by: AskPat 562 Episode Transcript
Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up, everybody?! Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 562 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you're doing well, feeling great.
All right, here's today's question from David, all the way from Ireland.
David: Hey, Pat. This is David here from Ireland. I just want to say I'm a huge fan of your work, and I love the stuff that you put out. So thank you so much for that. My question is about, my existing website. It's MindfulMeanings.com. I'm a psychotherapist and I work in private practice in Dublin, here in Ireland. And that's the website that I use for my practice. Now, it does the job really well for what I set it up for. I have a full practice, and I get enough traffic. I get all the traffic that I need. However, I want to branch out from private practice, and I want to move into, sorry, extend into online business, with psychotherapy. Reason being, is because first and foremost, I want to be able to reach out and help more people than I can do, in private practice. I'll say I can only see a certain amount of people every week, face to face. So, thanks largely to your good self, I've a lot of ideas around this, and I have a lot of work that I'm getting started with now, a lot of content written for blogs. I'm going to post blogs an awful lot more regularly than I have been. And, I have a podcast that I'm going to launch in January, hopefully. And, you know, lots of other good ideas for content so I can be of service to more people.
So my question is really about the website. As you can see, it's really set up for local traffic, and a local business. So, can I optimize that to utilize it for online business as well? In the way that I've been speaking about? Or would you recommend I set up a separate website for that? I'm thinking if possible, I'd like to keep the website that I have, you know, change it if needed. But not to set up a separate one all together because I see what I'm doing or what I want to do, more as an extension of the work that I already do. Rather than something completely different. Anyway, I would really value your input on this, so any you could give me would be fantastic. Thank you very much, Pat. And thanks in advance for the free t-shirt!
Pat Flynn: Hey, David. What's up? Thank you so much for your question today. I'm on your website, MindfulMeanings.com, and it's cool to know that this is working for you in a local sense. And driving traffic and customers and clients for your local practice. Congrats on all the success, and I think it's smart of you at this point, to want to branch out. To want to extend your reach. Not just to reach other people like you said, which I love that that's a primary reason why you want to do it. But when you reach more people, and you serve more people, you can generate more income…and, you know all that good stuff.
So, there's a number of different ways that you could do this. You had mentioned some stuff that's set up, and I see here that you do have a podcast link on your navigation menu. Actually, let me click on that now, 'cause you had mentioned that you were starting one. And it looks like you're on episode three now, which is great. Which is about “suicide intervention.” Episode 2 was “Change your story, change your life.” I love that phrase. And “Talk therapy,” episode 1. Awesome. So it looks like you are moving forward with the podcast. So first of all, congratulations to you, on that. I think that's a smart way to go, because yes, you are going to reach a lot more people by putting yourself on these platforms where your voice, your content can be seen and also shared.
But beyond that, you also want to make sure that you are providing, or thinking about providing a way for people to get access to you. To get access to your knowledge and pay for that. Because of course, a lot of…what a lot of people do is they create these great platforms, they reach a lot of people. But then they don't think ahead in terms of, “Well, how am I going to get rewarded for all of this?”. So, I don't know if that's in your pipeline but I hope it is, and by what I'm talking about is essentially products. Courses, I could I see happening in this particular niche. Webinars, very specific about certain things. And also, online seminars, and summits. You might perhaps be able to round up a number of other…psychotherapists, for example, and put them all together in a summit. Similar to what Lane Ehmann did in episode 37 of the Smart Passive Income podcast. Which you can find at smartpassiveincome.com/session37. She used her knowledge in the world of scrapbooking, to pull together some of the top experts and put on a paid live summit, that…you know, there were dozens of experts coming on, and it was like a full day or even two day event. And they would each talk about their own specialty and people would pay to get access to these live things and be able to interact with an audience in a webinar, sort of live summit kind of style. So, that's an option too.
And of course there's the ebooks, and physical books that you could do. Also I know a lot of people who are in the psychology arena who are publishing books and are doing very well, so that's available to you. Also, not only is it outreach, but it's another way to also generate income too, so I just wanted to make sure that as you're doing this, you're doing a great job so…in terms of, should this be on a separate page, I think you've already answered that. Now that I'm looking at your site, I see a podcast here and the blog, which is great. That's what I was gonna say. Keep it on your own site. The branding is perfectly suited for worldwide distribution. Mindfulmeanings.com, for example. Even though it's local to Dublin here, as it says on the top, it's something that could be taught and could serve everybody. So I think it's smart to keep it on that brand. I think it's a strong brand name. I would just make sure that it's easy for people when they land on the site, to know that these other things exist. And yes, you have them in the navigation bar. But when I go to the homepage, for example, it doesn't necessarily tell me that it's not just a service for Dublin. And that's what I see at the very top of the first, sort of paragraphs. When you say Dublin—I mean, it says, Dublin Counseling and Psychotherapy service. What I would do, is any traffic or blog stuff, you know you have a specific landing page that is more tailored for the non-local stuff. So what I would do is, mindfulmeanings.com/start, for example. It doesn't necessarily have to be that. But that could be, essentially a secondary homepage, for example. That if you do guest posts or guest blogging of guest podcast episodes. Or you read any articles on any other pages that are specifically meant to reach people outside of Dublin, then you can drive traffic to mindfulmeanings.com/start. And that could be a page that you could reference throughout your website too. And, yeah, have it all live there. And I think, this site, this brand is strong and…just, you can grow out from there. Like, it seems like you have been.
So, yeah, that's awesome, man, and I appreciate you, David, for saying thank you in advance for your T-shirt, because that's exactly what you're going to get. Because I, first of all, thank you for question. And yes, I will send you a t-shirt, all the way to Ireland. I would love a snapshot or a photo of it, on Twitter @patflynn. Just tag me there, so I could see the…I collect all the photos I get of people wearing AskPat shirts. It's pretty awesome. Anyway! Thank you again, David, I hope this answers your question and it kind of validates the direction that you seemed to heading. And yeah, thank you so much.
For those of you who are listening, if you have a question that you'd like potentially featured here on the show, like David's and yes, you also get a t-shirt too, just head on over to AskPat.com. You can ask right there on that page. Hit the record button just…ask your question. And there you go. I also want to mention that if you haven't picked up my book yet it's called, Will It Fly?. Will It Fly?How to Test Your Next Business Idea So You Don't Waste Your Time and Money. It is a Wall Street Journal best seller and I'm super excited to share it with the world. It has already sold over 16,000 copies at the time that I record this. And probably a lot more by the time you listen to it and I want to get it into as many hands as possible. So, if you haven't picked it up yet, go to WillItFlyBook.com. You can pick it up right there. Again, that's WillItFlyBook.com.
And finally, as always, I love to end with a quote. And today's quote comes from Jim Rohn. He says, “You either run the day, or the day runs you.” Cheers, take care, and I'll see you the next episode, of AskPat. Thanks very much.