AP 0398: How Long Does It Take to Build a Platform?

AskPat 398 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: What's up everybody? Pat Flynn here and welcome to Episode 398. Wow, we are so close to 400 I can taste it. Thank you again for all of the support. This is Episode 398 of AskPat and I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions five days a week.

Now before we get to today's question from Gabriel, I do want to thank today's sponsor which is AWeber.com. You can check them out and get a free 30 day free trial to AWeber to start building your email list. They are an email service provider. It's going to help you start collecting email addresses so you can send broadcast emails out, autoresponder emails, and start to build that database of potential customers for your business. Very important to start building your email list and do it the right way with AWeber by going to aweber.com/askpat. Again that's aweber.com/askpat. You can try it for 30 days for free.

All right, here's today's question from Gabriel.

Gabriel: Hi Pat, this is Gabriel Avilas. I blog at gabrielavilas.com. My question has to do with the length that it takes to build a platform that's monetizable. I just started blogging and, you know I heard so much about courses and creating other products and services that generate tons of revenue. But, realistically what is the average time it takes to build up a platform in order for you to have those opportunities? I've heard, I think a couple of years, maybe three years. How long does it take to create the kind of success that gets you into the six digits and beyond? Thanks!

Pat Flynn: Hey Gabriel, thank you so much for the question. It's an interesting question because you know I am a little hesitant to give you a specific time frame. Because I feel like if I give you a specific time frame, and for everybody else out there listening as well, you're going to think that it's okay that, you know, maybe you haven't reached that time period yet. That maybe you're not making money and you're going to just use that as an excuse to not actually do the work that you need to do, when you could actually do the work to make money even sooner.

So I'm hesitant to give you an exact time frame. For example, if I say, “Oh, it's going to take you two years typically to build a platform that can make you six figures.” That's just wrong. Because I feel like, well, if you are at year and a half and you haven't made any money yet you can say, “Oh well, I've still got six months left to go. Pat said it's okay.” And it's not based off of time, it's based off of a lot of other variables. For example, how much work you're doing to put yourself out there, who are you building relationships with, who are you networking with? You know, things can happen much faster when you do the right things.

Now I will say, because I know I do want to give you some average times based off of my own experience as well. And I'm going to give you a wide range here. Two of my most successful businesses, SmartPassiveIncome.com and also GreenExamAcademy.com; those took about a year and a half before they saw any sort of monetization happening. Both of those sites, interestingly enough, weren't started to make money. But they started to build an audience quite quickly and it was only after a year and a half that I was then able to start monetizing those platforms.

So, a year and a half, and that seems to be a good number in terms of what it might take to build a successful long-term business that can last you for years—and both of those websites have lasted for years. One of them I haven't even touched for years and it continues to build and bring in a passive income for me. SmartPassiveIncome.com is less passive, as you know, because I'm doing all of these podcasts and staying very active with it. But I do that to grow and that sort of thing.

But, I have other websites that within three months started making money. You know, nothing up to the six figure range. But I know of many people who have started businesses, they started building relationships sooner, and within a years' time started seeing six figures. John Lee Dumas, for example, from Entrepreneur on Fire. He started seeing it in a quite quick manner because he positioned himself very well, he was very quick to monetize, he was very quick to take action and do the right things within terms. For his particular business model was getting sponsors coming on board, he got a lot of listeners right away because he was doing seven days a week for his podcast, and then he got sponsors and then was able to build a six-figure business, you know, within a year I believe.

So, you know, I'm hesitant to say, “Oh well, it's okay if you don't make money by X period of time.” No. But what you need to do is understand that there is work that you can do to get to that level if that's, indeed, what you want to do much sooner.

So what I would do, in some very actionable items you can do, is okay, think of that dollar amount that you want to hit. If it is six figures, then that's great. You can go to $100,000 and then backtrack from there. What's it going to take to get that $100,000 based off of the type of business you have? Perhaps you are doing a service-based business. Well, how many clients do you need to have and at what price point do you need to have in order to get to that? Maybe you are selling information products. Well, how many of that information product or products do you have to sell and what price point, and break that down to monthly, and even daily. That can help you determine, okay who do you need to connect with? How many people do you have to have coming to your website? What's the conversion rates? How many webinars do you have to do? So on and so forth.

So that's how I would think about it. Not in terms of years, but in terms of “Okay, what's that next goal that you have?” You know, hopefully six figures is perhaps a goal if you're not there yet. But, that's not the end goal because once you get there, then what? So backtracking from there, how many per month, how many for week, how many per day? And what per day are you selling and at what price point?

So, again, some things to think about, and hopefully that gives you some direction, Gabriel. Again, just being very honest. I think that is the wrong approach to take in terms of how long it's going to take you. But more so, okay, what is it that you need to do in order to reach that goal? Not how long is it going to take, but what is it that you need to do? And then maybe you can think a bit from there. Okay, in a realistic fashion, how long is it going to take to do those things? Again, visualize the process.

You know the end game is good to think about. There was a study that was done with 262 students where they had one set of students visualize the end game, so getting an “A” on an exam and testing their results, versus another set of students who visualized the process of getting that “A”. So not the end result, but the process of getting that end result. And the people, or the students who visualized that process scored much better. Because you can have someday goal, but when you break it down into what it is that you have to do, it's going to be much more likely that you're going to achieve that goal.

So again, hopefully that gives you some direction, Gabriel. Thank you so much for your question today. I really appreciate it.

For those of you listening, if you have something to add to this conversation use the hashtag #AskPat398 on Twitter and we can continue this conversation on Twitter from there. Gabriel can check out that hashtag as well. #AskPat398.

And Gabriel, for having your question featured here on the show, we're going to send you an AskPat t-shirt free of charge. Jessica, my assistant, is going to reach out to you very soon to collect that information so we can send that to you as soon as possible. Probably in the next couple of week or so.

I also want to thank everybody else out there who is leaving questions. You can ask your question over at AskPat.com. Just right there, there's a record button on that page and we'll get those questions coming in and answer as many as we can.

I also want to thank today's sponsor AWeber.com, the email service provider that I've used ever since day one to start building my email list. It's helped me collect over 100,000 emails, which helps me send broadcast emails out when I have new posts that come out, which bring more traffic to my site. It helps me keep in constant contact and continually provide value to my audience through the autoresponder that I've set up. And also, it's just really easy to set up and they have great customer service and live chat as well to help you out too. So you can check it out for 30 days for free by going to AWeber.com/askpat. So that's AWeber.com/askpat.

All right, thanks so much and here's a quote to end the day. This is from Lee Iacocca. He said, “I hire people brighter than me and I get out of their way.” I love that, cheers take care and I'll see you on the next episode of AskPat. Bye.