With over 25 years of experience in business and technology consulting, Heather has the breadth and depth of knowledge and skills to help bridge the gap between where you are and where you want to be.
Technology has become a necessary evil for most independent artists and creatives. It’s easy to get frustrated and lost in the every changing and highly intricate world of software systems, so how do you figure out a balance between what you need and what you can handle? Heather’s lifelong passion for the creative arts and experience as a full time studio based artist mean that she understands the challenges of small artist-entrepreneurs and is adept at translating the business and tech-speak in to what you need to know.
She has worked in fields ranging from healthcare to finance to telematics, providing business analysis and design, development strategy, software testing, and project management services for companies ranging from Fortune 50 to independent artists, non-profits, and entrepreneurs.
There are lots of choices for how to build out your technology “stack”, and there are no perfect solutions. There are tools that will give you a workable tradeoff between cost, privacy & security risks, and usability. The choices are constantly changing and evolving, so this list is “for now” and represents what has been generally successful for us in the past.
- Website/Content resource management (CRM): WordPress, either minimal through WordPress.org or fully hosted WordPress installation with customized themes and plugins
- Contact marketing: Mailchimp
- Social media: Facebook (because, really, I have to). Instagram or Twitter only if they fit your goals and style.
- Payment gateway: Square or PayPal (Note: I’m not a fan of PayPal’s Privacy Terms these days, but they are trusted and widely integrated in to other platforms.)
- Graphics: depends on your operating system and tech options; Adobe products (Photoshop mostly) or various Mac applications are generally good choices. If you want expert graphic design work or print setup, we have suggestions for other resources.
Why not Squarespace / Weebly / Wix / etc.? Those will work for some circumstances and for some people. We can still help you, but it may not be as easy or as quick. (After learning the 3rd programming language and 2nd software development paradigm, the rest are pretty much variations on the same theme just with different vocabularies. It’s kind of like adjusting to driving a lawn tractor once you already know how to drive a stick shift or semi.)