AP 0540: I’m Starting A Website. Where Should I Spend My Money?

AskPat 540 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey what's up everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 540 of “Ask Pat”. 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. We have a great question from James.

But before we get to that, I do want to thank today's sponsor which is ZipRecruiter.com. So if you're looking to expand your team, whether you are a solopreneur, or you already have a team and you're looking to add more people to join your force, all you have to do is go to ZipRecruiter.com. What you do, is you put one little job description there of what you need, and they will send it out to over 100 job sites for you. It's completely free to use. If you go to ZipRecruiter.com/pat, they also have a bank of millions of resumes that they can pull from to show you the best candidates immediately. It's a really cool tool. It's going to help save you a lot of time, because for those of you who already know, hiring people is a headache. But ZipRecruiter helps with that. So, again, ZipRecruiter.com/pat. Check it out.

Alrighty, here is today's question from James.

James: Hey Pat, this is James Jenneman from jamesjenneman.com and hopefully by the time this airs, the uptownimage.com. First, it was great meeting you at Converted last week. It was so awesome to see you here in Minneapolis. It was great learning from you and hanging out for a little bit. My question is, what should I spend my money on? I've got my domain, I've got my hosting. I've got some content prepared. I've got all the equipment I'm going to need. I'm going to go with a couple of free options, like MailChimp for the first 2000 users. I'm gonna switch to ConvertKit once I hit 2000. And then I'm going to use Rapidology from LeadPages. Which is, kind of, their free WordPress plug-in. So what's my next best investment? Should I take a class, like Zero to Launch? Or, should I get a premium WordPress theme or plugin I don't know about yet? Should I not go with one of the free options, that I mentioned above? Or should I just save my money? I'm just kind of looking for advice I guess. So thanks again for everything you do. It was great meeting you last week. And I really look forward to hearing from you. Thanks.

Pat Flynn: Hey James, what's up? Thanks so much for the question. It was great to meet you at Converted. Which, for those of you listening today, it was in October of 2015. So, James, I apologize, it's been a while. But by now, I'm sure you have some stuff going on in the online space. I look forward to learning more about where you're at now and hopefully see you again in the near future, potentially again at Converted 2016.

So anyway, let's get to your question. What should you spend your money on? You know, you got the equipment, the domain, the hosting, a lot of the tools. Whether they are free, or paid for. You know, of course, in terms of a WordPress theme. It's always good to spend a little bit just to get a nice-looking theme so that the navigation through your site is fine. So that it's actually just working the way it should be. But, again, you shouldn't need to spend too much money on that kind of stuff up front.

The best bang for your buck, when it comes to when you are just starting out, is really education. So you had mentioned Ramit's Zero to Launch course, which is, by far, one of the best ones out there. There is a lot out there. Now, whether that's right for you, or for those of you listening, that's up to you to figure out because Ramit has a certain style, and so do other people. There is Internet Business Mastery, there's Fizzle, there's Youpreneur, there is so many other options. But, Ramit is definitely one of the top ones. But the program reflects that as well.

But, anyway, education is really important. It's going to give you the fastest way to get the results, because whatever it is that you're trying to learn.You can find somebody who has already experienced in that, to teach you. And that's that! Really, by far, if you had the cash and this option was available, you might want to get some mentorship or something like that. I know Jamie, should be Jamie Masters, formally Jamie Tardy. She's over at EventualMillionaire.com has a program called the Millionaire Hustlers. That's kind of a open and then closed program. But you can check that out. Just look up Eventual Millionaire Hustlers. She coaches people in groups to get that next level in their cash flow. Decrease the time they spend in their business, and that sort of thing.

So, again, that's going to help give you direct access to people who can help you the best with your situation, in particular, and where you are at. I would hesitate to say, buy all this equipment and all these other fancy tools because we expect that these tools are really what's going to make the difference for us. To a certain extent, they do make a difference. But they are not going to be the difference between win and fail. What the difference is between win and fail is, like I said, the education that you give yourself. So that you know what to do, and you have people in your corner to help you do that. But also, just doing. If there is nothing that you feel like is pressing in terms of what you could spend the money on, save it. Because there might be an opportunity to spend that money in the future with somebody or something that comes along that can help you.

But, until then, just execute. Do things. See what the results will be, and always keep trying more. Even if you fail, that's okay. Failure is a part of the process. We all know this now. You've heard me say this a hundred-thousand times here on the podcast. On this podcast and on Smart Passive Income and all the time on the blog. Failure is an option, as long as you learn from those failures and keep moving forward. You don't want to fail, of course, but again, like I said, you have to.

Here is another thing that could help you in terms of, if you really do have a lot of money that you can use on other things. Here is what else I would look out for. Look out for any other events that you could go to where you could connect with the right people. That's where you're going to be able to form real relationships and partnerships that can help take your business to the next level too. You might be able to take somebody out to coffee or dinner and just ask them questions. Tap into their brain. I've done that a number of times. A number of people have done that with me. And so, in addition to looking for mentors out there and guided help that way. Specifically for your situation, and in addition to, just making sure your site is navigable … navigatable, whatever that word it. Just make sure that you are also aware of what's coming up in the future interms of events. Where people who you want to connect with are there. People in the same space as you are there. That way you can, again like I said, build those relationships, form partnerships, and just have each others backs. Who knows, you might find, that there's people there who could join you in a mastermind group. And that's huge. That's happened to me before, as well. That's something that money can't even buy really. But, money can buy you that ticket to go to that event. Or, the plane ticket to go to the event, that you just don't attend the sessions for, but you go to the networking parties and just stand in hallways. That's called “un-conferencing”, I think is the term. A number of people do that too because they know how important those relationships are, and just meeting people in person.

So, that's what I would do James. Thank you so much for the question. I look forward to seeing you again. Of course, we are going to send you an AskPat t-shirt for having your question featured here on the show.

I also want to give a shout-out to LeadPages, which you mentioned. They have a tool called Rapidology, which you can check out at Rapidology.com. That is a free tool, that you can use to grow your email list. It's the only 100% free WordPress plugin that lets you quickly create those beautiful opt-in forms and pop-ups, and widgets. No design or coding skills required. So, go ahead and check that out. That's Rapidology.com.

And I also want to thank you guys so much for being here and listening in. As always I like to end with a quote. Today's quote comes from Mark Zuckerberg or “the Zuks” as Gary Vee would say. That quote is, “The only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.”

Cheers, take care. And I'll see you on the next episode of AskPat. Thanks guys, bye.

Oh, and by the way, thank you again one more time for those of you who support or have supported Will It Fly? at WillItFlyBook.com. I found out last week, that we hit the Wall Street Journal best seller list. Woohoo! So awesome! Thank you guys so much for the support. I appreciate it, it just means the world to me. I'm not going to be promoting it quite as much now that the launch period is over. But I just wanted to share that with you, because that was a huge deal. A nice byproduct of just sharing it out there. And those of you that who have supported it. So thank you again so much. WillItFlyBook.com, now a Wall Street Journal best seller.