Soulful Mba

We were recently guests on the Mend podcast with Anne Fricke and Amy Day, and we’d like to share an excerpt of the conversation here with you. We discussed the relationship between women, technology, and power, the restrictions we put on our children with respect to screen time, and our perspectives on charging what you’re worth. 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!

Joining us on the podcast is the legal powerhouse, Autumn Witt Boyd. Autumn is a lawyer who specializes in helping entrepreneurs protect their intellectual property. She provides legal guidance with copyright and trademark protection, contract negotiation, and problem solving. Along with her team at The Law Office of Autumn Witt Boyd PLLC, she loves helping entrepreneurs grow their dream business through smart collaborations and deals. 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, H

In this episode, we walk your through our “Before You Film Checklist,” which serves as a cheat sheet of sorts for new online teachers. Make sure you never film another video with your mic off or your iPhone oriented the wrong way! 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!

We’re joined in this episode by Leah Neaderthal, a serial entrepreneur who specializes in teaching other women how to become comfortable (and successful) with sales. 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 increas

We’re becoming big fans of producing fewer, but more thorough, blog posts and we think that you should consider this strategy too. Here are the reasons we’re in favor of more comprehensive content: The majority of blog posts are short (under 500 words), so you will stand out by producing longer content. You can establish yourself as an authority and expert by writing high-quality, comprehensive posts (3,000 words or more). Search engines (like Google) reward long-form content. The Internet doesn’t need more fluff. Epic blogs posts can be easily repurposed. Think Instagram captions, podcast episodes, YouTube videos, email-based free course, ebooks, etc.

“We want you to be in this for the long haul, but you can’t do that if you’re working yourself to death… Your business is only as healthy as you are.” 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

Videography is kind of our jam and we get asked about this autofocus issue all the time. If you’re struggling to get yourself into focus while filming your online classes or having trouble staying in focus for the duration of your session, you’ll want to listen to this episode. 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!

“Women often speak about their ambition in terms of altruism. This isn’t the full story.” - Laura Close 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: Money Fame Power 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

We’re sharing our favorite new-to-us technology on this week’s Office Hours episode — Voxer. It’s super efficient (and addictive) to communicate via walkie talkie and it’s now a core part of our team’s communication strategy. Listen in to learn why we love this technology, why we think it beats texting, and why we think you should consider incorporating it into your own business. 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!

One of our favorite benefits of entrepreneurship is the flexibility we have in our days and weeks. In this episode, we share about the specific ways we’ve built our business around our lives. 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,

This quick episode shares our five rules for sending cold emails. By following these simple guidelines, you’re much more likely to receive a positive response (or any response at all). 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. 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. State the value proposition. What’s in it for the person receiving the message? 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?

Good sound quality is EVERYTHING when you’re running an online business. In this quick episode, we share our top recommendations for high-quality microphones:  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

In this episode, we explore the topic of expertise. Our new tagline, “leverage your expertise into a profitable online business,” has become a bit controversial in our community and we want to offer some thoughts as to why “expertise” might be a troublesome concept for some of you. 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: You have more knowledge that other people in a particular area of work You have credentials in a given area You have a demonstrated track record of excellence You’ve impacted people through your work You’re receiving referrals 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

In a follow-up to last week’s Office Hours episode, we now dive into some specific pre-selling strategies, including how to offer a beta group and why we recommend using webinars to pre-sell your offering. 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.

“You have to hire for the talent and then train for the skillset.” - KayLee Hansen 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

Pre-selling is the practice of creating a private launch before your product is completely built and perfected. Why do this? Because it validates your concept and means you get paid for conducting market research. Because it allows you to sell your pilot products instead of offering them for free. Because it WORKS. 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

In this episode, we talk with Cathryn Lavery. Cathryn is a serial entrepreneur and designer. As co-founder and CEO of BestSelf Co., she took the company from zero to 8-figures in less than two years. After launching the Self Journal on Kickstarter, she went on to win Shopify’s Build a Business Competition in 2016 and the Build a BIGGER Business competition in 2017 – making BestSelf Co. the only company to win both awards consecutively. 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

In this quick episode, we share some productivity and lifestyle tools that we each use to make our lives easier and have more time and mental space to grow our businesses. Head on over to the show notes to download the full list (including links) of the resources mentioned in this episode.

In this episode, we chat with Minneapolis-based writer, Sally McGraw. Sally is a freelance writer, ghostwriter, editor, and copywriter with more than 15 years of professional experience. She specializes in ghostwriting non-fiction books and book proposals, but has written everything from artist statements to self-help books for her clients. 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

In Part 2 of our Instagram micro-blogging episode, we dive into several additional strategies you can implement to ensure your Instagram posts perform well: 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 sp