AP 1207: How Do I Convince My Audience I Have What They Need?

Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to episode 1,207 of AskPat 2.0. You're about to listen to a coaching call between myself and an entrepreneur, just like you. And today we're speaking with Chris Tiley from Nevertoooldtolift.com And it sounds like exactly what it is. It is a website for those who are a little bit older, to help them learn how to lift weights and lift them safely and be healthier in that way. But what's really interesting, and what we talk about here today, is that's not necessarily what those people want. That is what they need, and Chris knows this. He helps people who suffer from some sort of injury who are of this age and then help them even further with lifting weights, and it really opens up their lives and really helps them out. And he wants to do this online.

Pat Flynn: Again, you can find his website at nevertoooldtolift.com. But the issue is, again, that's not necessarily what people of that age are looking for. They're looking to solve a back pain or to get back out the garden, not necessarily to lift. So how do we go from what they want to what they need? That's what we're talking about today. And Chris also speaks a little bit about an online course and having the ability to do that with maybe not much time outside of his physical practice, his online stuff, as well as being a father and a husband. A lot of stuff is going, so let's talk it through with Chris. Here again, this is Chris from nevertoooldtolift.com.

Pat Flynn: Chris, welcome to AskPat 2.0. Thanks so much for joining us today.

Chris Tiley: No, thank you for having me. A pleasure.

Pat Flynn: I'm excited to chat with you and see what I can do to help you, but help us first understand a little bit more about you, Chris. What do you do and how'd you get into it?

Chris Tiley: I'm a physiotherapist based in the UK. So for you guys, that's a physical therapist. Going into it, I have developed a bit of a passion for introducing strength training, so resistance training or lifting weights, to older adults. So generally, I market towards people over the age of 60, and that's naturally the demographic that's been coming in to see me as a physiotherapist, and I've had some great results from that. And they're the people that I really enjoy working with as well.

Chris Tiley: So off the back of developing that passion, so it started as a blog called Never to Old to Lift, which again, is me then trying to inspire more people to try and take action and consider strength training, because in the past, it's maybe thought of as a younger person's hobby or sport, and people tend to avoid it and stay safe as they get older. So I'm trying to change that mindset and showing that it actually makes you more robust and resilient and gives you the energy and the strength to be able to do the activities that you might want to do in retirement that you've been looking forward to doing.

Chris Tiley: So I think initially I set it up as a bit of a way of attracting the patients that I wanted to see into the clinic. So it wasn't really a thought of building it as a side project, sort of monetization or anything like that. And then COVID happened and I got hit pretty hard in terms of physio side of things. I'd only just set up my private practice, and I had three months, four months of not being able to work at all. I wasn't eligible for any of the furlough pay because I hadn't had the accounts behind me. So at that point, I thought maybe it would good idea to at least get a little bit of an income coming in from there. And again, if it helps me work with more people I enjoy working with. So in that I wrote an eBook, which is about 13,000 words, 60 pages. It guides someone through eight steps to create their first 12-week program, one that's going to work for them around their limitations and helps them adapt and progress as they need to.

Pat Flynn: So you had a blog to start with plus a physical clinic, and COVID happened, the clinic obviously was difficult to continue to run. Now, has that come back for you or are you still just online mostly right now?

Chris Tiley: No, that's come back. So a lot of my energy this year has been building that back up to a point where it's covering the bills and giving me an income.

Pat Flynn: That's good.

Chris Tiley: So I haven't had the consistency that I would've liked with the blog, and I've had a goal of turning the eBook into an online course, but that just hasn't happened. And I was thinking about it this week, and I've gotten a little bit down about the fact that it hasn't happened yet, and then actually I had to think back, and I've put a lot of work into effectively starting a business twice from the physical side of things, and that's worked out well.

Chris Tiley: And mainly off the back of SPI Pro, I've got a lot of wins from that, more through the challenges that you set in terms of just nudging me out my comfort zone because I realized the that, although I was writing a blog and writing an eBook, I don't consume eBooks and I don't consume blog posts. I listen to podcasts and I watch YouTube and online courses, and I thought, actually, that's where I need to go, but I wasn't quite comfortable in front of the camera and speaking. My message was good at writing it down, and I was good at doing it one to one with patients. So yeah, it is, I suppose, a long way of saying thank you for that because I've now done-

Pat Flynn: Oh, you're welcome.

Chris Tiley: ... about eight, nine guest podcasts, interviews, mainly through SPI Pro members. So I was on David's.

Pat Flynn: Nice. So you have a podcast now?

Chris Tiley: No, so I was a guest on them. It's a plan for the future.

Pat Flynn: Oh, you were a guest on a podcast? Okay.

Chris Tiley: Yeah.

Pat Flynn: How did that feel, being a guest on another person show? Was that as nerve racking as, perhaps, you initially made it out to be? How did that feel?

Chris Tiley: I think the first one or two, yes, and then I realized the more that I did it, the more confident I got with how I was verbalizing the message I was trying to get across to people, and that just became clearer and clearer, and then I've started to be a bit more vocal and active on YouTube. And then again, I find I'm getting clearer and clearer, and actually, I now feel I'm probably in a better position to do the online course from there.

Pat Flynn: Well, that's great. I mean, that just shows you that sometimes the best way to learn is just to put yourself out there and do it, and especially, like you said, with what your positioning is, what your message is, I mean, you're forced to figure out how to talk about it in a way that a person would understand if you're, for example, a guest on a show or creating a YouTube video. It's much different to write that down. It's a different part of the brain. It's a different part of just creation. So well done on that.

Pat Flynn: Now as far as the online course ... Well, your online business, let's talk about it a little bit, the online portion of it, what is the goal of that for you? I mean, I know you want to create a course. Is it now also to bring new clients in, or is that separate and this is now taking its own life online, and how's it been doing?

Chris Tiley: It's a little bit of both. So I still want it to attract the people that I want to work with in the clinic, and the clinic is not something I want to stop or replace with the online content. It's something that definitely complements each other. I think what I want and my goal is, at the moment, is to have the online business side of things earning what my physical clinic is bringing in an income so that it means I'm working in the clinic because I want to and I love it, rather than the pressure of having to pay the bills. And then if I can then have the online business take off a bit further from there, fantastic.

Chris Tiley: But I've got a goal that I don't want to be working in the clinic much more than 25 hours a week. I've seen too many people that go down the route of just trying to create it busier and busier and busier, and they get run down and burn out. And yeah, I want it to cap it at a certain number of people. I enjoy working with them and it being 80, 90% of the people I want to work with rather than some of the other type of injuries, which I'll happily refer on to someone who enjoys that a bit more.

Pat Flynn: And then as far as the income and where it's at now versus your physical space, where are you at in that journey?

Chris Tiley: Still early stages. It pretty much covers all the bills in terms of hosting any ad spend I'm playing around with. The other thing I've done with eBook-

Pat Flynn: And that's from the eBook sales?

Chris Tiley: eBook sales, and I've also, which has been more successful, actually, I've uploaded it to KDP. So Amazon KDP.

Pat Flynn: Nice.

Chris Tiley: And because I think it was off one of your podcasts, I heard you saying that Amazon being such a big search engine themselves, that I'm finding a lot of people organically finding me now through there, by an eBook. And then through something you said, I've created a link to download another bonus and then catching emails from there.

Pat Flynn: Perfect. Perfect. So the next logical step would be to have them go into a more valuable, higher paying product. And this is where the online course comes in, right?

Chris Tiley: Yes.

Pat Flynn: Great. So what has been stopping you with the online course?

Chris Tiley: It's mainly time. So as well as having my energy trying to put into the marketing towards my physical business, I've also got a son who will be two in February. So he was seven weeks old when our first lockdown, when COVID started in the UK. So yeah, definitely. And my wife is a pediatric intensive care doctor.

Pat Flynn: Oh, wow.

Chris Tiley: And she works full time, which is about 48 hours a week. So I do the majority of the childcare when he is not in nursery or in the pickups. If her rota allows, she'll do some, and it gives me a bit more time. But for example, this last month ... And he's actually fine now, but he's picking up bugs all the time. He's had viruses and colds and ear infections, and every time I've allowed myself time to plan and film the course, something else eats it up, whether it's the business or my son.

Chris Tiley: So a lot of it has been time, but she's actually dropping her hours down next month. So I then should be able to create a bit more time from there. And then, like I said, I think I'm in a better place in terms of organizing myself, and my physical business is currently at a point where I don't need to put the energy in to grow it again. I'm just hoping Omicron, the new variant, isn't going to cause a bit of a dip again. But we'll see.

Pat Flynn: Yeah. Let's pray for that, for sure. Okay. So you've set yourself up pretty well now for the ability to then create this thing, which is really nice. And the beauty of an online course, as we all know, is that you can create it once and you're done. Now it's just the marketing of it, and you've already put in places things online and your KDP and your book to bring people in. You're not starting from scratch, and that's a really huge advantage. And the fact that you've been almost forced to talk about your positioning and what it is you do, specifically, I mean, that is all leading into making the course even better. And just more obvious for people who this is for. The best thing that I would recommend now is to not necessarily just go, "Okay, find an eight-hour block of time one day. Your wife is watching your kid or she's off, or a nanny or something, and just film it."

Pat Flynn: That could happen, but I think before that, planning so that when you create this thing, it's just going to be efficient and you already know what you're getting into, right? So there could be opportunities to chip away at ... For example, we have a course called Heroic Online Courses where we supply a spreadsheet. You don't need that one. You can create your own. But one where you can nail down what the outline is and understand, "Okay, this video in particular is going to include my face on camera, and then half of it is going to be a computer screen recording."

Pat Flynn: And then you keep track of all these notes ahead of time so that when it comes time to, with the little time you have to create this thing, it's just like how a movie production happens. The movie production, it's like how many years to write the script and then to get the team ready, and then it's like you shoot for two weeks and it's still, and then it's off to the editing team after that. So I think you could benefit from planning and structure and organizing the course. I mean, how far, if at all, have you already started that process?

Chris Tiley: The outline is all planned, and the first two modules I've started to plan, and I've had a bit of a U-turn since I've practiced a bit more with you YouTube, and initially I was going to do it as a PowerPoint slide, but actually, I'm finding that I'm better if I can just talk and then afterwards I can add images in or any B-roll in, if I need to. That was a question. From online courses I've done, there's less people tend to use B-roll and things like that. Is that something you've seen, or does it tend to be just face-to-camera, talking and editing there?

Pat Flynn: The best online courses are filmed in a way that provides the best value, right? And I think that if you could imagine yourself putting something in and then removing it, but it's literally the going to be the same value, then there's really no reason to add it in, right? I think B-roll is meant, especially on YouTube, for patterned interrupts and the short attention span of free viewers and all those kinds of things. Inside a course, I think that may be an initial lesson, just to set the tone and get people excited about what they're going to dive into could work, but I've never really included B-roll in any of my courses. It is, I would say, 70% face-to-camera and 30% recording the instruction on the computer screen or a top-down view of me putting together some equipment or screen recording another person's video and showing how they did that. And that is the lesson, and that is the teaching.

Pat Flynn: So that should help because you then don't need to spend money on B-roll or worry about falsifying those videos. I think the most important thing is just making those videos efficient. When I initially got into consuming online courses in 2008, the big benefit of an online course was, "Wow, here's all this information that isn't available anywhere else, and I want as much of it as possible." And so the courses were very much positioned as 20 hours of video and 150 videos to consume about this thing, so you can get it all. And that was the benefit back then. Now nobody wants that. Nobody wants all of it. They just want exactly what they need to get the result because the course offers a promise. You're not selling the course. You're selling the result of what the course could offer them.

Pat Flynn: So if you can get them that result faster, that's even better. It's like when you are stranded on the side of a road because of a flat tire and you call a person up to fix it, it's not more valuable if they're there for four hours to do it. It's valuable if they're there and they get it done in literally a minute. Keep that in mind when you are structuring your videos and you're considering, "How much do I include?" And the quicker you can get a person a result, the better it is going to be.

Chris Tiley: Yep. Makes sense.

Pat Flynn: What other questions do you have about that or anything else?

Chris Tiley: So I think one of the big things that I was hoping to get out of this was that in my clinic, I suppose I feel my strength is people that come to me aren't coming to see me because they want to start strength training. They see me because they're in pain, and then once we've got them out of pain, I then talk through it and introduce them and inspire them to start. And it's taking someone who's never considered it and actually making it a habit and a routine that they go on with is something that is really great to see, and that's what I want to emulate.

Pat Flynn: I like that a lot.

Chris Tiley: But because, I suppose, they don't ... Let's say they're not coming in with that in mind, and then one of the things I want to start to do is, I find it hard to find my audience in the first place because if I'm trying to emulate where my strength is to a wider audience, they're not necessarily looking for strength training yet.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, resistance training for people over 60. Right.

Chris Tiley: And anyone who is tends to have done it before, and they're looking for the next step, whereas I want to take the step of inspiring people to start. Some common themes is there's people who enjoy gardening, there's people who have grandchildren, and they're often big factors once I've explored things a little bit with them about motivations, and often they haven't been able to get in the garden and they start to pay people to do it, and they feel like they're losing some independence. And actually, then they've taken on the strength training and actually they've not needed the help, and they're back to doing it. And the same with grandchildren is-

Pat Flynn: That's amazing.

Chris Tiley: ... where they started to dread time with grandchildren because of how they might feel, they're thriving. And I was in the Smart Tank, the competition you had, and I talked about Mike, who-

Pat Flynn: Yeah, yeah.

Chris Tiley: He got back to a bouncy castle party with his four-year-old son, and he absolutely loved it. And that was as a result of starting strength training. And I've tried to get into a gardening Facebook group and a grandparent group. And one, there's not necessarily people, again, making that link and looking for strength training. So I can't then step in and say, "Oh, yeah. I can help you with that."

Chris Tiley: And then equally, I'm a 30-year-old, well, 35-year-old, but in my 30s, trying to get into groups that are designed for over 60s, and I feel like there's a couple of groups I've had a frosty response, thinking like, "Why are you even here? Because you're not part of our group. You're obviously here because you want to sell to us," or again, that might be my mindset that's in there. But if you've got any tips or if I'm looking at it from inside the bottle, like you refer to, is any outside-the-box thinking that you can think of how I can get into communities that I might be able to help start that thought process of starting the strength training?

Pat Flynn: So the big thing here is we have to realize that people aren't searching or even wanting the resistance training, which is your product and which you have to offer. That's not what they want. That's what they need, and that's what they would love. But it's not what they want. We have to go into, "Well, what do they really want?" And you touched on some of that. And if you can write articles or speak to or provide value to those who have those wants, then they are now open to hearing what they actually need. And so using that framework or structure, you could potentially navigate yourself into providing value into these groups a little bit more. You could position yourself as, sure, you're 35. You're not in this group, but you served this group. You have helped people through pain, and people might be going through pain here. And that's all that the conversation should be about, initially, because, again, that's what they want.

Pat Flynn: If you come in and say, "Hey, you know what you need? You need strength training," and it just is like, "Okay, this is just another vacuum salesman coming to the door," right? Versus, "Hey, what's going on here? Where is this pain? It's there? Okay. Well, here are some things that I do with my clients to help. And by the way, every time we finish up, I often recommend strength training because that keeps their strength and allows them to do all those things. Do you want to talk about that?"

Pat Flynn: "Wow. I've never heard about that. Sure, let's talk about it." So it's like a conversation, and if you go into these forums and groups and start, again, sharing things that are different than what they think they need, then it's going to always come across that way. The method I would use would be to ... Here would be the best case scenario and what I want you to shoot for. How do you get a trusted person in that group? How do you get, maybe it's the admin or the moderator of that group or the leader or the podcast host or the YouTuber to talk about you and how you've helped them and how the strength training has helped them? Right? That is where people go, "Oh, wow. I didn't know I needed that, but this person I trust, who I follow, seems to take on to it. Okay, I'm interested now. Who do I go to for this?"

Pat Flynn: "Oh, well, there's this guy, Chris. He helps people through pain, but also he knows the best way to continue to have longevity is to do a little bit of strength training, and yeah." And then he'll go to bat for you because you've helped them, right? So there could be ways for you to find a person who has some influence over these people already and see how you might be able to provide value for them. That could be just simply you coming onto their podcast. And again, not talking about strength training and how great strength training is, but helping people through their immediate needs. The fact that they have lower back pain and they can't garden anymore, "Well, here are some exercises that you can do to help yourself through that. Here are the pills that people are going to recommend that I wouldn't recommend because they're dangerous for you." All these little things that people go, "Oh my gosh, this is really helpful for me right now. I'd love to learn more."

Pat Flynn: "Oh, and hey, did you know that strength training ... I know it's a thing that most people consider for 20 year olds coming out of college to get strong, but it's actually something people your age should be doing, and it's what my clients do as well. You want to talk more about that?" And I think that that's how you get into those conversations. You need to provide value first to the want, and then you can tell them what they need from there.

Chris Tiley: Yeah.

Pat Flynn: Does that help or get you thinking about, "Okay, well, how might you be able to, or who might you be able to reach out to, to initiate that?"

Chris Tiley: Yeah, definitely. I think that's probably part of the reason, thinking about it now, that I'm attracted to podcasts is that you learn about people, other people you can trust through someone you already trust. And there's several people that have been on SPI Pro that I've then found, and I now listen to their podcasts, and it's only because the trust I had in you in the first place in order to listen to them. So one I've listened to today was Rick Mulready, and there's Jack Hopkins as well, and a few other people like that. And yeah, it's all because they were on the podcast with you first.

Chris Tiley: So I think if I could do a little bit more of that, is actually reaching out to a podcast that is likely to have people that might then just listen to it and it spark a chord with them. So yeah, if they have a high listenership of over 60s, because it doesn't necessarily have to be a specifically gardening one or ... I mean, there's a lot of people who have grandchildren, so it's not necessarily niche down at that point either. But all I need is a few people to take onboard and start talking about it.

Pat Flynn: I think that could be a great strategy. And then the other thing would be to create ... I don't know if you're creating YouTube videos yet or not, but which of these do you think would perform better, "How to gain more strength so that you can be out in the garden more," and you can teach them resistance training from there, or, "How to fix your lower back problems so you can garden again." It should be obvious, right? And because people on YouTube are literally typing those things, you can do a quick search, you can do a quick auto-fill to see what people actually need help with. You can create a quick video to solve that problem.

Pat Flynn: And then you now have their ears open and permission to go, "Hey, and by the way, if you want to make sure that this kind of stuff doesn't happen to you again, I personally recommend resistance training. And yes, I know you might be over 60 years old, and that sounds weird, but this is what I do. Here's a story about Mike," right? And then you tell that story, and that could be a really great way for people to go, "Oh, wow. Okay. First of all, you helped me with my lower back pain." And now they're open to hearing you talk about these things that you have going on.

Pat Flynn: So I wouldn't even say like, "Hey, I'm Chris from nevertoooldtolift.com." It's just like, "All right, you have some back pain. Let me help you out. Do these things. Here's what I do with my clients," and then, boom, you now have the open opportunity to share what else they now need.

Chris Tiley: Yep. Yeah. That makes sense.

Pat Flynn: Cool, Chris. So what do you think your next steps are from here?

Chris Tiley: So I think I definitely need to plan the modules of the course, review that again because when I did get around to that, that was a while ago, so yeah, I need to go back to it, make sure the planning stage is done in the little chunks of time that I have and then put aside and hope they don't get eaten into by unexpected illnesses and things like that. But inaudible filming.

Pat Flynn: Well, at the same time, you know that you can bounce back, right? You've bounced back before. You can bounce back again, right? You can get through anything now at this point. You know that, which should be reassuring, right?

Chris Tiley: Yeah, definitely, because I had thought about doing the Jeff Walker, the seed launch into the live weekly ones that I heard you recommend to someone not too long ago. And I'm so glad I didn't in the end because the week that I was thinking of starting was the first week that he was ill and the time I would've done it, he wasn't able to get to nursery. So I had to come out. So I don't think that's going to be an option for me at this stage is doing a weekly live one that someone can attend because I may not be able to attend myself. But I like the idea of filming a couple of modules and just starting it, and that way I have to keep up with the modules and that puts the pressure on me and I'll get it done that way, I think.

Pat Flynn: I love it, Chris. Where can people go to find your practice? What's the website one more time in case people listening are interested in following your journey?

Chris Tiley: So in terms of the online, it's Never Too Old To Lift, so it's nevertoooldtolift.com. And I mean, in terms of the physio practice, if you happen to be in the UK and live near Birmingham, it's Chris Tiley, physiotherapy. So not particularly an original name, but yeah, Christileyphysiotherapy.com.

Pat Flynn: That's all right. Hey, we got a worldwide audience. So I'd love to hear a story of somebody just walking into the clinic. "Hey, I heard you on AskPat." I think that would be pretty cool. Chris, thank you so much for this. Thank you for opening up and sharing what's going on. I hope that this was helpful and I look forward to maybe we can reconnect in the future and see how things go from here.

Chris Tiley: Yeah, that'd be great. Provide some accountability for getting the course done.

Pat Flynn: Awesome. Thank you, Chris.

Pat Flynn: All right, I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Chris. Again, you can find Chris at nevertoooldtolift.com. Very interesting and very important conversation about the difference between what a person might want and what a target customer potentially could actually need, and using that want to bring people in as far as a lead magnet, as far as solving their problems first, but then really helping them with their longevity with the thing that you know they need that is your specialty and opening up that conversation instead of, like Chris was talking about, just getting shunned or going into these groups and not really being listened to at all.

Pat Flynn: So hope this was helpful for you. It definitely is something that is very important, and I look forward to seeing how you use this information. And make sure you subscribe because we've got a lot of other great coaching calls coming up as well as some other fun things here on AskPat, and look forward to serving you in the near future. So hit that subscribe button if you haven't already. Thank you so much already for the reviews that have been coming in for the show. I appreciate that very, very much. And Chris, thank you again for opening up and being vulnerable for us. It helps everybody out, and I appreciate you for that. So take care. Thanks so much, and I'll see you in the next one. Peace out. Team Flynn for the win.

Pat Flynn: Thanks for listening to AskPat at askpat.com. I'm your host, Pat Flynn. Our senior producer is Sara Jane Hess. Our series producer is David Grabowski, and our executive producer is Matt Gartland. Sound editing by Duncan Brown. AskPat is a production of SPI Media. We'll catch you in the next session.