Strategy Hour | Online Marketing for Business Growth

June was the most slap in the face lesson that Emylee has ever had in business. Abbie, on the other hand, felt like we had it coming. But no matter which way you see it, we’re going to talk about it – and many other delicious things – today in our June Review episode. This June, we launched The Strategy Academy live for the first time since November 2017. We have evergreened the program for the past six months and this launch was to give us a big public push. We did a successful live launch but did not reach the goals that we had set for it.In this episode, we reflect on the process and the results of our Strategy Academy relaunch and highlight some of the latest changes and additions to TCC. We have some exciting things coming up for July, which we’ll share with you too, and round things off with some strategy, pancakes, and spaghetti. By end of this episode, you’ll be reminded that sometimes you don’t need to burn your projects but rather, speak about them in a different way.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 welcome Michelle Knight – mother, wife, world traveler and storyteller. Michelle is also a branding coach and the founder of Brand Merry, where she works with female entrepreneurs to create an authentic, captivating and money-making brand through the power of story. Today we are breaking down the different types of stories that Michelle sees as most effective in the online space, as well as how you can literally integrate yourself, your background, your purpose and all the little stories that make you an amazing human being – into your brand.Michelle shares some tricks, tips, and tactics on how you can outline really big stories, break them down, share them authentically and how to truly draw a connection between your audience so that you can build trust – which in turn, builds sales and a money-making business! This episode is really actionable and is going to spark a ton of ideas for you and your business. Everyone has a story to tell, right? So grab a notebook and start brainstorming yours here with us today.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 today’s episode of The Strategy Hour we are tackling a very important subject and a problem that is very close to home for most business owners including ourselves here at TCC. We are going to be looking at the two schools of thought that might be holding up your business’ progress. With the rise in entrepreneurship and self-made business owners, their has been a natural growth in literature and thought on the subject. So much of this has been helpful and inspiring in many different ways but there are also ways in which it can be stunting you and your work.The first popular school of thought we look at is the “hustle ‘till you die” attitude which has been popularized by many successful entrepreneurs and has so much influence over the way go-getters portray themselves at events and online. We at Think Creative Collective know the value of hard work and persistence but attaching someone else’s or a collectively held image of blood sweat and tears to your own life can have devastating effects on your health, family life and of course your work. The second thing we look at is the idea that hiring and outsourcing is the direct line to success and credibility. After unpacking just how damaging these two ideas can be to you and those around you we look at ways in which you can avoid these problems, taking only the necessary pearls of wisdom from the philosophies and finding your own, healthy pathway to success!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 welcome Brit Kolo of Jam Marketing Group. Brit is a feel-good Marketing Coach, accountability partner, abundance junkie and hugger of all things plants. Brit coaches boxed-in business owners to become independent, profitable leaders through self-awareness and #MarketingThatFeelsGood. In this episode, we’re diving into all things personality type and this corresponds to marketing plans. Brit believes that you shouldn’t have to feel fake and sales-y in order to grow your business.By knowing your personality type and using that as a home base for your marketing strategy, she believes that you can truly create marketing that feels good for you. Here we break down what types of things feel good for certain personalities and what things might make us feel icky and uncomfortable so that you can lean into the thing that is going to help you market faster, better and stronger. By the end of this episode, you’ll have a good sense of how you can make selling feel so right for you in your business.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’s podcast is really special retrospective, looking back on our meetaversary! We met three years ago and those of you who have been with us for a while, know just how special the journey we have made together has been! So we thought we would take this opportunity to look back on the last three years and really just pay tribute to each other and what we have achieved. Although it has not all been plain sailing and easy terrain the good times have made the challenges that much more manageable. Through all the ups and downs that life has thrown at us, this business we have built together is a blessing and we are both so grateful for it!We start by trying to remember exactly how we first met and the first conversations we in the Savvy Community and the following phone calls and sleepovers. Once we spent time together we knew it was something special and the honesty we were able to exercise so quickly really showed us how rare our connection was. Very soon after meeting we started to see how we balanced each other out and complimented each other’s strengths and weakness. We hope everyone out there gets to feel this great feeling! We look back at some of the best and worst memories from this period and look forward to what the future might hold. This episode is a bit gushy and is all about us - but we know you care, otherwise, you wouldn’t be here! And who doesn’t need a little bit more inspirations and gratefulness in their lives?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 welcome Lauren Golden. Lauren loves helping mamas free themselves from the nine to five grind. Lauren launched The Free Mama Movement to show working moms that they don’t have to choose between family and financial stability. We’ve all said it and we’ve all heard it: “I don’t have time.” This is the easiest excuse that people love to pull out of their pockets when they’re not seeing business growth or success. But is it really true?For every single person out there who has ever said, “But I don’t have any time to grow my business” – this episode is for you. Here, Lauren is busting myths, knocking excuses out the window and giving you action steps on how to better utilize the time that you do have in your day – regardless of kids, dogs, full-time jobs, health, hobbies and life. All this so you can make amazing things happen in your business. No more excuses – grab your notebook and give this one a listen!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 ya’ll! It’s our May review / June planning session coming to you live from Emylee’s very dirty office. In this episode, we go over some of the things we accomplished and didn’t accomplish in May, some of our daring plans for June and let you in on a little big secret… This June we will be bringing you the biggest launch you have ever witnessed at TCC and share some of our exciting new sponsorship prospects on the horizon.We also share some successful news from our grueling switch over to Active Campaign and reveal why we deleted 21k subscribers from our list and are as cool as cucumbers about it. We also share the changes we have made to the business with GDPR compliance and why vanity numbers really don’t mean a thing. By the end of this episode, you will have a few great resources to help you take the steps you need to take in your business in order to reach success and sustainability.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 welcome back Steph Crowder. Steph is so awesome, that we decided she needed to become a regular! So here she is, to talk about keeping your to-do list alive once you’ve lost momentum in your business. After the hype of a launch has died down, losing momentum is common. Trust us, we know! There is a certain amount of adrenaline that keeps you going during a launch that keeps you alert, that keeps you firing when you’re in that challenge mode. But what do you do after this frenzy subsides? A lot of us go back to the same old habits and the same old routines and this is where a lot of us get super unproductive.Steph has found that there are 7 major reasons why your to-do list is not getting done. If you are one of those people who are like, “What the hell? It’s Friday and I’ve crossed off barely anything on my to-do list!” Then girl, this episode is for you. Here, Steph talks about the big commonalities she has seen for why people aren’t getting their shit done. Better yet, she gives us actionable steps we can take toward more productivity and sustainable momentum. After this episode, you will be able to take a deep breath, re-evaluate your time, kick that self-doubt to the curb and be the boss lady you’ve always dreamed of being.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

For those of you who missed the last Boss Talk Series episode, we brought Steph Crowder of Courage & Clarity on and everybody loved it! We got such good feedback, that we decided to bring her on again. Yep, she’s officially moved in! So today’s question is, how do you maintain healthy female relationships? We’ve touched on this in previous episodes, but today we want to focus specifically on business female friendships. This is a tricky topic and goes hand in hand with the theme: Community VS Competition. So how do you stay in your lane and be friends with someone who is doing what you’re doing? When are you crossing the line of taking advantage of a friendship? And how do you know whether your own helpfulness is being taken advantage of too?These are the types of tough questions we’ll be digging into in this episode. We also share how we personally manage our business female friendships and how having the support of other business women has radically enhanced our lives and careers. By the end of this episode, you’ll really see the benefits of having business female friendships in your life and will know how to determine whether these friendships are in a healthy give-and-take balance. No more hiding, it’s time to get out there and take a chance on the women in your midst.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 welcome Mia "Maya" Scharphie – creative career coach, designer, and agent of change. Mia founded Build Yourself to help women in creative fields move past the obstacles that hold them back in in their careers. This episode goes hand-in-hand with the previous few conversations we have been having on the podcast around competition versus community and what empowering women really looks like. Through Mia’s Build Yourself program, services, workshops and courses, she helps women to build confidence in their work and in their work environments – assisting them with practical things such as asking for a raise or a promotion, negotiating better and lead a healthier work-life balance.Mia also helps women understand and control their inner-critic and become comfortable with the fear of rejection and the heavily-weighted “No’s” that none of us want to receive. Mia also encourages us to find a wing woman and leverage the power of the women in our lives today. In this episode, we unpack our thoughts on empowering women and how we can make the changes necessary to tackle our self-sabotaging thoughts. Mia gives some really great, practical new routines and habits that you can start implementing in your life to see these changes and unlock the power of your own gifts.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