How to Build your Business Without Relying on Social Media, a Fancy Opt-In, or Any Ad Spend with the Boss Project

Do you stress at the idea of creating content and designing your whole marketing strategy around being visible on social media?

Subscribe to the podcast here

We have a special guest who is a legend in the online space, Abagail Pumphrey from Boss Project! She has helped service providers and small businesses for many years, and she is someone I have followed since beginning my online journey.

Meet Abagail

Abagail is the Co-Founder and CEO behind Boss Project and hosts the chart-topping podcast, The Strategy Hour. She’s internet-famous for Boss Project’s Trello for Business program, which breaks down boring and complicated systems into bite-size chunks. She has helped over 10k creative small business owners create simplicity and ease in reaching their goals. After getting her start in 2015 serving clients in the marketing and branding space, she now helps other service based business owners reignite their offer, create systems for client experience, and get more of their time back inside Boss Project’s program, The Incubator. The team at Boss Project is truly revitalizing the service based industry through strategies that don’t require flashy marketing, a huge audience or full-time hours.

She has primarily been in the operations side of her business up until recently
She had great success selling her Trello program, which is where she got her start

“The hard part of building a business off of a skillset is that it’s not natural for [us] to be in that marketing engine.” – Natalie Gingrich

How can we market as operators who are not marketing-minded?

“Marketing and promoting content, while appealing, is not required for every small business.”

You do not necessarily need an email list, opt-ins, ads, or social channels to be booked out and profitable
Early on, it was not required… she relied on referrals and growing her relationships to grow her business
Over the years, people came to believe that this was necessary because they say her business growing and she had added all of the things
- She decided to show everyone that it was possible to do this without all of the marketing tools so she stepped away from content marketing
- She re-started the agency side of the business

“It was important to get back in the weeds and understand what people were going through and really make sure I was still attune to what was making a service provider successful.” – Abagail Pumphrey

She was still booked out and realized she didn’t need a ton of people in her network
You don’t necessarily need a giant roster of people to have success
Marketing over the last few years has taught us that we all need to be content creators but in reality most service providers love serving their clients (rather than marketing)
- Not everyone is cut out for the content machine, and it is NOT required
- Boss Project teaches a framework of removing barriers to make it easy for someone to work with you
- They teach a direct method that puts your offer up front and center so that taking the next step will be as easy as possible

“Consumers have become more savvy, and they know when they are being taken through a sales cycle, and ultimately buyers are waiting longer and longer before they reach out for a service provider.” – Abagail Pumphrey

When clients reach out most of them are 90% sure that you are who they want to move forward with
You are preventing sales by adding barriers to working with you
- If they don’t know what step to take, they aren’t going to take it
- If you make the step to difficult for them, they will abandon the process

“Every service provider on the planet is trying to be clever… STOP IT! You don’t need to be clever, you need to be clear and concise about what the next step is!” – Abagail

Some sort of face to face conversation will convert the highest
- Sales calls will convert at an average of 60-90%
- Social channels conversations will see a drop to as low as 15%
- Digital products, courses, and memberships will convert at 2% at the high end

“Jumping on the phone or zoom for the majority of people will be transformational because it’s easy… you just have a conversation.” -Abagail Pumphrey

Where should service providers look for clients?

There are some consistent things that can be done
- One approach that is the easiest when starting out is aligning yourself with someone in the same industry and presenting yourself as an option for white-labeling
  - She did this and ended up working with global brands who she would have never worked with otherwise
- You can also create a white label relationship in which you work with brands directly and essentially function as part of the team
- You can also find an individual who you are certain is very busy who is doing a similar kind of work, and offer a referral opportunity
  - You create a system where you pay them to send clients your way who they don’t have time for
  - They have the discovery call, get the details, and then offer it to you as an opportunity
  - You still have the choice to say no, but otherwise you would pay a set fee or a percentage up to a certain cap (she paid around 15%-20% up to $500)
  - If she worked with this client once, then they became her client for future work which she didn’t have to pay the referral fee
You also need to connect yourself with people who are developed within your desired industry
- Make these people your community and peers instead of your competition
Join a chamber of commerce, or align yourself with a local non-profit and spend some time volunteering
Spend some time on LinkedIn specifically going after connections and creating relationships
- These are a slower burn, but they can be life changing
Do not forget to explore your local market!
- Find the way to get in front of different groups of people in person or online (even if you are an introvert)
- Even if those people don’t become clients, they can become referrals

“Nothing hurts more than seeing very capable, brilliant women give up on what they want because the marketing process is hard…” – Natalie Gingrich

Connect with Abagail

The Strategy Hour Podcast
Instagram
Work with Boss Project

Weekly Ops Activity

What is your biggest takeaway from this episode? Make sure to share it with us in the Facebook group!

Stay Connected:

Subscribe on your favorite podcast app.

Join the Ops Insiders Facebook Community:

Other Ways to Connect with Me:

Private Facebook Community
Facebook Page
Instagram