Hello friends! It has been a minute since we have talked about the other businesses we run. We thought it was high time for a little update because Abagail has something new and exciting that she has launched (by the time you hear this it will have been out for a minute). We are going to talk about that but we also think there have been some decisions that we have made very intentionally in our side businesses that we want to break down the logistics behind.

We share these things with you, first of all, because it is fun to chat about, but it is also fair for you guys to hear this part of the process because it gives you a look behind the curtain of something new and growing. It also shows you the reality of how a lot of entrepreneurs and small business owners are, which is multi-passionate!

Relationships can make all the difference in your business and as many of us have learned, focusing on connections and networking in the right way can take your biz from quiet to booming! Our guest today is Jaclyn Mellone and she helps entrepreneurs exponentially grow their businesses by becoming an authority in their space. One of the ways she helps them do this is through authentic relationships. Jaclyn is a coach, strategist, keynote speaker, momma, guac lover and host of the Go-to Gal Podcast! In this episode, she shares how to create strategic relationships and how to utilize them as more than friendships without being weird about it!

For Jaclyn, it all starts with an authentic connection and she breaks down exactly what that looks like. We also talk about how this translates into creating more friends in your own space and work environment and how to utilize these to continue to grow your business in the long term. We cover leveraging relationships, creating intimate connections that fill your cup, and how to jumpstart your biz in a big way!

This is another one of those episodes where Abagail puts Emylee on the spot in front of the audience. She knows nothing and is expected to come up with something out of thin air. For context, we started our business as creative entrepreneurs and designers and all that. What we did not realize we were doing at the time was influencing people. We started this blog, we were putting out content, and ultimately, a large portion of our business has become what we would call affiliate marketing. It makes up a big percentage of what we are doing. So, Abagail has all this background knowledge of what it takes to be an influencer in an affiliate capacity and has made all of these pivots with her second brand to broaden the ways she is bringing in money for this brand. Emylee is admittedly the laziest influencer out there. It is not that she doesn’t influence people; she definitely does, and there are many examples to prove it. In technical terms, Abagail, based on the size of her audience, would be seen as a micro-influencer. There are so many people out there that want to be influencers but they don’t necessarily know what they need to be looking out for. There are some alarming things brands are starting to include in their contracts, and micro-influencers are agreeing to these things, most probably without any idea of what they actually mean. And they could not only negatively impact your business, but they could destroy your online reputation if you do not pay attention to what is going on.

Today on the podcast we have Kristin Ostrander from Mommy Income. She is an e-commerce expert who got her start 17 years ago on eBay. She has since transitioned to Amazon where she has been a serial entrepreneur who has learned all the ins and outs of how to run a successful wholesale business selling on the platform. Today she touches on her wholesale bundle system and how she’s helped thousands of students through her online course and podcast.

In this episode, we talk about a product offering, revenue stream, and selling platform that we’ve never talked about on the podcast before: Amazon, and more specifically, selling wholesale bundles on Amazon. Honestly, there was so much information that we did not know. So we really think you guys will get a lot of good ideas from this episode if you’re interested in selling a new product, getting a second stream of revenue up and running or just testing your toes in running a business that might be a little different to what everyone else is doing. Kristin breaks down her strategies in the order that she did stuff really, really well, and has some incredible resources for you guys to keep learning if you want to find out how to sell on Amazon. We’re sure this show will give you a lot of great ideas!

We feel like the anniversary of the global pandemic that is quickly approaching is hitting us really hard! We just want to remind all of you business owners out there that you have been running a business for the last year in the midst of one of the craziest years any of us will ever go through, especially as a collective. For us, running a business in the midst of all this has been the most surprising thing that has ever happened, because March 2020 was the most afraid we have ever been about the future of our business. A year later though, we are now more confident than ever that we will continue to grow!

We have spoken a lot about the different areas of our business that we have invested in and how they change over time. We want to spend today’s profit report for February talking about how these decisions have ultimately affected our profit and how we are looking at this side of things. We want to talk about why things are just incredibly different now than they were last year and the place of greater maturity at which we have arrived with regards to the way we cope with the supposed ups and downs.

Today on the podcast we have Melissa Harstine. She helps creatives, coaches, and consultants land next-level clients with customer-centric copy and gripping case studies. As a trained journalist, she leverages her research and interview superpowers to write killer copy that makes readers think, “holy guacamole, did they read my journal?!”

We’re breaking down everything about case studies today; what they are, how you can use them to land more clients, how you can use them to vet your clients, and to work with your dream clients. We also dive into how you should set up the interview, how to transcribe it, and how to repurpose your content. Everything about this process makes it seem so tangible and 100% worth it!

Back in the day, we recorded an entire series on starting your business and one of the first subjects we talked about was adopting a profit-first mentality. Here’s the thing, we re-looked at that episode and have so many more things to say! The way we run our business has dramatically shifted in the last 12 months and because of that, we have so many things to say to people who are just getting started. Even if you have an established business, we have some thoughts about what you should be doing differently when it comes to your dollar bills.

We recorded that first episode about adopting a profit-first mentality in February of 2018 but we honestly didn’t really put our ideas into practice until 2020! It took two years for us to learn how to do that, so we are going to save you that time today. We are not saying that our first episode has no value, but now that we have actually been through the trenches, this is the episode you want!

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!

Any business that is selling through a one-to-many system is going to, at some point, debate whether or not their strategy is worth their time and energy. That’s why today, we are going to talk a little bit about why we decided to roll out our affiliate program, as well as some of the logistics behind setting it up. When it comes to affiliate programs, there are a few mysteries that need solving, like what kind of software is out there and how to make it work in your business. We are also going to focus on some of the aspects that didn’t make sense for us in the past, because like we said: affiliate programs aren’t always the best idea. So join us and get the lowdown on the dos and definitely don’ts of setting up an affiliate program.

Today on the podcast we have Kaye Putnam. Kaye is is a psychology-driven brand strategist for entrepreneurs. Through work with over a 100 clients, from Fortune 50’s to entrepreneurs, she developed the In Demand Brand method. She has had some crazy success though with her famous opt-in. 55,000 people have taken her psychology quiz all about branding and y’all need to take it too. Inside this episode, all three of us nerd out pretty hardcore. We talk about the psychology behind understanding your competition and establishing your brand presence. We uncover a couple of the most popular archetypes and the least popular ones.

Back in the day, we recorded an entire series on starting your business and one of the first subjects we talked about was adopting a profit-first mentality. Here’s the thing, we re-looked at that episode and have so many more things to say! The way we run our business has dramatically shifted in the last 12 months and because of that, we have so many things to say to people who are just getting started. Even if you have an established business, we have some thoughts about what you should be doing differently when it comes to your dollar bills.

We recorded that first episode about adopting a profit-first mentality in February of 2018 but we honestly didn’t really put our ideas into practice until 2020! It took two years for us to learn how to do that, so we are going to save you that time today. We are not saying that our first episode has no value, but now that we have actually been through the trenches, this is the episode you want!

Today on the podcast we have Krystina Benedetti of The Messy Cookie. She is a lifelong entrepreneur who has grown her love of baking into a business and started spreading her joy through COVID. She has left her full-time job and has built an online business that offers virtual Cookie Ice Nights and she is also making all these amazing custom cookies. We love this girl, she is so amazing!

Krystina is soon to be a Strategy Academy alumni! She is not even a year through our course, hasn’t even celebrated her first birthday with us, and has already done super amazing things in her business, like putting in her notice to leave her retail job to pursue her cookie business full-time. We break down everything that she has gone through in the last eight months that has led up to the moment where she felt comfortable and ready to leave her job. We talk about what she had logistically prepared for, how she got there mentally, what investing in her business looked like to her, and how she tackled the program and made the most of it to see the most traction. If you are interested in the Strategy Academy, we have a free training video that you can watch here.

A couple of episodes ago, we teased at the end that we were already going into what could be a whole other conversation. This is that conversation. We are going to be sharing some tidbits we have learned and have deliberately decided to do or not to do in Boss Project, and within our side businesses, to seek growth and to keep our business and our companies in the range we want them to be. This is based on what we do and don’t want to do in that job. We know this sounds confusing but stick with us, and we will break it all down. We really want you to go and listen to episode 512 because at the end we start this conversation, so it might make a little more sense to listen to that one first.

Today we welcome Aandra Bohlen, sales guru, inspiring friend, and all-round badass! She is here to demystify the stigmas around selling and the ways it is being taught. Her work is centered on developing and teaching entrepreneurs how to create an amazing enrollment experience that leads to higher conversion rates. She is an expert on sales calls and mentality and if you did not get the point already, she has it going on! We are going to talk about getting your mindset right and some real techniques for conversion so you are not going to want to miss this, we promise!

Aandra has almost 30 years of experience in sales and we are so lucky to get to throw a bunch of questions at her, things we know you would love to have answered. We discuss getting past money-mentality blocks, perfecting your pitch and how to translate sales onto social media and your content creation process. Aandra has a bunch of great reframes of the sales thought process and we promise that this conversation is going to help do better and think better about your sales game. We also have a great activity that we really want you to do, so stay tuned for that!

It's 2021, and we are diving into our profit reports. If you are new to this segment of the show, we really like to dive deep into what it takes to run an online business while avoiding comparison and not having to question your every move. So, instead of sharing dollars and cents, we share percentages, and we share strategies. We also dive into sharing behind-the-scenes thoughts and actions so you can see what makes sense for you without having to worry about whether you are in the right place and questioning where you’re at.

We have a good accompanying episode to this one, where we break down the strategies we are trying to tackle for this quarter, and more specifically, we break down the accompanying expenses to those strategies. So if you want to hear more about them, definitely listen to that episode too. Now, without further ado, let’s dive into today’s profit report.