looking at your brand, your messaging, and what you’re serving to your clients based on what you are actually best at and who you are as a human being, which is like the easiest and the best thing to do, right? Of course, we also talk about her quiz, and the strategy behind how she set that up, how she has collected the leads, and what it’s meant for her financially. This a good one to listen to just to uncover a little bit more about yourself and how you can use that to craft your brand messaging to your benefit. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Back in the day, we reported an entire series on starting your business and one of the first subjects we talked about was adopting a profit-first mentality. Here’s the thing, we re-looked at that episode and have so many more things to say! The way we run our business has dramatically shifted in the last 12 months and because of that, we have so many things to say to people who are just getting started. Even if you have an established business, we have some thoughts about what you should be doing differently when it comes to your dollar bills.We recorded that first episode about adopting a profit-first mentality in February of 2018 but we honestly didn’t really put our ideas into practice until 2020! It took two years for us to learn how to do that, so we are going to save you that time today. We are not saying that that first episode has no value, but now that we have actually been through the trenches, this is the episode you want!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 on the podcast we have Krystina Benedetti of The Messy Cookie. She is a lifelong entrepreneur who has grown her love of baking into a business and started spreading her joy through COVID. She has left her full-time job and has built an online business that offers virtual Cookie Ice Nights and she is also making all these amazing custom cookies. We love this girl, she is so amazing! Krystina is soon to be a Strategy Academy alumni! She is not even a year through our course, hasn’t even celebrated her first birthday with us, and has already done super amazing things in her business, like putting in her notice to leave her retail job to pursue her cookie business full-time. We break down everything that she has gone through in the last eight months that has led up to the moment where she felt comfortable and ready to leave her job. We talk about what she had logistically prepared for, how she got there mentally, what investing in her business looked like to her, and how she tackled the program and made the most of it to see the most traction. If you are interested in the Strategy Academy, we have a free training video that you can watch here.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

A couple of episodes ago, we teased at the end that we were already going into what could be a whole other conversation. This is that conversation. We are going to be sharing some tidbits that we have learned and have deliberately decided to do or not to do in Boss Project and within our side business to seek growth and to keep our business and our companies in the range we want them to be. This is based on what we do and don’t want to do in that job. We know this sounds confusing but stick with us, and we will break it all down. We really want you to go and listen to episode 512 because at the end we start this conversation, so it might make a little more sense to listen to that one first.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 welcome Aandra Bohlen, sales guru, inspiring friend, and all-round badass! She is here to demystify the sigmas around selling and the ways it is being taught. Her work is centered on developing and teaching entrepreneurs to create an amazing enrolment experience that leads to high conversion rates. She is an expert on sales calls and mentality and if you did not get the point already, she has it going on! We are going to talk about getting your mindset right and some real techniques for conversion so you are not going to want to miss this, we promise!Aandra has almost 30 years of experience in sales and we are so lucky to get to throw a bunch of questions at her, things we know you would love to have answered. We discuss getting past money-mentality blocks, perfecting your pitch and how to translate sales onto social media and your content creation process. Aandra has a bunch of great reframes of the sales thought process and we promise that this conversation is going to help do better and think better about your sales game. We also have a great activity that we really want you to do, so stay tuned for that!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

It's 2021, and we are diving into our profit reports. If you are new to this segment of the show, we really like to dive deep into what it takes to run an online business while avoiding comparison and not having to question your every move. So, instead of sharing dollars and cents, we share percentages, and we share strategies. We also dive into sharing behind-the-scenes thoughts and actions so you can see what makes sense for you without having to worry about whether you are in the right place and questioning where you’re at. We have a good accompanying episode to this one, where we break down the strategies we are trying to tackle for this quarter, and more specifically, we break down the accompanying expenses to those strategies. So if you want to hear more about them, definitely listen to that episode too. Now, without further ado, let’s dive in to today’s profit report.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 on the podcast we have Melissa Fryer. She is a creative artist, who has been in the professional baking industry for sixteen years and she noticed that people needed to find out more information about building their own baking business. But this was not until after she moved to the middle of the desert, had to leave another business behind, and start all over again with the help of Strategy Academy. Melissa is one of our rockstar, OG Strategy Academy students who have truly taken the program to a tee of how it was designed. We brought her on to not only get a peek behind the curtain of her business but to follow along with her thought processes and different strategies that she implemented in her business with how she was learning and what she was learning from the program.You’ll get a good glimpse today behind Melissa’s business that has succeeded and continues to succeed and thrive as she has taken pivots and made different decisions and tweaks based on not only what she is learning from our program but by knowing her audience and herself as her life has changed. This is exactly what we designed the program for – your life and not the other way round. So we are going to talk about the Strategy Academy a lot today but you are also going to get so many good tips about memberships, monetizing a Facebook group, how to grow an email list, and how to identify your offer depending on your lifestyle. Learn more about Strategy Academy here.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

Okay, we’re finally here for the episode we’d said we were going to give you. We are going to share a sneak peek behind the scenes of what we are doing and what we are focussing on for Q1, including not just big projects, but also some exciting shifts we’ve had in our team! If you have been following us for any length of time, you know we do a big planning dream-dump and break down our quarters into these “sexy chunks,” as we refer to them. Historically speaking, Q1 has always been a time for us to reevaluate and to really clean up and optimize our existing systems. That’s worked for us because, in terms of outside obligations, we are home the most in Q1. We also have the least going on with others in our business and we can really focus on what’s going on internally. It’s a great time to haul in and not go anywhere, especially because it’s the worst part of winter. So when we have no choice but to be cooped up inside, we use it as an opportunity to perfect everything for the rest of their year so that when spring blooms, we can come out of our shells ready and prepared. Join us today and get the three-step blueprint to our 2021 Q1 masterplan.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

On the Strategy Hour Podcast today, we are joined by the wonderful and amazing Rachel Green! She is one of the first people we connected with when we were starting out in the online business world and she has been in business for the last seven years, helping hundreds of businesses grow and succeed. As a brand strategist, designer and educator, Rachel has generated over 5 million dollars in sales for her clients and her focus on empowering female business owners is truly inspiring!In this episode, we are breaking down what a brand strategy is, why it is important to start there, and the questions that you need to ask when figuring this all out. Rachel offers some great thoughts to work through in order to help you make sure your story and brand are pushing you forward. She is all about progression, not just pretty branding and logos! We really respect Rachel's perspective on the strategic part of branding and we know you will all find it very useful. So buckle up and let's get into some strategy!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