SNM005: Start a Blog so that You Can Quit Your Job

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starting a blogged so that you could quit your job. Today's episode is brought to you by name. Cheap. The only place where I go to buy all of my websites To find out how much you can save and get a free year of identity protection, go to serve. No master dot com Backslash NAME Cheap. Are you tired of dealing with your boss? Do you feel underpaid and underappreciated? If you want to make it online, fire your boss and start living your retirement dreams now then you've come to the right place. Welcome to serve no master podcast where you'll learn how to open new revenue streams and make money while you sleep. Presented live from a tropical island in the South Pacific by best selling author Jonathan Green. Now here's your host. It's very easy to fall into a pattern of inaction when thinking about your first moves online thinking about starting a business. It's so overwhelming. There's so many options out there that we can kind of get caught up in this paralysis of analysis. Hey, don't want to do Facebook at Angel. I want to write a book. Don't wanna start doing Consultant, Don't want to sell s yo don't want to do all these different things, and all of these different ideas can overwhelm us to the point of we're just not sure of the right thing to d'oh and we get frozen and end up doing nothing. So today I'm gonna walk you through the very first action you should take. Now there's other options out there That's true. But I want you to do is get used to taking action because that is where the real value comes in getting used to taking action and kind of pushing yourself through moments of indecision. I can tell you right now I have made many poor decisions and many mistakes building my business. But those mistakes were far better than doing nothing on looking back, I can see that the reason I succeed where other people fail, struggle or still fighting is because I take action fast. The real value that anyone brings to a project organization endeavor is execution. Lots of people have amazing ideas. Okay, there's people out there with much better ideas than me. There's people out there that are better riders than me. The people out there that are smarter than me. Look, I know my voice isn't perfect, is probably not amazing, right? I don't have these wonderful tones, but I execute. I take action. So to gay together I would walk you through the process of setting up your blog's and the reason we're gonna do it. The reason we're kind of going to this process is to demonstrate and take our first action online. And it's also to begin to carve out some real estate. So you start to feel a little bit of ownership. You may eventually as we grow realized, Hey, this is the wrong website or hey, I need to move into another direction. That's okay, because now you have some momentum. So even if you decide eventually that this website isn't gonna work right for you and I've been through many websites, okay, some ideas went somewhere and some didn't that happens. Oh, the execution will really make a difference for you. And I want to take you to the very basic process of setting up your first website and really the process I go through thinking about ideas and why it's so valuable. I like to start with a blogger for a couple of reasons. Bloggers were close to my heart because that's really how I got into this business. I started off. My story starts off years ago, all the way back. I think in 2007 I started a block where I just wrote about my dating life. It was anonymous. I didn't use anyone's name. They didn't use girls names. I didn't use any specifics. I didn't write about what city I was in, and somehow it started growing popularity. People found it. I have no idea how this was long before I understood Google or how people find websites or anything like that. And over time I developed a following, and eventually I realized the name of that block needed to change. I changed it and became kind of more professional name, and I move forward and eventually my blogged about my dating life, my experiences and turned into giving people advice eventually led me to get a cold call from a publisher asked me to write a book for them. That's how I got into writing cookbooks. So my blog's really how I started. But also blogging is how I learned how to write how to connect with the Internet to find my voice, all things that are very, very valuable. It's like putting your tone to the water, you know, getting that first feel of what it's like. And the process really starts with choosing and name choosing a brand, choosing an idea. And the longer you wait, the more ideas get snapped up. And I've had websites that I really, really wanted, but the name wasn't available. My brand right now is serving a master, and actually I owned this website. I own this name for probably two or three years. I original use it for a couple of small things. And I think I launched a product on it, wrote five or 10 block posts and then kind of let it linger for more than two years and eventually the host I had it on. I don't know what happened. A payment didn't go through. They didn't email me. They deleted the website. It happened The four eyed for five websites hosted with these guys and it all disappeared. I don't know exactly what happens. They said I missed a payment. I don't know because I haven't set to auto pay, but you know how your credit cards expire every four or five years. This is all my credit cards. For some reason, all my credit cards and debit cards. I don't know how this happened. They all expired the same month, one year. I don't know why they're all set to the exact same time instead of being staggered or whatever said. And because I live abroad, I had all these challenges, you know, getting my credit cards, FedEx here and changing things over yada yada. I don't happen, but all of that disappeared, so I had to rebuild it. But when I first I kind of thought of the idea. I went to that period of choosing the right name, and that's really important because it's very personal to you and I've been through different brands and different ideas, and I've kind of dialed into one that I'm really excited about right now, and maybe in three or four or five years I won't be any more like right now. I have no desire to block about my dating life anywhere but with the same person for three years with two kids together and planning on having another kid assumes we can, Maybe next year. That's the direction I'm moving it. So stuff I wanted to block about in my late twenties is not what I want. A block about my mid thirties. I originally my idea was to block about traveling kind of being really free and was much more blawg heavy. So I was gonna write more about traveling more about minimalism, and I had named over there a couple of ideas. I know. I wish I could remember all the ideas I had. I remember I wanted Bloggers without Borders, but some already has that and had a five or 10 names, and I can't exactly explain to you how I came on serve No master. I was really shocked. It was available when I grabbed it. It's one of those names is, like, really strong, and it comes from I saw this gently movie called the One where It's All About How there's like multiple Earths and he goes to every earth and kills is clone because the more versions of him to die, the stronger he gets. So it's a really weird plot when you think about going around other universes and killing yourself. But At some point, he says, I'll serve no master, and I mean, I think he did. Maybe I'm remembering it wrong, but I thought that was a really great line, and that's where the idea comes from. So thanks gently. If that's a line in the movie, I'm not 100% sure, but I think it is. But that's where the idea came from. And so I had this idea, and it kind of grew into what I'm really excited to sharing with you now, right? It's become my brand name. Is podcasting my website saying my book. It's really this idea that all boils down to for me being in control of your life, having no one able to tell you what to do to yell at you, control your time and control your destiny. That's what I think of his freedom. That's my definition of freedom. So when you're picking the first name for your website, you know you'll start off trying to buy your name dot com. My name is Jonathan Green. Okay, that dot com was taken like 2025 years ago. For a while, I held on to Jonathan green dot Emmy and then I let it fade away. I wasn't really using except for one email address. I don't know. There's, like, 50 websites that start off Jonathan Green and this and that, because it's such a common name, I'm not nearly the most famous person with my name. There's a very famous painter has been famous for a long time. Hey does really cool calendars. There's other authors with same name and things like that. So what can you do when you have a really common name? You want to kind of think of a brand. If you have a unique name, maybe you can get your dot com. I do recommend trying to get the dot com the different endings, always having difficult endings. Now that I'm just not in love with, I find that people respect dot com more than dot net or dot organ. I don't know if the other ones like dot L Y. If you have like a really cool name, you think of something cool and ends in l. Y. Then maybe it works, but just grab something, you know, whether it's your name or a brand and the way I do it and have all the links on my website. I have a whole step by step instruction. But you gotta try 10 or 20 names before you find one that is actually available sometimes. And that's the first wall you're gonna hit. Sometimes all of your ideas won't work. Now what I want you to know, this is very important. If you do a search and a cool name comes up and it says available and you don't buy it, somebody else will. Every time you run a search, when you type in a name to see what's available, the website you're typing it into doesn't search its own database. What it does is tap in international database. So it hits, I think, 80 to 120 different places. You can't buy a website that someone else just about five seconds earlier. So they do this tap and they say, Hey, do you have this website and all these other websites? Get the get hit with that and there's certain people not at the organization I used, but it's some of the other registrars. They Every day they look at the list of what has been requested and they see, if anything, cool appears. If anyone had a cool idea of a CIA collecting the person didn't bite, then they just buy it. So sometimes you have an idea. You're going to think about this until tomorrow. You come back to our own, it's gone. So just be aware that that kind of is part of the process. So pick a really great name now. You don't want to make the mistake of buying your website and hosting in the same place. This is how a lot of companies get you. And I have done this in the past. I did. This is my first websites and it's still a problem for me. About 15 years later, the problem never goes away. They have so much control over you in your business that they have you. You're murder their mercy. And you don't want that. All of my domain names that are hosted with this one company are protected because I have hosted it separate places. So when you say they're registered, that's where you kind of have the deed, the deed on the property where you could say this I own this domain name. So the deed for serve no master dot com is held one place, and then the server is the computer that my website lives on. So when you go to visit a website, you actually are visiting a computer and the servers I use all over the world, so I don't know exactly where which computer hip. It's somewhere near you, and that's what sends you the information. That's the website. So the computer, it's on separate. So I recommend you buy one plays, host another to protect yourself, because if anything goes wrong and you have a both of the same company, you lose everything. You can't rebuild. See that building problem? I don't know that happened. With that recurring place, they would have taken the website and the ownership of the name. They would have stolen my property from me. If you get a cease and desist because someone says you stole some content from their website and that happens, right? You think Oh, yours, my image, even if you're not people do that stuff. Sometimes you can really get hurt if your website gets hacked and they start sending out spam, or they start sending out pornography from her Web site without your control of the host, right? The computer company you're paying to take care of your security, they mess up, they'll blame you and shut down your account. They'll freeze your account. If you have your domains host with them, you lose your websites. So that's why you have to take this extra step and the process and all. It takes five minutes. It takes five minutes to point from your registration to the computer and have screenshots of my website have a whole block post show you exactly how to do it. It's very important that this is the first action step you take. I see by your domain and you pick your hosting. I happen to host right now with a company called a small orange. That's just who I host with. I don't have any super favorite hosting company, I can tell you that I had a bad tech support experience with them and it really annoyed me. I was gonna jump companies and then the next day I had a really, really good tech support person that fixed everything before me turned me around with every company We're gonna have ups and downs and governors and batteries. It's just who I actually is, Have you? I've been through probably 10 or 15 different hosts, and that's so I'm using right now. And hopefully you know, if you listen to this recording two or three years in the future, I won't have changed. That's why I recommend you go to my website where have this step by step and all the links for who I use. If I do change house, I'll also change the screen shots and showing you to the process. But once you set up your website, once you invest a little money in your business, you know, registering your your domain name, it's gonna cost you like between seven and $12 just depending on who you use, I use named cheap. It's usually $70 then your monthly with a small orange for your first websites, like three or $5 a month. So you really start of spending 12 or $15. I don't want to spend huge amounts of money, but investing a little money in your first property is kind of a demonstration that you believe in yourself. And so it's okay to take these small steps. I don't believe in spending huge amounts of money to start your business. I don't think it's necessary. I think that when you spend huge amounts of money, it can distract you from efficiency. So you start small installing WordPress. You really just log in and give you your log in to use the quick log in, and there's a button that doesn't solve our press. You click it and installs your website and then you can kind of go in and you have a block set up. You start running block post. It would look pretty similar to my website. It won't look that different. Yes, my website. I have some fancy stuff to the look to it. I've done, you know, some customization to make it look a little bit unique, but will be 90% the same. Okay, you don't have to have the most amazing website to get started, but eventually you could move into that. So now you kind of have your blawg and you can get a feel and you start writing that whatever you're interested, just to feel what it feels like to write online to write something to the world can see to kind of connect with the universe in a powerful way. There are other places where you can write. You can start a tumbler. Blawg. You could start a blogger or on tight pad and these other places, or even a wordpress dot com. The promise if your website is like serving a master dot wordpress dot or you don't own anything. If you start a blawg inside of a Facebook page or something like that, you don't actually own it. I know people. They have 1,100,000 fans for their Facebook pages. Then Facebook just cancels her page. There's nothing you can do. You don't actually own that property. That's why. What have you actually are the owner of you have total control of If you have a block that is not your own domain, then you have this level of vulnerability. You have a lack of control, and that's exactly the opposite of what I believe in. So I want you to have a domain that's your own, and I want to hear about it. Okay, you could post in the notes under this episode, the link to your new website, and I'll check it out, actually read all my comments all the time. I spent more time reading comments than I do so much. Anything else. I love reading comments. I read all the e mails that people send me. Check out the Facebook page whenever people post. So I'm actually really personal interactive with all that. So I'm not a big social media guy, as you may have noticed on my own. Like, I don't just like posting beams all the time. And someone told me their parents. May Mays. I'm not sure stuff. I mispronounced that. I'm sorry. I've never heard anyone say it out loud, except for once, and I wasn't sure that was right. But I do. If you message me, I'll message you back. I do like to be interactive, and I do like to connect with people, so I'd love to see your first block post. I'd love to be the first comment on your block post, So if you post especially your post in the notes below, this episode's on over to find it or you post below the screen shots I read a block post showing at starting block. You posted those locations. I'll be the first person to visit and give your first comment, which is really exciting, that other people listening to radio show other people's sins. Podcast on people who read my books or visit my blogged. They'll go and visit your block tune. You can get some free traffic just by being friends with me, and that's how you can begin to start this journey. It's really exciting when somebody you don't know read something you wrote and leaves a nice comment. It's an amazing feeling. The first time that happens, I want you to experience that. So once you've set up your block and this entire process, honestly, we're talking 20 minutes, tops under 20 minutes under $20 said everything, and then you'll see all the amazing things you could do. You start messing around with design and start messing around with riding posts and seeing all the powerful things you could do. That's where you get started, because once you're in that phase where you're taking action, it becomes very normal to take more X. Instead of reading about another way to start a business, you go. You know what I want to follow a training video and set up a lead capture form. I wanna have a little form where people can join my newsletter. Give me their email address. So you watch a training video in the new implement. So we're learning toe, activate a different part of your brain. I want you to move from listening in to learn By doing so, I want you to be very active. One of the things I know is that when you listen to a podcast, you listen to something like this. You kind of go into a receptive state of mind. You're absorbing knowledge and information from your absorbing my wisdom and my teachings and all of those things, and it kind of makes you a very receptive mode. But instead I want you to be enjoying action mode, which is where you're actually doing something. I want you to see what it feels like to set up a website to set up a block to write a blogger post, have someone leave a comment on your blood post to start messing around with themes and design. Make your blog's like your color and something you own. It's something that you're proud of and you can show to other people. It's a really good feeling to have something that's exciting like that. I can tell you right now that I am constantly redoing stuff on my website. There's all these little spots and hopefully I fixed them all by the time you listen to this. But there's all these little spots on my website where it says, like Laura MIPs, Um, and the looks like it's Latin. It's not actually Latin if you look it up. It's actually set of phrases that people used to use for, to test typesetting, to test the characters. So it's a fake language is not actually Latin. I learned Latin for three years in high school, but it does seem like it's Latin. It looks like it for some reason, but I'm always going through in finding his different sections. I was just going through my members area couple of days ago, and I realized there's these three links that I didn't even realize these images were links. I thought they were just images and they're sending people to pages that didn't actually exist on my website. So is causing. I was getting all these text support emails about some my courses. I was like what are you talking about that pages and exists? And now I figure out what happened. Finally, I'm constantly refining. I'm a big believer in the 80 20 rule, which means that you make something pretty good and keep improving it over time. Your website doesn't have to be perfect before you get that first visitor, don't fall into that trap. It's much more important to get any message other than to get the perfect message out. The sooner you're taking action sooner you train yourself to take actions, connect with the world, get feedback and do do do do things. You know that feeling of doing that's when you become successful in light. There's not really a lot of steps between listening to me and making your first dollar line. If you really listen to the last episode, right talk about how to make money from writing, you could have joined a couple of the Web sites. I have links to where they pay you to write stuff, and you could have gotten a job by today and made your 1st 10 or $20 right The small article for one of the places where you get started. You could have easily done, then taken action. And if that's the path you're going down, your still need to make a website all about riding. Whatever you're doing, you wanna have a website that you're proud of and it takes time and you want to constantly be adding things to it. One of things that I thought really interesting when I was looking for an editor for serving our master. I went and looked at every editors website, A good fight and the things I found were pricing makes no sense in that industry. There's no driver logic to it. One personal say Hail at your book for $80. Tell a person, say $7000. What is it had away? How do I choose between those two? It doesn't make any sense to me. I found that very baffling. So there's no it seems like there's no regulation yet or there's no kind of uniform pricing. People just choose a random number and kind of get there and then, you know, if it's the same thing I can tell you right now, you could build a book as an editor in the same way that I have built up a book and a resume as a writer, and there's certain letters that people would hire over and over again, and then you kind of create your own pricing. If you only work with four or five clients, that's all you need, and you can keep busy full time as an editor. So I think that's an interesting business. But I found it very interesting that the prices sometimes made no sense that say, Oh, it's a smidge for pages, this much forward and the amounts were very different and the prices didn't make any sense to me. I only eat, actually e mailed one editor, and she said she doesn't really do non fiction. So I decided, actually, to use someone that already knew every single website I looked at was terrible. Even people who edited for authors, bloggers and podcasters that I follow their websites were so bad they put no effort into it, and I find that so amazing. If your website is making you money, you should put more time into it, so it first you start your website doesn't matter if it looks that great, but over time, if you're using it to get clients if you're starting to post your resume their or post on your portfolio there. If you work in this editor writer or making videos anything, you should always be improving it. So I don't think you need to be perfect at the gate. But once your website's been up for six months or two or three years, it should really be something you're excited about. There's a lot of parts of my ServiceMaster website that I'm really excited about. There's parts about of it that I think could be better. I'm thinking about changing the shade of green of the little logo where the man's kind of breaking free of the chains. I'm thinking of changing it like two shades, a little bit more of an Aqua Marine green on Lee because that's the design color that appears on the logo for this podcast. When the guy designed the podcast color go Oh, I like that green a little bit more so these little things I think about, but I don't want to spend six months getting the perfect block designed before I write the first post. Don't get caught into that in action. Take action Now What I want you to do today. Go to my website, go to the show notes. I have the link to where the little block was. That shows you step by step. How to separate book. I really want you to take that action. If you're in the car right now, your work. You can't do it to get home. Fine. Make your punishment. You can't listen to the next episode until you get it done. Taken action today. Take that first step and you'll discover it changes you from a researcher and a thinker to endure. And that means you've taken the first step towards the Emerald City. And that's something that gets me very, very excited. To celebrate the launch of this podcast, I'm giving away some epic prizes. You could win an Amazon tap and have me personally turn you into a best selling author toe win. You're part of over $20,000 in prizes. Go to serve no master dot com backslash contest. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Serve No, Master. Make sure you subscribe, so you never miss another episode. We'll be back tomorrow with more tips and tactics on how to escape that rat race head over to serve no master dot com forward slash podcasts Now for your chance to win a free copy of Jonathan's bestseller Serve No, master. All you have to do is leave a five star review of this podcast. See you tomorrow.