Strategy Hour | Online Marketing for Business Growth

Today, we are going to talk about some dream weeks, some not so dream weeks, and how we have transitioned in our business. We chat through our journey of how our life and day of work looks different as our business grows and changes, as our life grows and changes, and the kind of questions we begin to ask ourselves when we want to strive towards a different or better ideal dream week. We go over how to start to work through some of these challenges yourself.In this episode we are going to walk you through the process of what it looked like when we were scaling a multiple six figure business and then how we kind of hit a brick wall at the beginning of 2017 and we had to learn a whole new world of how to run a business. We dive into how managing life and business was completely different and why always keeping in mind what we wanted along the way was super important to us. Instead of letting the world just slip away from us, we kept our hopes and dreams actively in front of us and we want this for you as well.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

Guys, we are super excited to have on our friend, Josey Stafford from Six Pence Events today. She is a wedding planner and we know there are a lot of you in the wedding industry listening in today and we know nothing about it other than the fact that we both have gotten married. So, we are super excited to have someone on who actually knows what she’s talking about, in regards to service based industries and wedding industries, and we are kind of getting into some meat and potatoes on all things referrals.On today’s episode you are going to learn how to ask for a referral without being super creepy, and you are going to figure out the best and organic ways to get clients and vendors to refer you. We are jumping into incentives, giveaways, and prizes and whether or not they work. If you are brand new to business, we get into exactly how you go about finding these people, the right and the wrong way to network. We also how things work for you in your business and even if you are not in the wedding industry, I want you to stay tuned because all of this have super specific takeaways that are applicable to every single one of you.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 are getting a little nerdy with you guys. We are geeking out on some numbers and giving you the same slap on the face we got when it came to conversions of your peeps and making money. If all of this numbers stuff kind of freaks you out and makes you want to break out in hives and throw your phone out the window, it’s okay. Take a deep breath. We are not going to turn you into a mathematician over the course of the next 45 minutes, that’s fine. But if you feel like you need some help with that, we’ve got you covered. So don’t you stress about it.We are going to be talking about the icky feelings about money, about disappointment in sales numbers, and what that really means especially for businesses like ours and yours. We dive into a bit of background on how we transitioned rather quickly from a client based business to a course based business in a matter of months. What that did along the way was teach us a lot of things about what we didn’t know about conversion rates and how many people you actually need on your list in order to make money. So if you find yourself in that same La La Land place right now, put your socks on and get into this episode!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 Claire Swinarski who is a copywriter and content marketer for creative entrepreneurs. She has been featured in the Washington Post, Seventeen Magazine, Bridal Guide, and many other amazing magazines and publications around the country. Claire is based out of Wisconsin and she pretty much loves burrito bowls, so we like her. She is a girl after our own burrito loving hearts.In today’s episode, Clair is going to break down a lot of stuff that many of you need help with, like copyrighting. First, we are figuring out how to dive into knowing your ideal client, because you have to start there before you even know what to write in the first place. Next, Claire walks us through the pages that you probably should have on your website and others not to even worry about, as well as how to actually break down what goes on that website itself.Claire also gives her tips on how to avoid that copy overwhelm, and how to stay true to yourself in your own copy so that you can repel the “wrong kind” of people. Make sure you listen all the way to the very end because she gives some really quick tips on how you can update your copy today and not be so stressed about it anymore. If this is your jam and you need a refresh for your website, then be sure to give this one a listen. Hunker down, put your socks on, we are going to get started!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’re talking about one of our favorite systems, Squarespace, and why it is our favorite web platform, all of our favorite features, and why we have adamantly insisted on staying on Squarespace despite the option to leave multiple times at this point. Now, if you are using another platform, we are not here to shame you and judge you for that, and we are certainly not going to tell you that WordPress is wrong and that it will ruin your life. So if you are happy where you are and you are getting great results then maybe this episode is not for you.However, if you are frustrated with where you are right now and are thinking about leaving or you haven’t even started your website yet, then this might break down some options for you and let you know where we stand. This will be our judgment free zone and although we are completely biased, we will not shame you. That is our objective. So if you are curious about how we started out on Squarespace and why it might be right for you, then stay tuned!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 going to get crazy up in here! Today on the podcast we have Tasha Haynes from BLINK Conference on. She is AMAZING, and we are so excited to have her share all her wisdom with ya’ll. Tash is in the fifth year of running the BLINK Conference so she definitely knows a thing or two about conferences by now. She has great advice to those looking to start their own conferences or perhaps attend a conference for the first time.With Tash we go through how the BLINK Conference has grown and the format that they find unique for their conference to make it different. We also dive into how they are able to create that really intimate and family aspect at BLINK, which is hands down our key takeaway from our experience there and has led us to have really close relationships to not only Tash but other speakers and attendees that we met at that conference as well. We also chat about landing sponsors, landing key note speakers and all the good stuff in between. Tash has a huge place in our heart and we think she will have a huge place in yours too, if you let her in.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 you are going to learn all about how to do a survey, why it’s important, how to actually create the thing, a few of our tips and tricks, as well as some of the questions that you should actually consider asking inside of this bubbly delicious thing that’s going to give you so much information that you will be exploding with ideas by the end of it. So you need to make this sound like the best thing that has ever happened to your business.Surveys have gotten a bad rap, but they can seriously do so much for you and your business. If you can incentivize and make it seem easy to do, you’ll be surprised how many people will actually give you really valuable feedback. It reminds your readers and your audience that they are literally helping shape the content that you create. Instead of just making up things that you think your audience wants, give them a platform to tell you what they actually need from you. Ready to learn how to create a badass survey? Listen in!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

Oh my gosh! We are so excited to have Sarah on the podcast today. Sarah was our first hire here at TCC and has been with us the longest. We still remember her first email to us, asking to be part of the team — it was definitely a heaven sent! Sarah is awesome, we love her, she is amazing, and plays a big role in this team. You may not know this, but we are not the greatest spellers and grammar is for sure not our forte, so thank goodness for Sarah. She is our editor for the blog, who makes everything super wonderful and polished.Now you might think that when hiring an editor, all you are getting are some spelling fixes and maybe a couple of extra commas. We are here to tell you that you most definitely get a whole lot more than that! What an editor brings to your blog is to polish the content and keep your voice in tact, while also acting as an accountability partner to help you keep on a consistent publishing schedule. Sarah also helps to improve SEO by making sure that not only are links working and things spelled correctly, but that various industry standard SEO steps have been implemented for each post, including older ones. All of this consistency ensures that our readers know exactly what to expect and that the content is delivered as promised.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

Lately, we’ve seen a lot of people rebel, and not in a good way. There is a little bit of anti-trend setting happening, and although we totally fit in with the weirdos and the misfits, we need to give you guys a little bit of a reality check about the difference between marketing tactics that work and trends that you can spin your own style on. We are going to peel back the layers, Shrek style, so you can better understand how to move past the fear of not understanding and learn how to use these tactics for your unique business.Today is going to be a lot of a this versus that conversation and we are going to give you a peek into a lot of the pushback that we hear from our audience and those in the online creative space. We are going to break down the difference between marketing tactics, style, and branding. So if you are looking to get some ideas on how you can spin these tactics and make them work for you and your own business, then listen in!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 Katie Hunt with us, and it is going to be an absolute showdown — tradeshow showdown! Katie knows all the secret stuff about this whole secret universe that they call “wholesale”. Now although neither of us live in this parallel universe, Katie definitely does and she has a ton of knowledge to share with us. Katie has been wholesaling and dealing with the wholesale world since 2009 and has always had the entrepreneurial bug, even back in the day selling friendship bracelets to all her friends.Katie shares how she first got started in the wholesaling industry, going from making wedding invitations and cards for all of her friends to a full-blown Etsy shop of her own. She has spent the last 16 years coaching large corporations and entrepreneurs on marketing and business development strategies. Her strengths lie in connecting people and bringing ideas to life – brainstorming, making a plan and executing. Katie has a passion for creating, a mind for business, and a strong desire to help others succeed. So if you want to soak up all her knowledge, then you’d better listen in!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