AP 0408: Can I Start a Business Using Only Social Media?

AskPat 408 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: What's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 408 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. We have a great question today from Khizer K-H-I-Z-E-R, and you'll hear why I spell it out in just a sec. But, I also want to thank today's sponsor which is Freshbooks.com.

FreshBooks making it super easy for everybody out there to manage your business finances. They serve over three million small businesses including mine with helping manage our income, our expenses, and also our invoices. They make invoicing super professional and easy so we can just, in a nice way, get paid much quicker and then continue doing what we need to do. They also have an award winning map, or a award winning mobile app, or, I guess I shortened that to map. But mobile app is fantastic because you can check the health status of your finances and your business on the go. So check it out. You can get it for free for 30 days. You can check it out for free for 30 days by going to FreshBooks.com/AskPat and by entering “AskPat” in the “how did you hear about us?” section.

All right, here's today's question from Khizer.

Khizer: Hey, Pat. This is Khizer calling. I sing and play the guitar. I do not have a website yet. But I do use my personal Facebook page, Instagram, and Periscope to put out content and to build a following. I wanted to know how I could turn that into receiving income using those skills because I've been doing it for almost a decade now and would like to release my own music and song covers out. My Instagram name is KhizerPermanente, like the health insurance company. So yeah, your feedback would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Pat Flynn: Hey Khizer, what's up? Thank you so much for the question and I spell it out for you, or for everybody out there in the beginning actually, so people weren't finding you at the actual Kaiser Permanente website. But more Khizer, K-H-I-Z-E-R Permanente in terms of Instagram. So I'm excited to check out your music and things like that. But here's the big thing. I'm just going to tell you really quickly. You've got to have some of your own property to be able to collect all of your followers on. And the reason I mention that, and what I mean is, what if Facebook were to, for some reason, restrict your account, or go away? Happened to Myspace. A lot of people's accounts get banned on Facebook all the time for no reason. What if your Instagram account got hacked? What if your Periscope account got, you know, what if Periscope goes away? Which is still very possible because it's still fairly new.

You are potentially setting yourself up for massive disappointment by not having a way to collect email addresses and have your own website. You need to have something that you can control, because you are building a business on somebody else's platform right now and all these platforms are free, basically. So you never know what's going to happen to them and Facebook could, for whatever reason, for example, just cut off your page and then you're done. And then you couldn't do anything about it. It's happened to a lot of people before. So I really, really worry about that Khizer.

So the best thing I would essentially have you do is create a website. It doesn't even have to be very big or have very much stuff. You can create a WordPress website and just get a nice theme up there with your image, but it will also help you down the long run because you can build an email list, which you should be doing. You should be getting as many fans to give you their email address as possible. It's like the number one mistake I see a lot of YouTube stars doing and musicians who do these songs and cover songs and who have millions of followers and they just rely on YouTube, for example and that's it. But when you collect email addresses it allows you to connect with your audience a little bit better. It also allows you to control that email list so that if something were to happen on one of these web properties or their social media platforms, you can then move somewhere else and really easily establish yourself much quicker.

What if there's another social media platform that comes out later that's even better, that allows you to better share your music? Well, you're going to have to start from scratch from there, if that's the case. Whether you still have these other ones or not, or you could just really quickly send an email and say, “hey guys, I'm up on this new platform now. Check me out. Here's a direct link.” Boom, you're up. You're one of the top stars on there and everything is golden, right?

So you've got to have a way to collect email addresses and bring people off of these platforms and onto your own brand where you can then control that experience, you can give people exclusive access to stuff they wouldn't get anywhere else as well. And that would only help you grow your audience on those platforms even faster. Because when you share those things, more people are going to share those things with other people. They're going to get into your email list. Every time you come out with something new, you could send an email out. It just makes things happen much faster. But again, for the most important reason, it gives you control over that following that you've worked so hard to create. So I would, I mean, I'm so scared that anybody out there who's built a loyal following, especially somebody who has a lot of talent, just it immediately gets taken away. I would hate to see that. So you've got to build your email list for sure.

Now, does that mean you have to sell through your website? No. But of course, once you have a website, of any kind, like I said, it doesn't have to be super complicated and fancy. But it gives you a way to sell some of your goods and it helps you get search engine optimization, of course, as well. But it helps you bring people back to a home base, if you will, a hub where everything else that you have going on is happening. And then, later down the road, for example, let's say you do concerts and you go on tour. You need to have a website to share all that stuff. I mean, think about the future of what you're doing here and what you want to accomplish. Like if that's a big goal, then you have to have a website where people go on and not just leave their email addresses, but can see everything else you have to offer and where you're going to be and where they can get tickets and all that stuff.

So, again, just interacting with people on social media is great. It's obviously built a huge following for a lot of people, and hopefully including yourself, Khizer. But you need to bring these people back to your website. You need to start building an email list. And I know a lot of people who've been doing this online business stuff for awhile, and even those who haven't would agree with me on this. Now, can you sell directly on social media? I guess, that's sort of secondary question here. Yes, you can, but only after you build a ton of trust with people, and it sounds like you've done that. So I hope you take that next step and bring those people off, not necessarily off like you wouldn't be able to contact them anymore or converse or interact with them on those sites. No, you're going to continue to do that. That's your primary leg of your brand in terms of building your audience and marketing. But you need to bring these people back to your website. But again, that doesn't mean you have to stop conversing on social media. I encourage you to continue to do that.

But in terms of selling, yes, you can sell on social media. I know a lot of people who do that, but, you know, think about it, social media is like a big party, right? Everybody's talking, having conversations. You walk in to this big gym, it's a big party and when you're new to it, you have no idea what's going on, people are talking, right? If you're brand new to Twitter, for example, you're like “whoa, what am I doing here? Who do I find?” But then you find your people, you start talking and then, what if you were to make friends with those people, right? Then it would be more easy for you just to have them be interested in what you have to offer instead of you coming up to a group that you've never seen or heard of before and you come in this conversation and say, “hey guys, look at me! Buy my stuff!” It doesn't work like that.

So you've got to be careful, there's a line there in terms of what you can and how you sell on social media. But again, the best thing, and the thing that's worked out best for me is I sell on my website and I sell a lot of other people's stuff through affiliated marketing and earning a commission and stuff like that but I will eventually sell more of my own books and courses and things like that. And yes, I can sell those directly on social media where I put a link up to those sales pages, for example. But I think the best thing is to bring people back to my site and give them value, you know? On social media, I point to blog posts and videos, and then it is on those blog posts and videos and podcast episodes that people then understand what it is that I am offering, after giving them a ton of value as well. You know, sharing content that actually helps them in some way and in return, they'll likely see what else I have to offer and either purchase it or click through or share it and things like that.

So that sort of indirect selling on social media works more well than selling directly on social media. But it's not to say that that doesn't happen. It can be done and, you know, if you had a new album that came out, for example, on iTunes, then it's not any harm to link directly to it if you're building that core group of audience and raving fans, then absolutely. That's what they're going to want. I would also follow a lot of celebrities and musicians that you admire as well and kind of see how they're using social media too. And if they don't, if they're not collecting an email address, well then that’s their own bad too. I know, I follow a lot of celebrities and people to see how they manage their email accounts and their social media accounts and a lot of them don't have email.

It's kind of scary. Now they're at that tipping point where, of course, no matter what they do people are going to follow them, but when you're just starting out it's really important. And if you build that email list, it helps you to build that core group of true raving fans and I would recommend, Khizer, and everybody else out there who's just starting especially, to find an article called 1,000 True Fans. It’s by a guy named Kevin Kelly. Read it. It's going to help prove my point here and show you how important it is to build an email list. And although it doesn't mention an email list in that particular article, it shows you the power of what can happen when you truly build that. It's like a thousand people, it's not very big. But if you have a thousand people who truly support you and love what you do and you have an amazing relationship with them and that's where the email comes in, it allows you to do that, to get in to their heads, to be in front of them whenever you come out with something new.

If you had a thousand true fans who support you with what you do and you had them paying you $100 a year for something, to get whatever it is you have to offer them. I mean, that's not much money. A lot of us pay $100 a month for stuff we don't even use. So $100 a year, a thousand true, absolute true fans. They know you by name and you know them by name, hopefully. That's $100,000 a year right there. A thousand people, $100 a year. That's not much. So it shows you, it puts a lot of things in to perspective where, let's focus on building those true fans. Not getting a billion people coming to our site, but getting those thousand true fans who will love us for what we do. And so, Khizer, I know you're on your way to building that but I encourage you to build that email list.

Get off of your social media accounts, primarily, and start building your platforms as well. But, obviously, continue to grow and build your social media platforms too because that's what's working for you and I think Instagram's a great medium. Periscope, absolutely, especially for musicians. And Facebook too. Probably Instagram and Periscope more than Facebook I would assume, just because of the algorithms and stuff.

But anyway, Khizer, I wish you all the best. Thank you so much. I hope everybody out there who's listening to this finds you on Instagram. Khizer K-H-I-Z-E-R Permanente, and I'm going check it out right after I record this. So best of luck to you. I hope you agree with me and I'd love to get your followup thoughts on this, whether you want to send me an email or a follow up recording on AskPat as well. Maybe we can follow up with you and see how it goes. But, either way, we're going to send you an AskPat t-shirt for having your question featured here on the show.

Thank you so much for calling in and if anybody else out there has a question that you'd like potentially featured here in the show, just head on over to AskPat.com. You can ask right there on that page thanks to the widget from SpeakPipe.com. I also want to thank today's sponsor, FreshBooks.com, making it easy for me and three million other small business owners manage our finances. Making it really easy, especially come tax season because, I mean, it's August already. We’re just however many months away from starting to focus on our taxes and all that stuff. So it just makes it really easy with just a couple pushes of a button to create a PDF file that you can send to your tax guy or you can print something out for yourself too. Manage your taxes when that all happens, because I know it's a major headache for a lot of us, especially my first year when I had kept track of everything on excel. FreshBooks just makes it so much easier.

So go ahead and check it out. You can try it for 30 days for free by going to FreshBooks.com/AskPat and by entering “AskPat” in the “how did you hear about us?” section. Again, FreshBooks.com/AskPat, enter “AskPat.” Here's a quote from Gary Vanynerchuk to end the day. He said, “the reason we love our parents is because they loved us first.” Every single company should take this advice. Cheers. Thanks so much and I'll see you tomorrow on the next episode of AskPat. Thanks.