This has all happened really fast for me. It got pretty serious in April of 2013.
I reached out to several different people to let them know about what I was doing to gather thoughts and feedback.
I messaged Daniel on LinkedIn, and filled him in just a little bit. Almost immediately he sent me back a thoughtful message and asked if I might need help with “web stuff.”
Truthfully, I didn’t think I would. I mean, I already had “a gutsy girl” and I didn’t think the brand would get to the point of needing its own site. But I said that perhaps I would. We could continue conversations.
Conversations began almost immediately, and they were daily.
A Loving Spoon
At the time, I didn’t even know that is was going to be “a loving spoon.” I had several ideas – the ultimate vision. I remember brainstorming with Daniel…bouncing ideas and getting feedback on my vision.
In the beginning it wasn’t that I wanted to start a “nut butter business,” per se. It’s that I wanted to develop a product that not only tasted delicious, could be a “dessert” staple for myself and my health coaching clients, but was also completely free of all the traditional junk added to that product. My passion for food as a healing instrument simply lead me to the business side of it.
Once the main things were set, I decided that yes, perhaps a website was imminent 🙂
Hosting, Website, and Email
Daniel set me up with my own web hosting account and built a custom WordPress theme and e-commerce shopping cart so I was able to access and edit the site if I needed to.
He also set up my business email addresses and forwarding so that I could receive everything in one spot – the lovely Gmail. As an entrepreneur, these very simple actions have saved me so much time. These days, time is my best friend!
With my vision and direction, Daniel began building my website in time for launch. We went back-and-forth, forth-and-back until everything was set.
Sometimes I’d want something minuscule changed, and Daniel simply just did it – immediately. He made sure that everything looked and functioned exactly the way I wanted it.
Ebook Design, Payments, and Automatic Delivery
For the initial launch of the site, I also launched my summer eats, treats & desserts ebook.
I excel at creating recipes, writing content and helping people with food and lifestyle heal their bodies (oh yeah, and I’m also pretty damn good at nut butter’ing!)
But I’m not good at putting it all together into an ebook format. I don’t have the patience to design a cover, and I certainly don’t have the patience to format and do the more “technical” aspects of an ebook.
I literally just gave Daniel my vision for the cover, all content and recipes, images and any other pertinent information. He took it and created it into the ebook you see here.
If your goal is ebook sales (and likely it is), working with Daniel will be easy. For me, he designed and developed a landing page for the ebook with payment integration and automatic file delivery. Again, saved me so much time. Invaluable.
Support
We recently launched version 2 of the site. As with any launch, especially when money exchanges are involved, there will be initial hiccups. When I found out that a customer was confused or having problems, I sent them to Daniel and he rectified the situation immediately….within 3 minutes probably.
Branding
Because I worked with Daniel from the beginning on this, he was able to bring to the table additional ideas that I might adopt. One was “my girl.”
She is the brand face and a cartoon-ish figure. I fell in love with her immediately. My friends and family said she was absolutely perfect for me.
I appreciated the slight suggestion from Daniel, which ended up turning into one of the brand’s staples.