The Design Business Show 231: How to Generate an Additional 60k in Revenue in 6 Weeks with No New Leads with Abagail Pumphrey

Abagail and Emylee are the business fairy godmothers behind Boss Project and the hosts of the chart-topping podcast, The Strategy Hour. They’re internet-famous for their program, Trello for Business, which breaks down boring and complicated systems into bite-size chunks. They have helped over 10k creative small business owners create simplicity and ease in reaching their goals. After getting their start in 2015 serving clients in the marketing and branding space, they now help other service based business owners reignite their offer, create systems for client experience, and get more of their time back inside their program, The Incubator. The team at Boss Project is truly revitalizing the service based industry through strategies that don’t require flashy marketing, a huge audience or full-time hours.

Here’s what we covered on the episode:

The Start of Boss Project + Offers

Abagail shares that their brand was originally Think Creative Collective and rebranded to Boss Project about 5 years ago
You can join their Boss Project Facebook Community that has over 30k entrepreneurs – it’s a great spot to find jobs and get support
The Boss Project started in 2015 when Abagail was recently laid off and started her own branding and marketing company – she was able to replace her salary in the first 30 days
Shortly after starting her business, Abagail met Emylee, her business partner, who at the time was running her own photography business
How Abagail and Emylee’s partnership started as them working on projects together – soon they began marketing themselves as a package and started the Think Creative Collective
On top of running the agency, Abagail and Emylee were teaching everything they were learning, from how to get clients to sales strategy and more, on their blog
When it was just the two of them, they leaned more into the education side of their business, but now that they have a team, they can offer a wide variety of services
Abagail believes the reason they grew was because of the community they offered and says it wouldn’t have been possible without the community of women interested in learning and growing together
One of Abagail’s favorite offers is website design because of their unique approach to design, messaging, and strategy to create an SEO-rich website that speaks to prospects for their clients
Abagail and Emylee have 7 core full-time employees, but several additional contractors come in for specialized areas
One of the first things Abagail and Emylee do with clients is dig into the numbers because the only way to scale is to truly understand where you are at – they like to see what has served you well so you can do more of it and see if you are pricing yourself correctly
Abagail shares a client story of a social media strategist who needed to realign her pricing and contracts with clients
Instead of sending an email that outlined the new pricing for this social media strategist, Abagail, and Emylee coached her on how to have individual conversations with her clients based on her relationship with each client, and it was extremely successful
In 6 weeks, the social media strategist had 6 new contracts and an additional 60k in revenue, and by continuing to ensure her pricing was in alignment, in 3 months, she doubled her business with fewer clients than when she started with
So many people put themselves out of business because they are not appropriately getting paid enough for it to be worth all the effort they’re putting in

The Power of Relationships + Prioritizing Your Life

Abagail says that most people assume trends are marketing because it’s what’s working at the moment for the loudest people in the room, but marketing, in the most basic sense, is sharing what you do with the world
What business owners need to be focused on is relationships – marketing is only as good as who you know and how much they know about what you can do for them
Abagail focuses so much on relationships because she has seen people be one connection away from being booked out for years to come – when you and your client are in alignment, they’ll want to recommend you
When Abagail first started her branding and marketing company, she had a referral partnership with another designer and shared that you would be shocked by what one solid relationship can do for a business
Reawaken a relationship, even if it’s been years between talking is as easy as sending a message and setting up a meeting
Abagail says that you should go into interactions with an open mind about trying to understand the person and their needs and not be so focused on selling your services because not every interaction is going to produce a sale or client, and that’s okay
In 2016, Abagail was in a car accident that left her with a brain injury, and at the time, she was running her business full-time – luckily, they had some systems in place, but they weren’t expecting such a random event as a car accident
After the car accident, Abagail and Emylee started running their business with the focus that their lives will always be far more important than the work they do at their job
Abagail shares that it takes time to prioritize your life first, and it takes the proper systems and support behind the scenes to make it work when life throws you curve balls that you aren’t sure how to handle
Having solid boundaries are important, and Abagail shares some of theirs
Building a business can be isolating, and Boss Project is a safe community for you to get the support you need because it’s okay not to know everything as a business owner
If you want to talk about your business numbers, send Abagail a message, or if you’re interested in working with the Boss Project, book a consult to talk with Abagail personally
Connect with Abagail on Instagram