We love systems and tools (surprise, surprise). We’re always upgrading a process, trying out new tools that we think will benefit our team, and generally seeing what’s helpful and ends up sticking long-term. In doing so, we’ve accumulated a small staple collection of tools that massively benefit our team productivity and communication, which are two of the most important aspects of managing a team.

Stepping into our roles as not only managers but leaders, learning how members of our team work best, how they prefer to communicate, and ensuring that we have the necessary tools to aid in that has served us and our team members so well.

There are 10 tools that are our absolute couldn’t-live-without-them favorites, and we’re so excited to share them with you today! If you don’t adopt some of these exact tools for your team, hopefully the goal behind them inspires you to create something similar.

We think hiring a business coach is one of the best decisions you can make for your business (we might be a tad bit biased 😜). But having someone who can help you with your business’s ups and downs is great for your sanity and for getting actionable advice to help you uplevel your business.

In this blog, we’re talking about three reasons why you need a business coach. And here’s the thing, we’re talking to all you established business owners out there because, from our experience, you could use someone in your corner.

We know you can’t be an expert in every area of your business so there are some positions this tip doesn’t apply to. But let’s say you want to hire someone to be a salesperson to close client deals. The question you should be asking yourself is have you done those tasks in your business yet? Like do you have a process that you follow already for getting leads, sending out follow-up emails or DMs, what do you say, what has worked for you? This is important because knowing what that process looks like helps you decide who you need to hire and how to train them.

Or understanding this process gives you insight into what areas you can create systems and automate to free up more of your time. Cultivating sales is an important part of your business so if you can free up time in other areas then you can keep sales as a priority on your to-do list.

By definition, a Subject Matter Expert (SME) is a person who is an authority in a particular area or topic. They’re knowledgeable about their topic, they focus on a very specific field, and they’re extremely sought after. If you’re a 1:1 service provider whose expertise lies in a specific niche, then you, our friend, are a Subject Matter Expert!

For example, a general Social Media Manager wouldn’t usually be classified as a SME, but an Instagram Strategy Consultant for veterinarians could be. You can fill in the blanks with your specific niche and ideal client. This isn’t to say one is better than the other, but we do want you to understand the difference between a generalist title versus a SME.

In this post, we’ll be covering 4 things that we think SMEs really need to be aware of about running a profitable business!

We’ve heard it many times before and we’re sure it won’t be the last time. You want to burn your business to the ground and rebuild it into something new? We get it, building a business is not easy and sometimes plateaus are hit and building something new feels like the best answer.

We know there’s a ceiling that gets hit over and over again with 1:1 service providers.You’re cruising along and then one day you’ve hit an income ceiling and time ceiling and it seems like the only way out is to pivot. You’re convinced that your done-for-you service is the timesuck (and it is), but your solution is to pivot to serve more people, but less hands on. And it seems sexy at first, we get it! But we’re here to do what we do best and poke holes in your seemingly seamless shift so you can truly find the best solution for you.

So you’ve been freaking crushing it and are now ready to hire your first team member! Congratulations! But pump the brakes babycakes, because there’s a whole slew of decisions that need to be made before you can even decide who to hire.

Let’s dive into the differences between contractors and employees, hiring internationally, who to hire and who to not hire.

Running your service-based business essentially isolated and getting your advice and resources from freebies, Facebook groups, or short courses was great when you were first starting out. Now that you’re trying to scale beyond measures that were even conceivable in the beginning, having other brains to feed off of each other is a value unlike any other growth method.

This is technically called a mastermind group, and many successful entrepreneurs have credited their success to the collective of minds they’ve been a part of. Keep reading to learn 5 reasons why you should seriously consider joining a mastermind group!

It probably wouldn’t be too far-fetched to say that a common dream amongst business owners is to be able to work less but make more money. It sounds like a contradiction, but it’s actually entirely possible to achieve. By streamlining your work week and increasing your client capacity, you’re able to get back more time in your business and make more money.

There are really only two levers to pull in order to do this: 1. Increase the price of your package, and 2. Decrease the amount of time it takes to complete a client project. In this blog post, we’ll break down what it means to accomplish each of these, so you can finally reach your “work less, make more” goal.

So often when starting a creative service-based business, you start to feel disconnected with the reason you even started your business in the first place. Even when you’re absolutely crushing it in your business, landing clients left and right, and are super busy, that often comes with more things outside of client deliverables.

Taking on the CEO role means you have to deal with more things that may feel out of alignment with the thing you really love doing. What we’ve learned from being in that position is that feeling that connection to what you’re creating is the most important thing for a service provider to protect.

In this blog post, we’ll be sharing how to become the creative director of your small business, so you can still deliver on your services while building a high caliber business!