AP 0207: How Do You Stay Informed When You’re Not In the Industry?

AskPat 207 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: What's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here ,and welcome to Episode 207 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. I'm feeling good. I hope you are feeling good too. We have a great question today from Andrew.

Before I get to that, I want to thank one of my favorite companies in the world, Music Radio Creative. I had to thank them live here, because they are the company that helped create the intro for AskPat. Plus, a couple of other things I've been doing. Some stuff that's in the work that you're going to hear later. Actually, in 2015, you'll hear.

Anyway, Music Radio Creative produces high quality podcast intros, outros, and jingles. Their site is so cool, you can go there and depending on what sort of a package you get, you can even choose the type of voice. They have all different professional voices that you can choose from and hear examples of and it's truly a worldwide experience, over 107 countries have used their services. What's really cool is that it's super affordable and all the music and sound effects that you get are fully licensed, so you can focus on creating great content without worrying about copyright claims.

To check them out, head on over to MusicRadioCreative.com/askpat. Again, that's MusicRadioCreative.com/askpat.

Awesome. Now let's get to today's question from Andrew.

Andrew: Hi Pat. My name is Andrew Hartley and I'm a certified flight instructor in Columbus, Ohio. I run SmartFlightTraining.com. My question is actually specifically about your Green Exam Academy site and your newsletter. Knowing that you run multiple sites now, and are no longer daily involved in the architecture industry, I'm curious how you continue to have newsletter topics and newsletter information about LEED tests that I assume are continuously updated all the time, how you stay on top of that and make sure that your users are getting good information in a timely manner. Plus, I really want an AskPat t-shirt, so I hope to hear this on AskPat and looking forward to your answer. Thanks Pat for everything you do, we really appreciate it.

Pat Flynn: Hey Andrew, thank you so much for your question and congratulations, you have an AskPat t-shirt. It'll be sent to you in a couple of weeks, you'll get an email from my assistant very soon. That's awesome. I hope to see a picture of you wearing it in exchange for your request. Of course, anybody who gets their question featured here in the show get a t-shirt. You don't have to send in a picture, but a lot of people have. It's really cool. Thank you Andrew.

To get to your question. Since I am no longer involved in architecture, and I would say that's perhaps 99 percent true. So, pretty much, you're right, how do I stay on top of timely information in the field from the Green Exam Academy newsletter, and just the site in general. I think this is a fantastic question, because when you think of passive income . . . whenever I talk about what I do with other people, and then they start to understand the idea of, “Okay, I can build something now, I can invest time upfront, takes a lot of hard work, okay, but then I can set it and forget it.” I say, “No, you can't set it and forget it.”

You can set it and walk away for a little bit, but then you have to come back. You update it, you need to obviously talk to your customers, if you have customers that need help. You can update and add new things to your product line, and add new features to your site, but you should never just walk away forever.

The cool thing about passive income is that you can build things now and reap the benefits later. You don't have to trade your time for money, but you can build something and then walk away for a little bit. Perhaps take a little mini-retirement as Tim Ferriss would say, but your business can continue to work for you. Perhaps it's even just the idea of going to sleep a night, knowing that in morning you will have the opportunity to have sold products overnight because your online store is open 24/7, seven days a week, even on holidays. That's all good.

To more directly answer your question, Andrew. There's a few ways I keep on top of what's going on in the architectural world. For one, I have a few friends in the industry and I talk to them every once in a while and I ask them, “Hey, what's the latest on x, y, and z.” That helps a little bit, but actually, those conversations, now that I have a couple kids and people are leading their own lives as well, I'm hardly ever in touch personally with other people who are in architecture right now. Although there are some few connections on Facebook and once in a while on Skype with some old friends. We never really talk about architecture. The last thing we want to talk about is architecture, actually.

There are other ways that I keep on track of what's going on. One of the best ways is to use a Google alert. Alerts.Google.com. If you don't know what that is, for those of you listening, it's a way to set specific keywords in Google so that when anybody sort of types or publishes any sort of content in and around or related to that keyword, or actually using that phrase, it'll send me an email report every day, or every week, however often I want this report.

It'll send me information on what people are taking about related to that keyword. Where have they used that keyword online? I look for keywords like “LEED exam”. I get information every month and that's the frequency I get it because this industry changes rather slowly, the exam changes every couple of years. The last exam has been about three years since the previous version. It changes slowly, but there are additions and things like that. Looking at keywords like “LEED exam” or “LEED AP exam” and all the different exam types—and also the United States Green Building Council update—things like that are really helpful and allow me to just receive in one spot in my inbox, changes, things that I should be keeping up with and things like that.

If anything I see when I'm scanning through that seems to be important and something timely that I can send to my newsletter, then I send them that particular link. I don't even go as far as, and I could perhaps hire somebody to do this, but I don't even go as far as summarizing those things in a long email. I simply say, “Hey guys, this is the latest, here's a link to it.” Boom. You know what, typically those places that are talking about those things like the official United States Green Building Council website or the Green Building Council Institute. Those places, they're going to talk about the topics in a much better, more detailed fashion than I would in the email.

That's the sort of strategy I'm using now, because I found that if I were to summarize those things on the website, and often this happens, there are updates, every once in a while, two of those particular notifications that come from United States Green Building Council and little changes and addendum like that, because there are a lot of technical things go along on with that stuff, if I updated it on my website, then I'm going to have to re-update it on my website. You're going to have to keep up with all the little changes whereas, if I point to where the origin of that particular notification is, those websites that I'm receiving again through my email in my Google alerts newsletter from Google, then it's all right there. If changes are made, I'm still directing people to the right spots. That's one way to do it.

I also subscribe to the obvious newsletters of those companies and organizations I actually am subscribed to. I do read and skim those over and those give me big time alerts on many things happening when I need to make changes on my website, any sort of major updates that happen. It's really easy for me to address and that's what helps me stay on top of these things.

If something seems to be of major importance and I get a lot of people on my Google alerts talking about it, a lot of notifications and newsletters coming from these large organizations, then I know to spend more time, perhaps schedule some time during that day to do more research and then perhaps do a unique email blast to my newsletter subscribers.

There are also other things you could do, like . . . this is something I used to do, although I don't do it so much anymore because a lot of the blogs that I was following died. If there are any blogs or forums out there related to that particular niche that you're in, you can subscribe to those feeds and determine whether or not, when new content comes in, if it's something worth paying attention to and sharing with your audience as well.

That's cool because, like I mentioned many times in the past here on this show, AskPat, and on SmartPassiveIncome.com, it's the relationships you have with other bloggers in the same niche as you that can definitely help catapult you forward in the industry that you're in. If, for example, you were following somebody else's RSS feed, who’s talking about the same stuff as you, if they were to come out with a great, amazing article, you can even share that in your email list and give that person credit, of course. You can post a link to it on your site and then you can reach out to that person, perhaps if you don't have a relationship with them already and say, “Hey, I loved your article, I have an audience that is of the same as yours, and I shared your article with them. Just wanted to let you know.” That's how you develop those relationships and those people will want to give back to you in one way, shape, or form down the road.

Those are the great strategies you can use for those of you out there who are looking to stay up to date in your field if you are, for example, not really into it anymore, if you've moved on to something else. This is a great question because I know a lot of people who have helped start a business who have now automated that business and then have moved onto something else. I think this is a great reminder for all of you out there that you can't just leave it there and let it be for good, because, and I made this mistake before. On SecurityGuardTrainingHQ.com, this is website I started publicly on SmartPassiveIncome.com. You can actually follow along that whole journey from how I selected that niche to how I monetized it. You can find it at NicheSiteDuel.com. You can follow along that journey.

I remember getting to number one on Google. That was my goal. And then I just let the site sit there for months. The site was doing well, it was making money through AdSense ads, but if I had a better goal, I could have put a little more work into it and perhaps made a lot more money. It's because I was just sitting on it for a long time that . . . I was just seeing the same sort of results and it wasn't until I finally woke up and started putting more content into it and more thought into the strategies and funnels on that site, even keeping up with what the latest news is in Security Guard Training as well, using these techniques I talked about earlier, things started to build much better.

Even now, I'm working to triple that income hopefully within six months from this point forward actually, because I'm taking it to level three now. There you go.

Andrew, I hope that answers your question. Thank you so much for taking the time to send me that, and I can't wait to see a picture of you in your AskPat.com t-shirt. Go ahead and tweet it out. My twitter handle is @PatFlynn. As always, any of you, if you want to tweet about a particular episode of AskPat, go ahead and use the hashtag #AskPat and the episode number. For this one, for example, it would be #AskPat207 and that's how we can all follow along.

Cheers. Thank you all so much. I also want to thank today's sponsor, which is Music Radio Creative. They are the wonderful producers of the AskPat intro and are going to do a lot more things for me down the road too. Isabella and Mike over there are amazing. They will make sure that you are happy with what you want for your podcast production needs. Super high quality intros and outros and jingles and music. They have a really high quality team over there, all different kinds of voices, all different kinds of sound effects, all fully licensed so you don't have to worry about anything. Check them out. MusicRadioCreative.com/askpat.

Thank you so much for listening. As always, I love to end with a quote. Today's quote for today is from Booker T. Washington. He says, “Success is to be measured no so much by the position one has reached in life, as by the obstacles which he has overcome.”

Take care and I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat. Enjoy your walk or gym time or car ride or time at your computer. Whatever. Wherever you're at, love you guys. Thanks so much.