The Game Changer

Building a business isn’t just about what you’re doing, it’s about how you are showing up. I know most creative entrepreneurs are looking for ways to be more organized, focused, and in control of their businesses in 2022. For some, that means working on new habits.

Starting new habits is easy, but often we make the mistake of sprinting hard out of the gate in January only to crash and burn by the end of Q1. In this episode, I’m talking about six ways that you can make your habits really stick. Tune in to hear about how choosing to cultivate new habits in the right season, building new habits onto old ones, and simple strategies to make new habits easier.

KATIE’S INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/katiewussow/

KATIE’S WEBSITE: https://katiewussow.com/

GET THE FREE 90-DAY PLAN TEMPLATE: https://katiewussow.com/plan

BOOK: The Power of Habit, Duhigg

BOOK: Atomic Habits, James Clear

BOOK: Effortless, Greg McKeown

It’s hard enough to find the time to get basic things done in business. When it comes to our biggest dreams and ideas? Sometimes we are so overwhelmed that we don’t know where to start.

My former client and career coach Jenn Smith is joining me on this episode to talk about how she took one of her biggest game-changing ideas and made it a reality. She launched her very first group program in 2021. Tune in to hear how she:

>> Overcame analysis paralysis and started taking meaningful action

>> Designed a very robust but SIMPLE group program with only three elements

>> How she learned to more actively promote her business without losing authenticity

>> How launching her first group offer led her to create a second one

JENN’S WEBSITE: https://flourish.careers/

JENN’S INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/flourish.careers/

KATIE’S INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/katiewussow/

KATIE’S WEBSITE: https://katiewussow.com/

GET THE FREE 90-DAY PLAN TEMPLATE: https://katiewussow.com/plan

Being the most talented person in your field doesn’t guarantee the best client experience. If you are difficult to work with, don’t meet your deadlines, have a bad attitude, are disorganized, or don’t communicate well, clients aren’t going to have a good experience with your business. Your client experience matters just as much, if not more than the product you are producing.

This week, I’m joined by Maggie Patterson, founder of two successful service-based businesses. She is the editorial director at Scoop Studios, a content marketing agency for tech companies. She also is the founder of Small Business Boss where she acts as a consultant for other service-based business owners.

Maggie knows firsthand the impact of having a truly excellent experience around your expertise. So she’ll be sharing her wisdom from being in client services from her 20-year career, with 15 years of being a successful entrepreneur. She’ll also be telling us:

• How to balance marketing and growth with serving the clients you already have.
• Simple, everyday interactions that can create a wow-worthy client experience.
• Three ways that the client experience supports your marketing: retention, repeat customers, and referrals.
• How to build a “surprise and delight” margin into your pricing so that you have the bandwidth to go above and beyond.

Links
Follow Maggie Patterson on Instagram.
Check out Small Business Boss.
BS Free Service Business Podcast
Follow Katie on Instagram or visit the website to learn more about her work.

For the last few months, my personal motivation in business has been a bit lacking. I started asking myself the question I’ve asked myself 1000 times over the last 5 years – “is this what I really am supposed to be doing?” After attending a virtual conference, it hit me like a ton of bricks. There is nothing more motivating than clarity. Knowing exactly what you need to be doing, why it matters, and what milestones you need to hit.

As a follow-up to last week’s episode all about my year in review, today will be a deep dive into my priorities and some of my goals for the coming year. I’ll be reintroducing the goal-setting framework that I use for my Thrive Business Bootcamp coaching program to set up my top 3 priorities for 2022, which help define my goals and outcomes.

• Priority 1: Put more money in my own pocket from my business
• Priority 2: Build programs with a high level of accountability and support
• Priority 3: Create a more robust content strategy

Links

Follow Katie on Instagram 

Visit Katie’s website

Download the Year-End Review & Reflection Guide

In this week’s episode, I’ll be sharing my wins, challenges, surprises, and lessons learned from 2021. These are things that came directly out of my Thrive in Five goal-setting process. You’ll hear about:

• How to grow your business without getting new customers
• How finances were my biggest win as well as my biggest challenge
• The most valuable thing I bring to my clients (hint: it’s not information)

Links
Follow Katie on Instagram
Visit Katie’s website
Download the Year-End Review & Reflection Guide

Last week’s episode was all about misunderstandings about money and finances that lead us to over-invest in our businesses. Continuing the conversation today, we’ll be diving into what we need in order to make good decisions about the money. I’ll be sharing a reliable and repeatable process to help you make solid decisions about investing.

First, we'll talk about how to come up with an investment budget for the year. Then I'll share a five step process to evaluate whether a particular investment is right for you.

Links
Follow Katie on Instagram
Visit Katie’s website
Download the Year-End Review & Reflection Guide

Have you ever felt like you're spending SO much money "investing" in your business, but you don't have much to show for it? As we continue our goal-setting series, we are talking about the topic of investing in growth. Specifically, why are so many creative entrepreneurs over-investing in our businesses and not seeing any return?

On this episode we are diving into 5 misunderstandings that are leading you (and me) to spend too much money on our businesses:

• Misunderstanding 1: We don't know the difference between an investment and an expense.
• Misunderstanding 2: We spend money like a startup when really we are building a lifestyle business.
• Misunderstanding 3: We don't know where we are in the process of building a business.
• Misunderstanding 4: We don't realize the role that our businesses are meant to play in our overall financial plan for our lives.
• Misunderstanding 5: We overestimate the impact that a single investment can have on our growth.

Links
Learn more about the goal-setting workshop
Follow Katie on Instagram
Visit Katie’s website
Download the Year-End Review & Reflection Guide

If you are a creative entrepreneur running a business with a full life outside of work, goal-setting can’t just be a tactic you use to help you get more done. Goal setting should be a filter to help you get better results without adding more to your plate.

In today’s episode, Fanette Rickert, food photographer and business educator, returns to talk about how the challenges she experienced this year. The hard times she experienced revealed that she didn’t set goals the right way the first time around. Fanette hit the reset button with only 4 months left in the year, adjusted her priorities and goals, and now is more clear than ever on where she needs to be focusing in order to earn more and work less.

Through understanding the basic goal-setting framework that we use in the program Thrive in Five, you’ll be able to get clear and focus on the right goals to get what you really want out of your life and business:

• Priorities -- themes, what is most important right now.
• Goals - specific metrics that will measure success for your priority
• Tasks and Projects - the things you do to achieve your goals

Links
Sign up for the Thrive in Five Goal Setting Workshop
Follow Fanette on Instagram
Check out Fanette’s blog
Download the Year-End Review & Reflection Guide
Follow Katie on Instagram
Visit Katie’s website 

This is the second in a four-part series about goal-setting to get you ready to set strategic goals for 2022. Today, I’m going to share what your priorities should be in different phases of business and talk about how things might shift for you as you grow and evolve. I’m going to provide a lot of suggestions for what kinds of priorities are common and useful to pursue in these phases:

• Start
• Streamline
• Grow
• Expand

Links

Learn more about the goal-setting workshop

Follow Katie on Instagram

Visit Katie’s website

Download the Year-End Review & Reflection Guide

Harvard Business Review Article Three Popular Goal-Setting Techniques Managers Should Avoid

Back in late 2020, I did a five-part series on goal-setting, with the very first episode in that series talking about mindset shifts you need to make when you’re setting goals for next year. Because it’s almost the end of the year. This means it’s time to start thinking about what your business is going to look like next year. 

In this week’s throwback episode, we’re going to challenge the flawed approaches you have with goal-setting and come at it with a new approach, which is strategic goal-setting. This comprises outcomes and the related action steps you’re going to take in order to achieve them.

The mindset shifts that you need to take note of before setting your 2022 goals are:

• Shift 1: I don’t know what’s realistic.
• Shift 2: I don’t want to fail.
• Shift 3: I don’t have time.
• Shift 4: I know my plans will change.
• Shift 5: I don’t have any control over the outcomes.

Links

Follow Katie on Instagram 

Visit Katie’s website 

Download the Year-End Review & Reflection Guide