How to Create Anything: Part 4
Starting your website... and launching the thing!
As always, my posts are far too long for e-mail format… so click ‘read more’ at the bottom to see the whole thing!
Hello dearest Kula Diaries folks!
I have a bunch of pending questions in the AMA Kula Diaries Google Vault, but I really didn’t want to drop the ball on this series, because it’s something that I am pretty passionate about. This will be the second to last article in the ‘How To Create Anything' series, and it’s a fun one… because we are going to talk about how to start your website so that you can turn your product or idea into a business that generates income… for you and for others!
If you are new to the Kula Diaries, you will want to read the first three parts of this series to get started:
How to Create Anything Part 1 - From No Idea to an Idea
How to Create Anything Part 2 - Tags, Packaging, Prototypes, Clusters and Dance Breaks
How To Create Anything Part 3 - Finding a Place to Make Stuff For You
BEFORE WE GET STARTED, I need to issue a very important WARNING:
I read this post out loud to my husband (I read all of my posts to him before I publish them because it helps me edit them!) and I asked him what he thought. He said that he really liked it… he felt that it was very encouraging and uplifting (the first part of the post is a bit more ‘tech-oriented’… but trust me, keep reading!) In particular, he said liked the part where I talked about what Kula’s sales looked like in the early days, because he felt like it portrayed a realistic peek into the reality of starting a business. As he was listening to me read, he was lying on our guest bed with our cat Esa (pronounced ‘Ace-uh’) sitting next to him. He also added, “But Esa did fall asleep. So, I just want you to know that the post is probably is boring for cats.” So, cat people, please consider yourself aptly warned: your cat might be bored by this post.
To very briefly recap our journey so far… at this part in the process you should have completed and/or contemplated these steps:
Had an idea for what you are creating (either a physical product, service or brand)
Taken steps to make your business ‘real’ - i.e. you have a name, you’ve gotten a business license, you have a separate bank account and are doing some early bookkeeping of expenditures
You have contacted a lawyer to see if you might need a trademark or a patent
You have worked on a logo for your brand, or you are working with a designer to create a logo.
Your brand has a name and you have purchased a domain name (more on that below)
You’ve sourced the materials for your product (or at least some of them)… and you’ve done some basic research on how you are going to produce your product
You have a rough prototype of your product (if needed)
You’ve been considering packaging options for your product (if needed)
You’ve researched and contacted possible factories to make your product (if you have a physical product), and you are working on solidifying that relationship and/or you have the final product in hand.
You have determined how much your product or service costs to make and you have determined the price that you are going to charge for both ‘direct to consumer’ pricing, as well as wholesale pricing (if applicable)
It’s a digital world…
I am not here to tell you how to run your business, because you can do that in anyway that you want to. Which means, that if you do not want to have a website… and if you want to exclusively sell your product at in-person venues and/or though direct human-to-human conversation and contact… you absolutely can do that. Most folks do want to set up a website of some kind, so that’s what we are going to talk about right now.
Once you know the name of your product, and you’ve cleared it with a lawyer for any trademark issues… it’s time to buy a domain name. I usually purchase domain names from Squarespace. To be quite honest with all of you, I’m not sure why I do it this way… I just always have, and I am comfortable with the process. A domain name can cost you anywhere from $12 per year…. to a lot more, depending on the name you choose. If your domain name is not available, you could consider using a different ending than ‘dot-com’. For instance, Oat Haus granola butter uses the website www.Oat.Haus, which is pretty clever. When you are choosing your domain name, make sure it is memorable and that it is going to be relatively easy for folks to remember. For instance, KulaCloth.com is a lot easier to type into a web browser than TheKulaCloth.com. Little things like a ‘the’ on the beginning of your domain name can make a difference, if it isn’t a part of how people usually say the name of your product.
Now that you have a domain name… it’s time to get an online store. One option would be to hire a web developer and to pay them a lot of money to design a completely custom website platform. If you have a significant budget and a need for something that is completely tailored to your specific niche or product, that would be a great option. For the rest of us… there is Shopify. Well, there is also Squarespace and Wix… but I’ve never used Wix and I’ve only used Squarespace for a blog format. Shopify, is, in my opinion, the easiest way to get an e-commerce store set up quickly, easily and efficiently. The first time I set up Kula Cloth’s website, it probably took me a few weeks to get it up and running. A few weeks ago, I set up a very, very basic Milk Run Moto website in under a day. That website is currently more of a placeholder (it’s a work in progress… but I’m planning to launch it ‘for real’ in the next few weeks)… but once you get the hang of setting up the websites, it becomes very intuitive and simple.
A short word on other e-commerce platforms: I do not have any experience using other platforms such as Etsy. If you think that using Etsy is a good option for you, then go for it. I believe that, in the early days of Etsy, it was an amazing platform for creators. However, it has unfortunately become very diluted and hard to distinguish between the ‘real’ creatives and the ‘copycat’ creatives. In addition, having an Etsy store makes it more challenging to create energy around an actual BRAND. Having your own website gives you the ability to really hone in on your voice and message without just trying to randomly flop into somebody’s Esty search algorithm. I know that more and more creatives (artists, writers, etc…) are leaving Etsy and starting their own Shopify stores. I am 100% pro-Shopify (in case you couldn’t tell)… and if you really want to create your own BRAND… I’d highly recommend having your own standalone website. Shopify makes it so easy to do it! And no, I am not paid by them to say this.
There is one other option for online stores that I know about, but am not familiar with. I am sharing this, just so that you can investigate options. Big Cartel is popular amongst artists and makers. Again, I have no experience with it, but it’s another option for you to consider.
Finally… as you begin your Shopify store, I’m just going to plant a tiny, but important seed in your mind: you are going to start building a mailing list. You can integrate this with Shopify to start, but as your mailing list grows, you will want to have a separate mailing list service so that you can effectively send out newsletters to your customers. The most current, popular options are:
MailChimp (I used to use Mail Chimp, but I don’t anymore)
Klayvio (what I currently use for my e-mail marketing)
My current mailing list is well over 150k people, but my ‘engaged’ readership is around 75,000+ people. When I send out my weekly newsletters, I typically send them out to my ‘engaged’ readers. To have a mailing list of over 150,000 people it costs around $1600 per month, as a tidbit of information. This seems ‘expensive’ - but your mailing list is, without a doubt, the most valuable asset that you have as a business owner. Social media is bleh compared to your newsletter. Your newsletter is a group of people who are choosing to keep themselves up to date with what you are sharing. They are your people. Treat them with love and respect and never take that relationship for granted. Behind every single e-mail that you send out is a very real human being. Above all things — never forget that. The most important thing that I do as a business owner every single week (other than mediation, dancing and eating chocolate chip cookies) is… SEND MY NEWSLETTER.
If you are a newbie to the newsletter to the newsletter world, you can start by using a pre-designed template on MailChimp or Klavyio. Remember to add your logo to make it look like YOU. Then, write from your heart. Hate writing? That’s OK too. There are people who can help you. I work with a brilliant, genius, unicorn, angel sent to me from the universe named Oliva who helps me write my newsletters every week. I tell Olivia what I have going on every single week and then she helps me write some of the sections of the newsletter. I write the Founder’s message for Kula every single week. I always write things that are directly from me. If you are just getting started, you don’t need to send a newsletter every single week… just know that it’s probably something you will need to do, so you should, at the very minimum, contemplate it a little bit.
The basics of Shopify:
There is nothing that I can tell you here that you would not be able to find in Shopify’s extensive educational library about how to set up your store. But, in a nutshell, you will need to transfer your Domain name from the place where you bought it (i.e. Squarespace)… to Shopify. This happens by magic when you cut and paste random numbers and snippets of code in a section of your Squarespace (or similiar) website called ‘DNS Settings’. As you can see, my technical jargon is limited to words like ‘magic’ and ‘random numbers’ … I don’t write these things to dumb myself down… that is my actual understanding of how this technology works… and so I am telling you that to simply say…. If I can figure this out, I promise you, it is not difficult. I am a person who is still mostly unable to figure out how to use a remote control to turn on a television… so, if I can start an e-commerce store, I know you can too.
Once you start your Shopify account you will get a free trial for a couple of weeks. During this time, you can select the theme for your store, which is basically what determines the layout and appearance of your online store. Then, you can delete or add sections to your store as needed… upload photos of your product… and create banners to go on your website so that it looks beautiful. You can do this on Canva, or you could hire an artist to help you. Keep in mind that your website banners need to be created in such a way that they look beautiful on a desktop computer and a cell phone. This means that most of the imagery needs to be visible in the center of the banner, so that it doesn’t get cut off on a cell phone (most people are probably visiting your website on a cell phone!).
This is the current Kula Cloth homepage:
And this is what it looks like on a cell phone:
When I first started the Kula Cloth website, I didn’t have a designer… so I did everything by myself… on Canva. If that’s where you are right now — that’s amazing. You are in a magical place of creation where you are figuring it out, and a few years down the road when you look back and tell stories about your very first website banners that you made with Canva… you’ll feel a deep since of pride about it. Because not knowing how to do something didn’t stop you.
Remember how I said that we all start somewhere? It’s true. Wherever you are right now… it’s perfect. You are doing great and you do not need to know all the answers. You do not need to launch your website and expect it to be perfect on day one. You are a true creator. You are building this from the ground up, and that is an important part of your story.
This is one of the first banners that I used for the Kula Cloth website when I first launched it in 2018:
That’s a photo of my good friend Mallory, the founder of Youer who went snowshoeing with me and let me take some photos of her. For reference… these banners are 2000 x 600 px in size. In case you want to dig deeper into image sizing, you can use this reference sheet linked here as you are creating your own website images.
And here’s another banner that I made on Canva that same year:
These are very simple banners… but you know what? They worked! I had 850 orders in my initial pre-sale launch, and my banners worked for a couple of years until my amazing Creative Director Amanda arrived in the Kula world and started helping to ‘beautify’ my website. Keep in mind, as you begin this process, that there is nowhere you need to be except exactly where you are. It’s easy to look at other people who are ‘further’ along in the process… it’s easy to look at ‘really put together’ websites and to feel a twinge of imposter syndrome. See if you can, when you notice those feelings, let them go. Let them go like a drifting cloud, and come back to focusing on what you are doing… why you are doing it… and what really matters to you.
A few more random things
Once you have your Shopify store set up, you will be able to go in and edit important things like your return policy, contact page, and terms of service. Shopify is fantastic, because they will give you samples of each of these pages so that you can use their existing verbiage and then edit it to suit your needs.
Shopify is going to walk you through almost everything that you need in order to be successful at running an online store. Just keep ticking off the steps until you have a functioning website.
Other things that you’ll need (if you are doing your own fulfillment) :
A label printer - I use this one.
Labels for the label printer - I use these.
Packaging and shipping materials - I purchase mine from EcoEnclose. The items you need to ship your product will greatly depend on what you are shipping (for instance - if you have a fragile product, you will obviously need more than just a recycled poly bag).
Any extras that you want included in your orders. Currently, I include a Kula sticker + a cute Kula postcard in each order + a temporary creepy cat tattoo.
If you are thinking to yourself, “But how do I get a sticker or a postcard?”. I designed all of those on Canva too. I print my stickers at Sticker Mule and I print my postcards from Vistaprint. You don’t have to include these… but if you want to… now you know where to get started!
Once you have your website set up and are ready to accept orders and money… it’s time to enter the launch code! And by that, I mean, that it’s time to extremely anti-climactically ‘publish’ your website so that the rest of the world can see that it exists.
If you had been in my guest room on July 20, 2018 at 12 pm, you would have witnessed the dramatic launch of Kula Cloth. I was sitting at a TV tray that I was using as a desk. My stomach was twisted in knots and I felt nauseated. I winced as I hit the ‘publish’ button on my website… and that was it. Kula Cloth was suddenly a real website. There was no applause… no fanfare… it just happened. And nothing about me changed. It felt very reminiscent of Y2K (for anybody who remembers the excitement from the year 2000)… we all waited with baited breath for the entire internet and the planet to self-implode… and then nothing really happened. Well, that was what it felt like to launch a website.
Launching and Urgency
Let’s talk about deadlines… urgency… and arbitrary launch dates. I realized this very early on in my business… NOBODY CARES. Nobody cares about my launch date. Nobody cares if my newsletter is a day late. Nobody cares about the date I’m launching my neck gaiter. If I don’t launch it on the exact date that I say that I’m going to launch it… literally nothing happens. The only thing that does happen when we victimize ourselves to arbitrary dates and numbers is that we self-impose urgency and stress on ourselves. People (including you) are amazing, beautiful, multi-faceted beings that are doing their best just to get through their own life. When I send out a newsletter or launch a new product… people will find out about it when I do that… and then they can decide (on their own), whether or not they want to read something or purchase something. I can ‘hype’ up a launch or a sale… but, chances are, the second after somebody reads about the new Kula product that is launching… they probably forgot about it, because they remembered that they need to do their laundry.
This is not a bad thing. This is a very good thing. Because it means that you can let go of the stress of imposing strict, unwavering deadlines on yourself. Take a deep breath. Things are going to launch when they launch. It might not be exactly when you wanted it to happen… but you can also choose to trust that it is happening when it is meant to happen.
I also want to make it clear that what I’m not saying is that you should just lay around and do nothing. Absolutely not. What I am saying, is that you should hold your dates loosely and release yourself from the stress of hitting arbitrary deadlines that were made up by you. There are ‘deadlines’ within a business, but to be completely honest, most of them are not very important. Sure, maybe you have an event on certain date — so, of course, you will need to have certain tasks accomplished by that date… but, in general, we are the ones creating the stress and the urgency that we feel in our own lives. Keep in mind that there is a difference between being frazzled and being in the flow. I usually give myself deadlines, because they can be helpful for planning purposes… but I will only keep them if I can manage to use them to my creative advantage. If I find myself getting frantic, stressed, overwhelmed or nearing a point of self-implosion… the deadline needs to be adjusted.
This was a really hard shift for me, if I’m being honest. When I first started Kula… everything felt urgent. I lived in a world of needing to get more product… have more product… sell more product… launch more product… etc… It was incredibly exhausting and I’m still in a phase of recovering from that state of constant stress and anxiety. When I was in the ‘thick’ of it, I lived in a frenzied state of panic that told me (incorrectly) I needed to be doing something at all times… or I was probably falling behind or failing. But, behind on what? Failing at what? It was all made up in my mind.
If you find yourself getting sucked into urgency - it’s OK. It’s also completely normal, and there will be some of it, especially in the beginning. But, if you want to do this for the long haul… if you want to make this a sustainable way to live your life… you cannot maintain a high level of stress and simultaneously feel a sense of freedom, connection and love to the world around you. The sooner that you can cut the ties to the sense of importance that you grant to things outside of yourself… and the more quickly that you can see that the important things are the sense of love that you can generate in each moment… I promise you this: Your business will flourish beyond your wildest dreams and not only that…. you will flourish too.
All of this being said… it’s ironic that I will now say this: You still need to launch your business. Ha! How’s that for irony? But… it’s true. You need to launch it, and you get to decide what that will look like for you.
What did it look like for me? For me, it looked like a post on my personal Facebook page where I non-ceremoniously announced that I had created this product and was launching it… and then I shared the link to my website. That was it. At the time I launched Kula Cloth, my online hiking and backpacking Facebook group probably had around 1,000 members… I had an Instagram following of around 100 people on my personal Instagram page… and probably a few hundred people on my personal Facebook page. I started an Instagram for Kula Cloth, but it only had around 26 followers at the time I launched the website.
Ok… now what?
I’m going to end this post with an important tidbit of advice, because I genuinely believe in you, and I believe in your idea, whatever it is. First off, take another deep breath. You’ve done something pretty cool… and you’ve taken it further than you’ve ever taken one of your ideas before… and that is pretty amazing. As a fellow former idea-giver-upper, I know what it is like to actually get something to the point of making it a real thing — it’s a huge deal, and it probably has pushed you beyond limits that you knew were possible for you.
It is pretty overwhelming, exhausting, exciting and terrifying to launch something. It feels like you’ve just put your entire heart and soul into something that you really believe in… and now, you are going to pluck your heart and soul out of your chest and lay them on a platter and then show that platter to anybody who will look at it. Some people are going to line up to look at that platter and they are going to cringe. Some people will refuse to look at the platter. Some people are going to look at the platter and they are going to love what they see. Keep in mind: it’s about the platter… it’s not about you.
When you first launch your business, It’s also easy to fall into the trap of expecting things to go crazy viral almost instantly. I’ve seen so many people start something… and then quit almost immediately, when their idea or product isn’t successful right away. If I can give one piece of unsolicited advice let it be this one:
It is so easy to focus on the lack of results… or the lack of an audience… or the lack of sales. If you’ve been here for awhile, you’ve probably read or listened to the post where I talked about the metaphor of the satellite beacon. And when you focus on the lack of what you think you should have right now… guess what your internal satellite beacon is saying? It’s saying: SHOW ME MORE OF A LACK OF THESE THINGS.
In the very beginning of Kula Cloth, it was a busy day if I sold more than 4 Kulas. There were many, many days when I sold zero Kulas. Even before Kula Cloth, when I launched my coaching class called Stuck to Summit (I think some folks here might have even taken one of those classes - if so, thank you so much for supporting me so early on in my journey!!), I had zero people sign up for the first class I offered. ZERO. PEOPLE. Only 2 people signed up for my 2nd backpacking class. Zero people purchased the stickers I designed and tried to sell. I gave them all away instead.
It would have been so, so terribly easy to quit and walk away and say, “Well, that didn’t work out.” But, you know what? I walked away from everything I wanted to do for most of my life… and I wasn’t going to do it again. It had never materialized into anything when I walked away… and I was always left with a nagging question I couldn’t answer: What would have happened if I had just stuck with it?
In the next post in this series, we are going to jump into a new way of marketing your business… and a new way of approaching building an audience. I can assure you this: it is going to be easy, fun, and organic. The most important thing that you need to know and do right now is this:
Go have fun. Don’t worry about things that aren’t going to matter in a couple of months. None of this is super serious - it’s only your thoughts about it that are making you think it is serious. We are all floating on an orb in space in an infinite cosmos. Yesterday, while I was lying in bed, I felt a small earthquake. That’s right… the earth beneath me literally shook because some unfathomably deep fault under the crust of our planet moved a little bit. The smallness of my existence on this planet was placed on display for me to see. Meanwhile, I could have been freaking myself out about pee cloth sales and the engagement rate on my last newsletter or the number of people who unfollowed me on Instagram… and you know what? None of that matters. We want to think that it matters, and we are told that it matters, but it doesn’t. You know what does matter? That I saw the sunrise this morning. You know what does matter? That I spent the entire weekend with my husband. Those are the things that are equal to the energy of the business and life that I want to create. It might seem like you aren’t being productive by doing those things… but friends, I assure you, taking care of you and doing the things that feel good and fun in your heart are the most important things of all. I don’t know what those things look like for you — it might be as simple as listening to the rain… or peeking out of your window and looking at the sky… or dancing in the kitchen to your favorite song. But, for right now, in the very early stages of your business… do yourself a favor and prioritize how you feel above everything else.
When you start a business or create a product, you have the chance to do something pretty remarkable. You have the chance to reach out and touch the lives of other humans on this planet. That is not something that I take lightly. It is not something I take for granted. It is such a beautiful and wonderful gift, and not a day goes by when I am not grateful for the existence of Kula in my life. Keep in mind that wherever you are in the process of starting your business — you will get to where you want to go, but only when you can find the feeling of love and abundance in your heart now. Those are not things that will come at a later time once you are selling more products. You must find the feeling now… and let that feeling bubble up inside you. Let it permeate everything you do… even when there is no proof. The proof will show up. The proof is a reflection of your heart… of the good and kindness within you… and of the beauty and abundance of this living, breathing universe that has the power to move mountains. You have that power within you too. You absolutely can create anything.
Friends, thank you so much for being here — and thank you so much for reading this series so far. I know that it is probably very unlike most traditional entrepreneurial advice you may have read, and I want you to know that it is up to you to decide what is going to work for your business. Above all things - trust yourself … and please know that I will always be here, cheering you on.
Love,
Anastasia
P.S. I’ll be back in a couple of days with a new discussion thread… and another post on Sunday. Can’t wait!
P.S.S. Want me to write or share about anything else? You can anonymously submit a comment, question or anything else using the Kula Diaries Google Vault.
The video that literally nobody asked for. Just remember not to take yourself very seriously.
Wow! This was a great read! I feel like you are talking directly to ME. I needed to hear all of this. Thank you thank you thank you!
Incredible! Thank you, I’m so happy to have run across you here on Substack! 😍