by: AskPat 366 Episode Transcript
Pat Flynn: What's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 366 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.
All right, here's today's question from Bree.
Bree: Hi, Pat. My name is Bree, and I have a question for you, because I know you have your SPI platform and brand, but yet you still have other products that you sell online as far as your Truckr.com and also your LEED exam. And so, my question to you is: I'm a brand new coach, life coach, that is, and I'm just starting the building of that brand and business; however, I do have ideas for a digital product that is separate from that. My question is: Do you think I should put time and effort into these digital products first? Because they are going to be separate, I'm afraid that they might take too much time away from building business and brand. I am a mom of two. I still do have a full-time job, and I also homeschool my kids. Obviously, I'm not going to be homeschooling for too much longer, but there is a lot going on. So, what I'm afraid of is that having the digital products … Once they are done, I want to be able to put my full focus into them of course, but once they are done, how much time and effort do they really take? Besides regular upkeep and customer service, is it going to take away from building my true passion and my business, which is helping people change their lives? So, I hope you can answer this question. I really love your show, and I love you. You've been so great. If you can answer, that would be wonderful, and I'll be looking forward to it. Have a great day, Pat.
Pat Flynn: Hey, Bree. Thank you so much for the question today. I really appreciate it, and my first question to you is: why do you want to do digital products in other niches if your passion is coaching, and you don't seem like you have a lot of extra time to explore because you have all these other amazing things you're doing for your kids and things you have going on in your life? Why do you want to try and do something other than what your passion is? I would worry, like you, that this would take too much time and perhaps distract you from what it is that you want to do.
Now, I know you mentioned that part of it is probably because you see me do this with my FoodTruckr niche, with my Green Exam Academy niche. And I will say that … Well, with Green Exam Academy, that was my first venture into online business. So, I had already had that but I continued to explore different niches in spaces outside of the ones that I'm already in because I feel like that's my job. As Pat Flynn, owner of Smart Passive Income, because I'm in this really unique situation where people see me as, like it says on my home page, “The crash test dummy of online business.” So, in order to do the “crash test dummy” thing and try different things and see if this works, and see if that works, and see what happens there, and see what happens here, I have to try new things. That's my job, but I wouldn't actually recommend that for most people. What I would recommend is you become an expert in one particular space. Whether you do coaching to serve your audience, or that you do digital products to serve your audience. Whether you do software or a combination of all of the above, serve that one audience, and serve that audience well.
So, Bree, go forth with the coaching. It sounds like that's what you want to do, that's what your passion is, and that's how you can make a great impact on people. But, coaching can also come with, to the same exact audience, digital products. And I would highly recommend you exploring or at least brainstorming now what kinds of digital products you can create to serve your audience in the future. This is a great way to serve your audience if they cannot afford your time. So, if people are going to hire you as a coach, you want to make sure that it's high value to get access to you, and if they cannot afford that, you can still help them through these cheaper, but not cheap, just cheaper digital products. This is what a lot of people do in different spaces. They charge a high premium value for their time, and people come to the sites that they go to or their brand, and they see that this person is offering this much time for this much money, and if people can't afford that, that at least establishes that baseline, that you are worth that much, which then anchors everything that you have to promote and offer.
So, that's how you can be able to make even more money from digital products, as opposed to if you just had digital products on your own. This is why, even if you don't coach, it might still be a good idea, especially, if you know there are people that want some handholding in your business and in your audience to charge a high premium value for your time. To do some one-on-one coaching or one-to-many coaching. It doesn't even have to be … That's the in-between, Bree. There's the coaching one-to-one and the digital products, which is no access to you at all. But then there's the one in the middle, which is you giving a little bit of access to a group of people at the same time.
Now, which one should you do first? Well, it kind of depends on what you want to do first. A lot of people start with digital products and then they get into coaching, because they see that people who want more handholding, they go to the coaches for more one-on-one time. Which is, like I said, more expensive, premium value. Or, you can start off as a coach, which, it sounds like you've already done that, and you can start to notice patterns, things that happen consistently and constantly with each of your clients that you can then solve through digital products. Something that you could perhaps teach people and still make changes in peoples' lives through a course, or a membership site, or an ebook for example.
I actually recommend an ebook for everybody, even if you're a coach. An ebook that you sell on Amazon, that can help you generate leads but also help you with social proof and proving your authority, helping you stand out over that space that you're into. A book is a great way also to share more of your personality. Yes, you're going to share it on your brand; yes, you're going to share it on your site. I hope you do that already, because that's what helps you stand out. Nobody is like you. But a book is an even better way to get people into really, truly who you are and what you can provide to them. Some people will get that book and get a lot of value out of that, and that's it. Some people will get that book and get a lot of value out of it, but want more and download your digital products. Some people will download that book and want coaching. Some people will download that book, get the digital products, see they need coaching, and ask you for that.
So, there's a lot of ways to go about it but that's how I would approach it. I would approach it with just one particular target audience in mind and all the different ways that you might be able to serve them, knowing that your time is valuable and it's worth paying for.
So, Bree, I hope that answers your question and gives you some insight and maybe lifts a lot off your shoulders in terms of creating these other niches. Now, that's not to say that if time opens up in the future and you have other interests and other expertise that you'd love to share and that you could perhaps create a product for, go ahead and do that. But, at this moment in time, I would probably recommend … Not probably recommend, I would recommend focusing on your passion, your coaching, and keeping in mind that there are digital products or group coaching options in mind for you, for, again, this one particular audience that you're serving through the coaching that you do.
So, Bree, I hope that all makes sense. I wish you all the best of luck and thank you so much for your question. We're going to send you an AskPat t-shirt for having your question featured here on the show. Thank you so much.
For those of you who 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.
Cheers. Thank you so much. I appreciate your time today, and to finish off, as always, I'd love to end with a quote. And this quote is from Steve Case, the co-founder of AOL. He said, “You shouldn't focus on why you can't do something, which is what most people do. You should focus on why perhaps you can and be one of the exceptions.” Cheers, take care, and I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat. Thanks, guys.