Soulful Mba

In this episode, we discuss a major pivot that we’re currently experiencing in our software business. We’re branching out beyond the yoga and wellness industry, which runs counter to everything we were taught about niching down into a very specific market. Learn why we’ve decided to make this risky decision, what we’re doing to smooth out the transition, and what advice we have for you if you’re considering a major pivot in your own life or business.Other Mentions: Lightroom and Photoshop for Bloggers Joy: Adobe LightroomHustle: FREE COURSE: Become an Online Teacher

Instagram can a fantastic platform for connecting authentically with your audience. Although it seems natural to focus primarily on the images you’re posting, we want to encourage you to focus just as much on your captions. Micro-blogging is the practice of creating information-packed, short-form blog posts that accompany social media images. Doing this allows you to convey important news, helpful tips, and other rich content quickly and effectively, without having to write and promote a traditional 500-800 word blog post. We love to use Instagram for micro-blogging and here are six strategies you can use to build community and trust through your posts: Be short and sweet. Make sure that your content is unique and original. Lead with the most important information early on in the post. Encourage comments and interaction. Share relevant tips and tricks for your followers. Offer a peek behind the curtain.

“I am not lucky. You know what I am? I am smart, I am talented, I take advantage of the opportunities that come my way and I work really, really hard. Don’t call me lucky. Call me a badass.” - Shonda Rhimes This episode explores the juxtaposition between luck and hustle. Ultimately, we believe that luck, flow, determination, and hustle all come into play in the ability we have to achieve our goals. Perhaps it’s a divine responsibility to go after your dreams when you’re born into this lucky of a situation (i.e. anyone listening to this podcast)? If you identify at all as an entrepreneur, you are likely driven to build something and grow every single day. That’s hustle. If you’re called to build something new in the world, we encourage you pursue it with all reasonable effort.  Other Mentions: Flow, Julie Arora  Joy: Brave Women + Female Entrepreneurs Pinterest BoardHustle: Make Room for Magic

Today’s episode dives into the Japanese concept of ikigai, which roughly translates to “a reason to live” or “a reason to get out of bed in the morning.” To find your own ikigai, experts recommend that you answer the following four questions: What do you love? What are you good at? What does the world need from you? What can you get paid for? In an ideal situation, you are able to build a career and a life around your answers to these questions. We discovered the concept of ikigai after creating our own core values assessment exercise, and we were astonished to see that the exercises overlap quite a bit. Other Mentions: Is this Japanese concept the secret to a long, happy, meaningful life?, How To Find Your Ikigai And Transform Your Outlook On Life And Business Joy: Spring Dragon Longevity Tea (U.S.), Gynostemma Tea (Canada)Hustle: Masterclass

As you learned in last week’s Office Hours episode, incorporating targeted keyword phrases into your blog content is essential. Those SEO-driving phrases need to be sprinkled throughout all of your content, but you can also benefit from placing them strategically in a few more places. This episode shares our specific recommendations on where else to load up your keywords within a blog/podcast/vlog post: The post URL: WordPress, Blogger, Squarespace, and many other blogging platforms allow you to alter the URLs of your posts, so take advantage of that flexibility! The post title: It’s essential that your post title include your target keyword phrase since titles are among the top elements examined by search engine algorithms. The name of the featured or primary image for the page/post: When editing and saving your images, name them using your keyword phrase. Also add your keyword phrase to the “alt text” and “title” fields when you upload the image via WordPress/Squarespace/Blogger. Any relevant internal lin

“The words you speak become the house you live in.” - Hafiz We’re discussing all things related to #girlboss culture in today’s episode. We would never consider using the term #girllawyer or #girldoctor, so it’s fascinating that this child archetype been so widely adopted by women in business. How does this self-imposed characterization impact us, both individually and culturally? According to a recent New York Times article, “female entrepreneurship is on the rise because gender equality efforts in the workplace to address issues like the salary gap and advancement to positions on corporate boards have stalled.” Entrepreneurship is increasingly becoming the answer for women who are fed up with glass ceilings or a biased workplace. But once women venture into entrepreneurship, the gendered stereotypes are overwhelming and we can’t help but worry that some self-sabotage is at play... Joy: OmmwriterHustle: We Should All Be Feminists, Ted Talk

The advice most brick-and-mortar businesses owners are given when they first start out is “location, location, location.” For online business owners, the equivalent advice is “SEO, SEO, SEO.” SEO, or search engine optimization, is a series of practices that makes your web content easy for search engines to find, understand, and recommend to their users. A search engine’s job is deliver relevant and authoritative content to the people using their platforms. Your job as an online entrepreneur is to load your content with appropriate keywords to help those search engines find you and your work. Many of the businesses we work with, ourselves included, receive more than half of their traffic from organic Google search. Listen in to learn how you can start optimizing your content to get seen by more people.

We had the honor of interviewing the co-founders of Bravery Magazine, Elyse Beard and Ashley Aikele. Ashley and Elyse met seven years ago and have dreamed of doing something big ever since their friendship started. At first they dreamed of opening up a shaved ice shack, but years later they finally had an idea that stuck...Bravery! The idea for Bravery Mag was born from their shared frustration at the lack of kid-friendly resources to help teach their children about bravery and strong female role models. In 2017, the ran a Kickstarter campaign to fund their idea and they were fully funded in three days. Ashley and Elyse hail from small towns in neighboring states (Ashley-Idaho, Elyse-Utah) and, between the two of them, they have five children. They have a few key things in common (like their love for rice-crispy treats and The Office), but mostly they are an opposites-attract-kind-of-duo. Elyse has a background in education and handles all the writing for the magazine while Ashley has a background in Advertis

If you’ve been listening to the podcast for any length of time, then you know that we’re not fans of discounting. Here are some of the reasons why discounting is bad news for your business: Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC) are increasing across the board. Discounting creates a race to the bottom in your industry. Pricing too low attracts the wrong customers. Selling cheap products tarnishes your brand. What should you do instead? Differentiate yourself with these strategies: Tell your story. Share your essence. Create unique offerings in your niche. Bundle! Keep the price the same, but add something extra to it.

“Just is a word that minimizes whatever follows. And somehow I got it in my head that adding that little ‘just’ in there made whatever request I had smaller, easier to handle, and less of an inconvenience to whoever I was emailing. Basically, it’s another word for sorry.” - Chelsea Stone The podcast gets personal this week. After releasing more than 60 episodes, we want to check in about the observation that we use a lot of qualifiers like “just” and “actually” in our speech and dialog with one another. We know we do it, we know that it’s an expression of internalized sexism, and we believe that it undermines our authority. “It’s not a huge deal, is it? But language shapes consciousness...” - Tracy Moore This episode is our commitment to doing better, owning our power, and standing in our leadership. Want to join us? Joy: Just Not Sorry (Chrome Extension)Hustle: 'Just' Say No, Google Exec: Women, Stop Saying 'Just' So Much, You Sound Like Children

Blogging is a powerful way to build your brand online, but it’s also pretty time-intensive. Since you’re putting in all of that effort to draft, edit, post, and promote, how else can you repurpose your blog content give it some additional legs in your business? Here are 9 strategies that we’ve used to repurpose content within our own company: Sharing on Facebook (both within Groups and on Business Pages) Discussing the post on Facebook Live Discussing the post on YouTube Micro-blogging about the post on Instagram Sharing the post in an Insta-story Recording a Podcast about the topic (or uploading audio to Soundcloud) Creating relevant Pins and Infographics (if applicable) Building an email sequence or email course on the topic Turning the post into a future opt-in

In this episode, we chat with Danielle Joseph of Function Creative Co. Danielle is responsible for the branding of our podcast (and the design of the podcast’s website), but she is a talented entrepreneur in her own right. Danielle discusses her journey from employee to becoming the founder of her own design agency and shares some tips for working with designers (such as the one skill she wishes that all of her clients could learn).  Other Mentions: Function Creative Co., The Brand Planner, Playing Big, Worth It: Your Life, Your Money, Your Terms Joy: Chef’s Plate Hustle: Adobe Creative Cloud

Pinterest is a powerful tool for anyone who runs an online business. A whopping 92% of our social traffic comes from the platform, so it's time we share with you our secret sauce: Promoted Pins. With Facebook Ads, you generally target people by demographic or psychographic information. With Pinterest, you can target by search terms (i.e., you only pay to expose your advertisement to people who are already looking for what you’re selling). In this episode, we share seven tips for optimizing your Promoted Pins: authenticity use text overlays strategically optimize pin descriptions with keywords create vertical pins to take up more real estate on the screen try out a collage (such as a yoga sequence broken down by pose or a recipe broken down by step) be sure to include your logo or website on your image (People steal!) don’t use hashtags

Starting an online business? You need to run (not walk) to go hire a virtual assistant (VA). At least that’s the conventional wisdom we were told when we first started this entrepreneurial journey... We’ve streamlined our team in recent months and taken over tasks that were once delegated to virtual assistants and agencies and it has been THE VERY BEST decision we could have made for our business. We call this process “insourcing,” and although we naively thought we coined the term, it turns out to be a well-studied business phenomenon. (Heck, even the Obama Administration had a directive on insourcing back in 2012.) When is the right time to insource vs. outsource? Listen in to learn the powerful strategies that we’ve uncovered to increase our revenue while cutting costs and reducing stress and anxiety in our business.Joy: Hand Wash Cold: Care Instructions for an Ordinary LifeHustle: Tailwind   (This post contains affiliate links. If you click through to purchase, we may receive a small credit or commission 

Given that your business and personal life are likely to overlap, should you create a separate Instagram account for your business? Many online entrepreneurs consider their personalities to be part of their brands. A single account shows you walk the talk without getting overly sales-focused. If you mix business and personal, that balance makes your online presence feel more authentic and grounded. If you have a partnership like we do (or a larger team), on the other hand, you’ll need to create a separate account. You’ll also want to consider opening a separate business account if you’d like to keep your personal life more private (or if your personal posts seem like too much of a departure from your business).

In this episode, we discuss our theory of why tools like Snapchat and Instagram Stories have become so popular (and why they worry us at times). We’ve been wrestling for months with our opinions about ephemeral content on social media. Why, as entrepreneurs, would it make sense to put time into creating content that’s fleeting? At the same time, ephemeral content is often refreshingly honest and unscripted.  Joy: Baron Fig Lock + Key Hustle: Plann

Today’s episode dives into strategies for using hashtags (on both Instagram and Pinterest) to grow your online following. Hashtags allow your posts to become searchable on social media, so it’s a powerful way to get new eyes on your content. For Instagram, we recommend that you: Research the hashtags that influencers in your niche are using and exploe the hashtags that your quintessential clients are including in their posts as well Mix up your hashtag blocks so that you don’t get shadowbanned For Pinterest, we recommend that you: Use 4-6 hashtags max in your Pin descriptions Don’t use hashtags in promoted (paid) Pins Don’t waste your time revisiting old Pins to incorporate hashtags Incorporate at least one long-tail keyword hashtag in ALL of your Pins moving forward (to create a curated feed if someone clicks the tag)

“We are being sold on the need to upgrade all parts of ourselves, all at once, including parts that we did not previously know needed upgrading.” - Alexandra Schwartz It’s a brand new year, so that means our culture is abuzz with the aspirational narcissism of self development. In this episode, we discuss our opinions on New Year’s resolutions, the self help movement, and our society’s increasing focus on productivity. Other Mentions: Improving Ourselves to Death, Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials Joy: Grain Mill Hustle: Calendly Chrome Extension

Today’s episode is Part 2 of our quick overview of online challenges. (You can listen to Part 1 here.) Offering a challenge can work wonders for your email list, but only if that challenge truly appeals to your audience. You’ll want to be strategic at every step in the process. Here are our tips for creating a successful email-based online challenge: Find out what your audience wants. If you offer a 10-day core strength challenge but your readers are more interested in meditation, you’ll get far fewer new subscribers. Utilize polls, track your own stats to see which articles and other content users are reading, and start conversations on Facebook to test the waters before settling on a topic. Make sure your challenge is unique. OK, it doesn’t have to be one-of-a-kind, but it certainly can’t be dime-a-dozen! Pick an angle, add a twist, and find a way to customize your offering. Keep it short and make it doable. Length is key. Too short and you don’t get bankable buy-in from new readers, too long and participa

In this episode, we summarize our big picture approach to online marketing. We see so much excitement among our clients about their teaching content, but all too often, marketing is an afterthought. We have four basic suggestions for getting your brand in front of new people: Master the Hashtag. Incorporate SEO. Invest in Paid Marketing. Be an Inspired Guest. Once you’ve got someone’s attention, how do you keep them interested in your brand? Get them on your email list via a generous, free opt-in offer. Create and share great free content on a regular basis. Send out a regular newsletter that showcases your free content. Add a call-to-action to your social media platforms at least once per week.  Joy: Clear Window Bird Feeder Hustle: linktree