Welcome to Married To Your Business
I’m Dustin Baier, half of Married to Your Business. If you want to start an online business but don’t know where to start, this page is for you.
Lacey (my wife and face of our business A Sweet Pea Chef) focus on building businesses that take advantage of systems that allow transactions, cash flow, and growth to happen while making a connection with your audience and helping them solve real problems that matter to them.
I want to show you hard work, honesty and leading by example can take your online business to the next level.
What Married to Your Business Is Not
Let’s dive right into setting some expectations for what this site is and isn’t.
1. Creating an online business or any business for that matter is NOT easy and it takes a lot of hard work.
Nothing I have done that is worth anything has comes easy. Creating a business online is no different. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise or let yourself feel like it isn’t possible just because it’s hard. Why? Because I can tell you from experience lots of starts and stops and false starts that it can work. I am going to work my ass off to guide you and help you as much as I can but ultiamtely it’s up to you to take action and keep driving forward.
2. Creating an online business does NOT happen quickly.
We’ve tried to create a lot of businesses (online and otherwise) before A Sweet Pea Chef succeeded. Our first business took about a year of hard work and time and energy and all I did was burn money. A Sweet Pea Chef took us 5 years to really get it into a spot that provided a full time income. None of that was easy. At times we felt like failures. Quit for a bit and then came back (twice). Now it doesn’t need to take you 5 years if you skip our mistakes 🙂 but it will take time
3. Creating an online business is NOT impossible.
For awhile now I have tried different things doing a lot of it on my own. When we started to get frustrated we would always wonder is this even possible or worth the hard work. But I can tell you it is possible and whenever we get to do fun things with our kids when other parents have to work at a “true” 9-5 or we plan out a trip and know we can work from anywhere
When i talk about Being Married to Your Business I look at it as a commitment sure there might be ups and downs and you have to work through a lot of things but ultimately you’re stronger as you keep working at it and improving it as you go.
The Basics You Need
So to have an online business you need a few basics
1. First domain name – You need to own your own domain not one of the free ones. Depending on what it’s for I use amazon AWS for this but you can also use something like namecheap.
2. Second hosting – You need hosting I recommend WPEngine it’s all I use anymore. I have used tons of hosting companies and even run my own servers on amazon. I use WPEngine for A Sweet Pea Chef and love it. It handles spike in traffic and the customer service is awesome. You can use a cheaper service if you want I know $29 bucks a month can seem like a lot but I just have always had trouble with them and can’t really recommend them anymore as the service I use to get just isn’t there anymore.
Disclaimer/Truth: I do earn a commission if you choose to go with wpengine. There are obviously other hosting companies available, but again this is my recommendation based on my experience with the company. If you do purchase through my affiliate link, thank you so much for your support!
3. A Business Model – Say what? Why do I need this right away? You need this right away so you don’t waste a bajillion years making a business like Lacey and I did. We started out with a horrible plan of just trying stuff. Not until 2 years ago did we really start to hone in on a good business model.
Thanks So Much!
Think of us as your online business coach.
I love hearing what your working on. I want to know how I can help you. I want Married to Your Business to be the go place for people who want to work hard on their businesses and make this dream of yours work.
Lacey or I respond to every comment and/or email personally. Their is nothing special about other than we worked and didn’t quit.
I know you can do it 🙂