Episode #176 - Meet our Elevators - Tara Johnson

WP Elevation WordPress Business Podcast

Watch the video of this podcast here.

A Bit of Background
Tara's business, AlchemyThree, is a small business that she runs out of an office in Massachusetts. Tara and her small team concentrate on small to medium sized businesses particularly female-owned businesses as she loves helping women to step into their power and succeed. Her business focuses on digital marketing, web design and maintenance.

Tara started as a photographer and hated computers for a long time. She only wanted to make art and it wasn’t until things started to go digital that she realised that she needed to get into that space and embrace her inner control freak! She got onto Photoshop and started messing around with that. She is largely self-taught with an Associates in graphic design from a community college.

She has been working in the WordPress/ design space for around 16 years now with some stints of work in corporate.

Discovering the Blueprint
A year ago she saw Kristina Romero (one of WPE’s coaches) give a talk at WordCamp Boston. A light bulb went off when Kristina was talking about care plans and the concept of recurring revenue. Tara at the time had been hustling to get the next project and just wasn’t thinking long-term. So she started following Kristina online which led her to WP Elevation and here she is! Now Tara is part of the Mavericks Mastermind group.

The Game Changer
The biggest game-changer for Tara since completing the Blueprint is that she has realised her worth as a web developer, marketer and brand specialist. It wasn’t until she found WPE and it’s community that this happened. She talks about the isolation that you feel when you're running your own business. So the support and guidance helped her make this mindset shift.

Before the course, she was charging around $2,500 for a website and was getting in over her head because she had no processes in place and was making everything up as she went along. After the course, she felt she had the tools, the skills and the structure to take on more work with full confidence in her abilities.

Everyone keeps going on about the community- am I right! Well, Tara says that she loves the diversity of the community with varying skill sets and backgrounds. She loves hearing stories of how people got where they are and loves how the people in the group are so supportive when you need help.

Being a part of Troy’s small Mastermind group has given her the chance to get even closer with some of the other members. So last week she had a "little tantrum" when Google decided to shut down her account. It was one of those moments when the straw breaks the camels back and she felt ready to give up on her business. She took to her Maverick's Slack group and everyone rallied around her, reached out to check on her and offer help. She says that "instead of undercutting each other we lift each other up."

The care plans and having a recurring revenue changed her life as well as the proposal process. She was wasting so much time writing proposals so to have a structure and a baseline was amazing. The proposal allows the reader to see that you actually understand their business and sell them the benefits of your work rather than the features.

Growing a Team
Tara is nervous and excited because she just offered someone offshore a full-time role. Hurrah! Her first full-time employee! She currently also has a writer and a developer working for her which she was only able to do since WPE.

She learned that making yourself feel uncomfortable is important. Hiring this person makes her feel nervous and in the past, she never would have done this without the support of the WPE community.

Tara's Favourite Tool
Tara says that she has an unhealthy relationship with Mixmax. It's a tool that allows you to track your emails, send canned email responses and send invites to your calendar. The tracking helps you to understand what level of interest people have in your business and whether emails have been lost.

Wrap Up
Tara wraps up the chat with Ray by saying “The course is a no-brainer. The amount of value you get is bonkers! Don’t even hesitate”. Awww thanks for sharing the love Tara!

How awesome is she! If you have any questions for her or want to let us know what you think of this podcast, please leave a comment below.

P.S. We've created a 10% discount code for the listeners of the WPE podcast. Simply add the code GOELEVATE upon payment of the Blueprint course. The deal is valid until the 21st September 2018.

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