TRAUMA RESILIENCE
Entrepreneurs & Small Business Owners
Resources & Featured Offerings
For bosses, freelancers, and CEOs seeking sustainable tools and business strategies to support recovery from trauma or burnout.
Three Things About Your Business & Career...
I believe your business doesn't have to feel triggering, overwhelming, and scary.
I believe your business can support and empower your continued recovery from trauma.
I've seen and believe that commerce (not capitalism) is a tool with the power to dismantle systems of oppression & cycles of trauma.
Dear Fellow Business Owner
On this page are some of the self-hosted and outside resources that I frequently reference while working with entrepreneurs like you.
Everything on this page is freely available because:
Trauma suuuuuuucks, doesn't it?! Let's make it suck less.
You're my kinda people! (I'm a trauma survivor too.)
I am always down to vent about "I can't believe how sneaky my trauma is!" because, I'm right there with you.
I don't do "sales calls," but if you ever want to schedule a coffee/tea chat, I'd absolutely be down for something like that, click here for the scheduling link.
PS - Feel free to share this page with whomever you'd like or connect with me on LinkedIn!
Business + Trauma?!
Trauma comes with mental, physical, emotional, and financial effects that are often long-term or even permanent. It can take an extremely long time for a survivor to acknowledge that they experienced trauma and even longer to understand or repair the damage.
In the meantime, how is a survivor supposed to keep the lights on and pay the bills?!
Entrepreneurs are *already* at risk for:
- depression
- self-worth issues
- chronic anxiety & panic attacks
- addiction
- ADHD
- bi-polar disorder
- hypertension/heart disease
- joint & circulation problems
- sleep disorders, insomnia
- vision-related problems
- migraines
- sexual or erectile dysfunction
- hormone suppression
Trauma can *increase* an entrepreneur's risk for:
- "kindling" (exponentially escalating mental health crises with progressively less extreme triggers and shorter periods of time between crises... uh, yikes.)
- hypertension/heart disease, diabetes, obesity
- stroke, cancer, autoimmune diseases
- addiction, self-medicating, self-numbing
- chronic anxiety & panic attacks
- sleep disorders, night terrors, insomnia, hyper-arousal
- easily agitated or angered, extreme startle reflex
- disassociation, over intellectualizing, monotonous voice, spacey
- cognitive disfunction, poor memory, trouble speaking
- excessive or inappropriate guilt
- intrusive thoughts or memories, flashbacks
- obsessive and/or compulsive tendencies
- self-injury, self-harm, high-risk behaviors
Your business problems might be trauma symptoms:
Note: Everyone's trauma is unique. Everyone's business is unique. Your symptoms will show up differently. Here are some I see frequently with new clients:
marketing avoidance
impressive feats of procrastination
frequent pivots or new products
self-sabotaging strategic decisions
feast & famine bank accounts
constant hustle at the speed of survival
bashful self-promotion
clients that "walk all over" your boundaries
frozen with indecision (aka analysis paralysis)
panic attacks at very inopportune times
and so much more
Featured Consulting Offerings
for Business Owners & Entrepreneurs
Consulting is like ice cream; we want what we want how we want it—occasional support on the side, sessions scheduled under a big project, a special calendar container, or a cherry on top of your recurring sessions. Sessions À La Mode are the answer to your flexible scheduling needs and are available in bundles of 1, 3, or 6 sessions. Each session is 50 minutes of 1-on-1 attention with Emily Ann Peterson.
Consulting is like ice cream; we want what we want how we want it—occasional support on the side, sessions scheduled under a big project, a special calendar container, or a cherry on top of your recur…
Build your bravery and resilience one step at a time with regular check-ins and accountability! This option is good for clients working on a longer-term project or those seeking ongoing support from a coach and consultant like Emily Ann Peterson. Each month you'll receive recurring private coaching session(s) via Google Meet and weekly office hours via email. The frequency of sessions is up to you: monthly, bi-monthly, or weekly.
Build your bravery and resilience one step at a time with regular check-ins and accountability! This option is good for clients working on a longer-term project or those seeking ongoing support from a…
then $185 every 30 days
You've got questions to clear up about your life, career, and creativity? Maybe you've got some marketing questions? Or you'd like to know the best way to automate a certain piece of your life. Well, Emily Ann's got a house to Marie Kondo! Let's join forces! Reserve your spot in Emily Ann's calendar today!
You've got questions to clear up about your life, career, and creativity? Maybe you've got some marketing questions? Or you'd like to know the best way to automate a certain piece of your life. Well, …
Featured Business Tools & Themed-Sessions
for Business Owners & Entrepreneurs
If you've always wanted to write a book or somehow the creative muse has magically gifted you with a manuscript idea, then let's talk. Self-publishing is the single most effective way for you to get your book *out there* for the world to see as soon as possible.
Every author's book is different, so working with Emily Ann *starts* with six (6) one-hour sessions to nail down your book summary, ideal audience, outline, title, overall strategy, and next steps.
If you've always wanted to write a book or somehow the creative muse has magically gifted you with a manuscript idea, then let's talk. Self-publishing is the single most effective way for you to get y…
Got a website that reads a little too boring? Does your artist bio make even your *mom* want to fall asleep? Don't want to re-write the words for that thing? Stuck with a blinking cursor and a blank page?
Schedule a session with Emily Ann to write some tastiest morsels with you! After paying for your session, you'll fill out your intake form and then leave your scheduled session with the perfect words for whatever your creative project requires!
Got a website that reads a little too boring? Does your artist bio make even your *mom* want to fall asleep? Don't want to re-write the words for that thing? Stuck with a blinking cursor and a blank p…
This worksheet bundle is for client-based business owners who value their time and want to make smarter money choices. Consider this your rinse-and-repeat strategy sandbox and financial planning sidekick! Includes 3 auto-calculated digital worksheets, 2 bonus strategy sandboxes, and 1 private coaching session.
This worksheet bundle is for client-based business owners who value their time and want to make smarter money choices. Consider this your rinse-and-repeat strategy sandbox and financial planning sidek…
A Digital Tool to Navigate Your Business & the Marketplace—This auto-calculated worksheet bundle is for business owners who want more confidence to set boundaries, make strategic marketing decisions, improve customer onboarding experiences, attract the right clients and repel the wrong clients (you know the ones). Consider this your rinse-and-repeat strategy sandbox for ideal client/customer acquisition and marketing strategy! Includes 1 worksheet bundle (with customizable client categories!) and 3 private consulting sessions with Emily Ann Peterson.
A Digital Tool to Navigate Your Business & the Marketplace—This auto-calculated worksheet bundle is for business owners who want more confidence to set boundaries, make strategic marketing decisions, …
Do you have a website? Do you (secretly) worry that it sucks? Or maybe you know it doesn’t do you and your awesome work justice?
Easy! You'll walk away from your 45-min Website Audit with a tangible list of tiny improvements and the confidence to put yourself out there!
First impressions matter. Make it easy for promoters, members of the press, publicists, and content creators to feature you the way you want to be featured! Spend an hour with Emily Ann Peterson, and you'll learn what's missing from your press kit (aka your EPK) and how to display it to maximize your publicity and visibility. You'll also get Emily Ann's expert opinion on your biography, about section, photos, and relevant links or work samples.
Help them help you shine brighter than ever! Get your press kit audit & consult today!
First impressions matter. Make it easy for promoters, members of the press, publicists, and content creators to feature you the way you want to be featured! Spend an hour with Emily Ann Peterson, and …
Business Software & Online Resources
for Entrepreneurs & Small Business Owners
to help your business operations feel as easy as possible!
under construction! come back soon for more or send me an email if you see something missing!
Email Marketing & CRM Platforms
- Simplero—This is what I use, very versatile if you're willing to put in some time for a learning curve, I'm happy to answer questions about it too.
- HubSpot—lots of tools for CRM, email marketing, lead generation; they have a free version too
- Drip—really good integrations for e-commerce (like Shopify)
- Weave—two-way texting, helps boost online reviews, team chat, email, and analytics
- BombBomb—video messaging for email and text
Accounting Apps & Sites
The market "standard" is Intuit-based products. However, I have a big beef with how they run their business in a coercive and domineering manner. (Boo!) So here are some alternatives to Quickbooks:
Freshbooks—has lots of API integrations, very popular
Wave Accounting—mostly free! They make their profit elsewhere, like through offering hourly appointments with a bookkeeper or their bank accounts
Sunrise—a product of Lendio, so everything is geared toward offering business loans
Capterra has a great short list with methods of comparing platforms
Scheduling Platforms
- Acuity—really versatile, plans start at $14
- Calendly—scales well with a brand new business
- YouCanBook.me—works well for teams & their free version connects with 1 Google Calendar
- WhenIWork—for those who need to schedule hourly employees on a regular basis
- Vagaro—good for salons, spas, or fitness studios
- Fons—great community of music teachers and time-for-money professionals
- Capterra maintains a shortlist of their top-rated options for easy comparison.
ADA & Accessibility
- The Disability Language Style Guide—from the National Center on Disability and Journalism
- How to Make Your Spreadsheets Accessible to People with Disabilities—from Microsoft Excel
- Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) & Accessibility Fundamentals Overview, from W3 / Web Accessibility Initiative
- Accessibility Statement Generator—from Siteimprove
- Color Contrast Checker—from Siteimprove
- Disability Inclusion in the Workplace—complementary online course
- Accessibility for Virtual Classrooms—complementary online course
- Accessibility Fundamentals for the Web—complementary online course
SEO & Website Analytics
- Siteimprove—excellent for businesses seeking to build their SEO through online accessibility and inclusion
- Squarespace—easy drag-n-drop website builder with built-in analytics and SEO
- SEO Fundamentals—complementary online course
- How the EU's GDPR regulations affect US Businesses—on-demand webinar
Still Not Sure? Book a Meet-N-Greet
Schedule a super-chill chat via Google Meet!
Online Resources & Scholarly Articles
Business Ethics + Compliance
- Join me! Take the Anti-Racist Small Business Pledge
- Koehn, Daryl. (1998) 'Business Ethics' goes beyond contradiction in terms. Houston Business Chronicle
- Ethics & Compliance Toolkit (free .pdf)—Ethics & Compliance Initiative
- Ethics & Compliance Glossary—succinct and easy to reference
- Ethical Finance Hub’s Blog—a Scottish financial organization with great info
- Chartered Banker+EFX: The largest professional body for bankers in the UK partnered with EFX to provide continuing professional development content focused on sustainable finance and responsible bankers.
- Annual Ethics & Compliance Stats in the Workplace: Sexual Harassment in the Workplace, U.S. Employees' Views on Diversity, Inclusivity, & Discrimination, U.S. Employees’ Reporting Experiences by Race and Ethnicity
- Creating a Code of Ethics for Your Org—resource guide by Chris MacDonald, PhD; links to essays, samples, and a book list
- Henderson, David. Misguided Virtue: False Notions of Corporate Social Responsibility. Institute for Economic Affairs (ebook in .pdf format)
- Corporate Ethics Class, from CorporateGovernance.net, freely available, no paywall or email required
- Anti-Corruption & Integrity News, from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, oecd.org
- Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions, at the Illinois Institute of Technology
- Business Ethics Blog, from Chris MacDonald, PhD
Affiliate Marketing + Ethics
- Mazur, Michelle. (2020). How Online Summits Replicate Systems of Oppression. via Instagram Live
- Byran-Podvin, Lindsay. (2022) The Problem with Free Therapy Summits, Mind Money Balance
- Mangiò F. & Di Domenico G. (2022) All that glitters is not real affiliation: How to
handle affiliate marketing programs in the era of falsity. Business Horizons. - Guide to Affiliate Compliance: Techniques, Signs, & Strategies To Combat Affiliate Fraud. from brandverity.com
- Reimer, Adam. (2022). Difference Between Influencers, Affiliates, and Ambassadors
- Cohen, Mark. (2013) Surviving The Dark Side of Affiliate Marketing. The New York Times.
- Reimer, Adam. (2021). Should Influencers be Affiliates or In Your Affiliate Programs?
- Duemeyer, Randy. (2020). Does Affiliate Marketing Work? The Balance.
- Chachra, N. Savage, S., Voelker, G., Affiliate Crookies: Characterizing Affiliate Marketing Abuse. Department of Computer Science & Engineering, University of California, San Diego
- Marciano, Jonathan. (2020). Affiliate Fraud: The Dark Side of Affiliate Marketing. blog post from Cheq.ai
Ethical Marketing
- Statement of Ethics, American Marketing Association (AMA)
- Standards of Practice, American Association of Advertising Agencies (AAAA)
- Ethical Marketing Policy Template, freely available GoogleDoc from JB Media Group
- Sher, S. (2011). A Framework for Assessing Immorally Manipulative Marketing Tactics. Journal of Business Ethics 102, 97–118 (2011).
- Silver, Mark. (2017) Don't Buy Now: How to Stop the Scammers & Avoid Spending Way Too Much Money on Business Coaching. ebook freely available from heartofbusiness.com
- Lohmann, Jessica. (2021) Ethical Marketing: How You Market Matters.
- Atchison, Jared. (2019). How to Use Ethical Marketing to Attract the Right Audience. Forbes.
- Minton, EA. & Gardiner, P. (2021) The missing role of moral values in anti-vaping messaging. Journal of Consumer Affairs, 55(3), 1040–1061.
- Brignull, Harry. Types of Deceptive Design Tactics, presented by an expert legal witness for deceptive user experiences
- Shultz, T. (2014). Evaluating moral issues in motivation theories: Lessons from marketing and advertising practices. Employee Responsibilities and Rights Journal, 26(1), 1-20.
- David T. Courtwright. (2019). The Age of Addiction : How Bad Habits Became Big Business. Harvard University Press.
- Genco, Steve. (2020). Nudging vs. Covert Persuasion: Are Your Marketing Tactics Ethical?, Better Marketing
Moral Capitalism vs. Anti-Capitalism
- Caux Roundtable—an international group of business leaders making a case for "Moral Capitalism."
- Stakeholder Capitalism—posts from B-Corp's blog
- Brass, T. (2021). The Anti-Capitalism of Pro-Slavery Discourse: Lessons Unlearned by Postmodernists. Critical Sociology, 47(7–8), 1245–1265.
- Friedman, H. H., & Adler, W. D. (2011). Moral Capitalism: A Biblical Perspective. American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 70(4), 1014–1028.
- Dunning, John, & HRH The Prince of Wales (ed.), Making Globalization Good: The Moral Challenges of Global Capitalism (Oxford, 2003; online edn, Oxford Academic, 1 Nov. 2003)
- Berger, S. & Przyrembel, A. (2019) Moralizing Capitalism: Agents, Discourses and Practices of Capitalism and Anti-Capitalism in the Modern Age. Palgrave MacMillan.
- Satz, Debra. (2012) Why Some Things Should Not Be for Sale: The Moral Limits of Markets. Oxford University Press
- Sasson, T. (2016). Milking the Third World? Humanitarianism, Capitalism, and the Moral Economy of the Nestlé Boycott. American Historical Review, 121(4), 1196–1224.
- David Farber (2017) Moral capitalism in the age of great dreams: the Grateful Dead’s struggle to craft right livelihoods. The Sixties. 10:1, 63-93.
- Leathers, C. G., & Raines, J. P. (2011). Natural religion and "moral capitalism". International Journal of Social Economics, 38(4), 330-340.
- Suciu, T. (2009). Is Capitalism Ethical? Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Brasov. Economic Sciences.Series V, 2, 237-244.
- Otteson, James. (2014). What Adam Smith Knew: Moral Lessons on Capitalism from Its Greatest Champions and Fiercest Opponents. Encounter Books.
Justice, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion (JEDI)
- Anti-Racist Small Business Pledge [Join me & take the pledge!]
- Anti-Racism in the Workplace Toolkit—paid resource from InclusiveEmployers.co.uk
- Decolonizing the Cultural Workplace: A New Organizing Front—article from SUNY's School of Labor & Urban Studies
- Harper, Shaun. (2022) Remote Work Can Boost Diversity Yet Undermine Equity for Employees of Color. Forbes.
- Marie Forleo & The Good White Liberal Response—a case study for online business owners & employees
- On White Leaders (Like Danielle La Porte) Who Dehumanize Black People—a case study for online business owners & employees
- Addressing Anti-Asian Discrimination—a collection of resources from Cal State East Bay
- Decolonize Your Workplace—from SheFlourishes; introduces the Inclusive Maturity Assessment Tool
- Decolonizing Career Development—online course taught by Stephanie Castellanos
- How to Start Decolonizing Your Business—a well-written article by Ricardo Twumasi, Charlotte Horne, and Jenny K Rodriguez; filled with links to other informative articles
- Casey, C. (2020). Do Your D&I Efforts Include People with Disabilities? Harvard Business Review.
Scholarly Journals
- Fast Capitalism—An Interdisciplinary Journal
B-Corps
- Honeyman, Ryan & Jana, Tiffany. (2019) The B Corp Handbook: How You Can Use Business as a Force for Good* Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
- B Impact Assessment—scores of 80+ is the first step toward becoming a B-Corp
- B-Corp Resource List from BCorporation.net—podcasts, articles, guides, and more
Finance & Accounting
- Financial Ratios Cheat Sheet, .pdf from CFI
- Thompson, AA. (1984) Strategies for Staying Cost Competitive. Harvard Business Review
- Gallo, Amy. (2014) A Refresher on Net Present Value. Harvard Business Review.
- Timmons, JA. & Sander, DA. (1989) Everything You (Don't) Want to Know About Raising Capital. Harvard Business Review.
Human Resources
- Ennis, Dawn. Best Employers for Women in 2022, Forbes.
- Buckingham, Marcus & Goodall, Ashley. (2019). The Feedback Fallacy, Harvard Business Review.
- Jones, Alicia. (2016) The Drain and Gain of Conflict. The Headington Institute.
- Deeb, George. (2022). Too Many Meetings Suffocate Morale & Productivity. Forbes.
Entrepreneurship + Startups
- Cook, Jodie. (2022) How Loneliness Could Be Costing Your Business Success, And What To Do. Forbes.
- Montoro-Fernández, E., Cárdenas-Gutiérrez, A. R., & Bernal-Guerrero, A. (2022). Entrepreneurial resilience: A case study on university students. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(5), 2589.
- Almeida, Fernado & Buzady, Zoltan. (2019). Assessment of Entrepreneurship Competencies Through the Use of FLIGBY. Digital Education Review. No 35.
- Ács, Z. Audretsch, D. Braunerhjelm, P., Carlsson, B. Growth and Entrepreneurship: An Empirical Assessment
- Cook, Jodie. (2022) How to Run a Business With Your Siblings. Forbes.
Branding
- Affixes.org—great site to help with creating new trademarkable words