The sovereign business.

A little food for thought today. It is something I’ve touched on before. And perhaps because of that I’ve even had people mention it to me on strategy calls.

It is the idea of reducing reliance on outside organizations.

This is something I’ve definitely thought about (and am doing). And I’ve had a few clients want to do the same.

For instance, building a community right on their website (often using BuddyBoss) specifically to NOT have to use Facebook.

Or trying to reduce reliance on Google.

I think awareness of all this really increased in the last few years. Big tech is becoming a dangerous beast, in some ways.

It comes down to… sovereignty.

When you’re sovereign, it means you’re in the driver seat for yourself. You’re independent. You’re autonomous.

And you’re seeing a lot more interest in this. The whole prepping movement has never been bigger than it is now, and it isn’t without reason. Keeping excess food at home, having alternative power sources, alternative water sources, etc. It just means… you’re more independent. You can enjoy the benefits of modern society with the best of them, BUT… if it got interrupted, you wouldn’t be in the crowd of weirdos raiding Walmarts trying to buy up all the butt wipes and bottled water. 

This same idea can be brought over to how we build and structure our online businesses. But, it does take intention.

The really good news is that the technology has never been better for it.

The tools available for WordPress now are so good and compete favorably with what used to require expensive third-party bills. It is amazing. A great time to build WordPress-powered businesses! 

My personal interest in bringing things “in house” and not relying so much on third-party services is part of that. Let’s see…

• I was using hosted shopping cart (Thrivecart) and before that MemberMouse (which literally stops working if you don’t pay them). Now, I’m on WooCommerce. More capability, more control.

• I was using Facebook groups for member discussion. Now, it is all in-house powered by BuddyBoss. WAY better experience.

• I’m still using Drip for email marketing, but am switching to FluentCRM. Which will bring the last major segment of my business “in house”.

The tech options available for WordPress sites now have never been better. And it is SOOOO easy to intentionally set up a sovereign online business these days.

Sure, you’re using outside services for billing (like Stripe) or sending email (like Amazon), but YOU own the data. When you back up your site, you back up EVERYTHING. And if one of those services gets weird on you for some reason, you just plug into another one and keep going.

Now, on top of this, you have to build sovereignty into your strategy, too. Not just your software choices.

Google is so damn big (unfortunately) that you can’t get away from it. And honestly, they’re a good search engine. So, you play ball. BUT…

• If you’re using Youtube for your videos, be sure to also back everything up and maybe even cross-post to another network. Just in case.

• Don’t use Google apps, but instead use something else. For instance, I use FastMail for all my email.

• Always be focused on building your email list. Always. Without fail. Because, that is YOUR community and regardless of what Facebook does or Google does to their algorithm, you can reach out to your community via email. If you’re relying on a Facebook group to generate business, you’re in a really bad place as far as I’m concerned.

Just last week, I talked about how my traffic dropped. Because of Google. It isn’t censorship or anything alarming…. it is just Google being Google. They change things and the rest of us react. ‘Tis life. But, I’m not totally reliant on Google. Sure, Google affected things. And I’ll get it fixed. But, this is a reminder of why…

… it pays to be sovereign.

To be an online business prepper.

It has nothing to do with paranoia.

It is called building up an asset and you OWNING it. Like, TRULY owning it.

I mean, with my email list on Drip, what if Drip just… went weird? And took my email list with them? Not likely at all, but… impossible? Nope.

Just recently you may have seen the story about OnlyFans changing their mind about…. certain types of content. Well, regardless of what you think about that, when I saw the story, my first thought was…. those people were reliant on OnlyFans. They were not sovereign. I bet they’ll pay more attention to it now. 

So, have you built (or are you building) your online business to be sovereign?

Tech Talk

Presto Player has gotten some new updates. It now has video overlays as well as dynamic watermarks (for security). It also has integration with Divi.I've been impressed with the speed of development with Presto Player. And speaking of sovereignty, Presto is a nice way to potentially avoid a Vimeo Pro subscription for your videos. If that kind of thing is important to you.Speaking of Vimeo Pro, apparently they just launched sub-folders. Meaning, you can organize your videos into folders, but now also sub-folders. Really convenient if you have a lot of videos on your account (as I do).Wishlist Member has a lifetime deal going on right now. Wishlist is one of the oldest membership plugins out there, but they've done a great job of keeping up with the times. It is a solid membership plugin.Fluent Forms price is going up. That is, for their lifetime license plan. This is the best forms plugin for WordPress, IMO. And I used to use Gravity Forms. Love Gravity, but... Fluent Forms is better and a better deal.In fact, I'm making some changes to my opt-in setup at BMA and... I'm moving some of my opt-in forms to Fluent Forms. Works beautifully. This plugin has so many uses.Anyway...Now, I nabbed a special discount for FluentCRM for ya. And I've been told it works for Fluent Forms, too. Use the coupon code "bmamember" and knock 20% off the price.