AP 0579: How Do I Expand My Professional Network?

AskPat 579 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 579 of Ask Pat. 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.

Okay. Today's question from Tiffany:

Tiffany: Hi Pat. My name is Tiffany from HeyTiffany.com. I am a therapist who is working to expand my business to include online training courses. I took the Zero to Launch course by Ramit Sethi after hearing him on your show, Smart Passive Income. Thank you so much. I am looking to expand my professional network to include people who know about things like creating online courses and building an audience. Therapists aren't particularly great at marketing, so a lot of the people I know personally don't have any idea what I'm talking about.

To that end, I want to know if you can recommend any conferences that you would suggest I go to in 2016, particularly anything around creating, building an audience, and creating courses. I know you recommended some for 2015. I wonder if they're the same or if there's anything else you'd recommend I go to to expand my network and meet other cool people who are doing stuff. People like you who are in the online space. That's it. Thanks.

Pat Flynn: Hey Tiffany. Thank you so much for the question today, and first of all, congrats to you for what you're doing in terms of trying to expand your knowledge about online business. I think it's really very smart of you to expand outside of your own niche to be able to find people who you can connect with because that's absolutely important, and I think a lot of people are stuck in their own little worlds, and you really need to expand your world and go out there and find people in the online business world who may be in completely different niches who can help you. I know this is very beneficial because I'm in a number of mastermind groups that have people way outside of the space I'm in. For example, there's one group where there's a guy; he swallows swords and goes around the world and performs, and I've learned so much from him related to stage presence and public speaking and what not. There's a lot of cross-pollination there.

Of course, we're all trying to build an online business too, so we learn a lot from each other in that way. Here is what I would suggest for you, Tiffany. Before you even end up, first of all, going to conferences by far the number one way to meet people because you're in person, you're connecting, there's actual networking events and you can actually go and find people and actually meet people. You can get their vibe, and have coffee with them and then take those relationships outside of that conference and into the future. That is the most common way that people are setting up mastermind groups and finding connections like the connections it's obvious that you want. Like I said, it's a really smart thing to do.

Conferences that I'm attending in 2016. So I'm attending, in the next couple days, or in the next couple weeks actually, Social Media Marketing World, which is in San Diego, California, which I'm stoked about. They're in my hometown. I'm also attending Podcast Movement in July. That's a great one. That's not necessarily going to help you with finding people who are going to be creating online courses, but it is an environment where a lot of people like myself will end up going because they have a podcast also, and you might be able to find some budding relationships there.

I would also recommend FinCon, Financial Blogger Conference. That's a great one where everybody in that realm, who is- you know, that conference actually started out for personal finance bloggers, but I was lucky enough to attend the first one, and it has since grown. That was actually the first conference I spoke at was in 2011. The Financial Blogger Conference, FinCon for short. Since then, it's grown to much more than that, and a lot of people who are in this world of online business actually ending up attending that one because it's such a great one in terms of the people and the networking. Noah Kagan, for example, that kind of person, he goes to that one even though it's a personal finance blog, and he doesn't do that. He goes there because there's amazing people, so FinCon in San Diego, is a good one to go to. It's not always in San Diego, but it just happens to be in San Diego this year too.

Those are the ones I would recommend. There's also Traffic and Conversion Summit which passed, this is back in February, but that for some reason was also in San Diego. There's a lot of San Diego ones. I forget living here that this is actually a destination city sometimes. They're not always in San Diego. Traffic and Conversion, however, usually is in San Diego, and that's a good one to go to. You can check out the one for 2017 also.

Those are great. You go in there, you meet great people, you take those relationships with you and into the future, but there's a lot of other places that are online where you can connect with the same kind of people. For example, a great one would be- this is just one of many examples, and I mentioned David Siteman Garland in the beginning here in the pre-roll for the cheat sheet, David's great, and he has a course. That cheat sheet will lead you to his course if you want to check it out, on building awesome online courses, and his community on Facebook, who are all part of his program, is amazing. A lot of people have connected there too and have shared great success stories and are sharing wins and asking questions. People are answering, and David's in there. It's great. Places like that where you download or get access to a program or a course or a membership site is great place to go and get access to those kinds of people too.

Fizzle.co is another one. This is run by Corbett Barr and Chase Reeves and Barrett Brooks. That's another place where you know that there are entrepreneurs, and there's a forum, and you can connect. Youpreneur.com by Chris Ducker is another one with an amazing community where people can go and connect with each other. Don't feel like you have to wait until these conferences come up. Like I said, the conferences are great, and a lot of great things can come out of that, but you can get started now by getting access to these things that have communities that are related- where people are just like you, trying to figure this out, and they're learning from the best. Fizzle.co is the other one and also Youpreneur.com.

Tiffany, that's what I would recommend, and I want to wish you all the best of luck. Thank you so much for asking your question. As a result of that, you are going to get an AskPat t-shirt sent your way free of charge. You're going to hear from my executive assistant Jessica in the next couple days. We'll get that over to you very soon, and for all those out there who have a question that you'd like potentially featured here on the show, just head on over to . You can ask right there on that page.

Cheers. Thanks so much. I appreciate you, and always, I like to end with a quote. Today's quote comes from Aristotle: “It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.” Boom. Cheers. Take care, and I'll see you next week on the next episode of AskPat. Thanks so much. Bye.