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Strategy Hour | Online Marketing for Business Growth
999: What’s Next for Me (And Maybe, for You Too)
00:21:24
Over the past few months, life has forced me to slow down through surgery, recovery, and a lot of unexpected stillness. And in that quiet, I’ve had to ask some uncomfortable questions about what really matters.
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- [00:00]
Abigail Pumphrey
I'm the kind of person who when I start something, I generally stay incredibly committed to that effort. There's very few podcasts that have reached a thousand episodes, and there's very few that ever will.
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Welcome to the Strategy Hour podcast brought to you by Boss Project. I'm your host, Abigail Pumphrey, and I'm dedicated to supporting online businesses. I don't believe in one right way to build a business. I'm here to help you build business your way, one that supports not only the life you have, but the life you want. I'm on a personal mission to help you become financially free. I'm taking all the lessons learned as I turned a layoff into a seven figure online business. I'm here to help you prioritize your life every step of the way. Whether you're creating your first digital product, growing an email list, or scaling an already profitable business. Settle in. It's time to talk strategy.
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- [01:31]
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- [02:01]
Abigail Pumphrey
Been absolutely dreading recording this episode because I haven't known what to say or how to say it. I wanted to have a perfect PR plan and matching social media and a whole launch just to end some things. Some parts of me I haven't been totally transparent. Life has been really hard and I'm going to attempt to get through this episode without sobbing. The entire time I've had surgery, I ended up in the hospital with complications and I've had a lot of things that have forced me to really examine what's the most important to me and where do I want to be Spending my time. And what does that look like? Not just now, but into the future. Life has been pretty adamant that I need to slow down, that I was running on a speed that was not sustainable, especially with me and a small team. Now, this isn't to say that there's anything wrong with the business. Profit's actually up, like the business is doing well. And honestly, this isn't really about the business so much as it's about the podcast. But I was looking at the next few months and what I know is coming up in my life, and I just couldn't imagine doing this show the justice it deserved. I didn't know how I was going to book guests or what we'd even talk about. And that hesitancy doesn't come from a place of scarcity or me being afraid or me resisting change or pivoting. It's not really that at all so much as I have been doing this for a very long time. I've recorded this podcast for eight years. This is episode 999. I'm emotional just thinking about all of the hours and all of the people I've interviewed and all of you who have listened and given me moments of your day, hours of your day. I have just wondered what to say and how to say it and not really known the right way. So this is me attempting. This is me acknowledging that it's hard to talk about what's next, especially when you're not clear on what that's going to be. As much as I've always been a person that's preached, like, not doing things beyond a level that's sustainable, it's not that what I'm doing isn't sustainable. Like, realistically, I'm working maybe 20 hours a week right now, and yet I feel myself being called to focus on different parts of my life and business than I have in the past. And that's been a really strange juxtaposition to be in, especially when I'm the kind of person who, when I start something, I generally stay incredibly committed to that effort. There's very few podcasts that have reached a thousand episodes, and there's very few that ever will. This level of consistency is just not common. And the people who have produced for a very long time, most of them have built this sort of thing in seasons where they're recording in a blitz and then taking a break. And the way this show has been structured, it's been continuous. We've never broken it up into seasons or had kind of thematic ways. We've gone about the show. It's just been multiple days a week, and I'm trying to remember how often it was in the beginning. I think it may have been at 1.3 days a week, but I genuinely don't remember. But for the past many years, it's been without fail, every Tuesday and Thursday. And it was not until a few weeks ago that I couldn't maintain that due to my health. I went down to one episode a week to kind of get to this transition point. I think it's really easy to know you need something and also resist it or maybe even fear it altogether. I know I want to rest. I know I want to take a break. I know I really want to think through how this can evolve, because the things I'm called to share aren't just strategy anymore. It's not just tactics and tools and.
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Formulas and frameworks to help you build a business.
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I care a lot more about all of you, your mind and your heart and your health, not just how much money is going into your bank account. And I don't know if the way the show has been is really meant to evolve into that in this way, in this format. And so I've considered a lot of options about what that looks like, whether that's doing reruns, until I felt ready to figure out what the next step was. Was it just changing the name of the show and like keeping on the same feed? Was it starting a new show altogether? And I couldn't really land on anything? And it wasn't that I was being indecisive, but I really didn't want to make a decision that I wanted to take back later. And so I'm waiting until I'm a lot more certain about what that's going to be. I am excited about this opportunity because I've never really totally slowed down to the level I'm talking about slowing down. I've taken off the full month of December for several years in a row, but this is going to be a little bit different. Things are going to be slow in November. I'm probably still going to send out some emails about Black Friday. I still have some brand sponsorship responsibilities, contract obligations that I need to fulfill, but beyond that, things are going to be pretty quiet on my end. I don't know if that's going to mean a shift in what I offer or how I offer it or how I show up online. I'm unsure. In the meantime, I know what I have is effective and helpful and has gone on to impact tens of thousands of entrepreneurs. So don't hesitate to continue to utilize the resources that I have. That's kind of at your disposal. That's at your ready. But I'm getting ahead of myself because I want to talk about the end of the chapter not being the end of the story in the next episode. So instead I really want to reflect on not knowing being okay. Because we've painted a picture of what certainty needs to look like and that we, especially as business owners, as entrepreneurs, need to know our direction. We need to have goals, we need to have benchmarks, we need to have KPIs, we need to have things we're working towards. And while I think that can be true in a season, sometimes I think you not knowing the answer is exactly where you're supposed to be.
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Want to learn exactly step by step how to get paid to generate leads in your business? I'm ready to give you the exact steps that help me generate tens of thousands of qualified leads and millions in low ticket digital product sales. I won't just show you what I did, but teach you how you can do it too. I'm talking not just how to create low ticket digital products, but also showing you how to use them strategically to generate leads for your other existing or future offers. I'm sharing it all@bossproject.com jumpstart including exactly how I made $8033 and generated 277 leads my very first month selling digital products. Find out more@bossproject.com jumpstart still running your business from a spreadsheet titled accounting version 9? Start the new year with clean books.
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And a clean slate.
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Switch to FreshBooks and let it do.
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The heavy lifting for you.
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And that's just on day one.
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- [12:03]
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Abigail Pumphrey
Curious how I've added nearly 10,000 subscribers to my email list in just six months. Well, 9,528 to be exact. I want to share all of my strategies, all of my marketing, all of the behind the scenes with you. Head to bossproject.com leads right now to get this case study completely for free. That's bossproject.com Le A D S lead. On the other side, there's going to be a super quick 2 minute survey and I want to hear more from you about your current struggles with email marketing and what has you super excited to build an email list. Filling this out helps me deliver more quality content like this case study right here. So grab your copy now. Fill out that quick survey@bossproject.com leads it's.
- [13:35]
Not about getting to the answer the fastest. You don't have to skip to certainty. I think there's some like really powerful opportunities in the not knowing, in the pause in the slowdown, because this really didn't happen until I slowed down. I talked a little bit about that in the last episode that I had taken a trip and while I was abroad, you know, things that used to be important to me just no longer felt important. And it's not that the show is unimportant to me. For the record, I have loved being the host of the Strategy Hour. I think it's more that I don't have the time that I think deserves to be given. And so I'm going to wait until I'm ready for what that next season looks like. In some ways this feels risky to me. I've never really been one to put the cart before the horse. I. E. Like come out saying that. I don't know. I usually wait until I have it figured out and then I come up with a story. Not that it's a lie by any means, but a narrative to paint the picture that is the most publicly consumable. But that doesn't feel right right now Especially given the state of the world. I have friends who've been furloughed for more than a month now. I'm terrified for all of the families who are about to lose benefits of any kind, whether that's snap or otherwise. And I don't necessarily want to be the kind of person that says, oh, you can't run a business when other people are suffering, because that's not true either. Like, we all still have to eat, Businesses still have to run the world still has to go around. And sometimes that feels unfair and awkward. But especially now, when less feels certain than I've ever felt in my adult life, I want to be okay with uncertainty instead of scared of it. I think as a kid, like, thinking about being adult, you know, college seemed intimidating, or getting that first job seemed intimidating. Buying that first house felt like this huge leap of faith. But there's something about this where I do feel like I'm taking a leap. I do feel like I'm coming towards something new and exciting. But I'm not so much scared of that. I'm more scared of what you guys think it might be, or scared of someone misunderstanding me. I'm not scared of the change itself. I'm scared of other people's perception of it, which is really dumb. It doesn't matter what you guys think. It doesn't matter if you think this is a good idea or bad for business. It doesn't matter at all. And yet I still care, because the caring does come from a good place. Sure, a part of me cares because I don't want rumors to fly about me behind the scenes. I don't want to be the person on the Internet that's having a public breakdown, which this is not that, by the way. I still deeply care about my mission and the vision of this company. I want to see more small business owners financially free. I want to see more people be successful, doing their own thing in their own way. And it's funny, like, looking at all of the things I've built, I ran into something I did a full year ago. I was like, oh, my gosh, this is gold. Like, this is worth so much. It is so helpful, especially given this season. And I know I would be doing a disservice to my community if I just said, you know, I don't really know what the season looks like. So I'm just going to take everything away, take it all down, close the business, take all the resources away, shut down my programs, walk away from all of it. It's just gonna go Poof. That feels really dumb. Not only from like a PR perspective, but it feels really dumb because the things I've built still have value. They still are helping people. I'm getting new purchases every single day. The systems I've built are working, and they are continuing to help other people build their own futures. While this season has been not nearly as dramatic as when I went through a traumatic brain injury, it has brought up a lot of the same feelings of knowing things have to change, of knowing there's this shift that's coming and there's these things I must do in order to kind of get things in a row. And I was really scared in the beginning of that. I was like, how on earth am I ever going to get to the other side? How am I going to build this business that's going to be there no matter what happens? And I've been living the benefit of that for a very long time. But especially lately, I've gotten really quiet. I've done the least amount of things to just kind of keep it running while I have been sick. And it does. It keeps running. It keeps paying my family, it keeps providing. And that is such a gift. And I'm so grateful that what I have built has had the ability to support me in that way and will continue to do so during this non traditional break. So more on what that means for the podcast in the next episode. But as for what it means for everything else, my community will continue to run, my programs will continue to be sold, my website will continue to be available. I still have limited but ongoing private clients. I will continue to communicate regularly with you in your inbox and show up weekly with resources that are helpful to the season of life that you're in. That's not going anywhere. That will continue to be true. I just may be a little quieter than you're used to. You may see me online a little less than you have in the past, and maybe you haven't even noticed. Maybe I didn't even need to bring this up at all. But I did want to acknowledge that there was a reason behind all of it. That it has been hard and complicated and far from linear. But I also think it has the ability to be this really beautiful, incredible, important thing. But I kind of have to wait to let you in on that part of the story. So more than anything, while I can't tell you exactly what's next for me, I can promise you that I'm going to be honest, that I am going to tell the truth, that I am going to let you in as it makes sense and keep you posted on where we're going. And honestly, I'm excited. Even though I don't have a full vision or the full idea of what will become next. I think it's going to be more bright and more beautiful than ever, and I think it's going to be more of what the world needs from me. And that's exciting. And in the meantime, I'm working very diligently on writing my book. The proposal is very close to finished. Being in the hospital definitely slowed me down in October, but I will get there. It will be out in the world soon enough. I'll tell you exactly when I know what's next. But for now I'm going to keep living with that question, what's next? And for you, I encourage you to take it one step at a time. You don't have to have it all figured out. I certainly want to model that I don't have it all figured out. And you don't have to either. You don't have to know every decision you're going to make, every choice you're going to go after, every vision you're going to fulfill. You don't have to have it all figured out. We don't have to have it all figured out together. In the meantime, I'm going to miss you. So don't be a stranger. Feel free to DM me anytime. And there's one more very important episode coming to you very soon.
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Hey, a few quick favors before you leave. I'd love if you'd share today's episode, send it to a friend who needs to hear it, and post on social. You can show us where you're listening from, your favorite takeaway, or why someone else should listen. Be sure to tag me at Abigail says and bossproject so we can share it. Okay. Second favor to get podcast updates and all the behind the scenes news from Boss Project. I'd love if you'd join my VIP list. Just head to bossproject.comsignup to make sure I have all your contacted details. Really love this show. It would mean so much to me.
- [23:45]
If you'd leave a rating and review.
- [23:47]
It not only helps more listeners find the show, but allows us to bring on quality sponsors so we can keep bringing you this valuable content for free. Thanks so much for listening.
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Until next time.