hosted by: AskPat 392 Episode Transcript
Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up everybody. Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 392 of Ask Pat. Thank you so much for joining me today. We have a great question today from Matt, but before I get to that, I do want to thank today's sponsor, which is AWeber.com, the email service provider that I've started using ever since day one. And I still use them today on a number of my websites.
They help me build my email list, make it easy to put and embed forms on my website, but they also make it easy for me to create an autoresponder sequence, meaning a different set of emails that go out to people who subscribe, and they go out sequentially over time after people subscribe. So, I don't have to do any work to continue to stay engaged with my audience because you put in that work up front to create these emails, and that will do the work for you. And if you have anything to sell you can have it lead toward something to sell, you can drop in your social media platforms and things in there as well to make sure that people get through those and connect with you on those places. It's just amazing because you put in that work up front like I said, and it does the work for you over time. So go ahead and get started with AWeber and your autoresponder series by going to AWeber.com/askpat. That will give you a 30-day free trial to AWeber. AWeber.com/askpat.
All right, here is today's question from Matt.
Matt: Hey Pat. It's Matt. I was featured in a very early episode of AskPat, but now I have another question. I run a site called SkylandersCharacterList.com. It's been running for a little over two years now, and I've found some success with it. But as I continue to move forward, I'm trying to put a focus on expanding my brand of Skylanders Character List, or SCL. I'm currently working on some design changes, and I figure that the logo would be a good place to start. So, I took to 99Designs to get some samples.
Towards the end of the contest, I started to poll my audience to help me make my decision. I definitely got some good feedback, but there was a small yet very vocal, contingent that would rather I just keep my current logo. If you go to SkylandersCharacterList.com/askpat, that will take you to the Facebook post where this whole conversation began.
My current logo is very much in the style of the Skylanders brand, so I understand the argument, but I'm trying to build my brand, SCL. So my question; do you think the opposition is just showing their natural aversion to change or do they have a valid point that might even stop me from changing my logo?
As always, any help you can provide be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Pat.
Pat: Hey Matt, what's up? Thank you so much for the question today. I really appreciate it, and thank you for being honest and sharing this predicament with us today. And hopefully I can help you out, and I'm sure this is something that a lot of people in the audience would love to chime in on as well. For those of you listening, if you want to chime in and continue this conversation and help Matt out, or maybe you've gone through this before yourself, use the hashtag #AskPat392 on Twitter and you can continue this conversation about this particular topic on Twitter.
So, you're looking to make branding changes, which I think is cool. It's always good to do that. I'm doing something similar as well. And you looked to 99Designs for help, and that's great because they have a lot of great designers there. You can get a lot of good ideas, and they give you a pool of different visuals that you can use to then get feedback on, like you did, and I think that's very smart that you did that. And now you're at a point where you're a little confused because you have some people in your audience who are saying one thing, some people who are saying another, some people who say don't change, some people who like the ones. And this always happens. This is not anything new. This is always gonna happen when you start to build a large audience, and I see that you have a fairly large and vocal audience.
You have the Facebook page. I went to the website, and there's 5800 people there, which is great. You're getting a lot of people who are passionate about this particular topic. I went to that Facebook post that you talked about, and there's a lot of people who wanted to chime in. People love to chime in on what they think about design. And the truth of the matter is, it doesn't matter. Your logo, yes, I mean, it does matter, but in the end, it really doesn't because if it's something that … For example, if people were to be so unhappy with your logo change and the design change that the logo itself makes them not want to come back anymore, then that's not the type of person you want to have in your audience, right?
But at the same time, you do have to listen to your audience as well. Now, I will say that if you change the logo and it gets to a point where it doesn't look like, it doesn't make sense, and people are honest about that, and it's just not in tune with your brand, if it starts to … If you start to build a brand and a website where it starts to get a little convoluted and it's hard to find their way around it, then, yes, you're affecting the user experience.
But if it's just the logo itself, then you're gonna have, you know, some decisions to make, and, honestly, when it comes down to it is, whatever you do, eventually people are gonna get over it. Yes, people hate change for whatever reason, and no matter how much some people like it, some people are gonna hate it, and the truth is you will never be able to please everybody. Matt, you will never be able to please everybody. So, the only warning I have for you … And I'm not gonna tell you what to do, that's something a decision you're gonna have to make on your own. I think everybody has to make their own decisions about that, but we can offer some points of view.
The first thing is, you have to understand that whenever you do something, whether it's change a logo, create a course, or whatever, you're gonna have a few people who are very vocal who are gonna seem to control that conversation. And it might just be a few, you know, three people out of, you know, your thousands of followers, but they can be very convincing. They're good arguers, they're very outspoken and of course, because they're the ones talking and typing and giving you information about that.
Now, hopefully they're respectful, and they seem to be very respectful on your brand, which is good, because that means, you know, you definitely want to listen to them, but do you have to take action with what they're saying. No, you don't have to. But it's also important for you to gauge, and it's going to take a little bit of a gut feeling for you to understand okay, well, are they right? And if you are true to whatever new direction you're going to, and you know that that's the best for your brand, then go with what you know is right.
Now, if they begin to start telling you things, and you're like, “oh, well, actually, yeah that's kinda true,” and you start to talk to other people about it, which I would continue to do just to get a feel for exactly what's going on. I would even reach out to some people in your audience who may not have spoken up and just get their honest opinion on it too because sometimes those people are the ones who are gonna give you the best feedback, but they just want that permission to tell you, as opposed to some of these other more vocal people. It'll be nice for them to hear from you, and also, it'll be nice for you to hear from them and their point of view. You know, you might be able to see that these other people who are vocal have a valid point or just might be a sub-segment of your audience, who is just, you know, they're just trying to start stuff up.
Now, I will say personally, I looked at the new logo, the one that was in question that you talked about. It took me a little bit of, a few seconds to figure it out, exactly what the letters were. It's very creative, but in being creative, sometimes you lose out on exactly what you should be doing, which is telling people what the brand is. So, you know, I see the black and white one that you talked about. Again, we're talking about SkylandersCharacterList.com. Skylander is a game I'm sort of familiar with. It's similar to Disney Infinity, I believe. There's these characters, and you can start to build up their experience points and, you know, abilities and things like that. And my cousin's big into it, and his kids are into it too. But I'm more of a Disney Infinity guy, but anyway, I know that, you know, the branding is important, but also, the idea of being able to share what your brand is about is very important too and if those things conflict, then it's not gonna work out for you.
I like, like, what some of the other people in the comments mentioned, the one that is on your Facebook page. That one is very in tune with what this game is about, and it looks just like the way it should, I think, and I think if you would navigate that one onto your website, it would work out very well and it would make the most people happy. But again, there's a balance there between what would make most people happy, but also what you like because you want to be happy with it as well. And honestly, if you were to just say, “You know what, guys, I'm going with this new one and that's the way it is,” people are going to be upset, but then they're going to get over it, and people who are so upset that they're gonna leave, those aren't the people that you're going to want.
So, you know, the biggest lesson here is don't spend too much time on this. Pick something and go forward with it and, you know, do a little bit of investigation with your audience and, like I said, the non-vocal people, and hear what they think. But don't spend too much time on this because a logo is just a logo. You know, you've got some content to provide. You've got some value to share with your audience, and the logo is just a logo.
So, hopefully that makes sense, and, you know, I appreciate you asking a question, and I'd love to hear what everybody else thinks. Use the hashtag #AskPat392 on Twitter and we could see if we could talk about this a little bit more off of the show and on Twitter.
Matt, for having your question featured on our show, we're gonna send you an AskPat t-shirt. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. And the other thing I'll mention, just, this came to mind. You can always change. You know, maybe you try it for a little bit and if it doesn't work out, then you go back. That's fine. I mean, there's no, that's the cool thing about doing things online, you can always change, you can always pivot, if you will. And, you know, the Smart Passive Income logo has changed over time. The AskPat logo looks completely different than the Smart Passive Income logo and all these other things. So we're gonna put these things into some cohesive manner in the near future, but again, even though they're off and maybe not all congruent amongst each other in terms of the legs of SPI Podcast and the different parts of the brand, it's still working because I'm providing value, and, hopefully, you can continue to do the same thing and not have this get in the way.
So thank you again. You'll hear from my assistant in a couple weeks to collect information to send you that t-shirt.
For those of you listening, if you have a question you'd like potentially featured here on the show, just head on over to AskPat.com. You can ask right there on that page.
I also want to thank AWeber.com for being awesome and making it super easy for people to start an email list to start building that email list, which is important for many reasons. Obviously, communication. On a secondary, even more important level, it's important because you're building a list of followers, a list of people who've given you permission to contact them. And let's say your blog or website, for example, got hacked or went down, if you don't have that email list, I mean, that's … You're screwed, right, because how can you contact your audience? Even through RSS feeds, you can't personally email everybody else and say, “Hey, this is what happened. This is where I'm going. You can find me here now.” When my site got hacked in March of 2013, the email list is really what saved me and kept people knowing what was going on. So, when they couldn't get on my site, they at least knew what was going on and knew that things weren't going the way they were supposed to. And I was still able to provide value to them and direct people toward my podcast through my email list. So check it out. AWeber.com for starting your email list. You can get a 30-day free trial by going to AWeber.com/askpat. That's A-W-E-B-E-R dot com/askpat.
Thank you so much for listening in today. I really appreciate it, and here's a quote to finish off today from Thomas Edison. He says, “Many of life's failures are people who do not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” It's crazy to think about, just, what other people in this world could've done if they just put a little bit more time, effort, had a little bit more patience for things. So, I don't know if that resonates with you, but it definitely resonates with me. Cheers. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. I appreciate all the reviews on iTunes, and I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat. Bye.