by: AskPat 315 Episode Transcript
Pat Flynn: What's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 315 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today.
Sweet, now let’s get to today's question from Marty.
Marty: Hey Pat, my name is Marty Griffin and I almost did the intro to my podcast right there. Geez, that's a hard habit to break. My name is Marty Griffin. I went by Marty McFly in high school so you could certainly appreciate that. I had some questions about JV Partnerships. I do a podcast called “Golf Strategy School.” I just launched back in the third week of January. And using a lot of your strategies, your tutorials. . . I’m speaking into an ATR2100 right now, and I'm absolutely loving it. So, thank you for that kind of information.
But, going forward, long range vision for my business is to have a membership site a lot like Fizzle, where it's a solid golf community that provides accountability and motivation for people who are trying to improve. Within this community, I would want to have tutorials by these world class instructors.
So, I was just wondering what your experience is with JV Partnerships. What kinds of compensation go with it? Obviously I'm familiar with the affiliate side of doing webinars and things like that, where you provide a percentage of the signups from that webinar. But, in terms of that evergreen content tutorials, really that is what I'm looking at. What should I expect?
I don't want to go in and get taken to the cleaners. I know you prevented me from getting cleaned out a couple times, with your great information. Just wondering if you could bail me out one more time. I don't have a Delorean for you to borrow, but, I would appreciate the info over the airwaves. Again, thank you as always Pat. I look forward to hearing your answer. And good luck on catching those Post-It notes next time on SPI TV. Take care.
Pat Flynn: Hey Marty McFly, what's up dude? Thank you so much for the call today and the Back to The Future references. I love that, and also mentioning SPI TV, I appreciate that so much.
So, let's help you out here. First of all, your voice sounds amazing so I'm sure your podcast is rocking and that ATR2100, as all of you can hear, is a fantastic microphone, if you are looking to start a podcast. The Audio-Technica ATR2100 is amazing and it's about $60-70 on Amazon. As opposed to the mic I'm on right now, which sounds essentially the same, which is about $300-400. So, Audio-Technica ART2100. So, thanks Marty, a lot of people I’m sure appreciate that.
Now, let's get to the future of your business here. So, you have a membership site and you're looking ahead in terms of getting experts to come on and provide content for you. Just similar to what Fizzle.co does. Actually I helped out Chase and Corbett and Caleb, back when Caleb was. . . and Barrett is in there now. I did a couple courses for them. For me, because I had a relationship with them, I didn't ask for anything in return. I know I'm going to get a little bit of exposure, just being in there and build a little bit of authority for my own brand, being in there.
If you have any good connections with people in the golfing world, that's where I would go first. Go to those people who you know can expand your library, who are going to help you out because you have that relationship and who know that in return they are just going to get that exposure. Even if you don't know those people, that is the first thing you should offer them. You have these highly targeted people in your audience and that exposure to them. To these people and their course and their teachings and building authority, is going to, first and foremost, be the number one thing you want to talk about of course.
Now, you also mention the affiliate program and that could work too. These trainers that come in and provide courses for you, you can give them special deals as an affiliate. Maybe they are some of the only people who have the affiliate program or maybe they have a higher percentage, higher than other people in the course. I have been apart of other courses where I've been given a higher percentage to help promote and be encouraged to promote. But, also, just as a thank you for being there and that is also really nice, if you do end up going down that route.
I also know a few people who have included experts and trainers in their own courses from outside of their own world into a flat fee. You might pay someone $2,000 for a course, if you know that course is going to give you a lot more value to give to your audience so they will continue to pay over time if you do have a recurring fee. And $2,000 is just a number I picked out of thin air, so you are going to have to figure this out and understand who this person is and what would be valuable to them. Have a chat with them, maybe have coffee with them and talk this out.
Either way you want to talk it anyway, obviously, no matter what the deal ends up becoming and also know that when you have these new experts and trainers come on board. Those sometimes are big names that people who are on the fence of buying or who would come across your sales page, would help them, go over the fence and purchase. Those are other things to consider when you have experts and trainer come one who might have a name that could help you sell even more. Giving a flat fee to have them give you content to put in there, whether it is content that they create specifically for you, like what Fizzle does, it’s content that they already have that you put in there, that could help as well.
Another benefit to the trainers or experts that you have on board, similar and along the same lines as the exposure, is that maybe you help sell the stuff that they have. Maybe you have a golfing instructor who comes on who is an expert at shooting a dogleg left. This person has a course on dogleg lefts. Then you promote that course, right there in that lesson and you have that be a little pitch in that lesson, at the end, maybe the final minute or two of this person’s video, for example, is a pitch to his or her course or book or something. I don't know if there is a course on dogleg lefts. Probably there would be a course on dogleg rights too. For those of you who don't know golf, then don't worry about what I just said. You can offer people the chance to pitch on your audience as well, whether there is commission or affiliate offer or not, that is a nice thing to offer them as well.
Finally, you could—I’ve seen this a couple of times, it's a little bit harder to manage—essentially sell that course within your membership site and then give that person a particular percentage of that. So, it would essentially be an extension of your course or an add-on of your membership site that people would have to pay to get access to. I don't know if you would like to do this; but maybe it’s a big time name that comes on and provides this course, and you could consider up-selling it. Maybe it is worth that much, at which point you would offer this person a percentage of the people who buy into it. The nice thing about that is you only give what that person gives, if people don't download it and people don't pay for the add-on then you don't owe that person any money. But, if it does really well, everybody wins. So, that is something to consider as well.
There's a lot of ways to go about it. I would really think about what the experience is about from a user perspective. Even kind of depends on how people are used to getting content from you already, so put yourself in the shoes of a member and decide from there and see what would work best and what makes sense. But, also put yourself in the shoes of that expert and it might be a different deal for different experts. It doesn't have to be the same across the board.
So, Marty, just something to think about. I hope you get some information that helps you from this particular podcast and for those of you listening, if you have something to add to help Marty out, use the hashtag #AskPat315. You guys have been doing a great job on Twitter extending the conversation for when I mention the hashtag.
Let's help Marty out. What else can he do? How can he help provide value to the people who are also providing value to him in his membership site for training courses? Use #AskPat315.
Awesome. Thank you so much, Marty. An AskPat t-shirt is headed your way. Best of luck to you and your podcast and the course and your membership site and everything you're doing. For those of you listening, if you have a question that you would like potentially featured here on the show, just head on over to AskPat.com and you could ask right there on that page thanks to the widget from Speakpipe.com.
Thanks again for your time today. I really appreciate it and as always I like to end with a quote and today's quote comes from Tim Ferriss, author of the Four Hour Workweek. He says, “When you try to do something big, it's hard to fail completely.”
Cheers, take care, and I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat. Thanks.