How I Built an Inexpensive Tech Stack that Scales (and how you can too)
Triumphs, Trials, and Tribulations of an Entrepreneur with 17 Years Experience in Online Marketing
VIRGO MISSION 1 - This was my submission to the Dharma Artist Collective’s Zodaic Games. Honored to win first place in their first video submission competition!!!
I used this mission to create an impetus to get my brand-new website live. There are some things you might not know about me as a systematizer, business owner, and consultant. I’ll get to that later.
First, I want to dive right into the meat of how I can serve you today.
I’m learning every day. I find mentors who can help me grow in the areas I’m trying to grow in. So if you find one who is great at humility, please send them my way. Because this feels like a giant bragging fest and I’m going to do my best to share what I know in a way that doesn’t gross me out.
I’m grateful to all the unnamed people for seeing me, for teaching me, and for letting me into their lives so I can learn and share. I consider myself a perpetual student. Seneca said, “While we teach, we learn.” And to take learning to the next level, you teach.
I’m going to do my best in this video to teach you how to create a tech stack, which is the backend technology that runs your online business dealings. After 17 years in the online space, I’ve gotten to watch the evolution. Today, there are so many platforms and subscriptions and one-stop shops and bells and whistles and shiny things, that you could end up embedded in a system that doesn’t suit your needs and could potentially break your budget. There are hidden costs to success and most business owners don’t talk about it. I want to make sure you understand these costs.
This is the place where I might lose some of you. If you start getting foggy or tired, it is even more imperative that you learn this info. The density comes from parts inside of us that are trying to protect us from changing who we are right now. Because we survived to get to this point. So we must have done something right despite all the trials do tribulations.
Stick with me! You can always bookmark this video and watch it again when it applies to you. You can also pop in your earbuds and take a walk while you are listening. I have slides and some video footage, but it is ok to take in the info how you need. Take care of yourself and you do you.
I’ve worked primarily in the health space. Most healers do not want to look at money. Artists are very similar. There is this deep-seated desire to find someone who will take over all the parts of your life that feel icky so you can focus on what you love to do and what you are best at.
I’m not saying you need to learn how to fix a broken old Toyota like Dana or create heat protection panels that protect satellites from burning up when they reenter the atmosphere like Layton. But I am saying that you need to learn how to run a business and take care of your finances if you want this to be sustainable.
My friend trusted her money to an advisor who stole everything from her and her husband, and right before she was about to retire, she had to reinvent herself and go back to work in her 60s and now specializes in teaching boundaries.
My friend, a well-known health practitioner, didn’t know how her business ran. She focused on her strengths as an author, spokesperson for her brand, and visionary. She hired CEO after CEO to run her company. Little did she know, none of them were qualified and they made poor decisions that cost her so much money it made her sick once she started paying attention.
Whether you are a seasoned business owner or thinking of starting out, the same rules apply. Learn how to run your business and take care your finances.
What does this mean?
Your finances are the energy that fuels your idea engine. It’s what brings your ideas to life. I go more into that in my Mystical Money free ebook and 6-week immersion course, which if you want to learn more…I highly recommend it. Learning the way the energy flows in and out of your business is one of the metrics to know what is growing and what isn’t.
When you run your business based on decisions informed by metrics and facts, and combine this with your passion and intuition, you are melding both hemispheres of the brain. Not using both is akin to of
being a teenager. Teenagers haven’t developed the corpus callosum, which is the largest nerve fiber bundle that connects the cortical regions of the cerebral hemispheres in human brains and it plays an essential role in the integration of information transferred between the hemispheres over thousands of axons. This means they are only using the right hemisphere, coming up with a great idea and not running it through the pragmatic side of the brain to ascertain the steps to achieve it, the practicality, and the risks and rewards. Einstein’s corpus callosum, interestingly, is thicker than new and old brains studied in comparison. Based on what we know about human brains, Einstein’s intellectual gifts were enhanced by coordinated communication between the cerebral hemispheres.
Artists are known for enhanced creativity stemming from the right hemisphere of the brain.
The left hemisphere of the brain is associated with logical and analytical thinking.
Modern neuroscience shows that the hemispheres are working together for creativity and complex problem-solving.
Practicing this neurological pathway could enhance your overall creativity.
This is what I’m tasking you with today.
Consider learning the important aspects of your business and finances so you can thrive in your art. Consider that by doing this, you could also be enhancing the processing of your corpus callosum, thereby impacting your overall creativity.
I want to make sure you understand that all businesses are marketing to you so they paint a pretty picture of what they want you to buy. They are there to make money. Many companies are earnest in their attempts to solve customer’s problems, but the downfalls of picking the wrong software for your company can be expensive. Worse, it can create a tech nightmare trying to link everything.
You want tech you can update and edit yourself. Without the help of an expensive tech person. Don’t try to build a complex tech stack that can do all sorts of specialized functions because you are attached to wanting to do things your way.
I worked as an interim COO for an institute in the health space and they plateaued at a couple of million dollars per year because their systems were so complex, it was no longer easy to market to their audience because all the bandwidth of the team and mostly of the founder, was taken up by trying to make enough money each month to cover all the expenses just to run the business. They were not agile. It is amazing how many companies out there can easily get to a million or a few million dollars a year, but plateau there when their systems become cumbersome because they are still running their company like a small company.
Worse, is when companies spend a bunch of money on all the bells and whistles to try and copy someone else who looks successful to them. They buy all the tech and software that their hero is using, but they haven’t mastered their ability to market and sell their product at the scale of their so-called hero. I’ve watched people’s businesses completely fold from making this fatal mistake.
Then, there’s digital hoarding. This is where a company will buy a new subscription to this or that and never consolidate and upgrade their systems as their company grows.
One thing I want to tell you, that you may not realize, is that passion and a good idea can actually sell. I’ve personally watched thousands of businesses make a decent amount of money with just that…passion and a good idea. I’ve worked intimately with hundreds of those businesses where I’ve consulted and gotten to see behind the curtain how things are actually going.
I’m going to tell you the formula for the ones that are the most financially successful and creatively enjoying their work.
And after that, I’m going to talk about tech stacks, show you my tech stack, and explain why I’ve set mine up this way. I will also make some recommendations for what you could use based on your situation…
Here are the commonalities I’ve noticed with successful entrepreneurs.
Success is defined by their ability to make money without sacrificing their personal time. They prioritize their family, friends, and time off from work.
They know how much money they are bringing in each month down to the dollar. They know how much money they are spending each month down to the dollar.
They double down on ideas that people give them money for.
They squash the ideas that don’t make money. And if they really like the idea, they might rework it, but they use money as an energetic representation of reception. So if people are excited and want to support that idea energetically, they give the person money to represent that.
They get clear on their best form of communication with their audience and they create consistent content that is generous and full of value.
They know their value and what skills or experiences provide that value. They don’t worry about ‘giving too much information away.’ Often, what they are actually selling is something that can only be experienced within that container. Think of the Dharma Artist Collective. Erick Godsey is sharing information freely with his audience all the time. But if you want to participate in the experience, spend time getting your questions answered, your dreams interpreted, or the container of the sprint, you pay for that. People often get confused about this piece by not knowing their value and what they bring.
They know who their customer is. So well, in fact, that they are often writing/creating for one specific person they have in mind. They know that person inside and out and can articulate their internal world and bring words to experiences and situations that most people cannot come to on their own.
They have humility. This might be the most important trait of successful entrepreneurs.
I’m sure there are more, but these are the patterns I’ve witnessed the most.
Ok, let’s talk about platforms, tech, subscriptions, and other interesting things.
I do nerd out on this. Because as a business owner, these are the sites you are logging into. This is where you are pasting your emails and hitting the send button to your audience. This is where you are building your audience. This is the interface between you and your audience in the Shimmer (a haunting way of describing the truth of the internet).
A tech stack is the various platforms and software that manage your online business behind the scenes. This is where you share who you are and how you serve.
There are many more platforms and subscriptions that I could talk to you about regarding finances and marketing, but we are just going to start with the basic backend system for sharing who you are and how you serve people. This is what you need to get started and scale.
Email CRM: Customer Relationship Management a.k.a. Where you email from. Substack, Simplero, Kajabi, Kit, Klaviyo, Infusionsoft, Hubspot, etc.
Website: The postagestamp-sized spot you own on the internet. WordPress, Shopify, Squarespace, Wix, etc.
Shopping Cart: Order forms, credit cards, payment plans, etc. Shopify, Paypal, WooComm, etc.
Shipping & Fulfillment: Label creation. Shipstation, SendCloud, Shippo, etc.
Course & Digital Product Housing: Skool, Ruzuku, Thinkific, Udemy, Teachable, etc.
Community: Skool, Discord, Telegram, etc.
Blog: Your website, Substack, Medium, etc.
Integration: Ways to link your software so they talk to each other. Make, Zapier
You need an email CRM, where all your email subscribers live and you can email them. Most of these services are expensive, especially when your email list grows. This is important because you need a way to capture people’s contact info in the Shimmer to enhance your ability to grab their attention when you want to and pull it away from the doomscrolling, boredom, and dopamine fixes they are chasing. This is the beginning of how you serve.
You need a website, which includes hosting and DNS so that people have a point of access to you in the Shimmer.
You’ll need a way to sell your art, courses, work, products, services, etc. This is your shopping cart, order forms, and payment plans.
If you have physical products, you’ll need shipping, fulfillment, and possibly manufacturing.
If you have courses or ebooks, you’ll need a place to host so your customers can engage with your philosophy and reap the benefits of your knowledge.
If you want your paying customers to have a place to engage, you’ll want to have a community. This can be an app, Skool, Discord, Telegram, etc.
Depending on how elaborate you want this all to be, you could spend thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars per month to run your business in the Shimmer. I’ve worked with hundreds of businesses online in the past few years, and many of them are spending at least $10,000 to run their online businesses not including labor.
I had a client who was spending so much money on tech and subscriptions that within a few months of being hired, I started reaching out to the director of operations with questions and lists of what we were using and asking why. Within 6 weeks, she discontinued $120,000 worth of apps and subscriptions that it would have cost the company that year.
One of my current clients is spending at least $15,000 per month on their tech stack, but they are so organized and check each month what they are using and what they aren’t. We just got a notice from the CTO on Thursday with a list of subscriptions asking the team to let them know if they are using any of them. Otherwise, they will be discontinued immediately. They are more streamlined than most businesses at their level. This is an easy, often overlooked death cookie that you need to eat each month. You will actually be able to afford more real cookies when you do this. They are utilizing one of the principles of mystical money, which is that money likes attention. When you pay attention to it, it grows.
There are many business models and your business model determines the tech stack you use so that everything runs seamlessly together.
I’m stoked because I think I came up with a tech stack that might be the most cost-effective one I could possibly use that aligns with the intentions, products, services, art, and knowledge I have to share.
I’m going to show you what I’m using and then show you how I set it up. I think this is a great way for someone who is just starting out. I also think this tech stack has everything it needs to scale. So this is something to consider if you are further along in your company too. But this isn’t a one-size-fits-all situation. Determining your tech stack is something that is entirely dependent on what you are selling and how you are marketing. We can talk more about marketing another time if that is something you are curious about.
Mistakes
I watched over the past few years while consulting that people can try to emulate the tech stack of a multimillion-dollar-per-year business before they are there and
They can’t afford it so they go broke spending tens of thousands of dollars per month on building and maintaining it and paying expensive tech teams to create a thing that the business owner doesn’t understand.
Since they don’t understand it they are handcuffed to the tech team.
Their creativity slides when financial stress kicks in and they lose sight of what they started out doing in the first place.
All because of one cardinal sin…greed. And a desire for fame or recognition. And comparison and trying to be someone they aren’t. This is why the Dharma Artist Collective so resonates with me. Erick is teaching us to focus on the work that our soul is being called to do in the world. By simply staying true to our dharma, while practicing other techniques of humility, right work, meditation, parts work, and physical practices to keep the ego from getting too strong such as breathwork, bodywork, and physical activity…we can integrate the disparate parts that attempt to run the show.
“If you don’t learn to deal with it, you will be dealt with.” -Summer BockHere’s what I use and why.
Summer’s Tech Stack
Email CRM (customer relationship management) - Substack - free charges a percentage of paid subscribers.
Website: Shopify $34/mo
Shopping Cart: Shopify
Shipping & Fulfillment: Shopify
Course & Digital Product Housing: Skool $100/mo
Community: Substack & Skool
Blog: Substack
Integration (ways to link your software so they talk to each other): Make
My tech stack only costs $134 per month. That is so cheap compared to most tech stacks. I want something inexpensive enough that I don’t have to feel rushed with my creative process and so I can take breaks in between launches and programs. I don’t want to build a hamster wheel that I can’t get off.
Back when I was running my Gut Rebuilding and Fermentation business, I made this fatal mistake. I was spending a cool $20,000-$30,000 per month on tech and my tech team. I got so burnt out because I was making decisions to launch things more frequently and trying to keep up with the expenses. This is problematic. I grew quickly, but I didn’t have room to take a break and get creative again. I reached a critical juncture where the needs of my business were fighting my soul’s creativity. I couldn’t experiment and play anymore. I had to make money. I had a team to pay. It was soul-crushing. Starting over this time, I am learning from my past mistakes.
Email CRM
I created a Substack account because it is free to host emails. I have 116,000 valid emails from my previous business. That would cost thousands of dollars each month to host so I’m going to use my free 30-day trial of Kit and do a specific email launch campaign to move as many interested parties over to Substack as possible. Plus, Substack emails ALWAYS land in the inbox. They don’t go to Spam. Deliverability is a big problem with email lists and CRMs.
Substack has a paid subscription option for my audience annually and monthly. This allows commenting on the posts, which I love because I got tired of the trolls in my last business. Now you have to pay to say what you want on my posts. The paid subscribers will get access to various content such as my somatic Soulwork course.
Website
I’m using Shopify as my website because it is so easy to use for products. In the past, my tech stack was totally different, way more custom, and did exactly what I wanted it to. Because I had a dream and a vision and I was a control freak. That is not how the efficient entrepreneur works. Instead, we work within the confines of the native functionality of the platforms. So my business strategy is built around the native functionality of the software. My good friend, and human spirit animal, Bryan is a tech genius. He showed my Seven Lion’s Shopify site and suggested that I just stick with Shopify as the only website. I thought this was genius. Shopify has the ability to create a blog and other pages - not just products.
This means, that Shopify is the hub for my product sales and links out to Substack. That’s where my newsletter is, so when you click on NEWSLETTER it goes to my Substack page to sign up.
Shopping Cart
When you go to my shop, you can see my herbal products and my digital products.
Shipping & Fulfillment
When you purchase the physical products, my roommate in Tennessee will fulfill and ship the orders to you. I use Shipstation, which is my favorite label printer and shipping integration. I have an herbalist in Portland who has been sworn to secrecy about my formulations and she makes all the products and labels them for me. I used to make them myself and then it got to be too much time and energy and it became a better and more efficient plan to have someone else do it. She is the third herbalist I have contracted with since 2007. I like my DIY simple system. Health practitioners often use big manufacturers. I have a good margin this way, but most people can’t communicate, create clear systems and instructions, and manage people well enough to pull this off so they go for what is easier for them. This is easier for me.
The physical product, Winning Streak is available. I will share the recipe for my witchy forest nymph tea so you can make it yourself. It is earthy and dirty and grounding and energizing. It’s like sucking on the teat of Mother Earth.
Course & Digital Product Housing
If you purchase a digital product or even go to my Free Store for my digital downloads, you will be able to access it on Skool. I chose Skool because I keep it open in a tab for the Dharma Artist Collective so I thought it would be easy for me and easier for y’all. I named my community THE FERAL COLLECTIVE, but I may change that to VIRTUOUS VISIONARIES. Inside there, I created two free downloads and two paid courses.
Community
This community is based on my soul calling that I had to be a spokesperson for the planet. After a plant ceremony last year, I got that message. That felt like a big, narcissistic fucking task. Who I am to be that? Through my dreams and discoveries, I realize that I have to move on to this work. I don’t know why. I don’t care anymore. A healthy human wouldn’t destroy their home. I spent 13 years dedicated to helping humans become healthier. And in the last few years of getting interviewed on podcasts and summits for gut health, I realized that I kept saying the same thing over and over again. “We are only as healthy as our environment.”
I am here to help people connect with nature, heal their relationship to the mundane miracles that surround us in every moment, and get so free that we can all go run naked through the wilderness together and remember that we used to be feral and that our wildness is one of the most precious parts of our humanity. We’ve been shamed and programmed to believe that being wild is savage and unsophisticated. Great. I’m happy to be savage and unsophisticated. Because I want to run through the wilderness naked and have all kinds of sex and pick up nondescript rocks and lick them. I eat plants and hunt my food and drink the cleanest water and breathe the freshest air.
I’m not here to tell other people what to do. But I’m telling you, when you heal your attentional system and end the dopaminergic stimulation cycle that is keeping you from sitting in nature and having ecstatic and mundane mystical experiences…YOU WILL FEEL FULFILLED. You think you’re chasing happiness. You’re not. You’re looking for fulfillment. That comes from being healthy and free and connected to a close-knit community of lovers, ahem, I mean friends who truly celebrate all of you and all you bring to the world. All judgment is cast aside and all parts are welcome. Because we’ve done the work to recognize and hold our own parts so close. We treat others’ parts with the same care.
Right now, I feel called to continue my personal journey as a single woman in as much solitude as I can tolerate, which is quite a lot right now because it allows me to focus on MY WORK. I think that the work I’m doing with my own personal finances has allowed me the amazing life I have. I live in a camper in the most gorgeous place where I took a bath in a creek with water so clean and fresh that you can drink it straight from the ground. That’s how we used to drink water a long long time ago. I believe that when we get our relationship to money and nature healed, we have a fighting chance of creating the harmony required. Because money is energy and nature is the soul.
More soul work is The Mystical Magnet. It is a free download that reminds you how freaking magical life is at every moment. When we shift our attention to noticing this, it connects us to our innate ability to create and manifest what we want in our lives. This guide is how we follow the divine breadcrumbs straight to the source. This book came to me in a mystical experience and this is the first time I am sharing it.
Mystical Money Manifesto: A Guide to Wealth and Energetic Alignment is a dream sprint download that occurred when I acknowledged the fact that I have come a long way with money. In this book, I share everything I’ve learned to transform my relationship with money with the goal of doing what I want when I want. This is intended to help people free themselves from the judgments and social programming that keep them stuck in a bad relationship with this energetic exchange.
There are two programs that people can invest in if they want a distinct shift in their lives.
I created the Thought Pattern Release Project, which is an education of emotional release to connect with your ONE TRUE SELF. Trauma holds our nervous system in the past and fragments us into parts. Feel things fully and spontaneously. Do this and get back into the present moment. This is parts work combined with somatic work that is meant to be done regularly. It helps prepare you for plant medicine and is one of the most valuable tools I’ve experienced for integration work post-ceremony. It teaches you how to feel again.
I am leading a live container for Mystical Money as soon as I can get my shit together and there is enough interest. This is for people who want to clear their energy around money. Learn how to charge for the things you make without selling yourself or selling out.
I also included my consulting and one-off sessions on my website so that people can apply to work with me when they feel called.
All links to everything are at SummerBock.com Like the beer. B-O-C-K means “mountain goat” in German.
If you are just starting out getting yourself out in the world because you have a message you want to share, I recommend starting with simply Substack or Medium. You could also do WordPress and get a CRM that is free or cheap for the first few hundred emails. I’ve been down that route and chose this because I think it is a better option, but you do you and what you do depends on where you want to go. If you want help to figure out your current or future tech stack, want to be ready as your business scales, and want to talk through your business plans with me, this is what I do for a living. Feel free to reach out to me on my website, I would love to connect. If you want to talk about gut health, you’re shit out of luck…haha, just kidding, I’ll recommend some amazing practitioners you can work with.
Personal Oversharing Time
When I was 18, I was shooting up morphine every day to cope with the grief that I had given my baby up for adoption at 16. I knew I needed to stop using because I had a waking vision while I was sitting on the couch of a cancer patient waiting to score morphine. I saw my junkie friends’ body outlines filled with grey smoke. Every time they walked through the world, the smoke would slowly dissipate. Every time they moved, the smoke would get less and less in their smoke-filled body. Then, they would shoot up and the smoke would fill back up to the maximum in their body. Like a video game. They were empty. Their soul’s energy had been replaced by grey smoke. This simple vision spoke to my subconscious and painted the horror story subconscious I needed to see to make a change.
After trying to quit, I’d run into junkies on accident at the gas station and get sucked back in. I had to leave Tennessee. I packed up my car and bought 220mg of methadone, an opiate used to help people who are chronically addicted to opiates, put hash marks up the whole bottle, and drank tiny sips every day. Some days, I’d have an extra nip to keep the withdrawals from taking over my whole body. Sweating and achy, I drove with no destination in mind…just one rule…do not hang out with junkies. If you discover someone uses, walk away. Do not form a connection. I learned that when your life is better without the addictive substance than with it, you can quit. But, that is controversial and I’m not here to get anyone back into a relapse with my personal philosophy. But that has served me and has been true as I’ve overcome many addictions throughout my life. Including my addiction to the Shimmer.
I faked a resume in San Francisco and got a sales job at a clothing boutique. I lived in a warehouse underground for $200 per month. I could sell. The automatic deposits started adding up so I saved enough to get my first computer and go to herbal medicine school.
Now you know more about me than I probably know about you, which is always the strange part about putting our work out in the world. When I look back at where I started and the hardships I went through, I am amazed that I live this magical life where I get to run around in the wilderness, living in my camper with my dog with my heart wide open. I own two houses in Tennessee that I rent out and walked onto my dream property yesterday and my soul said make it happen. There is a world where you can help with that. And this will be a place for the community to expand and grow. I’ll have van spots/RV spots, and rooms to rent so we can make this more than a shimmer relationship. It could become one of the real-world vortexes where we meet up. My dream includes building an Earthship and a tiny house on it. Let’s make it happen!
I saw the most unbelievable rainbow unicorn sunrise of my life that morning walking my dog. And the moonrise last night stopped me in my tracks. I forget my phone half the time and my friends rarely have their phones even in the room when we spend time together. My community all over the world gives so much to me and I try to give as much as I can. I’m grateful. But I’m still amazed. Because there is a timeline where I might not even be here to tell you this story.
This is Summer Bock signing out.
P.S. Mentors are important. I’ve had many mentors in this life and I’d like to take a moment to appreciate them all. Some of them specifically, Bryan Stafford, my human spirit animal, for tech support, my music buddy Pete Van Horn for teaching me the basics of Davinci, the editing software I’m using for the first time to make this video, Anthony Frederick for serious Davinci help and helping me get unstuck with his video coaching when I was about to create a monster. Aidan for giving me the most epic pep talks, being a champion of my true self, and reminding me to go after what I truly want even when I’m trying to talk myself out of it. Erick Godsey for being the ultimate nerd and making a database that allows him to teach at a level I strive to achieve, for his insane class Mentally Fit, and for the Dharma Artist Collective, where I get to know all of you. But especially, I’m realizing, that I’ve gotten to share 3 of the most important dreams of my life with him and he got it and took it as seriously as I have always wanted someone to take them. I’m a dream walker. I’m learning things in my dreams like botanical formulations for offerings to make in the waking world and primal somatic work. And I can finally step into that thanks to Erick.
Citations:
McGilchrist, I. (2019). The master and his emissary: The divided brain and the making of the Western world. Yale University Press. https://neurolaunch.com
Ivry, R. B., & Robertson, L. C. (1998). The two sides of perception. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2(3), 112-121. https://doi.org/10.1016/s1364-6613(98)01161-9
Gazzaniga, M. S. (2005). Forty-five years of split-brain research and still going strong. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 6(8), 653–659. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn1723
Gonen-Yaacovi, G., de Souza, L. C., Levy, R., Urbanski, M., Josse, G., & Volle, E. (2013). Rostral and caudal prefrontal contribution to creativity: A meta-analysis of functional imaging data. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 7, Article 465. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2013.00465