business insights
I’m officially building my first Al app. No code. No hoodie-wearing co-founder. Just me, my idea, a no-code tool called Lovable.dev, and two years of quietly training an Al on everything I know about marketing, messaging, and digital products.
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100 Profitable Digital Product Ideas
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The Best Way to Streamline Your Client Projects as a Service Provider
Managing your client experience is one thing, but managing and streamlining your client projects is a whole other beast to tackle as a service provider. You might be wondering what the difference is, so when we talk about managing your client experience, we mean all of the communication, appointment scheduling, sending forms, proposals, contracts, getting paid, and all that jazz. (Dubsado’s our trusted CRM for that– here’s why.)
On the other hand, you also have to deal with the actual tasks that come with fulfilling a client project for both you and your team. For this, we recommend using a project management system like Asana. It’s robust enough to handle even the most complex projects, yet simple enough that if you don’t need to use all of the fancy-shmancy extras, you don’t have to.
Today we’ll be diving into the best way to streamline your client projects using Asana!
Hiring a Contractor Vs. Employee – What is the Difference
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.
How to Build a Team that Allows You to Scale
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.
Identify The Results You Want and Create a Profitable Offer
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.
10 of Our Favorite Tools for Team Productivity & Communication
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.
3 Reasons Why You Need a Business Coach (Even if You’re an Established Business)
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.
Complete Guide to Dubsado’s New Form Builder 2022
As two self-dubbed Dubsado connoisseurs, we were over the moon when we first learned about the updates to Dubsado’s form builder. While it wasn’t terrible to use before, this upgrade that just rolled out for all accounts in July has increased our love for the platform times a thousand. Even though all of the blocks and options are basically the same, the form builder now has a whole new look that the majority of users will find more intuitive and easy to use.
We were part of the lucky group who were able to use the beta version of the new form builder for months, so we’ve already gotten used to the upgrade and have been sticking to it exclusively. Because of that, we knew we had to put out this unofficial guide to Dubsado’s new form builder!
3 Things You Can Do Before You Hire Your Next Freelancer or Employee
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.
Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Dubsado Proposals
Dubsado is an all-in-one CRM that allows you to do many many things right within the software. One of those things includes creating a variety of different forms, like proposals, contracts, questionnaires, and lead capture forms. Proposals are one of our favorite forms because when you send them, you have the option to make it an easy 3-step process for your clients where they can choose a package in your proposal, sign the contract, and pay the invoice all in three streamlined steps
Sending them is easy, and creating them can be even easier. Dubsado has a drag-and-drop form builder that makes building your proposal a breeze, which we’ll be diving into later. So, keep reading for our step-by-step guide to creating Dubsado proposals!
Empowering Managers: Harnessing AI for Effective Employee Development and Productive 1:1s
In today's fast-paced and technology-driven workplace, managers are constantly seeking innovative ways to support their employees' career development and maximize the impact of their 1:1 meetings. Artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as a powerful tool that can assist managers in achieving these goals. By leveraging AI-powered solutions, managers can gain valuable insights, facilitate personalized discussions, and provide tailored guidance to their team members. In this blog post, we will explore how managers can harness the potential of AI to develop their employees and have more effective 1:1s. We will also provide specific prompts that you can ask an AI language model like Chat GPT to enhance your 1:1 interactions and empower your employees' career growth.
Service Providers Earning Less than $5k Per Month: Essential Skills You Need to Have a Successful Business
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.
Maximizing Your Potential: Understand the Relationship Between Capacity and Business Goals
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.
How to Know When You Should Pivot or Start Over in Your Business
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.
How to Identify and Define Values That Your Business Can Actually Live In
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.
Roundup: 5 Must Have Templates to Help You Review Your Year in Business and Plan for 2023
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!
Welcome to My Blog
Hey, I’m Abagail Pumphrey!
You know when you are so deeply passionate about something you can’t help but share it? That’s how this blog has felt for the last decade. I’ve written about my latest strategies, tech how-tos, experience with scaling and so much more. I hope you find just what you’re looking for. We’re here to help!
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