AP 0896: Should I Split Services by Site? How Do I Productize Them?

AskPat 896 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up everybody? Pat Flynn here and welcome to Episode 896 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 from Manv, but before we get to his question I do want to thank today's sponsor, which is ZipRecruiter. You know, if you're looking to recruit anybody in your business, whether you're solopreneur looking to finally grow your team, or maybe you have a large team and you're just trying to fill in a hole, somebody left, whatever: If you're looking for somebody to fill in that role who's great, it can be very difficult, right? There's a lot of places you can go out and share that job description. I mean there's hundreds of places. Well, why not make it easy and use one tool that'll help do this all for you, and all for free? You can check out ZipRecruiter.com/pat. Go ahead and check out this amazing tool that allows you to share this job need that you have. With one single click it gets sent out to hundreds, over a hundred different job sites including social media. It has an amazing interface that allows you to see the best candidates coming in like, fairly soon, without any calls to your office, without email swapping, it's all in one spot. Make sure you check it out, Ziprecruiter.com/pat.

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

Manv: Hi Pat, I'm Manv from ManvGomez.com. I'm a translator, copywriter, and editor from Mexico. I actually have two questions. The first one is, should I create separate websites for each service, even though I've been trying to see myself as a brand? The second one is, how can I transform these very active tasks into sources of passive income? Thanks so much for all your help. I'm a fan of your work, and I really appreciate everything you share with your audience. Take care, bye.

Pat Flynn: Hey Manv, thank you so much for the question, I appreciate it. I want to answer your last question first which is, how do you transform very active tasks into sources of passive income? I appreciate this question a lot because the truth is, you can't start with passive income. You have to start with active income, and it's active because you're building an audience, or you're creating these products, or you're producing the products or the tools, or creating the software, or you are providing that service. Whatever that might be, it's always going to start very active. But the goal should be to turn it into a passive source of income in some way, shape, or form. There's actually a number of ways that you can do this. You can use other human beings, so building a team to help you with some of the things that are required to help your business run, you can do that. You can use software to help you manage some of the processes and automation so that it's taking your time away from it but it's still continuing to run as it should. Software and people are two different ways to do it. Now, there's a lot to wrap yourself around in that sort of realm of turning something active into passive. You're going to have to understand what the things are that happen each time with each new client for example, or what are some certain sequences that happen over and over again that can be repeated. That gives you opportunities to create software, or find software, or even bring somebody in, a team member, or somebody who you are outsourcing to, to do those kinds of jobs.

It may not be possible to get it 100% passive, but as long as you're not trading your time for money anymore, I think that's where the big thing is. Now, there is an episode of the SPI podcast, that's Episode 158 with Brian. Brian Casel, from Productize. In that episode he talked about how he took his service based business, and turned it into a product. That's another way to go about doing it; so turning it into a digital course or some sort of offering that has other people working to create those deliverables and not you. I highly recommend listening to that episode. He talks about his product, called Productize. He teaches service based businesses, which are obviously very active, how to generate passive income and create a solution that's more turn-key.

Now to your first question. Should you create separate websites for each service, or under your personal brand? Really, that's up to you. I mean there's a number of pros and cons for each side of the equation, but I feel like if it's a completely separate thing that could be run on its own, and it is something that you want to eventually turn into passive income where you have maybe other people working on it—even though your face is still part of the brand, it would still be potentially wise, especially if it's a separate business, to be on a different website. That way, legally and financially, things are separated. But not only that, mentally things are separated for you as well.

It's similar to how with the Smart Podcast Player, that's a software product that I have for podcasters . . . It's my face there, and it's me who's the creator, but it's its own thing. It can live on its own, and because of that it's on its own website, it's separate as well because it's a software. It makes a little more sense that way. In other aspects, some brands have created products and services, and just simply offered them on their own site, and that's totally fine too. You get more traffic coming and seeing those things, versus giving that extra step to click away and find those things. Again, it's up to you. You could start by having it on your own site, Manv, first, just because you have those assets already and it's all in one place. Then if you want, you can experiment and see how that goes, and you can separate it out later if you'd like. Again, it's going to be up to you, and who you work with, and how things are kind of structured legally and financially. It's fine either way, I don't have a preference from my end on which one works better or not. I think it kind of is based on a case by case basis, and again, it's up to you the owner in terms of what you feel is best.

Hopefully that helps Manv, thank you so much for the question. I appreciate you; I want to send you an AskPat teeshirt for having your question featured here on the show. For those of you listening, if you have a question that you'd like potentially featured here on the show, all you have to do is head on over to AskPat.com and you can ask right there on that page. Just click the red button, record your question, and you can get featured just like Manv.

Now guys, thank you so much. I appreciate you listening in today. I want to give you a little bit of a tease. In a couple weeks you'll see promotions happening for my brand new course, Power-Up Podcasting. If you want to start a podcast like this one, or like my other show, I've helped hundreds of people already, and even through this course which has been beta tested. I'm excited to help those of you who are hungry to start your podcast too, and do it in a very short time period, but also do it well with a launch behind it, and planning, and content editorial planning as well. Not only that, I'm going to help you learn how to monetize and automate it too so it'll take less of you, and more just it working for you and helping to power-up your brand. PowerupPodcasting.com is where you go. Sign up for the wait list there, and you'll hear from me as soon as I start gearing things up for the launch. Really excited about it. Thank you guys so much, I appreciate you.

Here's a quote today from Plutarch. That is, “Those who aim at great deeds must also suffer greatly.” Hmm, ponder that one. Doesn't mean you need to suffer all the time, just means sometimes when you try something big, you might have a big fall. But, always keep getting back up, and realizing that those big falls are actually lessons that you learn along the way so you can aim even higher, and perform even better next time. Thanks guys, take care and I'll see you in the next episode. Bye.