I want to share a new site, Isvari Yoga, that we just completed and launched this week. Isvari is an Atlanta Anusara/Inspired Yoga teacher who wanted to have her own on-line presence.

Isvari had been blogging on WordPress.com but wanted to bring it up a notch with a customized site design and more functionality. She got off to a great start when she wrote a post that she got posted to the Anusara Yoga Facebook page and this drove 800 + visitors to her site on day one. This is what I call coming out of the gates in a BIG way.

I love the site, if I do say so myself. I made the background from a photo of a yoga mat which seemed just right and then secured the rights to use a Mandala from an artist, Stephanie Smith, who has made over 1,200 of them. This was an especially wonderful site to work on. It exudes great energy.

Isvari is known for her ability to provide information, trainings and workshops for yoga teachers, helping them to improve their skills as well as her skills in Yoga therapeutics and alignment. You will be able to read about those things on her site. Okay Isvari, now you must keep up this great momentum; writing and connecting and sharing your valuable information about Living Yoga On and Off the mat.

As I was looking over the past couple of years, and planning the next one, I thought I would share this information with you all since I think it is interesting to see how small businesses get started and what they do to make it work. I hope you get something like that out of it and I would be happy to answer any questions you have.

Looking back

I have always been an entrepreneur. I started my career as a PhD psychologist and started several treatment programs across the country, as well as having a private practice. Later, I became the CEO of a startup software company which my ex-husband and I built up and eventually sold.  I then found myself having to decide what I wanted to do next. I loved building and had done a lot of renovations as a hobby. While looking for space for the software company, I came across some warehouse properties in Atlanta and I decided to go develop them into loft communities.

130 Krog St. in Beginning of Renovation

I found I loved it and continued to do these adaptive reuse projects. Along the way,  I had always done my own graphic design and websites as a hobby and then about five years ago discovered WordPress. I loved it and started blogging and creating my own sites.  When selling my properties started to suck wind, I sold what I had and stopped building before the shit hit the fan. I looked around at what I loved doing and found that I was enjoying coaching small businesses on how to blog and use social media. Idea born. I was teaching them New Tricks!

The first year, 2009, I teamed up with a woman who had left her corporate job to work for the Obama campaign. We worked very hard building sites for clients and hard because there is a steep learning curve when going from building sites for yourself to building  sites for other people.  I called 2009,  the year of,  “See One, Do One, Teach One”,  and it involved a lot of really late nights. At the end of 2009, my biz partner told me she was going to go her own way missing the trappings of corporate success. I was somewhat, but not really,  surprised and I started 2010 having to totally rethink and regroup.

2010

This unexpected but not, change turned out to  give me space and time to ponder and set the future course of New Tricks. I sought out a friend and business coach and talked through my next steps. Margo helped me carefully consider the ideal makeup of a small team that could help me get the work done and  keep the business going smoothly. With these insights under my belt, I chose and brought on two people and also decided, if I wanted to pay two other people, I needed to focus on growing New Tricks, so I implemented a Social Media plan. And thus 2010 then became the year of “Boundaries, Systems and Delegation”.

Shiny New Tricks Team: Jonelle and Krichele

It became apparent that to grow I had to be clear on what we could do for a particular price and what we could not; who we could work with and who we could not. We had to put systems into place to keep track of the work and keep things moving. This is a struggle for me. I actually like things orderly and systematic, but getting them there is not easy. And finally, I have had to face that I could not do everything I had been doing and had to train and delegate so that I could better do things that only I can do. Letting go and asking for help. Hmmm, not my strongest suits. I also quit working ’til late in the night, which I have had to do since I have gotten up and walked  almost every morning at 8 since last January.

What Has Worked

I really get tickled to see things working as planned. What a concept. We teach our clients to use Social Media Marketing and to have a plan to grow their businesses. And it’s still fun to see it work for them and for us. We have implemented a lot of things that have started to really come together using Social Media, with a healthy dose of “In Real Life” and great customer service and relationships. These things have coalesced and contributed to more of our “right” clients finding us.  What exactly have we done that has “worked” so well…

1. I actually started using Social Media Marketing for New Tricks. This included starting a Facebook Fan Page and actually developing relationships on Twitter ( @judiknight) and through Blog Comments ( see items 6 and 7).
2. I volunteered to help to co-coordinate the Atlanta WordPress Users’ Meetup Group, which has over 600 members. I revamped the format of the group to have an hour presentation and have been holding the monthly meetings at New Tricks World Headquarters routinely having  50 to 60 people attending. We have made a real WordPress community out of it.
3. New Tricks contributed with small sponsorships of two WordCamps and while there we gave out business cards in a clear cellophane bag along with an iced sugar cookie in the shape and colors of the New Tricks dog logo. Yum and so memorable.


New Tricks Cookies



Andrew Nacin, John James Jocoby, Judi Knight, and Matt Mullenweg

4. I led a weekly small business social media marketing group, which was great fun and taught me a lot about what my clients need and want.  Everyone learned a lot, including me, and I came away with a lot of material that I can use to create an online version of the group for people who want to know how to use the, for the most part, free social media tools to grow their businesses.
5. I decided to keep in better touch with my readers by sending out a weekly e-mail called Just a Digital Minute, putting out a little message from me and one Social Media Tip each and every Wednesday. This has grown my list from 39 people to over 600 people in the second half of the year. I also did a 12 Days of Christmas Online Gift Giveaway this December that helped grow the list by 100 people in the month. It was also fun, but more work than I thought it would be to set up, especially when I was already very busy.
6. I  found out about a workshop called Creating Irresistible Presence, by Sarah Robinson, and I signed up without really knowing what it was or why I was going to do it. All I knew was that I liked what she said and the fact that it was at the Georgian Terrace, and that she had been a Shakespearean Actor. I knew as soon as I stepped into the room that I was in the right place. It has been a terrific experience. I have met a lot of people that I continue to relate to and I have  continued to do coaching with Sarah. Although the workshop and the coaching was expensive, I have, in the three months since then, recouped the entire amount by referrals that have come to me by the people in that room.
   

   Creating Irresistible Presence

7. I was the Atlanta host for Chris Guillebeau’s Unconventional Book Tour for his book, The Art of Non-Conformity.  I met Chris through his blog and offered to host the event. I also met other people, like Sarah Robinson who knew Chris and when he needed to do the event here, I had offered and he took me up on it. It was a good networking event that expanded my sphere of online influence and brought online and IRL together in a very powerful way. We had 125 people at the book signing and Chris sold out of his books he brought that night.
   

   Judi Knight and Chris Guillebeau

8. One of the things I love best about what I do is working with new businesses to help them create their platforms and get their businesses off the ground. This year we created branded websites and helped to launch 16 new businesses. In addition to the new biz work, we did 22 redesigns for businesses who wanted to take advantage of all the good that comes with using  WordPress. We also created some  sites for artists and non profits on a pro-bono basis and that made us feel good.
9. I gave ten presentations/workshops, wrote 56 New Tricks blog posts, wrote and published, 48 Just a Digital Minute Newsletters and tweeted 680 tweets.
10. My Klout Score (yes, there really is such a thing), which measures one’s ability to influence people on the web, went from 7 to 57 in the second half of the year.

What hasn’t worked

1.     I have two products in various states of completion and would have liked to get them out last fall. I got really busy doing client work and then my projects got sidetracked, which is my excuse, but is not a justification. I will get them done. I have to. They are both things that clients have asked for and that I go over with people all the time, so it makes sense that I record these series and have them available at a much better price point than to have me personally go over this material. Then people can pay for my help with their specific issues.

2.     I have a bad habit of wanting a website to be perfect, even if the client did not pay for what it would take to have it the best it could be. If a client does not have the funds for the type of site they want or need, then I really need to pass on the project or give them exactly what they paid for and make it very clear what the boundaries are before starting. This all boils down to the need to charge for the time I spend on each site.

This is a dilemma. I really love working with small businesses who are just starting out and a lot of these folks do not have a lot of money to spend. But, I want to work with people who are serious about building their businesses.  My “right” clients will understand the importance of a great and effective online presence. They will know that the coaching and design work to get it “right” are valuable services they need to and are willing to spend the money to get what they want. I believe that as New Tricks gets even better known, people will want to work with us because of the expertise we bring. They will come to us knowing they want to work with us because of the work we do.  But, I still need to be very clear that I cannot work with everyone. That is my lesson.

Man I hate to say no, which is why this has been and probably needs to still be the year of “Boundaries, Systems and Delegation”. But it has been a damn good year and I am looking to next year to be the year of “Altitude”. Not Attitude, mind you, but Altitude. I want to take my work higher, by doing sites for people that need and can afford my services, including the business and marketing coaching that I do. I want to focus on multiple streams of revenue by getting my products out, so that they bring in residual income that does not require my, or my teams’, labor for each and every sale. Yes, 2011 is going to be the year of Altitude!

My To-Do List for 2011

1. Train my team to take more of the business items off my plate.
2. Update my Website with Website Packages showing three levels of service.
3. Complete Social Media Success Product.
4. Complete the Get Started with WordPress Video Series.
5. Complete Hacking WordPress for Graphic Designers – Webinar series.
6. Getting some outside WordPress stars to speak at our Meetup Groups.
7. Speaking at 2 – 3 WordCamps.
8. Continue to build relationships online and cementing them with IRL meetup opportunities.
9. Chris Guillebeau’s World Domination Summit in June.
10. Sarah Robinson’s Three Day Event in September.
11. BlogWorld in the Fall.
12. Double my mailing list.
13. Double the monthly site build revenue – while not increasing the number of sites we build.
14. Work on increasing multiple streams of revenue: social media management, products, coaching, and training.

Project Highlights :

This is the social network site that is linked to the Dirt Road Delight Web Site.

New Tricks Services:

We created a site on Ning and customized it with a complementary color and header to distinguish it from the main site.

Budget: $

Project Highlights :

Georgia Tech has a strong  history of students and faculty very involved in the major innovations in the automotive engineering and technology fields. Consequently, every year they celebrate this expertise by throwing an auto show. This auto show is unlike others in that it takes all vehicles, cars, motorcycles, planes, boats whatever,of all eras and in all conditions. If you are proud of your ride then your ride is welcomed. Sterling Skinner, of the Mechanical Engineering department,  is the founder and director of the show which is held every spring.

Sterling is something of a frustrated artist. He knew exactly what he wanted for the site, but didn’t have the skills to create it. In this case, we had to pull out of him the vision that he had for what the site and this year’s poster would look like which was somewhat like a guessing game.  After coming up with several ideas, he decided on one of our concepts of toy car/real car. It was important to Sterling to show photos of the show with people in them, this was a way that he felt displayed the unique character of the show. People could see that there are all sorts of vehicles and see that a wide variety of people were having a great time up close and personal to some fabulous cars.

Another thing Sterling wanted was a site for the Ga Tech Alums to get involved. This expanded into a vision of a 24/7 virtual auto show that would extend the feel of the auto show between shows. The site that we would create would be a place to build community and keep it going between shows. We were going to add a forum to the regular site but instead decided to create an entire social network site using Ning. The site is called Georgia Tech Gearheads and in the first three days of its existence has 25 members without yet promoting it at all.

The main site although a WordPress site, it has an almost static front page. The blog page in called news and is on the nav bar but is not highlighted. In addition to all of the show information and registration. we were able to include a gallery section with each past year with a Flickr sideshow, a synopsis of the year, the winners and a photo of the tee shirt and the trophy for each year. We also have showcased people from tech who have contribute to the field with a photo and short bio of their accomplishment.

New Tricks Services:

• Website creation: We brought in information from the existing site and supplemented it with other information provided by the client. We created a graphic representation of toy cars that when you highlight a car a real car of that type from the show pops up with real people enjoying the show. The front page is static except for a box at the bottom which highlights the latest posts.
• Graphics Created a new logo and a website header. Created background graphics for the customization of the website and the Gearheads Ning site.
• Copy and Photos: worked with Sterling Skinner who provided past files from previous shows. We rewrote  existing copy and add additional copy for the blog and about pages.
• Social Media: Started Twitter and Flickr sites and linked them to the blog site.

Budget: $$$

Project Highlights :

Dirt Road Delight is made up of a guitar, fiddle and stand-up bass playing Appalachian Soul.  You couldn’t meet a nicer person than Tedi May, the creative force behind the group. Playing Stand up bass, she has pulled together this tight little group. Their fiddle player, Billy Ward is amazing. They were recording their first CD when Tedi  came to New Tricks needing a website. We had a meeting or two listening carefully to how…they described themselves and the impression they wanted to impart to their fans, lovingly referred to as  the DirtRoadies. Tedi wanted a website that would showcase the band and what they were up to and also a site where their fans could interact with each other and the band. We decided to do that by creating a second site on Ning for the Dirt Roadies.

Tedi had been studying on-line marketing techniques and she had certain items that she wanted on their site. Of course we added a Twitter feed and we also set up a Flickr Site. Flickr is great becasue when you upload photos to Flickr it automatically resizes them to a reasonable size for a website and it makes it easy for people to upload their photos from Flickr to WordPress Galleries and Slideshows. The cross linking from Flickr is also good for search engine ranking. You Tube accounts are also good that way. Tedi has a You Tube account and can easily embed the You Tube code into her posts and pages.

When we set up sites for people we want them to be able to use them and maintain them to some extent by themselves. OF course we have maintenance contracts for people that need some extra help but we want them to be abel to upload photos music and videos with their posts and do so easily so that they keep the site active.  Lately I have been disappointed with the music players for WordPress. For the most part they are really hard to customize and a pain to go into the code and put the urls of the mp3s. A trick I use to help people easily add music is to use the music player from a Ning site which is easily customizable and the music can be added by a simple upload feature. When completed the player’s embed code can be copied onto the regular website into a post, a page or a widget for the sidebar. Voila! Even if they are not going to use the Ning site it is a good solution just for the music player.

New Tricks Services:

• Website creation: To keep the costs down we customized, Irresistible,  a free theme from Woo Themes.
• Graphics Created a new band logo and a website header. Created background graphics for the customization of the website and the dirtroadies ning site.
• Copy: worked with Tedi May  to rewrite existing copy and add additional copy for her blog and about pages.
• Social Media: Started Twitter and Flickr sites and linked them to the blog site.

Budget: $$

Project Highlights :

Santa Rosa Island Triathlon had a static website that they could not update themselves. This race, now in its 14th year has a huge following and race community. The race directors wanted to be able to communicate with them, letting them know about training events and sharing personal stories of triathletes who have competed in this event. It is a fun festive event held at Pensacola Beach Florida, yet their previous website was old school and not reflective of the amount of  enthusiasm of the event and their community. The New Tricks team developed an entire new logo for the race…combing iconic images of Pensacola Beach.  Then we downloaded the content from their previous site and rewrote and reorganized the existing text and information. We also looked at what other content was now possible with a database type site and helped them to create posts in new categories. They did not have many usable photos so we put out a call to their race community and received some fantastic action shots, a few of which made it into the new header. The font for the header was chosen to give an island feel and we were right on the money with the new colorful design.

An important component of the new site was that it be easy to navigate. Another big factor was that it be easy to update as sponsors change or new information is needed to be quickly disseminated. We also got the race onto Twitter and Flickr making it easy to post up to the minute news and makes it easy to add slide shows for each of the years of the race. As soon as it went live the website started getting three to six hundred hits a day. They expect about eight hundred participants on October 3, 2009.

New Tricks Services:

• Website creation:Existing site was easily ported into WordPress:
• Graphics Created a new logo and a website header for the race.Also customized a theme for the race site
• Copy: Worked with the race directors to rewrite existing copy and add additional copy for their blog
• Social Media: Started twitter and Flickr sites and linked them to the blog site.

Budget: $$

Project Highlights :

Nancy Bennett Photography now has a showcase for her beautiful portfolio on her new WordPress.com site, Capture Time. New Tricks helped Nancy, and business partner Brenda Stubbs, create a site to launch her new focus on senior photography. Nancy has long been known for her intuitive, creative work with children and has recently discovered the beauty of photographing people at he other end of the stages of life.

An important component of the new site was that it have a simple design that let the photos speak for themselves.  Another big factor for Nancy was that it should be easy for her to maintain herself. She had come to one of the New Tricks free seminars earlier in the year to learn about blogging and had started the site herself but needed a bit of help fine tuning the right design. We got the site launched on WordPress.com in one afternoon and Nancy was so excited about  the site that she stayed up until 3 AM that night entering and categorizing some of her favorite photographs.

New Tricks Services:

• Free WordPress.com seminar: client attended a New Tricks seminar and chose to change her site to WordPress.com
  
• Website creation: Helped to choose an appropriate theme for this portfolio site.
• Training: Taught Nancy to work with her photos to display them on the site.

Budget: $

Project Highlights :

Stromquist & Company has an existing website for product information and online ordering. They asked New Tricks to help create a complementary new site to share information with their colleagues in the commercial and industrial control community.

An important component of the new site was to provide an easy way to showcase the product demonstration and training videos Stromquist & Company has created specifically for the control industry. And they wanted to provide a component so their in house experts could share their vast knowledge with other industry professionals.

New Tricks Services:

• Website creation: Implemented a WordPress blog engine / CMS system. The new site features:
  • Embedded training videos.
  • Podcasts.
  • Group blog with multiple Contributors and access levels.
  • Workflow process to include approval of blog posts by Administrator prior to publication.
  • Events calendar displaying upcoming training schedule and online course registration.
  • Subscription service for new online newsletters.
• Training: Provided one-on-one training for five team members at Stromquist’s training facility.

Budget: $$

Project Highlights :

Shawn Black came to us after he heard about the benefits of using WordPress as a website platform. He was especially interested in the searchability of these content management sites as well as the ease with which he could learn to maintain the site and have it be an active conversation with his clients. He had already started with some other designers but after meeting with us he completely changed directions.

New Tricks Services:

• Design: New Tricks redid the Mirar Salon Log colors to go with the new site. Shawn had some beautiful professional photos of one of his clients that inspired up to choose to use one for his site’s background image . TO keep the development costs down we chose to modify an existing WordPress Theme than to start from ground zero. We chose to modify a premium theme called Cafe Press by Press 75. If you look at the theme and the finished site you would never guess that it was built using Cafe Press as its start. We customized it by removing the side bar feature boxes and adding extra footer boxes to accommodate space for four stylists. We wanted it to be feminine and yet not too much and feel that the colors reflect the yin and yang very well.
• Website creation: Shawn had a URL but we transfered his original hosting to Blue Host who does a great job keeping up to date with everything needed for our WordPress sites. We then installed WordPress and a My SQL database on his hosted site. The new site features:
  • A static, non-blog home page. We then made pages for each stlysits with links form their photos on the home page. Their pages have individualized, person sidebar with their own links and information. They each are able to blog and their blogs are avaiable from their personal pages. We. then included pages about Services, Contact and Directions.
  • Plugins were installed and configured for Statistics, Spam Prevention, and SEO
  • Social Media sites such as Facebook and Twitter were tied into and links appear on the sidebar.
• Training: Provided one-on-one training customized for client’s unique site.

Budget: $$

Project Highlights :

Susan Asher of Asher PR obtains publicity locally and nationally in newspapers, magazines, trades, online media, and on radio and TV. Susan has been able to get her clients on “The Tonight Show,” “ABC News Now,” on CNN and the FOX News Network. Having worked in newspaper and radio and written for numerous publications, Susan Asher knows how to tell a story to make the news. When Susan came to us she had a website and a blog. She was brave enough to…show her sites to the Press Club meeting for review. They gave her several tips like to combine the two sites and give her blog a name. They also gave her another important tip,

Call New Tricks… They will help you take your site the the next level.

New Tricks Services:

• Design: New Tricks created a logo for Asher PR and a name for her  site. We chose to modify the Vigilance WordPress theme in order to keep her costs low.  Since Susan’s tagline is “putting you in the Limelight,  lime green was strongly featured.
• Website creation: Obtained a URL and installed a WordPress and an My SQL database on her hosted site. The new site features:
  • Five pages were developed;  Home, About Asher PR, Clients and Accounts, Testimonials and Contact. Susan has multiple categories appearing in her sidebar.
  • WordPress Plugins were installed and configured for Statistics, Spam Prevention, and SEO
  • Social Media sites such as Facebook and Twitter were tied into and links appear on the sidebar.
• Training: Provided one-on-one training customized for client’s unique site.

Budget: $$