What Works

The Nitty-Gritty: * How Victoria Klein questioned her choices and assumptions to try some decidedly unexpected things in her business and life* Why she decided to go back to school to study Japanese and how the decision gave her a fresh perspective on her business* What’s happened to her level of confidence as she’s experimented and questioned her assumptions* Why her business is better off today...

The Nitty-Gritty: * Jodi Brandon took nearly 2 years away from full-time work on her small business to care for her dying mother* When and how she made the decision to step back from her business and step up for her mom* How she kept things going behind-the-scenes while she wasn’t working normal hours* Why her confidence took a hit when she returned to full-time work* What she learned about runnin...

The Nitty-Gritty: * Why attorney Victoria R. Clark decided to leap into her own solo law practice just 5 years out from law school* How she’s focused on working through her weaknesses and supporting her business with each new challenge* What happened when she realized that her prices were keeping her stuck and overworking* Why she believes increased confidence is the key to overcoming every obstac...

The Nitty-Gritty: * How podcaster & coach Katie Linder uses her Radical Self-Trust framework to ensure her life and goals support her confidence* Why she finds confidence in sharing the work she’s most passionate about as she’s creating it* The 6 foundational pieces of the Radical Self-Trust framework* How she uses “cross walking” to match her to-do list with her values Showing up and being se...

The Nitty-Gritty: * Why Abby Herman, founder of Write Solutions , set her prices so low to begin with* How she realized she needed to raise her prices and how long it took to make it happen* What happened when she realized that her prices were only part of the problem and how her services have evolved since* Why Abby feels more motivated than ever to find a new level of satisfaction in all areas o...

The Nitty-Gritty: * How Hillary Rea, founder of Tell Me A Story , discovered her love of rich and nuanced storytelling* What she does to help new storytellers find more confidence in themselves and their ability to perform* What triggered a recent crisis of confidence and how its helping her move forward with growing her company* Why she’s channeling the confidence she feels in other aspects of li...

The Nitty-Gritty: * How Edios Media ‘s target clients have evolved over their 3 years in business* What happened with co-founder Michael Karsh and Elizabeth Madariaga got the chance to pitch a project for Google* Where Michael sources his confidence while working with giant corporations* What Michael and Elizabeth have focused on operationally to continue leveling up their service and their confid...

The Nitty-Gritty: * How Jamie Varon decided to embrace an “effortful” attitude and put more intention into her work* Why living and working from France reset her satisfaction meter and helped her find a new level of confidence* Her weekly writing practice and how that habit has impacted her ability to show up and do the work* The results she’s experiencing—personal and professional—from embracing...

I opened my email and saw the message that brightens the spirit of any cross-country traveler: my upgrade was confirmed. Even better, this upgrade included my daughter. Lola has always loved flying but this was her first First Class flight. Of course, she had no idea what to expect when we boarded the plane. She was 6 at the time and small enough to sit quite comfortably in economy so she was dwar...

It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been in business… Any entrepreneur can suffer a crisis of confidence. Late last year, I felt woefully unprepared and underskilled for the task I had in front of me. I felt like I had been faced with setback after setback, with defeat after defeat. I’d spent 2 years trying to build what I saw as the answer to a huge, painful problem for small business owners. And I...

The Nitty-Gritty: * How Brazenist founder Brooke Roberts left rural Kansas for a life and business in global travel* What Brooke learned about planning and hosting events from her career and businesses* The exact process she uses to plan events for her business—whether they’re simple meet-ups or retreats in exotic locations* What mistakes she’s learned along the way and how they’ve changed her pla...

The Nitty-Gritty: * Why Amy Scott, founder of Nomad Editorial and Nomadtopia , quit her office job and started traveling full-time back in 2004* How she ramped up from freelancing to running her own businesses* How the technology she uses has changed over the years—and made her location independent businesses easier to run* What an average week looks like for Amy (hint: there’s really no such thin...

The Nitty-Gritty: * Why Kate Leese and her husband decided to travel full-time in an Airstream while building Kinetics Consulting * How the logistics of running a business from the road have impacted their approach and operations* The tools and method she uses for managing their team—all full-time travelers themselves!* How Kate’s leadership style has evolved since starting the business and adapti...

The Nitty-Gritty: * The day Kelly Higdon realized she couldn’t keep working at the pace she was working at* How she plans her year to prioritize her life—and then fits her business in the space left over* What she’s changed to allow for taking 3 months off from her business per year* How her business is different today thanks to her new working style We recently asked What Works Network members ho...

As you’re listening to this, I’m somewhere between the White Mountains of New Hampshire and Acadia National Park in Maine. Sean and I are celebrating our 1st wedding anniversary in the only way we how: in a National Park! That’s right, I’m on vacation—but that doesn’t mean the business comes to a standstill. We’ve worked hard to improve the operational efficiency and predictability of our business...

The Nitty-Gritty: * What inspired Thien-Kim Lam to develop a subscription box and virtual book club for a niche audience* How she channeled her love of romance books and her experience selling adult toys into the subscription she would have loved to buy herself * How she’s connecting with the right people using a Facebook group, author partnerships, and savvy content marketing* Where she’s run int...

All this month, we’ve been talking about building an audience here on the podcast—and we’ve been asking members of The What Works Network, well, what’s working for them when it comes to audience-building and marketing their businesses. Some people have told us that keeping it simple and focusing on just one technique has paid a lot more dividends than trying to be everywhere and do everything. Oth...

The Nitty-Gritty: * Why Eli Trier embarked on her first community project —and the results she experienced from that first project* How facilitating community projects help her reach important business goals and build her audience* The exact process Eli uses to put together each project* How community projects differ from less effective marketing tactics like telesummits When I first heard about t...

The Nitty-Gritty: * How Rachael Kay Albers got the idea to create a “ business comedy show “* Why Awkward Marketing really stands out—even when plenty of other marketers are using video to promote their businesses* How the show supports her web design & digital marketing studio , RKA ink* The start-to-finish process she uses to produce each season of the show* How she finds new videos and meas...

The Nitty-Gritty: * Why Kim Herrington believes start content creation is the key to building your audience and getting off the social media treadmill* How she used 20 targeted articles to boost a website’s traffic by 1000%* The tools she uses to discover what to create content about and the technique she uses to maximize their potency for search* How she bridges the gap between social media and S...

The Nitty-Gritty: * Why social media marketing agency founder Andréa Jones doesn’t try to game the social media algorithms to build her audience and, instead, spends a lot more time behind the scenes* How she finds people to connect with, how she starts the conversation, and how she follows up* The process and tool she uses to track her time spent on her behind-the-scenes audience-building* Why cr...

A year ago this week, I deleted about 12,000 people off my email list. That meant that my audience shrank by about 80% with the push of a button. GDPR was going into effect and, while I wasn’t caught up in the mass hysteria happening in the digital marketing world around compliance, I did look at the regulations as an opportunity to take a new approach to building an audience for my brand. Quick a...

The Nitty-Gritty: * How Kate Northrup started doing less by accident—and why she decided to move forward doing less on purpose* The exercise Kate used to determine the 2 activities that have led to her biggest business wins* How the way Kate asks for and receives help has evolved since she became a mom* The process Kate uses to know what she needs help with so she always has an answer to the quest...

Imagine the open rate on the last email you sent to your subscribers. Think about the net profit your business has generated already this year. Consider how many people viewed your last video, clicked on your blog post, or listened to your last podcast episode. Those numbers aren’t just numbers for a lot of us. At best, they can be subtle points of validation that we’re headed in the right directi...

The Nitty-Gritty: * How Jordan Gill used data and experience to set competitive prices for her business operations firm* Why she focused on serving seasonal service-based businesses and how that impacts the way she delivers her service* The stat she used to figure out a new way to offer her services* What expenses Jordan accounts for in pricing her unusual offer Sometimes the numbers top you in yo...