Due largely to the media we’ve been consuming, attention spans are waning. Now, more than ever, we need to focus on concise communication at work so as not to waste time or lose focus, and to cater to neurodivergence. We recently had a conversation with our team about innovation, problem-solving, and presenting the root of those problems with solutions in a clear, concise way. The importance of utilizing meeting minutes as efficiently as possible is becoming more and more evident to us, and we want to promote the concise communication of new launch game plans, offers, marketing strategies, etc. This is a skill we could all use some practice in, and today’s episode is all about how to be more concise as a leader and how to train your team to identify and communicate the bottom line of their presentation and client communication.

We know that so many business owners, at all stages of their growth, do not understand their finances and we can see how much it affects their businesses! We want to talk about what understanding your numbers will do for you and why it’s such an important thing to prioritize. Often, the anxiety when discussing finances is rooted in a lack of financial literacy and the attachment we have to money that results in avoidance.

Sometimes these kinds of conversations will be uncomfortable, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are bad. We want to remind you that our mission at Boss Project is to equip more women and femmes with the financial knowledge that they need to build a sustainable business that supports them financially and soulfully. These things are only possible with a level of financial literacy!

What would you do if your business disappeared overnight but your skills and experiences remained? How would you choose your product or service? Would you want to play a similar role? Should you even remain in the same industry? Today on the show we share our answers to all these complicated questions, and more, as we reflect on what we’ve learned from building a business and running it for almost ten years!

In our conversation, we reflect on the current economic climate, what we learned from starting a business during a recession, and what we would want from a second business after building a company based on passion from the ground up. Tune in as we indulge in a conceptual exercise examining what we’ve learned over the past few years and what we would do differently for our next business, and why!

Today, we’re using you guys for practice. We have a workshop meeting coming up with the team at Boss Project to go over some updates for our team Wiki page, practices for problem-solving, and other aspects, and we wanted to share some of that information with our listeners. Consider these the highlights of what we’ve learned about innovation, problem-solving, and creative thinking.

This episode is best suited if you also listen to our recent episode on the four types of problem solvers that you need in your team. You don’t necessarily need to listen to it first, but it will help you. In the last year, we’ve been able to put definition to the culture behind the scenes at Boss Project, making our mission and vision a more prominent part of the work that we do. We talked about creating a motto to highlight the areas we really want to enhance and how we could share our philosophy with our team in a meaningful way.

We usually share a free-balling, brain-storming episode around this time of year about what we want the next year to look like. We are so ecstatic (and intimidated) about some of our ideas and we want to document them for you all to hear! This year, we dove into having a hybrid company really heavily but going into 2023, we have to ask ourselves what the right mix is for our team.

We know how stressful it can be to figure out how projects are going to happen and we encourage you to plan for the new year with flexibility. Find the balance between having a plan and being flexible to allow for inevitable changes that you can’t predict. Be prepared that your plan may not happen exactly the way you want it to. Spend your planning time looking at where your leads are coming from and what makes sense for your business based on the leads that you have.

There have been a lot of conversations in our incubator coaching lately about what to do when leads are lower. But that’s only part of the conversation. Today, we want to focus on how to know what’s right when you’re considering different ideas to pursue. When we’re in a rut, we tend to think that it’s time to think far outside of the box. Innovation is amazing when you’re in a season to be able to create something new and it makes sense, but when you need a cash injection, or you want to start the year off with a bang, it’s not necessarily the best time to start with something brand new!

What if, instead, you looked for ways to do the same thing, but in a different room? Could you do the same thing through a different lens? At the end of the day, if you already have systems and processes around the thing that you have been delivering, selling, and pricing, it’s so much easier to stay in that lane. Don't reinvent the wheel! While it might sound counterintuitive, we encourage you not to think outside the box, but to spin it in a different direction. It’s the same thing, just from a different viewpoint!

Today’s episode is all about how to define your role in your company. As we look towards the start of a new year, we always like to comb through the job descriptions of the people on our team, as well as ourselves. What we’ve noticed is that defining the role of founders and CEOs is something that is often overlooked. So, we are intentional about taking the time to get really clear on the things that we need to do versus the things that we want to do so that we can find a healthy balance between the two!

As we look ahead to the new year, we’re evaluating what we want to take forward with us, what we’ll discontinue in the new year, and what we’d like to tentatively start investigating. Here at Boss Project, we’ve been in the throes of planning for 2023 and have settled on some decisions which we share with you in this episode! Tune in to find out what we’re carrying forward with us and why, what we’ve decided to drop, and three potential additions that we’re contemplating bringing into the mix.

If you dream of having a team full of problem solvers, you’ve come to the right place. In the previous episode, we talked about the four types of problem solvers that your team needs. In this episode, we investigate how to encourage your employees to be problem solvers in the first place. Efficiency is championed in the workplace, and the number one thing to get in the way of it is the brake of identifying and solving problems. For this reason, there is often a lot of resistance to turning the focus onto innovation. Yes, it takes time, but it’s worth it! Tune in to hear our advice on creating space for innovation and incentivizing problem-solving. We leave you with seven practical ways to promote a culture of creativity and innovation within your team!

We recently came across an article about the types of problem solvers (or innovators) that exist within a business. In this episode, we are going to be sharing a breakdown of this article. The idea is to encourage you, as a leader, to look at your team and determine whether it is diverse enough in terms of the perspectives and roles as well as whether it is cognitively diverse enough. This is such an important conversation because there are certain things that will be innately easy for some people and much harder for others and when you understand the dynamics of your team, everyone can help each other out. For anyone looking to grow their team in the coming year, this episode is for you!

Do you find hiring daunting? Do you want to find the right people that will grow your business but don't know how? Then this episode is for you! It’s been a minute since we’ve had a guest on the Strategy HourPodcast, but we absolutely had to bring our friend Abbey Ashley on so that you can hear more of what she's got going on with hiring, and get some tips from a multi million dollar CEO on how she has navigated hiring in her business, along with a few personal anecdotes from our experience over at BossProject.

Have you ever felt that you’ve run out of boxes to check? It can feel unsettling not to be clear on what you should be pursuing, especially as you get older. We were pretty surprised to find out that most of the things we strive for as we age are actually developmental milestones. We learned that, with the passing of each decade, there needs to be a realignment to work toward a new set of goals. There’s a progression from building your career in your twenties, to finding life alignment in your thirties, connecting to passion and purpose in your forties, and building a legacy in your fifties and beyond. Striving to make these things a priority is a natural part of the life cycle.

We’re sure everyone is familiar with the popular Netflix reality TV show, Love is Blind, but did you know that you can actually learn some tools for having successful conversations at your next networking event from the show? No, these conversations won’t end in a terrifying wedding whereby all your guests anxiously await the words ‘I do’ or ‘I don’t.’ But, you could stand to create incredibly meaningful professional relationships and even friendships. You will also develop your social skills and self-esteem which will have a positive impact on your business!

This is not the first time we’re speaking about boundaries, and it won’t be the last. We love boundaries! They’re our favorite ‘B word’. We like setting them, we like holding them, and we like helping other people set them. One thing we find interesting is that when we start the conversation about boundaries and we lovingly push our clients or our team to create, set, and hold a boundary, it can be triggering for a lot of people. That’s because it makes us reflect on toxic behaviors we have allowed or done or negative stories we have told ourselves about why we might need boundaries.

We have worked with many different service providers over the years. And in that time we’ve learned a great deal from their wide-ranging responses to any number of situations and scenarios that inevitably pop up with clients — be they totally bizarre or bordering on the mundane. In today’s episode, we take a closer look at how to deliver a sustainable client experience. One that is consistent from client to client and can be maintained and altered as your business grows and scales.

When you’re in the thick of the behind-the-scenes work of running your business, it’s easy to lose sight of the client experience. This is why it’s so important to have systems in place that allow you to not only receive client feedback but to come up with solutions that are then seamlessly integrated into your business. We break down the most common issues we’ve seen service providers get stuck on and offer insights on how to fine-tune your internal systems for a unique client experience with staying power!