 So over the years, I've helped so many new businesses get off the ground and one of the most common questions I get or one of the most common desires I get from a new business owner is I got to build a website and Over the years with a lot of experience now, I can tell you that building a website is Not a good first step. In fact, I recommend that you delay The building of your website for as long as possible Years if you can so let me explain why When you try to build a website in the beginning of your business and let me just clarify I'm talking to the majority of my audience here who are Service-based business solopreneurs without a team. So I'm talking to those of you who would love to become a well-paid coach consultant mentor healer Author speaker those of you who like myself Work, you know our self-employed don't have a team and want to keep your business manageable instead of Scaling out to to have a huge team. You want to be able to Share the message that has transformed your life and that you believe will transform many other people's lives You want to be able to use the modality that you've been trained in or that you created to help people So you're not looking for becoming a Fortune 500 company You're looking to stay as a solopreneur and yes, eventually create some passive income like through online courses Things like that, but you really love doing the work You love doing the transformational work with your clients and that's probably what you're gonna be doing for a while You know, that's gonna be your focus for a while. So Please don't feel the pressure of building a website yet And in fact, I like I said, I don't think it's a good idea to build a website in the beginning. I'm gonna tell you why couple reasons one is that To build a website means that you need to have clarity about your niche About your message about your brand Okay, and those three things you think well, okay. All right, let me just hire a coach to help me clarify my niche My message and my brand Really? That's that's what you think that makes sense, right? Oh, of course, George You start off you you get your niche clarified to who your target audience is What the message is you should share with them what your logo is is like or what your color scheme on your web That makes sense from the from like from someone who is not very experienced in business That makes sense or from someone who is starting a larger business that makes sense for those of us who are just starting out The problem is you don't yet know what the market wants from you You think you know or you think you can figure that out by working with a coach or by reading a book and journaling about it You can't let me explain you to you what the market is the market is the spend the expenditures the spending of other people That's your market. So if I spend money The money I spend if some of that goes to a service like the one that you want to provide to me Then my money spent on that service is your market You get you're trying to capture some of the dollars I spend to spend with you instead That's what marketing means. It means to understand what people are spending money on and then creating your version of what they're spending money on that you believe you're qualified and passionate to Be an alternative for Does that make sense so in the beginning when you're creating your niche and your message in your brand you are doing this in complete Isolation of your understanding of what the market actually is Okay, so that's number one and and you're gonna take a long time You're gonna take months maybe even longer than months to try to figure out your niche your message your brand Probably with a coach that may charge you thousands of dollars and yes, that coach may do good work For sure and you might feel really good that oh my gosh. I've got my niche clarified I've got my message in my in my brand and everything and then you'll get out there and you realize. Oh my god I thought I was gonna serve this group doing this and No, it almost certainly your first guess at the group You're gonna serve the type of people you're gonna serve and doing what for them Almost certainly that's not going to be what happens after a few months or the first year or two You are going to evolve your service as you come in contact with real people and Try to help them with the things that they really want help with so number one reason why not to build a website as as a Starting a business is that you are Trying to figure out things that you have no qualification to figure out Until you start talking to a lot of people. Okay, so so number one Okay, number two is if you build a website you either have a small budget and you're gonna build Unfortunately a bad-looking website. I have seen so many people with just bad looking websites that I'm like first of all You your niche is probably not correct because you haven't talked to enough people and actually try to do enough marketing and selling So your niche is probably wrong and you've built this website. That doesn't look that great because you have a small budget Okay, or like I said if you spend a lot of money with a coach and with a graphic designer and with a copywriter And you spend months or a year building that wonderful looking website You're gonna find out as you encounter the first hundred prospective clients that oh my gosh I'm totally off off track with my message with my brand with my niche I have seen this so many times people spend thousands Sometimes you've been tens of thousands and guess what I know this because before I started this business I Was in the business of selling those expensive branding and website packages a Lot of people don't know this about my background and I didn't know any better back then I just I came out of graduate school I thought okay I'm just gonna go into a company that you know, they are a marketing agency and I thought okay I'm just gonna do whatever they're asking me to do which is to help sell these branding and website packages And we regularly sold 10 to 30,000 Branding and webs and messaging and website packages for people After we build it for them, of course in the first three to five years of their business They completely evolved and the website and the message and the brand was no longer relevant So I know what I'm talking about because I sold those packages myself and I don't want you I don't I don't want most of you to end up buying those unless you have millions of dollars You could just you know You're doing it as a as an exercise to build your own confidence and you have tons of money And it doesn't matter if you spend ten thousand dollars on it doesn't matter And then great that it's a good exercise and building your confidence But knowing that you're gonna have to change dramatically probably in the first two years of your of your business, so Don't build a website first. Okay save that for year three Maybe even year two But hopefully year three or year four you then build a website after you've gotten a bunch of paying clients Then you build a website So let me tell you what I think are the first five things you should do when you start when you're starting a solopreneur Service-based business someone like a coach consultant mentor healer author speaker Okay facilitator etc. So what are the first five things to do set number one? You need to understand the importance of a schedule You need to set up a schedule for yourself to work consistently on your business In a joyfully productive way If you go to my website I have so many articles about joyful productivity and I would recommend starting there Reading some articles so that you can kind of get inspired and get structured with your time because now that you're working for yourself You're self-employed You are your boss and so you have to tell yourself when to start work when to take breaks Okay, when to finish work so that you're not burning at yourself out and working all the time So that's step number one is really joyful productivity getting yourself set up so that you can have a schedule You're working on your business joyfully. Okay, and productively is consistently step number two is to start scheduling meetings With friends To talk with your friends as many as you can. Okay start scheduling meetings with your friends especially friends who are profession of other professionals other people who are business owners if possible, but just other people who are who know Ideally people who know a lot of people but just start scheduling with friends to talk with them one to one Okay, and when you talk with your friends, this is what you're asking them you're asking them to give you feedback on You're gonna practice describing your service and The kind of person that you think you you want to help because you're still this is all very tentative You think you know, maybe you just got out of training coaching school I don't know. Maybe you got some training or maybe you didn't maybe you have a passion Maybe you have a peak experience that you want to share with the world or whatever But this is all tentative until you have your first 50 paying clients It's all very tentative. You think you're nice. You know your niche. You think you can figure it out No, figure out your niche after you've gotten your first 50 paying clients Then you're in qualify to start figuring out your niche and your messaging and your branding and your logo and all that all that So start scheduling meetings with friends get their feedback as you describe Your service and your ideal client and then see if they can think of Some several people right away who they can introduce to you. So, oh, oh, you want to meet that kind of person Oh, yeah, you want to do that for them? My cousin, you know Jane my friend Bob You know my classmate Joe Needs exactly because I talked to them and I heard them complain about that problem or Ta heard them passionately wanted to reach that goal that you're helping people with I can introduce so Schedule meetings with friends give get them to get their feedback on your service description and your audience your client description See if they can if they can't think of anyone to introduce you and If that happens and friend after friend after friend You need to change what your service is or How you describe it or who you're serving. That's why your friends are gonna help you like, you know what? I can't think of anybody that that meets that criteria that would probably want your help So maybe we should talk about How you might frame your service differently or who you might serve instead so that I can easily introduce you to some people Do you see what I mean? And in the beginning you might be providing three different services for three different audiences Because it's okay. Who says you have to provide only one thing for one audience. Yes, some marketing experts do I don't I'm having 10 plus years of experience coaching a lot of you You don't need to limit yourself to one service one audience in the beginning You should be exploring as many as you can So if your friend can't figure out who to introduce you do say well, let me let me prove Let me shoot. Let me share with you another service. I'm thinking of providing Because I'm just starting out and I can provide different things and my my business is gonna go in a direction where there's a market Your business is not going to go in the direction of your passion Only okay. Yes, of course your passion is going to be involved. Your business is going to go in the direction of The intersection between your passion and the market It's not just your passion the market is what is who pays you If it's just your passion you could do your hobby all day long and not get paid and that's fine But you want a business you need to have the intersection of your passion in your market Okay, so let me keep going first thing was a set up a schedule Joyful productivity second thing and on my website lots of articles second thing is to schedule meetings with friends get feedback about your service and your ideal client or Get their help in thinking of another service and another ideal client that they can easily introduce you to that second third one Is to start creating Content every day now. I'm assuming that you are able to work on your business at least 10 hours a week If not 20 or more, okay, that's that but if you can only work on your business for You know five hours a week or something then maybe create content once a week Okay, that's Okay, but if you can work 10 hours or more per week then create content every day at the beginning You need to do that every day at the beginning because you need to practice and explore What your passion is and what seems to resonate with people I have a lot of and and you create content and you put it wherever you enjoy using social media Whether that's facebook or instagram or linked in or youtube or medium or wherever you enjoy using, okay I have a lot of articles on creating authentic content and that's on my blog and you can read that too That's step number three create content daily. Okay step number four Is occasionally so let's every five to ten things you post on social media Every five to ten things or you know at least once a month at in the beginning probably once every two weeks You post a mention of your service Or an invitation again to ask friends to have conversations with you to help you out with clarifying some things about your new business So you either mention your service. Hey, I'm really excited about providing the service Can you introduce me to somebody that would probably enjoy this? Or can you introduce me to somebody who is already providing the service for a while who might be able to give me some tips On how they're getting clients Okay, so step number four is some call to action Some asking your friends for help on social media every five to ten content posts and then step number five Once these four steps are in action Step number five is to start setting up the logistics of your business What scheduling tool will you use to get client appointments? You know, I use acuity scheduling. That's what I love using So scheduling tool. Um, how will you get payment? So I I recommend paypal dot me is very easy P-a-y-p-a-l paypal dot me. It's not dot com It's owned by paypal. Also, it's paypal service But it's paypal dot me go there today If you haven't set up your paypal dot me link every once you set one up I have one Paypal dot me slash george cowl go there and see you could pay me whatever amount or paypal dot me slash george cowl Slash 100 will pay me 100 you could put whatever number you want after your paypal dot me username To to automatically create a link that pays you that amount. Okay, so Pay payment method, okay It's you know a way for client to set up appointments with you a payment method a way to organize your documents I use google drive so documents with clients or whatever you need Okay, and then start and then start securing a domain name I use google domains google domains is the service I use by google And but so start securing your domain name For your future website that might not be until A year or two from now, but at least for now you can redirect your domain name to your facebook business page Or to your linkedin profile. That's all you need in the beginning people unless okay, let me say unless you are a marketing Professional unless you're saying yes, I'm a marketing. I help you market your business Then you need a website But for all of you who are just who are not a marketing professional You're providing some kind of personal development or spiritual or relationship or health Coaching consulting facilitation Healer mentors authors. You don't need that you need a domain name. Sure. It's easy to say My name dot com or whatever just have it redirect your linkedin redirect your facebook business page for the first year or two You need clarity before you create a website. So I hope this is helpful I hope I know a lot of you are probably like oh my gosh, george. You should have made this video five years ago, you know Before I spent those you know three thousand dollars five thousand developing my website, but Hopefully you can share this with a friend who is wanting to start a business and hopefully that'll save them A lot of wasted months And a lot of money in the beginning. So I hope this helps. I'm always open to your Questions and your comments and in fact, I'm going to give you a chance to Add a comment below now while you give me a chance to look at the live comments Looking them up from those on the facebook live here Okay, thank you for joining me schweta and linda and judith And alisa jeta Miriam tunde Laurie and tonio susan ida. Thank you all so much for joining me live Well, go ahead and start taking those five actions like that. I mentioned In this video and in the blog post associated with this. There's a blog post associated So you can read read those in writing if you like. All right. My name is george cow authentic business coach I love helping people create A fulfilling business That uses authentic marketing And I look forward to helping you as well So i'll see you in the next video. All right. Take care