3: How To Build A High-Quality Website In 24 Hours (Squarespace Intro) - #GrowYourLife

Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Grow youw Life podcast with myself, Jeremiah Krakowski. The goal of this podcast is to give you a resource with action steps every single week that you can apply in your life to see results. Also, there's stuff that applies to business and growing your income. For me, I believe that if you grow your income, expand your territory, your reach, your ability, you can then grow your life and it's it. They work together. I believe that if you listen to this, you subscribe to this, that you'll see results in your life. And all I ask is that you share it with some people. So let's get started. Hey there everybody, and welcome to episode three of the Grow youw Life podcast where we give you action steps that you can take to improve your life and change the situation that you have, transform the the world that you live in and go out there. This is real stuff that you can apply and use. And each episode is a new point on that that builds upon everything else that we have out there. If you don't already, make sure to follow me on social media, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, subscribe to this podcast. I'm putting out new content every single day and week for you guys of the stuff that I've learned, that I've used, that I use on a daily basis to be successful, to grow my life, to move towards my goals. And I want to empower you to be able to do and become the best version of yourself. Not a copy of me, but the best version of yourself that you can be to reach your goals and giving you action steps and tools to be able to do that. Now, one of the number one things that I like to help people with, that I've done for a long time now, is building websites. In fact, you know, when I was about seven years old, I taught myself how to code and build websites. I'm not saying that to say, oh, look at me, but rather, I've done this for a long time. I've tried everything that's out there. Hard coding, WordPress, Wix, Shopify, Squarespace, React, all of that Angular, JavaScript coding stuff from scratch, blah, blah, blah. What I have found is a tool that is the most valuable. But before we go into that, I want to talk to you about why you need a website, why I think everybody does. And this is going to be kind of a mini masterclass for you on today. Getting your website up, getting a web presence up, and why you need that, why you need that in 2019, why you can't go another year without this and why this is important, why this is on my heart. You know, one of the biggest things that I saw in coaching people and helping them reach their goals in their business is that people did not have websites that properly expressed who they were, what they were selling and sold them and their products that didn't cast the vision of what it is that they were offering. And so I'm not gonna have screen shares on here because this is my intention with this podcast is for people to listen to it wherever they are in their car. There's also a video version on YouTube where I'm talking to the camera and you can engage with me that way, watch it that way. But if you need more of this, that's why I actually created a course called Website Building made easy. It's 10 hours where I break this down step by step inside the computer. Like I actually will show you where I click. You're able to look over my shoulder the whole time through this and learn and actually gain the skill that I've learned over the last 15 years in that 10 hour course. And in fact, you'll get all the skill you need in that course in probably the first couple hours of. It was my intention of that. And I know that, I know that it's the best training that's out there on that because I've seen where people struggle. I've seen what they need to do and where they are and where they need to be. And I bridged that gap with that course in the best possible way that I know how. And so I stand behind that for you. There's also a support group in there to help you along the way. You can ask me questions and grow with the course. I'm there as a resource for you to build your website in that way. And one of the number one tools that I've seen is Squarespace for that. Now don't turn this off just because I said Squarespace. Okay? I used WordPress for probably the last 10 years and have shifted to Squarespace from that because I believe it's a superior tool that is actually cheaper than WordPress. And I'll tell you why that is when we break down even some of the myths behind, behind this. But why do you need a website? For instance, nowadays employers are no longer looking at just your resume. They want to see your social media presence, your web presence, and that shows the value that you bring to the marketplace. If you show that you have content that is related to the industry that you are trying to get a job in or be an influencer people will hire you. They're able to see for themselves what you've done and what you can do for them. And so in 2019, everybody needs a website, even if it's just to link to your social media profiles, to have a blog and to link to your social media profiles, have a blog and have your resume on it as well. When you're trying to get a job, just to put content out there that employers can look at. So that's the very base level. If you're building a business and you don't have a website, you're gonna be behind the curve of everybody else in the future. Now there are certain word of mouth businesses and things like that. Yeah. That can build and sustain and grow to a certain level. But if you want to scale beyond where you are, need a website. And what I have found is, you know, this Internet thing is not going away. That's a quote that I got from Gary Vaynerchuk and I agree with that. This Internet thing is not disappearing anytime soon. You know, it showed up in the 90s. People thought, they've said that it's dying every five to 10 years, whatever. No, it's actually evolving and growing. The first phase of the Internet that you've seen since the 90s was like the early days of television, was like the early days of radio. And now the Internet and social media is growing beyond that into apps, into being more integrated into our daily lives. In fact, beyond anything that you can even imagine. There's stuff being developed right now by companies like Google, Microsoft, Facebook that are going to revolutionize and change how we interact with the world around us using the Internet. And even more importantly, that's why you need a website. And so I need to stress this to people that even if you are selling a, you know, a network marketing product or whatever, you built a social media following. You need some sort of a real estate on the Internet to connect with people, a way for them to connect with you. What you're offering, what you're putting out there, and if you don't have that, you are going to lose out because you're relying on somebody else's platform for your success. Okay, don't rely on somebody else's platform entirely. One of the biggest things I've seen is network marketers. They will use their company websites. If you are selling a network marketing product, build your own website, talk about the benefits of the product, the industry that your network marketing product is in. And then the network marketing product that you're selling is now just A product that you as a brand are promoting and selling. No longer is your network marketing product the brand, you become the brand and you are referring with your authority to that network marketing product. And that's how you start to sell that whatever you are selling or promoting, you need to have a website. And you can start to utilize very simple tools like Facebook and Google Ads and Pixels to better target your audience. You can't do that without having a website and without having a website that is intentional, one that is easy to navigate, one that looks and operates like the rest of the web. Here's the biggest thing. If your website does not work like every other website people visit, meaning they, they play on their computers, they play on their phones, they visit websites and your website doesn't work like every other website that they visit. People will leave your website because it doesn't work like the Internet should. They're used to this version of the Internet in their mind that works a certain way. And if your website doesn't work in that way, you missed out automatically. And so a that's why you need to build a website and then use a tool like Squarespace which the pros and cons. You know, compared to wix, Wix is not doesn't have the best mobile platform. It's also very complicated to make the changes that you need to compared to Squarespace. It's cheaper than Shopify for all the features that Shopify has. Squarespace has all those features and it's much cheaper. GoDaddy is limited in what you can do. WordPress is expensive even though it's free. It's actually expensive on the other side of things because you have to learn how to do everything yourself or hire somebody to do it. And you have to pay for high end hosting and security and stuff like that. Squarespace has all of that security, high end servers, they become like your, your full service IT department for you. And everything is the cutting edge of design, functionality and technology out of the box for one low price. And for their business platform I think it's like 18 bucks a month. That's literally nothing for what they give you. They actually give you an email marketing platform right now that you can use to even build your email list inside of it for for free, included with that as well as full e commerce functionality that you can connect. It's an all in one platform for building your website. Another thing people ask, how does it compare to Click Funnels? Click Funnels is different. I would use Click Funnels after you get your website set up for Strategic funnel building. But I wouldn't use click funnels as your main website. I would still want to have a website identity, some sort of a, an identity for you and your company that is built on this easy to use platform of Squarespace. Plus click funnels is about five times more expensive than Squarespace for the feature and you're getting less features for what you need. In my course I actually show you how to build a click funnels like funnel for yourself, landing pages and opt in pages in about five minutes. And so that's like literally the value of that course alone is right there. And I might break that down. I think I will in some free training here over the next few weeks. You know, I can't make all of my content all at once, but I will put it out there for you guys in bytes. That way you can start to get some value. I actually want to show you guys how to create in Squarespace a funnel page like how I broke down on there for free. But if you can't wait for that, go buy the course. It's on my website. Website building made easy. You'll be able to do and accomplish those things. But for you, the number one thing, that's why I said tonight to get up and get started for your website, go to squarespace.com you actually get a 14 day free trial to where you can use Squarespace for 14 days, play around, use all the tools, build something, mess it up, whatever, and you could create another 14 day free trial. They also don't limit you by how many free trial sites you can make. You just have to start from scratch once you make a new free trial. So you can actually learn the tools 100% for free of Squarespace in about 10 seconds. You sign up for an account name, email address, you make your free trial site and boom, you're in and you can learn it. And then, you know, 14 days is up. You might need to make a new site. That's what they do it. They don't charge you, they charge you for each site that you then upgrade to the paid version. But they let you. I've probably made like 20 free trial sites in like a week just testing stuff. They don't limit it, they don't lock you out. It's just they're letting you use the tools and learn them for free because they want you to, to be able to use it. Obviously you can't then launch your site for free, but you can learn the tools for free, which is great. The tools are very easy to use. That's what my course goes over. I break down every single tool, all the templates, all the styles and stuff. And this, this podcast isn't a pitch for my course. I want you to be able to actually take this and start today, get an account with Squarespace. Literally. That's the first. That's it. That's all you got to do. And just click around Squarespace. The way it works, there's squares and blocks that you move around that you click it, you drag and drop it and you type in. And it's as easy to use as a word processor. You don't need to know code. But here's the thing, this is one of the other myths of Squarespace is that it's not as customizable as WordPress. In fact, Squarespace is just as customizable as WordPress. They give you a developer platform to be able to develop and code everything from the ground up, if you wanted to do that. My site is built on the Bedford theme. Brine is probably the easiest, best theme or template to use. And here's one of the cool things about Squarespace. If you click on a template, you go to squarespace.com, you click on templates, and then you click on a template that you like. If you scroll down from that template, so you have to click the template name, click Preview Template, then scroll down, you'll see examples of active sites that are on the Internet that use that template and get ideas for yourself of how you can use those templates. Now, for those of you that want to upgrade to a paid version of Squarespace, I would highly recommend it for you. Like I said, Squarespace, it doesn't cost more than WordPress. I wrote a blog post about this, in fact, where I'm Comparing Squarespace to WordPress. Go to my blog, look it up. It's actually a lot cheaper because you have to pay for a hosting platform, which is about five to ten bucks a month. And then you have to pay for your theme, pay for your template, pay for somebody about, you know, at the minimum, 15 bucks an hour from Upwork, to keep it up to date, keep it updated, all of that to deploy your site. Plus, you don't get an ssl, you don't get cdn, you don't get high level cloud computing that you get with Squarespace right out of the box. Your site is fast, it doesn't take long time. You can customize it just as much as WordPress with code. In fact, I wrapped an Angular app around my Squarespace site to Add functionality that didn't exist in Squarespace. And I actually show you guys I have code snippets in my course, actual lines of code that you can copy and paste to do some of the most common functions. And I'm adding those constantly for you guys as well as an added value to that. It's more secure than WordPress because it has advanced security functionalities built into it from the ground up. And Squarespace becomes your IT department. It's not built on PHP, it's built on JavaScript, actually. It's actually really good for blogs as well. You can see how I used it for my blog. Go look at that. And it's not too hard to use compared to WordPress. In fact, WordPress takes a lot more knowledge and skill to dive into to start using initially. And so what I break down for you is some of the harder to do stuff in Squarespace in that course. And I show you. You know, it's taken me, it took me about a year to really get good at Squarespace. I save you a whole kind of a learning curve of that with my course. And you'll have as much skill as I do then with Squarespace. I built my site with it when you go through that course. So that's, that's why I created that course for you guys. If you want to upgrade your site and start building your site, the first step is this. Find some of your favorite sites that you like that are in your industry for one, or similar industries, you know, for instance, and similar industries could be. It doesn't have to be exactly similar. Like for instance, software and video games are two very different industries, but their websites would be similar. For instance, education sites, E commerce, stuff like that. Look at what sites are similar to what you want. Write those down. Write down some of your favorite site functionalities and then write down the pieces of that that you like. Do you like the header? Do you like the navigation? Do you like the way the logo is set up, the fonts look up font stuff. Another thing that's really cool is Squarespace gives you type kit and all the Google fonts built in, which is easy to use. Dive in and start playing around with that. Write down some of your favorite sites to use. Write down some of the favorite features that you want to use that you need on your site. Like I said, if your site doesn't work like the rest of the Internet, people will have a hard time using your site. Put those things down on a piece of paper, maybe take you an hour to do, and then Go through the templates in Squarespace and see which templates would most fit into your goals. Okay. Which templates would most align with the stuff that you wrote down. And then look at how other users have used those templates by clicking Preview Template, scrolling down and seeing that, and then you could activate any of those templates, literally. You don't have to just do one. It doesn't cost anything to get started with Squarespace. It's. It's free to just activate a template to get started, to start playing around with it. And then you can start to, you know, just type in a headline, create a header. It has unsplash images built in. You can take some good photography for yourself. Having photography is one of the number one things that sets an amateur site apart from one that's not. And one of the best things is we have these great phones. Have somebody just take some good photos of you. It's good to do something that's a little more than just your head, more of a full body. You'll see, you know, some more full body stuff. And even if you're not comfortable with how your body looks, here's the thing, people will respect you because you're able to show your full body. And they'll actually trust you more because you're not trying to hide certain parts about yourself that it shows that you're more authentic. It shows you're real. So, like, for instance, don't be afraid to, to let people see the real you see behind the curtain. And that's what your website, that's what your photography lets you do. That's what your social media, your stories, your Instagram. And I'm not going to go into social media influence right here. But this is about your website getting good photos, setting that up. You know, think about that. Some of your favorite sites, where do they have their photo placement? Where's the headline placement? How does it flow? What's next? If you scroll down a little bit, what's down there? What bullet points are they highlighting? What are they offering on their homepage? What are some of their products? And then you can start to structure your site around that. What I break down for you in my Squarespace course, Website Building Made Easy, is step by step how to do this for you. And you're going to get a lot more than you will out of this podcast. But this is my thing for you guys. 99% of anything that you can do and anything that business owners that I have seen or talked to, I've talked and worked with thousands of them over the last 15 years on this topic of websites. In fact, this is what repeatedly people come to me for is having how. How to build a website that converts, how to have a website that is converting for them and structuring it and technology and things like that is that they're not being authentic on their site. They're not expressing it in a way that is real and conversational. One of the biggest things too is they're using fonts that are hard to read. So don't use hard to read fonts. That's one of the biggest things I've seen a lot of people fail with. They use maybe too many colors. Just pick three main colors to use and then start to use that across your site. Some of your products might have different colors, but only use two or three main colors for your products as well. And Squarespace lets you. They kind of keep it to where you can't break your site or make it look ugly because they have certain parameters that they keep you within. And to break out of those parameters, then you have to know custom coding, which is nice. So that's why I really recommend for most people for their business, their product, their service, or even just a personal brand site or a vlog or a blog or whatever you want to put out there. Squarespace has all the tools that you need. And so I would Recommend Go to squarespace.com this is, by the way, this is not sponsored by Squarespace. My goal is to get you to engage more with this content if it's helped you share it with people, share this podcast with people, share my social media content with people. If anything that I'm sharing is helping you, that's the only thing that I want you to do. And if you want to go to the next level, you know, sign up for one of my. My programs that I have, one of my courses. I have new stuff coming out as well. If you're listening to this in the future, you'll see that I have different products and content on my site. I'm constantly adding things to help you guys grow in your business, grow in your life. New resources and tools. And so Squarespace isn't sponsoring this podcast. In fact, they don't even know I'm recording this. But I am a huge proponent of them. And for all the sites that I'm suggesting for clients and building for clients for my site, for everybody that I'm working with, I'm telling them, use Squarespace. Even if you don't buy my course, I don't need you to Buy that course that's just for you to learn how to go to the next level. All of you need to sign up for Squarespace and start using it, start playing around with it, at least learning the tactics. And now the next level of this is if you get good at this, this is, this is a little, little tip for free, a little business model for you. If you get good at building websites in squarespace, playing around with those tools, it's very easy to use. That's why I'm not really breaking down a lot of the tools for you, because you can go in there and just start using it like you would word processor, start clicking, dragging and dropping like you would your desktop on your computer. It actually also works on mobile really well, which is good, which is why I like it. I can use it in the Chrome browser on my phone and actually manage my website from anywhere in the world, which is really cool. It's very easy to use and so just dive into it, learn how to use it. And if you want to learn more and take it to the next level, that's what my course is for. It's a, it's a resource for you. I'm going to release more content about stuff that's going to help you guys. It's coming, trust me. You're going to see it on my blog, on my YouTube channel. I'm going to have a whole channel devoted to Squarespace stuff, a whole playlist for you guys on my social media about tips and techniques of how to use it completely for free for you. Some free different mini courses and stuff that you can take before you need to, you know, want to take it to the next level with what I have in my course. So that's why I want to be a resource for you guys in this. And this is the number one thing that I've seen people miss out on is having a good website that works good on mobile, that's responsive, that works like the rest of the Internet that people can connect with. But if you get good at this, this is what I was, this is what I was saying. A little business model for you is then you could build Squarespace websites for people as a service and charge 500,000, 1500. Two grand. Five grand. If you're really skilled and have a team, 10, $15,000, sky's the limit. And have like, you know, like a mini agency model where you're building websites in squarespace for people. So if anything, if you want to fast track that, learning how to do squarespace and then you could Start to get clients and build sites for people and start to sell your own products. You could just sell building sites as a, as a service. One of my things is that I would love for you to take some of the stuff that I'm teaching and stuff that I have coming in the future and then apply it and build a business for yourself around doing those things as a service. Build a business for yourself. I think that, you know, our economy in this country started with entrepreneurs, with business owners, with people that did services and helped people and we're getting back to that place no longer instead of, you know, you, you're not going to reach your goals and your dreams just in a 9 to 5 setting. And so if you can start to even just doing it as a side hustle, building websites, that's one way of increasing your income by a few thousand dollars a month with just a few hour extra hours a week of doing that or in the air in the evening. So just that alone, getting good at this, you can then use that as a business model for you to build in the future. And I'm going to talk even more about that as well in the future. But if you don't have a website, you don't have one that you like, you don't have one that works or functions the way you want to, it's very easy to just copy and paste stuff. They actually let you import your WordPress site into Squarespace, which is really cool. And then you start to build your site around Squarespace and you will have a website that has the most cutting edge technology design standards, works on mobile and is easy to use for you and your customers or whatever target market you have. Let's say even it's a non profit. I built sites for nonprofits and they've gotten, you know, more engagement, more donations, more partners that way because of that. And so if that's what something that you want to do, go to squarespace.com sign up getting a free account. Like I said, they don't sponsor this. I don't get anything from you for referring this. The only thing I get is if you buy my, my products or courses that you know this, this podcast isn't, isn't sponsored. What I've seen in my experience is Squarespace is the number one tool in 2019 right now for doing this. And so go get an account, play around with it. Just click around and start this, start building a website for yourself, get a domain name on GoDaddy. It should be something that's easy to remember as well. Easy to write down, easy to remember. I've seen so many people, they have these domain names and they're hard to spell, they're hard to remember. They're hard to just say to somebody and then for them to get that right. Stop it. Don't do that. If you can't just tell somebody your domain name and they type it in wrong or it's hard to remember unless it's your name. I do like using your name. That's what I'm using for mine is my name. So that's a little different because I'm branding myself. But if you build a website with a name that's hard to remember, just make it easy for people. Okay? You could even use this for affiliate marketing, you could use this for network marketing, selling, creating your own products, services, whatever, have a website, then build an email list. You could use Facebook pixels, you can use Facebook ads, you can build audiences, you can do all this other stuff. But it all revolves around having a website that works and functions properly. And so that's why one of the number one things and one of the ground level, if you were building a skyscraper and think of that as like your business or your life, the foundation is having that website built. And so that's why that's been the first product I put out. That's why it's one of the first podcasts I put out here for you guys is you need to get this thing. So I'm doing more blog posts, more content on this. I want to help you guys get this thing down first and then we can go to some of the next stuff to grow your business, to build your business, to get more customers, to engage, to sell products, sales. Once you get this down, then you can dive into sales and building, you know, generate leads for your business. You can start to call leads. You could use tools like calendly to set up calendar scheduling where people could schedule a time to get on the phone with you and talk, set up an email, opt in where they give you their name, email and phone number. And then you could call those leads. You could do that in squarespace, out of the box right there and start to build a business for yourself, whatever that is. It's a photography business or service business, or you're selling a product, you need a website. You need one that functions like the rest of the Internet and is easy for people to use. It's not confusing to people. And so that's why I suggest Squarespace is the number one tool. That's why I built that course for you. So get my course. I think it's gonna help you. It's the best content on building websites in squarespace on the Internet. I've looked at everything else that's out there. It's the best training course on squarespace and building websites in general. It has all the stuff that I've learned over the years. Best practices that will help. That's part of what you're getting out of that and. Sorry, I need to drink some water here. Best practices of what works for businesses. How to structure your website in a way that works in functions, that gets results. Not just what looks good, but also what works and gets results. Because it's coming from a results first place. And this is one of those things that if you start to do this, that's why I have this in here. The Grow youw Life podcast is stuff for your life and your business to grow your life, grow your income. And if you can grow your income, you can be more effective for your goals, to go to the next level, to impact the world around you, to do things that will impact those around you. And if you start to do that, you subscribe to my podcast, you watch my content, you watch the content on my social media, and you plug into this every single day. You'll see your life transformed in the process. So this has impacted you or anybody. This has impacted you in any way. Share it with other people. Share my podcast, share my social media. And I want to. I want to build a movement around this. Growing your life. Growing your life. Growing from where you are to where you want to be. That's the goal of this. Giving you real actions that you can use. Not just fluff, but stuff that you can apply today. As always, thanks for listening to this week's Grow youw Life podcast. Head over to my Instagram. Every single week, we do a giveaway within the first 10 minutes of when I post something on Instagram or IGTV, leave in the comments, hashtag grow your life. And at the end of each week, we pick somebody who's a winner of some really cool giveaways that we're doing. So go ahead and do that. Tell somebody about this podcast. Subscribe if you don't already. Follow me on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram. Look up Jeremiah Krakowski, Jeremiah Samuel Krakowski, or at Jeremy Crack. On those platforms, you can go to my website to read blog posts. I post new videos every single day on my Instagram. Listen. I want to be a resource for you that you can learn from and grow with constantly. That has more content, new content for you you can apply in your life. And so that's my commitment to you. Share this with somebody. I'll keep delivering the best content that I have and we'll grow together. Let's grow your.