by: AskPat 483 Episode Transcript
Pat Flynn: Hey. What's up everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 483 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. We have a great question today from Will.
Before we get to Will's question, I do want to thank today's sponsor which is Freshbooks.com making it super easy for all of us entrepreneurs out there and small business owners to manage our finances. They serve over three million small businesses. They could serve you, too. They also have an award-winning mobile app so you can check the financial health of your business on the go, too, and they make it really easy to do any invoicing, so if you have any students or clients that you work with, it makes it really easy to get paid. Go ahead and check it out for free for 30 days by going to GetFreshBooks.com and by entering “Ask Pat” in the “How did you here about us?” section. Again, that's GetFreshBooks.com, enter “Ask Pat.” All right, here is today's question from Will.
Will: Hi, Pat. You always say the riches are in the niches. I have a website and YouTube channel that I'm growing, and I have hundreds of videos lined up. Honestly the topics I cover are kind of broad. I read some of the best books and go through some of the paid products on dating, health, wealth, finance, and business. I share this information with the viewers of my YouTube videos, and so my following is pretty small right now, but I have faith that it will grow. The problem is, how do I sell something when the niches are so diversified and people are maybe interested in only the health part or interested in the whole thing?
I do think people are telling me to niche down, but I do think that people do well with a diversified group of interests like mens' health, so I really want to know your opinion. Should I start selling immediately or plugging things, asking for email addresses, or just wait until I get a consistent following of 1,000 viewers? Right now I get about 30 viewers. Thanks.
Pat Flynn: Hey, Will. What's up? Thank you so much for the question today. I think this is very relevant to a lot of people who are listening out there because a lot of us have a lot of diverse interests and things that we feel we can offer value with, but I will say that quote which is from—I don't know where that quote actually comes from—”the riches are in the niches.” It is so true, and especially when you're first starting out.
You had mentioned mens' health, which is sort of the realm of what it seems like you're targeting, or mens' personal development, I guess you could say which is a niche, but that is so broad. There are so many people targeting all different aspects of that niche already. It's going to be very difficult for you. It's not impossible. It's not impossible, Will, but it's going to be very different for you to stand out.
Now, the one thing that will help you is to create something that is going to be unique and something different. That's going to help you no matter what, but if you want it to be different and unique in a much easier way, you want to target one of those particular aspects of mens' health or personal development and become the trusted advisor. This is Jay Abraham's strategy of preeminence. This is called being the trusted advisor for that group of people. If you feel like you can talk about all these different topics and become a trusted advisor in each of those things, its going to be very difficult to do that. It's just honestly there are so many other experts out there who are relevant. There's magazines. There's websites with thousands of team members that are all addressing these topics.
Now, again like I said, it's not impossible, but if you want to make your life easier, you niche down. So select one of those. Become the trusted expert. The one that everybody talks about whenever that topic comes up, you are the one that they reference, talk about. That's going to help you spread word of mouth. It's going to help you narrow the content that you can create and also help you build that following that is targeted so that you can then figure out what they need and sell them something, and you're not selling something to just 2% of your audience, you're selling it to 100% of that particular audience, and that's exactly what you want to do.
Then over time, you can branch out, and then you can diversify, but when you are starting out, you need to narrow down your field of vision. It also narrows down who your audience is. Yes, you're going to target less people, but you're going to become an expert to more of them. That is absolutely true and what I would recommend. Where do you go from here?
Well, you have all these videos which you've created already which is great, and I would recommend posting them. Why? Because you can then see what people are resonating with the most. So maybe you publish on a whole bunch of different topics since you've created this already, and then you find out, “wow it's the mens' personal mental development stuff” that people seem to be the most interested in. Then you can focus on that one. It'll give you an opportunity to quickly weed through the stuff that aren't going to help you out in the beginning and go right to what's working, and then like I said become that trusted advisor. That's the mindset and the approach that you want to take, and so it narrows down the kind of content. It narrows down the products that you might potentially create, the products that you might potentially sell as an affiliate, advertisers that you can work with.
Think about that. If you're doing a lot of videos and you're getting some views, well people don't want to advertise where their audience isn't all totally there. That's why I would recommend narrowing down. So Will, hope that answers your question. I'd love to hear what everybody else things about this actually. If you use the hashtag #AskPat483, again hashtag #AskPat483, we can continue this conversation on Twitter and help out Will even more, and just get some interesting thoughts from the audience there. So hashtag #AskPat483 on Twitter and we'll hear what you think.
Will, thank you so much for your question. We're going to send you and AskPat t-shirt for having your question featured here in the show. For everybody else out there, if you have a question 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 want to thank today's sponsor which is FreshBooks.com. Like I said makes it super easy for us to keep track of our business finances, especially come tax season. Those forms are already there for you to give to your CPA, or if you do your taxes yourself, it just makes it very very easy and simple to see what has been going on with your business. Also, it's just really easy to organize.
I remember when I first started managing my finances, I used Excel, and it was just a headache especially around tax season, so do yourself a favor. Get FreshBooks by going to GetFreshBooks.com and entering Ask Pat in the how did you hear about us section for a 30 day free trial. Again, that's freshbooks.com, enter Ask Pat. Thanks so much. I appreciate it, and I'm going to give you that quote one more time to end the day. This is by somebody unknown. It's not my own quote, but that is The riches are in the niches. Take care, and I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat. Bye. Oh, and before I forget. If you're listening to this on the day it comes out, Happy Thanksgiving. Thank you. I appreciate you. Bye.