by: AskPat 749 Episode Transcript
Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 749 of AskPat. Thanks you so much for joining me today. As always, I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions, five days a week.
All right. Now here's this question from Joshua.
Joshua: Hey Pat! My name is Joshua Ruby. I just started a new website called CreatingComfortable.com. It is a website that's going to be focused on teaching construction principles and design, and how to solve problems with materials at hand. I guess my situation is I'm still in school, and I have family, and so I have basically zero discretionary income. So I finally bit the bullet and I got a website through BlueHost, and so I've put about a hundred dollars or so into it.
So my question is: With just a hundred dollars, and if you were starting from scratch, what would you do to make it so your website could pay you back immediately?
My ideas include creating an email course and starting with some tutorial videos on tool usage and such and such. But if you're starting from zero and you're trying to get going with as little investment capital as possible, what would you do?
Thank you very much, and thanks for all you do.
Pat Flynn: Hey Joshua! Thanks for the question. You know, if I was starting from scratch, actually even before that, a lot of people ask me this question in terms of like, “What would you do to make money fast?”
And truly the way that I feel it could be done in the fastest way would be to freelance. So offering some sort of skill or knowledge or service that you have to offer for somebody who needs to know how to do that. And so there's a lot that goes into that, obviously. There's a lot of websites that are specifically helping freelancers get started. Ramit Sethi has a great course called Earn 1K, which is related to that stuff as well. But either way, it makes complete sense. Because instead of … you don't even need a website, necessarily, to make this happen. Now, a website can help, and you have one already, which is great, because it kind of establishes you. That's sort of the equivalent of your business card, if you will, to start out with. But making real connections with people, finding people in groups and talking to them, and actually having real conversations to the point where you can then offer up your services would be the way to go. And it could be done completely for free.
Now, it's going to take some time. And finding that target audience, building those relationships, mustering up the courage to actually go and ask, and potentially have people reject you, that's all part of the process of becoming an entrepreneur. But in terms of making money fast, the freelance work can be quick. You can even get 50% of your service fee up front, and then if they like what they see, or you do your job the way that you're supposed to, then you get the 50% on the other side. And so that's how I would start.
And what's cool about freelancing, especially if you're doing in an industry to something that you're in, it's sort of like internships. Right? Where you are getting some experience, you're learning as you go. But you're getting paid for it, too. And what's cool is that depending on who you freelance for—maybe it's a influencer in the space that you're in—you get to know a lot of the people that they know. You get to learn the ropes a little bit of what it's like to actually see what they do, and you're just adding one component of it and using your expertise to make something easier for them. But I've seen a lot of freelancers go from that to building their own brands in a relatively short period of time, maybe even just under a year, to be able to do that.
Now building a brand like Smart Passive Income or creating a podcast and getting advertising for it like I do, and many others as well, that kind of stuff works, but it takes time. It takes time to build up a fan base. It takes time to build trust and authority with people who would then follow you and read your stuff and then actually by through you, whether it's stuff that you recommended as an affiliate or stuff that you created yourself. But even before creating any sort of course that people would pay for, the number one easiest and fastest way would be to freelance.
You might think yourself, “Well, I don't have any special skills that people pay for.” Well that's not the right mindset to have. You are an expert at something, and you have to understand what your superpower is and really hone in on that and milk that, because that's what you have to offer. And some people would pay for something that would help them achieve something better, or make something or convenient, or have things done faster.
So one thing thing I would do is actually look for the influencers in your industry and look at some of the things that they're doing, and see if you can see yourself in there and any way shape or form. Whether it's…you know, maybe it's writing for them, or maybe it's a graphic design for them, or maybe it's copywriting for them. Or whatever. Go in there, be creative, and offer value in some way, shape, or form.
And if you wanted to actually capture somebody's attention first, do it for free. Try it out for free just to capture their attention.
It's just like how when I started speaking, I didn't know what I was doing. I was deathly afraid of it. But I started doing it to get practice, but I started doing it for free so I could just keep doing it and keep improving. And over time people started to notice that I was a different speaker than many other people, and now people are paying me to speak. So in a similar fashion, you could do the same thing with your freelance related stuff.
So that's how I would go about it. You don't even need a hundred dollars to do that. So hopefully that helps, Joshua. And so keep up the good work, and best of luck to you, and see what expertise you can offer other people who might need that.
So I want to send you an AskPat t-shirt for having your question featured here on the show.
For those of you listening, if you have a question that you'd like potentially featured here on the show, just head on over to AskPat.com and you can ask right there on that page.
Thank so much. I appreciate you, and here's a quote to finish off the day by somebody unknown. And that is, “You need to understand the difference between someone who speaks to you on their free time and someone who frees their time to speak to you.”
All right, take care and I'll see you in the next episode. Bye, now!