hosted by: AskPat 975 Episode Transcript
Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up everybody? Pat Flynn here and welcome to Episode 975 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. As always, I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions, five days a week.
Alright, now here's today's question from Ali.
Ali: Hey Pat, this is Ali. Thanks so much for all your help and guidance with everything; I'm learning a lot. Just had a few questions about websites. I'm at kind of the very beginning of things. What I've been doing, I've been doing for a handful of years on the side, loving it, helping a handful of people and hoping to expand that. So, I am at the point of creating a website. I looked into different options. I know WordPress is really highly recommended. I've heard Squarespace is incredibly easy to get up and running with. So I've been doing a free ten-day trial of Squarespace—enjoying it. It's pretty slick and easy, but I can definitely see some of the limitations it has. I'm planning on looking into WordPress more.
My questions for you are: How long would you estimate or anticipate it takes for a person to get something up and running that's okay-quality at least? How would you maybe pace yourself with that? I know some WordPress themes I've heard are incredibly expensive, while others are not, but I don't know if there's like, an average price. If you were advising someone at the very beginning stages of making a website, any recommendations on pacing yourself, pricing things and kind of knowing what you're getting into as far as some of those aspects go? That would be really helpful. Thanks so much, appreciate you, and hopefully someday the website that will be out there—and someday sooner rather than later—is TeacherTransition.com. It's to help teachers who are transitioning from the classroom to their next work life adventures. Okay, thanks so much.
Pat Flynn: Hey Ali, what's up? Thank you so much for the call today, and I'm really excited. I have like, my hands moving together like I've been planning something for a while, and I have been. I've been saving your question for a little bit because today, October 16th, is a big day in the history of SPI and my courses, because I just came out with a brand new course today called Build Your Own Brand, or BYOB for short.
Many of you who've been listening to the podcast on Smart Passive Income may know about this already, but BYOB is a free course that's going to take you from nothing or no website, or maybe a website elsewhere, to a website, up and running on WordPress with the correct plugins installed, a theme—an economical one—that you can be proud of and just getting yourself familiar with the platform and getting hooked up to email service providers so that you can then begin to start collecting your emails, so that you can build a foundation for what will hopefully become a brand that you can use to build your audience and sell your products later, and those kinds of things. It launches today and it's evergreen, so it's going to be there.
It's actually a course that's built around a five-day challenge. So, you ask how long it might take. Well, I walk you through the process from start to foundational website you can be proud of in five days. One module per day in this course. It's actually hosted through Teachable. Again, it's free to access so anybody can go there right now. If you go to SmartPassiveIncome.com/byob, you'll be taken to the Teachable page and you'll be able to get set up right there and walk through the process. If you sign up within a week—so before the end of day October 23rd—after that point, you can still take the challenge but you won't be entered into a drawing to win a new MacBook Pro, which is really cool. I had an extra one shipped over to me and I'm just excited to be able to give that away.
Beyond that, I'm also excited because everybody who gets involved with this challenge within the next week, until October 23rd, will automatically be registered to a webinar that I'm going to host for free, just for those people. That's going to be about how to launch your brand. This challenge, this course, helps you walk through the process of starting your brand and getting it out there and building your website, making your mark on the internet—well, let's let people know about this mark that you've just made. That's what that webinar is going to be about.
So, Ali, it takes you through that whole process. You can go through it right now for free and I make sure to set it up—And this is something I do for all my courses, for Smart from Scratch, for Power Up Podcasting and for future courses—I always make it so that you don't have to spend a ton of money after you get in. Yes, of course, when you're building a website, you have to spend money to get hosting and domain and maybe another plugin here or there, but I try to keep it minimal.
Same thing with the podcasting course: The equipment that you need to get started runs you under one hundred and fifty dollars for a very professional sound, just like the one you're listening to right now. That's over at PowerUpPodcasting.com. I gave you the minimal amount of money that you need to spend in order to get the best and most quality results. It's the same thing for the BYOB course. Again, if you want to check it out, SmartPassiveIncome.com/byob. Go through that; I walk you through that entire process in five days.
So there's a lot of options out there. You were talking a little bit about themes as well. The price range for themes go from free—and there are some great free ones out there—to paid ones that are hundreds of dollars that do all these other things. In the course, you'll see that I have specific recommendations for which ones to get started with. I'm also asking people who go through that course to find ones that they enjoy to share with the community as well. There's a community aspect to this within the Teachable environment, which is pretty cool.
So, yeah guys, check it out, SmartPassiveIncome.com/byob. Again, thank you Ali. Really, that's all I have to say because that's just going to walk you through the process for you and get you up and running on WordPress with the right plugins, with the right analytical tools, nothing more than you need to really build that foundation, and also some instructions on how to use WordPress so you're not lost. Again, SmartPassiveIncome.com/byob.
Thank you so much. I appreciate you, Ali. I want to send you an AskPat teeshirt for having your question featured here on the show. For those of you listening, if you have a question that you'd like potentially featured here on the show as well, just head on over to AskPat.com and you can ask right there on that page.
Thanks so much, I appreciate you, and here's a quote to finish off the day by Bruce Lee, “Don't fear failure. Not failure, but low aim, is the crime. In great attempts it is glorious even to fail.” Love that. Alright guys, take care—SmartPassiveIncome.com/byob, we'll see you there. Bye.