Your Web Presence
Why women think they can’t do technology… is just a small crack I use for getting in to do the work I love which is all about self-empowerment. And helping you see how capable you really are at using technology as a support system for your creativity.
And I believe we are all creative at the core of our essential selves and that our ability to express more of it, on a daily basis, it essential to living a happy, fulfilled life.
Using an approach that is filled with a ton of fun, humor and Jedi skills, I help you take the very first steps you need to take to get it going. Your web presence. A place for you to share your gifts with the people you want so badly to serve.
What is a web presence?
You want a website or blog (or maybe help figuring out the difference and which one you need). You don’t know how to do any of it. And it freaks you out sometimes. Other times, it just stays on the perpetual list of to-do’s. Or maybe you know you have some skill but you realize that partnering with someone is a powerful way to crank up the awesome for yourself or business.
Who do I work with?
You are a coach, healer or artist. You have something good to give our world. You think having a website might be an important part of your business. An essential for doing business in the 21st century.
You’re a writer. Or you’ve discovered how writing for your business is another essential ingredient to building an online business. To connecting with the people you most want to serve.
You’re a woman. You’re super smart and very creative. You believe in what you’re doing. And rounding corners and jumping off window ledges into the faith that, yes you can live your dream and use technology to help you do it.
You might already have an existing website. But it’s just sitting there. And making changes to it has become too challenging. You want to believe there is something easier for you, that you can actually figure out and be in control of your own web presence.
You might be blogging over here AND have a “just sitting over there” website and wondering why it can’t be just ONE place. Or you have an existing website and want a new blog platform to match its look and feel. You might also have a web presence that needs some jooj-ing up… a make-over.
You need a friendly voice to help you sort it out. All the information and subsequent choices to be made.
You need someone who can listen to you and translate what you share into your place on the web. So it really feels like your place on the web.
How I can help you.
What I’m not
I’m not a Virtual Assistant. Nor will I ever be. The intention of working with me is to help you get started. Take the first steps to get it created and then give you the tools & skills you need so you manage it yourself. At least in the beginning, right? Once you hit internet-blogging-pay-dirt, you can hire all the resources you need.
I’m not the very best web designer available on the market today. The truth about designing (like many things) is you get what you pay for. You can get a kick-ass custom web design by people all over the web. I follow many of them. And refer not-perfect-for-me people to them all the time.
What I am
I’m afforadable. A really superb custom design can be a costly investment, often not one that we can make in the very beginning. So, to keep things simple and easy, I offer one webification package. You get everything I can think of you’ll need, on the best content management platform I know of (WordPress), using one of the most flexible and widely used templates around (Thesis).
I’m knowledgeable about the basic set up process. I can help you think about what you don’t know you need yet. Because I’ve already done it. For years, actually. It’s what I did in my last corporate gig. And it’s what I do now with women entrepreneurs, usually coaches and healers.
I can put together an elegant, tasteful design based on your existing logo and marketing materials or create one for you. Your first one. Which is a big first. Progress over perfection. Look and feels come and go. The core of your web presence, which is you and your content, evolves over time. The point to remember, everything changes and you don’t need a spendy price tag to get it going.
I’m also all about making what I do, what I love and having fun is given very high priority.
Six More Things You Should Know
These are my guidelines for staying optimystical throughout your webification process. Things I’ve discovered along the way that support my best clients. I’ve edited them down and put a link to the full version at the end, because you are already reading quite a lot.
- It’s never finished. All of everything is a constant evolution. And the main challenge you’ll face during this process is avoiding getting caught in perfectionism, others and your own. Shoot for increments of improvement. Start with 20%. Work toward being done at 70%.
- There is no right way. Or a more right way to do it. There is only right for you right now.
- It’s all personal. Every last bit of it. If this is your first time creating a web presence of any kind, be prepared for your stuff to come up. How do you do with freaking out? You might have a few. What does your support system look like? It’s just a very personal process. It’s good to have a plan for good self-care in place during this process.
- You’ll know by how you feel. Whether you are choosing a web designer, looking at your first few design compositions, or even when you read a sales page… the opportunities to check in with yourself are endless. Simple as it gets: if it feels good and you get excited, then it’s for you. If you feel anything else, you have to commit to ask more questions to get clear or just move on!
- Remind yourself often of what you are committed to and why you are spending time on web stuff for your biz. Be clear and on purpose with your self. When things go wonk, it’s helpful to remind yourself to come back to a positive affirmation about trusting yourself, affirming your worth and understanding that we are all creative at the core of our essential selves.
- Remind yourself often how good you’re doing. I cannot drive home the importance of having the skill to be able to acknowledge yourself for what you are doing. Especially where technology is concerned. It’s easy to feel stupid and that you don’t get it as well as others.
How To Get Started
If this sounds like the right web help for you right now, here’s a very brief overview of what the process looks like:
- You’ll purchase your domain, hosting & Thesis theme (or what you don’t already have). I can help you with this piece if you need it.
- We’ll go through 3 phases: installation, design, launch.
- Installation: I’ll get WordPress installed along with your Thesis template and all the plug-ins I recommend.
- Design: During our however-many-calls-it takes, we’ll begin a design phase to flush out the information you want to use (content), look and feel aspects, sidebar widgets, etc.
- Launch: We’ll look at your training needs and help get you up to speed with using your WordPress Admin panel and you’ll launch your website.
This process from begin-to-end can happen rather quickly. It depends on how much time you have to make this the highest priority. Based on working with my best clients, plan for 4-6 weeks (because you are doing other things in your life and business, right?)
Ready?!
Great! The very best way for us to begin is to get on the phone together. Pick a time that works best for you. We’ll chat. We’ll check out resonation, alignment… all that jazz and then decide to have this adventure together. Or not. No hard feelings.
Excited now? Good! Schedule our chat :)
Questions??
In case you’d like to contact me about your webification process, there are three easy ways to do it. They are listed in order of preference:
- Use the form below.
- Email me at mynde AT myndemayfield DOT com
- Call me at 714-328-3828
I’ll do my best to get back with you in 24 hours or less, however, it may take longer. Life is interesting and all that!
Testimonials
A few words about and from some of my clients.
Helene Van Manen | iRetreat.org
Helen Van Manen is a Master Certified Coach and founder of Retreat Coach Network, a community of coaches who specialize in leading in-person retreats for rejuvenation and radical self-care.
iRetreat is all about the power of retreating to support health & wellness. It’s a place where Retreat Coaches are sharing their experiences of leading & supporting women to re-connect with themselves through nature, creativity, solace & safety.
“As a Master Coach who has been in the business for more than a decade, and having worked with many design and internet providers, I have found Mynde to have all the professional skills that I adore in a web expert. She is creative, able to hear who I am and what I want and need and transfer it into images and technology that serves my business and the Retreat Coach Network I lead. She is on time, organized, affordable and has always followed through with whatever she promised. Hire her. Don’t wait. You won’t be sorry.” ~ Helene Van Manen | iRetreat.org
Sinead Flanagan
Sinead is a healer in Southern California. She needed a “new” place on the web where she could write about health & healing on a regular basis.
She thinks of herself as challenged by some of the technology available today and never thought that in a matter of six weeks or so, she’d be blogging. But she is!
Mynde is creative, experienced, tech-savvy – and a born teacher. She is happy to patiently share her knowledge to empower and build confidence before, during and even after the project which she makes a genuinely collaborative experience. Thank you! ~Sinead
Bindu Wiles
Bindu is one of my latest clients. I’ll start with the fact that I was once Bindu’s client myself. So it’s both fun, interesting and a lil strange sometimes that we’ve come full circle. We’re sitting at “the table” again, except in slightly different roles. After working with Bindu personally (now and before), I know that one thing for sure I can always count on is a transformational experience (she’s a Scorpio with Pluto in the first house). It doesn’t matter what side of “the table” I sit on. And that’s why it was an easy “yes” when she asked if I could help her with her scary technology and webification shizzle.
Bindu was a transformation client for me because she helped me step out of my comfort zone in regard to how I was serving my technology clients. We did this by beginning with a clear intention of creating a custom blog design. Bindu needed to know how to migrate her existing WordPress.com blog over to a self-hosted WordPress.org installation (a ‘big girl blog’ is how she affectionately referred to it, and her original WordPress.com blog became “the ghetto blog”). Bindu is a lot of fun.
Plus, I discovered a brand new core value (bravery) while working with her.
“Mynde blew me away with her teaching/technology skills! Her knowledge of WordPress seems unending. She was enthusiastic about calling GoDaddy to ask them some tech questions about things I wanted that they didn’t offer up front, and she has an ease and generosity and helpfulness that results in over-delivering.” Bindu Wiles, BinduWiles.com
Lee Miller
Lee is a life coach. She did a workshop and later we began working together privately. She started out using Blogger and eventually grew into getting her WordPress on. With some “branding” help from me, we designed a blog she is happy to hang out on, so she can get her writing thing on and build her online business using technology to reach people. She is 63.
Recently Lee asked me about Aweber. She already has a free Feedburner email subscription on her website and wanted to look at creating her first marketing list. I tell Lee that “Yes I can help you walk through all the steps to create that first list.
“Mynde is a brilliant tech savvy coach, but she’s so much more–she is an intuitive and compassionate coach also. I learned the tech stuff around Blogger and I definitely had my tech boldness on. But there was one thing holding me back–me! Mynde is especially skilled at listening. She helped me kick butt on some serious fear issues around the content of my blog. She was a tremendous encourager and really helped me go to the edge of my perfectionism and procrastination and jump off! I did and I am forever grateful that Mynde sees deeper, listens deeper, supports deeper and cares deeper. She doesn’t just give a workshop, she gives you a whole new way of bringing your “A” game to the table!”
Lee Miller, The Flourishing Woman
Christiane Holmquist
Christiane is a Landscape Designer in San Diego. When she contacted me, she was already working with WordPress. Christiane is very much a do-it-herself gal. For herself and her landscape design business. If she’s going to have a website for her biz, she’s decided she wants to be in control of it and to make changes herself. We talk about writing. Discuss ideas. She gives me some “logo” artwork she already had that I used to put together a custom look & feel for her blog.
Christiane and I have also worked together on making her web presence more search engine friendly. I helped her with choosing and using plugins (like All-In-One SEO Pack). Plus, she is taking advantage of free stuff from Google like Google Analytics (measures her website’s traffic) and other free resources (like @SEOSteve‘s free SEO guide) that helps her understand what keywords are and how to use them in her content.
“I have never been able to hire someone other than your services and have tackled most of my problems alone, especially my gardening frustration, so thank you for your good ideas on helping me build my blog!” Christiane Holmquist, Christiane Holmquist Landscape Designs
