Strategy Hour | Online Marketing for Business Growth

It’s been a little over 90 days since I took over as managing partner at Boss Project. Since then, I’ve been deep in experimentation! I’ve changed our email schedule, rolled out regular workshops and tried a ton of new tech and tools. I even planned out the next 16 months of promotions, product releases, and exciting new projects we are pursuing. On today’s episode, I’m giving you all a look behind the scenes: what’s working, what’s been fun, what I wouldn’t bother with, and what’s been the most effective.  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're going to uncover the secret strategies other marketers are using to sustainably scale. I’m going to give you the tools to leverage them inside of your own business and turn strangers into buyers. I'm here to pull back the curtain, revealing nine indispensable strategies to transform strangers into dedicated buyers and drive organic traffic, with little to no budget.Tuning in, you’ll hear me share exactly how to drive free organic traffic to create more predictable income in your business. These tools aren't just for a select few. They're universal for online entrepreneurs, be it creatives, consultants, content creators, or coaches. They've served me, bringing in millions, and they can serve you too. So let's 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

When Boss Project first started, it was very different from what it is today. And, whether I realized it or not, I was growing two business models simultaneously, while using entirely different marketing strategies for each one. Since then, I’ve seen an increasing number of entrepreneurs looking to diversify their revenue streams or even pivot their business models entirely.In today’s episode, I unpack how you can keep nurturing what you've built and let your business evolve by investigating the countless ways you can leverage organic marketing to grow your brand and fulfill the potential of your business. Tune in to learn how you can evolve your existing business while embracing the one you’re dreaming about!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

During today’s episode, I’m speaking with my partner in life and employee in business. Jared and I have been together for 15 years, married for 10, and working together since 2018. He’s been full-time at Boss Project for two years now, and under my management for about 90 days. Today, I’m answering all your questions about what it’s like to work and run a business with a spouse, and nothing is off the table! 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 in this episode is Boss Project’s Program Manager and Creative Director, Caitlin O’Bryant. She is an integral part of the team and contributes to a broad mix of things, but she’s here today to discuss our development cycle, how we go from idea to launch to product, and offer improvement!After attending design school in Seattle, Caitlin took the leap and started her own business as a wedding stationery designer. Five years later, 2020 happened. By the time things had stabilized, she realized she had lost her spark for stationery. That’s when she applied for the role of Graphic Designer at Boss Project. The rest is history! We’re in a brand new phase. So often we’re just sharing the end project, but today we want to give you some insight into how things start out as just an idea and what it looks like to make those edits. Let’s dive 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

One of the number one things I see business owners wrestling with is leads: how to get them, how to secure more of them, and how to pull them in with less effort. I want to assure you that it's fully possible to amass all the leads you could ever want and have your business entirely booked without doing all the legwork yourself!When I first fully booked my agency-style services, I went from being laid off to completely booked in a mere 30 days, matching my plush corporate salary in the process. Fast forward eight months, and I had hit my first $100,000! Just four months beyond that, I doubled it. I've unearthed nine methods to snag leads 100% on autopilot, and today, I'll share just the first two that overwhelmed me with more business than I could have ever imagined.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, I’ve shared a lot of the behind-the-scenes of my marketing and messaging pivot that has happened within my business but what I haven’t shared are the changes to my actual offer. This was not a small decision because I undid three and a half years of work to make my business more sellable and focused on what would give my clients better results. Today, I am going to share all of the changes I made in my business over the last three years. In order to give you the full behind-the-scenes, I need to back up quite a bit. I desperately wanted a product shop from 2016 and it was so far removed from the kind of business I was running. As time has passed, I have become more and more aware of the challenges associated with running one so I began to think about a digital shop. I saw a hole in the market for tools that help business owners enhance their client experience, present themselves more professionally, and speed up their sales process. In January 2020, I launched the Creative Template Shop. I wanted to have everything available up front but I didn’t necessarily only want to sell these things once off. I wanted recurring revenue and that was only possible with some sort of membership option. This worked so well and was so focused on the product itself which allowed it to be removed from Boss Project. To make this viable we really had to lock in on the process and we managed to! We used the audience we already had to create warm traffic and present the Creative Template Shop to them. We also used paid advertising early on to focus on cold leads. We presented the products as individual things that could be purchased but as soon as the website was clicked on, it was very clear that becoming a member would be so much more worthwhile and as a result, very few people bought one-off templates. And then everything changed. 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 order to become a successful entrepreneur, you need to make sure you’re on the cutting edge of your industry or else you run the risk of becoming obsolete. There is no such thing as having ‘arrived’ as a business owner, and thinking so will only stifle your growth. Exploring ideas makes me think specifically about pioneering innovation which is about discovering what’s never been achieved before and succeeding at making it happen. Pioneering innovation occurs when a brand-new product, service, or way of doing something is introduced into the market and I think that’s where people get stuck. Being successful does not require you to be a pioneer, inventor, or innovator! I’m sure you have all heard of the adoption bell curve and the truth is that there are people at all different stages of that wave. This is usually discussed with reference buyers but it doesn’t just apply to consumers, it applies to business too! You can be a pioneering innovator at the forefront of your industry or you can ride the curve. You do not have to be first at something to be the best! Industry giants are built by observation and I would argue that your ability to observe is far more important than your ability to innovate. Now, this doesn’t mean that you should copy someone else's work, because copying is not what will make you successful. But learning from others and adapting can be such an incredible way to grow and make an existing idea even better! 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

Over the last 12 months, I've been doing an experiment. I wanted to prove that even after nearly a decade, the same principles still apply, still work, and still let you build a business that earns a reasonable salary and can support the life you want to live. When I first started my own business, I replaced my corporate salary in 30 days after being laid off. And in eight months, I made $100,000. Four months after that, I doubled it.A lot has changed in the intervening years — IRS technology is different, social media is constantly evolving — but do the same principles hold up? Last August, I quietly reopened the agency side of my business, calling it BP Studio. In 12 months, I pulled in $264,000 in revenue from high-end services. No paid ads, no social, no trendy marketing strategies. This growth? It's been 100% organic, all from warm leads that were already in my network. So if I did it once and then did it all over again eight years later, how did I pull it off? What changed and why? I can't wait to get into all of this with you in today's 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

There are many psychological reasons that you may want to be remembered when you’re gone, but before we start delving into these, I want to give a disclaimer that leaving a legacy is not a requirement to live a good life. It does not define the quality of your impact during your lifetime and is not part of your responsibility while you are alive. According to the Oxford Dictionary, a legacy is the amount of money or property left to someone in a will, but I believe that a legacy can be so much more than that! It’s an imprint. As if you left a piece of yourself behind. A legacy can be the impact you have within the four walls of your own home and how you’ve affected family and friends or it can even stretch far beyond that. It’s not just a sum of money but rather the accomplishments that last a lifetime, your values, your ongoing influence, the good deeds you do, and so much more. If it’s not required to leave a legacy, then why is it so important to so many people? Well, because it gives you the opportunity to live for a purpose that’s bigger than yourself! According to Psychology Today, there are five reasons that people want to be remembered. So, let’s talk about them! 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