AP 0390: How Do I Get My Family to Support My Business Goals?

AskPat 390 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up everybody, Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 390 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.

Now, before we get to today's question from Elizabeth, first of all I just want to say thank you to everybody who's watching live right now on Periscope. I'm recording this episode live on Periscope and people are watching, I was showing people the workflow and stuff, so if you aren't following me on Periscope, go ahead and follow me @PatFlynn and check it out, some really cool live things happening in the future. I also want to thank everybody who gave me some love and “safe travels” when going to and coming back from Australia. I'm back in my home base in San Diego now, so I'm excited to be here, and thank you, again.

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

Elizabeth: Hey Pat, this is Elizabeth. I'd love the AskPat Podcast so I can get my daily business nugget on my way to my full-time job. This spring though, I started my side hustle, which is my blog called Savvy Sandwicher, at SavvySandwicher.com, and I really can't grow it fast enough. I'm living in this sandwich generation, raising my kids, and helping to take care of my mom, and I'm anxious to have my own freedom. My blog is exciting to me, but my full-time day job provides much financial security to my family, and my husband is a bit anxious about me eventually wanting to retire from corporate America and live the Smart Passive Income dream. My primary products are going to be ebooks on my site, with my first one coming out this summer, and I also plan to do some affiliate marketing. I need to create a business plan that will set my husband's mind at ease, and that we can sit down and review together. What do you recommend? Thanks in advance for your help.

Pat Flynn: Hey Elizabeth, thank you so much for the question today, I really appreciate it, and I took a look at your website, SavvySandwicher.com, and it's a great looking site. I love what you're doing, I can totally connect, cause I'm in that age range of a sandwicher. I didn't even know exactly what that meant, but I'm really happy to see that you explained exactly what it was when I got to your website. So that was really cool, and I think you're doing a lot of great things, and you do have a lot of things set up for success in the future, in terms of building a real business out of this. I think it's great.

Now, in terms of the financial security to you and your family, and these discussions that you're having with your husband, the first thing I want to mention is that … And this comes directly from advice from Chip and Dan Heath, couple of my favorite authors, they wrote a book called Made to Stick, a big orange book with duct tape on it. It's one of my favorite books out there. But they also wrote another book called Decisive, and in this book they talk about how we as human beings, we always feel like if we're making a tough decision, like you are making a tough decision right now, you have to go all in, one way or another. You either have to go full time with this passive income business model, and ditch everything you have going on right now, or forget about all of that stuff and continue doing what you're doing, and there is no middle ground. But the truth is, there are several many different ways … several many different ways … to tackle this solution.

So, you could do what you're doing now. You could continue with building your passive income business, building your audience, building trust and authority with your brand, while also having your full-time job. Now, that will take a little bit of balance, some sacrifice, a lot of sacrifice for some of us. I know that I've had to sacrifice a lot of things when I was building up my business, in order to keep things going.

But, you don't have to go all-in one way or another, and that's why it's called a side hustle, or side job. And those things can become and grow into a full-time job, and that's the cool thing. Now, to be able to do that, it's crucial that you have to know, okay, well when does that actually happen? When could you actually be comfortable, and your husband be comfortable, with actually, quote, jumping ship, or making the leap. I don't want to say jumping ship because it's kind of dangerous and not everybody knows how to swim. But, you know what I mean? You have to take the leap eventually at some point, and if that's the goal that's a great goal to have. But you need to have a more specific goal, right? We have to have a very specific goal.

So you have to have a discussion with your husband, and this is going to be different for everybody out there who's listening. What is that number that you need, how much money do you need to generate, per month, to be able to be comfortable with leaving the job that you have now. If you don't know what that is, you're going to be stuck in this middle ground all the time, in these weird discussions and these fights, not just with your husband—not to say you guys are “fighting” fighting, but these tense discussions, not just with him, but also with yourself. Some days you'll feel like “Yes, I can do this.” And then some days you are going to be like “Ahhh, I don't think I can do this.” So that's the battle that we all have as entrepreneurs, but really, you have to figure out what that goal is.

And it's going to be different for everybody. It might be just a couple thousand dollars a month. It might be $10,000 a month, depending on your lifestyle and what you need. I don't know. I don't know what that is, but you're going to have to have that discussion. And the important thing about having this discussion is not just figuring out for yourself, which is great, because you're going to have that goal, you're going to have a specific number, you're going to know … and we'll talk about this in a second, reverse-engineering that number. But it's also going to be great for your husband, cause he can see if you do the work, and you create something that does generate that amount of income per month, then you won't have to worry, he's going to believe in you, and he's going to say “Wow, you're actually doing this.”

I mean, I know a lot of us who are just starting out can have issues with convincing somebody what we're doing is the right thing, especially when there's no money coming in, right? That's the hardest thing. But if you set a specific goal, which will help you because then you're going to be motivated to do the actual things that you need to do to get that income level, that's going to help everybody out. So, going back to and finishing up with what I talked about, with reverse-engineering, you need to figure out what that number is, and then it just becomes so much easier from there, because you can visualize and actually mathematically see how much it's going to take for you to do that.

So you say you have these ebooks coming out, maybe it's $2,000 a month you need. If you need $2,000 a month … and I'm doing this math live now, which kinda sucks because I'm going to get it wrong, and everybody on Periscope's going to laugh at me … but let's just say you're selling a $20 item, right? If you get a hundred people to buy that $20 item a month, that's $2,000, right? Correct me if I'm wrong, everybody. Yeah. So a hundred items, at $20 … or maybe it's 10, maybe you sell 10 things at $200 an item. So, that just makes it … it just puts it so much into perspective. And maybe you have the $200, 10 person a month model, in which case you could provide completely amazing value to those people, maybe you come on as sort of a consultant, or you get clients that would pay you to get this information from you, this advice, this consultation from you, clearly and continually over time. Or maybe it's one person, maybe you mentor one person for $2,000 a month. Your business model will be determined by what that number is, and how you feel you can best provide value.

But not only that, and the last important point here is, how can you provide value based on what they want? So understand your audience, understand, like Jay Abraham says, you gotta understand exactly and define the language that they use, and what those major problems are, so you can come in and provide that solution. And be their number one resource. You want to be their number one resource who, when people talk about this with other people, you're going to be the one that comes up in conversation, and that's how you make it work. But you also have to understand, okay, and talk to them. Have one-on-one conversation with them, do surveys.

I just did the survey on SPI … and thank you for everybody listening or watching this right now, who has done that survey. It's completely helpful, cause it's showing me the language that my audience uses, where they're at, but what they need the most help with. And now I don't have to guess, and you won't have to guess either. And actually, through a lot of one on one conversations I have with people in my audience. I sometimes will just randomly email people and say “Hey, you want to get on Skype with me?” And they're like, “What, you want to get on Skype with me?” I'm like, “Yeah, it's actually really important, because I want to know more about why you're here, what you like about it, what you don't like, but also what you really need help with.”

And then the cool thing is, and the number one tip I learned from Ramit Sethi recently … actually I'm getting a lot of advice from him and reading a lot of his stuff … is, and this is just one word that you can all benefit from, and that is, like? With a question mark. So when somebody says “Oh, well, I'm having trouble because I'm not feeling … ” whatever that they say, you know, you're talking to your audience and they come at you with a struggle, go deeper, say “Like, what?” Like, what else is going on, you know? And then once you get those … yeah everybody saying like now on Periscope … once you get levels deep, you begin to understand truly what it is their pains are, and then you could provide those solutions.

And again, this all goes back to helping you figure out how many of what you need to create to get to that particular income level to satisfy your husband, and yourself, and to make you happy and confident when you go into a new position for yourself, coming from another person's … from being an employer. Another thing that has also helped a lot of couples especially, when they're transitioning, or one, or the other, or both, are transition from employment to self-employment, is to have that security bucket. That amount of money put somewhere that they can go to if things don't go the way you'd expect. Just an emergency fund, or something that could hold you going for three, six, a year, whatever's comfortable for you as a couple. So that's another important thing that you should have too.

So, again, thank you so much for your question, Elizabeth. I really appreciate it, I look forward to seeing what you do, and if you have any followup questions, or want to talk about this further, use the hashtag AskPat390. For those of you watching on Periscope, #AskPat390, that's for this particular episode, so you can offer your own advice too, and we can continue this discussion on Twitter as well.

Elizabeth, thank you so much for your question, we're going to send you an AskPat t-shirt free of charge, you're going to hear from my assistant in the next couple weeks to collect your information so we can send that to you. Than you so much, hope to see maybe a picture of you in the future, rocking that shirt somewhere in the world. And thank you for, those of you who submit the questions. If you have a question that you'd like, potentially, featured 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.

Thank you again so much, I appreciate you guys, I appreciate you guys too … hold on, I'm going to stick around for those of you watching on Periscope. And to finish off, like I always do, here is a quote from Ramit Sethi, he says, “What got you here, won't get you there.” Think about that in terms of growing your business, and whatever got you to where you're at today, or maybe you're not happy with where you're at today, wherever you want to go, maybe you need to do something different. Cheers, take care, and I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat. Thanks guys.