by: AskPat 94 Episode Transcript
Pat Flynn: Hey what's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 94 of AskPat. I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions five days a week.
But real quick—tomorrow is actually June 1st, which marks the exact halfway point of the year, and for all of you out there listening, even if you're listening to this in the future and it's not June 1st of 2014, you should still ask yourself: Am I making progress toward my goals? Since it's mid-year, it's great because you can see exactly halfway, how far you've progressed, how far you have to go. If you're ahead, great! If not, now's the time to figure out how to catch up. So where are you at? I hope you're all doing well. So far, I'm doing really well myself, and that's why I'm here. I'm here to help you if you need it.
Now let's get to today's question from Mike, and his answer. Actually, in the first part you'll hear him reference a previous question that he asked that I didn't answer on the show but he found the answer to himself, and it's all about how to start writing an ebook. So for those of you out there who are wondering, “Well how do I start writing an ebook with no experience? Where do I start?” head on over to EbookstheSmartWay.com. That's what he eventually found and then he followed up with this question that you're about to hear right now.
Mike: Hey Pat, this is Mike again, I left you a question earlier but was a little premature because I didn't see your free ebook on the whole process of creating an ebook. My question is now: When you first started did you know how to build websites? Because I'm starting out right now and it's kind of frustrating because I don't have the skill set to do everything myself, and I also don't have the capital to outsource people. So I'm in the self-learning stage which is very difficult. How'd you get through it, if that's how you started as well?
Pat Flynn: Mike, thank you so much for your question and you know, I want to tell a quick story. When I first started out doing online business, I did all the technical stuff myself without knowing how to do it. I learned as I was going just like you're doing, Mike. I didn't have very much capital, I didn't even know I could hire out that work, and if I did I probably would have researched that a little bit more because I did spend a lot of time trying to figure things out, working and troubleshooting through things, going on YouTube trying to figure things out in terms of how to set up a site. I even went as far as trying to learn HTML and CSS, which I finally learned was something I didn't even really need to do because there are a lot of easy systems and programs out there that'll help you get started pretty much on your own with no technical background needed, and not very much capital as well.
Now a lot of people out there know that I did join a course called Internet Business Mastery Academy, which was a well-worthwhile investment for me when I finally spent money and knew that this was something I was going to be doing seriously. And that does have videos on how to set up a website, and do all that stuff and get started with online business. But, I had joined after I had actually started my website and gone through all the technical stuff myself, and I will say that even though there are courses out there and even though there are videos that will help walk you through it, there is something to be said for at least trying it out yourself once. You could hire out, but once you do it once it's easy to just keep doing it, and once you start going you'll understand that it's actually a lot easier than you think it is. Yes, before you get started it's a completely different language, like you're in a foreign country and just trying to figure out where to go and not, you know, get hit by a bus. It's that difficult when you're first starting, I completely understand, but once you get going and especially if you can get a little bit of help, not even necessarily having to pay for it, but not being afraid to ask for help from others who are there already is completely just, because a lot of people like myself know where I came from, and I came from the bottom as well.
So definitely there are ways that you can go about doing this yourself, and with blogging platforms like WordPress it just makes it really easy to set up a website really fast. And for those of you out there who want my video on how to get started with all this, it'll walk you through the process of actually setting up a website, putting a theme on it, and the only capital you might need—and again, you could do this all yourself—would be to buy a domain with a hosting company. That's it, that's all I did when I first started. Once I started to learn more about online business, I started to add things into that, like setting up an email list, or dropping a little bit of cash on better graphics and a better site. But when I first started, all I paid was $3.95 per month. I pay that annually though, and then I just found a free theme and started putting content out there.
But anyway, that resource I wanted to share with you is—if you go to AskPat.com/start, that'll take you to a page that goes through a lot of the beginner stuff as far as the things that I do and also some videos on how to get started with setting up a website. Completely free there, but of course to set up a website and get domain and hosting it's going to cost, at least from my link $3.95 if you go to Bluehost, AskPat.com/bluehost for the hosting and domain company that I recommend for beginners.
And yeah Mike, it's hard I know. And it really is just about being consistent with working at it. I think that's what separates a lot of the people who do succeed and who don't, is when it gets hard, when it gets difficult, they just give up or just don't feel like it's meant to be. But if you really want it you'll figure it out, and for me when I first started building my website it was a struggle. I was spending three or four hours a night, this is in addition to the nine to six job I had as an architect, just trying to figure it out and going on YouTube and trying to understand exactly what the heck was going on and I would make hardly any progress every day, but it was some progress. And even if you don't have that much time, you do want to dedicate some time every day to just continue to move forward. I think that's the most important thing. Just put one step in front of the other every single day, and you'll find that once you do this more and more it just becomes second nature. I mean, for me, I don't even have to think about what I'm doing on WordPress any more or when I set up a site, it's just completely natural, but that's because I've done it for so long. That's just the nature of anything: If you keep doing things, the more deep you get into something, the more your brain just understands that that's just what you do. So when you first start out, it's hard, just that law of motion goes into play: An object at rest tends to stay at rest, and the hardest part is to try to get that thing in motion. So just get started, and if you'd like to get started head over to AskPat.com/start, and it'll walk you through some of the beginner stuff for you.
But to answer your question again Mike, just really quickly: You don't need experience, you don't need technical experience, you don't need to know how to set up a website in order to set one up. And once you do it, it's going to be much easier, you're going to understand it, and you don't have to hire out. Then hopefully you can get to a point where you can hire out and make it even better. But you don't have to be perfect upfront; you shouldn't try to be perfect upfront. If you try to be perfect right at the beginning . . . I mean I feel like perfection is just an excuse. An excuse for not launching, or not getting started, and it's just hiding nervousness. “No, I really want to get this perfect.” No, you are just too afraid to put it out there. Every single day you don't put something out there is a day that you're losing out on the opportunity to gain a new reader, to gain a new subscriber, to perhaps sell something, to change the world. Every day you wait is a day wasted, because you cannot get that time back. So just get started, and then you go from there.
Mike, I wish you all the best, thank you so much for your question, an AskPat teeshirt is going to be headed your way. I can't wait to hear an update on you, on your website, and what you've got going on. I also want to mention our awesome supplier for the AskPat teeshirts, which is SuccessShirt.com. They hooked us up and gave us some great quality shirts, so go to SuccessShirt.com. You can get an AskPat teeshirt there actually, and other teeshirts like people from John Lee Dumas from Entrepreneur On Fire, and you can buy those shirts there if you want to help support what we're doing. You don't have to have your question featured here on the show, but Mike gets one because his question was featured here on the show. If you have a question you'd like to have featured here on the show, just head on over to AskPat.com and ask right there in the middle of that page using the widget; all you need is your internal mic on your computer, or a headset. Whatever you have, I'd love to hear your question and potentially answer it for you.
Thank you so much for those submissions, thank you again to SuccessShirt.com, and as always I want to end with a quote. Today it's coming from Bruce Lee. And that quote is, “The successful warrior is the average man with laser-like focus.” Boom. Boom's not part of that quote, that's just my response to that quote. “The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus.” So my question to you, as we end today's episode of AskPat: Are you really focused? What is your next task? If anything else is taking your time away from you completing that task, then you don't have that laser-like focus. Get it. Take care and I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat.