The secret to getting ahead is getting started.
Mark Twain
My website has a homepage!
OK. Well, I figured if I was going to make it a habit of routinely writing blog posts, I needed to stop and take some time to configure my website. Upon launching the blog, I hadn’t yet figured out how to set up a homepage or make a menu. Honestly, it’s kind of fascinating how easy WordPress makes it to write a blog but not actually share the platform that houses the blog.
Though I have built a website before, that experience involved using Wix. Which is a real drag-and-drop experience. I’m not sure how you would categorize WordPress, but it takes a significant amount of experience or research to figure it out. Why am I using it? Because it’s in the budget.
What I’m using to build a WordPress Website
Anyway, the last semester I was in nutrition school, I took a class called Communications in Nutrition, or something of the sort. We were encouraged to build our own website, and one of the resources shared with us was this YouTube tutorial on creating a website using WordPress for virtually free. Or as close to free as you can possibly get.
It’s a pretty good tutorial. I have not been able to find a better one. And though I don’t think I could rival the production value, after following it for the third time now, I feel pretty confident that I could write a better-organized tutorial on how to start a website using WordPress. So, maybe I’ll do that someday.
But for right now, I’m just over here trying to do this thing poorly. That might sound weird to some people. It certainly would to different versions of me. But I’m trying to follow the seemingly unanimous advice of all of the smart people who are way ahead of me. Advice like “failure is the key to success,” “if you’re doing it well from the beginning, then you started too late,” “done is better than best,” and so on. So, I’m trying to do that. Getting started is always the hardest part.
Hey, so what’s the purpose of this blog?
If you are one of five people who know this blog exists at the time of writing, you might be asking yourself, “Wait, get started on what, Jessie? Didn’t you tell us you were starting a business? Is that business blogging? I’m super confused why you would need LLC for that.” to which I would say, those are all great questions.
The blog is not the business. The blog is here to document my journey of building the business.
To my husband will, at some point upon learning that I have this blog, inevitably ask, “But is blogging actually the best use of your time?“ To which I will probably respond with a very annoyed look. And then I will hopefully follow it up with, “I did not write this playbook. I am simply following the recipe of countless others who have built something similar to what I want to build.” Jenna Kutcher has a good podcast episode and blog post dedicated to this topic.
My top three reasons for starting a blog?
- To build that content creation muscle.
- To share tips with someone in the same boat and starting from the bottom, like me.
- To build credibility for my big picture goal of creating courses to generate passive income.
More on that last one to come in my next blog post.