My Favorite Resources for Turning Your Passion into a 6-figure Business:
One of the top questions I get is “Angela, who do you use for___?” This is my list of professionals I work with and that I highly recommend.
First, I love supporting local business. If there are local vendors in your area, give them your business. We boost our local economies and build great face-to-face relationships that way.
Be sure to mention that Angela Johnson referred you. You may get a perk or two or at least some special attention and my vendors like to know that I’m supporting their business.
Yes, I am an affiliate of some of these vendors. Even if I wasn’t an affiliate of theirs, I would be mentioning them here. I became an affiliate AFTER I started doing business with them, which is the way I recommend that you have your affiliate relationships.
IMPORTANT NOTE: As with ANY referral you receive from anyone, even the Pope, do your due diligence. Interview people, use your intuition. I never recommend to anyone to blindly accept a referral just because someone said so. Do what you feel will work best for YOU.
Business Planning and Strategy
This is What I LOVE
Soul Vision Business: Take all of the ideas and possibilities and organize it into a strategy that you feel confident about. If you don’t have a plan, you don’t have a business. I love to do this for entrepreneurs. I focus primarily on marketing communications, product and program development and the how-tos with your website, strategies and systems. Contact me here.
Bryn Johnson: The other person I highly recommend is Bryn Johnson, no we are not related. Perhaps soul sisters but we’re not related that we know of. She is the master planner and queen of Post-it Notes and flip charts. Get your business into a plan on paper. Bryn is your gal to do this with ease. Contact Bryn Johnson at www.brynjohnson.com.
Copywriters
(People who write copy aka content in really amazing ways for your marketing collateral.)
Matthew Goldfarb of Corporate Renegade Copy. Matthew’s message: It’s OK to fit in, but better to stand out. http://tinyurl.com/25an8bs
Download Matthew’s book about his first year as an entrepreneur. You will laugh out loud and the tears will make more sense now.
Jared Kessler of The Kickass Copywriter. Jared’s message: Are you standing out from the noise or just adding to it? http://www.thekickasscopywriter.com
Matthew and Jared often work together on projects together. They are both awesome.
Graphic Design
First, let me just give you a few tips on working with graphic designers. Select a designer that doesn’t have an ego and won’t get offended if you ask that he or she change something. You are the client. Their job is to educate you on what will work, what is functional and what will look good. Be open to their feedback AND they need to be open to yours.
Also, be aware of “This looks really cool.” Just because it looks cool doesn’t mean it will create sales, so how cool is that? Is it functional? Does it create results?
Some of the ugliest websites I’ve seen generate seven figures for entrepreneurs. It doesn’t have to be flashy to be effective. In fact if it is flashy and takes a day and half to download because there are so many images and flashy banners, fire the designer and run away. Run far away.
I love working with Rebecca Servoss of Persnickety Creative.
Ebook Covers and Information Product Design:
Absolute Covers: My buddy Ovi at Absolute Covers is the guy. Super affordable, great work: http://go.coverscash.com/402
For less than $50 you get a great ebook cover!
Information Products
Ebook Covers and Information Product Design:
Absolute Covers: This is a repeat from the Graphic Design section, but want to make sure you get this info. Ovi at Absolute Covers is the guy. Super affordable, great work.
Here are some samples of covers he has done for me.
Marketing Communications
What is marketing communications? It’s how to communicate your message to your market. I love helping conscious entrepreneurs get their message in a powerful way. I also help entrepreneurs expand their ideas into profits. I have several coaching options available.
Networking Groups
Meetup: Visitwww.meetup.com and find groups in your area. The important thing is to find a group you resonate with, one that pushes your limits a bit and you need to be consistent in showing up for results. Networking is another word for building relationships. When people see your face consistently, they trust you, and then they do business with you.
BNI: BNI has been around for a while and they keep the groups exclusive. That means they have ONE spot for a realtor, ONE spot for a banker, etc.
Groups with exclusivity don’t really resonate with me because if you are the only realtor in my group and I can’t stand you, it’s out of integrity to refer my contacts, friends and family to you. (Let’s just call it how it is.)
I know lots of people who love their BNI groups so check it out.
Chamber of Commerce: Every city has one just Google one in your area to find out what is happening in your city.
Biz Divas: This is my networking group and if you are a conscious women entrepreneur and you would like to open a chapter in your area then contact me. Currently Biz Divas is in Utah. There is also a Biz Divas mastermind group that anyone can participate in and we meet twice in six months so you can live anywhere to participate. Everything else is one over the phone. Each group is limited to eight people and I have up to three groups at a time. www.TheBizDivas.com
Personal Empowerment & Manifesting:
Learn how to use YOUR intuition to create financial abundance in this FREE Video Training with Andrea Hess.
“The Spiritual Path to Six Figures” and it’s a four-part video training that teaches you:
- What it means to align our income stream to our Soul Purpose, and exactly how this creates financial abundance
- How the ego has to “play” with our Purpose in order to create income authentically
- A really surprising secret about what makes money flow
- The key ingredient that is essential to putting the money we want into our bank accounts.
Ideal Life Vision: Put your vision board and affirmations on steroids!
Ideal Life Vision is like an audio version of your vision board. You take each area of your life and write about your ideal life in minute detail. You then record it in your voice to baroque music. What does this do? It literally programs your ideal life vision into your subconscious (thanks to hearing it in your own voice and to baroque music). You know when your unconscious thoughts change, your conscious thoughts change, your feelings change, your paradigm changes and you take different actions to get different results.
It works. Just 20 minutes a day while in your car or before you go to bed and you focus on your ideal life. What would change for you if you simply focused on your ideal life for just 20 minutes every day? Get details on Ideal Life Vision here.
The Ignite Your Spark women’s conference is in March every year in Salt Lake City, UT. This is the event of the year and is highlights over a dozen transformational speakers, 200+ like-minded women who are committed to transforming their life to create global change.
Technical Stuff
Conference Call Service:
Whether you want to record individual calls with your clients or small groups, or do large teleclasses with 1,000 listeners, you can do it all with www.FreeConferencing.com. I’ve used several services and like this one the best. It’s free as the name indicates. You can record the calls and you have an awesome web interface or you can use your phone to control the call.
Your recorded calls can be listened to through three ways: Generate a unique URL within the system and listen to the call online, or listen to the last recorded call through a playback telephone number, or download the MP3 file. Plus it saves all of your recorded calls. www.freeconferencing.com
Credit Card Processing:
Practice Pay Solutions: They understand the coaching and event world, making them even more appealing.
Email Manager:
I recommend Mail Chimp or aweber. (Just Google them.)
Email Manager + Shopping Cart + Affiliate Program in ONE System:
InfusionSoft: If you want a system that will support your growth long term and combine it with a shopping cart and affiliate program, go with InfusionSoft. It’s worth the monthly investment. http://tinyurl.com/24tm6hb
Ebook Covers and Information Designs:
Absolute Covers: As I mentioned in chapter 1, Ovi at Absolute Covers is the guy. Super affordable, great work: http://go.coverscash.com/402
Sales Pages:
With Optimize Press, you can design high-converting sales pages and squeeze pages in WordPress. Before if you wanted to have a cool and effective sales or squeeze page you would hire a designer to design it then a programmer to make it functional. Now you can use Optimize Press, a freaking awesome theme you just upload to WordPress. Just $97 and you can use it for all of your sites. http://tinyurl.com/27oxvmh
Website Hosting:
Blue Host – Their customer service is dynamite and their user interface is the easiest I’ve used. Plus their time to propagate your domain names (make them active online) is super quick. Other hosts I’ve used can take up to 72 hours and who has time for that? http://www.bluehost.com/track/soulvision
Websites
If you spent over $500 for your first standard website, you may have spent too much. Know that your first website will change and it will evolve, in probably less than six months. You want a system that will grow with you and a system where you and/or your VA can make edits and additions to it. What this means is you want a website that is also a content management system.
WordPress is the only way to go. If you have a complex, data-base driven website then you will need a web developer to do your website. If you don’t know what a data-base driven website is, then you only need WordPress.
Even when you go with WordPress, you will need to hire a designer to create a professional looking header for you. If you are a brand new business, you will be asking your designer for TWO separate projects: One is your logo. The second is your website header. The logo will be used as part of your header. They are not the same thing.
You can teach yourself WordPress if you want to waste time and lose money. Follow tutorials, hire a great VA or attend a workshop to learn it quickly and after a weekend you have your site live, perhaps minus the awesome header your designer will get done for you in a couple of days.
If you are a surround sound learner, then attend one of my live workshops. I keep the workshops to less than 20 people and I also assist you with writing your content and develop your web strategy. In two days, you learn WordPress, you complete at least four pages for your site, you outline and write a lot of your content. AND you develop your website freebie that will compel people to opt-in to your list. Yes, all of this in two days. And I even feed you yummy snacks and water. 
If you can learn through a do-it-yourself program, I recommend Christina Hills’ programs: http://tinyurl.com/3ygvqe2
Website Developers
Sector Nine Designs: The key to working with programmers and developers is to be VERY CLEAR with them about what you want. They are not mind readers. Give them examples of what you want. Programmers are linear thinkers and often entrepreneurs can come across as artsy-fartsy visionaries who are all over the place.
Tyler Seamons is the owner and he is the best, quickest and most honest I’ve worked with. Reach him at info@sectorninedesigns.com. www.sectorninedesigns.com
I only put people on this list of people I seek out and work with. So please don’t send me an email requesting for me to put you on this list.
