Hey everybody and welcome to another fantastic episode of The Strategy Hour Podcast! Today we are joined by one of our favorite people in the world, a real internet bestie and the Instagram King, Tyler J. McCall! Tyler is here to talk to us about his speciality, how to get Instagram working for you immediately. Of course, Instagram, like all social platforms is constantly evolving so Tyler will be talking about what the best strategies are right now, but also looking at some of the more timeless rules of the framework. Tyler has helped a huge amount of entrepreneurs (including us!) to grow their Instagram following and engagement through the lessons he teaches. For Tyler, it really is quite simple: if you follow a few easy rules, have fun, and bring your own personality to your account you really can’t go wrong!

During our conversation we cover some of the basics around content and captions and the move away from highly curated profiles. Tyler also stresses the importance of knowledge of your audience and how this informs your strategy. We get into the nitty gritty of telling your brand’s story and how to convey this in an effective and engaging way as well as looking at the values that underscore everything that you post. One of the biggest recent developments on Instagram is obviously the Stories feature and Tyler breaks down some lessons for approaching that area and also reiterates just how important they are to your reach, engagement, and potential profits. Lastly, we cover some tips and ideas for personal versus business profiles and how to go about starting out on the platform for newbies. Jump in, it’s going to be a fun ride!

The 'gram is a topic near and dear to our hearts, and it’s one we know every entrepreneur who we cross paths with thinks about on a daily basis. For most of the people that we know, it’s their happy place — that’s definitely the case for us! Today's guest does things differently on this incredible platform. Natasha Samuel, Founder of Sol Studio Marketing, is not simply posting stories or putting things on her feed. Of course, she is still doing these important things intentionally, but she has some other tricks up her sleeve that most people probably have not thought about when it comes to their Instagram account, so you definitely want to stick around to hear what she has to say.

Hey everybody, we are thrilled to bring you this episode with our good friend Shunta Grant! You might remember our Episode 441 that was all about tiny offers and why they might not be for everyone. Well, our guest today is the founder of the Best Today Brand and Guide and more recently the Right Now Routine™, which is the bombshell tiny offer she developed. The way she is marketing this pocket product (with cool gamification aspects!) is just next level, so we talk about that and how we swiped the idea for our own marketing for the Creative Template Shop. We also get into how creating a low-priced offer was right for her in her business at this moment and what kind of groundwork she had to do before she could even begin creating it. She shares how leaning into something that is fun, simple, and feels good produces miraculous results and how you can implement it in your marketing strategies. Be sure to give this episode a listen: you will not only love it but also walk away more inspired and much better equipped!

Today we are talking about launching various types of business, sharing a bit about what we are doing with the Creative Template Shop, and what the different avenues of our business entail. We sell courses, run a membership, sell products, and run a coaching business, so between all of that, things can get intense! We are always curious about the behind-the-scenes of a launch and what people are having success with, but the truth is, there are no guarantees. There is no perfect equation. At some point, you just have to jump. What is more important is taking an approach that you feel aligned with and excited about because your enthusiasm and confidence is what will win people over. In this episode, we break down a few strategies that we have used in our various businesses to help us grow—the kind of intel you do not want to miss out on!

In this episode, we talk about launching. We recently posted a fill-in-the-blank about how the idea of doing a launch made you feel, and you guys made us laugh! You came up with such funny descriptions ranging from super excitement to wanting to jump off a cliff—and we totally feel ya! The majority of you expressed some degree of anxiety, though. And we get it, because for so long, launching felt like this burden that put so much pressure on who we were and how our business was performing, it never used to feel good to us either. Fortunately, that’s changed a lot over the years and today we’re sharing how you can adjust your mindset about launching, so that it becomes a fun and profitable thing to do.

Today we are going to be talking about the 23 launch mistakes that your business can’t afford to make. But before we get started, first and foremost, we want to encourage you to get into the mindset of treating every single thing in your business like a launch. Whether that’s an Instagram post, a blog post, creating a course, new brand colors – treat it like a launch. Because if you do not treat it like a launch, it becomes one of those things that sits in your to-do list and doesn’t get done! As soon as you treat it like a launch, you will take the steps you need to in order to make it happen.

We have gone through the process of launching an obscene amount of times, and we have helped so many others do the same. Through these experiences have noticed a pattern of common mistakes made throughout the launch process, and today we want to share the top 23 mistakes we see happening in a launch. From aiming for perfection, to poor planning and promotion, or just not reaching out for support. There are small (and big) things we can do to maximize any launch and keep our sanity in the process! We believe in you and If you’re thinking about launching, you are in the process of launching, or you are just wondering how you can improve on your next launch – this episode is an absolute must!

Tiny offers … what are they? Small, inexpensive products that are supposed to blow up your business. At least that’s what we think people are saying they do: start with a tiny offer, grow your audience exponentially, and make a ton of money. Those people suggest that it’s possible to create a six-figure business on the back of a $29 product; that you can launch with a tiny offer and make the big bucks. But hear us out: while we have a tiny offer (Trello for Business), this only came much later in our business—we didn’t start with it.

We made a tiny offer before tiny offers were a thing, and now people ask us about it all the time since it became the cool thing to do. This is what we’re talking about in this episode. We’re walking you through whether or not a tiny offer makes sense for your business right now. The pros, the cons, the whole shebang. But take note: these are just our opinions and experiences; you might not agree with them. Still, there is always something new to learn. Grab your go-to Strategy Hour drink and let’s go!

Today, we have serial entrepreneur and business coach Christine McAlister back on the show! She is an amazing friend of ours. We love having her on the show and we hope you get some really good nuggets from today. Christine has a unique skill where she gets people to say yes to pretty much anything she puts out there, including coming back on our show all the time! What she is teaching you today is how to pitch yourself and how to be an amazing guest on other peoples’ podcasts, and why this strategy – being interviewed for other peoples’ shows – is one she recommends over actually having your own show.

She is going to walk you through how to use it to network, how to leverage, how to grow your audience and increase sales, and it’s just an all-round good, honest conversation about to-dos and not to-dos! So get out your notebook, jot some of the amazing strategies shared in this episode down, and we cannot wait to see what episodes you land your booty on!

Today on the show we are so excited to have Brit Kolo joining us once again! She is the creator of the Marketing Personality Type Framework to be found at marketingpersonalities.com. Through her framework, Brit has designed a match up system that works to find the best marketing strategies built for you based on your Myers-Briggs personality test! You guys know we love personality tests, so it is not shocking that Brit is back on the show but today, there’s a twist!

In this episode, we are throwing out a lot of what we have been raised to believe in this online marketing world about finding your ideal avatar. Today, we explore how maybe the concept of an ideal avatar is actually not what we should be paying attention to at all! So, be sure to listen to this episode to find out what Brit thinks you should value more than your ideal client or avatar, and how you can best filter marketing strategies that feel comfortable, good, and fun, so you can be super effective!

As of this week, we are officially five months into the launching of the Creative Template Shop and it’s so exciting, still! There are so many different moving parts and really cool aspects behind the scenes that are going on with this product of ours, and what’s more, they have never been a part of the process for other products we have developed! So, we wanted to share an update with all of our people!

We want to share some things we are thinking about developing – new features – and we want to hear from you too! So, we are officially opening our project to the public airwaves for your guys’ feedback and we are talking shop about the really cool things we think are so special about our baby. After today’s show, maybe our shop can become a nice little home for you on the internet as well!

Today on the show our guest is Danny Maloney, CEO of Tailwind, and we are so excited to have him here to talk about what his company has done for online business and how you can utilize it to drive more traffic and sales on your own! It’s important that you know before we even started using Tailwind we were using Pinterest. We had been on Pinterest for five years and had created a ton of content at that time.

Back in the day we hacked it so we could explode on that platform and we had a strategy we shared all over the internet. We wrote a blog post about it, but then, we found Tailwind and were like, “What is this? This is a lifesaver!” So, we are really looking forward to chatting to Danny about the changing landscape of content ranking algorithms and how to increase traffic while driving sales on Instagram and Pinterest using Tailwind!

Okay guys, we finally stopped putting our things off and worked on some marketing strategies we told you we would test out to see what would happen, and they worked! We’re just a little disappointed at ourselves, but also proud at the same time! We knew they would work and so we’re really glad we did them, even after putting them off for an obscene amount of time! We know everyone listening has their own version of, ‘I put this off,’ when it comes to a marketing strategy they have heard about that works.

So, today we’re talking about simple marketing strategies we finally put into practice and proved! The only thing you need to do is spend some time setting these strategies up, putting some things in place to prepare, and then actually doing it! Listen along and hear some of the amazing marketing tricks we tested and proved to be a great success!

We have exciting news! Word on the street is that Emylee is trying something new—gasp! Because, as you may know, she isn’t stuck in her ways at all…But before she shares her news, we have to state upfront that Abagail is going to be fulfilling the role of devil’s advocate on today’s show, poking holes in Emylee’s gutsy decision to switch from Squarespace to Shopify. We’ve been using the former since 2014 and we’ve been incredibly loyal, building our entire business on this site. At one point we considered having the site customized because we thought we were getting too big for the platform, but we ended up proving that Squarespace really can work for large businesses. And we still love Squarespace!

But then Emylee started this whole product-based business venture and it’s been a learning experience par excellence: of course, it is completely different from running a service-based business like Boss Project. So, Emylee called Abagail a few days ago and let her in on the secret: she was rebuilding her website on a new platform—Shopify. Now she’s getting messages from friends saying, “Welcome to the club! You’re doing what every e-commerce person should be doing.” In this episode, Emylee is going to walk you through the reasons for her decision, the features she’s excited about and the ones she misses, who she thinks Squarespace is right for, and more. Be sure to listen in as the two of them hash it out!

Today on the podcast we have Courtney Chaal, the founder of The Rule Breaker’s Club where she teaches women to package and sell with brilliance and offers awesome products, and her work has been featured in Inc., Creative Live, and The Huffpost to name only a few. She is crazy-talented when it comes to messaging specifically, so this interview is right on time. We get that we shouldn’t necessarily be changing our offers or postpone our launches, but how do we talk differently about our services, so that it appeals to people at this moment?

What messaging do we need to tweak to make it relevant, and where is the balance between being empathetic and helpful versus making sales because we’ve got businesses to run? Courtney shares the top tips that she herself is implementing in her business, from getting your mindset right and brainstorming ideas, to asking your audience what they need and putting it all together in a project plan, so strap in and let’s dive in!

On today’s show, we interview Melanie Fountain, a blog and Pinterest strategist who started her virtual assistant business a while ago and has since equipped herself in the area of all things Pinterest. We hopped on a call with her to chat about all the changes 2020 brought to the business landscape, and we were so blown away by her knowledge that we asked her to record an episode of The Strategy Hour with us. She talks about the behind-the-scenes strategies for getting your content discovered and seen by more people. Earlier this year, Pinterest underwent a shift toward different looking content but fortunately, it does not mean you have to go out and make a bunch of new content.

Melanie walks us through their adjusted policies and how you should adjust your approach, how Pinterest can work for product-based businesses, and what it means to be discoverable on the platform, including the ins and outs of hashtags, keywords, and descriptions. We adore Pinterest and have since its inception when it was all about planning dream weddings. In the early days, you saw more lifestyle content than business blogs, so using it for business purposes was still fairly new. But fast forward five years: we’ve been terrible at keeping up with Pinterest, but now they’ve done a major update that is very much applicable to your business. Stay tuned to learn everything about creating the strongest Pinterest profile in 2020!