Plan For Progress, Not Perfection: The Commitment Blueprint
What are you doing to grow your business this year? Wait. Let me guess: You're doing more. Doing more is rarely the answer to the question, "How do I grow my business?" But... it seems like it should be the answer. So it's the first tactic we consider....
The market is constantly changing. New technology, new trends, new players....
Hey, it's Tara McMullin, and this is a special bonus episode of What Works,...
In This Episode: Why Sean and Tara McMullin chose to "productize" their full-service podcast production offer at YellowHouse.Media... and what productized services actually areWhat's included in the package they offer--and why they don't often custom or a la carte...
Offer development is an incredibly important part of running a service-based business. Without a careful strategy and thoughtful process behind how you create value, you are likely to get stuck in the trap of trading time for money or wind up overwork & overwhelmed.
That’s why I wanted to make sure we included a bespoke service-based business in this series on creating value.
I invited India Jackson, the founder of Flaunt Your Fire, a full-service brand visibility agency, to share her approach to how she creates value and constructs the services she offers clients.
India is clear on what her agency does and what it does not do.
She’s clear on why her agency offers the types engagements it does and why some projects just aren’t right for them. And, she’s clear on how her team adds value to the services the agency provides—so India isn’t stuck doing everything herself.
Even if you don’t run a service-based business, this conversation has a lot to offer. Listen in and consider how you might be trying to do too much with your product-based business or how you’ve succumb to making offers that aren’t aligned with your values or best work.
We are all facing uncertainty–as we do every day. So I wanted to talk with business owners who have their own stories about embracing uncertainty this month and the first person I thought of was Lou Blaser, the founder & host of Second Breaks.
I’ve watched Lou embrace uncertainty over and over again throughout the years. I’ve watched her step outside her comfort zone and I’ve watched her take courageous action.
Earlier this year, she announced that she’d made the decision to upend her business, then a career coaching company for late Boomers and Gen Xers, and move back to the Philippines to help out with her aging m. And while she could have tried to continue with her business as is–she made the bold move to use the change as a way to rethink everything.
That’s where this conversation starts–and throughout, Lou and I talk about how her business has evolved, the questions she asked herself to create the new plan, how she could use her existing assets in new ways, and how she started experimenting with her new ideas.
As you grow as a business owner, you can start to anticipate market changes and plan for the way your cost of goods increases. You can set a goal to position your brand in a certain way and you can become smarter about your target market so you understand the value of what you’re offering more fully.
And perhaps most importantly…
You can plan for the ways your cost of doing business will evolve.
You can anticipate the team members you’ll hire. You can plan for the software upgrades you’ll need. You can build in margin to cover unforeseen circumstances or changes in the market that impact your bottom line.
Very, very few business owners do this from the start. But over time, you can get better and better at your pricing strategy—and even your overall financial strategy—so that you’re planning for the future instead of reacting to it.
And that’s exactly what I’m talking about with today’s guest, Tiffany Whipps. Tiffany is the founder and designer behind Fire + Mineral Jewelry. Tiffany has been designing jewelry full-time since 2012 and she’d be the first to admit that her pricing strategy has become a lot more sophisticated since she put together her first line sheet on a whim.
I originally invited Tiffany onto the show to showcase how money flows through product-based businesses. And we absolutely talk about that. But we also talk about how Tiffany’s approach to money has grown more sophisticated over time, as well as how she’s now pricing for the business she wants to have instead of the business she has right now.
Tiffany and I talk about how her pricing strategy has evolved over the years, why she’s focused on products that have more long-term value as opposed to what’s trendy right now, and how she’s using her goals to set prices for her new work.
This week, we’re taking a look at what happens when you’re able to go all in on every aspect of building your business—product, marketing, and operations—and how that impacts how money flows through your business.
To do that, I talked with Marie Poulin.
Now, Marie has been on the podcast several times now. Most recently, I spoke with her about her decision to not build a business that scales. Funnily enough, at just about the time that interview aired, things started to change for Marie.
Marie found something she could go all in on.
And suddenly her path to the right product, the right marketing, and the right operations became clear—as did the path to making money with ease.
In this conversation, Marie and I talk about how she transformed her business when she stopped resisting and found the thing she could go all in on. We talk about how the way she makes money has changed, how she’s finding her customers, how it’s all impacted her personal finances, and what she’s investing in now that her business is growing with ease.
In This Episode: Why grief & trauma worker Jennifer Patterson...
Last year, at an in-person gathering of one of the masterminds that we run at What Works, one participant told me that they didn’t really need anyone to tell them what to do with their business. They knew exactly what they should be doing. Instead, they said they needed people to ask why they weren’t doing it.
That’s why they were in the mastermind group.
To me, that’s the perfect illustration of how a mastermind group can support business owners who are committed to—not just learning a new marketing skill or figuring out how to launch a new product—but to becoming a more whole entrepreneur and building a business that works exceptionally well.
I’ve been running mastermind groups of one sort or another for about 5 years and I have a lot to say on the subject. But I didn’t want you to just get my thoughts…
So I invited someone equally as passionate about masterminding as I am, Sarah K. Peck, the founder of Startup Pregnant.
Sarah was on the show before talking about how the Startup Pregnant podcast got started—but the whole business and community of Startup Pregnant has evolved and grown a ton since then. Check out Episode 134 for our original conversation.
Today, Sarah and I jam about masterminding—how we participate in masterminds, how we facilitate masterminds, and how we leverage them in our businesses. We also talk about the role masterminding plays in how you get support as an entrepreneur and we talk through how we structure sessions for the best outcomes.
Host of What Works
Tara is a podcaster, small business community leader, strategist, and speaker. She’s been helping small business owners build stronger businesses for over a decade.
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