These are the trusted tools, programs and books that help me create and sustain my work.
MENTORSHIP & TRAINING
Ash Ambirge’s Unf*ckwithable Freelancer 100k Course
My game-changer. Ash is a legendary copywriter whose newsletter regularly pops up on Best Of lists. This self-paced online class is designed to help anyone who sells services jump over the 100k mark. The first modules focus on business basics such as setting up your online portals and banking. Things took off for me mid-course with the proposal coaching. The downloadable proposal examples enabled me to create price-points and options that helped people choose to pay me more than I had been comfortable asking for before. Ash also coaches you through project-management and sales techniques. The course now includes a comprehensive companion e-book. This class is applicable to anyone who sells services, including life coaches, tutors, stylists, gardeners, pet sitters, SEO consultants, etc. She also offers courses on internet writing and contracts.
This writers membership community is great for early and mid-career freelance writers. As part of your membership ($25/month), you receive consults on pitch letters and letters of introduction, a curated job board, monthly expert trainings, and over 300 hours of webinars and boot camps. It’s proved a great resource to help me fill in the gaps and sharpen my skills with courses on content marketing, SEO, analytics and more.
TOOLS
Calendly - online calendaring tool that lets clients schedule calls without all the back-and-forth. Calendly does the leg-work of adjusting time zones and can be programmed to send reminders.
UberConference - an online platform for phone meetings. Calls can be recorded and downloaded. Your account has its own URL and phone number, so you won’t have to send clients call-in info more than once.
G-Suite/Google Apps - cuz duh. Get your company email integrated with gmail, store documents on Google Drive and collaborate with others using Slides, Sites and Forms.
Asana - keep track of client to-dos in the easy-to-use cloud-based project management system.
Mailchimp - an email marketing toolkit that helps with landing page creation, CRM, A/B testing and social media integration.
Squarespace - an online web site building tool. I prefer Squarespace to Wordpress because Squarespace invests heavily in design, enabling you to seamlessly update your site often as visual and branding trends evolve.
BOOKS
Profit First - Mike Macholowicz’s business bestseller turns the tables on traditional cash-management, requiring (and helping) you set up a system that can make your business sustainable from day one. The book includes worksheets and stories from entrepreneurs who’ve used the system to climb their way out of what Macholowicz calls the “epidemic of entrepreneur poverty.”
The Million-Dollar, One-Person Business - Business journalist Elaine Pofeldt profiles entrepreneurs of all stripes who’ve built highly-profitable one-person businesses by repurposing their skills, listening to their passions, and leveraging technology. Whether or not you want to go all-in, the exercises and anecdotes in this book will give you ideas of how to scale your current work according to your values and desired lifestyle.
You Are a Badass at Making Money - This is the follow-up to author Jen Sincero’s self-help juggernaut, You Are a Badass. Like its older sister, You Are a Badass at Making Money’s strength isn’t its new approaches to earning. Instead, it’s Sincero’s energetic and encouraging writing style that makes exercises on prosperity visualization and transforming limiting beliefs hard to refuse. I found the most valuable sections to be Sincero’s stories of changing her own money mindset and her journey from struggling freelance writer to a high-earning life coach. Aspiring non-fiction authors can also find a self-paced book proposal class on her website that’s an excellent value at $100.
ONLINE INSPIRATION
From Rags to Reasonable - Chris Ennis is a professional opera singer and financial planner. His company is dedicated to helping creatives with variable incomes learn how to live in the real world, or, as his website says, “people with variable income, hard to predict expenses, and no built-in safety net.” I wish I’d had his insight early in my post-college life, as he understands the depth of financial investment required to continue artistic growth and that the rewards one reaps may still not add up to financial sustainability. He provides judgement-free coaching sessions and financial planning worksheets and blog posts.
Tara Mohr - is a speaker and women’s leadership expert who wrote Playing Big: Practical Wisdom for Women Who Want to Speak Up, Create, and Lead. She runs online courses to help women step into their dreams and power, and her blog features insightful articles that burrow into issues of confidence, fear and courage with more nuance and depth than one usually finds in the personal development space. I especially like this post about the addiction to praise versus the longing to be valued.
*Some of these include affiliate links for which I’ll receive a small commission if you purchase. Be assured, I only recommend resources that I use regularly and that have returned their investment many times over.