Our guest today is Meg Clark, the owner and founder of Clapping Dog Media, where she is the master of growing organic traffic. Using a combination of data, proven techniques, and years of experience, she attracts web visitors that not only stick around, but turn into paying customers. Simply put, she connects the dots of data to get your business found!

In this week’s episode, we take a look at the role of the integrator in online businesses. We discuss how the role has come about, what exactly it entails, and how hiring the wrong integrator places your business in jeopardy. While the role has gained significant traction in the last few years as a necessary step for any expanding online business, there are also some serious pitfalls that need to be considered!

If you’ve been dipping your toe into the ad space lately, you would have been hearing that a lot has changed. Although people say that every year and the changes are usually not so significant, this year is different; because of some really big Apple changes, the game kind of did change, and we now have to think about a whole lot of new things when it comes to paid advertising. In this episode, we are joined by Tony Rulli, co-founder of the digital marketing agency, Intentional Spark.

Today, Tony is going to be going over what those changes actually mean for marketers and advertisers, and he’s going to share his best recommendations for how to not necessarily combat those changes (because you can’t really) but how to still get the information that you need to sell your product or service.

Today, we want to talk about what it takes to build a sustainable business. One that is focused on making income for the long term, and some of the projects we are focused on internally that we think are just a little bit different to what we see other online business owners spending their time and energy on. To continue with our analogy from last time where we talked about your “Tinder date", we’re now going to segue into "How to make the relationship a bit more official”.

But keep in mind, it doesn’t have to be forever. You’re not necessarily married to everything you put out into the world, but there is some commitment required when you start to think about how you build a business that creates sustainable, consistent cash flow. So if you want to hear about our helpful hints and top tips for creating that amazing content your business needs, let's get into it!

Today on the podcast, we are joined by our good friends from Dubsado, co-founder and CEO, Becca Berg and Sam Gioia from their product department. Most of our listeners are well aware that we are big fans of Dubsado and how they help businesses thrive by taking away the busywork. Dubsado is a fantastic platform, especially for small businesses! They have created an all-in-one system that helps you stay in motion, build relationships, schedule appointments, and create workflows to streamline your projects from start to finish.

In this episode, we chat with Becca and Sam about the many new features Dubsado has in store for its users. We hear about how they’re finding innovative ways to interrogate and test the usability of their platform, and the pressure and sense of overwhelm that comes with a desire to make your software, service, and product perfect before releasing it to the public. As a response to this challenge, we examine how you can break that intimidating perfection down into tangible goals and steps, allowing you to accurately view the progress you’re making on the elements you want to improve for your clients, students, or anyone else you may be working with.

We cover a host of concepts in this episode that are relevant to anyone, not just software companies, making this an excellent listen for anyone interested in improving products and services for their clients! Dubsado has an ethos of service, which resonates strongly with Abagail and Emylee as ex-service-based owners. At our core, we are both driven by how to best serve our clients and customers, but this episode offers some excellent ideas that can be implemented in any business and is also an exciting behind-the-scenes look at Dubsado’s new features that they’ll be rolling out soon. Be sure to tune in to this information-packed episode on all things development, customer service, and so much more!

Are you tired of hearing our voices yet? We hope not because guess what just launched? Another freaking podcast! More words for your ear boxes in our voices. It's been so exciting to watch people’s reactions when they hear this is a thing. They'll say that they’ve been listening to the show for years, but then the questions start rolling in about the new show, “Where is it?” or, “I can’t find it,” or “How do I get access?” So, we are here, on our current podcast, to tell you about our new podcast that’s just launched, and we want to talk to you about how you can get access and what’s all involved because this is big news folks. We will talk about some high-level deets and what you can do to get inside.

Today’s guest is Kira La Forgia, someone who actually enjoys 1099s, W2s, FMLA, and FLSA; you know, all the human resources stuff that usually goes right over your head! Her operations consulting company, Paradigm Consulting, provides resources to online-based business owners that put people's operations at the center of the organizational structure. Kira knows how to project, streamline, and scale businesses, working with leaders in their fields to blend their strengths, passions, and experiences into their unique company culture and develop a robust hiring and growth strategy, as well as providing you with the people you need to move your business forward!

In this episode, we talk about what that looks like at different stages and Kira shares her top hiring tips for growing small businesses. Abagail and Emylee actually hired Kira as a consultant for their own company as they were phasing into growth and hiring employees, which is why we invited her on the show to share her take on small businesses, or businesses who are hiring contractors or virtual assistants, even for the first time. Kira shares some of the things you can set up to better your experience with contractors, the do’s and don’ts when it comes to contractors versus employees, and everything you need to know about your employee handbook, as well as how you can make the onboarding process, associated learning curves, and mindset shifts around hiring a whole lot easier!

We also touch on HR basics for small teams looking to hire contractors and employees, some of the mindset shifts you need to make when it comes to your team members, plus a new way of looking at org charts and what you need to do differently. We all want a scalable business model with no limit on revenue, which is why Kira’s insights are so valuable. Make sure not to miss this incredible and informative conversation, packed full of practical advice that you can implement today!

We are back here with another fan favorite: profit reports! Let's talk about all the things we did in July and how much money our products made. We love the profit reports because they are such a great opportunity to break down what’s been successful in our business. They also give us a chance to reflect on the things we did, the things we worked on, what we would do differently, and how it would ultimately affect the bottom line because that’s what this is all about. It's not revenue or how much income we generated; it’s about the profit we make in our business. For a while now, Abagail has been talking about using percentages to divide up your profits, and recently, she had a question about a line item. So, she asked our bookkeeping company what some of their recommendations are. They work with hundreds of online businesses in the space we are in, and they have an understanding of the breakdown of things. What made her so happy is that the things we have been working so hard on are the top amounts we should be searching for. This isn’t arbitrary and doesn’t just apply to our business; it’s applicable across the board! And we take a lot of pride in setting our business up in this way. That is also why we share these as percentages because the amount can throw people off if their businesses are not in the same arena or do not have the same goals. But there are percentages that literal professionals recommend businesses are at in terms of profit, or team, or education, or advertising. So, knowing when you’re in that ballpark is really, really reassuring as you continue to make a decision.

We discuss the number one way to grow your list through low-priced, high-value digital products, how to get paid and grow a list of customers rather than subscribers, and how to use the W.A.N.D. Method to figure out exactly what your Pocket Products™ should be. If you haven’t been introduced to Courtney yet, you’re in for a real treat! Tune in, get out your notebook, and grab a fresh cup of coffee, because we’re pretty sure you’ll be ready to hit the ground running after this episode!

We are here for part 2 of our story. First of all, if you haven’t listened to part 1, it’s one of our recent episodes right before this one. We went back–to–back with our voices and no guests. This is a two-parter, so if you haven’t listened to the first one, we highly recommend that you pause and go back to that one before carrying on with this episode. So, you are here and ready for part 2. We want to start this episode with a little preface, some boundaries, and we want to share the weirdness of being vulnerable online and in the internet space. These are deeply personal parts of our stories, and we are going to dive in and share a lot with you today. There is a good chunk of you who have been around for a really long time, and you will have heard bits and pieces of our story. But there is an even bigger chunk of you who have no idea what happened for us in 2016, a really big year for us in terms of pivoting personally and within our business. It literally changed every aspect of our lives and shaped the way we do business, and that’s what we will talk about today.

On today’s show, we wanted to take you back in time a little bit and talk about the beginning stages of our business. We so often get asked, ‘How did this all start and why does it exist in the way it does today?” We think there are some incredible takeaways from the early part of our journey that we don’t often talk about but which have shaped the mission and vision of our business as we have continued to grow and make an impact in the world of online business. It has been interesting uncovering some of our story through the work that we have been doing with Rachel’s coaching program in which we are currently enrolled.

We have struggled to frame our story because it breaks the mold of how origin stories are usually told, in the sense that there are two of us, not one. Often we have felt that sharing our feelings and thinking out loud on this podcast has helped us find clarity, so we wanted to use this episode to tell our story! We hope that if you had some things holding you back from telling your own story that this episode might help you step outside your comfort zone and share a little more about yourself.

We have the best thing since sliced bread to share with you. Big, big, big news. We are beyond excited. For the first time ever (note the sarcasm), we are giving more value to our members and our students because we love you and are obsessed with your success. It should come as no surprise to anyone that we just want to continue to see you improve your results. We are constantly looking at our programs and our offers to identify how we can help you be more successful, how we can arm you with the tools, strategies, and systems to be the most effective you can be. And we have been taking a good, long, hard look at everything we have done inside The Creative Template Shop, and we love it. It's not changing. All of that is staying AND it's growing and becoming even better!

While it doesn't take much talent to have a creative hobby, it takes skill, practice, and, most importantly, systems to monetize your creative passion and turn it into a career. By working with creatives, today’s guest is able to use his skill in law and tax while also vicariously working in the creative industry through all of you amazing ‘creativepreneurs’. Braden Drake is your gay best friend who also happens to be an attorney and tax pro, but aren't talking about the boring (but necessary) legal stuff today! For that, you need to head over to Braden’s podcast, Unf*ck Your Biz. Today, we are talking about creating systems, standard operating procedures, and processes that work the way YOU want to work in your business!

This is a roundtable-style discussion about how our individual personalities impact the way we organize our to-dos and develop our SOPs, as well as how you can create systems that will actually benefit your business rather than wasting your valuable time as CEO. We also touch on the Profit First methodology and how it ties into getting “your legal and tax shit legit,” as Braden says. Tuning in, you’ll learn about the three things you need to consider when creating standard operating procedures for your business, how to create processes that work for your personality type, and the system Braden suggests to stay legal and compliant, plus a whole lot more!

Make sure not to miss this informal and informative conversation full of practical tips with your new best friend, Braden Drake.

While we can’t tell you what this episode is going to look like, we can tell you where we are at. Being an entrepreneur is hard. It presents challenges that you don’t anticipate. Things pop up that you never imagined dealing with and you are pushed to grow as a person as you continue to grow your business. We wish we could say that it was always easy or that we always know what to do, but we don’t. The idea for this episode started when Emylee inboxed Jessica Eley and their conversation led to a lot of tears.

We want to preface this conversation by saying there are a handful of conversations that we have had like this where we are truly in the weeds and workshopping things as we go. We will probably get clarity just by talking it out with you guys and we love that we have the space to do that. It is not going to be an episode that ends with a resounding conclusion or strategy. We want to talk about the challenges that come with growth and clear out some of the junk in our brains in the hope that you won’t feel as alone if you were thinking some of the same things.

Today on the podcast, we have Pri. She’s an award-winning SEO strategist, Google Analytics expert, and Founder of Brilliantly Visible. Pri is based in London, and her work is frequently shared as an example of best practices in action at industry events in the UK. With her signature PROPS method, Pri helps people build out datasets and create simple, automated metric dashboards that help them answer some of the most important questions they have in their business: what are my results, and how am I getting them? Those are two really helpful things to be mindful of in your business when you are growing from a data and analytically-driven place, but also in a place that’s in alignment with how you want to run your business and the decisions that you want to be making. If you have been avoiding looking at your data to see if you are actually getting the results you want, or if you are feeling overwhelmed about how to make decisions based on the results you are getting, this is the show for you! You will walk away with so many tips on how to make smart, intentional decisions in your business.