I was asked recently how I took my business global. This is of particular interest for new people, new web developers and new web designers entering the market and also to people in my home country, South Africa, who offer services that they think might be able to be translatable or sellable in a global market and aren't quite sure how to actually go about doing that. So I am talking you through the same steps that I followed to take my business to a global market

Nine out of 10 times, if I see people that have a wonderful product that I think would do well internationally and the only thing holding them back is typically their mindset. So here is how to change that:

Really, what you need to do is get yourself a...

Read more about my journey here.

Hi, this is Chantal from one day webs. And this is your shamelessly quick check podcast. You asked me about my story about how I took my business, my web design business and went global with it. This is of particular interest for new people, new web developers and new web designers entering the market, but also to people in my home country, South Africa, who offer services that they think might be able to be translatable or sell-able in a global market and aren't quite sure how to actually go about doing that. So my story is really quite simple. First of all, I have an online business so that is a big benefit when you wanting to go global certainly is Very easy to do to change to a global model and to attract global clients. But really what it boils down to at the end of the day, if you do have a product that is sell-able in the global market is mindset. Nine out of 10 times, if I see people that have a wonderful product that I think would do well internationally, the only thing holding them back is typically their mindset. And really, what you need to do is get yourself a very good coach, talk through it with a good coach or a sounding board, somebody that's a good sounding board and has a good business head on their shoulders, make the decision and just go for it. You know, not so long ago, maybe four years ago, my target clients, my ideal clients and my typical clients were in the South African market, often in the town that I live in or the city that I live in Durban and so was a very small and very focused market.

Our exchange rate is not very favorable against the dollar. So at the time, I was building websites full on websites for in the region of C300, which sounds absolutely nuts to anyone in the international market listening to this, nobody would spend their time and wouldn't be able to spend very much time at all building a website for you know, $300 or even less than that. And that's really what my rate was in the South African market. Fast forward to today and a very basic five page brochure style website I now charge over $1500 for so that's quite a big difference. And I am busier now than I was then the work is easier to get now than it was then. It's really quite crazy when you think about it, but it's not that difficult to go global. Here are my top steps of what I would recommend if you're considering taking your business global, whether it's an online business, whether it's a web business or whether it's something else you feel you can take global. First of all, obviously, get your mindset right, as I said, believe that you can do it believe that your product is something that will have appeal internationally and go for it. Number two, put yourself in the places where your ideal clients are on an international level. So the easiest way to do this is facebook, facebook groups, Facebook pages, go and hang out in the places where your ideal clients, your ideal international clients are hanging out and start helping there, spend a couple of hours a day yes, it needs a time investment. Spend a couple of...

Let's talk about the worst case scenario ... being hacked. We spoke recently about whether or not you need to keep your website up to date. And something I didn't focus on was what can happen if you don't keep your website up to date. I try not to scare monger when it comes to clients and I try not to make you know the worst case scenario sound like a likely scenario because it really isn't. But it does happen. It just happened over the weekend to one of my clients. So I'm going to talk a little bit about the worst case scenario so that you know exactly why you need to do those updates.

How bad would it be for your business if not only did your website go down, but your emails started being blocked?

Pretty bad, right? Please prioritise updating your website, it is your first line of defence and very necessary.

Links to things mentioned in this podcast:

• Get the free Website Care Plan guide to get information about how to update your website ... https://www.1daywebs.com/website-care-plan/
• Sign-up for a Website Care Plan here ... https://www.1daywebs.com/website-care-plan-start/

Hi, this is Chantal from one day webs. And this is your shamelessly quick check podcast. Let's talk about the worst case scenario - being hacked. We spoke recently about whether or not you need to keep your website up to date. And something I didn't focus on was what can happen if you don't keep your website up to date. I try not to scare monger when it comes to clients and I try not to make the worst case scenario sound like a likely scenario because it really isn't. But it does happen. It just happened over the weekend to one of my clients. So I'm going to talk a little bit about the worst case scenario so that you know exactly why you need to do those updates. Why you need to prioritize that. And if you don't have the time or the skill to prioritize it, why you need to outsource it. So this is a a scenario, I wouldn't say it's a likely scenario. Again, it's not something that's guaranteed to happen if you don't keep your website up to date. I'm not here to scare monger you. But it is a possible outcome. So worst case scenario, you haven't been keeping your website up to date, and what happens, you get hacked. You may not even know you've been hacked until it happens a few weeks later. And what can happen is your website can go down or it can start redirecting to some random website selling some sort of medical whatever. Basically, it can just do some really undesirable things. Now imagine if you've got a membership site, you've got people logging into your website, and they can't access the content that they're paying you for. This is an awful, awful outcome. This is what happened to one of my clients this weekend. So you really, really need to keep your website up to date. And most especially if you have an e commerce store or you have a membership website, or you have a website, you're blogging on often.

What can happen if your website is hacked? Well, you can lose it. If it's a bad enough hack and it can't be cleaned. You can lose your website - all those months, weeks years of work can go away. If your hack can’t be cleaned. That would be an awful outcome. What else can go wrong? Your domain can be blacklisted because Google pics up that there are all sorts of untoward malware, etc. on your website, and you get blacklisted. They are loads and loads of blacklisting companies and one by one, they add your website to it. Okay, so your website goes down because it's blacklisted. What's the big deal? Well, this affects your email as well, because now your whole domain is blacklisted. So suddenly you emails on going through to clients, because when you try and send them an email, their email hosting...

Not knowing who your ideal client is, and who you talking to, in what voice, before you even begin your project. If you don't know who your client is, and you don't know what they want to hear from you, the chances are you going to go completely down the wrong road with your DIY website.

No clear call to action. What do you want the person to do on your website. If you don't know who you're talking to, you probably don't know what you want them to do either. These are things you have to think about before you even start trying to DIY your website.

Thinking your website is about you! Oh my goodness… Unfortunately we all fall into this trap. We all want our website to be all about us. We want it to be everything we love, the colors we love, the fonts we love, the beautiful words we love, etc. But it's not about you. It's all about your clients. It's a common common mistake people building websites for themselves and not thinking about what the clients want and who their clients are.

Choosing the wrong base. So this can happen quite frequently, especially if you haven't given thought to your medium term goals or your long term goals for your online business. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - What are you going to do about that? How easy will it be for your VA to edit once you grow your business and you have a team of VAs working underneath you? All these sorts of questions needs to be thought about before you decide what base you're going to build your website on. So before you jump into that Squarespace landing page, think about where you're going with your business and whether the square space website will be able to actually achieve those goals you think you may be wanting to achieve in a year's time.

Taking advice from the wrong people or not doing your own research. Whilst I love your auntie Sue or cousin Bob's nephew who's building amazing websites from his garage, he may not be the correct person to take advice from when it comes to building your coaching website, for example. So definitely do some research and take advice from people who are already doing what you want to be doing, or who service people who are doing what you want to be doing.

Being distracted by shiny things. Oh my goodness, I'm very much guilty of this one. I love all the new shiny things. I'm constantly trolling Facebook groups and finding all sorts of new shiny things to try out. Much like the old adage of before you walk out the door, take something off, The same applies in your website. So don't go down the trap of installing every new shiny tool that you come across. Give it some thought and only install what you really, really need because the last thing you want is a slow website that's bloated and overloaded with shiny things that are not necessary for your clients.

Bad or no copy. So this is the last thing that many many people think about. You'll often see people going and having amazing branding shoots done coming up with great products or services that they're offering. And they don't pay any attention to the copy. Or even worse, they have a homepage or a sales page that's really just made up of images and headings. You need to add copy, you need to sell your service, you need to tell your story, and you need to make it appealing for everybody to read.

Talking about features over benefits. Do not talk about all the features that you are going to offer in your service or your product. People don't really care about features, they care about the benefit to them. So what do I mean by that? They don't care that they're getting a free PDF that teaches them XYZ. They care that the PDF is going t...