Welcome to the Vault

I’ve created this space to share all the free resources that I’ve created in the past (note that the past means, the past, and although I try to keep them updates, some resources may be a little… dated), and all the resources that I’ll create in the future.

Because free stuff is awesome and I want them to be easily accessible!

Resources made with love by Jamie Leigh

Branding
Transcend | A Brand Audit – A tool that will support you to embrace your uniqueness, infuse it into your digital strategy, and craft actionable steps that will significantly increase your brand recognition—today.

Brand Consistency Checklist – A tool to support you and your branding consistency

Colour Matters –  A brief history of colour and how it can impact conversion rates and user experience on your website

Documentation + Systems
My Website Info – An interactive PDF where you can record all your website-related information and save it in one (secure) place.

WordPress Maintenance Checklist – give this checklist to your VA or website admin so that they can keep your website safe, secure, and performing well!

Business + Marketing Strategy
Unlock Your Guiding Intention – One of the most challenging parts of being a business owner is ALL the decisions you have to make on a daily basis. It’s hard to choose which tasks to knock out first, in a way that will actually benefit your business long term. This workbook will help you discover your goals from start-to-finish, in a way that makes it doable to get things done.

Is this Necessary or a Distraction – Having a lack of focus is one thing that may be costing your business money without you even realizing it. This fun flowchart will help you get clear when making decisions in your business.

No Thank You – A friendly script to help you say no

Stop the Leaks – Turn passive likes into active subscribes; create a MailChimp opt-in form for your Facebook page.

Just for fun
CDF iPhone6 – My brand values, in an iPhone6 background!

Other helpful third-party resources

Some of the links below are affiliate links. That means that I might get paid if you click on that link and purchase something. I only recommend products and services that I use or trust to be of high quality, whether an affiliate relationship is in place or not. And the reason why I’m telling you this is because I want to be upfront with you, and because it’s illegal not to. That said, I promise to use any affiliate commissions earned for good causes: like investing in organic seeds for my garden, yummy craft beer, and quite possibly at least one road trip. Because…road trips.

Education To Make Your Business Better
Systems: Creative Class. Paul Jarvis’ Creative Class is still, by far, the best educational investment I’ve made in my business. Ever. When I took the Creative Class a few years back, I was able to cut new client on-boarding time from 8-16 hours (per client) to one hour, I now have steady work and am usually booked at least four months in advance, I’m working half the hours, but earning more, and have a greater confidence and a deeper sense of professionalism. You can too.

Boundaries: Healthy Boundaries for Business also changed my life dramatically. Learning how I can be kind, and create a strong foundation of respect for both my business and my clients. Dramatically freeing work here folks.

Empathy, Congruence, Listening, and Unconditional Positive Regard: 4 Skills of Relationship Competency. Ever been in a conversation and all of the sudden felt your heart rate increase, the tips of your fingers go all wooshy and your face flush a couple shades warmer? That’s an indicator that something is happening that you’re not OK with. How do you respond? The 4 Skills are tools you can use in those kinds of situations so that you can respond with integrity, get what you want, and maintain your kindness. Holy mind blown batman.

Tools To Make Your Business Better
Accounting: FreshBooks. This small but mighty accounting and bookkeeping software has saved my life! I hate numbers so much that my system used to be an assortment of shoeboxes that collected dust for… a decade. The shame!! Enter Freshbooks and I’m a happy camper. Business lunch? I can take pictures of receipts with my phone and add them to my expenses before I even leave the restaurant. Trouble getting clients to pay on time? Freshbooks allows you to add late fees and automatic email reminders so you don’t have to be the bad guy. And at tax time, all ya gotta do is click ONE BUTTON to email your accountant all the things. MAGIC.

Scheduling: Acuity. Save HOURS with Acuity’s brilliant online scheduler. Clients can make an appointments (paying for it, if necessary), and a Zoom meeting is automatically created and sent to both of your calendars. Before the meeting, the client is sent email reminders that include links to reschedule if they need to. Both of your time? Optimized. That means more dollars in your sexy grown-ass woman wallet.

Project Management: Asana. It’s the best project management tool ever. It’s both pretty and linear so right- and left-brained humans can enjoy their experience. Plus, you can cut down on the amount of emails you hold on to because everything is neatly organized by project and due date. With reminders. Ahem.

Automation: Zapier. Did you ever find yourself taking something in app #1 and putting it in app #2 and just wishing that they’d communicate so that you didn’t have to for them? There’s a Zap for that. Zapier is the mediator of Internet programs, and connects your software together in “Zaps” that you can completely customize. A total timesaver.

Video Conferencing & Webinars: Are you still using Skype or Google Hangouts for your business calls? Let me whisper some good advice loudly into your ear: use Zoom. It is secure, STABLE, and you can chat, record, mute, and more. Plus integrates with most other programs, and if not, there’s a ZAP for that!

Hosting
I choose WP Engine to host my website and my client’s websites. Why? They are the next-level, super secure, WordPress-only, bad-ass web hosting company that can handle any kind of traffic your super-star website can attract. Plus they are support + security rock stars!!

WP Engine gave me a custom code so that YOU can WPE20OFF to save 20% off your first payment. Bonus.

Email + Marketing
G Suite (previously known as Google Mail) is bad-ass professional email and MORE. If gives you a professional custom email (you@yourcompany.com), allows you to access documents from anywhere, any time with over 30GB of storage, AND helps you work faster from anywhere and from any device.

MailChimp is a simple, user friendly, and pretty email marketing program. You can create a free account so it’s perfect if you are just starting to create a list of loyal followers!

Ontraport is a badass email marketing, CRM, membership, shopping cart, and all-around crazy solution for a grown-up online business. Not for the faint of heart, Ontraport can do it all, if you have the patience to configure it!

WordPress Themes & Plugins
Elegant Themes’ Divi is the Ultimate WordPress Theme and Visual Page Builder that gives you the power to modify your own content without having to learn the in and outs of an often-confusing WordPress interface.

Sucuri covers your butt. I know, it sucks, but the bad dudes exist and they love to attack poor, unsuspecting sites for no reason other than to inflate their basement-lurking egos. So protect yourself. For reals you need malware monitoring, removal, and prevention!

I also recommend BackupBuddy by iThemes. Always keep regular backups of your website. Accidents happen, and you don’t want to be caught with your panties down. Backup your WordPress database as regularly as you write new content, and run a full backup weekly.

Akismet: One of the best plugins around for combating comment and contact form spam. Plus they have a really nice sliding scale!!

Open external links in a new window: because you want to give folks valuable links to resources outside of your website, right? Sharing is caring but not at the expense of loosing fans.

SeedProd Coming Soon Pro: Simply and beautifully put your site into maintenance mode while applying updates, etc, without loosing site conversions! Create custom branded and designed splash pages that connect to AWebber, MailChimp, etc while you work. Also plays nice with search engines (read: Google). Love it.

Contextly: Keep your blog readers happily reading down the bunny trails of your site with this related content plugin. Oh, and it’s really pretty & clean, too.

Form Builder Extraordinaire: Gravity Forms. Gone are the days of boring form plugins that act as a digital notepad. Name, email, message, send, snooze. Welcome to the age of forms that do evvvverything for you. Quizzes, payments, updates, check-ins, registrations, you name it, Gravity Forms does it. And if it can’t? There’s a Zap for that (see above).