hosted by: AskPat 743 Episode Transcript
Pat Flynn: Hey what's up everyone? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 743 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. As I always am here to help you by answering your online business questions questions, five days a week. All right, now here's today's question from Matt.
Matt: Hey Pat, this is Matt from TimeZillionaire.com, and I have a question for you which actually came up while I was having sushi with a friend tonight. So my blog is growing and I have more and more readers, but I still want to keep that one to one interaction and see when I'll be able to help everyone in their single case. So as I scale up because I have more readers and more interactions, it becomes a little bit more difficult to manage. So I just wanted to know how did you do it, and how do you scale that part of interaction with your readers and with your tribe? Thank you for your help and for everything you do. You've really made an impact on my life and on a lot of other listeners and readers, so thank you for everything that you do. Matt.
Pat Flynn: Hey man, thanks so much for this question, sushi sounds amazing and this question is amazing too, because this is definitely something that I've experienced. You know when I started back in 2008, I made an effort to respond to every single email, to every single comment, to every single social media post as possible, and I did that a long time and people did appreciate it. They loved it because many others weren't going above and beyond with actually responding, and responding in a timely manner, but then a few things happened.
For one, I had kids, so my wife and I had a couple babies, and as a result I just knew that the more time that I would spend answering individual emails, comments and social media posts would be less time that I would have time for my kids. So that's the first thing. And secondly I just grew exponentially, and it was just going to be impossible even if I didn't have kids to respond to people, because if I didn't respond to every single comment and question on each of these platforms I would have no time to actually get work done in my business. And I think as grow, you need to make a decision for yourself, and saying that you can't possibly respond to every single person. Even though you want to, its impossible to do it. Now that doesn't mean that you still can't have some way to touch everybody, and to have a personal touch with them.
So there's a few things that I do, for me, in my blog and my podcasts, in AskPat, in Smart Passive Income, and on SPI TV, those are all specifically answers to questions that people have had. So that way I'm on a scalable way, able to still help somebody personally, and there's many people that have those same questions. For example, this question right here. You asked it personally, I'm reaching out and responding to you personally, but everybody's listening, and many people who have the same question are going to have their question answered. And they know that I'm also speaking to them, you being sort of a representative of them. So using one to many can help you out a lot. Maybe it can even be still done on a live sort of in person level, like with Facebook Live, you can still respond to people and give a personal touch in that way. Webinars for example are a great way to answer people’s questions individually in a short period of time, and things like that work out very very well
Another thing that has been really helpful is just being very honest with them about the fact that I get a lot of people asking for my time, and that there would be no way possible to answer everybody's question. So setting those expectations up front make it really easy to feel better about myself by not answering right away, although I do try to answer emails at least in a timely manner as much as possible, but I also have another strategy into place, and that is an assistant. My lovely assistant Jessica is there to help with filtering those emails. And I still answer emails that only I can answer, but she answers for me. Now she doesn't answer as Pat, she answers as Jessica but on the behalf of me. And because they are getting somebody in the brand to respond in a timely manner, they feel great about it. And they just absolutely know and understand I've had nobody ever complain about the fact that they're getting Jessica versus me when they have their question answered.
So that's just another thing to keep in mind and hopefully that helps out man. I mean its going to be a struggle, these are growing pains, these are very natural things to feel as your blog and your brand begins to grow, but I think you just have to make a conscious decision for yourself knowing that the more that you spend time your audience as they grow, the less you're going to have time to actually serve them better through the products that you create, through the blog posts and podcast episodes that you produce. So you know you're still serving them, you're still helping them, and you're still being very personable if you are paying attention and listening to what they say, and offering solutions to those problems and pains that they have.
So Matt, thank you so much for your question, I appreciate you, and I want to send you an AskPat t-Shirt for having your question featured here on the show. And for those of you listening, if you have a question you would like potentially featured here on the show, just head on over to AskPat.com and you can ask right there on that page.
Thanks so much, I appreciate you, and here's a quote from Kim Garst, who's awesome, and this is an awesome quote. And that is: “Legendary service is one of the criteria that sets one company apart from its competitors. It’s the mark of a truly authentic company.”
You just can't fake caring. And Matt as you grow, you will learn to care in many different ways, and hopefully the tips in this episode helped you. Cheers, take care, and I'll see you all in the next episode of AskPat. Bye.