by: AskPat 88 Episode Transcript
Pat Flynn: What's up everybody, Pat Flynn here and welcome to Episode 88 miles per hour! Sorry, Back to the Future reference. I'm a huge fan and I guess the next one I'll do is Episode 121, if you know what I'm talking about. Anyway welcome to Episode 88, super stoked you're here. I'm happy to help you by answering your online business questions, five days a week.
I want to give a shout out to our supplier for our shirts, the AskPat teeshirt, which gets given to anybody who has a question featured here on the show. If you go to AskPat.com you'll see the shirt there and what it looks like. Had a lot of people ask, “Where can I get one, if I don't get my show featured or If I don't get my question featured or I don't have a question, how do I get a shirt?” Well that's where you get it, you go to SuccessShirt.com, that's the supplier. SuccessShirt.com, thanks to Greg over there at SuccessShirt.com. Now today's question actually comes from a different Greg, and Greg asks about an interesting—actually this is a really interesting question about what happens where your audience doesn't respond the way you might think they should.
Greg Savage: Hi Pat this is Greg Savage. I'm not really willing to give my site address; I don't want to do any marketing through this message. My question is, I noticed that you and a lot of other professionals say that it's best to outsource to get, you know—lighten the load by outsourcing. I'm more of a do-it-yourself guy. I like to do things myself and recently I've been outsourcing video, articles, guests posts, things like that, and what I notice is my audience does not react the same to the guest's posts and the guest video, even though the posts and the videos are more beneficial and they're by professionals that are more familiar with the topic than I am. I recently did a test where I sent a video on a specific topic to my email list and most of the people were saying things like, “Greg why aren't you doing that? You are already the credible person,” but in actuality even though I do know about the topic, I am not as qualified to speak about the topic because it's something that I do not do on a regular basis.
So I guess my question is, how do you react to responses like that, where you're bringing the quality but because it's not you or your face people don't react the same? I hope that makes sense. Thanks.
Pat Flynn: Greg thank you so much for your question, it's always great to hear from you. For those of you out there listening, Greg is a very active member of the SPI, Smart Passive Income community. So Greg thank you so much for this question. Its actually a really interesting question because we don't hear about reactions from guests posts very often, so to get this straight for everybody listening out there: What Greg does is on his site he has other people who are experts—better, more knowledgeable about certain things within Greg's niche—he has these people come on his site and write guests posts or do guest videos and apparently your audience Greg, is just not responding to those very well. Perhaps they want information from you, even though that's information that you couldn't bring. So what do you do? Now the first thing I want to mention—and this is sort of a warning for everybody out there, just to make sure because I've fallen under this trap before too—sometimes we feel like that our entire audience feels a certain way, based on one or two or three people who speak up. You know, you have to make sure to understand that the outspoken people in your community may not represent the majority. The majority of your community maybe silent and may think differently. So that's just the forewarning Greg, just to make sure that you make sure you do the research or the surveys to understand that; maybe your audience is actually benefiting and liking these guests posts and guest videos. There may be just a certain few people who are more outspoken, maybe saying otherwise, and don't let the minority sway your decisions. Very important, because you have a large audience and you want to make sure that you are there for those who are in your target audience and the majority of them. Of course you want to please as many people as you can within that target market. Of course if you try to please everybody in the world, you're going to please nobody but you don't want to react to just a few people who talk up, who speak up.
You want to listen to them though, I think that's important and obviously you're listening because you asked this question. It's important to listen to see and do further research and survey if indeed this is how everybody thinks. So you might want to ask or actually have a blog post or a video come out where you say. “Hey guys,” like that's what I would do. I would just be honest with my audience. “Hey guys, I've been having all these guests posts on and these guest videos. This is why I have them on,” you know, everything you just mentioned on your question as far as, you know, you have experts come on that are more qualified than you to talk about these certain things and you want to make sure your audience gets the best information and you can say, “A few of you have spoken up and said that, you know, you don't want those. So I want to hear from everybody out there, this is your time to speak up, I'm giving you permission to talk,” and this is where you're going to get a lot of engagement. A lot of people who don't normally speak up are going to be able to speak up. There might be some debates in that comments section, which is great, you want that because you want everything to come out there and you want people to just understand why you do what you do, why you did what you did, and why you're going to do what you're going to do. So that might help with your decision making and your decision process from that point forward. I had mentioned something in that sort of speech there that I think is very important to reiterate. You want to make sure you tell people why you do what you do, why you did what you did, and I think also it's important to understand when you're listening to your audience. When they tell you they want more of you, I mean they want more of you.
You know, you can still have experts come on, I mean I still have people come on my podcast who are experts, who are way more knowledgable than me in certain areas and people still enjoy it because I think I put myself in there as well. Whether it's because we're doing an interview together and I put my own thoughts on those things and we're having conversations, so people aren't necessarily getting information from one single person, it's from another person and myself at the same time. So you can take that approach, or you could have somebody say something in a guest video or guest post and then you come in and add your own voice at the end or your own blurb at the end of that blog post and that could be a similar way, a way for you to get these experts to come on to share information but also give more of you, which is what it seems like your audience may want, but again you want to back check that and make sure.
I mean I don't see why people wouldn't want more of you Greg. First of all, I know you're an awesome person but secondly you're the person that has built that brand and of course people are going to want information from you. They can still get it from other people, but I think if you put yourself on the end of it—you know, of course you want to introduce these people but at the end come up with your own sort of analysis or conclusions on certain things that people are teaching or your own spin on what these other experts are saying—that can go a very long way and could be a nice way to address and respond to all of this talk that's been happening about the approach that you've been taking so far.
So Greg, I hope that answers your question and perhaps there's some things you can do to experiment to see what the reactions might be. I would highly advise you to be honest with your audience and create a video, talk to them about exactly everything we talked about today and see what they say because they are your audience. They're going to speak up and hopefully you would get to know them better as far as what it is they would like or what it is they would want to see. And again, to reiterate, there are ways to bring other experts on but also give more of you at the same time.
So Greg, thank you so much for the question and an AskPat teeshirt is going to be headed your way, I can't wait to see a photo of you in it. And for anybody out there who has a question, head on over to AskPat.com and you can ask right there on that page. No problem, and again thank you for everybody who has asked for a shirt; if you want to go a buy one, you can get one at SuccessShirt.com.
And as always I end with a quote, and today's quote is from Mario Andretti, famous race car driver. He says “If things seem under control, you're just not going fast enough”. I love that quote. Thank you so much for listening to AskPat, thank you Greg for your question. You are all amazing. See you in the next episode, peace.