AP 0683: How Do You Distribute AskPat T-Shirts?

AskPat 683 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: What's up everybody? Pat Flynn here and welcome to Episode 683 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. We have a sweet question today from Kelly. Sweet one.

Before we get to today's question, I do want to thank today's sponsor, which is ZipRecruiter.com. An awesome site you can use if you are looking to expand your team. If you're a solopreneur, you're looking to add more people. Or maybe you're a large company and you're looking to fill some spots that have been left vacant or you're expanding. Whatever the case may be, one of the hardest things to do is actually find the right people for those jobs. Because there's so many different job sites out there. Ton of people. All different credentials.

Well, you can make your life so much easier if you were to use ZipRecruiter.com because for one, it's free. Two, with just a couple clicks and a little bit of typing, you're able to find the best candidates. Because what happens, is you put it all into one place at ZipRecruiter.com, the kind of person you're looking for and they send it out to all those different job sites for you. They also have a data base of millions of different people who will potentially be qualified for you as well and they'll show you who those best candidates are. Again, it's just super simple, super quick, and the best way to relieve those headaches of hiring people. Go to ziprecruiter.com/pat and again, you can check it out for free. All right. Here are today's question from Kelly.

Kelly Croy: Hi. This is Kelley Croy from wirededucator.com. Pat, thank you for the t-shirt that you sent me in the mail but it's only given me more questions to ask. I love the AskPat t-shirt that you gave me from my last question but it only created more questions. How did you get that shirt to me? What is the fulfillment process that you used from getting my question onto your show and a t-shirt to me. I would like to use the same idea for my website wirededucator.com. Couple things. I don't really make any income from wirededucator.com. I interview teachers about the amazing things that they're doing in the classroom and I'd like to send them a gift for giving up their time, for being on the show. I'm working on the whole, passive income process but right now, I'm just trying to get a content out, professional development out to other educators. I think it would be great to send them a t-shirt as a gift, that says the wirededucator.com logo on the front. I was kind of thinking and I want to know your thoughts on this.

If I contacted educational sponsors that make software or hardware for schools and classrooms. If they would be willing to put their logo on the back of the shirt and help cover the cost, so I can send the people I interview a free t-shirt, once a week. Four interviews a month. Then maybe, having a Wired Educator-of-the-month, recognizing some teacher for their great work in the classroom. Their passion for the students and sending them a t-shirt as well. How did you do it? How did you get that t-shirt to me? What's the process for fulfillment? What do you think of the idea of having some companies sponsor the cost of the shirt, so I don't have to pay for it? Pat, you're awesome. I use your podcast player. I like everything that you're doing. You're really inspiring. Keep up the great work. Thanks. You don't need to send me another t-shirt, I love the one I have. Thank you.

Pat Flynn: Hey, Kelly. What's up? Thank you so much for the question. I appreciate you and your kind words so much. Thank you for using the Smart Podcast Player. Look out for some updates to that, this month actually. Some really exciting updates that I think everybody who is using it, will be really excited about and I'll talk more about that later for those of you who have yet to use it. Anyway, this is a great question because…actually, we've had a few people ask, “How do we do this?” With the t-shirt thing. Well, for one we use a great company called Printfection. Printfection. Like perfection, but Printfection. Now what's cool about them, is you buy your inventory up front. You select how many sizes of the different t-shirts. Obviously, you have it designed first. I had a designer create the t-shirt for Ask Pat and we sent the design there and got a sample shirt and it looked great, it feels great. We're using the I think the American Apparel fabric or whatever, which I think is the most comfortable and I love it.

What we do, is we get the design all set up and what happens, the way we use Printfection is that, we give them or pay for the inventory. We have to guess how many people, how many mediums, how many larges. We just get a bunch of each of course, and we refill them as they go. What's cool is after you have a question featured on the show, my assistant Jessica will reach out to you typically within a month and send you a special link that comes directly from Printfection. When you click on that special, unique link, it'll open up a page that says, “Here's where you can fill in information, so you can get your t-shirt.” It includes what size, so you select your size there and the shipping address. Printfection prints that t-shirt and ships it out for you. It's completely hands of. All we have to do is provide a link to those people.

Kelly, when you have guest on your show, you have your featured educator, which I think is a great idea. I think there needs to be more done to reward teachers and show off how awesome are teachers are. Great job. I love what you're doing. You send them a link after they're on the show, as a thank you and tell them that they'll put their information in there and they'll get a t-shirt. Boom-bada-bing-bada-bing or whatever they say and bam, it's done. That's how you got your shirt and it's just a great process. Makes it really easy. Cost vary, depending on the type of fabric you use, the type of design, of course, but it's definitely worth it. Now I will say that I'm thankful to have sponsors on the show like Zip Recruiter today and often many other ones. Because that helps alleviate the cost of the shirt. Obviously, it also alleviates the cost of the editor. Hi Mindy. And other people who work on the show, too.

Having sponsors on board to help pay for it. Heck, yeah. That's a great idea. Now, we don't put the sponsors on the t-shirts. We have them mentioned at the top and the bottom of the show sometimes but we also have them listed as a resources on askpat.com and at smartpassiveincome.com. That's another value ad that you can include, so that sponsors will be more likely to actually want to pitch in. Then really, it's all about just fostering those relationships and making it happen. It's your site. It's your podcast. You can do whatever you want with how you want to work with these sponsors to get them on and actually start helping pay for some of this stuff. You can even include their logo on the shirt, if you wanted to which would be pretty cool actually but then, you got to realize that your sponsors don't always stay on forever. If it's one that you know that's going to be around for a while. It may be worth putting on the t-shirt in exchange for having them help pay for the shirt.

Yup, definitely work it out but that's the simple process of using, again, Printfection.com. If there's a chance to tell them who sent you, just tell them Pat Flynn from Ask Pat sent you. There is no referral fee, or affiliate fee, or anything related to that. I think they're a great company. Check them out, printfection.com and that's it. I guess maybe a few more things really quick. Technically what happens, is when a question comes in through SpeakPipe.com, which is where the questions come in, which is where your question was recorded, Kelly, and everybody else's question. That allows me to do a couple things. One, it allows me to collect your question as an mp3 file, which Mindy knows and she goes in and actually puts that voicemail in the show. The one that you all heard earlier of Kelly. She put that in there after I recorded my answer. Because I listen to the questions before hand and then I answer. Then, she's the one who actually puts the show together. That's really important.

Then I also through SpeakPipe, I get the contact information. Or the email from the person who had asked the question or had recorded that audio file. My assistant, Jessica, she takes that email address, that's from SpeakPipe and that's how she contacts whoever it is to send the t-shirt. We have a spreadsheet that just says, which questions, and who was featured, on which dates, so that she can always keep track of, “Okay, well these people already were sent the link for the shirt and these people have yet to be sent the link to the shirt.” We use a spreadsheet, just a simple Google spreadsheet, to keep track of all that in our editorial calendar. Technically that's how it's done. Then, again, just using Printfection to send that link and bada-bing-bada-boom and it's done. Thank you again, Kelly. We appreciate you and your question. I hope that's helpful for some of you who wanted to use some fulfillment like that and just try to be completely hands off or as much as possible. Kelly, let me know.

You already have an AskPat t-shirt, I know this because you just said it. If you want to donate it to somebody else, or if you want another one, just let me know. Then if Kelly does choose to share it with someone else, I'll just share it with somebody on Twitter. Just make sure you follow me on Twitter @PatFlynn, we give away a lot of things like that every once and awhile. Thank you Kelly again for your question. For those of you who are listening, if you have a question that you'd like potentially featured here on the show, just head on over to Ask Pat and you can ask a question right there. All right. Thanks again for listening in and here's a quote to finish off the day. And today's quote is from Ralph Waldo Emerson. He says, “The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.” Cheers. Take care, and I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat. Bye.