Would all the people-pleasers please stand up? All of you? Oh, wow. Okay, whether you really identify as a people-pleaser or not, I'm sure you recognize that entrepreneurship & the internet has a tendency to bring out the people-pleasing tendencies in even...
This month, we’re focusing on how small businesses create & deliver value.
How do we develop new offers? Put together new packages? Build new products?
We’ll be deep diving into 3 businesses and how they create & deliver value.
I’ll also be sharing a series of short bonus episodes looking back at how I’ve created & delivered value over the years—and how that process continues to evolve both at What Works and at YellowHouse.Media. Plus, we’ll close out the series by hearing from a few more business owners who have found creative ways to create and deliver value through the offers they make.
As I mentioned earlier, “What’s next?” is often a question that helps you figure out how to create and deliver value beyond what you’re already doing.
A product or service that solves a particular problem might shine some light on the next problem that needs to be a solved. A product or service that creates a delightful experience might simply leave the customer asking for more.
Or “What’s next?” might simply be a request to go deeper, keep working together longer, or investigate new possibilities.
Alisha Robertson found herself with a whole bunch of customers asking her “What’s next?” after she released a book called Living Over Existing. After a lot of thought, some customer research, some soul-searching, Alisha came up with her next move.
Alisha and talk about how the LOE Collective came to be, how she’s set up her community to meet those “What’s next” needs, and how she created the Intentional Success Path to guide her members through more “What’s next” questions. Plus, Alisha shares why she also created a physical welcome kit to send to her new members.
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.
[smart_track_player url="https://media.blubrry.com/profit_power_pursuit_a/content.blubrry.com/profit_power_pursuit_a/What_Works_284_Jennifer_Patterson.mp3" social_gplus="false" social_linkedin="true"] 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.
When you started your business, you probably thought a lot about what you wanted to do. That's certainly what I thought about! What do I love to do? How can I do that for other people and get paid for it? Do I want to have a writing business so I can spend my time...
This month, we’re going to take a deep dive into the tools that different businesses rely on to run.
We’ll talk software, systems, and processes—plus how it all works together.
We’ll talk about how things have changed, what’s stayed the same, and how to know when it’s time to switch up your tools.
And, we’ll talk with business owners that run different kinds of businesses—digital products, 1:1 services, and agencies.
Focusing on tools is especially relevant right now because many business owners are looking for ways to run more efficiently and more effectively so that they can boost profit or create new streams of revenue as the economy is changing.
We’re also trying out new tools to cope with interruptions and stress. So in this kick off episode, I wanted to talk about both of those pieces of the puzzle with my podcasting partner-in-crime, my husband and the production coordinator for What Works, Sean McMullin.
Together, Sean and I run YellowHouse.Media, a full-service podcast production agency that specializes in helping small business owners create standout podcasts that power their marketing and sales.
We’ll get into the tools we use to run YellowHouse—including how we set up client dashboards, manage projects, edit audio, and consult on content strategy. But first, we wanted to share some of the tools we’re using to mange stress and anxiety right now.
Let’s get into it!
My guest today has had a similar experience learning the ins and outs of event planning and hosting kickass conferences.
Isaac Watson is the founder of Kickass Conferences, an event strategy and production studio based in the Pacific Northwest. Isaac helps community leaders develop and deliver transformative events for their audiences that inspire them to build a better world. So far, he’s planned and managed events that have touched over 21,000 lives across the US and Europe.
Isaac is a natural event planner. I know because I’ve attended a number of events that he’s planned and I hired him to plan a conference for me 4 years ago.
But Isaac hasn’t relied on his natural aptitude for creating meaningful and engaging experiences. Instead, he’s designed a process he can rely on to pull off one great event after another.
This process and the way he manages his events is clearly a product of the way he’s honed his craft over the years.
He notices what works, he notices patterns, he notices the things that go unnoticed—and then he adapts the way he manages future projects.
In this conversation, Isaac and I talk about how things have evolved since his very first event, the 5 phases that every event goes through from vision to completion, how he works with clients within that process, and what it’s like when it’s go-time and an event is live.
What Works offers in-depth, well-researched content that strips away the hype of the 21st-century economy.
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