All of these resources are things that we either currently use, have used in the past & highly recommend based on our actual experience! They are mainly Business Tools & Apps, but we will also be adding our favourite blogs & ladyboss-run resources regularly!*

(*If you're coming from Business Is The New Black, you'll always have access to this page, just save the link in your bookmarks and check back for updates!*)

Branding:

Canva | If you don't have the Photoshop or Illustrator skills to put together a logo, moodboard or other branding & marketing graphics - Canva is a lifesaver! It's easy to use and full of beautiful semi-custom designs and templates.

Creative Market | In our course, we talk a lot about building a one-of-a-kind brand - and Creative Market is one of the best places to shop for branding elements that will really make your brand stand out. This is because Create Market is full of designs, fonts, illustrated elements, web design templates, and other branding resources that can't be found anywhere else. They're not free, but they are fabulous, and everything is created by independent artists. Resources come in a variety of different price points, with commercial licensing options available as well.

Saffron Avene | Because we love supporting the work of independent ladies whenever possible - This girlboss' stunning website will pretty much blow your mind. She offers brand styling & website design, custom brand calligraphy (for those of you who are non-calligraphers!), photo styling, social media templates & more.

Organization:

A Professional G-Suite Account | Because sending emails from an address that ends in a domain instead of just "@gmail.com" sets the tone for a professional interaction and just plain looks better! Also, G-Mail allows you to work on all of your projects like documents, slide presentations, and spreadsheets within Google Chrome, so it's always saved to the Magical Google Cloud. **Note: You will need to already own a domain name in order to set up this a domain email address. Also Note, Jodi used to have codes to give you discounts but seems to have lost them. But if you want one, e-mail her and she can try to find it for you!**

A Client Management System | To make your life at least 1000 times easier, and to once again project a professional image out into the universe (no one has to know you're sitting at your computer screen in your pajamas at 3pm!). Seriously though, the fact that clients can sign contracts and pay you with a single click is such a game-changer, we've literally mentally blocked out whatever we were doing before. We get to give you guys a pretty fabulous 50% discount when you sign up for HoneyBook! Later in the course, we'll go into more detail on how to use it, but they happen to have amazing customer service in place, lots of templates and easy to follow instructions, so if you sign up for it now, you'll be fine!

Social Media:

A Planning App such as Plann or Planoly | Having a cohesive, aesthetically pleasing Instagram feed & Social Media presence is not overrated! The content & intention are the most important parts of course, but making it pretty matters. Planning your posts in advance will help you stay consistent with your brand aesthetic and take the stress out of posting!

Making Money:

Either A Square Account, or A Stripe Account (or both, depending on your situation!) | Both of these free platforms will allow you to accept credit card payments which means getting paid faster, which is everyone's favourite. The only caveat is they take just under 3% of the transaction as their payment, but this is typical of any payment processor and to be expected! Pssst. If you use the Square link to sign up for a new account, you'll get free processing on your next $1000 worth of transactions! Yay.

A Professional Website | It can be as simple or as in-depth as you wish, but you absolutely should have somewhere online that you business "lives" other than Social Media. This is particularly importnat if you wish to work with higher end or corporate clients, because odds are they are not browsing Instagram when they need a freelancer for a project - they are Googling! So you need to have a website with at least some basic SEO in place, so you can be found easily online and hired! Jodi currently uses Squarespace, and Sylvia uses Shopify.