There’s undoubtedly a flood of information and resources on the internet for service providers looking to grow their income to $5k+ months. Unfortunately, that also means that it can be difficult to know where to look, what to search for that’ll actually be helpful, and find reliable resources. When you’re a smaller business, your number one priority is essentially increasing your revenue, and there are a number of skills that are essential to have in order to make that happen.

In this post, we’ll be giving you our best resources to help you hone in on those skills so that you can finally break free of the feast or famine mode that so many small service-based businesses find it hard to come out of in the beginning stages of business.

One of the largest issues we see in the service industry, specifically related to CEOs and their time, is that they aren’t aware of what their capacity is or how to best split their time to focus on all of the areas that need their attention. Without the knowledge of what baseline their capacity should cover (i.e. 20% in this area and 10% in another), they also aren’t able to see the clear path forward to reaching their goals. In this post, we’ll be breaking down how your time should be spent as a CEO and how to understand your capacity and its effects on your business goals.

There comes a point in every service-based business owner’s journey (especially in this market) where they hit what feels like a huge cement wall. Leads feel harder to come by, prospects feel harder to close, and it seems the only way to get through it is to either demolish the wall or change directions. In this case, that would mean pivoting your offer or scrapping everything you’ve built and starting over.

Something we’ve noticed is overlooked by many new or growing business owners is creating brand values. You may think since your business is small or because you may not have a team, that means they aren’t important at the moment, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. If you want to ensure you’re developing a clear and concise brand, creating consistent brand awareness, and attracting the right kinds of clients and audience to your business, then you need to identify and define your brand values.

The end of the year is possibly our most favorite season of business! It’s the time where you get to reflect on your year in business, assess your analytics and results, and plan for the year ahead. Because this is such a fun time for us, we love making sure our audience is equipped with the resources to help them make these things happen. In The Creative Template Shop, we drop so many helpful templates for reflection and new year planning.

With hundreds of templates to choose from, we wanted to do a quick round-up of our top 5 must-have templates to review your year in business and plan for 2023!

Client acquisition is likely the single-handed most asked about topic we get from our audience and members of our various communities. Lately, we’ve been hearing a common complaint from business owners that they need more leads. While there have been some market shifts recently, they’re not necessarily impacting the way we acquire clients. It may feel like it’s changing when actually, everything with clients is exactly the same.

Here’s the thing; marketing is cyclical. There are things that work now that aren’t going to work in 6 months, then in 2 years, those things could come right back around again. There will always be hotspots, but you shouldn’t rely on them if you want consistency. We have lots to talk about on this topic, so let’s dive in!

We know that getting ready to hire and actually going through the process can feel like an overwhelming mountain to climb. It feels like you have 1,287 things to learn about the intricacies of different positions, titles, types of hires, tasks, job descriptions, etc. But one of the first things that needs to be decided on first is - are you ready to hire a contractor or an employee?

Don’t worry. In this blog, we’re going to share our best hiring tips and clearly tell you the differences between hiring a contractor and an employee.

Building a team is an incredibly powerful tool that will take you to the next level… that is, if you get it right. When it comes to hiring, the more you know, the more equipped you’ll be to face whatever comes your way. Over the years we’ve hired a slew of part-time contractors, contractors that felt like extensions of our team, part-time and full-time employees. We’ve literally hired ‘em all! Through all of that we’ve learned a lesson or 37 that we’d love to share with you.

When you first started your business, you probably came up with your services and offers like you were throwing spaghetti at the wall. You were just hoping to get some customers and start making some money.

However, after some time goes by, hoping is something you no longer want to do. Usually as you become more established, you want a reliable form of income, you want dreamy clients, you want clear boundaries and you want steady growth.

Well, having spaghetti thrown services and offers isn’t going to get you there. If you’re not getting the spaghetti reference (lol), what I’m trying to say is that your offer needs to be clear, precise and profitable. And by getting that type of profitable offer you first need to identify the results you want AND to identify the results you want you need to go through a handful steps.

So, in today's blog, I’m going to walk you through how to strategically identify the results you want and how to create a profitable offer.