The Game Changer

Several times a year, I start feeling a little bit lost. Scattered, unfocused, and reactive in my business. Maybe that’s how you feel right now – all of the ideas but unable to make progress on any of it. Too many people don’t give themselves the gift of stepping away from the day to day operations of the business and looking at the bigger picture.

To combat this, I’ve adopted akeystone habit of stepping away for one full day every quarter to reflect on and plan for my business – and this is my 90-day planning process. This keystone habit helps make so many other aspects of my business easier like: 

• Creating consistent content;
• Knowing how to focus my time well;
• Seeing my progress clearly, and
• Being able to step back and evaluate and decide on new ideas for my business.

In this week’s episode, I’m going to walk through my 90-day planning process. I’ll be sharing the logistics involved as well as the different steps I take during that time which are:

1. Reflecting and looking back at what happened
2. Reviewing my financial results
3. Reviewing annual goals
4. Setting 90-day goals
5. Making the Action Plan
6. BONUS: Adding anything else that makes sense to do on a quarterly basis i.e. content and social media planning, taxes, special promotions

Links

The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg

Follow Katie on Instagram or visit the website to learn more about her work.

This week's episode is a special one because we're welcoming back the first repeat guest of the show -- Amanda Schuman! Amanda is an award-winning website designer and brand strategist. She is a true artist and helps take clients' visual brands to the next level. 
 
 In today's show, we go behind the scenes of my rebrand and website launch. You'll learn valuable insights about:

• The rebrand creative process;
• The decision-making involved, and
• What goes on in the collaboration between client and designer

Links

Follow Amanda on Instagram or check out her website and her FREE Facebook branding group.

Follow Katie on Instagram or visit the BRAND NEW website to learn more about her work.

Fall is a time when people generally refresh their schedules. But due to the current situation, the lines between life and work are blurred way more than they have ever been before. Right now, so many of us feel like we have too much to do and not enough time to do it. 

Add to this the mistake most people are making is not having a structure when you have a lot to do. This leads to being completely overwhelmed, as well as other consequences like:

• Not being effective
• Missing deadlines
• Not doing your best work

In today’s episode, I’m sharing my strategy on how I manage everything during this season of COVID – and that’s Time Blocking. I’m talking about three steps for how to block your time effectively, which are:

• Step 1 – Set your work hours.
• Step 2 – Define your zones.
• Step 3 – Design your perfect schedule.

And some general tips to actually make it work, like:

• Learning to say no; and,
• Staying flexible

Links:

Follow Katie on Instagram or visit the website to learn more about her work.

Ashley Ebert is the founder of The Simply Elegant Group, once a one-woman operation that grew into one of the largest wedding planning companies in the country with a team of 40 employees with over $3 million dollars in sales and climbing. 

In this week's episode, Ashley shares her knowledge and experience with sales, specifically how to navigate an effective sales conversation so that you can turn inquiries into clients.

We discuss:

• How to turn away the wrong client without being a complete JERK
• A conversational yet professional framework for navigating your sales conversations from the first hello to the signed contract
• How to pivot to the “pitch” part of your sales conversions without being sleazy and inauthentic

Whenever we talk about having a big-picture marketing strategy, oftentimes we use the analogy of a funnel. 

Different stages of the funnel represent different phases of your client’s journey with you. And you as the business owner have different goals at different stages of the funnel.

In this week’s episode, I’m going to break down, in a very simple way:

• The different phases of your marketing funnel,
• What your primary goal is at each phase as the business owner, and
• Some examples of tactics you can use at each stage of the funnel.

Links

Register for FREE for The Fall Business Reboot Training Series at http://programs.katiewussow.com/businessreboot

Follow Katie on Instagram or visit the website to learn more about her work.

We’ve all heard the phrase, “Charge what you’re worth”. The big problem that I have with this philosophy is that it unhelpfully ties your pricing to how talented you are and how confident you happen to be about yourself. Your prices should be directly related to the value you are creating for the client. You shouldn’t charge what you’re worth, you charge what the WORK is worth.

If you really want to create a valuable service that you can charge a lot of money for, you have to do more than just show up and be talented. You have to create a process and experience for your client that is incredibly valuable.

In this week’s episode, we’re gonna get practical and talk about 4 ways you can add value to your service so you can charge more.

By...

• Eliminating friction,
• Taking things off of your client’s plate,
• Communicating proactively, and
• Creating a thoughtful off-boarding process

...you will be able to create amazing results for your clients but also be in a position to confidently raise your prices.

Links

Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman

Register for FREE for The Fall Business Reboot Training Series at http://programs.katiewussow.com/businessreboot

Follow Katie on Instagram or visit the website to learn more about her work.

The concept of a signature service is to revolve your business around one offer that meets the needs of your ideal client. It represents the best possible solution that you can offer to solve your client’s problem. 

For today’s podcast, I’m interviewing Tiffany Tolliver who has successfully used this approach to grow her web and branding design business to over six figures. She also teaches other graphic and branding designers to grow their business with a signature offer.

In this episode, we break down the benefits of creating a core offer and how you can create an elevated experience for your client that allows you to charge a premium price point. Frankly, it takes more than fancy gift baskets to create an elevated client experience. We talk about the importance of things like:

• Automating what happens for the client after the conversion;
• Elevating the way that the client interacts with your deliverables;
• Keep your client satisfied throughout the experience of working with you.

Tiffany also shares her thoughts on strategy-first branding and why your brand needs to be more than pretty to be effective.

Links

Follow Tiffany on Instagram (@theemmaroseagency) or visit her website www.theemmaroseagency.com. 

Access the free mini-course, Price for Profit.

Follow Katie on Instagram or visit the website to learn more about her work.

We love to talk about entrepreneurship and the freedom and flexibility that it brings, but there are some basic skills that you as an entrepreneur need to learn in order to be successful. 

If you:

• Don’t want to do sales
• Don’t want to deal with finances
• Can’t function without accountability
• Need conditions to be perfect

...you might be better off doing something else besides starting a business.

But I don’t actually want you to quit your business. My motivation for this week’s episode is to expose some areas where you are not understanding what is going to be required of you to be successful and help you focus on the skills that you’re going to need to stay in business and make a solid income doing what you love.

Links

Access the free mini-course, Price for Profit.

Follow Katie on Instagram or visit the website to learn more about her work.

This week’s episode is a continuation of an important conversation that has been happening in the small business and creative community around racism and racial justice. Doing this as a business owner can present some unique challenges because many of us have single-person businesses.

To help us with this conversation are Nikita Montgomery, founder and owner of Hazel O. Salon in Old Town Alexandria, and Dr. Andrea Holman, a psychologist, and professor at Huston Tillotson University in Austin, Texas.

In this episode, we talk about what it really takes to create a diverse business, including:

• The importance of representation and why it matters for people of color;
• The subtle difference between trying to look like you value diversity versus actually valuing diversity, and;
• How to use your business’s platform to bring marginalized people to the table
• The pitfalls to avoid for white entrepreneurs engaging in anti-racism work

Links

Follow Niki on Instagram or Twitter.

Check out Hazel O. Salon in Old Town Alexandria, VA, or follow them on Instagram.

Follow Dr. Andrea Holmon on Instagram or visit her website. Watch her recent webinar about responding to social injustice.

Getting clients is top of mind for both beginning and established creative entrepreneurs. However, most people make the mistake of copying what other people are doing when marketing their business.

 You can’t market a business by copying the tactics someone else is using – it won’t work. Unless you understand what they are doing and why it works: 

• You won't be able to troubleshoot when it doesn't work;
• You can't adapt the strategy to fit your unique business and unique strengths.
• And, even if it ends up working for you, if it's not incorporated into your marketing strategy, it won't be effective. 

The focus of this week's episode is going to be on three ways you can attract your ideal client. I'm going to help you understand how these approaches work on a strategic level and from a marketing standpoint to be more equipped to experiment on a tactical level. 

The three ways are:

• Traffic
• Content
• Networking

Links

Join my free training, How to Launch Your Business and Land Your First Clients

Follow Katie on Instagram or visit the website to learn more about her work.