Starting From Scratch

Hard to believe we’re just over a week away from October coming to an end. My daughter was just involved in a haunted house this last weekend, in fact. Just crazy how time flies!

This week, we’re getting back to basics a little. Talking about the “big picture” on starting a new business from scratch. Short and sweet. Let’s get into it…

Featured This Week

Smart Survey System: Your Guide To Using Surveys To Grow Your Business

It is common to overlook the power of surveys. It is also common to use surveys in a way which just isn’t effective. In this guide, we’ll cover the strategic use of surveys and how you can use them in the most effective manner.

Quickest Way To Start A New Business

Over the last few weeks, there’s been a lot of talk in the world of WordPress about the drama between Mullenweg and WP Engine. So, this issue, I wanted to completely shift gears. And, in fact, we’re going to go up the chain for a bit and just talk… basics.

One wants to start out as a solopreneur. To start a new business. Or maybe even just get back to basics with one they’ve already started. How do you do it?

Let’s talk about the quickest way to go here. And it isn’t online courses. 😜

Start with what you do at work. Or something you’re already skilled at. Then…

Build a simple landing page for it. Just a one-page site. No blog or none of that.

On that landing page, write some copy that describes what you can do. The benefits of it and the problems you can solve for the reader.

For a call to action, allow them to book a call with you. For free. Many like to call this a “discovery call”. You can call it whatever you want. But, they can book a call with you to discuss, learn more and ask questions.

Ongoing from this point, you start writing content. The point of the content is to answer key questions. But, if they have more questions, that’s when they can book a call. Booking a call is a nice call to action.

Now, important here is that…. these calls are not just about making a sale. Nope. This is mainly about communicating with people and learning what they need and want. You’re going to do a lot of listening. But, here’s a basic outline of some questions you can use on your call:

• What’s the problem?
• How have you tried to solve it? Did it work?
• What is it costing you?
• How important is this for you to fix? What’s the priority for you?
• When would you like to get it fixed by?

After the call, send them a recap email. Tell them what you learned. But, also tell them how you would fix their problem. Name your price and tell them how long it would take. Keep in mind the date by which they wanted to fix it.

Ask them if they’re ready to get started.

If not, then follow up. If yes, then send them a link to pay.

On followups, I’d follow up the next day. After that, less frequently. Also, here is where you can start thinking about a newsletter or some other kind of ongoing marketing. Lot of times, people come back weeks or months later suddenly ready to take action with you, but if you’re silent you will lose the opportunity. This is why content marketing and email marketing exist.

And when delivering on your offer, focus on systems so you can scale over time and make things repeatable. Get constant feedback from your client so you can then iterate and make your offer better over time. That feedback mechanism is how you adjust to exactly what your market wants.

Now, this process is simple. It is to-the-point. A few things to note:

• It gets right to the point about making an offer, but allowing for flexibility since you don’t yet have product/market fit. That’s the point of the calls. So you can exactly tailor an offer to what people are asking. Rather than you just dreaming up what you think people want.
• This isn’t about online courses. This is a service. You’re going to solve people’s issue directly. Online courses are something you can do later, once you have things more established.
• Your niche is based around what you can do, not keyword research.
• Focus on the simplicity. Don’t go get bogged down in reading a bunch of “gurus” with the marketing tactics. It is SOOOOO easy to get bogged down in other people’s noise. Just keep your eyes on the basics and be consistent about it. And things will happen.

Any questions? Feel free to reach out.

These days, I’m so busy doing WordPress stuff for folks that I haven’t talked business basics in a long time. But, sometimes back to basics is exactly what we need most.

This Week In Concierge

Not gonna sugarcoat it here…. project work for Concierge is running behind right now. I guess this is a nice issue to have, but I think I might have no choice for a bit here to clear the docket out by just grinding and working in the evenings.

Being hit by a hurricane didn’t help at all. That took up pretty much a week of my time. And there’s also a matter I’m helping my daughter with in the afternoons right now which has me out of the office for a few hours. Dad duties call. So, it is definitely a real balancing act right now.

Anyway, figured people might appreciate the transparency here. 😇 If you’re a client with a pending project, just know… you are not being ignored. I haven’t forgotten. But, I am unburying from some backlog. And all of my clients have been so awesome and understanding about it, too. You guys are the best.

One of the best ways to get a lot done quickly, too, is to book an Implementation Session. During these sessions, we bang out a lot of things all at once and we implement in real-time. I did one on Thursday with a client and he said afterward:

“Thank you for the last hour of implementation. I can’t believe how much we covered, and how many problems you solved for me in such a short time. Thanks!“

During that call, I built a couple of marketing automations, got him going with a more reliable setup for taking donation payments for his non-profit, and answered a ton of questions.

I’ve got another one booked with another client this morning where we’re going to address her online course setup and get the mechanics of selling those courses in place so she can see how it works. Have a feeling we’ll be getting Bunny.net and Presto Player set up for her, too.

You can learn more about these Implementation Sessions here.

WordPress Quick Bits

Automattic Obeys WP Fusion C&D. WP Fusion sent a cease & desist to to Automattic regarding unauthorized use of the WP Fusion trademark on WordPress.com. Automattic has responded and has agreed to take down the listing. You can read the synopsis here. I hope more plugin developers follow suit on this, too. The way WordPress.com co-opted the entire plugin repository and positioned plugins as extensions of WordPress.com offerings is super sketchy.

WP Engine Files Injunction. WP Engine has filed an injunction with the court to get access to WordPress.org re-instated. Basically, they’re trying to stop the bleed until the larger lawsuit can be handled. Makes perfect sense. Read more here.

Matt Mullenweg Whines. He came out and reacted to the WPE injunction by saying he feels like his first amendment rights are being violated. What a freakin’ baby. But at least he finally decided to shut up for awhile about WPEngine. It is for his own good, too, since all he’s been doing is making things worse.

Kinsta More Sites Addon. Kinsta hosting announced you can now add additional sites to your plan for $30/month each without having to jump to another tier. Cool, but also way too expensive. Rocket Hosting (my preferred host and much better) will do the same for just $10.

FluentCRM Update. FluentCRM has been updated to 2.9.25 and now has the option to import/export recurring campaigns, smartcodes in custom emails, improvements to purchase history, description field on automations (yeah!), and more. Check out the full details.

Elementor Gets Performance Updates. Elementor has been updated to 3.25 and looks like performance was the main focus. Optimizing front-end styles, global styles and more. Also some optimizations to WooCommerce DB queries. Check out the full update.

Paid Memberships Pro Update. PMPPro was updated to 3.3 and one of the changes behind the scenes on this one is that it will now be updated via their own servers instead of WordPress.org. They are making a move that a lot of other developers are making which is to bypass WordPress.org. This is a result of Matt’s unilateral stupid moves with the repository. Full details here.

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Still Running Thrive Themes? Plan An Exit.

I know this sucks. Especially since I spent 2-3 years at least being a pretty open advocate for Thrive Themes. I really liked them. But, in my personal view, things haven’t been progressing well at all since Awesome Motive acquired the company.

And it isn’t even just about the massive price hikes and the content lock-in, although that’s bad enough.

I have been seeing more issues with Thrive Themes lately from some of the people in my circle who are still using it.

One client had a strange issue show up with her Thrive Apprentice integration with SendOwl. After a big blame game by Thrive support, they finally came out and said they “fixed” it. But, in the meantime, she was having issues with her registrations. I fixed it for her by setting her up with a different system for selling her courses so that Apprentice is no longer doing it.

Another client was (and is) having a plugin conflict being caused by the presence of Thrive Architect. It is keeping his embedded PDFs from working due to some conflict with Jquery, but the issue disappears the moment we deactivate Thrive Architect. So, now he’s in the process of re-building all his Architect pages so that we can turn it off for good. The odd thing on this one, too, is that even if I disable Architect on those pages using the Script Manager of PerfMatters, the issue STILL remains. Which means however Thrive Architect is inserting all this conflicting code is bypassing the usual setup. Annoying.

Here’s the thing…

I’m not seeing anybody who seems to be gladly building a site with Thrive tools anymore. What I am mostly seeing is people who have already built a site with Thrive and just stick with it as a way to avoid the hassle of transitioning out of it.

That’s legit, I guess. But, in the end, these are people being held hostage by a platform. That’s not a place I would want to be. That’s not digital sovereignty.

Truth is, your site will get faster and perform better once Thrive Themes is gone from your site.

In my opinion, Awesome Motive bought Thrive Themes in order to control a competitor. I don’t think it is their priority to really excel with it. I could be wrong, of course. And I hope I am. But, what I do know and see all the time is that… life outside of Thrive Themes is kinda OK. 😇

The hassle factor of transitioning out of Thrive Themes is going to vary from site to site. But, if you’d like to talk it over with me, just book a call and I’d be happy to take a look at it for you.