AP 0400: AskPat Live on Periscope

AskPat 400 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up everybody? Pat Flynn here and welcome to Episode 400 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. As always, I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions, five days a week.

This is actually a very special episode, not just because it's 400th, but because we're doing something different today to answer your questions. Actually, right now I'm literally looking at a screen with over 170 people in it. This is Periscope, I'm live on Periscope recording this right now. Everybody's watching behind the scenes and I would love for you to get on Periscope and follow me. If you go and check out Periscope you can download the app on your Android or iOS device. You can follow me @PatFlynn and when I go live, and I go live once or twice a day, you can see me live and interact and ask questions which is exactly what we're doing right now. We've got a lot of people in the room right now. Go Pat. This is cool.

For those of you listening right now what I'm actually doing is broadcasting this live from my home office. Everybody is watching. Everybody is interacting and what's going to happen is I'm going to ask the audience who's watching live questions and I'm going to do my best to answer them as fast as I can. We've got about 15 to 20 minutes here and there's probably going to be hundreds of questions. I'm not going to be able to get to all of them but I am going to try my best so we're going to go lightning round here. There's not one specific question. There may be questions that have already been answered that I answer again but again this is just a way for me to thank you all for listening, thank you all for watching who are watching live on Periscope right now. Also for those of you who don't know that I'm on Periscope go ahead and check me out. We have a lot of fun.

Before we get to that episode I do want to thank today's sponsors. First up is Lynda.com, L-y-n-d-a .com with over 3,000 on demand video courses to help you strengthen your business, tech, and creative skills. You can actually get a free 10-day trial right now if you go to Lynda.com/AskPat. That's L-y-n-d-a.com/AskPat. Actually I know a couple of members of my team who use it religiously. I've used it myself to do some tutorials on Photoshop and tutorials for ideas. Again Lynda.com/AskPat. Okay, let's get to today's questions. Right now what I'm going to do is I'm going to ask the Periscope audience what questions do you have? I'm going to pull the screen closer here and do what I can to answer as many questions as I can. Again this is what I do. I like to experiment and see what happens. TrumpetLessons says, why so late at night?

Again for those watching there's going to be a lot questions. I'm going to try and answer these as quick as I can. Why am I doing this so late at night? I am better at recording this particular episode after the kids go to bed on a Sunday night and that's exactly why I do it. I try to really get scheduled and block out my time for certain things. I do a lot of things in the morning. Writing, that sort of thing. This particular show I record at night. Thank you for that question. Whew. I just missed like 40 questions. Again I apologize. You guys are going to have to get a little bit lucky here.

Strategies for calming down before speaking from Hale I believe. I do a number of things because I get super nervous before I go and speak on stage so before I speak I do some breathing exercises. I get a lot of water. I don't eat anything. I've found that every time I eat something before I speak I'd get burpy and airy and it just doesn't sound good on the microphone you know what I'm saying. I also walk around a bit and I just go through the intro of my shtick or my presentation as much as possible just to get comfortable with the intro because once you get over the intro you're kind of in the zone. If you've rehearsed enough it's just getting over those first few minutes. It's just like starting a conversation. One of the easiest things to do is have a conversation but one of the hardest things to do is start that conversation. What you do is you just work on the start and the rest will follow. Great question. Thank you.

All right. What's my favorite bird? My favorite bird is probably a cardinal. I love the red and the black and that whole thing. What do you do to keep your energy levels up? I make sure that I know when I'm energized. I'm very focused and conscious on when I have energy and when I don't. I also know the things that I do to give me energy and the things that I do to not give me energy or drain my energy. The miracle morning routine has been huge. Meditation has been huge. Exercise and diet has been huge as well but also here's one productivity tip that you might not have heard it before. Actually I think I mentioned it in a podcast or something but it is wash the dishes. That might sound really weird for everybody listening to this, especially the wives out there. You might love this. You can get your husbands to be productive by washing the dishes, if you say Pat said that they might actually hate me now but it works.

I wash the dishes before I get to work for a number of reasons. One, it's mindless. During that time I can just think about what I'm about to do so that when I go and do whatever I'm about to do without having to use that time when I go to do what I want to do to think about what I'm going to do. That was a lot of “to dos” but if you rewind that and play that back slowly it's going to make sense. Also what happens is you actually accomplish something so when you finish the dishes you feel completely accomplished. Something is done. Your wife or your partner is happy and you can go and move on so wash the dishes. Trust me. I truly believe something like washing the dishes, vacuuming, something like that is very good.

Ethan asks, do I believe in failure? Yes and I encourage it. I don't want you to fail. I don't think we should all strive to fail of course but we should welcome failure. Failure is an incredible tool because it teaches us what not to do next. If I could only use one as a content creator, Periscope or YouTube, says Walkaway52, which one would I use? I would use Periscope. I like it because it is the in thing right now and unfortunately there is no way to search for Periscopes. The Periscopes that are recorded kind of die after 24 hours unless you record them yourselves but I like the interaction. I think for first time audience builders, if you're starting from scratch I think Periscope is a great way to introduce yourself to people and get to know them. That one on one interaction is huge which you can't necessarily get on YouTube but I feel like you need to take people from Periscope somewhere and hopefully that would be back to your website but I can see people taking people from Periscope to YouTube and YouTube is great because that's where you build a lot more authority. That's where you have search engine optimization and that's where people can find you through search. People can't find you through search on Periscope at least at this time.

Okay. “What is my best advice to get a lot of fast exposure on the net?” says MaxRyanCoach. The number one piece of advice I can give you MaxRyanCoach is connect with other influencers. The relationship building, meeting people, helping other people out who have the same audience target as you. It's going to give you that 80/20. 80% of the benefits for 20% of the work. A lot of people try from scratch and build content and they think if you build it they will come. That's kind of halfway true. You have to build it and they will come only if they find you. You have to really find where that audience exists and there's no better way than to get somebody who an audience already trusts to recommend you. Guests posts and just creating amazing content that other people will link to.

Let's see. “How do I find podcast sponsors?” says Jono and how do I agree on a payment? Well it's on a case by case basis but essentially once you start to build a big audience you will see some podcast sponsors potentially want to sponsor you but you can also reach out. I've reached out to a number of companies I've used before and I started with the ones I knew had sponsored other shows. Actually I listened to StartUp with Alex Blumberg and I saw, Slack I believe. I think it was that show but anyways Slack, a tool I use, a communication tool I use quite heavily on my team, they sponsor that show. I was like hey, I use you guys. I love you guys. I reached out to them, told them I had a podcast and gave them my numbers, my downloads which is essentially how many people listen to an episode on average after six weeks.

I also gave them my demographics and told them what the price was, typically anywhere between $25 and $43 CPM which is cost per thousand listens and you can do the math from there. Also you're going to have to use your negotiation skills. It's pretty fun actually although it can be very scary for some people as well to actually have a real business conversation in that way where you're actually talking to somebody’s voice and wheeling and dealing and that sort of thing. It's a lot of fun but that's how I would go about it.

“Would I start two online businesses at the same time in different niches?” says Destiny I think her name is. I would only start one thing at a time. This is something I said to my son very recently because he struggles with trying to do too much at once. Kind of like all of us entrepreneurs. I can see him growing up to be an entrepreneur just like us but he struggles with trying to do too many things at once and when you tell him to do something faster, maybe we're late or something, he's putting on his shoes and socks and we're late and we go, go faster. He tries to put both socks on at the same time and both shoes on at the same time. He like scrambles all around and you know what? He gets nothing done and he just wastes more time. I say, hey bud how do you put on your socks? One sock at a time. When you are doing something, whatever it is, do one thing at a time. Then when you master that one thing or at least get to a point where you're comfortable putting your “sock” on then you can put on that next sock. I'm putting up an image up here that I have right here called The One Thing by Jay Papasan and Gary Keller which I have right in front of me to remind me daily to focus on one thing.

With that said you can get super narrowly focused with that one thing too so just because it's one thing doesn't mean it's as focused as it should be so that's a whole other conversation we could have as well. Pat, besides ebooks what other items do I sell to produce revenue? This is by Ryan Shu. He asks this question and I answer. That's my way of stalling there. Besides ebooks there's a number of different ways you can earn an income online. We already talked about sponsorships for podcasts. You can also do paid posts or review posts for companies. A lot of people in the mom blog space do that very well, actually make quite a bit of money by talking about a product and that company pays that person to do that.

You can also talk about a product, recommend it, and earn affiliate commission. That's how I earn a generous chunk of my change from SmartPassiveIncome.com is from affiliate marketing as well where you take a product hopefully that you've used, that you like, that you love, and you share it with your audience because you know they will like and love it as well and they win because they get a product they like. They go through your link so you get a commission on top of that and also the company wins because they get a new customer so that's a great way to provide value, generate an income, and do it without spending the time to create a product. Obviously you can create your own information products. You can do what a lot of people are doing now and utilizing Amazon as a fulfillment service by actually manufacturing and creating real products. There's so many different ways to do it. You can do coaching. You can do consulting. You can do freelancing. You can do apps. You can do web apps. You can do SAAS products. You can do dances and get paid for it.

Literally you can do that by putting yourself on YouTube which a lot of people do, not just dances but there's a guy that comes to mind. His name is Evan at EvanTube and Evan is somebody who my son loves because he actually films himself or his dad films him. He's literally 10 years old right now. He gets filmed and posts videos of himself building Lego sets. Building Lego sets. He has millions of viewers. I mean millions of subscribers and he's killing it now. There's a lot of things you can do as long as you're providing value in some way shape or form whether it's through inspiration, through education, or entertainment as well.

What was my most recent big “aha moment?” This was a question from Kimra who you will get to hear very soon on the SPI podcast. She's amazing and crushing it online right now. My latest “aha moment.” That is a fantastic question. My latest “aha moment” was oh gosh, let's see. I'm trying to think here. I want to say Periscope but that's kind of a cop out answer just because it's hot right now. My biggest “aha moment” was actually just fairly recently actually. Actually just today I was talking to Chris Ducker because I'm working on my presentation for Podcast Movement 2015 which is next week actually. Very excited. I hope to see you there or have seen you there if you're listening to this when it comes out. For those of you watching on Periscope I hope to see you there at Podcast Movement if not maybe in a recording or something later but I'm working on the opening keynote presentation and I'm doing some stuff I've never done before.

Chris said something to me earlier today literally just a couple of hours ago so this was my last “aha moment,” but he said you've got to put more of you in your presentation. I was getting a little bit worried because it's a keynote. It's one of those super special presentations. It starts the whole show. I can ruin the entire thing for everybody because I just start off on the right foot. The biggest thing is, and this is what Chris is all about and why I love Chris and Duckerscope because he does this, he puts a lot of you into his brand. If you guys watching on Periscope agree, if you watch Duckerscope and you know Chris puts him and his brand and is not afraid to do that, type yes. I would love to see those come in. Yeah, I mean he said dude you've got to put more of you in your brand. People love you because you're you. Here are the yesses streaming in now. That just proves it. If you are you, you are original. Nobody is like you. You've got to take advantage of that. It was really nice to be reminded of that despite me being worried about the keynote and trying to be something maybe I wasn't just because it was a bigger deal. I've just got to be me.

I crushed a few of other presentations because I was me. The last one I did at New Media in Expo in Las Vegas, it was completely me. TheSavvyYP right now says the MX presentation was so damn cool. That was the one where I had the DeLorean. I was sitting in a real DeLorean and rode up to the stage in it and that is totally me. I totally geeked out that and yes it was a little bit selfish because I wanted to do it but also I knew it was very relevant to the content in the presentation and it was a keynote. I think it was the closing keynote or it was in the middle of the conference but it made a difference. People remember it. People are still talking about it today so thank you for that question Kimra and I look forward to featuring you on the SPI podcast. Let's see. Anymore questions coming in? This is great. We are 13 minutes into the episode. We're going to sit here for about 7 more minutes. This is going to be about 20 minutes. Reading these comments is awesome.

For those of you listening you can see that on Periscope people are connecting with each other. The whole time as I'm answering these questions, I'm kind of scrolling through the question here and seeing everybody reply to each other. You can @ people. You can follow people and you can get to know other people here as well so this is more than just kind of a U-Stream or a live stream or something else. This is something that's incredible because when you think about it you have a phone and it's going from your phone. I'm in my office now and most people who in the past have done live streams have been in their office on that little webcam on top of your computer but this is something you can take anywhere. I've watched scopes of people walking through the Eiffel Tower and at the top of the Statue of Liberty. Oh my gosh it's so amazing. You can give a lot of crazy value to people by just sharing people a little bit about your life. Anyway, sorry I looked away from the screen so I missed any questions that came in.

I'm just going to ramble here. Who are my mentors? This is a great question. I have few mentors I've had over time. I've never had an “official” mentor, somebody who I've been like “hey excuse me, I love what you do. Would you please mentor me and focus on me for awhile and help me through these stages of my business or my life?” I've never had an official mentor although I would love one someday and I really do feel like that would be very valuable. I've sort of in my head created these unofficial mentors. These people who I've really looked up to, who I'm passionate about learning from and about. The big one that comes to mind is Elon Musk. He's a big inspiration to me and a mentor in his brain. The way his brain works. Eli takes these things that are pretty much impossible and he makes them possible. He's the guy who owns Solar City and Tesla and SpaceX and just what he's done with those programs, how he's built those businesses, almost getting bankrupt for them too has been an incredible inspiration in the way that his brain has been able to take these things that are in most people's eyes impossible and make them possible. I want that kind of brain.

There are some things I want to do in this world right and some of those things may seem impossible but I want them to happen so Elon Musk. E-l-o-n M-u-s-k. There's a biography about him that's really inspirational. There's some things with his personality I don't necessarily agree with but he's a business man and that's how he's gotten things done so I completely understand his options but I am not … You'll have to read the book to check out more about that. There are also some other people like Tim Ferriss. Of course I have Jeremy and Jason from Internet Business Mastery who were my first mentors who really helped me out when I was first starting out back in 2008. There's also Darren Rowse from Problogger.net as well and Chris Ducker is a mentor to me even though a lot of you say, oh you guys have a bromance and you guys are buds. Yes we're buds but he's a much more experienced business man than I am. He has that hardcore salesman type of knowledge and no BS kind of attitude which I love and I need to hear his advice. I need to hear his realness from time to time because I get so much.

I kind of get jaded sometimes. I might be too nice sometimes. I don't know would you guys agree? Thank you again for watching this on Periscope. I appreciate that. We're going to stay on for another three minutes here and again we're going to answer as many questions as we can within that three minutes. I know I missed a bunch but again thank you so much. Hope you guys listening to this are having fun and can keep up with how fast I'm talking. Maybe you can play this at half speed if it is going by too fast. EmbodyYourSoul says how long has Pat been doing his biz, do you guys know? Oh I've been doing my business since 2008. That is when I got laid off from architecture. Then I started GreenExamAcademy.com helping people pass an exam in the architecture business and then I started SmartPassiveIncome.com. I actually, fun fact, started a number of other different websites that didn't do very well or failed.

The first one I started after GreenExamAcademy.com, actually before SmartPassiveIncome.com was a site that I wanted to start with my fiance, April, my wife right now. Because that other site did very well she saw what was going on and I was like, hey maybe we can do this one together. That site was called ACoupleOfThoughts.com. There's a big lesson at the end of this so stay tuned. It was called acoupleofthoughts.com and the idea was that everyday there would be a theme that couples had to deal with or something couples could talk about and discuss and on the left side of the question or the left of the front page it would be the guys point of view and on the right side of the page it would be the woman's side of the view or April's view and then we would kind of clash. She's very witty and she's a good writer so we would go back and forth. I set up the website. I literally paid $500 to somebody on Elance to set up a website. We got the domain, all that stuff. Then all of the sudden we're ready to start writing.

We start writing and then within that first post that we had to write, the theme was literally custom with the left and right side and that sort of thing and we literally had a fight that first post. It was just ridiculous. We didn't even finish. What we discovered was this was a terrible idea, absolutely terrible idea. Everybody is laughing right now. The big lesson here, and a lot of us do this and we hit this idea and we want the business cards and we build the website and we make it fancy. We get the letterhead and we go on 99designs and get the url and all this stuff. Then you start to get down to really what that site is going to be about or what that business is about or what that product you're going to create is and you either can't figure it out or it's a halfway thought or you start writing and then you get in a fight with your significant other and you don't talk to each other for two days and you realize that that was a dumb idea in the first place.

If you had just thought ahead and tried a little bit of what the site was actually going to be about, if we had written first maybe we would have gotten into a fight but at least I wouldn't have lost $500 and we would have figured it out earlier and then I could have moved on and dedicated more time to other businesses as well. That's my little story there. Big lesson, don't worry about the business cards. Worry about the business first. That actually reminds me in high school, my friends and I for whatever reason thought it was cool to print business cards with our name on them. It talked about what our hobbies were and it looked very official. It was like, I don't know if you guys did that, I think it was so weird that we did that but we had these literally business cards in our wallets that we would hand out. Some people here on Periscope have done the same thing. They looked very professional. I don't know what the heck they were for. We didn't have a business but we just built those cards and we paid, you know, $30 or something for X number of copies but the thing is there was no point. There was no business. It was just a façade. It was just to look cool.

I don't know if somebody tried to hire us for something we wouldn't know what to do. I don't know. Anyway, worry about the business, not the business cards. Business first. How do I keep motivated and working on bad days. Okay. This will be the final question. Okay thank you for this Rich I believe. I missed the handle there on Periscope so I apologize. How do I keep motivated on a bad day so this is a great question and hopefully one that inspires you because what I do is I think about my next step and that helps often because sometimes I get overwhelmed. When I'm overwhelmed I don't want to work because I can just see that that road is so long but if I look at the next exit it's a little bit easier to get there so I just kind of focus on that one thing, and again, this theme of this one thing throughout many of these Periscopes I've been doing. It's very very important to do that. That helps a lot actually. Just clearing out the clutter and focusing on the next thing.

The next thing I do is I think about why I want to do that thing in the first place and often times we forget this right? We work so hard whether it's a 9 to 5 or on our business or whatever, we work so hard. We put time, effort, we put sweat into what we do and we often forget why and when we forget why and we're putting in all that sweat equity we often have that disconnect and don't want to do it anymore. Then you have to think about why it is that we're doing what we're doing. If you think about that and you see that what it is that you're doing does actually not align with what you're why is then you're going to be like, well why am I doing this thing in the first place. Then you can cut out that thing and not do it which could be very helpful or you could remember why you do it and keep moving forward.

The final thing that I do is I look back here and by back here I mean, for those of you not watching on Periscope I'm pointing at the back of my room right now for those of you listening right now I have a 5×5 board in the back of my room that is full of thank you notes and thank you letters from people who I've helped. These are handwritten letters too. I keep all the thank yous that I get in a special folder in my inbox as well. This helps me realize that I actually have an effect on people's lives. I forget that a lot actually but when I'm struggling, when I just cannot finish the thing that I'm doing but I know it's helpful I look back and say wow if I don't do this who am I not helping? Who am I letting down? I have to realize that this work and this business that I'm doing is not about me. This is about other people.

Wow did I show the light back there again? I have a big LED light that I use when Caleb comes over for shooting video and I put it on just to backlight me, but it's huge. It's a 5×5 and I'll show you guys on Periscope later when we hang up on the recording but the recording is going very well. We're at 22 minutes. I'm just going to finish up this final thought. I go in there and I literally just read one of them and it gets me back to work. Sometimes it is because I'm working too hard and for too long so sometimes I'll just take a break, turn my computer off, literally turn it off so it takes me awhile to turn back on and I don't just jump back into it and I go outside for a walk or I go and play with Gizmo, my dog, or the kids, or I go have a drink of water or I'll go play the piano, play the ukulele whatever.

The other day to kind of keep my mind off the work I was doing, I was working hard on my keynote presentation I found a video on YouTube about Pop and Locking. For those of you who don't know pop and locking is a way to dance. It's an old school 70s dance and there was a tutorial on how to do certain moves and I just spent the next 15 – 20 minutes focusing on that and it was really fun and interesting and challenging but it totally got my mind off of what I was doing. After I was done with that, after I saw how bad I was but maybe got a few of it I went back to work and got things done so great questions you guys. I apologize for not being able to get to all of them. For those of you who are listening to this right now I hope you can see just how cool Periscope is although you can't see, I hope you can hear how cool Periscope is and we've got 132 people still on who are just amazing and who are giving you guys a shout out.

To finish these episodes I usually, for those of you watching on Periscope, I say a quote. You've heard me say them at the end of every episode. I'm going to call out some people who have some quotes to share. Those of you on Periscope if you have a quote to share I'm going to do my best to share a few of those. For those of you watching I appreciate you so much. I'm just going to end with these quotes here. I'm going to also end with another sponsor as well in just a second but all I'm seeing is we're glued Pat. Awesome Periscope. This is super cool. One of the cool things about Periscope as well is you get that immediate sort of feedback from what it is that you're doing.

What it is I go and watch these later and I see when people tap the screen for hearts and that shows me. . . Getinmykitchen says, “peace love and bacon grease.” I love that. Dreams don't work unless you do. Says stop focusing on the business cards, focus on business. Hey that was mine. CashLifeMastery says show up everyday. RickJayPeterson says go to bed smarter than you woke up. I love that one. BPH says we learn from mistakes so one is not enough. That's so good. Mentors in life are so important, choose them wisely. I believe that was [inaudible 00:25:17]. Create more than you consume says PollyAnna I think. VirginiaDuvall says trust your own power. Absolutely. UnclutterNow says, “work smarter not harder.” Amen sister. That's what I'm talking about. You're not necessarily a sister. Sorry I said that. Richard says, high five life. For sure. Let's see. DinaMcLiving says, “be yourself. Therein lies your. . .” I lost it. LiveYourBalance says, “I would rather live a life full of oh wells than a life full of what ifs.” Thank you for that. That is a Pat Flynn original. I would rather live a life full of oh wells than a life full of what ifs.

This episode of AskPat was totally brand new, something different. The idea came across my head and I said you know what, I would hate not to do this so I would rather live with the oh wells than the what ifs. Thank you guys so much for listening. I appreciate you listening to the episode, this 400th episode of AskPat and of course thank you to everybody who is watching right now. Thank you guys for listening. I appreciate you and I can't wait to serve you in the next episode of AskPat. Cheers.