Ready? Set? Launch!

So incredibly excited (and nervous!) to officially launch The Healing Farm website TODAY!!!

It's been a HUGE learning curve to launch a new business unrelated to photography, but after five months and many times said in the last four weeks "It is my goal to launch this week!" here I am ready to send out my launch e-mail by end of day today. Wow. 

It's been incredibly important to me to keep up with my life-work balance while I transition to my new business and it's been hard to do in the past few weeks. I've been running my photography business, writing, shooting and editing to create The Healing Farm site and learning more and more about the retreat industry at the same time. Plus my dear brother-in-law and new sister-in-law got married on the 16th and I photographed two weddings this past weekend. Although I was tempted to work on my launch yesterday, I took a much needed day off instead!

It was also important to me to start my launch day with my normal routine which is ten minute meditation, coffee, news and catching up with e-mails, then my very important NYT Scientific Seven Minute Workout and stretch session followed by my daily smoothie (see this post for the recipe). Still a bit worn out from my two wedding shoots, so the day started a little later than normal, but it is so important to me to keep up with my normal routine. I've got to remember to KEEP THE STRESS LEVEL DOWN!!! These are all important lessons I hope the Healing Farm will eventually teach many people throughout many years.

So much help and advice from friends has been given along along the way to this launch.

Thank you to these very important people:

My dear husband who has been living with my up-and downs as I've navigated through this process.

My family who always supports me no matter what I do.

My dear friends who are also always encouraging and there for me.

My informal group of advisors who have been gracious in responding to my requests for advice in their area of expertise.

and I specifically  want to thank:

Pamela Hawley of Universal Giving who was the instructor of the "Introduction to Entrepreneurship" class in the UC Berkeley Extension program  I've been attending - and yes! that's me in the picture on the righthand side of the page - the model student -ha!. I hope to do a blog post today specifically on the UC Berkeley Extension program and how I practiced being bold when asking Pamela for a mentoring session. She not only offered one session, but continues to mentor me through this launch process. She has been KEY in helping me to gain confidence and in offering much need guidance. I hope to also launch a personal journal of the building of my business process today at birthingabusiness.com.

Thanks also to the folks at the San Francisco Small Business Administration and especially the SCORE program at which I signed up for free mentoring with two angel investors who are patiently waiting for me to launch my website so we can continue our mentoring sessions as I move into phase one of The Healing Farm business concept.

Also so important in helping me out the last few months:

My dear friend Laurel Segel of KS Creative who has been helping me build The Healing Farm brand and who has patiently been helping me build a template site even though her specialty is custom website design! 

Ryan of DepthxHeight who has helped Laurel and I navigate the programming quarks involved in customizing a squarespace template site!

My good friend Mark who got me started in the process of applying for my trademark and the folks at The Law offices of Christopher Day who continued with me through the process. Also Caryn Glasser, Examining Attorney at The United States Patent and Trademark Office who granted me final approval on the trademark.

Chris Kresser who I'm very excited to have on-board as my keynote speaker for the first large-scale retreat at Mayacamas Ranch, his nutritionist Kelsey Marksteiner of Healthy Gut, Healthy Life who will be onsite at the Mayacamas Ranch retreat for the whole week to offer two lectures and private consultations, my two yoga instructors: Patti Cocciolo of The Goodness Blog and Erin Cookston and to all of the other people in the works to participate in what will be such a fun and informative retreat.

and of course, last but not least the incredibly nice and patient team at Mayacamas Ranch which is the lovely site of the "Paleo Reset" Retreat.

Part of what I wrote about The Healing Farm's mission is to help "average people of average means" become extraordinary human beings. It's what I'm striving for myself which is why I want to document this process of changing my own life and hope to start a sister blog called "birthing a business". Odd name, I know, but stay tuned to find out why!

Whew! So here we go. Ready? Set? Launch!