Today we get into self-imposed limitations, balancing vision and action, the ever-present victim mentality, and setting realistic goals.

As a busy mom of five kids and a thriving entrepreneur, Kelly’s story is motivating and her message is profoundly important. 

Emily shows us that we have such amazing power to transform and mold our very existence through our thoughts, including the amount of money we have access to.

This is not always an easy topic to discuss publicly, yet we need to start having these conversations in order to remove some of our collective shame about money—shame that is not helping any of us, particularly women.

Going back to our memories of childhood, we share some of the difficult circumstances that shaped our understanding of—and relationship to—money. We hope that our experiences will give you the courage to confront your own stories about money.

Don’t miss out on this heartfelt conversation!  

As feminists and entrepreneurs, we felt that it was important to invite this conversation into our community because there is still so much we need to shift in our culture around gender and the workplace.

Do you also wish for a wife—someone to take care of all the details and homework so that you can focus on your career and on building your business?

The first article we’re discussing is “70% of Top Male Earners in the US Have a Spouse Who Stays Home”. Another article we’d like to talk about is titled “What ‘Good’ Dads Get Away With”, which is the other side of the coin. You might have a husband who does a lot more than most husbands and fathers, yet you still find yourself being the primary caretaker and filling in all the gaps in your family’s day-to-day life.

Either way, women are often financially marginalized by gender roles and these seem to be exacerbated when we become mothers. This conversation affects almost all of us and it has to be acknowledged that it is still largely an unequal playing field. Something’s got to give!

Best Books

Jeni: The Great Alone / Start Finishing: How to Go from Idea to Done 

Sandy: The Testaments: The Sequel to The Handmaid's Tale

Best Netflix Shows

Sandy: Bikram

Jeni: The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel / Country Music: A Film by Ken Burns

Best Purchase

Jeni: Blackbird Dagger Earrings

Sandy: Moose Knuckles Coat (super Canadian)

Most Influential People

Sandy: Claire Pelletreau 

Jeni: Nathan Latka (loved his book)

Favorite Instagram Accounts

Sandy: https://www.instagram.com/alexandriaslens/

Jeni: www.instagram.com/dudewithsign/

Best Decisions

Sandy: key hiring decisions

Jeni: taking a legit family vacation / hiring

Best Articles

Jeni: The ladders of wealth creation: a step-by-step roadmap to building wealth

Best Podcasts

Sandy: Unf*ck Your Brain

Jeni: Episode 126 | The Value of a Wife

Our Words for 2019

Jeni: Expansion

Sandy: Explosion

It is a common misconception that numbers are out of a business owner’s control. This pervasive thinking is not only untrue but also lends itself to a passive financial approach. Jeni and Sandy want you, as the powerful entrepreneurs you are, to take charge and be intentional about your numbers.

During this episode, they debunk this passivity myth and discuss why it is so important to realize that you have financial agency as well as what you can do once you make this pivotal mindset shift. They also move past the conventional understanding of profit and offer an alternative lens. Profit should be the ultimate goal of every business endeavor, so changing current thinking unlocks unlimited potential. They have used this model to great success in their own businesses and they share these stories today. Ultimately, in shifting thinking about profit and numbers, you change your approach to business entirely.

Key Points From This Episode:

•   Why moving from financial passivity to realizing you have agency can fear-inducing.
•   Learn why it is not a good idea to start a business with the ultimate goal of getting a salary.
•   Profit and financial freedom should be the motivators of any business.
•   Women carry their experience as employees over into their roles as business owners.
•   The long game: why it is crucial to have an overarching vision to drive business decisions.
•   Unpacking the conventional understanding of profit and an alternative suggestion.
•   By adopting a ‘profit-first’ mentality, you gain clarity on the tools you need to get you there.
•   Learn how Jeni used a profit-first approach in her family business and how it succeeded.
•   Discover how Jeni and Sandy handled their salaries with Namastream.
•   A look at the suggested percentages of salaries, taxes, and revenue from Profit First.
•   Find out why the snowball effect gives you the psychological momentum to keep going.

Words of Wisdom:

“When you hold agency for your outcomes, you’re responsible both for your successes as well as for your failures.”

“We are not the victim of our businesses.” 

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Bench — https://soulfulmbapodcast.com/bench

Namastream — https://namastream.com/

Joy: Hilma af Klint at the Guggenheim — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHdud9km7bQ

Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future — https://amzn.to/2MPHz02

Hustle: Profit First — https://amzn.to/37uV1hV

Looking at the numbers can become a sacred monthly ritual where you take time to pause and reflect on all that you have accomplished and where you have room to improve. If this sounds like something you’d like to incorporate into your business, today’s show is just for you! Jeni and Sandy believe that what you track grows, not only because these numbers are in your consciousness, but also because you can create systems based on the data you uncover. There is often shame around small numbers, but every business has to start somewhere, so take time to understand and appreciate them.

Every lesson the numbers teach you can be put to use to grow your business or make informed choices for how to move forward. Jeni and Sandy share two aspects of tracking numbers. They first talk about bookkeeping, what it is and the bookkeeping tools that they have found most useful for their businesses. Then they move onto a different aspect of tracking – the other metrics they use to measure their business performance. Tracking the numbers puts you back in the driver’s seat and empowers you to make decisions that align more closely with your goals. Don’t fear the numbers, embrace them!

Key Points From This Episode:

•   Some of the reasons why what you track will grow.
•   Numbers are simply neutral data and not an indication of your worth.
•   Tracking can be separated into bookkeeping and other kinds of non-financial metrics.
•   Bookkeeping options: do it manually, hire a bookkeeper, or use an online bookkeeping tool or software tool.
•   How to choose a bookkeeping tool based on the specific needs of your business.
•   Insights into some advantages of using bookkeeping software.
•   Discover the specific reasons that Sandy and Jeni love using Bench for Namastream.
•   Learn more about the way that Sandy and Jeni track their sales goals.
•   Knowing your numbers allows for better decision-making and goal alignment.
•   Why it is useful to see differentiated product sales that comprise the total revenue.
•   If you have different products, differentiate goals and allocate energy accordingly.
•   Further expenses that Sandy and Jeni keep track of in their business.
•   Business performance metrics: numbers other than money that matter.
•   Make time to go over your numbers and let it be part of the ritual of running your company.

Words of Wisdom:

“The more you analyze and understand how you made that first dollar, the easier it is going to be to make your next dollar.”

“If you’re not looking at this stuff, you’re really shooting from the hip and making decisions whimsically. And I love whimsy but not when I am talking about my business.” 

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode: 

Bench Accounting — https://soulfulmbapodcast.com/bench

Namastream — https://namastream.com/

QuickBooks — https://quickbooks.intuit.com/

FreshBooks — https://www.freshbooks.com/

Stripe — https://stripe.com/

Tezza on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/tezza/

Joy: Tezza App — https://apps.apple.com/us/app/tezza/id1393061654

Hustle: Start Finishing on Amazon — https://amzn.to/2LBeR2n

Understanding the numbers and margins that our business generates each month can be intimidating—and understandably so—but we are here to tell you why it is actually incredibly empowering to be aware of your finances. Our profit and loss statements and balance sheets give us valuable incremental information that we use to make decisions each and every month in our company. While P&L statements may seem impenetrable, having a clear understanding of what they are telling us makes it SO much easier to make properly educated decisions moving forward.

We help you understand the different sections of a profit and loss statement, the difference between gross and net profit, as well as the difference between top line and bottom line revenue today. We also get into the logical progression any new business must take, from requiring capital to breaking even and, finally, to generating revenue.

We speak about the side hustle as a strategy to weather during the first few years of starting a business while still earning an income, which helps the prospect seem less intimidating.

Our key message today is that it’s reasonable to build a company that, within a few years, is supporting you and your family. BUT is usually does take some time, so don’t sacrifice this amazing opportunity because it doesn’t happen in the first couple of months!

Key Points From This Episode:

•   Why understanding profit and loss (P&L) statements is empowering rather than scary.
•   It is OK to not know everything and ask questions as a business professional.
•   An explanation of why a P&L statement is only ready two weeks in arrears. 
•   The goals and advantages of the P&L statement: price and expense surveillance.
•   P&L statements and balance sheets are the two most valuable monthly financial documents.
•   How revenue is defined in this conversation: not as accrual but cash-based monthly income.
•   The makeup of a P&L statement (‘revenue’, ‘cost of goods’, and ‘other expenses’) explained.
•   A definition of ‘gross profit’ as ‘revenue’ minus ‘cost of goods’.
•   ‘Net profit’ is ‘gross profit’ minus ‘other expenses’.
•   Why having a lot of gross profit rather than a little is vital.
•   The business owner’s salary is not included in a P&L statement.
•   Focus on making money instead of assessing which items money was spent on each month.
•   Earnings are one’s ‘top line revenue’ while savings are one’s ‘bottom line revenue’.
•   Products which generate top line rather than bottom line revenue are risky but lucrative.
•   Starting a business costs money and just breaking even after the first year is good.
•   Understanding reinvestment in relation to growth trajectory.
•   The value of keeping your business as a side hustle for the first few years.
•   Building a successful business is reasonable but just takes time.
•   What makes the bookkeeping tool Bench amazing and how to use it.
•   The brilliance of the analogue/digital mixture of Bench and its new tool called Pulse.

Words of Wisdom: 

“Numbers and accounting reports are so avoided, but the truth is that this is the most empowering thing you can do.” 

“You do need to spend money to create a business, period, and in the first year you’re doing well if you break even.”

“It’s absolutely reasonable to build a company that within a few years is supporting you and your family. Don’t sacrifice that amazing opportunity because it doesn’t happen in two months.”

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Namastream

Become an Online Teacher

Beta Launch Lab

Joy: Bench

Hustle: TED Talks: Finance

This episode is packed with our tips for tracking your data and using it to make realistic predictions. We also discuss the value of separating your personal and business finances, as well as how to maximize the skills of an accountant in the not-so-sexy world of bookkeeping. 

By the end of this episode, you’ll walk away no longer feeling fear or shame about the numbers in your business. If you want to take control of your money, know how it is working for you, and make smart decisions toward financial independence—this is the episode for you!

Key Points from This Episode: 

•   Why so many entrepreneurs, especially women, fear and avoid looking at their numbers.
•   Why women need to dream bigger and work toward ultimate financial independence.
•   Discover why the only way to look at your numbers is as 100% neutral—no judgments!
•   How to examine the feelings you have around your numbers and recognize the results.
•   The importance of celebrating your wins and your sales to help eliminate fear and dread.
•   Find out how to use data to make realistic predictions about your launches and sales.
•   Top tips for separating your personal and business finances in the USA and Canada.
•   The importance of manually tracking everything that comes in and out of your bank account.
•   Why paying for an accountant to prepare and plan your taxes is crucial to your business growth.
•   Why taking ownership of your life and business often means asking the “dumb” questions. (There are no “dumnb” questions.)

Words of Wisdom:

“You will never have any amount of success if you run away and bury your head in the sand from your numbers.”

“Find a great accountant that you’re comfortable with and know that their job is to answer your ‘dumb’ questions.”

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Bench

Become an Online Teacher

Beta Launch Lab

Namastream

Joy: Meet the Frugalwoods: Achieving Financial Independence Through Simple Living

Hustle: Stripe App

Attending live events can often seem like a hassle, but because as humans, we are hardwired for connection, the benefits of attendance far outweigh these perceived obstacles.

We love attending these gatherings so much and believe in their power so much that we have decided to organize a retreat of our own in April 2020 in the hills of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Although organizing the event is a great deal of work, it ‘s worth it for the connection and all-round magic that takes place. These events have helped us connect with one another and so many others and we hope to inspire you to attend or even organize a gathering of your own to foster deep and boundless connections. 

Key Points From This Episode:

•   Some of the benefits of having in-person gatherings.
•   Why these events are gifts of connection and growth.
•   The capacity for in-person connection is much higher than what is possible virtually.
•   Even though we work online, we should place equal importance on our offline lives.
•   Paying for an event puts ‘skin in the game,’ and enhances the richness of the gathering.
•   Work trips are opportunities for busy moms to put your needs front and center.
•   Meeting in person can save time because it offers a dedicated, continuous work period.
•   Some of the details of our 2020 Sante Fe retreat (including a chance to save $200).

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Namastream

Soulful MBA on Facebook

Joy: Ken Burns’ Country Music Documentary 

Hustle: Gather + Grow Retreat

We invited Becca on the show to share with you how she has crafted a life based on freedom and adventure. Becca lives a life that is the definition of “uncaged”—a type of life we’ve all spoken about having but often don’t know what steps to take to make it a reality.

Becca launches just one-product twice a year— that’s it! This business model enables her to spend most of the year traveling in her van, rock-climbing throughout North America with her partner and dog, and take weeks off at a time to go backpacking—while still maintaining high-revenue and consistent offerings.

In this episode, you’ll discover exactly how Becca set up her business, what she sells, and how often she launches. Becca shows us that less really can be so much more and how the uncaged life is possible for you too!

Key Points from This Episode:

•   Becca’s backstory as a life coach and how she transitioned to where she is today.
•   Giving others the permission to let go of the things they think they have to do.
•   Discover how Becca runs her business on one offering that launches just twice a year.
•   Why doing one thing and doing it well is the key to a successful online business.
•   Becca explains the evolvement of her product from the start to where it is today.
•   Why it takes two years before you have something that will make your business lift-off.
•   Owning what you don’t know: Why humility is an important characteristic for entrepreneurs.
•   Money mindsets and talking to friends about your online business, goals, and earnings.
•   Becca shares what her business and her lifestyle look like on a yearly basis.
•   Going evergreen and making the decision to hire team members for support.

Words of Wisdom:

“I learned from watching successful business owners. Most of them who are killing it, just sell one thing.” — @rebecca_tracey 

“It takes a while to get confident with owning what your expertise is and letting the rest go.” — @rebecca_tracey

“Don’t not do something because of a future problem that hasn’t happened yet.” — @rebecca_tracey

“Building an online business is not rocket science. Our mindset is usually what gets in our way.” — @rebecca_tracey 

“I didn’t build a business so I could just work Monday to Friday with two weeks of vacation!” — @rebecca_tracey

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

The Uncaged Life

Becca Tracey on Instagram

Becca Tracey on Facebook

Becca Tracey on Twitter

Beta Launch Lab

Namastream

Joy: Becca’s boyfriend + dog

Hustle: The Voxer App

Ericka Thomas, founder of Elemental Kinetics LLC, joins us on the show to share the juicy numbers from her first-ever online launch. As a recent graduate of our new Beta Launch Lab course (our Inner Circle clients got first dibs!), Ericka has truly embraced a new entrepreneurial mindset and found well-earned success right out of the gate.

Ericka breaks down her real numbers for us on the podcast—including the size of her email list, and the number of sales she saw come in during her launch. This episode is really about embracing the very beginning of the business journey—when it’s all about those first sales, the three- and four-figure launches, and the tiny email list. There is SO much emphasis on the six-figure launches, but this is not where any of us start. We all start small and this is such a thrilling place to be!

Fundamentally, Ericka’s story is about embracing a new identity and transitioning from employee to entrepreneur. If you have ever doubted your readiness for starting your own online because you aren’t experienced enough, famous enough, technical enough, big enough—Ericka’s story will help you to see that you are probably more ready than you think.

Key Points from This Episode:

•   How Ericka transitioned from an independent yoga practitioner to starting her own business.
•   Ericka’s passion for trauma-informed yoga and tension-release exercise (TRE) and how she is working to weave this into her online business.
•   The process of figuring out what your clients want: Who to ask and what to ask them?
•   How to take the information your clients have given you and use it to expand your network.
•   Shift Under Pressure: Learn more about the product Ericka launched for her Beta Course.
•   The importance of the 27-word persuasion sentence for your first product launch.
•   16 sign-ups by midnight: Discover the surprising results from Ericka’s first launch.
•   Dealing with an identity crisis in the middle of your launch and realizing your self-worth.
•   How to get at least half the people on your email list to buy your Beta program.
•   Connecting with your clients and the value of launching to an audience that knows you.
•   And much more!

Words of Wisdom:

“You just need to pick your people and stick with them.” —@namastream [0:08:20]

“Sometimes if you want something different, you have to let the other thing go.” — Ericka Thomas [0:26:20]

“You can’t quit before you start.” — Ericka Thomas [0:28:20]

“Before, I never looked at what I did as a business.” — Ericka Thomas [0:28:50]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Elemental Kinetics LLC — http://www.elementalkinetics.com

Elemental Kinetics on Facebook — https://www.facebook.com/elementalkineticsmovewell/

Ericka Thomas on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericka-thomas-282060b7/

ConvertKit — https://convertkit.com/

Beta Launch Lab — http://betalaunchlab.com/

Namastream — https://namastream.com/

Joy: salad for breakfast!

Hustle: Inner Circle (which includes Namastream, Beta Launch Lab, + lots more!)

One of our Inner Circle clients, Nicole is an inspiring example of what you can achieve when you take action and invest in yourself. She has achieved fantastic results by following the step-by-step process that we lay out in our Beta Launch Lab—our brand new course on how to launch a profitable digital product within 30 days.Rather than come up with excises, Nicole went through the course, got down to business, and made some money! Although she has a smaller email list and a not-massive following on social media, she still had a fantastic launch.

We see SO people delaying an online launch because they believe they don’t yet have a big enough following. In this episode, Nicole debunks this myth by sharing her numbers, walking us through her beta launch process, providing tips on pricing, digital product curation, and community interaction.

Most importantly, we hear about the massive mindset shift Nicole experienced when she decided to invest in herself and in her business, and the impact this had on her results. Nicole is a force of nature, passion, and enthusiasm—and by the end of this episode, she’ll have you feeling like you can take a chance on yourself and your business too. 

Key Points From This Episode:

•   Why Nicole was inspired to move into the online/digital space after the birth of her child.
•   Making the shift from working for someone else to working for yourself using an online model.
•   Challenges with adapting to teaching online from a background of teaching in-person.
•   Navigating tech, software and digital strategies and products for your online business.
•   The Beta Launch Lab and how to use it to build a solid foundation for your online business.
•   Using your online and in-person community to help you develop your first digital product.
•   Nicole shares what she built for her Beta Launch Lab course product and how she did it.
•   Why you don’t need great numbers to achieve great success in your online business.
•   From “cart open” to “cart close”: How many sign-ups do you really need?
•   Tips for deciding on how to price your first beta course or program.
•   Where to turn for support and how to take action if you’re not a self-motivated person.
•   Discover how investing in yourself can help you take your business more seriously.
•   And much more!

Words of Wisdom:

“Everything I have to share, you can find online, but it’s not coming from me. People want to hear it from me.” — Nicole Lebreux [0:20:20] 

“I didn’t know how powerful investing in yourself is, energetically. Once I did that, it totally changed the game.” — Nicole Lebreux [0:25:50]

“I think the investment, at first, is probably the scariest thing if you’re not used to spending on yourself.” — Nicole Lebreux [0:26:30]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Nicole Lebreux

Nicole Lebreux on Instagram

Journey With Your Chakras

Elements of Abundance

Beta Launch Lab

Namastream

Joy: local CSA (community supported agriculture) programs

Hustle: Namastream’s Inner Circle Program

Today’s economy is rapidly shifting. The old capitalist model of going to school, getting into college, and settling down into one job for the rest of your life – is almost non-existent. There are very few jobs out there today that can provide an absolute sense of security.This is why we believe that everyone should be an entrepreneur, if not full-time, then at least as a serious side-hustle.

If all we have to trade for survival is our time, that’s a really sad predicament to be in, and like Seth Godin says in his article, “If you own nothing but the next eight hours of your time for sale to the highest bidder, you may be disappointed in the bids you get.” There is nothing more empowering than creating something of your own, learning how to run it, controlling it, and experiencing money come in based on how hard you work and how much risk you’re willing to take.

Today, we take stock of what we own by looking at our assets in a whole new light. By the end of this episode, you’ll feel inspired and supported in your decision to start building something that you own, right now!

Key Points from This Episode:

•   The shift happening in today’s economy and how to secure your future within it.
•   Why owning your time does not provide the same security it did in the old economic model.
•   Discover the lessons entrepreneurship can teach you and why these are important right now.
•   Re-defining “assets” and what it really means to own them to propel your own business.
•   How to build and store a collection of unique assets that no one can take away from you.
•   A recap on capitalism and Marxism and why owning something is the only way to thrive.
•   Why now is the time to think about the reality of the economic system we’re living in.
•   Entrepreneurship as a path out of oppression for the historically under-represented.
•   The common excuses we make to avoid entrepreneurship and making that small start.
•   Choosing to make a change in your life, creating space, and taking small steps every day.
•   And much more!

Words of Wisdom:

“There’s no such thing as long-term stability, that doesn’t exist anymore. Your safety comes from being adaptable.”

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Namastream — https://namastream.com/

Seth Godin — https://seths.blog/

“What Do You Own?” by Seth Godin — https://seths.blog/2019/09/what-do-you-own/

Become an Online Teacher FREE Course— https://www.soulful.mba/teacher

Joy: FOREO LUNA mini 2 Facial Cleansing Brush — https://amzn.to/30jIsCc

Hustle: Beta Launch Lab Checklist — http://betalaunchlab.com/

These days, online courses have become akin to a business card and clients and students are increasingly coming to expect you to have some kind of dynamic online content. Online courses, membership sites, and group coaching programs can be an incredibly lucrative income stream.

In this episode, we lay out the main reasons why now is a better time than ever to get started, so put that fear of failure aside and let's get things rolling!

Key Points From This Episode:

•   It is the season of more work! We love getting down to things in fall!
•   Online teaching and using this service as your new business card.
•   Experiential interactions; the trends of web-based platforms.
•   Creating another source of income from your online space.
•   Building a reputation, multiple revenue streams, and a solid audience. 
•   It is so affordable to get online and start selling your expertise!
•   The ongoing puzzle and the success that constantly grows with time and effort.
•   The availability of cheap and amazingly useful tools for doing your thing! 
•   Taking action to get past your fear of failure and anxieties around starting.
•   Learning and laughing at your failures; the correlation between wins and losses.
•   Our signature beta launch formula and why it is easier than ever to get yourself out there.
•   The timeline for getting to a launch from where you are!
•   And much more!

Words of Wisdom:

“You need more than just a static presence on the internet, even social platforms are moving towards more experiential interaction.”

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Namastream — https://namastream.comBecome an Online Teacher Course — https://www.soulful.mba/teacher Kevin Kelly — https://kk.orgWireless Go — https://www.rode.com/wirelessgo Sweetwater Audio — https://www.sweetwater.com

Joy: EmmaClaireShop on Etsy — https://www.etsy.com/shop/EmmaClaireShop Hustle: Beta Launch Lab Checklist— http://betalaunchlab.com/

We see these patterns, these excuses, these victim mentalities play out all the time online and in this episode, we take the opportunity to address the common thought patterns that get so many of us stuck in a rut. Here, we break down the Top 7 limiting beliefs/excuses we hear way too often:1. I can’t do what everyone else is doing.2. There’s so much free stuff out there...who’s going to pay for mine?3. Not embracing your inner salesperson.4. I won’t be able to figure it out.5. I’m not techie enough!6. Always telling old stories.7. I don’t really believe yoga teachers (or health coaches or spiritual teachers or personal trainers or ______ ) can make money.If any of these excuses ring true to you, we’re going to help you kick them to the curb!

Key Points From This Episode:

•   Failure to launch: The two types of dreamers you don’t want to be.
•   Why you need to take action and take a chance on yourself.
•   The comparison game and how to finally stop playing it.
•   Why you should still charge a fair price even though everything already exists for free.
•   Discover how to embrace your inner salesperson.
•   How to actively start believing that you CAN do hard things.
•   Find out why your excuses about technology are not helpful.
•   A shout out to the softer skills: empathy, communication, compassion.
•   How to break the “belief ceiling” and stop telling yourself old stories.
•   The importance of writing a new story and acting on it every day.
•   The value of building a scalable teaching/coaching business online today.
•   And much more!

Words of Wisdom: 

“Keep your eyes on your own page and do the work.”

“Saying you’re ‘not technical’ is not a valid excuse. Of course you can do it.” 

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Soulful MBA — https://www.soulful.mba/

Namastream — https://namastream.com/

Joy: TAXA Cricket — https://taxaoutdoors.com

Hustle: Apple Watch — https://www.apple.com/apple-watch-series-4/

Our current series on women and money has encouraged many of you to reflect on your own money stories. During this process, you may have uncovered beliefs that are preventing you from reaching your full potential and this series is meant to unshackle you from these restraints through the stories shared by other women who have experienced similar circumstances.

In today’s episode, you’ll get to hear more about Lori Kennedy’s money journey, including her bold sales goals, her belief in the importance of women starting businesses, and why she gets frustrated when she sees women holding themselves back as entrepreneurs.

Given her level of success today, you may be surprised to hear that Lori is “not good with numbers” and even failed high school math, but she is living proof that obstacles like these are possible to overcome. Once an overspender, she shares about learning to view money and debt as neutral and to remove emotion from the equation in growing her business.

Key Points from This Episode:

•   How Lori came into her role as an entrepreneur and being self-employed from a young age.
•   Discovering her purpose and how the journey helped her to become a better human being.
•   Growing up in an affluent home and always wanting to make her own money. 
•   Not understanding the value of money, compulsive shopping and getting into credit card debt.
•   What Lori has learned about the importance of paying attention to and tracking the numbers.
•   Cultivating a mindset where she has faith that everything will be ok.
•   An incident of running into a cash flow crisis, how she dealt with it, and what she learned.
•   Why she was not afraid of incurring debt to grow her business.
•   How defining what rock bottom looked like for her served her well from early on.
•   Where she starts the money conversation with the women she coaches.
•   Showing the reality of growth to people based on straightforward numbers.
•   Looking critically at how you spend your time and accepting the pre-revenue phase.
•   Getting beyond the conversation about money blocks.
•   Having her home professionally organized and the hustle of integrating a sales department.
•   And much more! 

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Namastream — https://namastream.com/

Soulful MBA’s Become an Online Teacher Course — https://www.soulful.mba/teacher

Connect with Lori:

Lori Kennedy on LinkedIn — https://ca.linkedin.com/in/lorikennedyinc

Lori Kennedy on Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/lorikennedyinc/

Lori Kennedy on Twitter — https://twitter.com/lorikennedyinc

Take Your Health Practice Online Group — https://www.facebook.com/groups/takeyourhealthpracticeonline

The Business of Becoming Podcast — https://thewellnessbusinesshub.com/podcast/

Joy: hiring a professional organizer

Hustle: integrating a sales department

We discuss the five key results we’ve observed within our Inner Circle community, from stress-free decision-making to feeling less isolated and more inspired. A group coaching program can also help you conserve your energy in order to allow you to focus on what’s really important to you.

Starting a business is not easy, but being uncomfortable is often where the magic happens. So why not step out of your comfort zone, while being supported and mentored by those who have been through it all before?

To learn more about the huge advantages of joining a group coaching program, tune in today!

Key Points From This Episode: 

•   How groups help alleviate decision fatigue through mentorship and peer learning.
•   How being in a facilitated community can save you time—both long- and short-term.
•   How mentorship and support can help you to fast-track your growth, which leads to quicker financial freedom. 
•   How a sense of community helps keeps you motivated.

Words of Wisdom: 

“There is no right or wrong; there are just two decisions that reveal different outcomes. Make the decision, make it quick, and move on.” — Sandy Connery

“It’s going to be uncomfortable either way. Choose the brand of discomfort that’s going to give you the result you want.” — Jeni Barcelos 

Joy: Atomic Habits by James Clear

Hustle: On-demand Masterclass

As you may infer from the name of her show, Claire loves to talk about all things money. Once a week, she sits down with entrepreneurs and asks them tough and very personal questions about their businesses. A standout from these episodes is her tradition of asking guests what they pay themselves—a question that most people would admit is quite uncomfortable.

In this episode, Claire shares insights about her own business journey and reveals what it’s like to ask her guests about money. We also get into why Claire believes paid ads are so important and how she manages her own success.

We absolutely love Claire's work and we both listen to EVERY episode of her show. It is so affirming and enlightening and we are grateful for her contribution to the broader money conversation. Enjoy the episode!

Key Points From This Episode:

•   Asking the questions that no one seems to want to ask on a podcast.
•   How Claire started work as a freelancer while employed elsewhere.
•   Finding early guests for the podcast who were comfortable talking about money.
•   Why Claire still gets nervous asking what people pay themselves.
•   Unpacking a particular person's story and looking beyond a snapshot.
•   Claire's younger years, career dreams, and how she came into entrepreneurship.
•   Discovering money mindsets and how important this moment was for Claire's journey.
•   Claire's current money goals; why she is currently focussing on income over revenue.
•   Business scaling and why ads are so essential.
•   Claire's family, friends and social community; their reactions to her success.
•   The divide between online entrepreneurs and the rest of the world.
•   The most surprising elements of hosting a podcast about money. 
•   This week's top of mind question round with Claire!
•   Claire's joy and hustle recommendations.
•   And much more!

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Become and Online Teacher — https://www.soulful.mba/teacher

Namastream — https://namastream.com/

Brooke Castillo — https://thelifecoachschool.com/

Brooke Castillo on The Get Paid Podcast — https://clairepells.com/63/

Nathan Barry — https://nathanbarry.com/

ConvertKit — https://convertkit.com/

Denise Duffield Thomas — https://denisedt.com/

Get Rich, Lucky Bitch — https://www.amazon.com/Get-Rich-Lucky-Bitch-Release-ebook/dp/B00BSG124I

Crazy Rich Asians — https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16085481-crazy-rich-asians

Joy: Show Your Work Podcast — https://laineygossipentertainment.libsyn.com/

Hustle: Instagram + Facebook Ads

Connect with Claire

Claire Pelletreau — https://clairepells.com/

The Get Paid Podcast — https://clairepells.com/category/podcast/

We’ve heard some encouraging feedback from listeners who have benefited from our conversations and we want to continue the discussion—this time focused on mindset and limiting beliefs. We all face self-sabotaging thoughts on occasion and it is important for us, as women, to collectively confront these issues so that we can move passed them as a community. 

Today we get into self-imposed limitations, balancing vision and action, the ever-present victim mentality, and setting realistic goals.

Key Points from This Episode:

• How the things we surround ourselves with unknowingly define our limitations. 
• Why we tend to set ordinary goals when we should be aiming for the extraordinary.
• Banishing your self-imposed limiting beliefs by reflecting on your childhood dreams. 
• How the messages we receive about money as little girls impose certain limits on us. 
• Committing to a goal and starting to ask “Why not me?”
• The need for a balance between having a strong vision and taking action. 
• How we set ourselves up for failure in the language we use to describe our goals.
• The victim mentality that has people waiting for the universe to make their dreams come true.
• Being careful not to glorify the first step and forgetting about the hundreds of steps thereafter.  
• Taking ownership of and committing to the process of getting to where you want to be. 
• Setting realistic goals, realizing that it takes time. 
• The unrealistic expectations we have of the first years of business. 
• The advantages and disadvantages of the normalization of online business. 
• And much more!

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

The Soulful MBA — https://www.soulful.mba/

Kelly Diels — http://www.kellydiels.com/

Emily Williams — https://www.iheartmylife.com/

Bill Gates on Twitter — https://twitter.com/BillGates

Joy: One Big Happy Life on YouTube — https://onebighappylife.com

Hustle: The Big Leap on Amazon — https://amzn.to/32Kurjt

When we first came across Kelly’s website, we could not stop reading through her refreshing  body of work on the intersection of feminism and online business. What struck us in particular was her focus on women and their finances and her own personal story, which she shares with us today.

Kelly helps feminist entrepreneurs and culture makers sell to women without selling out by teaching feminist principles, including how they apply to marketing and other facets of business. She talks openly about controversial topics, including the false perceptions that exist around poor people and money.

As a busy mom of five kids and a thriving entrepreneur, Kelly’s story is motivating and her message is profoundly important. 

Key Points from This Episode:

•   How growing up shaped Kelly’s relationship with money.
•   Dispelling the myth that poor people are “bad” with their finances.
•   The need for more narratives around stabilizing your revenues before attempting to scale.
•   Research that proves female entrepreneurs are incredibly capital resource efficient.
•   Teaching, coaching, and self-development as necessary skills for any culture.
•   Women filling in the gaps and doing uncompensated labor as a societal expectation.
•   Why you should charge someone for ‘picking your brain!’
•   Fast fashion and being more mindful with your purchasing decisions.
•   Shifting her business model after a family crisis required her to increase her income.
•   Raising capital and using credit to build a business.
•   Defining what the Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand (FLEB) is and aims to do.
•   Signing with a literary agent and writing a book about culture making.
•   Kelly’s tool for calculating your break even, thrive, and stretch numbers.
•   And much more!

Words of Wisdom:

“There’s this idea that women are risk averse and not good entrepreneurs and they need all this extra training. In fact, we get to profitability faster and we are way more capital resource efficient.” — @KellyDiels [0:07:08]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

The Soulful MBA — https://www.soulful.mba/

Kelly Diels — http://www.kellydiels.com/

SheEO — https://sheeo.world/

Namastream — https://namastream.com/

PayPal — https://www.paypal.com/

Stripe — https://stripe.com/

Gloria Steinem — http://www.gloriasteinem.com/

Bell Hooks — http://www.bellhooksinstitute.com/

Adrienne Maree Brown — http://adriennemareebrown.net/

Soraya Chemaly — http://www.sorayachemaly.com/home.html

Linda Bacon — https://lindabacon.org/

The Myth of Capitalism on Amazon — https://www.amazon.com/Myth-Capitalism-Monopolies-Death-Competition/dp/1119548195

Sister Citizen on Amazon — https://www.amazon.com/Sister-Citizen-Shame-Stereotypes-America/dp/0300188188

Audre Lorde — https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/audre-lorde

Joy: lemon oil / Donte Colley on Instagram / favorite mug

Hustle: business spreadsheet

Emily is a success coach and the author of the new book: I Heart My Life. Emily teaches women to examine their mindset around money and to do away with the limits we so often put on ourselves. She reveals how our false backstories are holding us back, and she shows us that, as ambitious women, we need to have more conversations about what we desire—including stories and examples that represent successes we can emulate. Emily is such a great example of this kind of success and her fearless attitude is something we can all learn from. 

Emily shows us that we have such amazing power to transform and mold our very existence through our thoughts, including the amount of money we have access to.

Key Points From This Episode:

•   The beginnings of Emily's business, life coaching and discovering purpose.
•   Emily's snowballing experience of starting I Heart My Life.
•   The work that Emily does with women now and how she fell into this role.
•   Day to day to life for Emily and getting started early every morning.
•   Working with her husband—how this all came together and their great partnership.
•   Emily's process and the opening phase with clients; removing denial.
•   Making more money in order to serve more people, more powerfully.
•   Why we should not be worrying about money and creating more space and energy.
•   Holding back, lack of belief, fear and how limiting these feelings can be.
•   The power of envisioning your plans, creating new beliefs and making things happen!
•   Drawing on available resources and spending what is necessary to start a business.
•   The collection of limiting beliefs that hold us back from reaching our potential.
•   Emily's thoughts and tips for pricing; start with your own intuition.

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Namastream Software — https://namastream.com/

Soulful MBA — https://www.soulful.mba/

Bulletproof Coffee — https://www.bulletproof.com/blogs/recipes/official-bulletproof-coffee

Marianne Williamson — https://marianne.com/

Law of Divine Compensation — https://www.amazon.com/Law-Divine-Compensation-Money-Miracles-ebook/dp/B007HB8EV2

Big Magic — https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24453082-big-magic

Elizabeth Gilbert — https://www.elizabethgilbert.com/

Oprah Winfrey — http://www.oprah.com/index.html

Nicholas Sparks — https://nicholassparks.com/

The Notebook — https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33648131-the-notebook

David Neagle — https://davidneagle.com/

Trello — https://trello.com

Connect with Emily:

Emily Williams — https://www.iheartmylife.com/

I Heart My Life — https://www.amazon.com/Heart-My-Life-Discover-Transform/dp/1788172868/

Joy: The Successful Mind Podcast — https://successfulmind.wpengine.com/

Hustle: Asana — https://asana.com/

p.s. This podcast is sponsored by Audible. Head over to audibletrial.com/soulfulmba to get a free audiobook and a 30-day free trial!

This is not always an easy topic to discuss publicly, yet we need to start having these conversations in order to remove some of our collective shame about money—shame that is not helping any of us, particularly women.

Going back to our memories of childhood, we share some of the difficult circumstances that shaped our understanding of—and relationship to—money. We hope that our experiences will give you the courage to confront your own stories about money.

Don’t miss out on this heartfelt conversation!  

Key Points from This Episode:

• What growing up with a single mom taught Sandy about hard work and owing money.
• Why Sandy decided to transition from the medical field to business and entrepreneurship. 
• Jeni’s father: a musician, a brilliant mind and the drug problem that ruined him. 
• An unstable financial life of alternating between being wealthy and poor. 
• Jennifer’s experience of money as something you can’t control. 

• The additional financial strain when Sandy’s mom took in a paraplegic foster child.

• Jeni leaving home at 16 and applying for financial emancipation from her parents.  
• Losing her father and deciding to postpone grad school for fear of student loan debt. 
• The common problem of women not having their own money (and therefore little agency).  
• How Jeni felt like she needed to prove her worth through success in her work.  
• Why hustling and working really hard do not always equate to success.  
• Having to still recognize and address mindset problems about money. 
• Holding on to money versus investing it in real estate and the fears around it. 
• Views on retirement, saving toward it and preparing for the unknown future. 
• The need for women to build wealth for themselves and become investors.  
• And much more!  

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Soulful MBA — https://www.soulful.mba/

Namastream — https://namastream.com/

FreshBooks — https://www.freshbooks.com/

QuickBooks — https://quickbooks.intuit.com/

Joy: Bench

Hustle: points-based business credit card (like this one)

Sara’s current business, Kickass Masterminds, rigorously curates and professionally facilitates structured mastermind groups and Sara shares how masterminds can be an extraordinary way to get the support and accountability you need to grow your business. 

Over the past 25+ years, Sara has started and grown five businesses—the largest being a telecommunications company that was doing upwards of $10 million in revenue per year and which employed 75 people.

When Sara is not masterminding, she can be found sipping bourbon or singing along to Fleetwood Mac. She currently lives in Austin, TX with her man and their three dogs.

Sara is a total dynamo and we know that you’ll love this episode!

Joy: rescue pug 

Hustle: Apple Watch

Other Mentions:

Learn more about KICKASS MASTERMINDS

Sara on Instagram

Traction

The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles

In this tell-all episode, we discuss what’s surprised us so far in our business journey, what we’re most proud of, and what advice we’d give to someone just starting out in online business.

Joy: On Being Human by Jennifer Pastiloff

Hustle: real estate investing

She is also the producer, editor and co-host of the Living It podcast and owner of Past Tense yoga studio in Washington, DC.

As a freelance journalist, Kelly specializes in exploration – whether it’s internally through yoga and meditation, physically through health and fitness, culturally and socially through profiles, or the myriad ways travel brings all of that together.

Kelly has written for magazines and newspapers such as O: The Oprah Magazine, Martha Stewart Living, The New York Times, National Geographic Traveler.

Kelly embodies a level of grounded ambition. With a career that embodies freelancing, entrepreneurship, writing, and yoga, she offers us an example of what’s possible if we’re really willing to dig deep and own our multifaceted, whole selves.

Joy: take time off Hustle: pen + paper list / clean desk / podcasts

Connect with Kelly: https://kellydinardo.com/

As feminists and entrepreneurs, we felt that it was important to invite this conversation into our community because there is still so much we need to shift in our culture around gender and the workplace.

Do you also wish for a wife—someone to take care of all the details and homework so that you can focus on your career and on building your business?

The first article we’re discussing is “70% of Top Male Earners in the US Have a Spouse Who Stays Home”. Another article we’d like to talk about is titled “What ‘Good’ Dads Get Away With”, which is the other side of the coin. You might have a husband who does a lot more than most husbands and fathers, yet you still find yourself being the primary caretaker and filling in all the gaps in your family’s day-to-day life.

Either way, women are often financially marginalized by gender roles and these seem to be exacerbated when we become mothers. This conversation affects almost all of us and it has to be acknowledged that it is still largely an unequal playing field. Something’s got to give!

Key Points From This Episode:

•    Examples of the silent labor we as women do that we’re not always aware of.
•    How men still have a higher earning capacity in the existing economic structures.  
•    The unequal playing field, where men have a different set of opportunities than women.
•    The double pressure on women to be home with the kids while also building a career.
•    Why so many women choose to hold back on their own ambitions.
•    The gender pay gap as a root cause of women staying home with the kids.
•    Drop the Ball and what women can do to change the patterns of unequal burden.
•    Why women often don’t ask for help.
•    Buying your way out of these part-time family responsibilities as a possible solution.
•    And much more!

Words of Wisdom:

“He can turn off when he comes home from work and I can’t because there are just so many little, minute things that we have to deal.”

“Not only do customers expect to pay less for products from women owned companies, but women who launch their own businesses also have a harder time attracting venture capital funding or bank loans.”

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Soulful MBA — https://www.soulful.mba/

Soulful MBA on Facebook — https://www.facebook.com/soulfulmba/

Article 1 — https://qz.com/work/1607995/most-men-in-the-top-1-of-us-earners-have-a-spouse-who-stays-home/

Article 2 — https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/04/opinion/sunday/men-parenting.html

Tiffany Dufu — http://tiffanydufu.com/

Drop the Ball on Amazon — https://www.amazon.com/Drop-Ball-Achieving-More-Doing/dp/1250071739

Rachel Hollis — https://thechicsite.com/

SOMA System on Amazon — https://www.amazon.com/SOMA-SYSTEM/s?k=SOMA+SYSTEM

So what better way to master your social media skills than to brush up on your video creation strategy? These tips apply to both live and recorded video, and we touch on video primarily for Facebook and Instagram.

It is very important to keep your video content and each individual video within the larger picture of your social media strategy, so be sure to consider your audience and you can reach them in the most appropriate spaces and ways.

The tips we run through in this episode include having a clear goal and purpose for a video, deciding on a platform, headline creation, content and message preparation, calls to action, captions and subtitles, and lastly, thumbnail selection.

Key Points From This Episode:

• Making sure you have a clear goal and purpose for your video.
• Which platforms should you use to share a video?
• How to create a compelling headline.
• Outlining your content while steering away from full scripting.
• Your all important call to action!
• Captions, subtitles and adding supplementary text to your videos.
• Selecting an amazing and compelling thumbnail.
• The joy and hustle for this week!
• And much more!

Words of Wisdom:

“You should really consider how a single video fits into your larger editorial calendar.”

“You audience is a little bit different everywhere!”

“You must drill down and figure out where your people are spending their time and how to reach them best in that space.”

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Namastream — https://namastream.com

Namastream on Twitter — https://twitter.com/namastream

Soulful MBA — https://www.soulful.mba

Audible — http://audibletrial.com/soulfulmba

Clipomatic — https://www.apalon.com/clipomatic.html

Handbrake — https://handbrake.fr

Joy: Benro Let’s Go Selfie Stick + Tripod

Hustle: The Social Media Video Checklist

We dive into five exciting trends that we’ve been noticing, both on social media and in online business in general, over the past few months. We give you our take on what’s working, what’s not, and how you can embrace some of these changes, rather than be overwhelmed by them.

By the end of this episode, you’ll have some concrete evidence of the powerful role Facebook groups still play in connecting us, as well as what to make of the new ads that are going to be popping up all over your Pinterest feed! In addition, we take a look at the exciting shifts big brands are taking toward nanoinfluencers and WHY you should consider becoming an early adopter of IGTV.

Key Points From This Episode:

•    Why many women are only on Facebook for the groups.
•    Why we still recommend Facebook groups.
•    Pinterest recently went public: what does this mean?
•    What the next wave of Pinterest means for bloggers and podcasters.
•    Why we are getting back in the Pinterest game.
•    Shifts we’re noticing in membership and other subscription model businesses.
•    Why your audience really just wants to connect with you.
•    The rise of nanoinfluencers and how this model works.
•    The benefits of being a nanoinfluencer and how to become one.
•    Why are we seeing so much more IGTV?
•    How Instagram is rewarding early adopters of IGTV.
•    And much more!

Words of Wisdom:

“If it’s difficult for you to be on social as a business owner, there’s a mindset shift that has to happen.” — @namastream

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Audible Free Trial — https://www.audibletrial.com/soulfulmba

Pinterest — https://www.pinterest.com

Namastream — https://namastream.com/

Namastream on Twitter — https://twitter.com/namastream

Tailwind — www.tailwindapp.com/

Obvious.ly — www.obvious.ly/

Soulful MBA — www.soulful.mba/

Soulful MBA on Instagram — www.instagram.com/namastream/

Become and Online Teacher FREE Course — www.soulful.mba/teacher

Joy: Felix Gray Glasses — https://shopfelixgray.com/

Hustle: Are You Ready for the Nanoinfluencers? — www.nytimes.com/2018/11/11/business/media/nanoinfluencers-instagram-influencers.html

These Women Are Only on Facebook for the Groups — www.buzzfeednews.com/article/annehelenpetersen/facebook-private-groups-online-abuse

Looking for some Insta tips? We discuss a number of the new features that Instagram will be rolling out in the near future…

Joy: @trinnylondon / @trinnywoodall Hustle: The Instagram Aesthetic Is Over / 7 Exciting Instagram Features Coming in 2019

Other Mentions: How to Use the Donation Sticker on Instagram Stories

Although there’s #noshame in archiving a Facebook Group that’s run its course, there are a few key strategic reasons why we’ve decided to keep ours going (and why you might want to keep yours up and running too).

Joy: connect via old-fashioned IRL networking

Hustle: News Feed Eradicator for Facebook

To illustrate the power of beta launching, we share our detailed stories of founding two software companies with this method.

Joy: Drunk Elephant

Hustle: Beta Launch Checklist

She is the creator and host of the In Her Voice Podcast. Her work has been featured on The Huffington Post, The Elephant Journal, and YourTango.com

Kelly, a recovering perfectionist, is also a professional flutist with Symphoria, a wife, the mother of two teenage boys, and the mama to a beagle named Piper.

Connect with Kelly: website // Instagram

Other Mentions: The Cut: Can You Be Ambitious and Happy? / Girl, Stop Apologizing

Joy: Take a (week )day off!

Hustle: Moonsight Planner

Listen in to hear our take on Elizabeth and her story, including the implications we think it has on other female founders.

Joy: The Dropout Podcast

Hustle: Loom

As the creator of the Marketing Personalities Framework, Brit has created a set of sixteen personality-specific strategies to help you to grow your business in a feel-good way. Her unique work is designed to help you go deep, find your true self, and grow that business of yours without feeling fake and sales-y.

Connect with Brit: Marketing Personalities

Joy: listening to podcasts

Hustle: Asana

We encourage you to invest your energy into mapping out your story, refining your message, and your connecting with your audience. What can your program do for the people in your community? How does working with you lead to a transformation for another human being?

Joy: +Acumen Storytelling CourseHustle: Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen

Taryn is a Trauma Informed Yoga instructor, dōTERRA Wellness Advocate and soon to be Recovery Coach. She has led over 25 yoga for recovery retreats, presented at several Yoga conferences, and has co-taught alongside Elena Brower. More recently, Taryn has started teaching SHE RECOVERS Yoga at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health and launched an inaugural SHE RECOVERS Yoga Teacher Training  Program (October 2019.)

Connect with Taryn: She Recovers | Instagram

Joy: move your body everyday in a joyful way

Hustle:The Four Hour Workweek / The Beautiful Life Lab

In less than three years she has expanded her business from a single client to a multi-million dollar agency with over twenty people on her team. Emily now works with some of the biggest names in online business—from life coaches to fitness experts to Internet celebrities.

Emily and her team work with business owners to take the fear and overwhelm out of marketing and make even the most complicated launches feel stress-free.

When Emily isn’t growing her online empire, you can find her traveling the world with her family or playing in the park with her two young children.

Connect with Emily: website / podcast

Joy: morning routine / house manager

Hustle: to-do list (top 3), momentum masterclass planner

A sales funnel is a series of steps that potential customers take on the way to purchasing. It’s a marketing term for the customer journey, although that “journey” is definitely a guided tour led by the seller. This marketing model allows online entrepreneurs to simultaneously refine their messaging, and get real-time data capturing which customer segments are responsive to their offers. Sounds great, right?

Maybe...

While the analogy of a funnel can be useful to a point, we believe that it oversimplifies the relationship that we have with or audience.

(Listen in to learn what kind of model we use instead.)

Other Mentions: How the Flywheel Killed HubSpot's Funnel

Joy: Roar. 30 Women. 30 Stories.

Hustle: More Start-Ups Have an Unfamiliar Message for Venture Capitalists: Get Lost

Joy: linen smock (similar)

Hustle: Ken Burns on MasterClass

Following her yoga teacher training, Maura raised $20,000 for HIV/AIDS programs in South Africa in collaboration with Off the Mat into the World. She considers that project a defining moment in her life and in taking her practice to the next level, both as a student and as a teacher.

Maura has extensively studied trauma informed practices and the intersection of social justice and yoga and she is dedicated to making the practice of yoga more inclusive and accessible for all people. Maura’s deep commitment to building community shows up in all that she offers.

Maura has been invited to teach at Wanderlust Philly, has been named one of Be Well Philly’s Top 5 Yogi’s to Watch, and was featured in Origin Magazine. She teachers classes, workshops, and trainings at her studio, Yoga Home, which also offers online classes through Namastream.

Joy: Basketball Games / Travel / Netflix Binges

Hustle: Soulful MBA Podcast (blush) / loom / Off the Mat Into the World  / CTZN Well / Paper Planner

What steps can you take now, before the end of the calendar year, to reduce your tax burden? What metrics should you be measuring each month? What is a customer journey and why/how should you be tracking it?  

Joy: Seedlip

Hustle: “I’m a Developer. I Won’t Teach My Kids to Code, and Neither Should You.”

These are the practices of Digital Artisanship:

1. Identify your core values early. These will be your touchstone and will help you to navigate every difficult decision.
2. Ask why. Daily. Don’t assume that what’s been right for others is right for you.
3. Build it well. Quality matters. Strive to be an artisan with your work—whether you’re making soap or outlining an online course.
4. Curiosity is essential. Your ability to approach problems with wonder will carry you through.
5. Audit your supply chain. Prioritize your values over what’s cheap or convenient or fast. Hire the people whose work you want to see more of in the world.
6. Embrace niching. This will be the key to your financial success. Understand a specific group of people and serve them well.
7. Value relationships over transactions. Treat your employees, contractors, and suppliers with trust and respect.
8. Demand fair prices from your customers. Avoid the negative energetic exchange that fuels resentment.
9. Pay fair wages to your team. Honor the community by respecting someone’s training and expertise.
10. Embrace the long game. Slow down. Build in buffers. It always takes longer than you think. An idea, when followed through with consistent action, can create tremendous financial liberation.
11. Be mindful of interconnectivity, the larger ecosystem, and ripple effects.  What we do affects others (and our future selves).
12. Embrace a culture of responsible generosity. Infuse your business practices with service and philanthropy, but not to a point that it drains you or breeds resentment. You know when you’re overextended. You know when you have more to give.
13. Trust your intuition. Eliminate the tasks that some advisor or random Instagram post told you that you “should” be doing.
14. Do what’s right instead of what’s easy. Treat leadership like a sacred duty. (If you’re reading this, you’re a leader.)
15. Look beyond profit and growth. Money is a metric of success, but not the only one.
16. Tell your story. Encourage others to tell theirs.
17. Amplify the work of others. Use your platform to showcase the voices that you respect and admire.
18. Connect with real human beings. Networking will get you off the ground in the beginning and it will accelerate your success as you grow.
19. Value your offline life. Carve out analog space. It will refuel you.
20. Speak up. Your voice matters. You won’t get there by playing small. Bravery is inextricably linked to your success.
21. Nobody does it alone. Find the people who will celebrate your victories and pull you out of those inevitable dips and struggles.
22. You can figure it out. You don’t know it all and you never will. Be willing to roll up your sleeves and get dirty.
23. Know that success is possible for you. It make take longer or look differently than you expect. It’s worth it.

Collectively, we have an opportunity to impact how this evolving economy shifts, to drive it in a more intentional direction. Please share these #digitalartisan practices with your people. Let’s build a world where entrepreneurship equates to creativity, service, and sustainability.

Joy: David Whyte’s Santiago

Hustle: The Digital Artisan Manifesto

Best Books

Jeni: The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore / Charlotte Walsh Likes To Win / The Female Persuasion: A NovelSandy: Witch: Unleashed. Untamed. Unapologetic. / Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts.

Best Netflix Shows

Sandy: Feminists: What Were They Thinking?Jeni: Salt Fat Acid Heat + (the book)

Best Purchase

Jeni: kayakSandy: private pilates classes

Most Influential People

Sandy: Tara MohrJeni: Sandy <3

Favorite Instagram Accounts

Sandy: @selfportrait_societyJeni: @generalstore

Best Decisions

Sandy: our return to wellnessJeni: finally putting our software on sale

Best Articles

Sandy: Powerful Women Talk About PowerJeni: Reconsider / Signal v. Noise

Best Conference

Jeni: She RecoversSandy: She Recovers

Best Podcasts

Sandy: ZigZagJeni: Yoga Behind Bars: A Conversation with Jess Frank

Our Words for 2019

Jeni: AmplificationSandy: Efficiency

Listen on...

Joy: The Sill

Hustle: Dare to Lead / (available for sale in our Soulful MBA Shoppe)

Which is totally, 100% fine. Because readiness isn’t about knowing exactly what to do in every situation, it’s about being prepared to bounce back when the unexpected arises. It’s about seeing where your unique talents meet a pressing customer need. It’s about attitude and energy and momentum and consistency.

So how can you tell if you’ve got the right attitude, energy, and momentum to launch your online business RIGHT NOW? Here are seven indicators that you’re prepared to take the plunge:

1. Your product or service addresses a need.
2. You understand the risks.
3. You have unwavering faith in your idea or product.
4. You have (or are actively building) an audience.
5. You’re in a good place emotionally, personally, and financially.
6. You understand your niche.
7. You’ve got a short- and long-term plan in place.

Joy: Our “Favorite Things” ShoppeHustle: Blueline MiracleBind Notebook

How do you ensure that you’ll have paying customers when you open the virtual doors on day one? Which old-school marketing strategies should you be utilizing to gather your initial pool of students? How is a client roster different than an email list?

We’re unpacking all of these questions and sharing our favorite advice for new online teachers in this episode...

Joy: 6 Ways Mushrooms Can Save the WorldHustle: old-school paper flyers

We’d like to suggest a new twist: Make sure those marketing and business plans align with your ethics.

It’s so easy to get sucked into the vortex of gift guides and gimmicks, clickbait and formulas. We totally get it. The online business world is crowded and cutthroat right now, and it’s tough to stick to your beliefs. It’s tough to resist when dozens of supposed-experts tell you to push your offerings hard and often and relentlessly. It’s tough to consider dialing back during a sales season when everyone else is amping up. But you can do this. You can do what’s right instead of what’s easy. And, in the long run, it’ll benefit your business.

Why? Because you won’t burn out. You’ll remain aligned with your true goals and mission long after your competition has grown weary of tricking customers into short-term sales. Because you’ll build deep trust and lasting relationships that carry you well beyond December and January. Because you might make less money in the short term, but you’ll also make fewer compromises.

Listen in to hear our suggestions for piloting your business through the holiday shopping and gifting season in ways that promote quality, heartfelt creation, and genuine connection.

We’re both organically drawn to work collaboratively, so partnership was an ideal business decision for both of us. Our business is like a shared child, and we trust each other to steward the company and serve as an equal decision maker. In our case, the whole is truly greater than the sum of the parts.

Joy: jenifer lake ceramics

Hustle: The Four Agreements (especially the audiobook version)

In this episode, we explore our relationships to power. Are you comfortable with the concept of power? What about empowerment? What about laying claim to your own power (Can you get behind the idea of power for other women, but not for yourself)? This is a term that many of us wrestle with regularly in our work and lives.

Perhaps we ought to take Mary Beard up on her suggestion to transform power from a noun into a verb. This way, it is less about power being a character trait and more about power being an intentional practice, comprised of multiple daily acts.

Our takeaway? Collectively, we need to stop judging other women for exercising power, while constantly finding ways to effect our own.

Joy: Cauldron Hustle: Powerful Women Talk About Power (And Powerlessness)

In this episode, we discuss Carol Dweck’s work on the difference between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. The bottom line? Your true potential is unknown and malleable. It is so often shaped by the internal language you use to define your experience.

How can you overcome a fixed mindset? Identify it, recognize it, name it, and ask for help.

Joy: Vijay Gupta Hustle: Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

If actual, word-of-mouth is priceless, online reviews are platinum. Meaning online approval is slightly less valuable to your business, but not by much! Recent research shows that 97% of consumers read online reviews for local businesses, and 85% trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. And we’re not talking testimonials on your own website, we’re talking about third-party platforms where reviewers can be candid and honest. We’re talking about Google Reviews!

Listen in to learn some quick and simple tips for getting started with Google Reviews.

Rynda, who has a background in the music industry, is a highly sought-after consultant and currently works with a select number innovative, like-minded entrepreneurs, lifestyle brands, content creators, and experiential events. She has helped to grow multiple companies and ventures. Her network is vast and she has a knack for combining creative concepts with the right people to get achieve powerful results.

Rynda has also just launched VRYeveryday, a supplement line supporting mental health and well-being. She has over 25 years of continuous sobriety and recovery from drug addiction and almost 3 years of full remission from clinical depression.

It’s not everyday that you meet a woman who took it upon herself to launch a business of this nature—formulating and manufacturing her own supplements—and that’s the primary focus of this conversation. Rynda is brave and her story is vulnerable.

Connect with Rynda: here / here / here

Joy: messages of impact from VRYeveryday usersHustle: perseverance

In this episode, we share our recent conversation with business strategist and innovator, Kayce Brown. Kayce predicts trends and seizes opportunity. She’s hard to put into a box. She is creative, impactful, and disruptive.

Following over a decade in the film industry, her unique blend of talent and expertise sit at the cross-section of tech, pop culture, social good, and entertainment. Kayce’s deep knowledge and experience within these industries have allowed her to make connections and strategically partner with global brands, influencers, nonprofits, and media. (Kayce has worked with everyone from Uber to the NFL, from Bird scooters to GYFT, a recently launched digital pregnancy companion.)

In this conversation, we get a peek into Kayce’s mindset, and she shares some invaluable advice for all of us in the process.

Other Mentions: Mindset: The New Psychology of Success /

Connect with Kayce: LinkedIn /

Joy: movement + exercise

Hustle: LinkedIn / AngelList

Joy: Sunrise Rock Everything OilHustle: How to Book and Prep Podcast Guests / Power Your Podcast with Storytelling

This episode features a raw conversation about our roles as mothers and feminists, our differing responsibilities, and the complex relationship we each have with financial security. Whenever we travel for our businesses, we encounter the double standards that have come to define our lives as modern women and mothers. It’s the truth. The truth is messy.

Joy: Malibu Beach House Airbnb / diane krön chocolatier

Hustle: The Wealthy Feminist / Many Women at Elite Colleges Set Career Path to Motherhood

Jess’s passion for providing transformative opportunities to incarcerated people sparked at the start of her career and has only grown since she became a YBB instructor nearly 5 years ago. As a program coordinator for the Post Prison Education Program and University Beyond Bars, Jess became both intimately acquainted with the challenges facing people in the criminal justice system and deeply inspired by the dedication of the students. As YBB’s program director, Jess co-facilitates trauma-informed trainings, manages and mentors volunteers, oversees program creation and growth, and conducts site visits and evaluations. Jess shared with us that the highlight of her week is teaching yoga to 25 students at the men’s prison in Monroe, Washington.

Connect with Yoga Behind Bars: YBB / YBB Online

Joy: deflect judgement with self loveHustle: movement, being in the body

In this episode we interview Jenny MacLeod (aka “Jenny Girl Friday”), who has been working one-on-one with self-employed women for over five years. She’s on a new mission to make those necessary business chores easier and even fun…for every single self-employed woman in Seattle. As a small business owner herself, Jenny offers Sidekick Services (tax reminders + how-to articles via email), one-time consults, workshops, and, coming SOON, an online business apothecary.  She also released a book last year, How to Become Self-Employed in Seattle: A Guidebook, Companion, and Reference.

Jenny lives in Seattle in a half-finished house, with her husband Alex and two teenagers. You might spot her driving around town in her VW bus on her way to yoga or happy hour. Amazing, Jenny has never owned a cell-phone and she built her business out of the belief that self-employed people are essential to the soul of Seattle. 

Connect with Jenny: jennygirlfriday.com / Business Apothecary

Joy: Goddess Oracle Deck / Women Who Run with the Wolves / Scythe / Ladywell’s

Hustle: Do the Work! / The Art of the Start / Jenny’s Weekly Flow: basic worksheet

p.s. This podcast is sponsored by Audible. Head over to audibletrial.com/soulfulmba to get a free audiobook and a 30-day free trial!

In this episode, we walk you though our metrics analysis and tracking process, how we set and evaluate goals, how we choose the next features for our software, and why we incorporate trend forecasting into our retreats. We also reveal some updates related to our our Soulful MBA course + community!

Joy: State the LabelHustle: Take a business retreat of your own.

The language that we choose to use each and everyday matters; by opting to be lazy with our language, we add more fodder to an existing series of microaggressions against women.

According to Sherryl Kleinman, Professor Emeritus of  Sociology at UNC Chapel Hill, “...women want to be included in the term that refers to the higher-status group: men. But while being labeled one of the guys might make women feel included, it’s only a guise of inclusion, not the reality. If women were really included we wouldn’t have to disappear into the word guys.” Amen, sister.

Other Mentions: Why Sexist Language Matters / The Problem With ‘Hey Guys’ / An unnecessarily long and surprisingly fascinating history of ‘guys’ 

Joy: Charlotte Walsh Likes to WinHustle: ZigZag Podcast

We were profoundly rocked this summer by Jaron Lanier’s new book: Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now, and this podcast episode explores the reasons why this book has had such an immense impact on each of us.

How does social media impact our access to economic dignity? What are the long-term implications of new technology? Why is the freemium model of social media so dangerous and why does the success of HBO and Netflix highlight what’s wrong with free software? What does social media and artificial intelligence have to do with religion and spirituality?

Other Mentions: The Cognition Crisis

Joy: Mary Robinson launches new feminist fight against climate changeHustle: Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now

Joy: make something by hand

Hustle: NPR’s sexist blunder is proof that women’s work isn’t just overlooked—it’s erased / Women’s Media Is a Scam / How Facial Recognition Could Tear Us Apart / The Calmest iPhone Yet

We’ve both been known to “hide” behind our corporate brand because we’re part of a larger team, but are we doing this at the expense of our future success?

There’s a feeling that many women share, that we need to have a doctorate (or more!) in a subject in order to speak publicly about it. But the truth we're realizing is, that in business, we each just need to show up fully as our imperfect selves.

Some great examples of personal brands we follow: Patricia Russo, Danielle LaPorte, Carmenspagnola, Elena Brower, Lisa Lister, Brené Brown.

Joy: How to Make Shrubs, Girl Meets Dirt Hustle: 2 Years From Now, If You Don’t Have A Personal Brand, Nobody Is Going To Work With You

• Email Marketing: The traditional advice in the online business space has been to grow your list and email your subscribers A LOT. The new trend we’re noticing? Email only when you have something of value to share. As the Internet has become more noisy, we need to be mindful about adding to the cacophony…

• Live Video: Part of showing up and embodying your brand these days involves live video. We don’t see this trend going away anytime soon, so we suggest becoming comfortable with this medium if you’re looking to grow your business online.

• Long-Form Blogging: Put out LESS content, but make it BETTER. It should be in-depth, comprehensive, and useful for your quintessential clients.

• Audio + Digital: The sweet spot of business (and modern culture) is increasingly the intermixing of digital and analog. Human connection PLUS (or via) tech. Passive income is getting harder and harder to come by, but digital offerings PLUS physical products and/or real human connection is HOT. (Plus, you can charge more money for this type of offering.)

Joy: The ShopkeepersHustle: Zoom

Let’s start with a huge and incredibly important DON’T: Never sell your services by the hour (or even by the session). Going this route means giving your clients total control of your process and an escape hatch if the work gets too tough. (Of course, you’d never want to trick your clients into purchasing more services than they need, but most clients need far more support than they realize.) One big breakthrough is not enough; they may feel done long before they actually are done.

What’s the alternative? Create packages of sessions. Doing this allows you to deliver real value to your clients, truly help them improve and develop, and embrace a business strategy that creates sustainable income for you as a coach.

Here are some rules of thumb for pricing your online coaching packages:

1. Keep it simple.
2. Offer at least three options / levels.
3. Know your audience.
4. Set a revenue goal and work backwards. (Check out our full blog post on this topic here for examples of calculating your own pricing.)

Far too many entrepreneurs dive into launching an online course before they’re truly ready. And courses may seem like “passive” revenue streams, but they actually require some serious prep work and behind-the-scenes management.

One-on-one online consults, on the other hand, are the perfect way to build both revenue and clout while offering valuable services to eager clients. You may want to eventually build a course, but starting with online coaching sessions can help you build the foundation you’ll need to make that future online course a massive success.

Need more reasons to take the live-streaming route right now for your coaching business? Here you go:

• Private online coaching requires virtually no prep. Unlike pre-taped videos, classes, and courses, you can work with a client in any tidy, relatively well-lit room. And as soon as you hit the live-stream button, you’re ready to rock.
• Online client consults help you build your fan base while earning money. Cultivate meaningful relationships with your students, bring in revenue, and develop your impeccable reputation all at once!
• One-on-one live-streamed sessions allow you to hone your craft. Refine your content and coaching style by working one-on-one with clients. Spend a year or so learning about your clients’ common questions, problems, or issues through individual sessions. That way, when you’re ready to build a group program or course, you can tailor it to address their specific needs.
• Virtual coaching saves you time. Coaching in person is a great way to build rapport, but often means commuting to an office, a studio, or the client’s home. Online sessions allow you to save travel time and therefore book more sessions per day (or take some much-needed time off).
• Private online coaching creates instant boundaries. Many teachers have told us that they struggle to end their in-person sessions diplomatically. People love to stand around and chat once the work is done, even if the coach has a mountain of other work to tackle. Live-streamed sessions mean clicking off when you’re done without any drawn-out goodbyes.

In Part 2 (which comes out next week), you’ll learn about how to price and package your online coaching sessions. Stay tuned!

Favorite Instagram Accounts

Sandy: @helloplantlady / @knitatude / @thehellyeslifeJeni: @accidentallywesanderson / @riseandwander / @ritual_botanicaBusiness + Tech Resources

Sandy: CutStory for Instagram StoriesJeni: DuckDuckGo Chrome Extension

Podcasts We’re Crushing On

Sandy: Call Your Girlfriend / Ear HustleJeni: Werk It: The Podcast 

Online ShopsSandy: Piece on Peace / RMS BeautyJeni: Primary Children’s Clothing

In this episode of the podcast, we interview powerhouse Namastream client Brooke Tyler about her experience growing her Asheville, NC-based acupuncture and pilates studio online.

After growing her local studio and clinical business to a 4,000+ ft location with twelve employees, you’ll learn why Brooke chose to pursue the online growth path (rather than opening up an additional studio location).

Brooke discusses her decision to incorporate seasonality into her online program, how she balances single motherhood with her business, and the specific way that she schedules her time each week and month to fit everything in. 

Connect with Brooke: Clasique Acupuncture & Pilates Studio / Core Self Online / Instagram 1, 2, 3

Other Mentions: Dorothee VandeWalle

Joy: You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life / You Are a Badass at Making Money: Master the Mindset of Wealth Hustle: blank journal + favorite pens

Nikki, who lives in Northern California with her husband and two daughters, has more than 20 years of teaching experience and has been leading 200- and 300-hour teaching trainings for more than a dozen years. She is YA500hr E-RYT and was Director of Trainer Development for YogaWorks for more than 7 years, where she supported and mentored teacher trainers. She leads intensives, immersions, and workshop series in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond.

In addition to offering her own yoga membership on Namastream, Nikki contributes to Yoga International, served as a 2016 Athleta Ambassador (for embodying the Power of She), was sponsored by Zobha, has presented at Yoga Journal conferences, and was voted best yoga teacher by Marin Magazine in 2016.

In our conversation, Nikki shares her opinion on the relationship between yoga and tech and offers tactical insight for building a thriving virtual studio.

Connect with Nikki: Nikki Estrada Yoga / Instagram / Nikki’s Membership on Namastream

Joy: look into your Dosha / Ayurveda by Siva / Monica Yearwood / Mark HalpernHustle: How I Built This Podcast

Sandy: Witch: Unleashed. Untamed. Unapologetic. / Warlight: A novel / Walden / The Josephine B Trilogy / The Female Persuasion: A Novel

Jeni: Tell the Machine Goodnight: A Novel / The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate―Discoveries from a Secret World / Make Trouble: Standing Up, Speaking Out, and Finding the Courage to Lead / Dear Madam President: An Open Letter to the Women Who Will Run the World / The Green Witch: Your Complete Guide to the Natural Magic of Herbs, Flowers, Essential Oils, and More

Joy: The Crafter’s BoxHustle: VSCO

More interesting questions: What is your work making possible? How is it impacting our culture? Our guest today, Amy Walsh, reveals that deep expertise in Photoshop and an eye for a pretty flat lay is not a requirement for producing interesting and important imagery for your brand.

Amy is an artist, visual storytelling specialist, sculptural worldmaker, and founder of the Bureau of Tactical Imagination. She helps people uncover the visual story of their work, and use it to communicate their most important ideas.

As a visual artist she has exhibited in places as institutional as museums and as everyday as the streets. She has devoted her life to understanding and teaching about visual culture and creative process - a road that winds through her work as a university educator, a museum exhibit interactive designer, an activist and now digital culture maker.

Amy helps her clients and communities build the creative and risk-taking skills to be true innovators in all areas of their work. Connect with Amy: The Bureau of Tactical ImaginationOther Mentions: Art Objects, Draw Your Weapons

Joy: go outside and feel the earth under your feetHustle: mastermind, Co-Commercial

Joy: Daily HarvestHustle: Logitech Slim Folio

In this episode, we interview Namastream client, Kate Case. At the intersection of Eastern wisdom and Western science, Kate's body of work combines twenty years of experience as a professional yoga therapist, yoga teacher, Thai massage therapist, Eastern medicine (Chinese medicine and Ayurveda) practitioner, women’s wellness leader, women’s moon circle facilitator, and eastern energy anatomy expert.

Kate is a Nature-based Yogini, Moon Maven, Ritual Queen, Anatomy Geek, and Hormone Whisperer specializing in women's health, cycles, rhythms, body wisdom, and soulful integration.

You can learn more about Kate’s company, SHE Collective (the “SHE” stands for soulful, holistic, and embodied) here and her Ritual Box subscription here. 

Connect with Kate: www.shecollective.ca / www.ritualbox.ca / Instagram

Other Mentions: The Great Work of Your Life by Stephen Cope

Joy: Red Hot and Holy: A Heretic's Love Story, NatureHustle: High Speed Internet, Journal

In her 2018 commencement address to Barnard College, Abby Wambach delivers four pieces of advice to women embarking on their careers out of college. This is amazing advice for young women, but we believe that these themes are universal:

1. Make failure your fuel.
2. Lead from the bench.
3. Champion each other.
4. Demand the ball.

We’re grateful to be part of this collective wolfpack with each of you…

Joy: 2018 Barnard Commencement Address Remarks as Delivered, video versionHustle: 13 Reasons Why You Should Read “Women Who Run With the Wolves” Instead

After working in social media management after of college, Mae had a hunch that influencer marketing was coming and had an idea to build a different kind of business—pairing an agency with a tech platform. Mae has gathered a team of experts to help her turn her vision into a reality, and in the process, she’s built a client roster of some of the world’s most iconic brands.

We loved interviewing Mae, a fellow bootstrapped female founder, because her story is incredibly inspiring and her experience is so similar, in many ways, to ours.

Listen in to learn why innovation requires thinking outside of the box and why listening to your customers is such a powerful strategy for getting an edge on the competition. 

Other Mentions: obvious.ly, Mae on Instagram

Joy: half-day FridaysHustle: Trello

Joy: Woodland AlchemyHustle: OnlineLabels.com

Michelle has a PhD in Communication and was a university professor prior to starting her own online business. We chat with Michelle about her own entrepreneurial journey and then dive into her process for helping brands to craft their unique three-word “rebellion” (and why it matters to do so). 

Other Mentions: Michelle Mazur’s website (where you can download her “3 Word Rebellion” worksheets for free!)

Joy: Game of ThronesHustle: The Four Tendencies

We explore some controversial themes in this episode as we question the fundamental societal shifts that have caused “wellness” to explode as an industry in North America (and “medicine” to effectively function as big business).

Although we’ve questioned some of our culture’s intense demands for “productivity” and “exercise culture” in the past, this is the first time that we’re questioning the concept of mindfulness.

We’re not placing any stakes in ground on this issue quite yet, but the conversation is important.

Joy: Joule Sous VideHustle: Natural Causes, Mind Control: Barbara Ehrenreich’s radical critique of wellness and self-improvement

p.s. This podcast is sponsored by Audible. Head over to audibletrial.com/soulfulmba to get a free audiobook and a 30-day free trial!

In this interview, we dive into Dana’s entrepreneurial journey from journalist to mom to entrepreneur and author. She shares advice on how to best integrate live video into your social media presence and how to keep your social media schedule grounded and realistic.

Other Mentions: Dana’s website

Joy: Google HomeHustle: Dubsado

You can listen to the full episode here. Thank you, Anne and Amy for inviting us onto your show! 

p.s. This podcast is sponsored by Audible. Head over to audibletrial.com/soulfulmba to get a free audiobook and a 30-day free trial!

Autumn is the mother of three small children, lives with her family in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and hosts the Legal Road Map® podcast. Her law firm’s mission is to provide “innovative legal services with integrity and joy, so that ambitious entrepreneurs can grow profitable businesses and create the life of their dreams.”

In this episode, Autumn shares her entrepreneurial journey, as well as some tactical insights into trademarks, privacy policies, contracts, and website terms and conditions.

Other Mentions: Autumn’s Website, Autumn’s GDPR Checklist

Joy: vacationHustle: Asana, Harvest

You can download a copy of the checklist here (scroll to the bottom of the post).

p.s. This podcast is sponsored by Audible. Head over to audibletrial.com/soulfulmba to get a free audiobook and a 30-day free trial!

Leah teaches her clients how to think of selling in these terms: Build the house. Furnish it. Move in. THEN, invite people over…

How is the your sales process organized? Do you have a sales pipeline? According to Leah, the health of your pipeline is a good indicator of the health of your business.

Leah didn’t learn to sell by being a commissioned salesperson; she learned it experientially through entrepreneurship. She taught herself everything she could about selling by reading over 60 books, which helped her overcome the natural “selling shyness” most entrepreneurs have.

Prior to starting Smart Gets Paid, Leah built, grew, and sold multiple businesses. She co-founded Lesbians Who Tech, a global organization to foster more LGBT women in technology. She also co-founded Lean Impact, where she helped nonprofits use Lean Startup principles to increase their impact and run their businesses more efficiently.

Leah’s best advice? Focus on articulating YOUR VALUE. When you can step into your value and really own it, the sales process becomes about offering that value instead of asking to be hired.

Other Mentions: Smart Gets Paid

Joy: sweater shaverHustle: CRM tool (Leah uses Nimble)

1. The majority of blog posts are short (under 500 words), so you will stand out by producing longer content.
2. You can establish yourself as an authority and expert by writing high-quality, comprehensive posts (3,000 words or more).
3. Search engines (like Google) reward long-form content. The Internet doesn’t need more fluff.
4. Epic blogs posts can be easily repurposed. Think Instagram captions, podcast episodes, YouTube videos, email-based free course, ebooks, etc.

Startup culture is defined by quick growth and fast exits, but we believe that true accomplishment and innovation results from longer-term thinking.

Starting a business is really not that different than starting a garden. You plant the seeds, water them, show up day after day—trusting that you’ll eventually see the garden bloom. Somewhere along the way, our culture became convinced that flowers that don’t bloom overnight are unworthy of planting. This kind of thinking is not only absurd; it’s dangerous.

We love the idea of building companies that will support our families and communities for years to come, but this means making choices sometimes that prioritize longer-term goals over short-term gains. This is actually not a novel concept—it’s roots run deep and sustainable growth was a common practice prior to the “expand or die” economic paradigm that evolved out of the Cold War.

Economic history aside, sustainable growth just makes sense in a world of finite resources.

Some questions we want to leave you with… What does success mean to you? What do you want your legacy to be with respect to your current business?

Joy: High Vibrational BeautyHustle: Overcast

When should you use autofocus and when should you disable the feature in favor of manual settings? If you’re filming in low light, filming around a bunch of reflective surfaces, or filming a fast moving object, you’ll want to disable autofocus on your camera. (We break down how to do this on a few of our favorite devices like the Canon Vixia, the iPhone, and the Logitech C920.)

p.s. If you’re using the Logitech C920 for live-streaming per our recommendation, Sandy suggests that you download Logitech’s free gaming software in order to have more control of your video settings.

p.p.s. This podcast is sponsored by Audible. Head over to audibletrial.com/soulfulmba to get a free audiobook and a 30-day free trial!

This episode features a candid conversation with Laura Close. Laura is a Seattle-based executive leadership coach and career consultant who leads a select portfolio of clients through the transformative work of leadership development, helping them reach their next level of career and business achievement.

In this episode, Laura explains why it’s problematic for women to lead with soft skills in business (and what they should do instead). She also shares her fascinating 4-part framework for identifying your own type of selfish drive:

1. Money
2. Fame
3. Power
4. Authority

To summarize, Laura recommends two primary strategies for business success: (1) lead with your most technical value, and (2) identify (and come to terms with) your most selfish motivation.  

Other Mentions: Hero’s Journey Framework, LauraClose.com

Joy: Brent MartinHustle: Herding Tigers: Be the Leader That Creative People Need

p.s. This podcast is sponsored by Audible. Head over to audibletrial.com/soulfulmba to get a free audiobook and a 30-day free trial!

The standard 40-hour work week was a product of the late 19th century and early 20th century labor movement, and while it did its job to protect factory workers who were—quite literally—being worked to death, it’s quickly becoming obsolete.

In our era, most professionals work far more than 40 hours per week. (We found a stat that Americans employed in full-time jobs work an average of 47 hours per week, which is almost 6 full days of work.) We’re also constantly tethered to our phones, even during our non-working hours. And with all of this added connectivity, many employers are not adding in additional flexibility benefits (the ability to work remotely, flexible hours, etc.).

Because of the autonomy it affords, entrepreneurship can be fundamentally liberating for women. The ability to be with our children after school, to take care of them when they’re sick, and to work nights to make up for family time during the day is priceless for us.

If you feel called to entrepreneurship, you know it. It’s not for everyone. If you’re called to build something for yourself, there’s a fire in your belly that you can’t ignore. The drive to create your own schedule and define your own success outweighs your need for security (or the illusion thereof).

You can find fulfillment in a side hustle, but for some of you, that side hustle will turn into your full-time gig—in which case you’ve won the lottery. (Only you made your own luck.)

Joy: Wild Wild CountryHustle: Moo

1. Introduce yourself. Dropping a note to a new person? Want to pitch yourself for a podcast guest spot or a guest blog post? Please share a bit about yourself and include a link for how to learn more about you.
2. Be authentic. Personalize with context or, even better, a compliment. Don’t blast people a blanket request without any personalization. Let the person receiving the message know that you’ve actually engaged with her/his content.
3. State the value proposition. What’s in it for the person receiving the message?
4. Use complete sentences. Maybe even proofread? Enough said.

Have a specific call-to-action. What do you want the person to do? What action would you like for her to take?

Sandy’s Mic: Shure SM7B Vocal Dynamic Microphone

Jeni’s Mic: Electro Voice RE-20 Cardioid Microphone

Our favorite Wireless Option: Rode RodeLink FM Wireless Filmmaker System

Inexpensive Webcam with Mic Option: Logitech HD Pro Webcam C920

Perhaps you identify with Sandy, who is fine with someone else calling her an expert, but not ok with calling herself an expert? Or maybe you’re generally uncomfortable with the word and don’t know why?

Here’s a loose list of criteria we’ve come up with for evaluating your expert status:

1. You have more knowledge that other people in a particular area of work
2. You have credentials in a given area
3. You have a demonstrated track record of excellence
4. You’ve impacted people through your work
5. You’re receiving referrals
6. You’re confident in your expertise

We’d like to encourage you to explore your own relationship to expert status, since it can be such a powerful driving force in the growth of your business.

Joy: FREE Workshop: 7 Ways to Leverage Your Expertise into and Online BusinessHustle: If Only Quoting Women Were Enough

A few general guidelines:

Don’t promise specific results: Never pre-sell by guaranteeing measurable results. This is especially important if your offering is more informative than tactical.

Don’t plow ahead if feedback is negative: If you go the Beta group route and the reviews are abysmal, consider trying a different topic or format. Even if you’ve already sunk some time and money into this offering, it may still fail to resonate. Honor the input you get.

What happens if your pre-sale brings in your revenue goal? You’ve hit on a winner. Build it out, heed the feedback you get from your first customers, refine and hone, iterate, and celebrate.

This episode features an interview with KayLee Hansen. We met KayLee through a mutual friend and quickly hired her to carry out a personality assessment test on the two of us, known as the Lumina Spark Portrait.

KayLee is a certified Lumina practitioner, a facilitator, and a training and development coach for executive teams and individuals. She’s spent 13 years working in the luxury hospitality industry and has also independently consulted with the leaders of industries ranging from engineering to construction to higher education.

Working with KayLee, as you’ll hear, has been incredibly eye-opening and also validating for both of us. We think you’ll enjoy the conversation (and you may just feel the urge to sign up for your own Lumina portrait assessment).

Other Mentions: KayH Consulting Inc

Joy: The Book of AwesomeHustle: The Lumina Spark

If you sink time, energy, and money into an endeavor, you want to be sure it will pay off. Unfortunately, simply asking your followers if they’d shell out for a program or class will not get you reliable feedback: Your fans are inclined to tell you what they think you want to hear, so polling yields dubious results. (What people say and what they do are often divergent.)

So to determine if an idea really has income potential, you need proof that people will pay. You need to build something you know you can sell, and then push it into the market and see how much it can earn. If it does well, gather user feedback and iterate on it. Improve it, revise it, and resell it. And then you’ve got a business model that’s predictable, reliable, and consistently profitable.

How should you decide what to build? Ask questions that gauge interest, and get people talking about their pain points. Don’t construct your offering around your own interests or expertise; Build it on what your people want and need.

(Join us next week for Part 2, where we dive into some specific pre-selling strategies for launching your next online offering.)

Originally from Belfast, Ireland, Cathryn moved to New York City to work as an architect, but soon realized that she wanted something more. We met Cathryn back in 2014, when all three of us were learning how to build software products from scratch. Cathryn is a powerhouse and her work has been featured in Fast Company, Entrepreneur, MTV, Huffington Post, Forbes, and Inc.  

Other Mentions: Deep Work, Little Might

Joy: Coffee MeetingsHustle: Self Journal, Win the Day

Head on over to the show notes to download the full list (including links) of the resources mentioned in this episode.

In the interview, Sally gives us some insight into her writing process and shares her inspiring journey from employee to fashion blogger to freelance writer.

We are both impressed with Sally’s ability to shape her entrepreneurial work around her lifestyle—choosing to pursue her own brand of ambition and define her own terms of success along the way.  

Other Mentions: Sally McGraw, Already Pretty, The Power

Joy: Katie KroeckHustle: CoSchedule Headline Tool

Use location tags: Whenever you can (and feel comfortable doing so) forego mentioning location in your caption and simply use Instagram’s geotagging feature instead. Users love to know both what they’re seeing, and where it is in the world. Plus, location tagging increases engagement by 79%.

Lean on “link in bio”: Although Instagram makes you work for it, putting in the extra effort to direct people from your posts to your website pays off. At the end of each caption, include the words “link in bio” then create a trackable, unique URL with a tool like bit.ly so you can monitor traffic flow from your Insta posts to your site. (We use and recommend the paid linktree software.)

Use hashtags: This is a great way to get your content in front of people who aren’t following you yet! Using hashtags allows your posts to appear in search results with other posts sporting the same hashtag, exposing your brand to a wider audience. Start typing related keywords and Instagram will show you the most popular related hashtags. (Check out our previous hashtag episode if you’d like a deeper dive on this topic!)

Interested in checking out some active Instagram micro-bloggers? Here are some of our faves:

@thehellyeslife

@local_milk

@foxmeetsbear

Micro-blogging is the practice of creating information-packed, short-form blog posts that accompany social media images. Doing this allows you to convey important news, helpful tips, and other rich content quickly and effectively, without having to write and promote a traditional 500-800 word blog post.

We love to use Instagram for micro-blogging and here are six strategies you can use to build community and trust through your posts:

1. Be short and sweet.
2. Make sure that your content is unique and original.
3. Lead with the most important information early on in the post.
4. Encourage comments and interaction.
5. Share relevant tips and tricks for your followers.
6. Offer a peek behind the curtain.

This episode explores the juxtaposition between luck and hustle. Ultimately, we believe that luck, flow, determination, and hustle all come into play in the ability we have to achieve our goals.

Perhaps it’s a divine responsibility to go after your dreams when you’re born into this lucky of a situation (i.e. anyone listening to this podcast)? If you identify at all as an entrepreneur, you are likely driven to build something and grow every single day. That’s hustle.

If you’re called to build something new in the world, we encourage you pursue it with all reasonable effort. 

Other Mentions: Flow, Julie Arora 

Joy: Brave Women + Female Entrepreneurs Pinterest BoardHustle: Make Room for Magic

1. What do you love?
2. What are you good at?
3. What does the world need from you?
4. What can you get paid for?

In an ideal situation, you are able to build a career and a life around your answers to these questions.

We discovered the concept of ikigai after creating our own core values assessment exercise, and we were astonished to see that the exercises overlap quite a bit.

Other Mentions: Is this Japanese concept the secret to a long, happy, meaningful life?, How To Find Your Ikigai And Transform Your Outlook On Life And Business

Joy: Spring Dragon Longevity Tea (U.S.), Gynostemma Tea (Canada)Hustle: Masterclass

This episode shares our specific recommendations on where else to load up your keywords within a blog/podcast/vlog post:

1. The post URL: WordPress, Blogger, Squarespace, and many other blogging platforms allow you to alter the URLs of your posts, so take advantage of that flexibility!
2. The post title: It’s essential that your post title include your target keyword phrase since titles are among the top elements examined by search engine algorithms.
3. The name of the featured or primary image for the page/post: When editing and saving your images, name them using your keyword phrase. Also add your keyword phrase to the “alt text” and “title” fields when you upload the image via WordPress/Squarespace/Blogger.
4. Any relevant internal links: Linking to other posts on your blog helps keep readers circulating through your content. When you do this, be sure to link related keyword phrases instead of simple directives like “click here.”
5. The first paragraph of text in the post and/or the first subheading: You don’t want to hammer on this phrase too much, but working it into the first few lines of body copy is vital to your SEO efforts.
6. The names of any additional images
7. The final paragraph of text

For more information on how to incorporate SEO into your online business, check out this blog post (with screenshots)!

We’re discussing all things related to #girlboss culture in today’s episode. We would never consider using the term #girllawyer or #girldoctor, so it’s fascinating that this child archetype been so widely adopted by women in business. How does this self-imposed characterization impact us, both individually and culturally? According to a recent New York Times article, “female entrepreneurship is on the rise because gender equality efforts in the workplace to address issues like the salary gap and advancement to positions on corporate boards have stalled.” Entrepreneurship is increasingly becoming the answer for women who are fed up with glass ceilings or a biased workplace.

But once women venture into entrepreneurship, the gendered stereotypes are overwhelming and we can’t help but worry that some self-sabotage is at play...

Joy: OmmwriterHustle: We Should All Be Feminists, Ted Talk

Ashley and Elyse met seven years ago and have dreamed of doing something big ever since their friendship started. At first they dreamed of opening up a shaved ice shack, but years later they finally had an idea that stuck...Bravery! The idea for Bravery Mag was born from their shared frustration at the lack of kid-friendly resources to help teach their children about bravery and strong female role models.

In 2017, the ran a Kickstarter campaign to fund their idea and they were fully funded in three days. Ashley and Elyse hail from small towns in neighboring states (Ashley-Idaho, Elyse-Utah) and, between the two of them, they have five children. They have a few key things in common (like their love for rice-crispy treats and The Office), but mostly they are an opposites-attract-kind-of-duo.

Elyse has a background in education and handles all the writing for the magazine while Ashley has a background in Advertising and handles the design. They both swear they couldn't have picked a better business partner and have loved seeing their friendship reach a new level.

Other Mentions: Bravery Magazine, Bravery’s Kickstarter

Joy: family time, Acai BowlsHustle: Big Magic, How I Made This

Here are some of the reasons why discounting is bad news for your business:

1. Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC) are increasing across the board.
2. Discounting creates a race to the bottom in your industry.
3. Pricing too low attracts the wrong customers.
4. Selling cheap products tarnishes your brand.

What should you do instead? Differentiate yourself with these strategies:

1. Tell your story. Share your essence.
2. Create unique offerings in your niche.
3. Bundle! Keep the price the same, but add something extra to it.

The podcast gets personal this week. After releasing more than 60 episodes, we want to check in about the observation that we use a lot of qualifiers like “just” and “actually” in our speech and dialog with one another. We know we do it, we know that it’s an expression of internalized sexism, and we believe that it undermines our authority.

“It’s not a huge deal, is it? But language shapes consciousness...” - Tracy Moore

This episode is our commitment to doing better, owning our power, and standing in our leadership. Want to join us?

Joy: Just Not Sorry (Chrome Extension)Hustle: 'Just' Say No, Google Exec: Women, Stop Saying 'Just' So Much, You Sound Like Children

Here are 9 strategies that we’ve used to repurpose content within our own company:

1. Sharing on Facebook (both within Groups and on Business Pages)
2. Discussing the post on Facebook Live
3. Discussing the post on YouTube
4. Micro-blogging about the post on Instagram
5. Sharing the post in an Insta-story
6. Recording a Podcast about the topic (or uploading audio to Soundcloud)
7. Creating relevant Pins and Infographics (if applicable)
8. Building an email sequence or email course on the topic
9. Turning the post into a future opt-in

Danielle discusses her journey from employee to becoming the founder of her own design agency and shares some tips for working with designers (such as the one skill she wishes that all of her clients could learn). 

Other Mentions: Function Creative Co., The Brand Planner, Playing Big, Worth It: Your Life, Your Money, Your Terms

Joy: Chef’s Plate

Hustle: Adobe Creative Cloud

In this episode, we share seven tips for optimizing your Promoted Pins:

1. authenticity
2. use text overlays strategically
3. optimize pin descriptions with keywords
4. create vertical pins to take up more real estate on the screen
5. try out a collage (such as a yoga sequence broken down by pose or a recipe broken down by step)
6. be sure to include your logo or website on your image (People steal!)
7. don’t use hashtags

We’ve streamlined our team in recent months and taken over tasks that were once delegated to virtual assistants and agencies and it has been THE VERY BEST decision we could have made for our business.

We call this process “insourcing,” and although we naively thought we coined the term, it turns out to be a well-studied business phenomenon. (Heck, even the Obama Administration had a directive on insourcing back in 2012.)

When is the right time to insource vs. outsource? Listen in to learn the powerful strategies that we’ve uncovered to increase our revenue while cutting costs and reducing stress and anxiety in our business.Joy: Hand Wash Cold: Care Instructions for an Ordinary LifeHustle: Tailwind

(This post contains affiliate links. If you click through to purchase, we may receive a small credit or commission at no extra cost to you.)

Many online entrepreneurs consider their personalities to be part of their brands. A single account shows you walk the talk without getting overly sales-focused. If you mix business and personal, that balance makes your online presence feel more authentic and grounded.

If you have a partnership like we do (or a larger team), on the other hand, you’ll need to create a separate account. You’ll also want to consider opening a separate business account if you’d like to keep your personal life more private (or if your personal posts seem like too much of a departure from your business).

Joy: Baron Fig Lock + Key Hustle: Plann

For Instagram, we recommend that you:

• Research the hashtags that influencers in your niche are using and exploe the hashtags that your quintessential clients are including in their posts as well
• Mix up your hashtag blocks so that you don’t get shadowbanned

For Pinterest, we recommend that you:

• Use 4-6 hashtags max in your Pin descriptions
• Don’t use hashtags in promoted (paid) Pins
• Don’t waste your time revisiting old Pins to incorporate hashtags
• Incorporate at least one long-tail keyword hashtag in ALL of your Pins moving forward (to create a curated feed if someone clicks the tag)

It’s a brand new year, so that means our culture is abuzz with the aspirational narcissism of self development. In this episode, we discuss our opinions on New Year’s resolutions, the self help movement, and our society’s increasing focus on productivity.

Other Mentions: Improving Ourselves to Death, Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials Joy: Grain Mill

Hustle: Calendly Chrome Extension

Here are our tips for creating a successful email-based online challenge:

Find out what your audience wants. If you offer a 10-day core strength challenge but your readers are more interested in meditation, you’ll get far fewer new subscribers. Utilize polls, track your own stats to see which articles and other content users are reading, and start conversations on Facebook to test the waters before settling on a topic.

Make sure your challenge is unique. OK, it doesn’t have to be one-of-a-kind, but it certainly can’t be dime-a-dozen! Pick an angle, add a twist, and find a way to customize your offering.

Keep it short and make it doable. Length is key. Too short and you don’t get bankable buy-in from new readers, too long and participants lose interest. Most experts recommend seven to 10 days for an online challenge. Make your challenge meaty, but not overwhelming (aim for participant actions steps that take under 10-15 minutes per day).

Promote, promote, promote. Buy Facebook ads, post promos to Instagram, start a challenge-specific pin board, create a series of YouTube videos, post daily reminders to your blog, or commit to a daily Facebook Live broadcast. Tell everyone everywhere about the stellar challenge you’ve created, and (gently) nudge them to sign up.

Incorporate interactivity. It may be tempting to write every word of your content challenge ahead of time and then step back and watch it all unfold, but resist the urge to remove yourself. Online challenges that include a social or interactive component are far more popular and effective.

Don’t forget to follow up! Hopefully your challenge doubled or tripled your list, but don’t just congratulate yourself and move on. As we mentioned earlier, these folks are now primed to buy from you, so consider offering challenge participants a deal on one of your products or classes. If nothing else, prep and send a quick poll to find out what worked and what didn’t so you can tweak the challenge for its next round.

We have four basic suggestions for getting your brand in front of new people:

1. Master the Hashtag.
2. Incorporate SEO.
3. Invest in Paid Marketing.
4. Be an Inspired Guest.

Once you’ve got someone’s attention, how do you keep them interested in your brand?

1. Get them on your email list via a generous, free opt-in offer.
2. Create and share great free content on a regular basis.
3. Send out a regular newsletter that showcases your free content.
4. Add a call-to-action to your social media platforms at least once per week. 

Joy: Clear Window Bird Feeder Hustle: linktree

Online challenges can be run through blogs, Facebook Groups, Instagram, virtually any online medium, but if you’re aiming to build your email list, your challenge should be email-based.

A well-crafted challenge can:

• teach your subscribers to open your emails
• build rapport and connection with your community
• highlight your expertise as a teacher or coach
• prime subscribers to purchase

Tune into next week’s office hours episode to hear our favorite strategies for building an impactful challenge!

Although new entrepreneurs can benefit from initial coaching and mentorship, your value proposition ultimately comes from your unique essence. In this episode, we discuss the work of Carol Sanford and the reason why it is so important to identify your business’s essence.

In some ways, essence is related to branding, but your business’s essence is bigger than its brand. As Sanford notes, “Essence is unique to each company, and cannot be made up...It is similar to the uniqueness each child has in a family. Children prosper best when their essence is honored and contributed. Only years later will you know their brand and how they apply it to their work in the world. They will be most successful and creative when their life and work are aligned with their essence. The same is true for business.”

So many potential clients reach out to us asking “How can I possibly be successful when there are so many other yoga teachers, health coaches, fill-in-the-blanks, online already?” The answer we always give is “But they’re not YOU.” The world doesn’t need a handful of famous, untouchable  gurus. Human beings crave connection and there are people that can benefit from YOUR unique way of teaching, coaching, and serving.

Other Mentions: Quintessential Business Workshop

Joy: @carissabaktayHustle: Finding Your Company’s Essence – and Using it for Growth, What Is Regeneration? Part 4 – Singularity, The Regenerative Business

Project Management: We love Trello best, but Asana is great too.

Personal Email, Word Processing, Spreadsheets: G Suite

Graphic Design: Canva

Online Teaching Platform: Namastream

Payment Processor: Stripe

Video Editing: iMovie

Email Marketing: Convertkit

Website/Blog: Squarespace

Team Communication: Slack

Inspired by Austin Kleon’s book, Steal Like an Artist, and the writing of Oliver Sacks, this episode is devoted to the topic of emulation. To what extent should copying or stealing impact our work? We believe that everyone benefits from an incubation period, where we are immersed in the work of others, but that the key to becoming successful is making it your own and producing original work.

Other Mentions: Oliver Sacks on the Three Essential Elements of Creativity

Joy: Good and Well Supply Co. Perfume BalmHustle: Steal Like an Artist

We, as humans, are animals who are hardwired to respond to incentives (and disincentives) in certain ways. We should all understand some of these basic triggers so that we can know when (and how) we’re being manipulated.

We believe that when you understand the underpinnings of human behavior, and you have the power to build psychological triggers into a technology product, you have an obligation to ensure that you’re wielding that power responsibly. Unfortunately, it seems that many founders take this responsibility for granted.

What we’ve tried to do within our own software platform is to ensure that incentives are tied to meaningful accomplishment rather than contrived, artificial rewards. Intentionality is key.

Joy: The Light PhoneHustle: Hooked, Nir Eyal’s work

When setting up your lighting, you’ll want to keep these three simple goals in mind:

1. Make the featured speaker (you!) look fabulous (i.e., prioritize lighting yourself over your background).
2. Make your setting look welcoming and natural.
3. Eliminate shadows, especially on your face.

Here’s a fabulous, inexpensive lighting kit (similar to the one that Jeni uses), as well as a simple DIY tutorial for creating your own!

Best Books: Deep Work, Drop the BallBest Netflix Shows: The Crown, Brojects, Reno My RenoBest Purchases: Madewell High Rise Jeans, Bellicon, Denim Jogger, Jamie Joseph RingsMost Influential People: Austin Kleon, Kelly DielsFavorite Instagram Accounts: @hellofunction, @code_likeagirlBest Decisions: restructuring our team, starting our podcastFavorite Articles: Life is a Video Game—Here are the Cheat Codes, 1,000 True Fans, Zebras Fix What Unicorns BreakBest Podcast Episodes: Sheryl O’Loughlin on Good Life Project, Danielle LaPorte on The Lively ShowBest Conference: Craft + CommerceWords of the Year: Flourish, Implementation

Other Mentions: The Royal Family on Instagram

If you leverage live-streaming wisely, you don’t have to have a single piece of pre-made content ready prior to taking your business online. So long as you have a basic website or Namastream site up and running, you can start offering live-stream sessions immediately.

There are multiple way to leverage live-streaming, but these three are the most common and effective, which is also why we’ve built them into Namastream:

• One-on-One Private Sessions
• Collaborative Small Group Sessions
• Broadcasts

 You need far less equipment for a successful live-streamed class that you’d need to create high-quality pre-recorded video content. Whenever you use Skype or go live on Facebook, you just use your webcam, right? Well, it’s exactly the same for live-streaming. As long as you have a built-in camera, you’re good to go live! (With that said, our very favorite live-streaming tool, the Logitech C920 webcam, provides an unbelievably crisp picture quality for around $50.)

Other Mentions: Blue Yeti, Rode RodeLink FM Wireless Filmmaker System

A flyway is an ecological term that describes a migratory bird route. It’s also the name of an incredibly forward-thinking investment firm founded by Hillary Strobel. We met Hillary at DazzleCon ‘17 and were immediately taken aback by her humility and unique attitude about investing. As a single mother with a background in literature and nonprofit management, Hillary made the bold and unconventional choice to start a social impact investment firm founded on the principle of “patient capital.”We both loved interviewing Hillary and left the conversation deeply inspired and hopeful about the possibility of business to be a vehicle for service.

Other Mentions: The Flyways, Wefunder

Joy: self-preservationHustle: lifelong learning

For memberships, you’ll want to anchor your prices to your local economy. A monthly online yoga membership, for example, should cost roughly the same amount as a single drop-in class in your area. If your students are used to spending more for in-person classes, they’ll be comfortable spending a bit more for online programs, too.

Pricing for online courses vary widely in cost, much more so than memberships. Most of our clients price their offerings based on the following two factors:

1. Amount of content: The more you offer, the higher the price tag can be.
2. Demand: A highly specialized package might appeal to a smaller audience and require a lower price point. A more general (but still niched!) offering can skew a bit higher.

We recommend that all online courses be priced at least $97 USD. Any product you offer is going to take some serious work to build and hone, and you’ll want to be in a position to recoup your investment! Additionally, selling fixed-price offerings in the $20 to $30 range forces you to scramble to sell more units and devalues your expertise.

Finally, we’ve got to circle back to the concept of undercharging. DO NOT undervalue yourself, your business, and your entire industry by offering inexpensive products, programs, or services. We can’t emphasize this strongly enough. Underpricing sets you up to be in a constant scramble to meet your financial goals, and creates a negative energetic relationship between you and your clients. Resentment is dangerous territory, folks. Please charge what you’re worth.

Establishing yourself as an authority figure in your niche is paramount to sustaining a business and growing a following online. Consistent content creation, be it in the form of a blog, a podcast, or a Facebook Live or YouTube show, is the best way we can think of to become known as an authority within your community.

If you’re interested in becoming a blogger or beginning a writing project, a great place to start is Medium. Alternatively, if you want to go all-in, check out the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and challenge yourself to write a full book within a single month.

Other Mentions: Sex & Startups, Zebras Fix What Unicorns Break, How to Get Published on the Huffington Post, Seth’s Blog

Joy: Why You Should Write DailyHustle: Authority

1. Location: If you’re aiming to build a global brand online, location won’t be nearly as essential. But if you run a yoga studio in your hometown, or operate a hybrid of in-person and online services, your initial client base will come from your local community. Which means you need to make sure that your prices are appropriate for the people who live within that community.
2. Demand: If you have a product that’s created for a specific audience, you need to take a hard look at how many other people are offering similar products to the same customer base. You also need to weigh how popular your subject is among the folks in your target market.
3. Amount of content: A fully loaded, content-packed 12-week program should be priced very differently from a streamlined 3-week program. Similarly, if you’re hosting a community and can offer members 100 stellar videos, you’ll be able to charge more than if you’ve only got 10 videos in the bag.
4. Production quality: This is where most folks get hung up. If you’re a newbie to videos and handling everything yourself, you simply can’t charge as much as someone who employs a professional film crew. That said, you should absolutely start wherever you’re at right now! As your business grows, begin investing in better tools and more help, and let your pricing reflect those improvements.
5. Background and experience: If you’re a brand new teacher or coach, you’d be wise to charge a little bit less than someone with decades of experience. It’s what your customers will expect.
6. Competition: You want to carve out a place in the market for yourself where you’re not facing a tidal wave of competition. A little competition is actually essential; It validates the viability of your offerings. But throwing yourself into a saturated space and selling the same products as dozens of other experts is a recipe for disaster.
7. Revenue goals: Your pricing should account for your specific income goals, and the products you offer at various price points should be built around those goals. If you have to hit a certain dollar mark each month, you need to know how many of each product must sell to reach that goal. And you need to ensure that selling that number of products each month is truly feasible for you.

Creating a fair and sustainable pricing structure for your business will take some research and careful calculation, but it’s well worth the effort. 

Tune into next week’s Office Hours episode, where we will discuss the different strategies we recommend for pricing online memberships vs. online courses!

1. by being very open and honest about our Story
2. by being intentional about our use of Imagery
3. by making decisions from our Values

In an era when products and services are increasingly commodified, we believe that embodiment can serve as an antidote. By showcasing our businesses as natural extensions of ourselves, we can bring much-needed authenticity and human connection into the economy.

Other Mentions: @hellofunction, Jen Wende, The Four Agreements

Joy: Sarah Wilson || first, we make the beast beautifulHustle: Burt’s Buzz

Amanda has learned to come to terms with her fear of not being “enough” by surrounding herself with people who support her, whether it’s through mindset coaching or within mastermind communities. She’s also learned how to lean into her fears over time and through her daily experience as an entrepreneur.

Amanda encourages all of us to view our marketing as expansive (rather than fear-based)… How can we nurture people towards making a better decision for them? How can we create an attractive brand that people are magnetized toward? How can we intuitively find alignment in our businesses?

Joy: Brain.fmHustle: Old-school Clipboards

Connect with Amanda: The Ad Strategist Facebook Page

 After taking hundreds of our community members through a free 5-Day Challenge last month, where we helped them go from idea to first paying customer, the same question came up over and over… “This was amazing, but what happens next?”

 Although asking for the first sale is often the hardest for many of us venturing into entrepreneurship, what happens between day five and day five hundred is what really matters. Consistent daily action sets the stage for predictable recurring revenue. There’s no magic sauce. You need to put in the daily work to see the payoff later.

 Because so many of our clients were confused about which specific steps to take to grow their online teaching businesses, we built the Soulful MBA. Here’s a peek at our six-phase course roadmap, where we’ve outlined our best thinking on how to start, develop, and grow a teaching business online:

• Phase 1 - Build Your Foundation
• Phase 2 - Develop Your Voice
• Phase 3 - Create Your Offering
• Phase 4 - Excite Your Audience
• Phase 5 - Launch Your Offering
• Phase 6 - Fine Tuning

Other Mentions: Soulful MBA Course

Joy: encircledHustle: Joseph Campbell’s Routine

 But we worry that this is more than a mere annoyance. The danger, we fear, is that SO many people with real gifts (and a true calling to teach and serve) are holding themselves back because their lives don’t look like what they see online.

 And although we’re in the online business space ourselves, we are constantly impressed with the meaningful work that’s being done daily by our own community online. This is a love letter to our people and a whisper of encouragement to KEEP GOING.

Joy: MÛR Lifestyle Hustle: JOBY GorillaPod

Here are some of the major benefits that can come from taking your teaching online:

1. An online offering serves as a de facto insurance policy against your local, brick-and-mortar business or job.
2. If structured properly, your online business can afford you the ability to take a break without significantly cutting into your income. It also gives you much greater geographic freedom.
3. The overhead is extremely low. You have the freedom to take risks and experiment without any real negative implications.
4. The opportunity is big (financially and for impact).

The bottom line? It’s smart to build redundancy into your finances.

Joy: StripeHustle: From In-Person to Online: 5-Day Challenge

In this episode, we discuss the ways that perfectionism holds us back in our businesses. We often see perfectionism used as an excuse for procrastination or as a reason to hold ourselves back once we’ve reached a certain level of success.

Here are the 7 perfectionistic tendencies we’ve identified in our own business and with our clients. Listen in to hear how we address each one.

1. You procrastinate until the stars align.
2. You often spend copious amounts of time just to perfect something that just isn't that important.
3. You have an all-or-nothing approach.
4. Inflexibility. You have a very specific manner in which things should be done.
5. Intolerance for mistakes. You are extremely hard on yourself.
6. You focus on the destination, rather than the journey. It’s all about the end result.
7. Your success is never good enough.

Joy: Why Brené Brown Says Perfectionism Is a 20-Ton ShieldHustle: Lighting Kit, Ring Light

In this episode, we discuss Kimra’s unwavering confidence, her fears, her spirituality, her new identity as a single mom to three young boys, and her role as a female founder. We were impressed by her honesty, her authenticity, and her willingness to boldly follow her intuition in business.

Other Mentions: Freedom Hackers, Freedom Hackers® Mastermind Facebook Group, Sacred Mama

Joy: Amazon PrimeHustle: Airtable

How do we structure our accountability to one another as accountability partners? What do we think about mastermind groups? Listen in to learn our tips for staying on track with our goals (and why we each have different strategies that work for us).

Other Mentions: RRP #317

Joy: Jelena | The FilmHustle: The Four Tendencies Book + Quiz

When you first start something new, it helps to follow the existing path, seek mentorship, and embrace best practices. At some point, however, you’ll need to start listening to your own intuition.

As we’ve matured in our business, we’ve begun to withdraw from the cacophony of advice around us and, instead, turn inward for guidance. It’s been an incredibly liberating, exciting process—and one that is far from complete.

In this episode, we discuss our own journeys toward wholeness and the joy that has come from making choices in our business that embrace our core values.

Joy: LeVar Burton Reads, to AdultsHustle: Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand

Regardless of your particular brand of business, money is not enough to drive most of you — there’s something deeper. There’s a problem that you’re trying to solve or an improvement to an existing way of doing things. If you’re an entrepreneur, there’s something special that you’re bringing to the table that no other person or business is doing in the exact same way. In our minds, you’re all making a ruckus.

Ruckus-making, in the context of business, is the same thing as innovation (with maybe a little bit of a political bent). In fact, YOU having a business is a very political act. You are veering outside of the path of the dominant economic culture.

The antidote to the monopolistic economic culture comes in the form of the artisan. As modern humans, we’re drawn to local, small-batch, unique. They serve as a counterweight to the heavy core of big business, big agriculture, big healthcare, and big tech.

As a community creating intentional, conscious businesses, we are paving the way for a new brand of artisan: digital artisans.  

How can you shake things up in your own small corner of a market somewhere?

Other Mentions: The Filter Bubble: How the New Personalized Web Is Changing What We Read and How We Think, Seth Godin: Keep Making a Ruckus

Joy: Tartine BakeryHustle: The Content of No Content by Elizabeth Kolbert

Integrity is about doing the right thing, being honest and consistent, and being in harmony with what you believe and how you act. It is also a critical element of being able to build anything that’s going to exist in the long run (a business, a government, a community).

Do you make regular decisions in your business from a place of integrity or do you get sucked into the allure of Groupon, clickbait social media posts, or other short term solutions to sales and profitability? Most of us would not make the decision to intentionally pursue shady business practices, but integrity falls along a spectrum that creates a lot of grey area. Integrity sometimes requires that you make decisions for your business that are not optimized for short-term profitability, but rather, long term sustainability.

Joy: The Lively Show #233Hustle: The Gardens of Democracy

After returning from summer holidays, we feel compelled to incorporate more analog habits into our lives and into our business. We’ve both felt the physical acknowledgement that the pen is an extension of the human body in a way that typing on a keyboard will never be. The writer and activist Bill McKibben writes that humans have come to use screens as mediators that color virtually every experience and relationship in our modern lives.

If the solution to digital overwhelm is to make a conscious effort to engage in offline living, how do we apply these analog tools to business? Offline connections. Word of mouth. Sales calls. Good old-fashioned networking. We’re all trying so hard to automate and to minimize the contact that we have with potential clients and customers, but the truth is that people trust (and crave) human connection. How can you find ways to take your online community offline? How can you add just a little more humanity into someone’s life?

Other Mentions: Why I Love My Paper Dictionary, Pause! We Can Go Back!, Surviving This Summer on the Internet

Joy: The Artist’s WayHustle: The Revenge of Analog

So many of us are constantly playing the waiting game in our business. We’re, personally, in the midst of a huge transition on this front. We’ve decided to make the future of our company about agency. Taking action. Figuring it out. Self reliance. (It feels great.)

We’ve identified a handful of places where we see folks get stuck in the waiting game in their businesses (many of which we’ve found ourselves in as well):

• Waiting for the money (to close the round, to win the next pitch competition, to sell out your next program, etc.)
• Waiting for that perfect person to come and join your team
• Waiting to be heard or to be acknowledged by others
• Waiting for the product, program, service to be built or perfected
• Waiting for the customers and clients to come to you

So how do you break out of the waiting game? Take action. Take control back. Be willing to make mistakes and even to fail. Embody the archetype of the empress. Decide what you need to do, own it, and lead. Do what it takes to go out and make it happen.

You’re not less than anyone. You’re fully capable.

Joy: The Holstee ManifestoHustle: Kaouthar Darmoni and her Tedx Talk

With all of the headlines making news on the women in tech front, we felt it was appropriate to chime in on the conversation. Although we walked away from the investment-backed startup world over a year ago, we remain connected to a diverse community of other female founders and women in tech. And the stories we’ve been reading sound familiar, yet disturbing.

With only 5% of startups having (at least one) female on the founding team, it not hard to imagine why there are countless subtle—and not so subtle—biases against women. An entire subculture has developed within startups and tech companies. And this subculture doesn’t look like many of us. It looks white, male, and young. This subculture, often, doesn’t represent our most pressing needs or long-term interests.

But something interesting is starting to happen — in private Slack groups for female founders, in female-run co-working spaces, in secret Facebook groups for female CEOS and others for female gamers…another subculture is developing. It looks and feels a lot like the beginnings of a revolution.

Other Mentions: Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble, How to Uproot Systemic Racism and Sexism in Venture Capital, Male and Female Entrepreneurs Get Asked Different Questions by VCs — and It Affects How Much Funding They Get

Joy: Hello Ruby: Adventures in CodingHustle: Geek Girl Rising

We’ve led about two thousand people through social media training programs in our business, but we want to come clean in this episode and share some of our fears about the role that social media is playing in our (collective) lives. While we love social for its ability to help us leverage our brands online, we believe that there is a time and place for our digital activities.

Tune in to discover why we worry about free apps more than paid tools and what’s at stake when we fail to take time to disconnect.  

Although social media is difficult to compartmentalize, we’ve got some simple tips to help you add more sanity into your digital life:

1. Turn off ALL notifications on your phone.
2. Use the Facebook News Feed Eradicator Chrome extension
3. Freedom
4. Read blogs on Feedly.
5. Facebook Groups App (unfortunately, Facebook just announced they will be removing this from the App Store)
6. SmarterQueue

Joy: You Can Thank Instagram for Your Rosé ObsessionHustle: Tristan Harris // Time Well Spent

If you’re enjoying the podcast, we would be so grateful for a rating and review on iTunes! Head over to: soulful.mba/itunes

It probably won’t come as a surprise to you that this podcast is hosted by two (proud) feminists. This fact is juxtaposed with the reality that we also inhabit the hyper-masculine world of technology. Tune in to hear about some realizations we’ve recently had related to our relationship to feminism, to our industry, and to our bodies.

Joy: Call Your Girlfriend Hustle: Feminine Economy

The relationship between humans and technology goes back thousands of years, but who decides what gets built — and how? As science and engineering surges within academia and within our broader culture, the humanities have been in steady decline. But what gets lost when art, literature, and philosophy constantly take a backseat to STEM?

Other Mentions: Learning to Be Human, Tech’s Moral Reckoning, Toward Humane Tech, Nir & Far

Joy: Edward Tufte’s WorkHustle: IDEO’s Design Kit

Joy: MOOCs, edX.orgHustle: Namastream Software

Other Mentions:Curiosity improves memory by tapping into the brain’s reward systemBig Magic

Joy: How Curiosity Changed My Life || This is Your Brain on CuriosityHustle: The Marketing Seminar

In an age of hyper-connectivity, it is so easy to move through our days without ever accomplishing anything meaningful. Because of the cacophony of social media notifications, text messages, and an overflowing inbox, the process of deepening our skills and creating original work has become a rare occurrence (and borderline subversive) in our culture.

Today’s episode explores the reasons why deep, focused work matters if you want to create something of value in the world and live a rich, intentional life.

Joy: Simplicity ParentingHustle: Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

Joy: You Are a Badass at Making MoneyHustle: DailyWorth

Listen in to learn why we are making joy an even bigger priority in our lives and business.

Other Mentions: FREE Social Media Summer Camp!

Joy: The Five Minute Journal Hustle: Find an Accountability Partner

Other Mentions: Episode #17: Networking, How to Build Community and Grow Your Tribe Online

Joy: How We GatherHustle: 1,000 True Fans

 If you want to see big results in your business, we strongly encourage you to focus on just one quintessential client, one message, one call to action, one product offering, and one social media platform.

Joy: Good Life Project’s Sheryl O’Loughlin InterviewHustle: Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

We discuss the path from employee to freelancer to entrepreneur and explain why we believe that freelancing is best used as a stepping stone along the journey to entrepreneurship.

Other Mentions: Female, Bootstrapped, and Profitable in Silicon Valley

Joy: Tulsi TeaHustle: Is the Gig Economy Working?

 There are so many incredible software tools you can incorporate to streamline and simplify your online business, but it can be challenging to determine the very best (and most affordable) options — especially when you’re just starting out. We break down the tools that we recommend at various stages of business and discuss when you can get away with using free tools and when it makes sense to upgrade to paid software.

Resources Mentioned: Asana, Trello, G-Suite, Canva, Namastream Software, iMovie, MailChimp, Convertkit, Squarespace, Slack, Airstory, Repurpose

Joy: eteeHustle: Soulful MBA Course

We touch upon issues of hiring, firing, contracts, building relationships with team members, assertiveness, harnessing fear, work-life balance, apologizing, growing apart, walking away, leaving room for grace, playing the long game, and not having all the answers.

Joy: In The Company of WomenHustle: Deep Work

Joy: Cumulus Clay PotteryHustle: Laura Close

Joy: Archetype Quiz

Hustle: Life is a Video Game—Here are the Cheat Codes

If you listened to the first episode of this podcast, you may remember that the two of us met at a live event for an online course. In our situation, a profound friendship and business partnership flowed from that chance encounter. If you run an online business, we recommend that you consider attending a (or maybe even organizing your own!) live event or retreat at least once per year.

Joy: SO DELICIOUS Coconut MilkHustle: iMovie for Yogis Course