AP 0229: When I Create a Second Niche Business, Do I Need New Social Media Accounts?

AskPat 229 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: What's up everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 229 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. Before we get to today's question from Lane, I do want to thank today's awesome sponsor, a company that I have been using for over 5 years now, and that is AWeber.com, the email service provider that I use to send loads of emails to loads of people.

It helps me collect email addresses on my website and send broadcast emails out to the world, and also an auto-responder sequence, which is a series of emails that I've pre-written that get sent out sequentially to people over time after they subscribe, which allows me to stay connected with them over time and have my timely emails, my broadcasts, not seem like spam. None of my emails are spam, but we all know how email can be. And AWeber has been a great solution for me and my business, and I recommend you check it out. You can get a 30-day trial for one dollar by going to AWeber.com/askpat. That's a-w-e-b-e-r.com/askpat.

Awesome. Now let's get to today's question from, Lain Ehmann.

Lain: Hey Pat, it's Lain Ehmann of LainEhmann.com. Thanks so much for allowing us to ask questions directly to you, very exciting. My question is this: After establishing a successful business in one niche, scrapbooking as you may know, I am launching a new business in productivity and mindset coaching, more business and life coaching. And I don't want to let go of the scrapbooking niche, but I want to add on this new part of my business. Now here's the question: What do I do with all my social media? Everything I've done has been established under my own name, and people are following me on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc., knowing me as a scrapbook expert, and now I want to add in this new business and actually transition a lot of what I'm doing over to the new business. I don't know if I need to start a new profile on all my social media accounts, a new YouTube channel, etc. What do I do so I don't lose the scrapbooking stuff, but then I can also build on with my new niche that I'm working on? Hope that makes sense, thanks so much, and hope to hear from you soon. Thank you.

Pat Flynn: Lain, thank you so much for the question. It's so good to hear your voice again. For those of you who don't know, Lain was featured in the Smart Passive Income Podcast in episode 37, which you can find at SmartPassiveIncome.com/session37, and just to give you a quick idea of what that was about, Lain mentions scrapbooking. She makes over six figures a year in the scrapbooking industry. Yes, scrapbooking, which is awesome, it's so cool. And you have to listen to that episode. It's great. I'm actually going to invite her back on the show to talk about more about the strategies that she's using. But I'm happy to have her here on AskPat because she asked a great question. I'm happy to see her expand into this new business because she's great at it, and I think she can hep a lot of people.

But what does she do with her social media accounts? How does she organize her current scrapbooking industry into something she's known for, with this new venture that she's going into? And to be honest with you Lain, I was sitting here for about 15 minutes thinking about how to answer this question because I wanted to give you, like I give with everybody, I wanted to give the best answer. But I was having a hard time, and I kept going back and forth with this one. So I do want to make sure that, before I answer this question and just sort of talk about it with you here and sort of spill my brain out to you with the ideas that I have, we can all talk about this. I would love to hear what everybody out there listening thinks. You can use the #AskPat229. Share in 140 characters or less on Twitter, maybe more if you need more than one tweet, but use the #AskPat229, and let's have this discussion. I want to know what you guys think. I think Lain would appreciate to hear what everybody else thinks, and we'll follow that hashtag.

Personally I feel that, oh gosh, there's so many ways to go about it, Lain. I mean you can separate out your scrapbooking industry from what you have and create a whole new personality, like “Lain Ehmann, Coach,” or whatever. And I know a lot of people who just put coach at the end of their name, create a new social media profile, maybe even a new website at the same name. “LainEhmannCoach” or “LainCoach,” or I saw you used a couple hashtags, “Lainfucius,” like “Confucius says”—”Lainfucius says.” I thought that was pretty clever. But they separate that out and create this new branch of their life, their ideas in this new niche, on a separate website. And that is good because it organizes it and keeps it sort of separate. And you have to realize that some people who are into scrapbooking might be interested in what you have to offer here, and you would just simply say, “Hey, I have this new profile here. This is what I do if you want to follow me here. This is what this is all about. If not, all good. You can stick there.”

Now with that being said, I feel like if you're getting into this productivity, coaching sort of thing, you know it's great to have your name, as a domain name, which you already have. And as the Twitter handle, however that's what you've been using for the scrapbooking thing. So that's the predicament here. And then I thought, well, there's a lot of people out there who I know, Cliff Ravenscraft for example being one of them, who started out doing one thing, you know, podcasting about the show Lost, to then podcasting about this and then that. He's had several different shows all about, you know . . . he's the Podcast Answer Man as well. But we all use @cliffeotc to contact him on Twitter. And people love that he's doing all these different things. And people who listen to him on Lost, or talk about the Lost series when it was live and he was doing his predictions and theories and things like that, they loved him for that. They moved to where he went next, just because they fell in love with Cliff and his personality, and he's been completely successful doing his podcasting thing, even though some people came over from that Lost thing, and I feel like a lot of people who started podcasts started listening to Cliff back when he was doing these other shows.

And so I feel like a lot of people who are potentially in the scrapbooking industry, those are . . . I almost feel like that audience could truly benefit from what you have to offer on this other site. I almost . . . I'm sort of fifty-fifty on this. I know you don't want to hear this, Lain. I want to give you an answer like, “Do this,” but I think it's not that clear and it's almost going to have to come from your gut, what you think should be done. Now, I think there's a part of me that would also say, “You know, some people might not want to hear all your new business and coaching stuff.” You know, they follow you for scrapbooking, and so they're only going to want scrapbooking stuff. And that's where another predicament happens. And so on the other hand, I feel like, wow, if people know you and you're providing value for them, you know, they can choose to unfollow you if they want. And if you are maybe giving them some great stuff on scrapbooking, they are going to have to live with this other stuff that they might not necessarily need.

And I feel like on Twitter, especially, that's okay because there's tweets coming out all the time. People miss some, people see the same tweets every once in a while, and it's fine. I think Twitter, more than any other social media platform, gives you the right to try different things and perhaps be a little bit more “annoying,” even though your not being annoying. But you know what I mean, right? Like, you have the ability to share things more often and not be punished for it. So there's that.

I feel like you would be okay if you stuck with @LainEhmann. For those of you listening, that's L-a-i-n-e-h-m-a-n-n, so Lain Ehmann, and I feel like you can just have it all under that. You are a scrapbooker, and you're also this productivity expert, and I think that could go very well. People will have to be happy with what you have to offer them. If you're providing value in one way or the other, one niche or the other, it's going to be cool that you have all these other things going on. And I think one provides proof for the other, you know? So the scrapbook stuff is great proof for you being able to do . . . create a successful business, and help other people. And then the . . . on the other side, it's like, hey, Lain isn't just a scrapbooker. She's doing all this other amazing stuff, and they would get to know you even more, and if people are like, “No, I don't want any of that stuff,” then, I mean that's you, and they're following Lain Ehmann, right? They're not following @YourScrapbookingBusiness, you know? So, you know what I mean? It's like, your name, Lain Ehmann, this is what you do. You happen to do more than one thing, and they have to be happy with that, 'cause that's you.

And I feel like, okay, maybe people get upset. Maybe you have a hoard of people who are like, “No, I only want scrapbooking stuff,” then you can create a separate account for scrapbooking. But I think, specifically for your life coaching stuff and your productivity stuff and the stuff that you seem to very passionate about now, that should be under your name. And you already have a following there, and some of those people will be interested in this new stuff that you have to offer as well. So that's my take. And again, I'm just spit-balling here, thinking out loud for you. And I think this is what, you know, this is like masterminding. You know? So it's just kind of one-ended right now, but I'd love to know what you think, Lain. As you know, my Twitter handle's @patflynn, and use the #AskPat229. For those of you listening, if you want to join in and you have some suggestions or opinions on this, use #AskPat229 on Twitter. We could talk about it. I'm sure Lain would love to hear from you as well.

Thank you so much for the question, Lain. And it's always great to hear your voice, and hope we can connect again soon. We'll get you back on the Smart Passive Income show as well, and we're going to send an AskPat t-shirt your way for being featured here on the show. For those of you listening, if you'd like to get potentially featured here on the show and have your question answered by me, just go to AskPat.com and ask using the Speakpipe.com widget right on that page. Use any mic that you have available. Sound quality's not important as long as we can hear you totally fine. It makes it more real actually, as long as we can hear you.

And finally, I want to thank also today's sponsor which is AWeber.com. Again that's a-w-e-b-e-r.com, super easy to use, great 30-day trial for 1 dollar. You can check it out. Go to AWeber.com/askpat. Like I said, I've been using it for years now, and it's the number one recommended, at least for me, email service provider tool that I recommend you use when your just starting out. So check it out, AWeber.com/askpat.

Thanks so much, and to finish off the week here, I do want to give you and finish off with a quote. And this is from Jacob DeHart, and he says, “If you have a strong, loyal community, you can do anything.”

Love you guys. Take care. Thank you for all the birthday wishes. My birthday is tomorrow actually. Today's the fifth when this episode goes live. My birthday is the sixth. I'm turning 32 years old this year. Super stoked about that. It's going to be another great year. And yeah, I appreciate it. If you want to leave me a quick birthday present, just go to iTunes, leave a review for AskPat. I appreciate it so much. Take care, and I'll see you next week. Peace.