This time last year, I was overwhelmed by juggling a full-time contract in Finance, learning how to blog, creating an online product as well as attending several biz training courses at the same time.
It was hard to do it all. And it felt pretty crazy!
Then Anni came along. She offered to design my e-book cover and make the whole book pretty. I loved her proposal and we started to work together.
It was a great experience because not only she is a talented designer, she is also a fellow intuitive (ie. she understands you without asking you to spend 5 hours to fill a form with 100 questions).
In the past, some readers in our community have mentioned being overwhelmed and experiencing resistance while starting online. We hear you! Therefore, I invited Anni here to have a written interview with us!
Anni will give you practical tips on how to get started online + getting your message out there with grace, ease and courage.
[Yiye]: Hi Anni, welcome! please tell us a little bit about yourself to our readers.
[Anni]: Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak with your readers, Yiye. My name is Anni Hayden Lane, and I am the creator of IntuitivePicture.com. As a designer and seasoned business person, I help coaches, healers and teachers market and sell their products and services. Not only do I design their websites, I also help clients turn their soul purpose into a money-making business. I’m based in Texas, U.S, and my clients stretch from Europe to Asia Pacific to North America.
[Yiye]: How did you start to support and assist intuitive online entrepreneurs?
[Anni]: I was working with my coach at the time and she needed help creating newsletters to sell her sessions and programs. I responded to her need. Through her help and word of mouth, I began helping other entrepreneurs that had a similar need. Pretty soon it turned into a business. The clients I’ve helped are all incredibly gifted at what they do. The missing piece they needed was either the design ability, the vision, the marketing or the entrepreneurial know-how. I brought those missing pieces to the picture, and it gave their business the support it needed to grow.
[Yiye]: What a fun start, what do you love the most about your work now?
[Anni]: As a designer and spiritual person, I love bringing a piece of myself in service to those who need exactly what I’m able to give.
As a business person, I enjoy fixing problems and healing the business where it hurts. I started entrepreneurship when I was 16, and I learned everything by being on the streets, making mistakes and failing. That gave me the ability to x-ray a business and understand the full picture very quickly. The other day at the supermarket, I randomly met a manufacturer of organic mattresses. After asking him two or three questions, coupled with my intuitive senses, I had already reached a clear understanding of where his business was hurting.
As a visionary, I see possibilities in everything. I help entrepreneurs see business opportunities that they don’t see, or help them envision a new income source they’re able to take and run with. I often carry the entrepreneurs’ confidence and hold their dreams for them. What I appreciate most is being able to pass on that sense of confidence to my clients. It is fun to watch a client step into her power.
[Yiye]: That’s beautiful! I love the way you create covers, websites and pictures, it feels like you give a life to the product itself. What keeps you inspired?
The gorgeous cover Anni desiged for me!
[Anni]: Thank you. The subject matter inspires me. Because I’ve undergone spiritual transformation, the topics of spirituality, wellness and healing are very close to my heart. My clients work from their heart space, so I feel more freedom to create from mine. I enjoy getting personal with the work. My clients operate from a conscious, high vibrational place and as a designer I love creating in those energies. I am especially adept with typography and color design. Both are a huge passion for me.
[Yiye]: I really resonate with operating from a conscious, high vibrational place. That’s one of many reasons I LOVE our community here. Each email, each comment and each client session all originats from a very loving place, which energises everyone that is involved. And often it is this intention and energetic synergy that help people to breakthrough the frustration and challenges.
And talking about frustration, it can be overwhelming and confusing for the right-brained creatives and intuitives to get started online, can you please give our readers any advice to overcome the resistance and move forward immediately?
[Anni]: Practically speaking, delegate. Without a doubt, there are a ton of little details when creating a business. Personally, I struggle with this too. I know how to do left-brain business management and I do it well, but at the expense of draining my creative energy.
I encourage entrepreneurs to get a bit of help wherever they can. Maybe it’s hiring a virtual assistant or a designer to get started, or having an accountant set up their systems.
Or maybe it’s getting feedback from a copywriter, or engaging a social media consultant or an SEO expert to make a few tweaks to the site.
It doesn’t have to be long term or expensive – entrepreneurs can bring on a good variety of specialists (that is a keyword) as they move along. We don’t have to know how to do everything. But we do have to know when and where to ask for help.
Emotionally speaking, take a baby step forward. It sounds very easy to say but difficult to do. There are so many passionate entrepreneurs wanting to create spectacular products and services. But mentally, they keep themselves stuck at the same place.
Often times, the longer we carry a dream, the more perfect it gets inside our head and the more unattainable it feels. Reality may not work out, we say to ourselves, so we keep the dream safe inside, intact and perfect. I would encourage entrepreneurs to move forward but to see themselves in backward time.
When something feels too challenging or daunting, fast forward in time a few years out. Ask your future, wiser self to help you take the next step or for a boost in confidence. S/he will be able to convey to you that in “hindsight,” everything is going to be okay. When you feel scared or doubtful, you can supply yourself with tons of encouragement this way.
[Yiye]: That’s so true about having a reassuring conversation with your “ancient” (at the same time “future”) self! The wisest and most courageous self, the timeless self (aka Higher Self), which we all have access to! I have taken several leaps in my life so far – when I look back at times, I couldn’t believe that I made such decisions/moves. That’s when I consciously realised that it was actually my Higher Self doing the work and the more I surrender to it, the easier and more fun it becomes.
Surrendering to your Higher Self is like building a “muscle”, which can bring you endless joy and opportunities if you practise it well.
Our readers are very spiritually conscious and they all have a message within to be delivered to the world. Can you please give our readers a few practical tips to get themselves out there?
[Anni]: From a business perspective, I encourage entrepreneurs to look at sales first. A gorgeous website with no sales is really just a website, not a business. We look at the products and services (usually, services) that she can put together. That is step one.
[Yiye]: 100% agree! Always work on your offering and core message first, although people often skip this step. Because it is easier to set up a twitter a/c than having a deep conversation with your market and find out exactly what they want. And many people have made this mistake before.
However, once you have clarity around your offering and message, it will be a lot easier to make everything consistent, from your website tagline, the photographs you choose, your freebie for subscribers…and all the way to marketing. Let’s talk about the steps after this..
[Anni]: The second step is to look at how the entrepreneur engages with her audience. Is it through her blog, podcasts, videos or social media? There has to be a way for potential customers to hang out at her site in order to get to know her. When potential clients develop trust and an emotional connection to the entrepreneur, they are much more likely to buy, especially high end or long term coaching programs. Free content is not just to get someone’s email address or getting a Like on Facebook. It’s about helping your potential client date you a little before you ask them to get married (by buying high end programs).
If the entrepreneur is in a place to do so, I sincerely suggest that she work with a designer to create the visual look of her website and marketing materials. Design elevates everything that the entrepreneur does, and it also makes her feel great about her work. It tells her story and also conveys the right tones and emotions in her products and services. It’s also about designing the emotions she wants the potential customer to feel. Excitement, safety, peace or confidence are all emotions that I design. So it’s not just about the look, it’s about the tones underneath it. In a way it is like cinematography.
[Yiye]: Great! thank you so much for your time and energy, and many useful tips for our readers! Before we wrap up, are there anything else you think that our readers should know?
[Anni]: I truly believe there is no greater privilege in life than to be able to actively create your dreams. We are so lucky in this day and age to have so much freedom, tools, teachers and resources at our disposal. Let’s not waste our time here on Earth.
I want want readers to know that whatever it is you want to do in your heart, it is absolutely possible.
It took me 10 years to act on my dreams. All my life, I thought I was too unrealistic. I had no faith in myself and I certainly didn’t trust the Universe to support me. I worked hard through my blocks and did tons of healing, and am now creating something big of my own.
Above all, protect your dreams. If something is sacred to you, hush on it to those who won’t give you love or support. Keep the dream alive and act on it – you will get there.
Finally, thank you so much for this opportunity – I appreciate this so much!
[Yiye]: What a heart-felt message there, thank you again Anni!
To our beloved readers, if you enjoy the interview, please share your biggest takeaway in the comment below or share the love on social media.
You can find out more about Anni on IntuitivePicture.com, check out her visual designs + schedule a FREE no-obligation consultation with her if you feel called.
With love,
Wow, what a lovely post! Its exactly what I needed to read right now. Thanks so much both of you! x
Glad to know that you enjoyed it Andrea!