AP 0133: If You Only Had 30 Minutes Each Day, What Work Would You Do on Your Blog or Podcast?

AskPat Episode 133 Transcript

Pat Flynn: What's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 133. 133 of AskPat. Thank you so much for spending part of your day with me here on this episode. Now, I have a great question today from John. Actually, this is a wonderful question, but before I get to that, I wanna mention today's sponsor, which is ZipRecruiter.com.

This is an awesome site that a lot of people who are listeners of AskPat have really been enjoying, especially those of you who have small businesses and are looking to hire help. With so many job boards out there, you really need to advertise on all the top ones to get the perfect candidate quickly, but you can do that quickly without wasting a ton of time with ZipRecruiter.com. With ZipRecruiter.com, you can post to 50+ job sites at once, with just one single click, and they even highlight the best candidates for you, making it easy to hire the right person fast. So you can try ZipRecruiter.com for free by going to ZipRecruiter.com/pat. Again, that's ZipRecruiter.com/pat.

Now, let's get to today's question from John.

John: Hi Pat, my name is John Wilkerson, and I podcast and blog over at TheWiredHomeSchool.com. Pat, if you only had 30 minutes a day to work on your podcast and your blog, what three things would you do every single day, to make sure that your blog and podcast were successful? Thanks for listening to my question and considering it, and also, thanks for all the wonderful things that you do out there. Hope to hear my question on the podcast. Bye.

Pat Flynn: John, thank you so much for your question. Thirty minutes a day isn't that much, as you probably know, and as we all know. However, you can get a lot of things done over the course of a week if you wisely use that time. Now, you asked me, “What three things should I do each day?” Or just three things would I do with that 30 minutes, meaning I would only have possibly ten minutes to do each of them, but I wanted to approach it a different way. I don't think there's something you should do every single day. There's a specific progression I would use, personally. If I only had 30 minutes a day to work on my blog, if, for example, I was working 9 to 5 or 9 to 9 like I used to, and only had half of my lunch hour, or a little bit in the morning when I woke up, or a little bit at night once I got home, to work on my site, what would I do?

First of all, if you have the choice of when to use that extra time, if you are actually working 9 to 5, and you'd like to find extra time, I would wake up earlier. That's what I would do. Because you wake up, you're focused on your stuff, and then you go out and start to do stuff for somebody else, instead of doing stuff for somebody else and then coming home all tired and not being really in the mood, or in the right mindset to do stuff for yourself. So, like in personal finance, you should pay yourself first, start your savings, and then pay off your bills. Well, you should pay yourself first with time as well. So that's the first thing I would do. I would do this 30 minutes in the morning, if possible, and perhaps, even add another 30 minutes by waking up 30 minutes earlier, which would obviously help, but for the sake of your question, few key points here.

If you have an existing site, what I would do is based on what is happening and what's giving me results now, I would look for that 20% that is giving me 80% of the results in my business, and do more of that. Whether it's a blog, or a podcast, or something related within those things, whatever that 20% is that is giving me 80% of the results . . . If I only have 30 minutes a day, I shouldn't be focusing on anything else but that 20% that is giving me the 80% of the results. Either that, or I would hire somebody else to do those things for me. Things outside of the 20%. I mean, if possible, that would be the best answer. Give yourself eight hours extra a day by focusing on hiring out work that you need to be done that you cannot do yourself because you're just so limited with time. But, for the rest of this answer, I'm going to go as if you're not going to hire out, or you cannot. And also, perhaps if you do understand what that 20% is but you still want to continue with your blog and/or podcast.

So, this is the approach I would take, and I would have a very set list of things I would need to accomplish every single day, and every day is going to be different. And the reason for that is because I want every day to be super and highly focused within that 30 minutes on accomplishing one thing. With 30 minutes, I think three things to accomplish in 30 minutes can be tough. And maybe even if you get two done, which is great, you're going to miss one on some days, and you're just going to be down on yourself because you didn't have any time to do it. I think focusing on one thing each day, and perhaps trying to think of it as the whole week, trying to accomplish something big, that's a better approach. So, here's what I would do, and this is just imaginary, but this is kinda what I would do.

Monday. Monday for 30 minutes, that's my planning day. I would figure out what solution I'd wanna create within a blog post or a podcast episode. What idea I'd wanna give across, or what big major milestone or goal I'd want my audience to achieve by the end of this week. That's my goal with Monday. Planning. Really focusing on trying to find out what my audience really needs, and trying to understand what that is and do a little bit of planning as far as what that looks like. Perhaps create an outline for it, really quickly sketching an outline and underneath each of those points, what stories in my life, or stories out there in the world can help promote or support those particular points in that outline to help people with that particular solution. Again, one goal. What is it that I'm going to do that I'm going to create by the end of this week? That is what Monday is all about. That way, I'm not focused on anything else. I'm not distracted, I'm not worried that I'm not going to get to that next thing I wanna do. That's all Monday is about.

And then I have Tuesday and Wednesday to create. Creating something in 30 minutes is tough, but I think, particularly with a blog post, you're going to need some time, and you might need to borrow some time elsewhere. Make some sacrifices in order to write that blog post that you're going to write. I mean, I know a number of people, and I've been getting better at this, who can create really great, very very well-thought-out, well-written blog posts in just an hour or two. And I did this a couple times this past year. I was actually surprised of how well and how quickly I wrote some great blog posts. Couple of them were actually done on a plane. I don't know if that had anything to do with it, perhaps I had no distractions, I don't know. But taking a couple days to create that content. And that's why I think podcasting is a little bit easier because it's just your talking time. And so, if you have a 30-minute show, you can spend one day creating your show, then the next day editing it, as opposed to just editing and writing and blogging at the same time. So, Tuesday and Wednesday is creation of that content.

Thursday, and this is going to sound interesting, but this is, for me and for all the businesses I've created and for all the businesses that I know about, this is a really important thing that I would put into my week. Thirty minutes a day on Thursday, build up relationships. Reach out to other bloggers, reach out to other influencers, create connections. Because honestly, even if you do this the entire year, every Thursday, 52 weeks, it might just take one of those connections in one of those weeks out of the 52 weeks of the year, to really make a huge, dramatic difference in the success of your business. Honestly, that's why I believe putting in time for building relationships is huge, because all the time we're doing stuff, we're creating, we're in edit mode, we're in social media mode, but we never really focus on connecting with the big players out there. And they don't even have to be big players, just people who have and share the same values as you, who are either where you're at right now or where you wanna be, and make connections and offer to help. Help in some way. You have skills that you know you can help other people with, and the reason for thinking about it that way is because you want to give, because when you give, you get back.

And that's why on Friday, my 30 minutes would be spent completely on helping other people. Doing whatever I can, going out of my way to spend that 30 minutes to do something to help somebody else. Somebody with an audience that has the same audience that I have. That way, and again, if I do this once a week, for 30 minutes, 52 weeks out of the year, again, it just takes one or two of those kind gestures, those random acts of kindness if you will, to come back my way. It'd really make a huge difference in my business. I hope you can see the benefit of that. And no, not everybody you reach out to is going to pay you back in some way, shape, or form. Not everybody you reach out to is even going to think about it in the future. But there's a few of them out there who will genuinely be grateful for the help that you're giving them, and will do what they can to help you, seriously.

And then Saturday, I would schedule my posts or get ready to publish it, and then Sunday, I would start to do more research or take a day off. That's my week. So Monday, plan. Tuesday, create. Wednesday, create. Thursday, build relationships, reach out. Friday, actually spending that time helping and doing something for somebody else. And then Saturday is scheduling, so that, by the next time Monday comes around . . . And I know for me, I get the most traffic on Monday, that's when my posts or podcast episodes would go live, at that point. Currently my blog posts go live on either Monday or Tuesday 'cause both of those days are working out really well for me for written posts, and then Thursday has sort of been the day that my podcast at SmartPassiveIncome.com comes out. Of course, AskPat comes out five days a week, but I would do that.

Now, like I said earlier, if you can get hired help, I would absolutely get hired help. Because this show, for example, the AskPat podcast, I have help. I have Mindy on board to help produce it, and edit it, and put it online, and post it for me on the SoundCloud. I only have to spend about . . . For every half hour I spend . . . We're almost at ten minutes in this episode right now. That's one episode, ten minutes, I can do three within that 30-minute time slot. I can do three episodes. If these episodes were to come out once a week, I already have almost a month's worth of content ready. But of course they come out five days a week, and I can do that, and I can only do that because of the hired help that I have. So, maybe if you do have the ability to hire help, and you know you could use it, the first few days should be spent figuring out out who can help you, and getting in touch with them.

So John, great question. I appreciate it so much. An AskPat t-shirt is going to be headed your way. If those of you listening have a question that you'd like potentially featured here on the show, just head on over to AskPat.com. You can ask right there on that page.

I also wanna thank today's sponsor for this episode, which is ZipRecruiter. If you go to ZipRecruiter.com, you could try it for free. Actually, you can use it for free. It's free for you. If you go to ZipRecruiter.com/pat, it's a way for you to put a job description out there. If you're looking to hire anybody for your business . . . Just in one spot, and you're not going to waste a ton of time posting that on all the top job sites, ZipRecruiter does it for you. You could post to 50 job sites at once with a single click, and they even highlight the best candidates for you. So again, go to ZipRecruiter.com/pat for that.

Now, as always, I'm going to end with a quote. Today's quote comes from Mark Zuckerberg, from Facebook. He says, “Nothing influences people more than a recommendation from a trusted friend.”

Cheers, thanks so much, and I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat.