AP 0854: How Do I Effectively and Concisely Answer Questions from My Audience?

AskPat 854 Episode Transcript

Pat: Hey, what's up everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 854 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 today from Tammy, but before we get to that, I do want to thank today's sponsor, which is FreshBooks.

FreshBooks is one of my all-time favorite companies because not only have they been a long time sponsor of this podcast, but more than that, they've become an amazing resource for a lot of you. A lot of you thank me for sharing them and offering a 30-day free trial, and here's why. They help you automatically keep track of your expenses. You track your income. This is a bookkeeping software, but more than that they also help with invoicing, so in less than 30 seconds you can create a professional-looking invoice to bill your students or companies that have hired you for consulting or whatever.

If you do any billing of any kind, it makes it very, very simple. FreshBooks is just awesome. You can check to see who opens those invoices, follow up with them. You can see who pays. Everything's just the way it should be. So if you want to check them out for 30 days for free, go to FreshBooks.com/AskPat and make sure you enter “AskPat” in the “how did you hear about us?” section.

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

Tammy: Hi Pat. This is Tammy Adams with The Local Small Business Coach podcast, and I'm hoping you can help me out. I have just recently started my podcast, which is aimed at helping local small business owners increase their profits, boost their sales, improve their processes, and develop stronger teams.

One of my goals is to have two to three episodes a week be focused on the questions from my audience. I have already set up the SpeakPipe button and set up an email. Now, with that said, my question for you has to do with answering the questions and keeping your focus on everything that you want to say in a short and concise way.

Right now, I'm writing out my answers so I don't miss anything, but I'm wondering, since you have been doing AskPat for awhile, what system do you use when you're answering your questions? Do you write them all out like I am, or are you able to free flow it all the way and still hit all the key points that you want to hit? Do you have any advice for folks like me that are taking questions from our audience and what is the easiest way you have found to answer on the podcast?

I want to answer like I would as if you were sitting across from me, but without the person there, I have found that for some reason, my mind just goes a mile a minute and I feel rushed and I feel like I'm always forgetting stuff to say. It's weird without that immediate feedback. How do you make it seem so seamless when you're answering our questions?

I appreciate you taking the time. You're awesome. Oh, by the way, since I already have a t-shirt, how about we do something fun and we give it to whoever is the 77th person to Tweet out “Pat Flynn rocks!” Or you can pick your favorite number. Let's just have some fun with it. Thanks again, and we all appreciate everything you do for us out here in podcast land. Tammy.

Pat: Hey, Tammy. Thank you so much for the question and also offering your t-shirt here. What we're going to do is use the #AskPat854 for this episode. So, again, that's #AskPat854, and within a week, a random person who uses that hashtag is going to get selected and we'll just do it that way. I don't want to have to have somebody worry about counting 77, or there might be issues with time delays, or I don't know, but we'll just go #AskPat854. Use that in any which way, shape, or form on Twitter that you want for those of you listening, and I'll select somebody at random next week and we'll let you know.

Okay, Tammy, so to your question. When answering SpeakPipe questions or any sort of questions, especially in this kind of setting, how do I do it? Well, I used to write down my answers in full. I used to script the whole thing. Actually, I can't remember exactly how many episodes it was, but it was for the first sort of dozen or so episodes, I actually wrote out every single answer word for word because I was just scared, and I wanted to make sure I caught every single word that is important.

What ended up happening was yeah, that they were good episodes, but when I listened back to them, they are kind of robotic and they don't necessarily sound genuine. Now, they were coming from the heart of course, so they were genuine, but because they were scripted, it just didn't come across correctly. So I took my own advice, the advice I learned and now teach related to my other podcast, which is just outline, okay?

Understand what the transformation's going to be. What are the things that you need to mention? What are the stories that you want to tell? What are the facts that you need to share? Just outline and that's it. And rely on yourself. Trust yourself to have a conversation with the person on the other end of the microphone, which you should imagine, because that makes it very easy, Tammy, to get rid that sort of, “This is weird. I'm by myself” sort of situation.

Imagining a person on the other end makes it really helpful, but also having that bullet point list and trusting yourself is what's going to help you through that and make the episode sound natural. Well, it's not going to be easy at first. It's difficult, but here's the thing. You just do it, and you just trust yourself, and you just go. You let go.

You're going to find over time that you're going to get better with this, and I've just now have only been bullet-pointing with one or two words per bullet point instead of just long sentences because now I know what I want to say ahead of time with just those couple words. It triggers the story that I want to tell or it triggers that fact or thing I want to share, and it always comes out more natural, so Tammy, that's what I would recommend you do.

The last thing I want to share with you is also keep track of your time, so if you have a specific set of time. So two things I want to share. Look at the time because that helps you make sure that, okay, you're always going to stay on track. It's just a mental thing you do as you're answering questions, looking at the time keeps you in check in terms of if you go way to far one way or another or you start to get off on a tangent, it's going to help you and remind you to get back on track.

Then the final, final thing I want to share with you is you can practice by doing a live-stream. Live streams are little bit more difficult actually because you don't have the opportunity to spend a little bit of time writing out your answers or even coming up with bullet points. I sometimes on live streams will do that because maybe it's a big topic, and I do want to mention things that I cover. But, again, the live streams more than anything are going to help you form that muscle of just trusting yourself, and when you can answer questions live like that on a live stream, on Facebook Live or Periscope or whatever, well that's going to be much easier and translate even better for you on the podcast when answering a SpeakPipe question.

It's just going to become much quicker for you. It's just going to become more natural. So Tammy, just do it, and try it on live stream. Practice and you're going to get that interactivity in a sort of not person-to-person but one-to-many sort of feel, and you're going to get that feeling of what it's like to actually talk to somebody on the other end, even though they're not there. Yes, you get the responses, and the chat of course, but then moving that over to the podcast without that, it's going to be a much easier transition. You're going to be much better at communicating answers to your questions in a style where it's like well, you're just sitting in a café talking to somebody like you and I are right now, Tammy.

That's what I would recommend, and hopefully that answers your question. Tammy, thank you so much again for offering the t-shirt to somebody out there who uses the hashtag #AskPat854. I'll select somebody in a week to randomly get that. So, thank you for that Tammy, and thank you as always for your support.

Also, big thanks to FreshBooks for allowing us to have a 30-day free trial. You can check that out at FreshBooks.com/AskPat. Remember, this is called AskPat, right? So you have to ask your questions in order for this show to stay alive, so we have a lot of them, but I'm always taking more questions. Just head on over to AskPat.com, and you can ask right there on that page.

Then finally, if you want to join me today or any Friday, 1:30 p.m. Pacific, typically I'm going to be on Facebook.com/SmartPassiveIncome at 1:30 p.m. every Friday to answer your questions live, just like I talked about, right Tammy? And check it out there because it's going to be a lot of fun. I'll see you there. That's Facebook.com/SmartPassiveIncome.

Thank you so much. I appreciate you, and here's a quote to finish off the day by Mahatma Gandhi. “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” Take care, and I'll see you next week in the next episode of AskPat, and hey, by the way, if you haven't left a rating or review, I would so, so, so much appreciate it. Just head on over to iTunes. Look up AskPat or Pat Flynn, and find AskPat, leave a review there. I read them all. It just motivates me like crazy, and I'm super thankful. Appreciate it and I'll see you next week. Bye.