Have you ever wondered how you can identify opportunities to bring in more money into your business? In this episode, Camille welcomes Emylee Williams, co-founder of Boss Project and co-host of The Strategy Hour Podcast. Along with Abagail Pumphrey, they have helped more than 10,000 small business owners create revenue-generating businesses. 

Emylee shares her journey from starting a photography business to co-founding Boss Project with her Abagail Pumphrey and helping clients identify low-hanging fruits in their businesses. She shares some strategies that you can use to grow more revenue including how to handle scaling your business and pricing your services right. 

If you’re looking for ways where you can identify more opportunities for business growth, tune into this episode to hear Emylee’s advice on how you too can build systems for your services to help you expand your business and your income.

Resources:

Interested in becoming a virtual assistant? Join the 60 Days to VA Course:
www.camillewalker.co/VA

Access the 5-day email sequence to help you discover your purpose:
www.callmeceopodcast.com

Listen to Fewer Things Better:
www.unlockthebrain.com/podcast

Connect with the Boss Project:

Visit Boss Project: www.bossproject.com

Follow Boss Project on Instagram: www.instagram.com/bossproject/

Connect with Camille Walker:

Follow Camille on Instagram: www.instagram.com/CamilleWalker.co

Follow Call Me CEO on Instagram: www.instagram.com/callmeceopodcast

EMYLEE [0:00]

If i’m very confident in that and I personally ethically would not push out a service that I wasn’t confident in, have an impact on people’s lives, so if I know that and I know that I can deliver, I will charge literally whatever price that I think I could get away because I know the impact that it has on their life.

CAMILLE WALKER [0:19]

So, you want to make an impact. You’re thinking about starting a business sharing your voice. How do women do it that handle motherhood, family, and still chase after those dreams? We’ll listen each week as we dive into the stories of women who know. This is Call Me CEO.

[MUSIC]

I’ve heard people say there's low-hanging fruit when you can look at your business and see what is actually bringing in money. What are those breadcrumbs that you are missing out on major opportunities to bring in extra cash? Let’s dive in with this episode and get started.

Welcome back everyone to another episode of Call Me CEO. This is your host, Camille Walker. My voice may sound a little bit lower than normal because I have a little bit of a cold. So, I apologize for that. But you are in for a treat today because we’re actually going to take a deep dive into revenue building. For all of you business owners, we have The Boss Project co-owner, Emy Williams. Sorry, Emylee. You guys, it messed me up because her name is spelled E-M-Y-L-E-E. I even said, okay, it’s Emylee. And I have a sister-in-law with the name Emy, middle name Lee.

EMYLEE [1:47]

I think that’s the weirdest connection though.

CAMILLE [1:49]

It is so weird.

EMYLEE [1:50]

I knew my name was going to trip you up.

CAMILLE [1:51]

I know, dang it. This is real, people. But her co-owner is not with us today, Abagail Pumphrey and they are also the host of The Strategy Hour podcast. And we are so excited to hear about this, Emylee. Please tell us more about The Boss Project and how it got started.

EMYLEE [2:10]

Yeah. So, Boss Project has been around since 2015. We were official in 2016. We’re actually known as Think Creative Collective back then. So, if you’ve heard of that, that’s also us. We rebranded in 2018, I think. I don’t know. All the years are blurring together.

But yeah, I had my own business. I started a business fresh out of college. I graduated. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I had an art degree in photography and a minor in creative writing and multicultural studies. So, I didn’t know what I was going to do. I picked up my camera, started a little bit of a business, not charging enough, not understanding marketing, not understanding selling, and just doing it.

I had an incredible partner who is my now husband who is still incredible. And so, he just let me be a little creative and I didn’t have any pressure. We didn’t have a ton of bills at that time. We didn’t have a kid at that time. And so, life was much different. But I finally had a serious chat with him where he was like, “I believe that you can actually turn this into something if you actually try. And if you take yourself seriously and if you learn a little bit more about the business.” And so, I was like, “Okay, fine.”

And so, I started taking a couple of online courses and listening to podcasts and just digesting and being a sponge about learning about everything about online business and strategy and selling and all of the cool things and really took from other industries what I think would work in my local photography business. And overnight, completely redid my entire selling process, the entire experience, the pricing, everything. I 64X-ed my pricing overnight basically. I was charging partly nothing.

So, I went ahead and booked a client. I put out some feelers, got a client, and was like I’m going to treat this client like the premium topnotch experience and just see because I was starting to get burnt out. I was starting to not have a great client experience because I wasn’t having fun. They weren’t having fun. It was just feeling really off.

So, I drastically increased my prices, but I also drastically increased the level of customer service and the experience and what people did and how I communicate with them and how I show up for them and took this new client, which is a family photography client through this entire process and I walked out of their selling session with a $2500 check. I was getting used to $75 Venmo transactions. And I was like, this was a completely different experience. They were crying. They loved it. I was so happy.

I called my husband on the way home and I was like, “I don’t know what just happened, but this happened.” And he was like, “See? Do more of that.” So, I started to become obsessed with selling and marketing and creating client experiences that converted and really, really dove deep into obsessing about being a service-based business owner and having a service and impacting other people.

Ultimately, that led me to create a course for photographers all about pricing, which led me to a Facebook group for small business owners, which led me to joining an Instagram pod. Remember when those things were a thing with 5 or 7 Instagrammers and they would comment on your post right when you hit publish to boost it in the algorithm?

So, I joined an Instagram pod and Abigail was in that Instagram pod. And she was like, “Oh my gosh. I love how you talk to your audience. That's how I talk to my audience. I also am obsessed with selling and pricing and marketing and all of those things.” So, she actually grew up about 20-30 minutes from me, but we had never met each other. We didn’t know each other existed until I lived 4 hours away and we met in a Facebook group.

Two weeks after meeting in a Facebook group, I drove up to Missouri. I was living in Tulsa at the time. I stayed at her house. I had known her for 2 weeks on the internet, and stayed at her house over the weekend. We just connected on so many levels about what type of businesses we wanted to run, what we didn’t want to do, what we didn't want to sacrifice, how we felt like there wasn’t really a space for us. And we wanted to create community and all of these things.

And so, then a couple months, we were like, why don’t we just try to do this together and see what that feels like? So, we hosted a webinar and co-sold my course together. She eventually added some curriculum to it. We started working with clients together both from Kansas City and Tulsa and ultimately decided to relaunch our brand as co-founders of a company and started pushing out blog content and courses and webinars and workshops and challenges and working one-on-one with clients.

And then, launched our podcast in 2017 and now just serve clients with our incredible team of 7. We have 7 people on this team like whole 7 employees with benefits and paid time off and all of these things. And so, it went from a definite hobby that I thought maybe I’ll never make money from to a full-fledged actual company, which is wild to me.

CAMILLE [7:01]

That is so cool. I love that you were so like minded in your mission and what it is that you wanted to do. And what’s really interesting to me too is that you found each other in such an organic way, which I feel like that can still happen. So, if you’re listening to this right now and thinking, could I find someone like that where I could partner? Because I feel like we all have our own talents and strengths and finding someone that compliments you in your weakness is magic. So, that’s so cool.

EMYLEE [7:31]

Yes. It’s been a game changer for both of us. We talk about all the time how we’re each other’s yin and yang and we just complement each other in that our values are always in alignment. And I think that that's critical. We’re always on the same page of how we want to show up and ultimately what we want to achieve together, but how we want to look and feel as we’re going towards those goals.

But what we’re doing to get there, we’re open to experimenting and trying out new things and maybe it’s a service. Maybe it’s a course. Maybe it’s writing a book. I don't know. Let’s just see what this looks like, but as long as we know that we’re building it in the alignment that's best for both of us, then we’re going to be great.

CAMILLE [8:20]

I love it. Now, there's something when I got the pitch from your company to be on the show, one of the things that caught my attention was something that said, first, “The number one mistake we make when trying to scale,” so I want to really dig into that, and second, “How we can make $60,000 more per week,” I think is what it said.

EMYLEE [8:45]

In 6 weeks.

CAMILLE [8:47]

In 6 weeks without new leads. So, let’s tackle those two questions because I’m like, yeah, that sounds good.

EMyLEE [8:52]

Yes, I want both of those things.

CAMILLE [8:54]

Right. So, what’s that number one mistake? Let’s talk about that.

EMYLEE [8:56]

Yeah. So, to us and we have gotten the privilege working with over 10,000 small business owners over the course of the years, whether it’s through our paid programs or our courses and our workshops or our coaching programs or our one-on-one executive coaching programs. So, we have gotten behind the scenes with a lot of business owners.

And so, because of that, we have a lot of data that we can look at and we can pull on a lot of themes of where people get stuck and the commonality within businesses, no matter what stage you’re in or what industry you’re in or what your goals are in. And so, ultimately, everyone’s after scaling. A lot of us want to go through seasons of growth or scaling.

And oftentimes, we get growth and scaling confused. But the conversation we actually need to be having before we’re diving into that and this is what I alluded to in this Aby and I’s values are very similar, there's the basic foundation of you obviously have to know what your goal is. What does scaling mean to you? What does that actually mean?

Does it mean having a team to support you? Are those contractors or are those employees? Does it mean having a virtual team? Does it mean you have a brick-and-mortar because you’re going to have clients come into your office and your building and exist with you? Does it mean you want to be a really well-known thought leader and influencer in your space?

Does it mean that you want to be traveling a lot or does it mean that you just want it to be you and one part-time admin or a VA and you just want to keep things lean and have really high profits? Does it mean you want to take some of that money and open up other locations or a foundation or start another business and you’re really a true entrepreneur in the sense of you’re using capital to start something else?

All of those versions are beautiful and great and amazing. I think we don’t necessarily know what we’re after until we start going after something and it feels right or it doesn’t feel right. But what I see when people are diving into scaling is that the mechanism that they’re choosing toward growth is to reach goals that they don’t actually care about that they don’t actually want. They’re goals that they feel like they should have because everyone else in the marketing space is saying you need to reach 6 figures or you need to reach $1 million business or you need to have a team or you need to host retreats for your clients or insert whatever thing that you’re being told.

And I really want you to sit with how do you want your business to feel as you’re running it, as you're showing up day-to-day? Because you deciding that it’s going to be you and a contractor or a VA or one part-time employee is a heck of a lot different than 7 employees or 25 employees or 500 employees. And how you have to show up as the founder, as the CEO, as the leader is drastically different depending on which route you choose.

None of them are wrong, but oftentimes, I see this major disconnect in this is what I want to do everyday, but these are my goals. You’re going to have to do different things if this is your goal and if we’re wanting this version of life, then here are the opportunities that are available to us. And all of those are great, but saying you want to be a thought leader that’s speaking on a bunch of stages, but you don’t want to travel is counterintuitive to that goal.

And so, I really want you to be mindful about what are your goals? What are the things that you’re wanting to do to get there? And how do you want your business to feel as you’re achieving those goals and are they actually in alignment?

CAMILLE [12:31]

Yeah. That’s such a good point. I think so often, we look at social media or have an idea of what those different scenarios could look like or feel like, but to actually step back and say, but what do I want?

EMyLEE [12:46]

Right. Here’s the biggest thing that we see because we work with service-based business owners, meaning you work one-on-one with someone. So, various price points, we have service-based business owners who charge $500 a month for something on retainer, some that charge $90,000 for one project and everything in between.

But what we see because this is the classic case of getting muddled with different industry advice, and then thinking you have to take on that advice for your own business, you’re a one-on-one service-based business owner, you’re probably an introvert. You’re hanging out at home. Your capacity is probably 3-5 clients a month if that. Even 5 might feel high. You’re thinking about maybe getting some help, but it’s going to be a contractor for maybe some copywriting over here or design work over here for your clients or even for your own business.

And right now, you’re in that lean scaling vibe. So, we think and we know that those are the things that we want. We want to be making more money. We want to have a small team. And we want to have high profits. We want to be keeping the money that we're making. And we don't have to work with a ton of people in order to make that happen. We really find that our best results are working with a handful of people and seeing really deep impacts.

So, this is what’s being told to me from our clients. But their strategies are, okay, so because I want that, I’m going to launch a $17 membership and I’m going to start a podcast. And I’m going to grow an email list and I’m going to start Facebook Ads and I’m going to start a TikTok and Instagram social media plan and I’m going to start blogging.

And we’re doing all of these things that are amazing strategies if you’re wanting to build a really big brand and if you’re needing quantity over quality, if you’re needing a ton of leads to sell a ton of products because your price is so low that you need those sales in order to reach this goal.

And so, that's what I’m talking about when the methods of what we're doing are out of alignment with what we say we actually want. And this reality, we need to find the price that’s actually appropriate for the handful of clients that we want, then how many leads do we need in order to convert that many clients?

And so, what are our marketing efforts need to be? Maybe it's showing up to one networking event and maybe it’s making sure our SEO is really great. So, when people are typing in keywords for what we offer, I actually show up for them because I only need 7 new leads a month to convert 5 of them, 4 of them. And so, really being mindful of what’s actually working in your business to get you the clients that you want versus what are you doing?

CAMILLE [15:17]

That right there is gold because I can relate to that wear especially if there is any type of business that I talk to and coming from the world of blogging and influencing, it's about the math. And everybody needs to be on TikTok and hurry and get out there. And it’s so distracting because you’re like, I have to do all the things? So, that’s such a relief to hear you say, no, focus on keywords. Show up at networking events.

EMYLEE [15:43]

Yup. And those are just a couple examples. I don’t know if those are the things perfect for you, but I’m on TikTok for my own brand because I am in the quantity game. I’m writing a book. I want to be a published author. And I need a bunch of readers in order for that to be a sustainable income for me.

But for BP, we’re on Instagram because we’ve been on Instagram since 2014, 2015. So, our account is there. We don’t get clients from there. It’s just our portfolio. Hey, we’re still alive. We exist. This is our business, but our clients come from networking, from our email list, from having conversations with peers and getting introduced to other people and referrals, speaking on other people’s podcasts, making them aware that we exist and this is what we do. It’s not the mass efforts.

CAMILLE [16:36]

Yeah, I really appreciate that. I think that that’s spot on. So, I’m curious about your own purposes on TikTok. Let’s talk about that for a minute. For someone who is looking to grow that way, what is your best advice for strategy there? Have you had success there?

EMyLEE [16:51]

No, I literally just started my account 3 days ago. And so, I am in the throw the spaghetti at the wall see what works. So, I'm writing a book. It’s spicy contemporary romance and so it’s going to be on Kindle. It’s going to be available on Amazon, all of the places. I’ve done a lot of research and have authors actually get paid from those platforms. And it’s very, very little quantities, but it adds up. It can have hundreds of readers and hundreds of pages. It stacks up. Again, the quantity game.

And so, I need people who are outside of my inner circle to also be aware of me. So, I know within my personal Instagram account that has about a little less than 8,000 followers, my people show up for me. They love what I do, period. I’ve been sharing my art and creative journey for over a decade on that platform. And it has ranged from selling paintings to selling handmade earrings to talking about motherhood and adoption to Boss Project stuff to now my book and my writing. And they're tremendous and they’re my rally people and I love them.

There’s also not hundreds and thousands of them. And so, I need more of them. So, I did decide to start TikTok and try to figure out the whole book talk section of that platform and I’ve got about 70 followers and some comments. And so, that’s happened in 3 days and I feel pretty good about that. But yeah, I’m just seeing what’s working for other people and trying to replicate that on my own with my own style.

CAMILLE [18:30]

That’s awesome. I can tell that you’re a learner and you make it happen for you. And stay tuned because I actually have a best-selling author who’s also a lawyer that I’m interviewing next week who has a team of writers that works with her and they release I think 3 or 5 books every couple of months and she’s incredible.

EMYLEE [18:50]

Yeah. Again, that's the quantity game. I can talk about book writing all day because I definitely dug into this. I have authors especially in my genre where the books are a lot shorter and they’re easier to digest. It’s like pushing out.

CAMILLE [19:05]

Yeah. She gives what you’re looking for. I promise you're going to love her. So, we’ll talk more about that if you’re listening to that and curious. That’s coming in a week or two after this episode. So, let’s talk about the $60,000 additional in 6 weeks. How do we get that? Because that sounds great.

EMyLEE [19:23]

Okay. So, I feel like i’m just going to be a broken record here and repeating back the same thing. One of our favorite things to do with clients, so I call it chasing the breadcrumbs. And we do an audit and we force our clients. If they come to us and say, “This is my problem. Here’s what I think I need to do to solve it,” we are those annoying consultants that are like, “But is it really? Do you have proof to back up that this is the thing that you need to do in order to reach the goal that you say that you have?” And we dig a little bit deeper and we have them chase the breadcrumbs and find the facts.

And so, client Bonny came to us. She’s in the marketing space in Denver. She works a lot with restaurants and restaurant groups. They’re her clients. So, she does their social media management, email campaigns, menus, signs on the menu for different events, all sorts of stuff like that. It’s her and a full-time employee. This was about 18 months ago. We continued to work with her and she’s grown incredibly and it’s very exciting.

So, ultimately, she joined one of our programs, The Incubator. And she came to us and said, “I joined because I’m at capacity. My time is out. My employee’s time is out. We have as many as clients as we can work with. So, in order to work with more clients, I need to hire more people. So, I want you to help me learn how to hire. Who should I hire? How much do I pay them? How do I train them so that they can start serving clients so that I can work with more clients so that I can make more money?”

And I said, “What if that wasn’t what you needed to do?” Because I’m all about simplicity and making more money without costing more money. So, I said, “Let’s do a deep dive into what are you offering right now? What’s the price point? Are you priced right? Let’s just start there. Are you even priced right? Before we add on any more clients, are you actually priced right with what you're delivering?”

So, Aby is our numbers gal. And she built this incredible calculator that our clients get access to that you basically plug in how much do you want to make, then how much revenue do you need and at what profit margins, what is your capacity? And so, therefore how many clients can you as the founder sustain versus if you have an employee, what’s their client capacity? So, how does that increase your client capacity?

It’s this whole big Google spreadsheet that’s gorgeous and amazing and auto-populates your answers. And so, she did all of that. And obviously, this is not a surprise. Real issue was drastically undercharging. Drastically undercharging. She was overdelivering gand undercharging, which a lot of us do, especially when you have clients who’ve been around for years as you started your business.

They’re typically paying the rates that you put out the first 6 months of the business, your first year of business and you’ve been adding more things into their scope because you let them do that, but you haven’t changed the price. So, we ultimately said, “You need to have conversations with your legacy clients. You’re losing money on these clients. So, we need to have a conversation. So, let’s start there first.”

So, we helped her craft some scripts and helped her identify of her client load, who were the ones that were prime to say yes to spending more money with her? Who were her easiest ones to communicate with, her favorite ones to work with? And ultimately, she decided to reach out to 6 clients. So, we helped her figure out does the conversation need to be an email for this person? What does that need to say? Do you need to have a phone call for this person? What do you need to say? Do you need to take this person to lunch and what do you need to say?

And they’re all the basis of the same conversation. “We’re raising our rates. Here’s why. Here’s what your new project is going to look like moving forward. Here’s why.” But all in a positive, “Doing this is going to help me better serve in these ways, XYZ.” All of these conversations. She reached out to 6 people, had 6 different custom-tailored conversations for them, all 6 of them said yes and converted to her new rates.

And from those 6 clients that she already had generated the additional $60,000 within a 6-week time frame. So, ultimately, at the end of that, she looked up and said, “I don’t need to hire. Actually, I can let one of these clients go because I don’t like working with them and I just found $60,000 over here. And what if I do this again for these 3 clients over here or these clients over here? And the next clients that are going to be coming in are going to be at an even higher rate because I feel confident now about what I’m offering.”

And ultimately, now 18 months later, she has her full-time employee and she has 2 part-time contractors and she’s brought on 6 additional clients because of those contractors. Because now, she understands when I pull this lever, this is what it’s actually going to do and it is in an input-output scenario when earlier, it would’ve kept her burnt out because she still isn't getting paid appropriately.

CAMILLE [23:59]

Right. That is so powerful. That’s the thing I’m really curious about too is that I think a lot of it is confidence obviously, and then sorting out the right amount to charge. Because I think especially for women, we have a hard time charging. And so, how do you help through that process?

EMYLEE [24:20]

I don’t think I’m great at it. I’ll be honest with you because I’ve been in the game for so long. And while I was the person charging very cheap for photography, it wasn’t because I didn’t think I was worth it. It wasn't because I thought my stuff wasn’t good. I just literally didn’t know how to structure or create the experience that would justify that price point.

Are there photographers that could charge $3,000 for I’m going to show up to this thing, shoot your photos, and give them to you on a digital drive? Absolutely. And I'm sure that they’re amazing at that. I felt like I wanted to create more of an experience there.

So, to me, as long as I’m coming at it from a space of, no, I know what I’m offering impacts people, it changes lives. It makes them happy. It makes them more money. It solves a problem in their life. If I’m very confident in that and I personally ethically would not push out a service that I wasn’t confident in, have an impact on people’s lives. So, if I know that and I know that I can deliver, I will charge literally whatever price that I think that I can get away with. Because I know the impact that it has on your life.

And so, when we work with clients about this, if they don’t believe in the thing that they're offering and believe that it’s impactful in whatever unique way that they show up, then they are going to have a hard time raising those rates and having those conversations. But we work with clients who could charge a gajillion dollars for their service because it’s that good.

And in reality, we just need to put you through the calculator to figure out what’s actually appropriate for the time that you’re spending versus the scope versus the deliverables versus your actual industry and your clients’ budgets. Some people are working with small businesses who have drastically different budgets than some of our folks who are getting hired by Google to come and train the entire department. That's a completely different budget conversation. I’m going to help you price differently if Google is your client versus if this small business over here is your client.

CAMILLE [26:20]

Yeah. That makes a lot of sense.

EMYLEE [26:23]

It comes down to math. As annoying as that is, it comes down to facts and math and you can be bent out about the price if you want, but you’re just holding yourself back from making more money. And so, once you get past that, come talk to me because I’m not the best at the mindset piece of why you need to be charging this because I’m going to tell you. It’s the only thing that’s going to help you reach your goals. So, when you’re ready to do that, then we can chat.

CAMILLE [26:47]

You referenced quite a bit about email lists and that that’s a way that you've been able to keep consistent income for your own business. Talk to me a little bit about that. What are your best tips for email and keeping that active and maybe re-engaging an email list that you’ve let slow down?

EMYLEE [27:06]

Yeah. It’s interesting because I definitely don’t recommend email list strategy for everyone. We happen to start ours back in 2015 when we were doing webinars and workshops and challenges, so online events that people would give their email to sign up for something or remember when in, I don’t know, 2016, 2017 when freebies were still really popular? One-page PDFs or sign up for this 5-day email challenge or whatever, those aren’t effective these days. You have to be really, really niche and really specific.

The thing that's happening right now and this is just a side tangent is buyer behavior is drastically changing. And the research from Google and from a lot of places is telling us that our website traffic specifically is coming to us where people are a lot further along in their buyer journey than they have been in the past because they’re able to consume so much content, not even from just you about the thing that you’re talking about.

They’re listening to a podcast, and then they're getting an ad for another workshop. And then, they see something on stories, and then they might see some TikTok videos about it, then they might read somebody’s blog post about it and it could be from a different source every single time. But it doesn’t matter because that’s their research.

So, they’re doing a lot of research on their own, even if they don’t realize they’re doing the research until one day, they’re ready to actually try to solve this problem. This problem is enough of an issue for me that I now want to take action to solve this problem. So, historically, even 5 years ago, people could come to a site and say, I’m still researching.

And so, it makes sense for me to drop in my email and I’m going to get your one-page guide. I’m going to get your 5 steps to this. I’m going to get your resource toolkit, whatever you might have had and I’m going to learn. And then, you can nurture me. And then, I might be ready to take the next step. That’s not where people are at right now.

And so, what I want is if we’re going to spend time on strategies, I want them to be the most effective for you, but also what your customers want, what your potential clients want. So, if I were to do an opt-in or freebie today, it would not be to drastically nurture. It would not be to have this 30-day long drive campaign to introduce myself, and then my values, and then my business. And here’s now what I offer and here’s what’s perfect for it.

I’m going to go straight to the point a lot faster. People’s attention spans are less and less these days. People are cutting through the BS a lot faster, I feel like.So, unless your thing is super effective and super valuable, I honestly would just cut it. Drop your email to schedule a call with me. Fill out this form, so I can learn which one of my services is best for you. And then, I’m going to choose your own adventure kind of thing, I’m going to put you down the right pipeline. It’s a quicker journey from that know, like, and trust because they’ve been doing a lot of that on their own to here’s who I am and here’s how I can help.

CAMILLE [30:02]

Okay. So, for people who are listening to that and they say someone comes to your website, would you have that be a popup for an email grab of, let me know how I can help you?

EMYLEE [30:13]

If you’re offering a one-on-one service, I would have a popup, a button, and multiple links throughout your home page and entire site for someone to either book a call with you, so straight to your calendar or fill out a form that gives you a little bit of information about who this person is, maybe what their budget is, what they're looking for, then you can read their form. And then, you can send an email to them saying, “Because you’ve said, here’s what I think might be perfect for you.”

If their budget is nil, maybe you send them carry you to blog post links or to podcast episodes that you’ve done and you’re like, “Here’s the resources I think you should dive into. If you have any other questions, I would love to chat with you or hang out over on Instagram or TikTok and learn more from me.”

But if they’re in the right budget or in the right industry or stage or whatever your filters are for your ideal client, get on the phone with them. People are wanting to build relationships. They’re craving connection. They want to see that you're a human on the other side of all this marketing presentation. And if you get there faster, even if that person doesn’t book, even if they don’t move forward, you learn so much about your ideal client that you can then take that to tweak your copy, tweak your brand messaging, tweak your next social media posts or whatever it might be and it’s going to convert higher next time.

CAMILLE [31:29]

I can attest to that because in the past with my 60 Days to VA course, I was doing more webinars and come learn from me in this class and this and that. And now that I'm doing one-on-one calls, it just converts so much better.

EMYLEE [31:46]

It’s a game changer. So, we do a mix of both. We do one-on-one calls all week long. Aby’s on the phone all of the time. You can literally go to our waitlist right now and just chat with Aby. You can get on her calendar right now for whatever you want.

But we also do a mix of webinars because I freaking love teaching. I love, love, love teaching. And I love a-ha moments and I just learned this thing and I want to teach you this thing. And so, that’s still the thing that brings me joy.

So, we do monthly lunch and learns. And our last two have all been about website audits and how you can perform a website audit yourself, so you can book more discovery calls. We design websites. That’s our biggest bread and butter here with our clients. But our packages, our budgets start out at $16,000. That’s not a fit for everybody. We get that.

So, we know that if you’re going to be taking the time to sign up for a webinar, maybe you also don’t have a $16,000 budget. So, what can I do within this training to show you that I actually care about you having a takeaway, that I actually am committed to making your website better? It’s not going to be perfect. Even if you take every single strategy that I share with you today, it’s not going to be perfect.

Ultimately, at the end of the day, I do suggest that you hire a design and developer for your website for specific purposes. If you have no training in design, copywriting or SEO, you need to hire someone for that. Those are not skills that you can try to do and hope that converts really well. But ultimately, I still want you to walk away with something.

So, we hosted 2 workshops in the past 2 months for website audits. And we have a tool. It’s our opt-in where you can get a free website audit of your own website. You literally just type in your name, your email, and your URL of your website. And within 60 seconds, a multi-page PDF generates and it gives you an SEO grade, so A through F.

Here’s why you have that grade. Maybe you have missing links. Maybe you don’t have enough keywords. Maybe your images are too big and it’s slowing down your website. Maybe your website’s not mobile-responsive and 50% of all website traffic as of 2022 come from mobiles or tablets. Maybe you don't have enough H1 tags, so Google doesn’t know what it is that you do. Maybe you don't have enough body copy on your website. All of these different things, it assesses.

And it tells you each and every one of those that you passed with a green check mark or a red X that you failed. And it gives you high priority to medium priority to low priority of attention. So, you can sort those things. If you have capabilities to fix those things, be my guest. Take it. Go into your website and start making those changes.

If you don’t, you’re prompted at the end of the PDF to hop on the phone with us and we can figure out what does that look like for us to work together? And that is enough for us right now where people are getting their exact report for their website with their grade with tangible steps they can do to make it better. But if they don’t want to do that, they also know what to do to get help.

CAMILLE [34:41]

That is such a cool tool. Was that something that was made specifically for your business?

EMYLEE [34:46]

Yeah. It’s a website that we pay for that we customize our reports to be able to generate and showcase our prospects to see what they want to see in their report. But you would have to pay hundreds of dollars to get that report yourself if you went through that website. But it’s whitelisted through ours and you can grab your report. It’s at the very bottom of our home page of your website, if you want it. It’s www.bossproject.com

CAMILLE [35:10]

Which is www.bossproject.com. We’ll link to that below. This has been so helpful. I think everyone listening has learned a lot. I know I have. Please tell our audience where they can connect with you. I know you’ve referenced some of it, but we’ll cover some more.

EMYLEE [35:26]

Yeah. Definitely head to www.bossproject.com. That's where you’re going to be able to get the website audit. You’re also going to be able to see lots of button links for you to schedule a call and that goes straight to Aby’s Calendly. So, you can book a time with her to talk about the website project, to talk about the SEO project, to talk about we have a sales strategy playbook where we do your pricing on it for your offer and help you create a sales strategy for that specific thing. So, there’s a plethora of things you can learn about on there.

We have a ton of blog posts on our archives as well as our podcast, The Strategy Hour, where you can find us wherever you listen to podcasts. I think we have over 700 episodes. Start at the newer ones, and then work your way back. Don’t start at the beginning. We were newb business baby podcasters and we definitely got better over time. But they’re really incredible episodes. We release a new one every Tuesday and Thursday, so definitely go check that out.

And we’re on Instagram @bossproject. That's where you can really see our portfolio of work. So, what does our design work, what does our branding work look like when we work with clients? And we'll let you know when new episodes and blog posts go live on our Instagram feed as well. But if you DM us, it’s literally me and Aby who respond. And so, if you want to chit chat with us, introduce yourself, say, “Hey.” Let us know that you came from this podcast. So, I can know and let you know that you have your amazing listeners come over. And I love to get to know you guys better over there.

CAMILLE [36:44]

That’s awesome. Thank you so much for being on the show.

EMYLEE [36:45]

Yes, thanks for having me.

[MUSIC]

CAMILLE [36:48]

Thank you so much for listening to this episode. Please subscribe and leave a review. Any time that you do that, that helps this podcast to grow. And I’m so grateful for you showing up today. I hope you found some helpful tips to grow your business.

And if you are a busy entrepreneur and looking for help from a VA, you can reach out to me at www.camillewalker.co, as well as if you’re looking to build your own 60 Days to VA business with me, you can reach out to me in that same place.

So, I hope you have a great day and I will see you next week. Hey, CEOs. Thank you so much for spending your time with me. If you’ve found this episode inspiring or helpful, please let me know in a comment and a 5-star review. You could have the chance of being a featured review on an upcoming episode. Continue the conversation on Instagram @callmeceopodcast. And remember, you are the boss!

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