Easy tools to run an online business: Acuity

Easy tools to run an online business: Acuity

If you are new in online business, it can be helpful to know which steps in which order. 

As long as you have an ABN you are ready to roll and start making money in your business.

In my other blog “Do You Need a Website” I mentioned having made 10k in my business before I even had a website. I said that if you just have a booking tool like Acuity and a social media account you can definitely make money and start your business online without a website. That’s how I did it. 

So today I’d like to go into a bit more detail about Acuity and help you get started making money in your business. 

Acuity has lots of competitors that do a very similar service like Calendly. I am not against Calendly, or any other tool. All you really need is a place where people can book and pay. So it doesn’t have to be Acuity. The basic principles of this article are the same no matter which service you decide to use. 

Acuity is an online scheduling tool. It allows you to create different types of appointments.

You can then share the link to those different types of appointments with clients and they can book themselves into your calendar.

You can also have one page where people can see all your different kinds of appointments if you like to let them choose from different lengths or style of meeting. 

The main things I love about Acuity are:

  • It saves you loads of time
  • Let’s you have a page where people can go without a website
  • You can collect payment
  • You can synchronise it with your Google calendar
  • You can send email reminders and follow ups

Some of these are free features and some are paid so let’s run through in a bit more detail.

It can save you loads of time

Setting up appointments can take 2-10 back and forth emails or messages. I have heard that some people enjoy this back and forth but for me, sometimes it can seem like a waste of time. It is so easy to send a past or potential customer a link to book in with your availability all marked out and ready to go. 

If you are getting started with Acuity, you might like to watch this video set up tutorial I did on YouTube

Basically, I would encourage you to follow along with the setup wizard for the first couple of steps. Once you’ve read the rest of this article, you will know whether you need the free or paid version but you should get a free trial so just go with that before you pay anything. 

It creates a page where people can go and book in without you having to set up a whole website

When you’ve created your availability and a couple of appointment types, click on “Scheduling Page Link” and click the link there. You should see a page with all of your appointment types listed.  

You can check out my scheduling page for Bush Flower Essence sessions as an example here: https://australianplantsforhealing.as.me/schedule.php 

If you like, you can edit what words appear on this page to give an overall description of your services, as well as the description for each appointment type. 

You can give people a good idea of what they will receive, what you are about AND let them book in for a session. All without a website and even for free if you don’t want the following 3 features.

You can collect payment

This is only available on the paid plan. You can take payment when people book in! 

This is not essential. You can get around it by using an invoice instead of Acuity for payment, or use PayPal buttons. 

If you do want to take payments through Acuity, you will need a Stripe or Paypal account. 

Yes: they both charge fees but you are going to need to  pay if you are in business. There is no way to collect money on the internet without fees. Direct bank transfer is the way around this which is fine for Australian customers.

Of course there are more options than this but I am thinking about keeping it simple for Australian biz babes. Plus, I’m just sharing tools with you that I am familiar with so I could help you if you needed help.

You can synchronise it with your Google or Apple calendar

If you have other appointments or commitments you might like to synchronise Acuity with your calendar. This is another paid feature but it does save a lot of rescheduling and apologising when you double book.

You can get around it on the free plan by blocking in your regular commitments when you set up your availability, but if you have commitments that don’t happen at the same time every week, you might like this feature.

You can send email reminders and follow ups

On the free plan you get an immediate email confirmation sent out. This is customisable and is a great way to share the link to a Zoom meeting and other appointment instructions. 

However, on the paid plan, you can also create hour-before reminders and post-meeting emails. 

If you have loads of time because you’re not fully booked, you can send out emails manually. Or if you are just busy or forgetful like me, you can pay and use this feature. 

I hope this article saves you thousands of dollars on a website and a whole lot of headache from creating a website too early. You can spend at least a year in business without a website and have a beautiful online business using a few simple tools. 

If you found this helpful and you like, you can make a small donation.

“I pay my respects and acknowledge the people of the Yuin Nation, traditional custodians of the land on which I live and work. I also pay respect to all Elders — past, present and future.”

Those days when you want to throw your laptop at the wall

Those days when you want to throw your laptop at the wall

Do you have those days when you are working on the tech stuff in your business and you get to the point where you’re so frustrated that you want to throw your laptop? 

I certainly do. 

And because I spend so many hours of my working time laptop dealing with tech I have had to develop some tools to help me in those moments. 

These are kind of like my rules of play or my rules of engagement for working with tech and how to deal with those moments of complete frustration. Those moments of just hitting the brick wall, being in some horrible vortex loop and hating it.

This can happen any time when using technology. 

You know the scenario:

You are trying to do a “simple” thing and it either hits the brick wall.

You want to save something and it just won’t save.

You want to edit something and it just won’t work

or something like that. 

Or you end up in a vortex – you want to do one simple thing and suddenly you’re being asked to sign up for another thing and then you have to pay for something else and then you need another tool to link those two up to each other and you don’t even really know what they do. Your head is spinning and the rage is rising.

So here are 3 things I adhere to when it comes to tech frustration:

  1. Watch the narrative
  2. Space clearing mist
  3. Set a timer

1. WATCH THE NARRATIVE

It’s so important to be aware of the stories you are telling yourself as you work on the tech stuff in your biz. 

If you are trying something new like setting up a website, running ads to Facebook or creating images in Canva and it isn’t working. What are you making this mean? What is your inner dialogue? Are you thinking thoughts like: “I am not techie”, “this is hard”, “Facebook sux” “this is not my zone of genius” {insert yours here}. 

It happens to me when I’m learning something new. I get to the wall or the vortex and I don’t like it. 

I am pretty tenacious and sometimes I think I can just push through and “make it happen”. 

And sometimes I do. 

And sometimes I get really frustrated and get totally disheartened. I get rejective and start wanting to tell a story about the whole thing being a really bad idea.

Once a story is running it’s important to consider how that narrative informs and dictates other realities in your life.

For example, if you try to run ads on Facebook and they get rejected, do you then say that “you just don’t understand” and “Facebook is crap”.

What do you say?

The same thing can happen to 100 people and there are probably 1000 stories you could be telling about that same experience.

One person might make it mean that they are learning something new and that is sometimes uncomfortable where another person might make it mean they suck and tech and can’t move forward in their business.

What you make it mean is the ONLY thing that is within your control.

If you can’t understand what I’m saying here or you find it hard to be aware of your thoughts I recommend meditation and a good life coach.

Those 2 things have helped me find the spaces between my thoughts and my awareness.

This is a powerful development that will help you in all areas of your life, as well as how you feel about tech.

I personally love Vipassna meditation and try to go for a 10 day retreat every year as well as meditating daily as my home practice.

Do you have a meditation practice?

It’s a business tool and a life tool you won’t regret acquiring.

2. SPACE CLEARING MIST

I have 2 space clearing mists I love. I have the Australian Bush Flower Essence Space Clearing mist and the Anima Mundi Palo Santo Protection Myst.

Sometimes, if I am having tech gremlins or even just working with a client and we are getting a bit tense with our progress over a tech fart, I will spritz the heck out of my space with one of those 2 and just take a moment.

Traditionally, Palo Santo is for warding off evil spirits.

But what are “evil spirits” if not our own mental tensions, negative thought patterns and bad mental hygiene?

Sure, maybe your neighbour did put a hex on you.

Or maybe you just need to breathe and become aware of the  magic inside you.

Either way, I find that somehow, space clearing mists help. Even if they only smell good and there’s a placebo effect.
By the time I’m that pissed off I don’t really care what is helping if at all. Bring the nice smells and hex removal.

3. SET A TIMER

The other day I was working with a group of clients on Facebook ads. As well as creating and publishing ads for clients myself, I was mentoring a small group of women to set up their own ads accounts. 

I had a client with a pressing deadline and a decent budget and 5 ads rejected due to misleading claims with another client whose account was disabled due to circumventing Facebook ads policy. 

Then I had one of the students who I was mentoring have her catalogue rejected and another one whose Squarespace site stopped connecting to her Instagram as soon as she followed my instructions to set Instagram up in Business Manager. 

So as well as my own ads failing, and possibly failing my clients I was also failing to support students. 

I could have made this mean that I’m no good at ads and that I am not fit to teach others ads either. And then I could decide that Facebook ads are crap. And I might even decide that I’m not cut out for online business. 

What I did was contact support, and they told me there was a glitch which was making ads rejected when they shouldn’t have been. 

This gave me a red flag that Facebook’s servers might be having other glitches too and that it just wasn’t the day for working on Facebook ads. 

This is so often the case. 

As well as the old “turn it off and turn it back on” trick, I find this third approach a sanity saver. 

How long are you going to swirl in a vortex or headbutting a brick wall before you walk away? 

Some days, it’s better to just walk away. But how long should you try? 

I usually allow about 30-minutes maximum to headbut/swirl and then I walk away. Because most times I have those moments, I find out a week later that “Oh yeah there was a {XYZ} issue that day and everyone was {effected in some way}”.

So just choose a timer, do as much as you can and then walk away. Come back a day or 2 later. 

I actually just checked all of those disapproved ads now (24 hours later) and they are all approved! 

Oh Facebook…

If you found this helpful and you like, you can make a small donation.

“I pay my respects and acknowledge the people of the Yuin Nation, traditional custodians of the land on which I live and work. I also pay respect to all Elders — past, present and future.”

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How to create content intuitively AND productively

How to create content intuitively AND productively

This blog is intended to share a simple, practical structure to support wild, rule-defying creatrix women to create content.

What???

I mean: I work with a lot of women (and I myself am one) who dislike norms. Women who need to pave their own way. Who have a lot to share but say “f*&# you” to shoulds. 

Or maybe they’re not quite that shouty but they find it hard to follow a regular set of rules about content creation. 

I have been there. I thought I knew how to create content and I would just go with the flow. I would just pop into Facebook and post a bit there and then pop to Instagram and do a bit there and then pop to LinkedIn and then POP – the day was over and I wasn’t sure what I’d really achieved and where the time had gone. 

Plus, I wasn’t sharing my gold. 

I was kind of splatter gun promoting, not really building an audience around my deeper soul work.

Sound familiar? 

The thing is: I am SUPER creative (and so are you) but I didn’t realise how deeply this runs in the veins of content creation and entrepreneurial life. I could embrace cooking amazing meals, sewing fabulous garments, or painting and drawing as creative pursuits – but business?? 

After I read Big Magic, I had a strong sense that my business was a creative endeavour. But writing and content creation? They were just for marketing and business and “getting” clients weren’t they? 

The artistry of content creation was lost on me until I started working with my 2021 mentor, George Kao.

Through working with George and following his Authentic Marketing  approach I have realised how much content creation is about me and my service to humanity and how little it is about “getting” clients – although that is a lovely outcome sometimes. 

And over time I’ve learned to apply some of the things I’ve learned through making art to creating content. I did the Artist’s Way process with the divine Aesha Kennedy a few years ago and since going deeper with creative practices I’ve realised 2 key things: 

Content creation and creativity in general flourishes when there’s a regular practice 

Creativity flows when there is space to feel free and unhindered

These 2 things seem to be in conflict though don’t they? 

Let’s unpack that a little.

When I make something every day, whether it’s a painting or a piece of content for my business, I just get more relaxed and comfortable. I make more and from that more means there are more wins. Not that the ratio of “happy with this” to “this is balls” changes, but rather, because I made 100 in total instead of 10 in total, the number of “happy with this” is 10 rather than one (if that were the happy:balls ratio). 

DId I lose you in the maths? 

I just mean, there is always some content/creations that we are happy with, that resonate with others and that really “work”. But if we only make content two times a year, it will take us 20 years to even have 40 pieces of content. If we make one a week we have 40 pieces of content in under a year and if we do it every weekday, we have it in 8 weeks. 

Not that 40 is a meaningful number. 

It’s just that out of 40, you might have a few that you are happy with, that resonate with other people, that really “work”. 

And further to that: as you create more, you will naturally get better. Because creativity is like a muscle and when you work it out – it gets stronger. You get clearer on what it is you’re trying to say and how you say it. You get better on certain formats, like video or (if you’re like me) writing. 

So, I wonder if you feel inspired to do a little creating each day? 

Or if that’s too much once a week? 

I used to try for one a week and that was great for a couple of years. I really didn’t think once a day was for me. But since I’ve been doing daily content, it’s become a lovely and heart warming practice that I miss when I can’t do it. 

But how does that work – when creativity needs to feel free + unhindered to flow?

The trick is: knowing where to constrain and where to be free.

A simple practice that I recently shared with a client is to use Google calendar for 2 things:

  1. Collect the ideas I have for upcoming blogs
  2. Create the space and time for content creation 

Basically, you can create a new Google calendar if you need to or use an existing calendar and make some repeating Content Creation events. 

I go to the Google calendar and create an event. Call it Content creation and allow about 1hour for writing a blog and around 15 minutes for a simple piece of content. 

In the date and time of the event, I set it to either recurring weekly for a blog or recurring every weekday for general content creation. In the description I gather together my content ideas that I have on bushwalks, in the bath or wherever they strike me. I might have to write them down till I get to tech, and then pop them in my collection spot when I get to it. 

Then, when it comes time to sit down and create, I don’t make myself work through the list. This is when I leave it to my inner compass to guide me. I trust my energy and intuition to decide what to post about on that particular day. 

This is the balance of structure + flow. This is knowing when to constrain and when to flow. 

The commitment to your growth and the commitment to sharing your brilliance is the constraint. The time that you lovingly set aside to dedicate to humanity and your business is the constraint. Your loving commitment and service. 

The choice of what you will create content about and what format is the freedom and intuitive aspect. What is lighting you up today? What is alive in you? What is ignited today? If it’s definitely NOT a video day (we all have them) maybe it’s a writing day. If you feel sparkly, then maybe it’s a video day. You get to decide + be free. 

What do you think? Could you experiment with this method and start to share your brilliance? 

If you found this helpful and you like, you can make a small donation.

“I pay my respects and acknowledge the people of the Yuin Nation, traditional custodians of the land on which I live and work. I also pay respect to all Elders — past, present and future.”

Do you just want to talk to me about your business and website?

I’d love to chat. You can book a free chat and we can discuss website set up and all of the other things I mentioned here. We can even set it all up of ryou and save you the headace. 

Go ahead and book a free chat here: 

MailChimp Resources

MailChimp Resources

Over time I have created a HEAP of free MailChimp resources for you so I thought it was time to make them all a home so they’re a bit easier to find. 

So here they are. I’ve ordered them kind of beginner to advanced:

All of the above steps are clickable links to take you down whichever wormhole you are drawn to right now 🙂

What questions do you still have about MailChimp? Email me your query and I’ll make a video about it! 

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Websites need terms and conditions and privacy policies don’t they?

Websites need terms and conditions and privacy policies don’t they?

Part of having a website built is considering whether or not to include Terms and Conditions. And what should they say?

I can help you to create a Terms and Conditions page and get your privacy policy onto your website if you need it.

Do you?

If you advertise goods or services through a website you MUST have T&Cs under Australian Consumer Law.

Michelle Marie Whitehead

As long as I’ve been in business, I’ve been refering my clients to Michelle Marie Whitehead for all legal concerns. 

We were both in a business building online course back in 2015/6 and I was lucky enough to connect with Michelle’s unique and loving approach to legals as I got to know her. 

I actually used Michelle’s Do it Yourself Terms and Conditions package to craft my own Terms and Conditions. 

Michelle is also a complete ninja at Intellectual Property and Trademark law if you want to get legal advice around your unique services.

Read her latest blog all about T&C’s here

Ok ok back to Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions.

Let’s look at one at a time.

Privacy Policy

You need a privacy policy if your business generates $3million a year or more.

If you don’t have a revenue that high there are a few situations where you still need one, like if you offer private health such as naturopathy or support people with weight loss.

Check out the details from the Privacy Act here to clarify whether you need a Privacy Policy or not:

According to the Australian Government your privacy policy should include:

  • your name and contact details
  • what kinds of personal information you collect and store
  • how you collect personal information and where it is stored
  • the reasons why you need to collect personal information
  • how you’ll use and disclose personal information
  • how users can access their personal information, or ask for a correction
  • how they can lodge a complaint if they think their information has (been) mishandled, and how you’ll handle their complaint
  • if you are likely to disclose their information outside Australia and, if practical, which countries you are likely to disclose the information to

I highly recommend using Michelle’s DIY product for the human face of your legals. She really does make it a loving process rather than all this blah blah.

Terms and Conditions

I am not a lawyer so I am not happy giving advice about this topic in depth. Iinstead, I’m going to let Michelle explain her approach to T&C’s which I love. 

“If you advertise goods or services through a website you MUST have T&Cs under Australian Consumer Law. Even more importantly, well-written Website Terms and Conditions can create a connection between you and those thinking about buying from you, increasing trust, reducing anxiety, letting people know that they are in the right place, and educating them about what it is like to work with you so they can give informed consent.”
“When you have T&Cs that are not a good fit – that have been found on the internet or drafted by someone who didn’t truly understand and adore your business – there is an energetic dissonance.
They feel out of tune and unreliable, like an uncomfortable alien appendage hanging off your website because “should” have it, not because you want it to be there.
This is even worse if you have “borrowed” your T&Cs from someone else, because this is a breach of their intellectual property.
Trusting your safety to something stolen is never going to feel wonderful.
Do you really want to build a sense of wrongness into your business foundations?”
“Imagine how it would feel to have legals that were working with you to draw in your ideal clients and manifest the working relationships you desire?
This can happen when you have poured your own heart and soul into their creation, when you feel like they empower you rather than weighing you down.
When you write your legal documents in the same language you use for your marketing, when you understand every word of them and when they are in complete alignment with your values and vision, your T&Cs become an essential tool that supports you in doing business YOUR WAY and saves you a huge amount of ENERGY & EFFORT.”
Above in quotes by Michelle Marie Whitehead.
I hope this blog has been helpful and I wonder if you have figured out whether you need T&C’s + a Privacy Policy? 

“I pay my respects and acknowledge the people of the Yuin Nation, custodians of the land on which I live and work. I also pay respect to all Elders — past, present and future.”

Written content and how long should my blog be?

Written content and how long should my blog be?

When you think about creating written content, are you like me? Do you feel like writing is a major challenge? Or are you a natural writer?

If you aren’t clear on “what is content”, you can read my other blog about that here.

Today I want to help set you free in regards to sharing your brilliance through written content.

Many clients ask me “how long should my blog be?” and I get the feeling that they don’t really like my answer.

I get the feeling that people need a container or they want to be told or they are just awesome and they want to do the best thing. They want to be wise and take advice from someone who really knows what they’re talking about to make the most of their time and energy and get it right. 

The thing is: this is your creative expression. 

Sharing content is part of your expansive, human, creative expression and what I would really like to offer you is to experience freedom of creative expression in your written content and marketing. 

I would also like to offer you a couple of concrete ideas and suggestions, practical ideas that I have used to help me with my writing. 

I have not spent much time practicing writing. 

When I was younger I was really great at maths so I didn’t really Focus much on my writing because I found it challenging whereas maths was naturally easy. I’m a bit lazy sometimes so I would just naturally gravitate to what was easy and shy away from what was hard. 

Now that I’m a big grown-up girl, I am up for the challenge of writing and I’m almost enjoying the practice haha.  

A few things have been very helpful for me in creating written content. 

Don’t get me wrong, I can write. 

I did a commerce degree and I wrote long essays and reports in the academic style of writing. Learning how to write for my own marketing and business has taken me a long time. It hasn’t felt natural. It hasn’t felt easy. I have actually shied away from writing & found that I can create video fairly easily. So my content has rested heavily on video until last year or so. 

Even now when I sit down to write and I look at a blank piece of paper I semi seize-up and freak out. 

So: how to write content and how long should your blog be.

Let’s do it the other way.

First of all let’s look at some super famous, semi famous and not so famous (although they should be) bloggers. Sometimes looking at other people’s writing can be inspiring and sometimes it can be intimidating. So in this process let’s try not to get bogged down in comparison or worry about your own style. 

What I’m hoping to share here is really just freedom. I’m hoping that you will see that the written word in marketing land has a great deal of variation, personal freedom of expression and options.

Example blogs 

https://seths.blog/ 

Seth’s Blog

this is Seth Godin blog. He is pretty super famous. What I love about his blog is he right every single day. personally I think back to major accomplishment because I don’t find writing everyday easy. The other thing I love about this blog is the variation in length. In my mind this blog is a beautiful example of how free you can be with your writing. You don’t need to fit into any container around how many words you write for your blog. I hope this blog sets you free in terms of length.

https://corbettbarr.com/whats-wrong-with-social-media/ 

Corbett Barr’s blog

 What I love about Corbett’s website is the intentional minimalism. it is such a strong contrast to most of current marketing and online media. I have a whole video about his web site which you can view here. I would say that corbett’s blog is an example of a more classic blog style with longer blogs. He has no focus on SEO or images to make it sparkly and spiffy. He is just keeping the focus on what he has written and he obviously likes writing. I hope that this example shows you that you can just focus on your message and don’t worry about lots of bells and whistles if all those things don’t come naturally to you. if you love to write you can just write.

https://leoniedawson.com/blog/ 

Leonie Dawson’s blog

 Leonie Dawson is a creative Powerhouse. She does very nicely in her business and doesn’t really care about fitting into any boxes. I find that so inspiring. Leonies blogs very greatly in length and instructure. She doesn’t try to apply any rules to her blogs and she really just creates whatever she wants and publishes it as often as she wants. Unlike set she doesn’t blog every day and unlike Corbett she doesn’t keep it simple and basic. She sprinkles it up with fun images personal anecdotes and other engaging content.  I hope this blog sets you free in terms of how personal you can be in your blog and writing. 

https://melaniejwhite.com/podcast/ 

Melanie White’s blog

 This blog is by the brilliance white. My team and I help Melanie to deliver her blog. She creates a podcast and then we transcribe it, lightly edited and turn it into a blog post. this method can also be applied to video content and is perfect for people like me or other people who just aren’t really in love with writing.  I love to use rev for transcription and some people love to use otter for transcription. There are loads of options for transcribing. I actually wrote this blog using a Google doc and the tool called voice typing. There are so many options for getting written content created and they don’t necessarily involve typing on a keyboard or writing on paper. I hope this blog shows you how you can use audio or video content to create writing and skip writing all together. 

Practical tips

Whenever I sit down to write, I look at the blank page and I seize up.
But I have been managing to write blogs, and social media captions and emails and sales pages. Now, I’m going to share my most recent writing success tips. I hope they are helpful. 

Just write anything.

I get over perfectionism and worry by just getting started. I don’t have high expectations of anything awesome coming out. I just write anything, without judgement and expectation. I have been doing some free-association writing, like journaling, in my personal life and I think this is helping. 

Talking it out.

I sit there and talk it out. Even for parts of this blog, I spoke it out and typed what I was saying. This helps me to write in a way that sounds most naturally like me. Plus, if it doesn’t make sense to say it, just writing it down won’t help. The message needs to be clear enough to be understood as someone reads it and I find that just talking it out helps a lot. 

Use a transcribing tool. 

Sometimes I need to just pop an idea out and I can’t wait to get to a keyboard so I create a voice memo in my phone, then send it off to a transcription service. Some people lately have been recommending Otter and in the past I’ve used Rev. I also like to use Tools>Voice typing in a Google doc. However you need to do it is fine! I heard that Brene Brown writes her books by setting aside a weekend and getting some girlfriends over to tease out the ideas. 

Set a timer.

I like to allocate a 15 minute slot when I’m writing sales pages. I use George Kao’s copywriting tips in this video and write for 15 minutes per section. Having a time constraint and a specific prompt has been helping me a lot. 

What do you do to get writing? 

I hope this has been helpful. I look forward to reading some of your brilliance soon. 

“I pay my respects and acknowledge the people of the Yuin Nation, traditional custodians of the land on which I live and work. I also pay respect to all Elders — past, present and future.”

Do you just want to talk to me about your business and website?

I’d love to chat. You can book a free chat and we can discuss website set up and all of the other things I mentioned here. We can even set it all up of ryou and save you the headace. 

Go ahead and book a free chat here: