The Holidays are amazing, but between presents, parties, and family, the last thing you want to do is scramble for content for your Instagram feed. Here's our 7 step process for preparing it ahead of time so you can feel free to sit back and sip egg nog (bonus if it's the grown-up version). 

Let me paint you a picture of our lives before Trello! Endless piles of paper, three journals working simultaneously (supposedly with different subject matter in each), scratched out to-do lists (and when they got too messy we would spend time rewriting them). I was in a constant state of panic, like I was going to forget a meeting or a deadline. I worried (even more than normal) that our whole business would fall apart over one missed task.

In the past we used Wunderlist as our project management system. It worked for a time but as our business grew and became more complicated, it ended up like the notepads, one hot mess.

We knew there had to be a better way!

Enter Trello - A free business tool that changed our lives and improved our business. But don't Google anything yet! Trello on its own is a little confusing, but don't worry - we've fixed it.

Instagrammers. Influencers. Tastemakers. These are a lot of the buzzwords that have been circling the marketing realm in the past few years. It may seem super daunting and corporate but influencer marketing is something that can be scaled back to work for your small business. But how?

Getting your brand out of the shadows and reaching out to Instagram influencers can be terrifying. You’re putting yourself out there and you're getting visible. The idea of this makes a lot of us recoil and want to get back into bed. (Try to resist that temptation and hear me out. I know it’s hard!)

But, it can also bring invaluable results to your business. By creating meaningful collaborations with Instagrammers, you can increase your brand exposure, grow a community  and build trust in your brand. Let’s get started!

Email marketing isn't as simple as compiling a list, writing a message and then sending it out. Of course, if it were that easy every company would be doing an effective job with their email marketing campaigns. There is much more that goes into a successful and highly effective email marketing effort, but once you've realized the mistakes you may be making and work towards fixing them, you'll almost certainly see a significant increase in the conversion rates you see and the amount of traffic being driven to your website.

Everyone wants to get tailored content. But how can you do that when you just have a huge list of names? How are you supposed to make sure Taylor gets emails about building his brand and that Monisha gets emails about creating systems to streamline her business?

It’s time for you to up your email marketing game and collect more information on your subscribers.

What Do You Really Need to Know?

When it comes to starting a business, there are usually a lot of overhead costs. Let’s be honest, those overhead costs can get overwhelming rather quickly, can’t they? You have people coming from every angle recommending that you use this cool new tool that they use because it got them one billion followers. Well, that’s a slight exaggeration, but you know what I mean!

Want to know the hardest part about opening your business? Simply getting started. That’s the only thing you need to focus on. You need the bare minimum to get the ball rolling on this cool new idea that you’re ready to show the world, but you’re overwhelmed by starting and worrying about how to afford to launch without putting it all on your credit card or taking out a loan.

Launching can be very stressful. You know it and I know it (and I actually loooooove launching). You may have learned the secrets to writing a great sales page or even emails that can help you persuade like a boss, but what I don’t often see is people crafting a holistic launch plan.

A good launch is done from “open cart” to “close cart” alone, but a great launch is started weeks or months before you even give people the chance to buy. The best part is that if you take the time to be intentional before your launch, you take some stress out of the launch itself while also boosting your conversion rates. (Hallelujah!)