Today we are super glad to welcome business and NLP coach Jen Casey to the show! Hailing from NYC, Jen is focused on helping coaches sell profitable group programs by incorporating psychology into their sales techniques. She also has her own podcast called the Inner Boss Podcast, so make sure to check that out! As you probably know, here at The Strategy Hour we are pretty obsessed with psychology! Jen is all about perfecting sales language for webinars and in-person meetings and uses her techniques to change deep-rooted beliefs and alter the neural pathways that hold us back. 

She has action steps for repeating patterns that create new pathways and habits that are more in line with our goals and ambitions and by learning these ideas you can help your customers do the same thing! This is a long episode with lots to think about, so you might want to grab a notepad to take part in the exercises! Make sure to share your experiences on our Instagram, we love hearing from you!

Would you ever consider deleting your Instagram account if you had nearly 40,000 followers? Businesses go through different seasons and for a long time we had not focused on Instagram because we were otherwise occupied. But for some reason, our account remained semi-active and we were still slowly but surely gaining followers, even though we only really posted about the podcast and random bits in between. But the engagement was poor, so much so that we no longer saw the need to post at all or to have the account, and this set us on a rollercoaster of a journey of trying to figure out whether we should delete our existing account and start all over again. This might sound crazy, but we had what we believed were legitimate reasons for wanting to do that, and our intentions were so good! 

We were absolutely convinced that this was the way to go, that is, until a comment or two from our audience and friends threw a wrench in the works and forced us back to square one. This was an amazing educational process that we came though as we learned a ton about ourselves, our business and what our approach to our followers should be. If you are thinking about deleting your account and starting off with a clean slate or just looking to grow your Instagram engagement, this episode is perfect for you, so be sure to listen in! 

Today we talk about a fascinating topic, one that affects every single one of you in one way or another in your business. When we think about marketing, we tend to think about psychology in general and the things that inherently appeal to all people. But, there is a better way to approach marketing and it pertains to the different generations. Ever thought about why people of different ages think and behave so differently from one another and often bump heads, whether in families or in business? What we discuss today will shed a whole lot of light on this subject. We compare and contrast the generations, from the traditionalists up to Gen Z and everything in between. 

Each new generation is constructed in a unique way with different things that impact how they view the world and what kinds of consumers they are. For this reason, marketing efforts should be adjusted accordingly to ensure that you speak to the needs of the generation you are targeting, and so you can better understand why certain initiatives will be more effective than others. We have relied heavily on the research of the amazing Jason Dorsey for this episode, so a lot of the information provided here is from his work on the topic. Definitely check out his website if you want to find out more. Jason also speaks about a very interesting new thought about millennials, one which we will get into on this episode, so be sure to tune in! 

We’ve previously done an episode about what you need to consider before starting a podcast, and we admit that it was a bit of a Debbie Downer, so today we want to do a follow up of that where we go over some of the things we’ve learned in the meantime. We talk about the reasons for starting a podcast and about everything you should have set up before you can start, including deciding on the extent to which you will be involved and the equipment you will need to record and where to find it. 

On a more serious note, we talk about the profitability of podcasting and what you can expect to get out of it as well as different ways you might think of monetizing it. We then switch to chatting about bringing guests on the show and finding fun topics and conclude with our number one tip for getting your show noticed and sponsored, so be sure to join in on the conversation! 

Today on the show we welcome Melissa Megginson! She is the Community Manager and resident Cat Lady at Tailwind, a company that is dedicated to helping brands with their visual and Pinterest aspirations. Tailwind can really help you and your biz conquer Pinterest in a way you might never have thought was possible. We really love Melissa and the work she does as Tailwind has helped us out a lot over the years! They offer organic and free ways for you to get more engagement, traffic and customers on the platform and that is exactly what we are going to be talking to Melissa about today! She will also be filling us in on what is new and exciting on Pinterest and what we might expect for the future.

We have pretty much loved Pinterest since the beginning and were definitely part of the 'Pinterest wedding' generation! You know what we mean! Over time we have watched it evolve and change, thankfully not as much as some other social platforms out there but there has been some definite development and growth since we started using it. We began using Pinterest for business pretty early on in our company history and definitely found that Tailwind helped tremendously with our efforts, so let's hear what Melissa has to say!

We did this kind of crazy thing and started up yet another Facebook group, while everyone else is shutting them down left and right! What we’re talking about today is the thought process behind it, who the group is for and how you can get your booty inside. This group is specifically designed for service-based entrepreneurs who deliver a creative tangible product, so designers, photographers – listen up! You would have to apply first, but don’t be put off, this is just to make sure that only the most relevant peeps have access, so simply head over to bossproject.com/booked.

In this episode we let you in on where we got this idea from and tell you exactly what we are aiming to achieve with this new platform. It is about our business, but it is just as much about helping you and other creative entrepreneurs grow and get the most relevant, helpful input you can get. Be sure to join us for this episode of Strategy Hour to get all the details!

Today on The Strategy Hour we are joined by the amazing, the wonderful, the gifted, Melissa McGraw! Melissa is the founder of The Creative Potential, an agency dedicated to helping online business owners increase their traffic and revenue through improved SEO. She and the company have aided countless brands grow their audience by millions and applying her strategies can multiply your organic search results tenfold in just a few months! With Melissa's help we are going to be breaking down SEO in the simplest of ways, not getting too nerdy but also not skimping on great, actionable plans and ideas. We want to get you ranked on Google ASAP! Get your notebook ready so we can start getting more traffic and customers and have that reflect in your bank account!

It's been a while since we have talked about SEO and just as a reminder it is very important for all, and we mean all, businesses! If we are honest, SEO is still a foreign language for some of us, while others of us have kind of got the hang of it. Our goal today is to get your site search engine friendly and high up in the rankings! We will be going from the simplest questions about what SEO is and how it functions, how to utilize it for your biz and even touching on some of the higher end stuff that will get you to the top of the first page! These strategies are super accomplishable but it is also worth noting that you are able to hire someone like Melissa to help you out with this task, get an expert to do the work for you, so there is that option too! Now, let's get you found online!

We have yet another awesome duo on the show today! Jessica Rhodes and Margy Feldhuhn are equal co-owners of the company Interview Connections, the first and leading podcast booking agency. Jessica founded the business is 2013 and Margy joined just a couple of years later, and now they have a booming business, booking podcasts left, right and center. They are totally on fire, and today they’re sharing with us how we can DIY getting on podcasts, what sort of return on investment we can expect and how we can measure what we’re actually getting out of it.

You’re going to walk away from today with tips on how to approach the conversation and build the relationships, show up for the interview prepared and how to make the most of it. So even though you guys are going to have many voices in your earholes today, it’s going to be so worth it! Many of you have asked the questions they are answering today, such as how effective podcasts really are for building brand awareness and how to go about doing it. We’re revealing all of this and more, so don’t miss out!

We remember our first good sales experiences so well! It can be one of the best feelings in the world and it does not have to have that slimy and sleazy feeling to it at all. Today we are talking about what we are actually doing and the process for having more efficient, successful sales meetings, that just feel better. No one one wants to feel icky and coercive when they are pitching and the truth is you really do not have to! What you really need to learn how to do is to let people fall in love with your offer, so it is less about selling and more about showcasing your process. If you follow these simple pointers the actual sales pitch will be a home run, we promise!

We have spoken at length recently on the podcast about locating your ideal and appropriate clients and this episode is essentially what to do once you have found them. Bad experiences in this department can make you feel terrible so we are trying to steer as far clear from these as possible. You do not want to be word-vomiting your way through nervous, un-researched meetings. These can leave you feeling like a wreck and with no more money to your name! Let's rather get strategic and get selling!

So we have been propagating some pretty scandalous ideas lately and they have got some of you thinking and moving! Today we are dropping the full knowledge bomb on all of you about the myth of online businesses. A lot of you seem to still be convinced that your next client or even all of your clients will be found online and to be honest this is just not true. If you run a service based business you need to rethink your model! Just to be clear this does not mean that your clients do not use the internet or are not on Facebook and Instagram, it just means that people find services and make connections in real life and through referrals, people! We need levels of trust and real life relationships will always trump online advertising and presence.

This is the know, like, and trust principle. So think about human connection, your personality and those tactics that can work in these arenas. It's like as a community we have become confused. A lot of us have started small businesses trying to mimic huge online businesses rather than think about what will get us going in our own stream. This line should have been drawn more clearly a long time ago! These are growth strategies for people with already established client bases, not tactics to find new clients when you are starting out. If you follow this popular online strategy and social media presence rulebook, you will end up with no clients! This is true all over the world, so get your head straight and let's find you some clients!

Hey everybody! Today on the show we are giving you a very important lesson, so listen up! We learned this lesson just the same, so the sooner we can get this through to you the better: content creation will not get you more clients. Yes, we said it. We used to blog five times a week sometimes, and saw almost zero increase in clients from it. In this episode we will be breaking down why exactly it just does not work as a strategy and what you should be doing instead. In fact, we are taking it as far as to tell you why you should stop building an online business altogether and instead focus on growing your local reputation, which can take you further, grow you faster and make you more money! This episode is perfect for service-based biz owners, so copywriters, photographers and designers, we are talking to you.

We have to admit that we do love content but if you think that it will land you new clients, you are sadly mistaken. New people will not just magically find you on social media or your blog and want to start paying you money out of nowhere. We hope you can see that this is a ridiculous idea. One issue here is that we see our heroes creating great content and we want to mimic this, but we have to remind ourselves they are serving an established customer base through that content rather than building one from scratch. The clients we are looking for out on the internet are usually waiting on our very own street, we just have to go out and get them!

Joining us today on the podcast is Kali Rogers, the Founder of Blush Online Life Coaching, a life coaching business aimed at female millennials. Kali is here to teach us more about the super do-able, fun and stress-free Pinterest strategies that have boosted their site traffic and sales and grown their clients and customers. The best of all? You don’t need a Pinterest marketing degree to implement them, you can start today! If you have a Pinterest account but have stopped using it for some reason, we hope this episode will inspire you to get back into it, or if you have been utilizing this potentially awesome tool, that you will get what you need to brush up your skills even more.

In the beginning, Kali used Pinterest for personal reasons such as recipes and fashion inspo, until she decided to take a break. At first she didn’t see how Pinterest, a mostly visual medium, would be applicable to Blush, a service-based business. How would she promote a life coaching business through images? When she first started she didn’t have any entrepreneurial skills but realized that she needed to communicate to people that she and her team knew what they were talking about. She resorted to writing as a cheap, safe means of publicity, creating numerous articles for The Huffington Post, including “An Open Letter From Introverts To Everyone Else”, which went completely viral. Many people have a Pinterest account when they first get started in business, but then they get distracted along the line and stop using it on a regular basis. In this episode we are going to show you that, even though it’s an oldie, it’s still a real goodie. So be sure to join us for this awesome conversation!

Word on the street is that you want to do an epic launch! On today’s podcast we’re talking about three things that led to an incredible launch: using affiliates, getting together a street team and of course having a valuable product that everyone wants. But what is a street team? We’re discussing the need for one of those, no matter how big or small your business is, dishing out advice on who you might want to include, the process of asking someone to be on your team and how to communicate effectively with them.

We then give you a breakdown of how we succeeded in pulling off our recent rebranding launch, sharing how we kept our followers and fans engaged with our communications, what we did to promote this change and our business at large. From our first-hand experience with launches, we advise you on using affiliates as an incredibly powerful tool to market your brand, giving you practical tips for recruiting key people who can really boost your business, even if you are only starting off. If you have a launch in the pipeline, are thinking about it, or just want to learn a ton about making valuable connections in business, do not miss out on today’s Strategy Hour Podcast!

Today on the show we welcome Jill Stanton who is the co-founder of Screw the Nine to Five and certified affiliate marketing badass! She and her husband, Josh, have built a massively successful business helping other businesses partner with yet more businesses! Everyone wins and everyone earns! Their mission is to transform unsatisfied employees into dangerously successful entrepreneurs and build skills and resources to help them with their growth, so they can work as much as they want to, wherever they want to!

This is such a hilarious and insightful episode, we know you are going to love every minute of it. We sure did, and by the end of it you will be at least one step closer to doubling your income through affiliate marketing. Jill’s brand of affiliation is not slimy and gross and is so simple to start today, no matter the size of your biz. We all know the bad reputation that these kinds of partnerships can have but this is not that, trust us! Jill is here to help you better serve your audience, stay inclusive and engaging, and make more money doing it!

Hey everybody we are super excited to have our friend Nikki Porcher on the show today! Nikki is the owner and founder of Buy From a Black Woman, which is an online non-profit organization that is bringing awareness and funding to businesses owned by black women! Nikki has had an amazing journey since starting this initiative and she now showcases a large number of black women business owners in her directory, Instagram, and in her shop. A fearless and natural creative, Nikki is so much fun to talk to and we know you are going to love this conversation too! During the episode we hear about this incredible journey that she has been on, starting with a blog, which became a hot Instagram account, then a directory and now a non-profit organization.

She currently gives out grants to black women to start their business and get off the ground, providing a network of support and knowledge to aid them in their pursuits. We have to admit we learned a lot in this conversation and Nikki is so open in sharing with us and we ended this chat just wanting to know more, support more and spread the love! There are so many great businesses in her directory and we should all be buying from them! It is so easy to do a little research, branch out a little further and diversify your world! Nikki is such a great example of turning your passion into something amazing and impactful and to be honest her story really reiterates a lot of what we always say!