Episode 90: 2018 Here We Come

Hello, 2018! It’s a new year and we couldn’t be more excited! In this episode, we’re giving you a bit of a behind the curtain peek into what’s up with us for 2018. Let’s do this!  

Here’s the scoop from Episode #90:

Happy New Year! We’re super excited to have a fresh new year, so we wanted to share what our plan is for the year, and what’s next for us. (don’t worry, the podcast isn’t going anywhere – in fact, you’ll be getting more Small Business Boss all year long!)

2017 was a Year of Transition

Out of the year of transition that was 2017 (check out our last podcast on this where we discuss in detail), ultimately came a level of clarity that we’ve not yet had before. Clarity happens in increments but then at some point, it becomes almost exponential.

Our massive hit of clarity came in Q3 as we were wrapping up one of our retreats for our Mastermind. This revolved around us realizing that we are actually running two businesses – Scoop Studios and Small Business Boss.  

Here’s what this transition looks like for us.

Scoop Studios:

• We needed to rename the agency as we need something more specific to say what we do – so we now operate as Scoop Studios. To be honest, we hate the word agency. People just can’t relate and it just doesn’t reflect what we do!
• Making some decisions about who we work with, what our roles are and how they are shifting.
• Empowering and leveraging our team. We pay them well and expect them to pull their weight (and they do!), but sometimes we just have to get out of their way. Which, by the way, we’re getting better at as we step more into our roles of sales and operations.
• Focusing on content and technology. We believe wholeheartedly in services businesses and it’s why our overall Scoop vision always includes some element of our philosophy at the core. We want to be in service to services businesses.

Small Business Boss:

• We’ve moved this business over to a new website. We realized that it’s a VERY different audience than our agency so we’re putting power behind this as a brand.  This includes Supercharged Success Workshop, our various schools, the Small Business Boss Society and the Double ItMastermind.
• This also allows us to ramp up our podcasts, blog posts and newsletters to allow us to be a hub of practical, relevant information for you as a boss.
• We’ll also get to experiment with content for you this year, including videos, social media, etc.

The 2018 Plan

• We’re committed to a year of growth. The past two years had growth, but honestly, not the 1+1=4 type of growth we naively envisioned at the start of combining our companies.
• We’re 100% committed to more growth for both brands and that’ll come not by working more hours, but by focusing on the right things and leveraging our team.
• We’re realizing that we’re committed to building a lasting, sustainable brand and are in this for the long haul. We’re doing the ‘small’ things now that will pay off in the long term.
  • This isn’t a strategy that always makes sense for services businesses, but it’s something that has become clear to us as part of our longer-term vision. So we’re invested in seeing things through. For example, our ConvertKit affiliate has grown steadily over the past two years and we want to continue this. Instead of instant gratification, patience is key. And maybe we need to put a bit more attention there. And our podcasts – this is Episode 90 (90!!!!)!
• A bigger emphasis on visibility. This means more speaking engagements, in-person conversations, videos, etc. It’s a massive commitment but we’re done hiding out.

This is where we stand right now.  We’ll update you as we go along and we’ll definitely share how things evolve. We’re committed to this plan so there likely won’t be massive pivots, but we encourage you to follow along on our journey!

Links for this show:  

• Check out our last podcast where we get into a lot of the precursor detail for this episode.