No BS Mastery Podcast

Everybody wants to make more money without working more hours. That's the dream, right? That's what I sell: How to make more and more money while working fewer and fewer hours. It’s a great goal and it’s absolutely achievable. But here’s the problem, and why people struggle to get there. When you want to make more money without working more hours, what’s the first thing you think to do? You focus...

Raise your hand if you hate sales. It's probably the most common thing that people struggle with when they're building a small agency. It's also the most important part of building any business. Because if you don't have sales, you don't have a business. You have a hobby. People hate sales, they feel icky. They feel like they're not very good at it. They don't want to pressure people. They don't w...

What does shifting from the old default model of working with clients to using the No BS Agency model actually look like? Super badass business owner Jennifer Anastasi is here to tell us. In this episode, she reveals how she implemented the model that changed everything for her — from projects that dragged on for six or nine months at a time to projects that were delivered in just a couple of days...

The never-ending revisions process and project scope creep are two of the key reasons that most small branding and creative agencies are not profitable. It’s why creatives seem to be working all the time for not enough money. It's easy to see how this happens. Your clients are paying you good money and you want them to be happy. So what’s another revision, right? Maybe you have a stipulation in yo...

“How is it even possible to do it that fast? Aren't you sacrificing quality? You must be selling templates.” These are just some of the biggest questions I get whenever I tell people that we deliver entire branding projects — projects that typically take 6-8 months to complete — in just one to three days. People think it’s impossible. They think our work must suck or that we’re duplicating our wor...

In the creative agency space, almost everyone follows the same process to close clients. I did too.  First, you network to find potential clients. Then when you find the client, you have multiple meetings, hold free consultations and free strategy sessions or phone calls to figure out what the client needs and wants. Then, you create a proposal that finally (hopefully) wins you that client. I don’...

It's the beginning of January, which means a lot of us are thinking about goals and what we really want our next year to look like. What’s your vision for your business in 2022? How do you want to evolve personally and professionally? How do you want your relationships to evolve? How do you want your business to evolve? Most people do this kind of goal setting once a year. They come up with some r...

Every year, I do at least one, if not two, full days of strategizing and planning with Steve. And it’s not just imagining what we want for ourselves in the coming year in terms of our business, but it’s about strategizing every aspect of our lives. We’ve been doing this for years and it’s an amazing opportunity to take a step back, take a deep breath and look at everything we’ve accomplished over...

Last episode, I told the story of how Steve and I started Worst of All Design and how it evolved into the No BS Agency model. Today, I want to share one more reason why that model is so valuable. When you’re running an agency, the hustle is constant. Constantly trying to fill your pipeline, constantly pitching, constantly chasing and closing clients, then all the work for those clients you landed....

A couple of months ago, I started running Facebook ads again. And with Facebook ads, come all kinds of comments and Facebook trolls. Pissy comments don't upset me. But they show me what triggers some people and why! They have been a wonderful breeding ground for ideas about what I want to share with you here on the podcast. So today, I want to take you back to how this all started—the challenges a...

We make assumptions all day long. And those assumptions dictate how we respond to people and situations around us. Whether it’s assuming the tone in your boss’s email, or not following up because you didn’t get a response the first time, or a client who says yes but then disappears, the assumptions we make about the people around us have major impacts on our business. But what if instead of assumi...

What’s holding you back from putting yourself out there, whether in articles, on social media, in videos, or just sending emails to your list? If you’re waiting to be good enough, spoiler alert: you’re never going to be good enough until you start doing it.  Yes, you'll probably feel embarrassed by your earlier efforts and outputs. I feel the same way! But this is an unavoidable part of the journe...

When you’re an entrepreneur, you’re in a constant state of not knowing.  No matter how much you know, there is always more to learn. You can’t know everything, because the landscape is always changing.  And not knowing isn’t always comfortable. When you’re doing something for the first time, when you’re learning a strategy that runs counter to everything you were taught, you’re bound to get frustr...

You know you’re great at what you do. You know how to deliver value to your customers. But when it comes to communicating that, you’re struggling. A lot of people suck at communicating to their customers so that they stand out. But there is a method that is as old as humanity, and is ten times more effective than just telling customers what you do: Storytelling. I’m sitting down with Seth Erickson...

If you absolutely knew you were going to be successful, to have the business and the life you want, what would you pay to get there? What would you be willing to sacrifice? What failures would you endure, if you knew it was all going to pay off? I’ve been thinking and talking to a lot of people recently about the idea of whether or not you can guarantee success.  I interact with a lot of business...

Do you have a clear set of goals for your business each year? Or a systematic way of orienting your business toward your goals each quarter? I’m a huge fan of annual, quarterly, weekly and daily planning to maximize the time you spend each day on high value tasks that move you toward your goals. Implementing a business planning strategy means you can make better choices about how to prioritize you...

How much risk are you willing to take? For some, the idea of taking a giant leap of faith is exhilarating. For others, the idea instantly makes them queasy. Where you land on that continuum will change depending on the greater circumstances of your life, too. Your relationship to risk affects your business and the choices you’ll make.  When it comes to finding your niche, your comfort with uncerta...

Everyone wants to find their one perfect square inch of the market where they can go a mile deep, do good work, and make good money. You could chase what you think the market wants and jump into a niche that seems hot right now. You could choose a market segment based on what your degree is in, what you’ve done before, or what you think you should be doing. You could jump from niche to niche to ni...

Whenever people ask me how I built a business with my husband, they usually add, with an eye roll, “because I could never do that with my partner.”  And I always kind of laugh and say, “Lots of therapy.” Which is the truth in many ways. Though it’s not just therapy, it’s both of us actively working on having a healthy, loving, energizing, communicative, successful relationship. And I believe that...

What really goes into building your platform?   Whether it’s Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn or another site, building an audience for your business through social media presence can be a key piece of marketing your business.   Actually getting traction and followers, however, can seem like a mysterious process. It’s not often that someone with a large following opens up about just how they did it....

What are you willing to do to get to what you really want? And how many times are you willing to hit a wall in the process of achieving it? You need clarity about what you want, but you also need to get clear on your expectations for the results of your actions.  If you reach out once and assume not hearing back means no, if you pitch a major publication with three articles on your blog, you have...

Growth is challenging because growth requires change. And many of us are stuck in our ways and we don’t even know it. Which is why it can be so helpful to have other people ask you questions that will push you out of your comfort zone. In a coaching program, boot camp or mastermind, you can have someone else force you to really look at yourself and ask, “Am I willing to adapt and grow and change t...

When was the last time you visualized the details of what you want from your business and your life? Did you have a clear, specific picture of what that actually looks like? Not just the money or a title or recognition, but what it looks like day to day. When you see the picture, does it show the life you really want? Getting clear and specific about your goals avoids you chasing a dream that does...

Letting go is hard. It hurts when it’s time to retire something you worked really hard on and that you’re proud of, especially when it’s working. But sometimes you have to let go of things that are good to make room for something great. Those good enough things might be filling the space and time you need to grow and expand into new places that will lead to even greater success. Saying no to clien...

There is so much talk about story. What’s your story? You need to have a good story for your brand. Blah, blah, blah. I think a lot of people don’t actually understand what “story” really means and how to use it to build your brand. So today, I wanted to revisit a clip from Episode 23 with Melanie Gow , the brilliant mind behind my TED Talk last year. Melanie understands story deeply. She is so go...