It’s 2024 and everrrryything is digital.
Social this. SEO that. Optimize. Optimize. Optimize.
And for the first time since the industrial revolution, people are capitalizing with almost zero capital.
All they need is a WIFI connection and the ability to activate a community.
As a result, you might find yourself feeling like you’ve got to get out there and claim your puny plot of internet real estate and you’ve got to do it yesterday.
Well, I come bearing a slightly unpopular opinion: Not everyone needs a website, at least not right away.
Do I really need a website?
The truth: it depends.
If your service or product has yet to break water, if you’ve only experienced a few sporadic contractions and that baby is nowhere near crowning, it is time to get sincere with yourself.
Because fiddling with the margins of that new head shot you paid top dollar for while you nervously fuss over which color pallet best matches your lipstick is just another way to avoid doing what scares the shit out of you: THE WORK!
Over the past 10 years, I can count dozens of clients who have come to me with the urgency of needing a website only to pour money into it and let it sit abandoned in some dark corner of the interweb. which brings me to something people rarely talk about.
If you do not work your website, your website will not work for you.
You might as well be lost at sea.
Let’s take Renee for example; a stay-at-home-mom slash seamstress who opened an Etsy shop of made-to-order costumes – the same costumes she was already making for her son. Renee is now doing 6 figures and has been featured in publications like Bride’s Magazine, The Food Network, a Huggies ad, a Stride Rite commercial, and let us no forget the time she did the launch party for Tori FREAKING Spelling’s clothing line.
And do you know what?
NO website.
What she does have is a great product, a product that fills her family’s tummy 10 fold during Halloween season.
On the other hand, there are businesses that would never even take flight if it weren’t for their Universal Resource Locator. (Pssst, I didn’t know what URL stood for either).
Take my first business for example. I was selling a service to a market that was overseas, a service they couldn’t simply learn about via word of mouth. They needed to book in advance and the only way was to build an online presence.
That being said, it’s important to note that, it wasn’t the website or the branding that built the business. (I changed my logo AND colors at least 3 times in the first 2 years.)
What gave birth to the business was the consistent satisfactory service, the continual testing and adapting I did to orchestrate an experience my students would savor long after they left.
How can I be so sure it was the service and not the website?
Because I was a newbie entrepreneur who learned things by falling on my face.
Back then, I thought that, by simply squatting on my pretty plot of cyber space, the clients would come a runnin`
They didn’t.
I had 4 students the first year.
FOUR!
That’s when I realized that a website is just one of the many brush strokes that make up the masterpiece.
What brings the picture into focus is having a solid recommendable product or service. That is the core of EVERYTHING. It’s about the connections you make with other people in your industry. It’s about showing up EVERY.SINGLE.DAY. And it’s about never giving up.
A website is just one of the many brush strokes that make up the masterpiece of your brand.
To do that, you’ve got to push past the fear of failing.
You have to recognize that scraped knees and hurt egos are woven into the tapestry of making the sale.
And you absolutely need to know what the freak you are selling.
So, here’s my suggestion:
If you’re about to birth the next best bottled magic, do this: focus on that.
Because in this day of prioritized WHY-ness, I meet people saying things like “I want to help people unleash their true potential.”
And that is GREAT.
But how? HOW are you going to do it? What service or product sets you apart from all the other big-hearted change-makers out there?
Once you’ve got that all polished and pretty, let’s talk. Because, having a website without the right words on it is kind of like driving a Rolls sans windows.
You want your browsers to become your buyers.
And THAT, is what I do best, but they have to be able to see you clearly and that starts with you.