Chapter 1: Ground-Zero
Your Wealth Building Goals
What is the one goal that unites most business owners and entrepreneurs? Most people who brave the ruthless but rewarding world of business do so in order to build wealth.
If you’ve heard of the wealth tripod (thanks to Brandon Turner), then you already know that business is a fantastic way to build wealth at a much faster rate than a salaried position at your local mega-corp. We won’t dive into the details of why this is true, but there is a good bit of evidence to back it up and it’s all based on simple to understand, but critical, math.
When we think of wealth building, we consider two factors - assets and debts. Wealth building, in a nutshell, can be thought of as your personal arms race between these two factors. If you have more assets than debts, you are winning. If not, then you need to increase your pace.
Tip: Remember that Net Worth = Assets – Debts
Your goal is to build your business assets in order to increase your personal assets. The most valuable assets are those that grow automatically - they make money for you without requiring you to expend any more resources (time, cash, mental/emotional energy). This is the foundation of the passive income idea.
So, where does your website come in? That is what this guide is for - to talk about how your website fits into your business model and how you can truly leverage the power of the web to achieve your wealth building goals.
As we will soon see in detail, your website should be thought of as a piece of highly tuned, automatic wealth-building machinery. Our objective is to help you understand, fundamentally, what the web is best at and how you can leverage the most current technologies. We will walk through a number of features that we believe are essential to every modern website if you want to see a real return on your investment. We’ll start at ground-zero - what does every website actually do?
What Your Website Actually Does
The average person has some idea of what websites do, and you, being above average, probably have an even better idea. You may be somewhat familiar with the topics we will discuss, but when it comes to developing an actual web strategy for a serious enterprise, do you know how to leverage today’s web technology?
Understanding what the web is capable of and navigating the complex terrain of new technology and implementation is vital to the long-term success of every small business owner.
The internet is very good at accomplishing one task - transmitting information from point A to point B. That's it. Often people overcomplicate the idea of the internet because we think of the web as a complex entity due to the vast quantity of information that it contains. A more granular view of the web will help us navigate its seeming complexities and give us a reference point when we need to make sound, forward thinking business decisions.
So, we can get info from A to B. Great. How does this help us make progress?
Think of it this way. The web lets us take information in any form that we choose from our brain (point A) and send it to a potential customer's brain (point B). This is invaluable. All we have to do is:
- Get the right information on our website.
- Get the right people to see the website.
Internet marketing is as simple as that, but this simplicity is not necessarily easy.
Our goal is to give you an independent understanding of web technology so that you, as the business owner or manager, can make high level decisions based on a solid understanding of what is happening at the ground floor. Think of me as your personal Web Technology Advisor, whose sole job it is to give you the best information available so that you can make the best financial long-term decisions.
So now we know what, fundamentally, websites do, let’s look at an analogy that will help us understand how to maximize our leverage of the web.
Your Website as Machinery
I find it helpful to think of a website as a machine. Machines are something that we understand and see every day. The internet and websites can seem very abstract and unreal, which can make it hard to formulate concrete ideas around how to construct a website for your business. You might think that you understand what you need, but it’s probably based on someone else's idea of what a website should be (trends, etc.).
When I picture a website, I think of it as a very powerful, optimized jet engine. Now, I know that jet engines themselves can seem complex, but I bet if you stop to think about it and picture an airplane in your mind with the jet engines on the side, you already know a lot about them. In fact, you already know everything about jet engines that you will need to know for this analogy to be helpful, I promise.
What is the purpose of the jet engine? To move the aircraft forward. How does it do this? When you look at the engine running, you can see the turbine blades at the front spinning.
You’ve probably heard of things getting sucked into the turbines (birds, tools, etc) and that's because the jet engine’s fan blades spinning causes air from the surroundings to be sucked into the engine.
This is important because engines need air to be mixed with the jet fuel in order for the most powerful explosion to occur inside the engine. This explosion, in short, is what you need to drive the engine (and the aircraft attached to it) forward. That's all you need to know.
Your website can be thought of as a jet engine. The whole objective of the machine (let's call it a web engine) is to induce motion, and to do so repetitively. This is what machines excel at - taking inputs and turning them into controlled, repeatable outputs.
Your web engine will:
• “Take in” potential customers that are browsing the world wide web.
• Immediately Impress them.
• Feed them expertly crafted content (that's the jet fuel!).
• Add a tiny spark (a call to action).
• And repeat the process ad nauseum
The person’s response to that call to action (an email, phone call, or purchase) is the output. That simple process is how you get your web engine moving to take you where you want to go.
The best part is, you can engineer your web engine so that the output is exactly what you need it to be! Just as aerospace engineers develop specifications for aircraft, we can specify which technology, components and information are present on your website in order to optimize for and achieve your specific goals.
Just like a jet engine, a website is a machine that you can build once, and although it will need maintenance and service and a continuous supply of proper inputs, it will continue to perform its designated function repetitively. This means that when you have an optimized, well-designed web engine, you have an asset that is tuned to create passive income. Achieving specific business goals with your web engine directly translates to achieving your personal wealth building goals.
Tip: You can design your web engine to specifically accomplish your business and wealth building goals.
Throughout the rest of the guide we will be looking at each of the specific web engine components that are essential for every website. At the end, you will understand what the components are, why they are essential, and have actionable tasks to move toward web success.