Break the Ceiling

You can use your pricing to create exclusivity—BUT, you can also use your pricing to create access and to start moving towards using your business to create more social and economic justice. Kate Strathmann spends a lot of time exploring new techniques and strategies to create more equitable businesses and works with business owners to start thinking about how to implement them in their own business. Key takeaways: - The different pricing strategies you might consider using, like sliding scale or pay what you wish pricing models - When these strategies make sense, and when a different strategy might be a better option - Some of the pitfalls that Kate's seen come up as folks start to implement some of these strategies (and how to avoid them)

Alethea Cheng Fitzpatrick and I talk about what happens when things go BOOM and you have to figure out how to manage that boom in your business at a time when your personal situation might actually mean that you have less time than ever to spend in or on your business? Key takeaways: - What 2020 has looked like for Alethea and how she’s figuring out how to balance business and homeschooling her kids—and how she’s being conscious about taking care of her own needs, too - What techniques and systems she’s put into place to try and cope with all the changes that this year has brought - How Alethea’s day-to-day looks as she manages having the capacity to work less but having MORE business than ever - How to balance business and life when they're both changing

Lauren's been through a MASSIVE change this year, so I wanted to bring her back on the show to talk about how she's been managing the impact on her business. Lauren used to run an event planning business for tech, and after her best year ever in 2019, was ready to give 2020 a run for its money. Sadly, the opposite happened, but out of breakdowns come breakthroughs. Key Takeaways: - How Lauren’s cash flow management skills gave her the time she needed to make strategic decisions instead of reacting out of panic - Making a HUGE pivot in your business and how to stay resilient - Processing grief as a business skill - An update on what Lauren decided to do about her business this year

YOU built your business and most likely, it depends on you in some form or fashion to keep going. Even if you have a staff or other people that do a lot of the day-to-day work, they still look to you for direction. If you suddenly aren't there anymore, what happens? That's what contingency planning is all about: making a plan for what happens to your business (and your personal business) if you need to step away for a while or you just flat out can’t run the business. And my guest on this episode, Mary Beth Simon, is an expert in planning for contingencies. - Who should be creating contingency plans and what it looks like in the real world when you have to execute your plan - How important your preparation is when it comes to ensuring your business can survive a big change - Tips for planning for a worst-case scenario - How being prepared for crisis helps you be resilient in your business and personal life

You know that the ability to be resilient and flexible in the face of change IS a skill and a mindset that you can work on. You can't control the change (because change is inevitable!)—but you can control how you react to it. Today, Melody and I talk about why investing in developing skills to strengthen how we personally deal with change creates a huge impact on how we approach leading our businesses through change. Key Takeaways: - How Melody uses systems and structures to help minimize stress, build resilience and manage change in her life and business - Why being kind to yourself and empathetic to your team is a HUGE part of effectively managing a rapidly changing environment - How to accept that during intense change, your bandwidth is a LOT smaller than it was - Techniques and systems to building personal and business resilience in your own life - How to find the right structures that minimize your mental load so you can take care of you and your team

How DO we go about building up those change management muscles? How do we make ourselves and our business stronger and better able to weather this ever-changing environment? Meet Elatia Abate. She is an entrepreneur, educator, and future-forward strategist. She partners with organizations that range in size from Fortune 500 to early-stage start-ups to help leaders make sense of the ever-growing disruption in our world and channel that disruption into tangible results. Key Takeaways: - How resilience and change management are intertwined - What does the future of work/future of business look like NOW? - Strategies to exist and thrive in a constantly changing environment - What Elatia learned from her personal experiment in resiliency

You can use no-code tools like ClickUp to streamline and automate your internal processes and enhance your communication with clients. You can also build digital products, help your students learn more effectively, and add to diversity your revenue streams. Layla is ALL IN with ClickUp. Key Takeaways: - How Layla’s using ClickUp EVERYWHERE in her business - The impact she's seen by systemizing everything using ClickUp - How to use no-code templates and tools as an opt-in and marketing tool - How to get the most out of the no-code tools you're using in your business

This week, we're talking about using no-code tools to actually build your own custom software products. My guest today is the queen of this. Brittany Berger is the founder of Work Brighter, a digital media company that helps productive unicorns go beyond working smarter to a version of productivity that makes room for “unproductive” things like rest, self-care, and fun. - How Brittany’s business is structured around no-code tools - How she comes up with ideas for new no-code products - What her development process looks like to build and refine these products - How to use no-code to build products and additional revenue streams - How to use no-code tools and resources to add value to a community or course

No-code or low-code tools–Jason and I are talking about the tools that have been built specifically to enable YOU, someone with no background or experience in building software, to build your own custom tools. Jason is especially interested in the intersection of the accounting industry and emergent technology—and, specifically, how we can turn the automation doom and gloom narrative on its head and show accountants how to proactively leverage new technology. Key takeaways: - How to use no-code tools to scale operations (because the more efficient the workflow, the more clients you can serve with the same staff, and the more profitable you can be) - Using no-code tools to automate workflow—both internal AND with clients - How to leverage automated technology so client communication feels really personal

I thought it’d be fun to take you behind the scenes and talk through how and why I decided to invest in starting this podcast, how it all works behind the scenes, and a look back a year into podcasting. To help me answer the question of if it's been worth it, I’m delighted to bring my friend Tara McMullin to discuss just that. Key Take-aways: - How do you evaluate the ROI of a podcast? - My decision-making process and how long I was willing to give it - The strategy behind my podcast and what business goals I was trying to achieve - How much time goes into producing a single podcast episode