AP 0941: What Are Your Top Resources for Building a New Website?

AskPat 941 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey what's up everybody? Pat Flynn here and welcome to Episode 941 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.

Pat Flynn: Alright here is the question from Elena.

Elena: Hey Pat. Elena here. I really appreciate all you do for online entrepreneurs. I started my first business by listening to your site, that was Amazon. And now I am into my second business. I'm actually a sales consultant by trade and I'm building a new website that's going to be taking on some online sales of a product that I'm developing. I'm learning about landing pages, email funnels, all this stuff but I'm not quite sure how to put it all together. What comes first—hen or the egg?—is basically what I'm asking. I need to know what resources you recommend, podcasts, episodes, to teach me the proper order to do things in, so I'm not wasting time, money and making a bunch of mistakes.

I just bought Will It Fly?, so if that is one of the suggestions, I already know I'm on the right track. But is there anything else that you think I should be doing? Again, I'm building a website, I'm looking for new sales clients but this website is going to be offering a unique service. I want to get it done within the next six months. Anything that you can offer for help, I really appreciate it. I think you're awesome. Thank you.

Pat Flynn: Hey Elena, thank you so much for the question. I appreciate you and all your support and congrats on taking action. It seems like you are in the right momentum with things and now you want to make sure you get the right things in place, which is great. Will It Fly? is definitely great and I'm so glad that you picked it up. Thank you. That's going to give you and lay down the foundation, help you discover like, where it is you want to go, how you want to make this business a part of your life versus how to make your life a part of a business that you created, if that makes sense. You're doing it in the right order in that way.

Where I would go from there, is actually I would listen to Episode 263 of The Smart Passive Income Podcast. You can go to SmartPassiveIncome.com/session263. That episode is with Clay Collins, the co-founder of Leadpages, and Leadpages is an amazing company. They help you build landing pages like we talked about earlier. I am an advisor for them as well as an affiliate. If you want to check out Leadpages, you can go to AskPat.com/leadpages [Full Disclosure: I'm a compensated advisor and an affiliate for Leadpages]. But you don't necessarily need that right away. I mean, it can help you start to build your email list, which Clay talks about. But really what that episode is about is laddering up. It gives you the steps and processes you need to go from just starting out, post-Will It Fly? essentially, post-validating where it is you want to go, then building a smaller audience up to maybe 1,000 to 2,000 emails and that you are going to use a website to help you do. Although in the very, very beginning you don't necessarily need that much to start to build your email list to like, say the first 100 people. Then email service provider would be really important at that point as well. To start, the one that I recommend typically is ConvertKit. I'm also an advisor and affiliate for them as well, AskPat.com/convertkit [Full Disclosure: I'm a compensated advisor and an affiliate for ConvertKit]. The reason I like that is especially for beginners it's just super easy to use, very intuitive. Not expensive at all and it grows with you. They help educate their customers too, which I really like. But anyway, you're growing your list.

Clay talks about that's the first ladder rung; Will It Fly? is the ground that you put your ladder on. Then you take that first step, which is to the first ladder rung, which will get you to about that $5-$7,000 a month sort of mark, right? Then from there you move up the ladder. Then it's like okay, $70,000 a month. Then from there you build your seven figures kind of business after that. But it takes time. And you have to start with that first step and so that's where you're at right now. Building a website, great idea. Collecting email addresses, that's definitely something you want to do. You could utilize LeadPages if you wanted to do that or some type of landing pages. Really that's all you need, then it's about putting out great content, building relationships with people out there, not only your audience but other influencers too and making it happen from there.

Podcasting, blogging, videos, those are content channels that you can choose and I would choose, like Clay talks about one, one marketing channel that you use. One product that you eventually sell or service that you're going to offer and just focus on that for the first ladder rung, and don't cloud your brain or lose the focus amongst all these other things that are out there, right? Like, focus on one of those things. Pick one of those content channels and really master it before you begin to automate it and move on to another one. A lot of people see me with a blog and a podcast and a video channel and they're like, “Oh, I got to do all those at the same time.” It's great that I have all them but it's not how it started. I started out with a blog and I blogged for like a year and a half until my YouTube channel came about. Then I did that for a year and then I started blogging in 2010 in July, or excuse me, podcasting in 2010. That really took off. For service-based businesses, all those content platforms will work as long as you just really get people to know, like, and trust you, and understand what it is that you have to offer. Then you're on your way. Elena, I know this is very high level but I think Episode 263 with Clay Collins—again, you can find that at SmartPassiveIncome.com/session263—that'll give you a good overview and sort of a line of sight there for you. Then those are the tools that I mentioned earlier for building those emails, so that then you can reach out to people, potentially have your first set of customers if you don't have them already from that initial finding, those emails that you get. The other tools that I mentioned were Leadpages and also ConvertKit [Full Disclosure: I'm a compensated advisor and an affiliate for Leadpages and ConvertKit].

There you go Elena. Thank you so much. I want to wish you all the best and want to send you an AskPat teeshirt for having your question featured here on the show as well. Thank you. And for all of you listening if you have a question that you would 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.

Thank you so much. I appreciate you, and here's a quote to finish off the day by Mary Oliver: “Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.” Alright, take care, and I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat. Bye.