What's Next For Your Business with Jessica Whitaker | Squarespace Next Chapter (Ep. 4)

Hey everyone, my name is Jessica Whitaker. I am a professional photographer based out of New York City, and I'm also the founder of a nonprofit called Build and Bloom. Thank you to Squarespace for sponsoring today's video. Squarespace will prepare you for what's next. Do you want to finally launch a YouTube channel, maybe a podcast? Do you want to sell your own presets or even resurrect your photography portfolio or begin with a blog? Our good ideas need a great website, and that should be the first step in our checklist. For me, I opened up Build and Bloom in October 2016, as a Facebook community and rapidly climbed to the top of one of the most engaged photography communities on the platform. There wasn't a place online for young photographers, beginner photographers, hobbyist photographers to come and receive education through a gentle guiding source. The following year in 2017, I decided to do workshops, which means that we needed a place beyond the group to hold all of our information. We mapped out the steps that it would take to be able to bring our community from online in person through these workshops via the analytics and data that we were given through not only the group but also our Squarespace website where we hosted all of that additional information. And I'm so thankful that the first thing I knew we needed to do was almost like instinct was create a website that would be a hub for us with all of our information outside side of the platform. I wanted to keep the design as minimal as possible because none of us were tech savvy. I'm so thankful that the first step was creating the website outside of the group because now we use it for a hub for our nonprofit. The biggest thing the website serves right now is a place for donors and partners to be able to see our various programs and give their financial resources to keep those programs up and running. Build and Bloom also has a networking group called Sister Sister which meets 8 cities across the United States on the 3rd Saturday of the month. The website now, I'm so thankful, serves as a place where all of the girls can come and register for their city and where the ambassadors who lead each city have a password-protected portal where they can log in, see the lesson plan, design assets, and everything else they need to serve in their communities. There is nothing else on earth that I would rather do than run this incredible community and now nonprofit, but it wasn't always so easy and it still has its challenges. At the beginning, I felt like Build and Bloom had just become a revolving door for people. So many people wanted to turn my vision and my heart for Build and Bloom into a business. I've had dozens of ideas for how I could profit off of this community pitched to me. I mean, I have heard everything. I've never really shared about that aspect of Build and Bloom before and the struggles, but if there's any place to share it, it's here in this YouTube video. And since day one, my heart has always been to provide free educational tools For young photographers. And since day one, I've put 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 hours a day into building up this community, as have the other people like Kade, Laura, Jenny, Kara, into running and fostering this community with love and care. And I'm so grateful for the team who donates their time and talent and has that same heartbeat. Now that we've talked about Build and Bloom and you have a bit of insight into who I am and what Build and Bloom I wanna encourage you, get started with that idea that you have had on the back burner, whether it's personal or professional, today. A lot of us put off these incredible concepts that we have because we are too nervous to hit publish, and the reality of the responsibility that comes with having that idea finally out into the world. With Squarespace though, you can truly put your best foot forward. You can eliminate that fear, if you will. This all-in-one platform will prove to you that your ideas are worthy of going live and give you the intuitive tools to do so. There is something so exciting about seeing our ideas that we've had in our brains for so long on the back burner finally translated onto a computer screen. Squarespace has easy-to-use drag-and-drop templates that can be customized easily in a week. Building a website should be one of the first things that you do for your business, but don't focus so much on the production value because that might be what holds you back from hitting publish. I find that choosing a design and a template that's a little bit more simple and sleek is the best way to get started because you can start with that. You can start with simple today. You can always go back and customize it further. E-commerce, domain hosting, and even email campaigns are all underneath Squarespace's umbrella. People put so much emphasis on the frill and the fluff, and I feel like that is what stops people from going forward with a vision, 'cause they're getting too caught up in the production value. I love how Squarespace made it so easy to pick out a clean, modern template, plug in our branding colors, and just move forward. And this is truly what I recommend any of you to do. First step for making this idea come to life is to pick a modern, clean, simple template and plug in your own branding colors. The website is the most important place on the web that you actually own. The longer you have the website online and live, the better. The next step of the weekend it took to develop this website was getting our domain and the custom email, which we use Squarespace for our email, but we had plugged in a third-party custom domain into the platform. And then your email list is the only thing that you own that doesn't correlate or compete with a social media algorithm. How do I even get people onto my email list? Or I don't even know what to begin with. Emails, what is this, 2003? In short, offer a valuable piece of content for free in exchange for their email. The best way to direct their attention to this is through a popup on your website, which Squarespace easily has integrated as an option for you. And from there you can even do email campaigns within the Squarespace platform. If you take away anything from this video, I hope that it's this: you need to begin building your email list as soon as possible. I feel like for every total follower count or every member count that you have, you want to have at least 3/4 of their email addresses. Even if you don't start sending out regular emails or other campaigns until later on, start today. Start now. Start simple and don't complicate things. It's really— complication is only an excuse for procrastination. I don't know who needs to hear that, but complication is only an excuse for procrastination. The best way to start simple is just to begin. The first step for any project should be a website, and the next one should be building out that email list. Not a social media post, not the production value for promotional posts. and assets. You do, however, need to begin with the basics. I hope that this video is just encouraging you and waking a lot of you up. If you want to take that next step in your journey, in your passion, in your project like I did with Build and Bloom, Squarespace is truly the best option to get started. Whether you need a website, a domain, or an online store, you can make it with Squarespace. Start your free trial today, and when you're ready to launch, head to squarespace.com/jessicawittaker to get 10% off of your first purchase of a website or a domain. Thank you again to Squarespace for sponsoring today's video. I'm so excited to be a part of this project and for giving me the ability to sit down and chat more about my nonprofit and a peek inside some of the struggles that I had to bring it about, but also to give some encouragement and inspiration to those who need that final push to make their idea that they've had on the back burner come to life. If you enjoyed this video, be sure to hit subscribe and comment down below. Is there a project that you have been putting off that this video might have sparked a little bit of inspiration and motivation with? Let me know in a comment below. Be sure to subscribe. I love you all. I believe in you, and I'll see you in my next video. Bye! Bye!