'Build it & they will come' is bullshit (& here's why)
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Let’s take a walk down memory lane, shall we? This new-fangled ‘World Wide Web’ allows people from across the world to find, access, and share information in a central area and to connect when it wasn’t possible before.
It started with limited access because we were all on Dial-Up (cue sounds of a phone line takeover). The more people who jumped onto it, the more it grew and evolved.
There were no data restrictions! Things loaded excruciatingly slowly by today’s standards, but we began to love it and find new ways of using it to connect to other people.
There was MySpace and eventually “The Facebook” for college students only… OMG, I remember when my college finally got access! 😂😳 Oops, I guess I’m dating myself here…
Now? Even family members of mine in their mid-to-late 80s are online, checking & sending emails, and even my mother-in-law (who is not very tech-savvy) has learned to use emojis in her text messages! (I’m so proud!)
So how has this drastic change over time affected the way businesses have to show up online?
AKA:
Why the ‘Build it & they will come’ method doesn’t work anymore
When I work with clients on building a brand new website, they always want to know what to expect for traffic growth. I always say it depends on how much effort they put into getting the word out, because I can set it up for success all day long, but if you don't take that & run with it, then your beautiful new site may fall off the face of the earth.
Womp. Womp. 🫤
People still seem to expect the "set it and forget it" method to work, but it doesn't! And it won’t.
That’s basically just expecting to get lots of clients by doing absolutely nothing.
Ain’t. Gonna. Happen. #sorrynotsorry
‘Build it and they will come’ also implies stagnation, atrophy, apathy, and even death. I really don’t mean to be dramatic, but… think of it this way:
You wouldn’t just go to a random place to buy a piece of land, build a house on it, walk out to the driveway & wait for a buyer to drive up with cash in hand. Right? Of course not! That’s utterly ridiculous. 😂
You have to tell people about it for them to know it exists, which means…
You have to put in the WORK.
Now more than ever, there are companies, and individuals, and side-hustlers, and kids, and grandparents video-chatting with family across the world, and online trade, and dark web users, and hackers –all online, doing all the things.
Our online space has evolved –and MANY of us are on it now, all at once– literally doing all-the-things, you aren’t the only one doing what you do, anymore. There are about 8 billion people in the world, and a very large portion of them have at least periodic or limited access to the internet.
Take any topic you can think of:
subscription-style boutique (Stitch Fix)
online yoga classes (OmPractice)
remote nutrition appointments via video calls (Betsy Thurston)
nutritional education (Kelly Leveque)
healthy InstantPot recipes & motivation/inspiration (Brittany Williams)
screw-ing the 9-5 (Jill & Josh Stanton, Screw the Nine to Five)
how to take care of succulents (Succulents & Sunshine)
how to fly fish (Jordan of Interior Fly Fishing Co.)
learn to play the cell as an adult (Billy at Adult Cello)
––the list goes ON and ON.
See? Odds are, someone’s already doing it somewhere else in the world.
BUT just because someone’s already doing it, doesn’t mean that YOU can’t too.
I won’t lie to ya: I don’t have this all figured out yet and I likely never will because there’s a lot to learn! And it’s always changing & evolving with our industry, technology, ourselves, and our audiences.
Entrepreneurship means ya never stop learning & growing, which is what I absolutely love about it!
That said, I do know these 7 things. 👇🏻
7 tips for success for new online businesses
👉🏻 It takes time. NO ONE is successful overnight.
I know, I know, I KNOW that’s not what you want to hear. But it’s the truth, …even if it hurts.
I get it. I really do! The waiting sucks; it’s a hard pill to swallow. And you can drive yourself crazy thinking about it.
But. Just. Keep. Pushing. 🐟
The truth is: no one’s success truly ‘happens’ overnight.
Not Marie Forleo’s, not Oprah’s, not Amy Poterfield’s, not Michael Jackson’s, or Ray Charles, or Drake’s or Abel Tesfaye (The Weekend), or Albert Einsteins, or Elon Musk, or Jeff Bezos, or Alexander Graham Bell, or even the Beatles.
No one.
It just SEEMS like it because we hear about them right at their big-break moment. But prior to that, you can bet your ass they’ve been bustin’ theirs to get to that big-break moment.
👉🏻 You have to find a way to stand out from the crowd.
It’s not enough anymore to jump in and say “I’m here, everyone! Come find me!”
You have to find a way to make what YOU’RE doing, unique.
It can be the way you make something, the platform you use, or maybe your process is just super unique. It doesn’t matter, but you have to find a way to make yourself unique.
This is called your Unique Seller Proposition or USP, or as Ashlyn of Copywriting for Creatives calls it, “your only-ness factor.”
👉🏻 Don’t be a generalist.
Ever heard the saying, “Jack of all trades; master of none?”
If you’re saying yes to every idea or project or buyer, doing #allthethings, learning everything, …
… You’re not mastering any of it.
That’s not to say you can’t do some of those things pretty well, but YOU CAN’T MASTER ALL OF IT IF YOU’RE NOT FOCUSED ON ANY OF IT.
So pick the thing you’re best at and focus on offering that thing, doing it really well, and becoming known for that thing. Drop all of the other stuff, until you’re ready to add more to your plate.
👉🏻 Find your niche & get specific.
This was a really hard one for me, I’ll admit. My niche evolved for YEARS because I didn’t know how to narrow it down. I don’t love any one industry so much that I ONLY wanted to work with those people, so that was out….but that also left me hanging. How do I niche down if not focusing on a specific industry?
Simple! I thought about the type of person I wanted to work with, and niched to that personality. Sounds kinda weird right? Because most people will tell you to niche down a different way, but that didn’t work for me so I went with my gut.
I knew I wanted to work with people that have a sense of humor, who go with the flow, aren’t stubborn, love to laugh, find joy in their lives, are well-rounded, can make jokes, find positivity in everything, and are just overall really cool people. I wanted to work with really cool humans that are passionate about what they do, don’t take themselves too seriously, and think I’m really cool too.
That’s it! And those people can be found in ANY industry. You just have to figure out how to attract them to YOU.
The best way to do that? Focus and drill down. Get more specific on who you want to work with, what you want to work on, how + when you want to work. If you think that combination will be mutually beneficial, then go for it! Give it a shot and see if it works.
The only way you’ll know if that’s a good fit or if it’s specific enough, is if you actually try it.
👉🏻 Talk about it. often.
With so much noise in the world, you can’t just post about it once and watch the sales come in.
It just doesn’t work that way, anymore.
Tell people what you do, often. On repeat. Consistently. In different ways.
Don’t be a slimy, sleaze-bag salesman about it.
If you can keep your service top of mind, –and deliver that reminder in the form of REAL VALUE, it will work in your favor.
And by value I mean: actionable freebies, a great newsletter, podcasts, blog posts, a video series, free workshops, giveaways, sales, discounts, memberships, courses, –the list is endless.
👉🏻 Find your one thing & own it!
Don’t get stuck in the trap of doing #allthethings, all the time.
If you’re on Facebook, and Insta, and LinkedIn, and Twitter, and starting a TikTok and posting blog posts, and pinning to Pinterest 50x a day, and networking in Facebook groups, and posting videos on YouTube, and starting a podcast, and guest blogging and doing guest-interviews on other people’s podcasts, and doing ads on FB and Google, and–– See where I’m going with this?
Stop. Focus. (This goes back to getting specific.)
Pick one thing, and master it. THEN you can pick up another one.
An example? I blog 1x week now; that’s my chosen thing. I focus on it and try to do it really well. I’m purposefully not very active on social media, because 1) I suck at it and generally don’t enjoy that, and 2) I’m focusing on my blog.
The result? With no paid ads, consistently over the last few years:
90% of my traffic comes from organic searches on Google
5-10% of my traffic comes directly to my website
everything else is negligible: social media, emails, referral links, backlinks, other search engines like Bing, etc.
But your one thing doesn’t have to be blogging. It can be Instagram, or podcasting, or networking, –whatever! It doesn’t matter what your one thing is, as long as you focus on doing it 110%.
Need some help with this one? To learn more marketing strategies, read 10 ways to market your business here, or check out the podcast episode with guest Jessie Bouton: The Power of One Thing.
👉🏻 BELIEVE You can do it; positivity can make ALL The difference.
Learn to think about it with certainty like your knowing that the sun will always rise & set each day.
Visualize it happening. Think about what success will feel like. Make a vision board. Say mantras if it helps!
Need some help with that? Check out this podcast episode with guest Carrie Green: Visualizing Your Business Into Existence or basically anything by Carrie Green and James Wedmore. They’re much more woo-woo than I am but in some of the best ways!
One thing I’ve noticed that truly matters in my own life:
When I am looking for ways that something WON’T work, I always excuses.
When I am looking for ways that something WILL work, I can always find examples.
My point is that negativity has a way of stopping you in your tracks. It can bury you in that spot so deep that you can’t crawl out of it. Don’t let that happen. If it means you have to start a gratitude journal and force yourself to find positive things happening in your life or in your business, each day, –then DO it. It doesn’t have to be big things; it can be little things too. Try it!
Remember this quote:
“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t, –you’re right.”
Last thoughts:
✪ Websites can’t be set-it-and-forget-it anymore IF you want them to actively bring you customers or clients.
With the sheer number of people on the web these days, you can’t just launch your website to a room of 1 (you) and wait for people to find you and the sales to pour in.
For one thing, Google doesn’t like stagnant websites. A website that isn’t updated often & consistently is considered to have “outdated” information & you’ll be penalized in your search rankings for it, which means you won’t ever show up on page one for whatever it is that you do. Not with a stagnant website. This is why people blog, podcast, YouTube, etc.
✪ Find your ONE thing and FOCUS on mastering that, before ya try doing #allthethings and burn yourself out.
I’ve been there. It ain’t pretty. My burnout was mild, but I still basically took 6 months ‘off’ my biz to heal & get past it; I could barely bring myself to blog each week, but most of those weeks, that’s almost all I did for my business.
✪ Do something every week that moves your business forward.
Whether it’s a post, networking, writing that blog, making that video, sending out inquiries about being a guest on someone’s podcast, creating new freebies, writing to your email list –or creating your email list, –the to-dos are endless.
I say weekday, because everybody needs balance, but your schedule is your own. Just make time for yourself to rest whatever that looks like, so you can give 1,000% focus to your biz later!
✪ Take the advice of people who are a step or two ahead of you, –but also listen to your gut.
Everybody’s business is different, just like every person is different.
Just because Gary V. says it, doesn’t mean it’s right for YOU.
You can try the advice if ya want, but if it feels wrong, –you’re not broken. Just pivot to something else or some version of it that feels better for you.
Doing something that feels really uncomfortable typically makes you ‘bad’ at it, and ‘bad’ isn’t going to make you successful.
So if you hate doing video, –don’t!
If you hate the sound of your voice, –don’t podcast!
If you hate writing, –don’t blog!
But find something you love and stick with it for a while, because you will HAVE to PUSH your business out into the world somehow.
✪ Nothing is permanent; anything can change.
Whatever you decide to do, doesn’t have to be permanent. After all, it’s your business. You can change it whenever you want!
If you decide to blog, do it for 6 months, minimum. If you end up hating it, switch to something else! It’s not a big deal.
Really.
Consistency matters, but so does how much you love what you’re doing.
✪ Take the emotion out of it.
We often fall into the failure trap, right?
If you’ve ever launched to no one, asked a question & no one answered, offered a service that no one booked, or a product that no one bought, –you’re not a failure.
Take the emotions out of it and learn to evaluate everything in your business like a scientist.
Prior to that ‘failed’ launch, what did you do? What did you not do? Did you have anyone asking for that service/product before you offered it? Did you have any reason (evidence) that it’d be successful? Did you talk about it enough? Did you use phrasing that resonates with your ideal client/customer? Did you use terminology that doesn’t make sense? Did you seem too salesy? Was the offer priced too low? Too high?
James Wedmore says this all the time (paraphrasing here): Think of your business like an experiment:
form a hypothesis
implement it
study it, take note of the results
use those results to grow & evolve & get better
That’s how we learn! And eventually get to a place of success.
Because we’ve fallen down 999 times, but we still got up on the 1,000th.
Don’t overlook your site’s SEO!
Here are all of my Squarespace SEO related posts, so grab a cuppa coffee (SEO’s not the most exciting topic, I’ll grant ya that!) and dig in.
