No BS Mastery Podcast

I’m taking the month of August off to be with my family, and I hope you’re taking some time to do something amazing and relaxing too. For the whole month, I’ll be sharing clips from some of my favorite episodes that you’ll enjoy revisiting as well. Today, I’m revisiting my conversation with Kia Aberra where she talks about recognizing burnout and finding her own work life balance. Kia Abrera is a...

I’m taking the month of August off to be with my family. I hope you’re taking some time to do something amazing and relaxing too. For the whole month, I’ll be sharing clips from some of my favorite episodes that you’ll enjoy revisiting as well. Today, I’m revisiting my conversation with one of my dear clients, badass business owner, Ediuska Laurens. This clip is about standing out by not following...

I’m taking the month of August off to be with my family, and I hope you’re taking some time to do something amazing and relaxing too. For the whole month, I’ll be sharing clips from some of my favorite episodes that you’ll enjoy revisiting as well. First up, my interview with Michael Roderick, the king of connecting.  We talked about what true influence is and how to build a truly referable brand....

Whenever we talk about success in business, it’s usually about how to make more money, how to make more profit, how to get more clients, better clients, improve your process, improve your systems. What we don’t often talk about is the personal side of business success. Can you call it a successful business if it’s draining you personally and physically? We build businesses because we want to have...

I got this question in the Facebook group the other day: How can I get more disciplined to get to a point where I can call it done and stop exploring ideas? I get why it’s hard to stop exploring. You want to give your clients the best work possible. Sometimes you don’t believe that what you’ve come up with is good enough, so you keep working and working and never feel like it’s good enough. When y...

Have you ever wondered why everyone you talk to is a challenging client, and everyone you talk to doesn’t have a budget, yet so many people online seem to be working with these mystical ideal clients? Here’s the secret: The people who are always working with those ideal clients? They’re not finding them from some hidden paradise. They know how to make great clients.  And so can you. Tune into this...

A couple of weeks ago, I hosted my 20th high school reunion. And while I was there, I had the chance to catch up with lots of old friends, but I was especially excited to chat with Vincent Kitirattragarn. I’ve been watching his journey building Dang Foods from afar for the last ten years. Those delicious coconut chips at the end of the aisle at Whole Foods? That’s Dang Foods. So today, we’re sitti...

Pitching your work, writing proposals, sending out proposals and never hearing back from clients, or hearing from clients that “this is more money than we have budgeted for.” To me, these are some of the worst parts of running your own business. What if you could eliminate all of that? What if you could get rid of the free proposals and all of the pitching and get it down to a 15-minute phone call...

How would you like it if you could sit back and clients — hungry, excited, motivated clients, the kind of clients you want to work with — simply came knocking on your door, blowing up your inbox, asking to work with you? That’s the dream right? You didn’t get into this business because you wanted to be a salesperson. You started doing this because you’re a creative person and at some point you sai...

Are you interested or are you committed? This was the question posted by my friend, Melanie Spring the other day. And it really got me thinking about two those simple words that have profound consequences. Running your own business is so sexy from the outside. But if you've ever run your own business, you know that it is messy, full of ups and downs and everything in between. If you haven't run yo...

Today, you get to meet one of my secret weapons, one of the magic bullets behind my business.  Josh Thomas is my business coach.  I wanted to have him on the show because we are aligned in so many no-BS ways. Josh has a way of cutting through the crap that even I can’t do. And you know me, I cut through BS better than most. Josh Thomas is an entrepreneur, business consultant and real estate invest...

How do you determine the prices you charge for your services? Do you give yourself an hourly rate and estimate how many hours a project will take to build a quote? Or do you just charge hourly and make less money if the project takes you less time? Or do you try to figure out what the client is willing to pay, or what your competitors are doing, and price the project from there? Whatever the formu...

Have you ever struggled to make decisions about your business? Whether it’s investing in your business, crafting your messaging, focusing your niche, or packaging your services, business owners are faced with a ton of decisions. And it can be easy to get stuck thinking, “if I knew it would work, I would…”  You worry about it not working, or changing your mind, or getting pigeonholed. For our  hund...

Do you do graphic design or do you do branding? Do you do visual branding or do you do strategic branding? Do you do brand strategy? Do you even know what strategy is? Strategy is such an elusive concept. Everybody means something different when they say it.  And if you're somebody coming in to deliver strategy to your clients, how do you know if you're delivering it at the right level for them? W...

Doing marketing can really suck. It can suck your time. It can suck your energy. And a lot of marketing out there well, kind of sucks. Which is where today’s badass business owner comes in.  Justina Cerra Lucas is the founder of 218 Creative, where she helps creatives and entrepreneurs book more clients with marketing that doesn’t suck. Justina doesn’t believe that there’s a one-size-fits-all solu...

When you’re networking and connecting with people in the early stages of your business, it’s easy to slip out of people's minds unless they have someone they can refer to you right now. It happens to all of us, even if we mean really well.  When I was networking, I had so many lunches and coffees with people where I genuinely thought I was going to find someone for the insurance agent or real esta...

Being able to attract and close clients is a fundamental part of any service business.  If you can't do this, you won't have a business.  So obviously it's one of the most important things that you should know how to do. But when I ask people, “How do you get clients right now?”, so many people don’t know what to do. In fact, the number one question I get asked is “How do I find clients?” I get as...

When you think about your week, what are the most important things you focus on to move your business forward? Maybe you want to get posts up on social media so you can grow your audience. Maybe you want to tweak your lead magnet. Maybe you’re so busy with client work and you want to hire a freelancer so you can outsource some of the work. Those aren’t bad things to do. Posting on social media is...

No entrepreneur goes straight up the ladder to success. And no entrepreneur achieves success without investing in themselves. But how do you know what’s an investment in yourself and your business and what’s just spending money? On today's episode. I'm so excited to host my new friend and bad-ass business owner, Shannon Mattern . Shannon teaches solopreneurs how to DIY their website and mentors we...

The No BS Agency model is about doing projects in intensives. This means short timelines. A lot of people wonder, "Won’t shorter project timelines result in less valuable work for the client?" When I tell people that we deliver entire brands and websites in a two-day intensive Brand Up, many people assume we’re delivering templated work, that the work must be shoddy, that it’s rushed, that there’s...

Do you feel stuck charging low prices for your work?  Do you feel like people around you just don't ever want to pay more than you're asking for? In fact, they don't even want to pay the prices that you're pitching them. Well, that may be because you are stuck thinking about yourself and pitching yourself as a freelancer. If you want to charge higher and higher prices–those premium prices that eve...

I bet you have a number you want to make each month. Maybe it’s the holy grail of making six figures. Or maybe it’s the amount of cash you want to have in your bank account. We all have some number in our heads that we think, "When I have that amount, when I’m making that much money, then I will feel safe. I will feel secure and stable and I can breathe in my business." When we first started in 20...

A designer recently told me they’re very intrigued by these one-to-three day intensive models, but their issue was they "can’t stop designing”.  “My problem is being a perfectionist. I don’t know when to stop designing. How can I get more disciplined to get to a point where I can call it done and stop exploring ideas?” It’s a great question.  People tell us that building an entire brand in one to...

Productizing your services is a hell of a great way to run a business, make better money and live a more sustainable life. For me, it was the answer to years of chasing clients and struggling to keep my branding projects profitable for my small agency. Productizing my services completely turned my business around within just a couple of months and I went from $40,000 in debt to $500,000 in sales i...

Retainer model clients. Are they the holy grail of small agencies? Or the source of their eventual downfall. So many small agency owners are stuck in a feast or famine cycle with client work and marketing. They’re either spending all of their time on client projects or they’re spending all of their time hustling for clients and not making money.  It’s a stressful way to run a business.  Eventually...