AP 0893: How Can I Find an Audience for My Niche?

AskPat 893 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey what's up everybody, Pat Flynn here and welcome to Episode 893 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 coming in today from Andy, but before we get to that, I want to thank today's sponsor, which is FreshBooks, an awesome company that's helping serve over 3,000,000 small businesses, including my own, with managing our business finances, from keeping track of our income to automatically keeping track of our expenses, and not only that, they help us with invoicing as well. So in less than thirty seconds I can create a professional-looking invoice that I could send out to a student that I'm coaching, to a company that I'm consulting or whatever, and I can keep track of who opens it, who has yet to pay me, all those kinds of things; it makes following up really easy, and it's just great. So if you want to get paid and make sure you do, use FreshBooks for everything financially-related. It's great. So if you want to check it out for thirty days for free, head over to FreshBooks.com/askpat, and make sure you enter “Ask Pat” in the “How did you hear about us?” section.

All right, now here's today's question from Andy.

Andy: Great Scott, I'm speaking to Pat Flynn! Hey Pat, this is Andy from Puerto Rico. I listen to AskPat every morning on my way to work and I thank you for everything you do for the community. Okay, this is it. I'm starting my business and podcast in Puerto Rico called MiRetiroProtegido.com, Protecting My Retirement. With my podcast, I help working millennials protect their financial future today, so they don't retire broke. I've been pouring my heart and soul to get everything ready for my launch date on April 24th, But since retirement is a topic not much talk about, it's been a struggle to find Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn or local groups where I can start providing value in order to them point them to my website and podcast. I thought of building a survey and posting it on my personal Facebook page in order to gather feedback, plus start building my email list—which I will do with CovertKit, thanks to your videos—but I don't know if this is the best way to do it. What would you recommend me doing? Once again, thanks for all the great info you provide, and if you ever come to visit Puerto Rico to visit JLD or my island, I can be your personal guide, man. Gracias. Ciao.

Pat Flynn: Hey, Andy, thank you so much for the question, I really appreciate it. One of the interesting things reltated to this topic is that millennials aren't going out there and saying, “Hey guys, I need to save for retirement.” I think it's something they know they need to do, although I don't know exactly how many are doing it, but it's not something they necessarily like, go to parties and talk about, right? And that's the difficult part about it. That's why you don't see Facebook groups or Instagram hashtags about it, it's almost just not a thing that millennials are really concerned about right now, right? But it is something that they need to know about, which I think is why your mission is really important, and I think why you're putting your heart and soul and passion into this and I want to commend you for that.

The way that I would break through to millennials to talk about this, and this is the one strategy I want to offer you—I could offer you a bunch of strategies, but this is the number one thing that I think would work—is they want to hear your voice on another podcast. So find podcasts, go to iTunes or you might know some already, and become a guest on those shows. And initiate those relationships with those podcast owners through your passion to serve their audience with this information that they probably aren't experts in, but you are, and you can help serve them in that way. And so it's almost like a guest post, right, but it's a guest podcast episode, which I think is a lot more powerful. And you have an amazing voice, you have amazing accent, I'm sure a great story to tell too in terms of why this important to you and you want to share those things.

That way you can get more in tune and find those millennials through the people who are listening to those guys and gals and get them to come to your website, and you can do some good in terms of building your email list from there, offering some sort of free incentive. “Here's one sheet, page, that you need to understand to calculate exactly how much you might need and what it might take to do that.” I don't know, some sort of lead magnet, as you might know, to begin to collect those email addresses. That's how I would do it. I would try to land your first one, Andy, and just focus on that, and from there build that out and start to become a guest that people who are serving millennials need to know about, and with this information you have to offer. And honestly, that's what I would do. That's what I would focus on.

So go out, make a list of ten podcasts that you could potentially go and feature yourself on to talk about this thing called retirement that millennials need to talk about and know about. What's going to be the big challenge for you is to make it interesting. Not to say your stuff's not interesting, but millennials, we have a short—I say we, I'm kind of on the cusp—but there's a short attention span there. They want it to be interesting, but also if you make it about them and what's happening and where they're going in the future, I think it's going to be very obvious to them that this is something they have to pay attention to. So Andy, that's the advice I have and I wish you all the best, good luck on your launch. I look forward to . . . I mean, you have your own podcast coming out now, it's going to be pretty easy for you to convince others who are also podcasts, knowing that you have this podcasting experience, that you're going to know exactly what people want in a podcast guest. Like, do it, man; I think it's going to be great.

So I want to wish you all the best, thank you so much and for everybody else out there who's looking to get more exposure, especially in spaces where it might be hard to find groups, find podcasts. Because people are listening to podcasts. I don't have to tell you that; you're listening to this one right now, right? And there are ways that you can get in front of other audiences in a way that can build a relationship much faster than a guest post, much faster than just a link on a website. Be a guest on a person's podcast.

All right guys, take care. Andy, I want to send you an AskPat teeshirt for having your question featured here on the show, and for those of you listening, if you have a question that you'd like potentially featured here on the show as well, head on over to AskPat.com. Just ask away, right there. Hit the record button and ask.

All right, thanks so much, I appreciate you. Also FreshBooks, thank you so much for offering a thirty-day free trial for the AskPat listeners. All you have to do if you want to get that is go to FreshBooks.com/askpat and just make sure that you enter “Ask Pat” in the “How did you hear about us?” section.

All right, thanks so much. I appreciate you all for listening in and here's a quote to finish of the day, by Charles Kingsley, and that is, “We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about.” Okay. All right, guys, thanks so much. Take care and I'll see you the next episode of Ask Pat. Bye.