How to Improve My Personal Brand Website

0:00I'm in the middle of updating the money lab website and turning it into my personal brand website. And I have a few questions that I want to ask in this on how can I take and possibly even rethink how a website even functions. What is the purpose of a website? Any more, especially in today's day and age, like who's going to a website? I have to ask a few questions. The first question, the biggest question is, what is the main goal of the website? All right, so when I was running money lab, the main goal, there were so many different things that money lab the website did, moneylab.co. And I had I had challenges and blog articles. I had or they were all just articles, you know, posts, WordPress posts. I had specific like marketing pages like I had

1:06my email marketing page, which got a lot of subscribers because it like went a little kind of like mini viral. I had like my personal business timeline thingy. These were like little just viral landing pages, my podcasting page, etc. So I also yeah, I had my podcast page, I had my about page, I had, you know, the blog posts. I had a lead magnet where you could like subscribe to my newsletter, but then also get this like landing page lead magnet that I built. And I was selling courses, I had money like pro, I had all these different things and I was trying to build out like this whole infrastructure on like what money lab was as a brand. This is a little different. This is just me as a person. And I sometimes think that websites are overly complicated now because

2:10they kind of had to be. But now since everyone is consuming content outside of websites, like how often I'm just like truthfully, how often are you on your phone in either like the safari app or whatever? Like how often are you really there? The probably the only reason you're there, at least for me, the only reason I'm there is to Google things and to read like news sites that I'm already familiar with. Or you know, the thing I use it for the most is I'm watching TV and I'm like, oh, what else was that actor in? And I'll look it up or I'll say, oh, what's the name of that person in this movie? I'll look up the movies to the cast list. That's sort of guy that's like mainly what I use safari for. Like I'm never in safari. I'm more in the native social media apps, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, what have you? Email even. That's where I live in like I live in

3:17apps on my phone, not websites. Now on my computer, that's different. When I'm on my desktop, I'm using what is it? Chrome. And I'm on websites because that's where the apps are for me, right? Like that's where kit is and transistor and the tools that I use to run my business, which is mainly why I'm on my computer. Very rarely. In fact, even YouTube, when I'm on my computer, I go through the web browser to access YouTube and to access Instagram and Facebook and all the social media sites. I do not use apps on my computer, right? But where am I using and consuming content more? Am I consuming content while I'm sitting on my computer or am I consuming it on my phone? And the truth is, is I'm consuming content on my phone. So this is why I think we are seeing

4:26a shift perhaps. This is just a guess why we're seeing a shift away from blogs and into newsletters because newsletters, the content now exists within an app and that app is email. So it could be a Gmail app, your native email app or whatever, that's where you are consuming content or it's on a YouTube app or an Instagram app or whatever. When it comes to using tools for getting work done, you are on a computer and you are accessing a website, right? You're using a web-based application, which is why I kind of think it's stupid to have like, if I don't know if this is true, but if Kit had an app to like create emails, I doubt anybody would use it because it's a complicated tool that requires like a keyboard and you know a big screen and all those things. So

5:30this is kind of important because the question I have is how will people find my website? So the first question I have is what is the goal of a website in this scenario? And I think if I have the goal, how will people find it and what do I want them to do when they find it? Okay, so thinking about that, let's, I mean this is like such a big, I feel this is such a big question and it's crazy to me, but okay, let's just, here's kind of, here's what I hate. I'm going to say something that I hate and I want to avoid it. I think hamburger navigation is fucking stupid. Obviously, everyone knows or at least everyone who is internet literate understands

6:30that the hamburger icon, which is like three horizontal lines that you usually see at the top right or left of a website. If you were to click that, a window pops out and you see your whole navigation. Like everyone again who is literate understands this concept, but think about how stupid that is. When every app on your, in the reason, by the way, the reason we have the hamburger is because of mobile phones. Mobile phones are smaller screens. We can't have the big navigation at the top of the page. So we have to create sub navigation. So we've basically added a button to access a larger navigation, which is still compact. So it's like, oh, there are two ways to solve this, I think. One is again, you've created a point of friction

7:32to access a navigation, which the, the user has to understand that mechanism and how it works to access it, which I think is really stupid. Okay. The second thing you could do is just have no navigation, which is kind of where I'm headed, is why do we need multiple pages? Why not just put all the pertinent information on one page and just come up with a better way to organize it? Or the three is that you have navigation, but you have it limited navigation. And you put it in the spot where all mobile navigation goes, which is easily accessible at the bottom. Think about it. Why are hamburgers at the hardest place to reach on your screen? If you have a phone, like, I have a iPhone 16 Mac, so I have the biggest iPhone. If my hamburger icon is at the

8:36top right or left of my device, I can't reach that with my thumb. So I'm never hitting it. Like, you're making me use two hands to use your website and you're making me click to navigate. Just to open the navigation and then I have to click again. Instead, put the net, like, instead limit the navigation to four or five things and put it at the bottom and make it visible and sticky, like all other apps. Very few websites do this, by the way. Instead, they create like sticking a sticky nav in a hamburger bar at the top. And I'm like, I can't even reach it. Dumb, I think. You know, if you don't, if you're not buying that, let me know. Shoot me an email, madditchofinesi.com. So I'm thinking, first off, what's the main goal of the website?

9:45So I have a couple. One is I want people to know about this podcast. Now my original site, the money lab site, had a podcast page. So it would be moneylab.co.slash podcast. And that podcast link to access that page was in the navigation at the top. So you would have to land on my homepage and click another button to know that I have a podcast and to access it and subscribe. Okay. So if my main goal was to get you to subscribe to my podcast, why wouldn't that be on the homepage? Why wouldn't that be? And then that homepage is linked everywhere because that's the big question is how will people find it? Well, people find it probably not through SEO,

10:45because I don't do any SEO on moneylab. So you're probably not finding it by googling, although I'm sure you could Google my name and my website would come up. And you know, when you click that, there you are, right? But probably more people are going to find out about my website through my social media profile or just social media in general because I'll create one link and I will use that link over and over and over again. And I want to direct people to one place to get them to take one action based around something that would interest them. So that's, you know, that's the reason for having the page and that's how people will find it, I think. So because of that, I kind of feel like a navigation is dumb. So again, going back to the goals, I want people to know

11:48about my podcast. I have articles, but they're dated and I don't plan on writing more articles, although I want to have the option to write more articles. So I guess I want people to find articles, but it is a very second or tertiary goal. I want people to subscribe to the newsletter and okay, if that's what I want, that makes more sense to me as the main goal because technically I could create if somebody subscribes to my email list. A couple of things. One, I think you are more likely to subscribe to email than subscribe to a podcast. My gut says, not everybody listens to podcasts. Not everybody watches YouTube videos, but I kind of feel like everybody likes newsletters

12:55in some way because it is a communication platform that can be long or short. It's kind of flexible. Also, the content you consume is native to your phone's email app. So for me, I kind of feel like email would be the best thing because what I could do is when you subscribe via email, which is you literally go into my website and taking one single action, a very transactional action, because you are exchanging an email address and I am now, I now have that email address and I need to treat that with respect and I can track it. I can know how well the page is performing that action. It's so very clear. The transactional nature of is so obvious. As opposed to if I just were promoting my podcast, I have no idea how many people

14:01click those links and actually subscribe. Like I can't measure that. But what I can do is collect your email address and set up an automation that sends you an email that tells you the podcast exists. Do you technically need, and this is a thought, do you technically need to go to a website and listen to an episode on on a webpage before you subscribe. Because think about it. You get a podcasting up and they're like, oh, you just embed the podcast player on your website. Okay. Well, one, if I'm consuming, if I'm consuming the content via my phone, if I'm on my phone, excuse me, if I'm on my phone, you make me click a link in the email, which takes me to a website, which has a play button, which means I have to play it through a website.

15:03That's a pretty awful experience. Wouldn't it be better if you told me, and I don't know how to do this, but hear me out, wouldn't it be better to have links for, let's say, Apple and Spotify in the email? And so when you click those links, it would open up the Spotify app or the podcast app natively on your phone and take you to my podcast where you can subscribe because you're already using that. That's a, I think that's a better experience than first taking you to a website, and then making you click a separate button, like you're adding friction. So my question is, does the podcast even need to exist on my website? Do people even need to know? Well, I guess my question is, and I don't know the answer to this, do people search for what podcast

16:11to listen to via Google? I would argue, no. I would say all podcasts come from, or all podcast listeners, specifically just audio, come from some type of recommendation engine. That could be a physical recommendation of a friend telling you, hey, you should listen to this podcast. It's pretty good. It could be in person or online. It could be your listening to a podcast in the podcasting app of your choice, and that app is recommending other podcasts that you might like, and you just, I don't know, give it a try. Maybe you're already familiar with the person, and you find out through them being on some other podcast that they have a podcast, and you go, oh, you go to the podcast app, you search their name, and you find their podcast. So, or you're in another recommendation engine, like YouTube, or you show up to your for,

17:18for you page, whether that's TikTok or Instagram or whatever, or even YouTube, and you're like, oh, I got a clip, or oh, this podcast appeared on my feed, let me watch. Okay, that podcast exists. Great. I think that zero people use Google to find podcasts. So, the question is, does my website even need a podcast page? And I would argue, no, it does not. However, people do need to know that the podcast exists, and I think the best way to do that is through a recommendation engine, and that recommendation engine should be probably email, or again, word of mouth, or God forbid me going on other people's podcasts, and letting them know that I have a podcast,

18:18and promoting it that way. That's how you grow. I don't even know if having the podcast, promoting that on social even matters. Maybe, I think people are, and again, not everybody wants to listen to a podcast. I think more people kind of want email. So, I think it's why email is king here. So, okay, I've decided that the main goal of my homepage is to get you to subscribe, to get you to give me your email address that I can send you content, and I am not going to create content on the website, because why would I? I'm not doing SEO, so why does content need to exist on the website? Okay, that's a fucking huge edit, right? All right. How will people find it? Well, like I just mentioned,

19:23me going on other podcasts, there's, you know, if you want to sign up to my newsletter, go to jivinesi.com. You want to sign up? You want to subscribe to my podcast? Search my name. Here's my name on my podcast. Go on your app, and search, search which one. It's kind of like app-based now, and really, the only purpose of the homepage is to get you into an app, which is an email app, not Safari, or Chrome, or whatever. Okay. So, what I want them to do on this site is enter their email address. Well, here's a question. What would get me to subscribe to an email list? In other words, what's in it for you, the subscriber?

20:23My first instinct when I thought of this, or when I didn't think of this question, but was thinking about the website, I'm like, okay, so I'm basically not creating a website. I'm creating a landing page, and that's all my website will be, is a simple landing page. Which means that I don't have to be on WordPress to do this. I could be on anything, but I don't know if I'm going to switch off of WordPress only because I'm much more comfortable on WordPress as a development platform, but honestly, I could probably try using NextJS or some of their modern framework and use my personal site as sort of a practice bed for that, but I don't want to get too far out of my depth in just getting this site up and running. So, this next piece of what's in it for you is huge because my initial thought was, oh, I want it, it's a personal brand, right? So, I want it to be all about me. It's about me.

21:31What I do here are the businesses that I run. Here are some context about me. And while I could do that, and I kind of also wanted to make it very tongue-in-cheek funny, and I usually go to with that is to make it brutally honest, where I'm like, welcome to my website, kind of like headline, enter your email address here, and I will send you X, like not beat around the bush and just say exactly what it is that I'm doing. I'm still okay with that idea, but, and I can still wrap, it can still be packaged that way, but I think the main question is what would get me to subscribe? Somebody being like full of themselves or having that ego of like, I'm this business builder and I'm going to blub, blub, blub. That's not going to get me to subscribe. So, let me think about this for a second.

22:34What would get me to subscribe? Because the reason I'm asking that question, and I feel like this feels like very much deja vu, like I've asked this before, and probably for money lab. So, recently, I subscribe to a newsletter called Marketing Gems. The person who runs this newsletter does not show his or her face. I don't know, I don't know, like they, they're like a cartoon, and I'm assuming it's a guy? I don't know, but anyway, the emails are kind of like if you watched a channel of marketing shorts, like just little nuggets of information. And the reason I subscribed to that one is because I like little nuggets, like little actionable nuggets that I can put into place. I like those sorts of things. I'm not going to do that.

23:42My stuff's probably going to be a little bit more in depth. I'm not trying to teach you marketing. I'm trying to teach you how to, what do I want to share? I am sharing how I run a very successful business without working that hard, like sort of anti-hustle culture. But I don't want to, I can make an enemy of it for sure, and I probably will, but I also don't want to be like, that's, that's kind of not very specific. And it's like, okay, sure. So you're going to teach me basically how to build a business without burning out, or how to build a brand without burning out, or how to build an audience without burning out. It's not a bad pitch, but how are you going to do that?

24:43And for me, it's creating systems. Okay, there's something there. So what I could do is do sort of like a, not a brag, but why should you trust me thing? It's like, here's a picture of me. Why should you trust me? Because I've built, and I can maybe say this now early, because I technically, it's technically kind of true, where it's like, I can teach you how to run a million dollar business without burning out. Or I should say a million dollar lifestyle business. I hate to use the word million dollar, but maybe I won't. Teach you how to run a successful business working only four hours a week or something like that. And I have to find my language

25:48for that, because it's obviously that's a little too ridiculous. And how do I do that? Well, I'm the person who runs some university. I have a team of four people, and I work probably about an hour a day on my business. And I do that through building systems and focusing on high leverage tasks that only I can perform. And it's really not an hour a day, although I technically could do an hour a day. So all right, there's something there. What do I need to show? So I do think there needs the, I do think that the the up top, the hero section needs to be what am I going to do for you? And why should you trust me? All in like one section.

26:49And all you have to do is enter your email address. That's what you need to do. And I will send you how to do that. And my podcast fits perfectly into that pitch. And it's like, Hey, if you want the audio version, I'm going to send you videos that. And again, I have nothing to sell. And that's also something I have to put on there. I should be writing this down. But anyway, all right. So where does the so okay, I like that. Now the rest of now it doesn't mean that that the the landing page has to be only that it can be a little bigger. So I think what I could do is I could also include the podcast on the landing page, but further down. I think I can remove all the content. I just don't think I need to link to the content anymore because it's just all

27:50outdated and doesn't fit the lifestyle piece kind of more. Yeah. Okay. So I'll remove that. I remove it remove the navigation. I don't need it. This is freaking crazy. Okay. And what else? I think I have to put some bragging rights, like I kind of have to brag a little just so I can maybe build some trust. And maybe also thinking about it, use it as a platform for research. Thinking about this. Okay. So earlier I said, how do you promote how do you find out about a podcast? Like you don't find out by googling, you find out because of some recommendation engine. And I said, well, I usually find out about podcasts by listening to some podcast, they have a guest on. And that guest is like, hey, you should check out my podcast. So for example,

28:53I was listening to or watching Good Hang with Amy Polar because I'm a massive Amy Polar fan, like Parks and Records, one of my favorite shows. She comes out with this brand new podcast. How do I know about it? Well, I think the way I found that about it is literally everyone's talking about it. It got recommended to me through YouTube. But I know that she went on smartness, which is another huge podcast. And she went on other podcasts promoting it. And I know that she's on a podcast network. So like, there was a lot of when she started, there was a lot of people pointing to her. And the guest, her first guest was Tina Fey who famously like doesn't do podcast. And so people wanted, so she had all of these things pointing to her podcast. None of it was a website. I don't even know if she has a website. A doubt she does. Why would she? So okay.

29:58In order to promote my podcast, I should probably go on other shows and talk about whatever my messages. And when someone needs to do research on me, right? Where are they? Where's the first place they're going to go? I kind of feel like if you go to where, if you go to my social media account, like, you're never going to find out anything. It's me mostly promoting and talking. So there needs to be like one collection area of my accomplishments, things I want people to know about me for context when they interview me. So my website or my landing page website should include that information. In case I do go that route, or people want to, or like some sort of like, how do I contact this guy? Right? So it's like, okay, contact for not a form, but like, here's my, and here's my email address.

30:59Email me. You know what I mean? I don't mind that being on a website. Again, people are going to find it through everywhere but Google. And yeah, I'm going to get spam if I do that, but whatever. I'll figure that out. Yeah, I think I have to put like my, my like plaque, my YouTube plaque, like, hey, I'm a YouTuber. And I do, this is like what my business, I kind of mostly about me as this entrepreneur person. And I can make that kind of fun and tongue in cheek and have like layers to it. So, okay, that's really interesting. So, all right. And then basically, I do not have, so what I'm suggesting here, and I could, I may have to go a little deeper on this topic. I don't

32:02want to take, I don't want to, I don't want this episode to be too long, but I think we, we did a lot of editing here. I think what I need to do is I just need a hero section and about me section, a podcast section, a contact section, which could also be part of the about me page. And then do I even need a footer? I don't think I do. I don't think I do. All right, interesting. Okay, I'm not this, I'm not the stop this episode, write those things down and get to designing. And I think what I'm going to do is a quick Figma design of this page. So, I can play around with some stuff, get this sort of vibe down and then build it in WordPress. I could probably build it in

33:08a day if I have a Figma design. And then once I build it, I want to build it for like evergreen purposes. Like this is this is the website. You know, I think what I'll do is I'll keep, should I keep the money lab articles up or should I delete them? Hmm. It's a great question. I do like the time capsule element of what I've written, but, but I think I would, I think I'll keep the website up, but I'll, I won't delete the content. I just, I'll just delete how you get to it. Because it's like, oh, what do I need to create a page.php? Do I need to create a single.php? Like, do I need to create an entire theme for this one landing page? Oh, brother. Oh, that's a, that's a loaded question, my man. Load it. Because technically, if I'm using

34:16ConvertKit and I don't have any articles on my website, I could technically use ConvertKit's landing page and make that the whole damn thing and just build out my content that way. And then, ah, never have to code. Ah, huh, huh, huh, huh. That's a real bit, all right. There's a lot, there's probably a whole another episode of just figuring out the tech behind it, but I'll, I'll maybe do a follow-up episode or a follow-up, ah, you know, I'll follow up and we'll see what happens, see where I come up with, but I'm going to look into that. So, if you have any questions, concerns, thoughts, shoot me an email, matatjibanesi.com, and I'll talk to you next time.