AP 0981: How Do I Present My New Niche to My Audience?

AskPat 981 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey what's up everybody? Pat Flynn here and welcome to Episode 981 of AskPat. Thank 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

Today's question comes from Charvee from India, but before we get to that, actually I have to just say thank you to FreshBooks for being an amazing supporter of the AskPat podcast throughout the years here, and I just love them so much, which is why I recommend them. And if you want to check them out for free for thirty days, all you have to do is go to FreshBooks.com/askpat and just make sure you enter “Ask Pat” in the “How did you hear about us?” section. They help us manage our business finances, they help us with our invoicing, they just make it really easy. Plus, they're just a great company with great customer service too, so check them out, FreshBooks.com/askpat.

All right, now here's today's question from Charvee.

Charvee: Hi Pat, I'm Charvee from India. I'm a spiritual entrepreneur and an angel card reader. I just thought of my—I just bought my domain of the spirit link for my website. Thank you very much, you've been a savior. I have a PayPal account where my clients pay me, but I don't have my website, and that's why I want to make one. Now, I also have an Instagram account that I created last year, with utmost love and honesty, and by god's grace it's grown from zero to 1,300-plus followers in a year. Now on this May 28 it's going to be like, 1,400-plus. And it's with utmost authenticity that I have made that.

The problem right now that I'm facing is that my niche is shifting from just angel card reading to also talking about how to create your own abundance that feels through to you on this path, or for anyone who wants to have a limitless lifestyle by having a passive income. But I haven't ever spoken about this to my Instagram followers, I have always given very inspirational messages about limitless lifestyle, but never about this so I am a little concerned right now that then I'm making the website—should I be talking about this or should I just keep my website limited to just angel card readings? In future, I also want to do podcasts, but I don't know how to go about this right now. Should I have a Leadpages, Coming Soon page right now, or should I invest right away in ConvertKit? I'm asking these questions because honestly, I don't want to look salesy, and I'm bad at marketing so that's my downside. Inspiration-wise, I'm pretty cool. Authenticity-wise, I'm pretty cool, but marketing-wise I'm zero. I really feel like, I don't know man. So any help would be great. Thanks Pat. Thank you so much. Angel blessings to you my friend.

Pat Flynn: Hey Charvee, thank you so much for the question, I really, really appreciate it. Here's the thing, if you are great at being authentic, you are also going to be a great marketer. I feel that this is where marketing is heading, and this is what you should be doing and incorporating into the messages that you have to share. And if you authentically care about your audience, you're going to do things that maybe in your head, initially now, might be seemingly a little bit pushy, but I want you to separate pushy with marketing, but also realize that sometimes you have to just share this message in offering in recommendations and these programs and other things that you have to offer—email list subscriptions, those kinds of things—because you are trying to help. So always make sure that you are always coming from a place of serving; that's going to help you with this kind of marketing thing that we all end up doing here online.

There is a way to serve and sell at the same time. And by sell, it could be something monetary, or selling the idea of getting into an email list of yours, like those kinds of—anything. So there is a way to serve and sell at the same time. As long as you keep that serving part—really, really important. With the website, I would definitely put one up, and then I would just start experimenting with it. Nothing has to be permanent, and it is, this is part of your journey, it's kind of figuring things out. And oftentimes, the Instagram niche is going to be very different than what people are resonating with on the website. You can talk about different topics too, that way you get to see what's more interesting. I think it's totally okay for you to start exploring different spaces just to kind of get an idea of what and how people are going to respond. Even on your current following on Instagram, you can start sharing a few other things just to kind of see what people think about them. You can even ask questions, you can even do polls on Instagram stories now, which is kind of cool. But just sharing maybe a post that's a little bit different than the others, just to kind of see how people resonate with it could be interesting.

And then in terms of the website, I mean you can set up a website, you can set up a lead page. I would definitely get involved with ConvertKit if you're going to build your email list because that's going to help you really nail down what it is your audience want [Full Disclosure: I'm a compensated advisor and an affiliate for ConvertKit.]. Getting people onto an email list and then understanding by asking them, “Hey what are you struggling with? What do you need help with? What are the things that you wish you had available to you that you do not yet have available to you?” That's how you can then determine, okay, well what can you do and offer to best serve them better than they are being served right now through the free content that you have?

ConvertKit is the top recommendation from me. I am an affiliate for ConvertKit, I am as well a compensated adviser for it too, so I just want to be honest with you for that. But like, see just what I did there? Like I told you what I knew is going to help you, I told you the truth about it that I'm an affiliate, and as a result you may end up using it, and if you do you're going to see how valuable it is. Again, doing the same thing for your own audience, there's nothing wrong with that. I mean, because you can, like I said, serve and sell at the same time.

Leadpages, yes that's also helpful too, but I wouldn't jump into just all the tools that I use or any other people use just because you hear that they're using them [Full Disclosure: I'm a compensated advisor and an affiliate for Leadpages.]. I mean I would just take it very carefully one step at a time, but also take action too. You don't have to buy everything that everybody's getting, and really you've had a great start to what it is you're trying to build here by getting these Instagram followers. I would highly recommend you listen to an episode that I did with Jadah Sellner. If you look up Simple Green Smoothies on search engine in Smart Passive Income, you'll find that episode, and she grew her audience with her partner for Simple Green Smoothies on Instagram, and then was able to take that Instagram following and turn it into a business, so that would be a great episode for you to listen to get inspiration from.

Charvee, I hope this gives you some insight and some exploration items for you, and I just want to wish you all the best. Thank you so much for calling in today, I want to send you an AskPat teeshirt for having your question featured here on the show. And 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 you so much, I appreciate you, and here's a quote coming in today from Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, “The size of your dreams must always exceed your current capacity to achieve them. If your dreams do not scare you, they are not big enough.” Be scared my friends. Take care, cheers, and I'll see you . . . I don't mean that, if you take that out of context that could be “be scared”—no, you know what I mean. Just in the context of that quote, go big, go toward that fear, because you know that that's how you're going to reach high for your dreams. All right guys, take care, thank you so much, and I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat, bye.