19: Abagail Pumphrey: Strategy, Partnerships and Starting Over

What kind of entrepreneurs truly inspire you? For me, it’s people who are constantly on a journey of change.

People who I can look at and say – I see you changing, evolving, growing and trying things out. I see that you are not where you were even six months ago. I see you pushing forward. And one of those people to me is Abagail Pumphrey, my guest for today’s podcast. You may know her from her company “Boss Project” formerly known as “Think Creative Collective”, that she runs together with her business partner, Emylee Williams, and from her highly successful podcast The Strategy Hour.
Today, we dive in her journey, including some pretty heavy setbacks health-wise. As well as what do you do, how does your business model need to change if something unexpected happens outside of your business.

Business and entrepreneurship is one of the biggest personal development journey you can be on. Abagail’s personal development started with her chronic illness and recovery while trying to run a business. She and her partner Emylee had to switch from a live launch model to an evergreen model and it definitely took some time to figure out what the new normal was.

Abagail is a firm believer that you don’t have to work full-time in order to be successful. She refers to it as diminishing return, where you hit a point from which you actually start doing more damage than good. You need to be aware of what your threshold is and be aware that that threshold will not always be the same. There are different points in your business, where you can work long hours and there are periods where you will be able to do 2 hours per day.

As an entrepreneur, you have to anticipate changes before they happen and you might also have to experience something not working at all in order to know what needs to change. But you have to be willing to try things, tweak things, adjust things. Because it’s not necessarily about saying- Oh this didn’t work, let me do exactly what I just did and it’s going to work the next time. You’re going to learn things from your mistakes and you have to implement what you learned and adjust from there. A lot of this is going to be a gut assessment and some of it will be calculated, some of it will be looking at the numbers and knowing and understanding what’s going on, but you won’t always have that luxury.

“It’s not bad to be in a season where your drive is lower. You’re meant to have seasons of hustle, followed by seasons of rest.”

– Abagail Pumphrey

The only person you need to challenge is yourself. Your results don’t need to feel lesser or better than anyone else, it’s just about you doing better than you did before. 

Carve out 30 minutes a day, try to make it in the part of the day that you are actually the most productive, and journal about the things you’re grateful for, dream about what you want to accomplish next and you can write a list of things but pick just one to really reflect on.

Another great tip is to listen to a podcast or find someone on YouTube, find one mentor. You don’t need to listen to every podcast out there, but find one person that fills your cup and pushes you to be a better version of yourself, whether that’s personally or in business. And just absorb the energy they give you, don’t necessarily worry about implementing every strategy they’re suggesting, you don’t need to go by all the things they’re talking about, that’s not the point.

Just get a little energy off of that person and then use that to fuel the rest of your day. 

Love + Magic,

Maggie