Not every client relationship runs as smoothly as we’d like and, generally speaking, it comes down to communication gaps and unspoken expectations. In this episode, we break down a scenario that one of our clients experienced and share our advice for dealing with the situation. In this particular scenario, our client found that her client was treating her like an employee, despite the fact that she's technically a contractor.

Because this problem is more common than you might think, we’ve decided to share our perspective and insights into how one might navigate a situation like this. It’s easy to get frustrated, but there are ways to address communication gaps with clients and continue to nurture long-term relationships. Join us as we shed light on how to enhance the client experience while maintaining healthy boundaries for your business.

When prospective clients are on the fence or delaying commitment to a particular project, it can be wildly frustrating. Not just that, but the follow-ups use up a whole lot of unnecessary time and energy. In this episode, we share the exact scripts we use to nudge people off the fence and reduce communication delays. You are responsible for closing the loop, and it is especially critical when you start documenting your sales process and really tracking conversion rates. Reviewing your sales information is only helpful once you’ve closed the loop and are certain as to which leads are going to convert to sales and which aren’t.

Today, we are specifically addressing those waiting for their prospective clients to sign off on a project but are left without a clear answer. So many service providers struggle with non-committal potential clients who seem eager but never quite get around to closing the deal. If you’re holding a spot for someone and they haven’t committed, you need to solidify that space or move on. Our prospect follow-up scripts will help you close the loop and mentally move on. Tune in to find out how to restructure your process to reduce cumbersome delays, and kindly and effectively communicate your parameters!

Today, we’re cutting the small talk and diving right into part 2 of our conversation. That’s how important we deem this topic to be.

If you own a service-based business, there’s a high chance you’ve encountered a client who wants to change some aspect of your delivery. Usually, this comes up during the sales process, but occasionally it arises immediately after they’ve booked. Today, we’re talking about how to navigate this based on when and where they are wanting to customize the product, and how to handle it at each stage.

When clients feel that they can negotiate price, tinker with the scope, and haggle with you on the deliverables, what do you do? We’re here to help you navigate these complexities.

Today we’re going to talk about the art of the follow-up! Once you’ve pitched your service, it’s possible that you’ll experience potential clients ghosting you, being passive-aggressive towards you, or fighting against the process that you’re trying to put them through. All three of those things have happened to us in the last seven days so we know all about those weird experiences. In an ideal world, people will seamlessly move through your sales process, discovery call, and pitch meeting, and then they’ll pay you. This happens almost half of the time but the other half of the time, you’ll be faced with resistance and objections that you’ll have to work through. Today, we’re going to talk you through how to deal with them!

Having discovery calls, going for coffee dates, and holding pitching meetings with potential clients is something that we’ve noticed that many service-based business owners struggle with in the early years. They feel like they either don’t say enough or they say too much, and this causes a lot of stress and anxiety. In this episode, we want to equip you with the confidence to go into these scenarios feeling like you know exactly what you’re doing!

Aside from our wonderful clients in the incubator, our DMs have been popping and we have so many great insights into the hurdles that service-based businesses are facing! One particular issue that continues to pop up, especially as we help people define a high-touch signature service or ultimately focus on a more primary offering (instead of having what we’ve lovingly called the Cheesecake Factory menu of offers), is the need to eliminate other services. Many people we’ve run into are open to the idea but have active clients utilizing those very services and don’t know how to make that transition. The question arises of how to pivot and how to communicate the changes, but the main risk factor that people dwell on is losing the income from those active clients. Well, in this episode, you’ll find out how to gently ease out of specific services with a transition plan, as well as how to inform your clients that you’re eliminating part of their service and raising their price. Tune in to hear why there is no question that you shouldn’t only offer the services you want to and how to get to a point where you’re billing ethically and creating space for rest and creativity!

Referrals are, without a doubt, one of the hottest topics that we have going on inside our world. We are so intentional about you doing business the easiest way possible without having to invest in huge ad spends, or allocate loads of money to marketing budgets, or focus on growing an absurdly huge social media presence. We really want you to focus on connections instead. The vast majority of our clients get booked out with almost exclusively referrals, and as they grow they start experimenting with different strategies.

Today, we want to talk about ten ways to get more referrals in your world. A referral lead is just as real a lead as a stranger! Quit downplaying the quality and impact that referrals can have on your business, just because they felt easier to get. Referrals, by and far, are better quality, will pay better, will be easier to work with, will finish their projects faster, and they also know other dreamy clients which they may end up connecting you to. It literally only takes one dreamy client to connect you to a network of other dreamy clients, and the clients that we see who use that route, reach their goals way more easily, and are happy in their day-to-day business.

It has come to our attention that there seems to be a widely held belief that high-earning service providers already know exactly what they’re doing. The perception is that everything is running super smoothly and that they are acutely aware of exactly what they need to be doing at all times. That they are solely focused on their zone of genius and that they've made no changes to the backend of how they run things. This is most definitely not the case.

On today’s episode we are super-duper excited to host Ashley Knight. Ashley founded the Hello Boss Community (no longer active) as a means to support and bolster other businesswomen who were in the same boat as her. Through her group she was able to teach and coach strategy to dedicated members and she loved it! And we love her for it! Here at the Strategy Hour Podcast we know the value of the groups we have run and been a part of, they can be the lifeboat bringing you back in when you are out at sea, so we know exactly what Ashley is talking about!

In our discussion we cover the early stages of starting a supportive community, relationships within this space, real world events, social media, sensitivity masterminds and much more. Ashley is one of the most dedicated community founders we have spoken to and we are sure her attitude and advice is going to be wonderfully useful and inspiring to all of our listeners. So whether you are part of an online community or looking to start one yourself, this is definitely the episode for you. Listen in to get the low-down.

Today on the podcast we have Dolly DeLong. She is a photographer and she has been in business since 2006. In 2020 she started educating small business owners on how to go from scattered to streamlined using powerful tools like Dubsado.

This episode is jam-packed with her exact framework, the TASK method, that is going to walk you through how she utilizes it in her business to really streamline her interactions with potential clients and actually turn those prospects into clients. Abagail had a ton of fun interviewing her! If you haven’t been introduced to the wonders of Dubsado yet, after this episode you most definitely will want to. If you haven’t signed up for a free trial yet, visit this link, and upgrade when you are ready! You can get 50% off your first month or year with the code BOSSPROJECT at checkout!

Today we are talking to Emylee’s good friend, Mia Graves. She is another maker from a tiny town in Northern Alabama but she is now a Louisville transplant. She has a background in politics, philosophy, and economics but she has a maker-based business where she makes jewelry called Honey Bee Clay. She specializes in handmade and 3D printed clay cutters and, as a total side note, she also has a talking dog named Gus! But we are not talking about Gus today, we are talking about marketing strategies, and while Mia isn’t formally trained in marketing, she is really smart when it comes to this side of business. We are talking about how she uses the magic of call to actions anywhere and everywhere she can to direct her clients, customers, fans, and followers to go from one platform to another with the end goal of making her money.

She shares all of her customers’ journeys and the different things she uses like Instagram, DMs, comments, TikTok, and email to get people to follow her and buy from her on a continued basis. We also talk about an exclusive Facebook group that she just recently started and her opinions on sellout launches and everything in between. Regardless of whether you have a physical, product-based business or not, the marketing strategies taught here today are going to help your business and give it a new life if you have hit a wall in your growth or engagement, so be sure to take notes during this one!

Prepare yourselves for one of the best episodes! Why? Because we are interviewing two of our favorite people, Jake and Becca Berg, the founders of Dubsado. Not only have they done amazing things for us in our business but they have helped many other service-based babes get a grip on things. We have loved watching them continue to grow over the last five years and admire them for building a software service while also leading one of the best customer service teams out there, making a huge impact on small business owners. They are now five years in and have expanded to 45 employees!

In today’s episode, we are touching on some of those unique aspects that make Dubsado tick and pick their brains about what they are doing that we can all apply to our businesses. Jake and Becca share the lessons they have learned as a SaaS company, how their business has evolved and changed in 2020, and how they have kept customer service a priority throughout. Be sure to tune in for a super fun interview!

Today we are super excited to welcome Ward Sandler to the show! Ward is the co-founder and CEO of Memberspace, where he and his team help entrepreneurs and organizations turn any part of their site into a members only area. They make it so easy, anyone can do it! Our topic for today's conversation, however, is customer service and feedback loops and we were over the moon when Ward pitched this idea to us and we cannot wait to share it all with you. We get into all the helpful and authentic ways you can keep in contact with your clients and customers, and Ward talks about the ways he does this every day, all week long!

This kind of proximity to an audience is what has helped Memberspace grow and grow in such an exciting way. They have raving fans and Ward explains what has contributed to this. Spoiler alert, its the feedback loops and great service! These lessons can be applied to whatever kind of business you run, whether it is for services, courses or products, you do not have to be a software company for these strategies to be implementable. We really recommend that you check out Memberspace and give it a shot if you have been considering something like this. Without further ado, let's get into some strategy!

Today on the show we welcome Kate Boyd. Kate is the Founder of Cobblestone Creative Co and does this girlfriend know conversions! After raising seven figures in revenue for a non-profit organization through powerful messaging, copywriting and marketing she started her own business that helps build more creativity and genuine connection to the digital marketing space. In just three years she has built three profitable online businesses and created live and automated sales and marketing experiences that convert up to five times the normal rates!

Kate is a serious conversion expert and in this episode she shares a lot of helpful tools, tricks and resources for you to use for an upcoming launch or perhaps to help you analyze an “unsuccessful” launch that you’ve had in the past. We are talking all about increasing conversions and humanizing your launch so that people trust you more and feel more involved. We discuss how you are priming your audience, how you are getting their mindsets ready for the sale and how to have an aspect of personal outreach included in your automated strategies in order to make your next launch even more powerful. Grab your notebook and be on the lookout because we might be trying out some of these tactics for our next launch… and you can too!

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 — she was definitely heaven sent! Sarah is awesome, we love her, she is amazing, and she 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, and makes everything super wonderful and polished.

Now you might think that when hiring an editor, all you are getting is 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! Here’s what an editor brings to your blog — they polish the content and keep your voice intact, 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.