Style and Substance

This is a hot topic for so many entrepreneurs. When we get into conflict, or emotional situations arise in our business and our instinctive tendency is to fight, flight or fawn there is another way. In this episode we talk around the importance of establishing and holding boundaries for ourselves in our business. We touch on why it is so hard, particularly for women to hold a boundary and some of the underlying principles that facilitate our ability to hold clear and firm boundaries for the benefit of all concerned. There's a few live scenarios in here that you might be able to relate to and in future episodes we'll no doubt get into the nuts and bolts of where we need to consistently set and hold boundaries to make business sustainable, commercially viable and preserve our sanity and how to do that with grace.As ever we'd love to know what resonates for you and if you love it please do review and share away.

So often, particularly with a well established business, we can get into a mode where things feel like they are a little out of control. Whether that's around feeling constantly overwhelmed, not being sure of where the next piece of work is coming from, getting stuck in a cycle of feast or famine, not feeling like we have a handle on how we are being perceived or perhaps where business is headed. In this short but sweet episode we are exploring 5 simple steps you can take to start to regain more of a sense of agency and autonomy in your business, what to focus on to take back the reigns and how to approach things with a more strategic mindset.We hope it's useful and. as ever, if you like what you hear please take a moment to drop us a review, we so appreciate it.

I am excited to be sharing this week's conversation in which Fi and I walk through Fiona's Show-stopping Brand Roadmap. It's a really clear, strategic guide to the entire branding journey and one I know will add huge value. Perfect for any entrepreneur beginning the branding journey, rebranding or wanting to know how to make the most of the commercial potential within their brand. Fi takes us through the 8 steps in the process which is a consolidation of years of work and her experience of working with thousands of entrepreneurs. The roadmap itself is available as a free download from https://www.thebrand-stylist.com/ so do hop on over and grab your copy.

Hello lovely listeners, as we move into spring it feels like the perfect timing for a conversation about flow. Why, along with vitality, adopting the flow principle of The Empowered Entrepreneur is absolutely essential to ride us through tough times and create more ease (and profitability) in our businesses.In this wide ranging conversation we talk about the key differences between a forceful and flowing approach to business and how to spot the red flags of when you're putting in more effort than you need. We talk about the benefits to flow in work (not leaving out the all important commercials) and wrap up with a couple of quick and easy ways for find more flow right now. So if you feel business is a bit sticky and you'd like more joy, inspiration and a lot less hard work for your buck, then listen in.We really hope you enjoy.

All design, good or otherwise, creates an impression. It affects our perceived credibility, opens up or closes down opportunities and influences the confidence we feel about our work. Whether we realise it or not, whenever we are producing any collateral for our brand we are producing design. From pitch presentations to social media graphics and everything in between, so let's get it right. Understanding design fundamentals as an entrepreneur will help you be more intentional about the impression you are creating with your graphic design and ensure your investment in your brand identity isn't compromised. In this episode we walk you through those fundamentals, so note pads at the ready. Fi explains the difference between brand design and graphic design, what a complete brand identity entails and what we should be watching out for to maintain the integrity of our beautiful brand identity when we are rolling that out across our businesses. If you'd like to dig deeper and learn how to apply these fundamentals in more detail then Fi's brilliant course Design for Go Getters will help you do just that. You can find details on thebrand-stylist.com.

Welcome back lovely listeners. In this second episode of our self publishing series (more to come next season) we take a gallop through varying aspects of the process of publishing a beautiful book for business. We explore how to tell if it's the right time to write a book and what, in our experience, is needed to pull you through such an epic project. We talk about the motivation required and how that shifts through different stages of the writing process and the importance of knowing exactly what it is you are trying to achieve to support that motivation. We walk through the basic steps of pulling a well designed business book together and where book design fits into the writing process.We explore how we know whether we have something worth saying that will add value and the potentially tricky decisions about what to hold back when it comes to sharing your beloved IP. We touch briefly on the the merits or not of writing and publishing a book over different mediums when you've got something of value to say.We focus on the importance of knowing exactly what it is you are trying to achieve with your writing and how that affects everything from your motivation, your edit, your ability to discern if you're adding value and when you know the book is done. We've roamed far and wide in this episode but there's so much more to say so we look forward to getting even more granular next season when we'll explore styling and book design, working with your dream team, a little more on the editing process and more besides.As ever we really hope you find the episode useful and if you do, please do like, review and spread the word. Thanks so much and we'll be back the other side of the half term break with a conversation about the value of Design fundamental for entrepreneurs.