AP 0892: How Can I Move My In-Person Business Online?

AskPat 892 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 892 of AskPat. As always, I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions five days a week.

Thank you for joining me today. We have a great question coming in from Kevin, but before we get to that I do want to thank today's sponsor which is FreshBooks, one of my favorite companies. Not only have they been a huge supporter of AskPat and SPI, but they're also a huge supporter of small businesses and helping them manage their business finances, from keeping track of their expenses, to their income, but also invoicing. The invoicing features are actually really cool. I've been using them a lot lately. Here's what happens: In under thirty seconds I can create a professional-looking invoice and I can just bill a person, a student who I'm coaching or a company that I'm consulting with, those kinds of things. It makes it really easy. I can keep track of who opens them, who owes me money. It makes it really easy for following up and gosh, I wouldn't recommend any other product for that. If you want to check it out and use it for free for thirty days, go to FreshBooks.com/askpat and make sure you enter “Ask Pat: in the “How did you hear about us?” section. Thanks so much, and here's today's question from Kevin.

Kevin: Hi, Pat. My name is Kevin. I just started my own business working with children with autism and, in general, people with developmental delays in the San Francisco/Bay area. I've been listening to your podcast for a little while now. My mind is always geared towards moving products and services online. My type of business tends to be an in-person type of service. I was wondering if you could help me brainstorm some initial ideas for producing products online. Any tips or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for all you do. You rock, thanks.

Pat Flynn: Hey, Kevin. Thank you so much for the question. First of all, thank you for what you're doing to help children with autism. This is so cool, and I want to do what I can to help you here. Now I feel like every offline business—and we can probably create a challenge out of this in some way, shape or form—but I feel like every offline business has a way, shape or form to do business online too. This is one of my favorite things to do, is brainstorm different ways to do this. Now for a lot of people, not just people in your realm but a lot of people who have offline businesses who talk to people, and they consult with people, and they communicate with people and that's a part of their business offering—often times platforms like Zoom, or Skype, or Google Hangouts, those kind of things can be amazing ways where you can participate in discussions but in a more online presence. It's still done in real time. For example, when I took singing lessons—I took singing lessons way back in the day when I was actually preparing to do a lot of speeches. I knew it was going to be helpful for endurance and being able to stay at the top of my voice game, not just on stage but at these events where you spend three days, and you might lose your voice. It has helped a lot. It has completely changed my life, so big shout out to Kerri Ho, who was my singing coach back in the day. By back in the day I mean a couple years ago. Any way, she's in Australia, and she was able to coach me online through Skype. This is the kind of thing I'm talking about. I met with her every week for an hour, and I paid her for that service. It was completely life-changing for me, and I'm sure there are ways that you might be able to utilize tools like Skype. Zoom is probably a better one because it automatically records; you don't need any other external services in order to do that. The platform works very well for that. Zoom.us is where to go for that. That's one idea.

Also, taking some of the things that are repetitive with clients that you might have and putting them into an online course, so it's a DIY deal. You might walk people through a certain process and do it live and in-person. You can do that in a DIY setting by giving people a set of modules, and lessons, and steps to go through. They can do it that way through an online course platform, such as Teachable for example, and there are many other options out there that you might have. Going online, as well, there might be a summit that you could produce. Maybe there's a way for you to connect with other people who are helping people in this field, and you can bring them together in an online summit. It's like a live event where you bring speakers on, and people come in, and they pay to listen to everybody and their expertise so they can bring home value with them. You can do it in an online setting in a virtual summit kind of way. If you go to SPI or SmartPassiveIncome.com and look up “virtual summit” in the search bar, you'll find some episodes related to actually how to do that, which is really cool. Obviously, you can take a lot of the information you're learning and put it into ebooks and things like that, so you can sell those on Amazon to get more exposure and either lead people into some of the other offerings that you might have or actually make money from those books or audio books to go along with that too. Also, I was looking at some of the online things related to autism right now. There's tests and things people can take. You can do and offer those kinds of things as well. You might be able to create a podcast, and run advertising on it, and have other programs and people who are serving that audience want to sponsor your show. There's a lot of things you could do, Kevin, that can be done online.

If any of you out there listening right now have some other ideas for Kevin, why don't you head to Twitter and use the hashtag #AskPat892. That way Kevin and I can both follow the conversation outside of this call, and we can continue to brainstorm on that because I know there's a lot of you who have offline businesses who are thinking about the same exact thing. Kevin, I appreciate you asking this question. Hopefully I've given you some ideas as well. I want to wish you all the best of luck. That's just the start. I'm interested to hear what everybody else thinks. #AskPat892. What else could Kevin do to move his in-person business online in that niche?

Thank you, Kevin. I want to send you an AskPat teeshirt 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 as well, all you have to do is head on over to AskPat.com, and you can ask right there on that page. Thank you so much. I appreciate you, and I want to wish you all the best. Also, thanks to FreshBooks for being awesome and offering a thirty-day free trial. All you have to do is go to FreshBooks.com/askpat. Make sure you enter “Ask Pat” in the “How did you hear about us?” section.

Then finally, here's a quote, as always, to finish off the day, another quote today by Helen Keller. She was featured yesterday as well. This quote is, “Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.” Love that. Cheers, take care, guys. I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat. Bye.