The online world has become so attractive to many. The possibilities are endless. And many want to create something online, but they don't know where to start. What is a sequential order? Where do they begin? Well, that's what we're going to talk about today: the seven must-haves for online startup on the Resilient Faith Online Show. Welcome. I'm Arissa Shadrick, host of the Resilient Faith Online Show. I'm an online marketing coach and certified copywriter. In this podcast, you'll find a different perspective to the external and internal challenges we face as online content creators. Join me for some inspiration and practical tips as we create positive change online. To connect with me in my private Facebook group, go to marissa shadwick.com forward slash community. Hello, hello everyone. How are you doing? I'm gonna reminisce back when I started online. Boy, I did not know what I was doing. I originally started my online journey thinking I was gonna create a magazine with all these different categories, and I was gonna get writers to submit articles and give them exposure. And I really chewed off more than I could handle and more than I could bear. I mean, it looked amazing, and I loved it for the first like six months, and then it got really, really tiresome because there were so many moving parts, and I really wasn't sure how I was gonna monetize the thing. Well, the online world has continued to provide opportunities, and today we're gonna talk about the seven must-haves for online startups. Now, maybe you've started a year ago, maybe you started six months ago, you're thinking about starting. There's an order to things, right? There's a way to have a solid foundation to just about anything that we do, right? We want to have a solid foundation when we build a house. In scripture, it talks about having a solid foundation as we build our faith. I mean, it's really wise to look to see what is going to support us as we build something. And that's what we're gonna look at today. So I'm gonna try to simplify it and just point out, just from experience, some of the things that I wish I would have known when I first started. Now, mind you, I'm not a legal attorney. I'm not someone in some of these areas you need to look for professional in some of these areas when we talk about business license, insurance, and so forth. But I am gonna list it as some of the things that you need because it's not talked about. And I think it's important to make sure that you have a lot of things in place. So I'm gonna mention these things and I'm and I want you to do your due diligence and look up some of these things and see what's needed in your area. So the first one is your business license. You want to just establish yourself as a business. So you want to start maybe locally, go to uh the city and find out what you need, and they'll give you. I know in the city here where I am in Nevada, they gave me a whole stack of paperwork showing me exactly what I needed to do, and they were asking what I was gonna sell. So uh just a heads up, have an idea of what you're gonna sell, whether you're gonna be selling physical products, if you're gonna be coaching, if you're gonna be selling a book or any other type of digital products, maybe have an idea when you go to the city to inquire about a business license, and then they will tell you what you need to comply with any state requirements as well. So getting that in place is really a good idea to have that out of the way and done. You don't have to look at it again. Some people say, Well, you don't need to until you start making money. I just that makes me nervous. I like having all the things just checked off. It's just the way I am. And I don't want to get busy and then forget about it and get myself in trouble. So, business license is a good thing to start and figure out, you know, what it is that you need. And the second thing, especially if you're gonna do coaching or it's just a good idea to look into insurance. Now, insurance isn't as expensive as you might think. You can go online and you can look for insurance, and there's one that you can check out, it's called Hiscox, Hiscox H-I-S-C-O-X. You can check them out, but you can check out different ones and see what would fit and how much coverage you want, depending on what you're planning on doing. So once you have the business license and the insurance out of the way, the not so exciting part of business, but you have that dialed in and done. Then the third thing, and one of the most important tools that I think you should have if you're going to have some type of online presence where you want to eventually do some coaching or you want to sell digital products, you want to be able to maybe automate some things, maybe have an automated webinar. You know, one of the things that you need is an email service provider. And boy, I didn't realize how important an email service provider is. There are some out there that are free, that are, you know, helpful, that can get you kind of started. But really, I mean, I went through, let's see, one, two, three, three email service providers before I landed with Active Campaign because I didn't know what I didn't know and I didn't know what I needed. Active Campaign is a CRM, which is a customer relations management program. It does so much and it integrates so well with so many tools. And that's the other thing. When you start looking for tools, I'm not saying you have to use Active Campaign, but just again, do your homework, do some research. And one of the things I suggest when you start looking at tools, the things that you're gonna need, is to check the customer service and check and see what the tool integrates with directly, not with a third-party tool. Because just about anything can be connected, but sometimes it's with a third-party tool and not direct integration. I like direct integration. I want them talking to each other directly without a middleman in the middle, right? And one of the common uh third-party tools that connects things is Zapier. I try to, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with Zapier. I'm just saying if I can get a direct connection, I'd rather do that than have a third-party tool. So you want to make sure that your email service provider is one that you can grow into and that you can uh do more things with it. Maybe you don't want to use all the bells and whistles at first. And typically they charge you based on the number of subscribers. So if you don't have a lot of subscribers yet, they're not gonna charge you as much. And as you grow and you get more subscribers, then uh you're charged more based on the number of subscribers that you have. So do your homework, look around and see what would integrate really, really well with other tools and see what the customer service is like. Active Campaign has amazing customer services, why I love them. I can get on a call, I get on a Zoom call, we share screen, they record it for me. So if it's something, a process or an automation I'm gonna do again, I have the video. I can go back to the video and watch it step by step. They'll check automations that I've already created, they'll help me leverage active campaign. If I just want a call to just see how I can use more of the features, maybe it's something I don't know how to use. They'll ask me some questions and they'll show me other ways to use the features. It's pretty powerful, pretty robust. And I like it because it's very visual. I'm a visual person. So this is why I think I leaned and kind of stayed with Active Campaign because it does help me with client calls and it has pipelines and all kinds of things. At first, in the beginning, I only used a little bit. I'm using more and more of the features, and I'm just absolutely loving it. Now, one of the things you'll do with an email service provider is the email service provider will be able to capture the emails of people that are interested in anything that you're offering. It's a way for them to be able to become part of your community, and so you're gonna be sending emails to them. And I do have a post where I talk about email marketing. It's called Five Basic Elements You Need to Craft a Powerful Email. I'm gonna put a link in the show notes to that so you can look at that particular post where it talks about how to create an email. And this tool, once you start getting people that opt into your community and you set up automated welcome emails, you'll have that in place and it'll be on autopilot. So let's go to the next one. The next one is website. Website is important, it is our home base, our virtual home base. It's where we tell the world what it is that we do and how we serve people. We give them a little bit of backstory, and typically a website will have a home page, it'll have an about page, and it'll have a contact or work with me page. Now, eventually you're gonna have maybe some other tabs depending on what kind of content you're gonna create. If you're gonna create maybe a podcast, you'll have maybe a tab for that. Or if you're a writer and you're gonna have articles, you can have a tab for articles. Depends on what it is that you're going to be creating or videos, whatever it might be. So you don't have to have tons of tabs. I would recommend having minimal, less is more, and just really direct your audience as to what the first step is when they get to your website. Now, the website can really hang up people. I have someone that I have used for, oh my gosh, well, when I started that website when I was trying to do some kind of magazine online, he's been with me, I think that was like 11 years ago, 10 years ago that I was doing that. So he's been with me for a long time. His name is Dan. Um, he's got a great package, and he can talk to you all about the package that he has. I think it's like a flat setup fee and then like a monthly, very affordable price to maintain your website. And he's awesome. Um, sometimes I don't talk to him for months, and other times I'm talking to him like every other day because I'm launching something or when I set up this podcast, I needed extra help, and he was there to help me at no additional charge, is just part of what he does. He really prides himself in customer service, which is why I stayed with him so long. So I'll put a link to um to his the page that I have. It's it's we partner together and he um when he has people that need some copy support, they s he sends them over to me. And when I have people that are interested in maybe creating a website, I send them over to him and he'll he'll do you right. I mean, he'll explain what it is you need, and he's just amazing to work with. So I'll put a link to that. And I also have some articles that I've done on the homepage. So I'll put those links there as well. One of them is the five building blocks to a winning home page, and that'll explain how to create the homepage, and I have examples, and the other is how to write a killer about page and engage your audience, and I'll put a link to that. And the other one is all about your work with me page, and I'll put a link to that as well. So it's important to have these dialed in, which kind of brings me to number five, which you need. You have to have an understanding of copywriting. So this really helps when you're right from the get-go, right out the gate, when you're creating your home page, when you're creating your about page, anything that you write, you need to have an understanding of copy. It's so essential for everything. I do have an episode where I talk about the difference between marketing and sales, episode 13. I'll put a link to that as well. This is kind of like an overview, this podcast, with a lot of resources in the show notes. So I really encourage you to go to the show notes because the resources will be there for you so you can look at it step by step. Now, with the understanding of copywriting, I also want to recommend my mentor, where I got my copywriting certification, Ray Edwards. He's got a great book that is a great way to just kind of crash course into copywriting. And it's called How to Write Copy That Sells by Ray Edwards. And that's a great book. And I would I I have so many highlights in it, and I've marked it up. It looks pretty beat up, but I love that book, and I think that's a good one to get you started and get your feet wet with copywriting. Now, the sixth thing that I would suggest is figure out what you're gonna do with graphic design work. Are you going to outsource that or are you gonna try to do it yourself? And you can do it yourself. One of the tools that I use that I think is really fantastic is Canva. I use Canva Pro. I absolutely love it. Canva allows you to create any size image for a website, for social media banners. It'll take one image that you created and it'll automatically resize it for you. It has stock photos, it has little gifts that you can put in to make an image look animated. It has so much, so many features in Canva. You can even actually post from Canva if you wanted to. Canva is pretty robust. I really love Canva. I've used Canva for years and I just will not go anywhere else. I love Canva. I am stuck on Canva, so I can't say enough about it. It's really, really a great, great tool. And Canva is what I use to create uh PowerPoint slides, to create lead magnets, anything that I need that's visual that takes graphic design, I use Canva. In fact, Canva gave me some inspiration on how I set up my website because they had such stellar templates in there. So the templates really kind of kickstart you. And I was really inspired by some of the things I saw on Canva. And then when I got together with Dan, we designed the website and updated some things to make it look like that. So graphic design is important because you need it on your website, right? You need it from the get-go with your website. And sometimes even in your emails, you might want to send an image from time to time, and you don't want to send a huge one, right? You want to uh tailor it and you want to change the size. Another feature that Canva has that I really, really like is that when you start taking photos of yourself, Canva has a way of removing the background. Like, say you took a picture and you really love the picture, you're not very photogenic, and someone just took a candid shot and you were in the kitchen right in front of the sink, right? And you thought, oh my gosh, this picture's like the best picture of me ever, and I'm in front of the kitchen sink. What a bummer! Well, you can upload that photo in Canva and it will remove the background and leave only you that you can lay that over another image, maybe a picture of an office background, and you put yourself right there in the office and it'll look fantastic. Lots of things you can do with Canva. So the very last one of the essential things that I believe that you need just from experience and some of the things that I went through when I was first starting out, is that you want to have your first offer. And I would suggest it would be something very, very simple, maybe depending on your niche, depending on what it is that you teach or or you help people with, something very simple, like a checklist, some type of PDF that would be really easy for you to put on the website. Now, if you're thinking, I have no idea what I'm gonna create, that sounds really too complicated, Marissa. You can instead just put a button where they can schedule a call with you, like if you're gonna do some coaching. So that could be a very easy way of putting a button on your homepage where they can get in contact with you. So you might be thinking, well, then how do they get in contact with me? Well, first of all, never, never, never, never, never, never, never put your email address right on your website. Don't do that because then you'll get spammed. You'll get people spamming you. So don't put your personal email on your website. Just set something up with a tool called Calendly, and Calendly will allow you to connect your email service provider with Calendly, and you can connect everything and then send them an email with a link to schedule the call with you, and then you can connect right on Zoom. It sounds complicated, but it's not. It's pretty easy to do, or you can even grab the link and just hyperlink some text on your website. Hyperlink just means you hover over it and then you click that little chain thing that you see often. And when you click the little chain thing, you can put a URL in there. The URL could be exactly the calendarly URL so they can schedule. You can do it as simple as that and forget the email, but it's nice to send an email and say hello and welcome and thanks for connecting with me. It's just kind of polite and nice. So let me review the seven that I talked about. First, figure out what you need to start your online business, right? Go to your local city, find out uh they usually have packages, business packages, pamphlets, information, or you can check online and they'll tell you what you need to comply, you know, city requirements, and they'll also give you any um information that you need for state requirements so you can get your city-state license and all that. Then check out insurance for online entrepreneurs, check that out. Then the third one is your email service provider. I use active campaign because I absolutely love it. But do your homework and check it out and see what the differences are. And remember, when you first start looking for tools, make sure they all integrate and play well with each other. You don't want to have to um use third-party tools or have to send a support ticket and wait forever for people to get back to you. You know, if you have a question, you want to be able to connect with someone pretty quickly. So check all of the customer service and make sure that they have good customer service, no matter what tool you get. Number four is get your website and I'll send you a link to um Dan's form so that if you're interested and you want to chat with him, you can talk with him. He'll um go ahead and work with you and he'll do all the back end. He is brilliant when it comes to tech, he understands it really well. My suggestion to you is go on the internet and look for websites that you absolutely love. And then you have some samples of things that you like. And say this website, I love this, I love the color of this second website, I love the way they do the opt-in boxes on this website, I love how they integrated these widgets on this website. And once you have a collection of URLs of websites that you love, then whether it's Dan or someone else, you give them an idea of what it is that you, you know, want to have on your website. That makes it a whole lot easier because it's hard for them to, you know, read your mind. And so once you have that set up and you figure out what tabs you want, later on you can add more tabs. Not hard to do, right? You can add to the menu. The fourth one is have a good understanding of copywriting. And I'll give you a link to episode 13 where I talk about marketing and sales, and also that book from Marie Edwards, How to Write Copy That Sells, is an amazing book. Number six, for graphic design, I recommend Canva. And number seven, think about what your first freebie is going to be, whether it's a free coaching call or whether it's a free PDF, some type of lead magnet that you can put right on your website. Notice I did not say anything about social media yet. Did you notice that? I did that on purpose because I think it's important to get all of this figured out before you start going out there on social media, and then that's a whole other animal on trying to figure out well, which platform am I going to use? You know, we can talk about that on another podcast, but get all of this. This is your foundation, right? This is your foundation, and you want to have a solid foundation. I kind of referenced that one scripture, Matthew 7, 24 and through 27, where it talked about um the building on a solid foundation. If you recall in that particular one, it was referring to all of the teachings of the Bible, right? Those who who listen to the teachings and follow it are wise. And it was compared to someone who builds a house on a solid rock, it's not gonna topple over no matter what happens, whether there's floods or winds beating against the house, it's not gonna fall over because it's built on bedrock. But anyone who hears truth and wisdom and doesn't is a foolish person. And it actually says it's like building something on sand. And when the rains and floods come and the winds come, guess what? It crashes, collapses, boom, gone. And so I feel that when you're thinking about really getting serious about your online business, maybe you've been doing it as a hobby and you're thinking, I'm really gonna double down now. I'm really going to take this seriously and do what it takes to be able to create the business that I love, serve people at a global level. Because I'm not exaggerating. The internet, you don't know who you can possibly reach. It's amazing. Even with this um little podcast that I have, I don't have a huge reach yet because it's fairly new, but still, I've talking to people, I'm people over listening to the podcast in Germany, in the UK, in France, in Canada, in Nigeria. It totally blows my mind. But you can have a positive influence online. And I say that a lot on my podcasts, create positive change in the world because I really mean it. That's the way I say it. So I'm gonna talk more about copywriting. I'm gonna talk more about helping you position yourself, get in front of the right people, you know, your target audience. And I'm gonna do a lot of this in my private community. So I would love for you to go to marissa shadrick.com forward slash community. It is my private membership where I do a little bit of coaching every week. I show up live every week and I do a little bit of coaching and I also listen to the questions that people post and I try to create a training based on those questions. So if that sounds like your cup of tea is if that sounds like something of interest to you, go to marissa shadrick.com forward slash community and join. I would love to have you there. It'd be so cool to see you there. It'd be awesome. So until next time, oh, take care. And I hope you stay well, stay safe, and I will talk to you soon. Bye-bye. Wait, before you go, if you found this podcast helpful, subscribe so you never miss an episode. Every subscription, review, or rating means so much to me. Remember, cultivate resilient faith online to create positive change in the world.