Strategy Hour | Online Marketing for Business Growth

Do you want to increase your sales? Of course, you do, we all do! There are so many strategies out there on how to do this and today we are picking out four that we use and that have been highly effective for us! We hope that sharing this with you will help you to decide which strategies are best for you and your hustle. When we speak about our work we are referring to Boss Project, our main thing and then each of our own side gigs. Some of the strategies have worked better in different places but we will be unpacking all of that, do not worry!The cool thing is that you get to try these out for yourself and see which suits you. We want you to think about which fits with your goals and lifestyle, as well as its conversion efficacy. These are the most important metrics for you to keep an eye on while testing things out. Don't forget to keep the conversation going over on Instagram, you know we love to hear from you, so hit us up with any thoughts or questions!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 have two of our good friends and product-based business gurus on the show. First up is Rachel Allene, who Abagail met years ago at a creative entrepreneur conference. They have stayed friends, and Abagail has watched her hand calligraphy business grow into what it is today. She makes all kinds of products that are not necessarily handmade but rather, hand-lettered. We're comparing and contrasting that with our other guest, Emylee's friend, Mia Graves. We are so excited to hear from her because we love the way her marketing and business brain works. She makes polymer clay earrings and also sells cutters for polymer clay makers. She has two different business models, and in this episode, we are breaking down a deliberate sellout, restock model strategy and the mentality behind it, why it works, why it's hard sometimes, who it's right for, and the pros and cons both for you as the maker and for the customer. We hear about the journeys Rachel and Mia have been on and the slight tweaks they have made to their selling mechanisms, strategies, and marketing in order to please more people and not go absolutely insane. This roundtable discussion will give you some really great insights into the product world. You have asked for more product-focused content, and this information is coming from two very smart women.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

Hey friends, so we are putting an introduction on the top of this episode because we had every intention to talk about all of our plans for Q1 and the cool, exciting stuff that we are trying, the people we recently hired, and the strategies we are starting. And then, somehow, we got down a rabbit hole of intuitive business ownership, contentment, our problem with happiness, and everything in between!So we are going to save our episode about Q1 for another time, and what you are hearing today is slightly different than what you think you might be getting ready to hear! But it is still a really good episode, so stay until the very end. We also have a disclaimer that relates to a lot of what we say today at the very end, so you need to stay till then to hear it!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 Cami Monet, a watercolor artist, and custom wedding stationer. She is all about paper goods with purpose and personality. Camille Monet operates under two branches where she has custom wedding clients and does all their custom stationery. Her product line is also available for both retail and wholesale. When she isn’t doing all of these things, she also has a podcast with a friend, where they share ways to make business strategy a piece of cake for paper people.In this episode, we’re talking a little bit about processes, using Dubsado, and all about how to create a high-touch premium service with your clients. This is for anyone who wants to dip their toe into charging premium prices this year, and for those who are already offering premium services. This episode will also give you some good ideas on how to be high-touch without having to be in the process every time. Camille shares details about her speedy process on getting clients in the door and paying. The customization and personality aspect of her process is unlike any other that we have heard of, so we know you guys are going to get some really good takeaways today. Let’s get going!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

2020 feels a bit like a lifetime ago, even though we are only a few weeks into January. Even though we projected and gave you some ideas of where we might land, we are still so surprised with how last year ended up going for us. For all of us, 2020 will be a standout year for good and bad reasons. For us, it was ridiculous how our business year ended up. When big things happen in the world, you don’t know how they’re going to impact you, your partner, your family, your business, the climate, and the people buying your product. Everything. Being in charge of how you make money is sometimes scary when you can’t control all of those scenarios. So, we are so thankful that we had the time and space in January 2020 to set the expectations of what we wanted to do, and more importantly, what we didn’t want to do for the year. This really helped because when shit hit the fan (and continued to hit the fan throughout the year), we were really focused on securing our foundation. And, in December 2020, this is what caught us.  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

In today’s episode, we speak with Dresean Ryan. He started his SEO career only four years ago after bootstrapping it and learning everything he could because he wanted to make a better life for himself. Dresean has gone on to work with some large companies like Etna, Signa, and Blue Cross Blue Shield. He helps his clients make millions of dollars just by improving their search engine optimization. Today we are diving into how you can DIY this process and how you can learn how to hire the right kind of person. Dresean breaks down SEO in an easily-understandable, digestible way to keep things simple for you. He supplies listeners with actionable steps that have to do with outlining your content, deciding what your content should be, and creating that content. To do this, Dresean uses a bunch of cool tools both free and paid, and references his amazing resources at the end, including his very own program that you can use or even pass on to your VA. This ensures that even if you’re not up to speed with SEO in your business, someone on your team definitely will be. Let’s get to it then!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

We get a million DMs from people saying they are ready to strike out on their own and telling us they will listen and start with services. If you have been listening for some time now, you will know just how much we believe in service-based businesses. But before you do anything, as always, we recommend you listen to our second episode, back in 2017, the year we launched the show, where we had Abagail on as a guest. In that episode, Emylee interviewed her to find out how she replaced her corporate income after getting laid off. Since we reference that episode a billion times, we thought it would be fun to do a 2021 version, where we find out how Abagail would handle the same situation today. Some of the things might be similar, but what are the new strategies Abagail would leverage now? Technology and marketing have changed so much that there are sure to be a few new ways to bounce back quicker.  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

Joining us today on the podcast is Kali Rogers, the Founder of Blush Online Life Coaching, a life coaching business aimed at female millennials. Kali is here to teach us more about the super do-able, fun, and stress-free Pinterest strategies that have boosted their site traffic and sales and grown their clients and customers. The best of all? You don’t need a Pinterest marketing degree to implement them, you can start today! If you have a Pinterest account but have stopped using it for some reason, we hope this episode will inspire you to get back into it, or if you have been utilizing this potentially awesome tool, that you will get what you need to brush up your skills even more. In the beginning, Kali used Pinterest for personal reasons such as recipes and fashion inspo, until she decided to take a break. At first she didn’t see how Pinterest, a mostly visual medium, would be applicable to Blush, a service-based business. How would she promote a life coaching business through images? When she first started she didn’t have any entrepreneurial skills but realized that she needed to communicate to people that she and her team knew what they were talking about. She resorted to writing as a cheap, safe means of publicity, creating numerous articles for The Huffington Post, including “An Open Letter From Introverts To Everyone Else”, which went completely viral. Many people have a Pinterest account when they first get started in business, but then they get distracted along the line and stop using it on a regular basis. In this episode we are going to show you that, even though it’s an oldie, it’s still a real goodie. So be sure to join us for this awesome conversation!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 to talk about one of our favorite things — meetings! While most people hate them, we are going to share a few things that might change your mind. Meetings are notorious for consuming a lot of time, often with little real progress, but we will present you with an outline that will make your every meeting from here on out a super productive, efficient one. We’ve spoken about the book Traction many times, but we want to remind you once more to go read it because this is where this outline and our guidelines around meetings come from. Sometimes a meeting is not necessary and a Slack message or quick update will suffice, but other times having a meeting makes sense, and therefore it’s important to know how to approach them. Having a weekly meeting keeps all parties fully informed on decisions that were made, as it can be easy to think that everybody is in the loop when they’re not. If you are someone who has little patience for inefficiency and is always looking for the quickest, most productive ways to communicate and do things, this outline is perfect for you! This is as applicable to small teams as it is big ones, and don’t hesitate to ask your contractor to attend these meetings. Be sure to tune in to this episode to get the best strategy for efficient meetings!  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 show we have Jordan Gill. Jordan is an operations consultant and the founder of Systems Saved Me. She helps overwhelmed, one-woman shows become streamlined solopreneurs and her jam is creating a cohesive operating system for managing your tasks, files, and inbox. But today we are actually talking about something that could really change the game for you if you are running a service-based business. If you are the type of service-based babe who resents client workloads and is not a fan of the lengthy, back-and-forth communications, and is thinking about changing your entire business because you are almost on the brink of burnout, we encourage you to listen to this episode first! What we are sharing today is all about VIP days. With VIP days, you’ll create an amazing, lengthy, costly, profit-inducing service for your clients that also leaves them with a great impression of you. VIP days will also help you to free up your time for the rest of the year so you can do other things in your business. Jordan shares all about how she structures VIP days, how they changed her business, the lessons they taught her as a creative, and how you can implement them in your own business. Spoiler alert – in part of this episode we are talking about using a system that is going to make your VIP experience even better. And that system is Dubsado!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