by: AskPat 110 Episode Transcript
Pat Flynn: What's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 110 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me. To everybody that has subscribed to the AskPat podcast, thank you so much.
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Let's get to today's question coming from Dylan.
Dylan: Hi Pat. Dylan here from DylanvsLife.com. I've been a reader of SPI for maybe the past three years and I'm turning 20 soon. I've been blogging for almost five years now and I'm finally starting to see some good money coming in from all my blogging and things like that. Just wondering, is there any advice you can give to someone like me who runs a personal blog? There's not really that much, we'll say aim to it. It's just random stories and things from my life I guess and different tasks that are going on with me at the moment. A lot to do with college now since I'm around that age. I'm just wondering, is there any advice you can give to someone like me who runs a blog like that who wants to start a podcast? I don't really know what to talk about I guess or even what topics or even if I could just do a podcast on my own or what would I have to involve maybe co-hosts or do interviews or things like that. Just wondering if there's any advice you can give to someone who runs a site like that and who wants to get into podcasting now? Thanks and keep up the great work. Peace.
Pat Flynn: Dylan, thank you so much for your question. I think this is a really interesting question. I actually have a few questions for you, which I know you won't be able to answer here on the show but I hope it gives you something to think about and all the other listeners to think about as well. The angle I want to take with this is, a lot of people start with a personal blog. They start to grow. Then the decide to monetize it or they decide to do something with it that is beyond just all the personal stuff. My question for you Dylan, is you said that you're finally starting to generate an income from the five years of blogging that you've done. How are you doing that because that will help determine what you should do with your podcast because obviously you want to do something that is going to help pay you back in return in the future in one way or another.
It sounds like you're doing something right on your blog. Perhaps that could be a continuation in your podcast as well. You might just have a lot of traffic and might be advertising and that's how you're getting some income coming your way. If that's the case then what I would recommend, this is something I recommend everybody do and I think we can all agree we need to do this more often. We need to survey our readers. If you have a personal blog, that's probably the best thing you could do because you can survey your readers and begin to ask questions to determine what they are interested in. But not only what they're interested in but also why they are interested in you. Because once you understand that, you can focus more on that. You'll find out what that 20 percent is that your audience really locks into that gives you 80 percent of the results. Those are the things you want to focus on. I can't tell you what topic to get into. That's going to be based off your survey questions.
I would actually recommend reaching out to people who subscribe to your blog or people on your email list to have actual one on one conversations with them. Or you can maybe get a special group of people. There are often people on our blogs who we know are the more active parts or members of our community. Get them on a special webinar. Treat them and make them feel special and have them help determine the future of your brand or where it's going to go. Or what the topic of this podcast is about. You can all brainstorm that together. How awesome would that be to be someone who is helping to determine what other valuable things are going to be there for you in the future. That's awesome. They're going to feel like they have a part in that. They're going to definitely share it. If you wanted to give them a shout out in the first episode for helping you structure it and figure out what the topic is going to be, then that would be sweet.
Those are people who are going to share that content and who are going to be fans for life. Beyond that you also have to look inward too. What's most interesting to you? Because a podcast is a huge challenge. It's not just something you could throw up and then all of a sudden … it takes a lot of dedication is what I'm trying to say. You want to make sure that it's something that you can imagine recording your voice, recording conversations about for years to come. You don't want to just do this short term. You want to do this and be committed to it. To do that you need a topic that you know you're going to be interested in. It might be a mixture of stuff that you feel very passionate about that seems to make headway on your personal blog and also stuff that you know will be valuable for your audience based on those survey results as well. One of your questions was, do you need a co-host.
Again, this is on a case by case basis. Of course, I have a show here on AskPat.com and also SmartPassiveIncome.com that is a solo hosted show. There are pros and cons to that. The pros are the fact that I can record those shows anytime. I know that a lot of people who have co-hosts have trouble often determining when in their schedule because both people have to have the same openings in order to record those shows. It would be nearly impossible to record a co-hosted show with one person recording at one time and then the other person recording the second track pretending to be there. That's just not going to work. You both have to be there at the same time. That's one of the benefits of doing a solo show. For instance, I'm recording this at 11:42 p.m. PT. I doubt that other people who I would be co-hosts with are up at this time unless they're in the pond. By in the pond I mean in the UK, or over the ocean.
That's one thing. Secondly, I can determine everything and what I want to do with my show on my own. I don't have anybody else to have to check in with. I don't have to worry about either stepping over somebody's toes or talking about something or pulling it in a direction that the other person doesn't want to go to. There are a lot of benefits to having a cohost. It makes the conversation feel a lot more natural. It's a big challenge. It's definitely a big challenge to do a show on your own. AskPat is a little different because you and I are having a conversation here. Now this is definitely a question and answer type of show so it's a little bit easier to have those two parts to it. Your question and then my answer. But if you are trying to do a solo show about a topic and it's going to be 30 to 40 minutes long, that's a big challenge. When you are talking about something with somebody, it just becomes a natural conversation and to your audience that is more natural to listen to as well.
To listen like a fly on a wall with two people talking. I feel like when I have guests on my show at SmartPassiveIncome.com that they are sort of like a cohost because they have knowledge and experience that they're sharing with the audience that I don't necessarily know. I feel like even though I'm the host of the show, I'm sort of co-hosting. I'm just simply guiding that person on what to talk about. They are the ones delivering the value. In that way it is sort of like a conversation. Even though it's solo for me when I'm doing an interview, it's my show. When there's two people together and I'm doing an interview, it does feel like it's co-hosted and I love to think of it that way instead of just an interrogation or somebody who's just asking bullet point questions to somebody. I like to have a conversation in my podcasts if I'm doing interviews.
Another cool thing about interviews, this is your last question, do you need to do interviews? You don't need to do interviews. What I like about doing interviews is the fact that you're getting people on your show that your audience might not know about or can get value from. A value additional to what you can provide on your own. Typically, you'd want to bring experts on who are fine tuned on some particular topic and then deliver that value to your audience for you. They just happen to be doing it on your show. There are challenges to doing interviews because yes, the other person who you are interviewing is providing all the value and giving all the content away on the recording but you have to ask the right questions. I remember in the beginning it was very challenging to do an interview because I was just so worried and thinking about all kinds of things. I remember hearing answers but not really listening to them because I was so worried about the next question that I had to ask.
I've learned that if I think of these interviews as conversations, I'm in tune and I'm listening. Then I naturally ask questions that are based off of their answers. That's another thing that I would recommend. There's different ways to do shows. There's different ways to ask questions but I do like the natural feel of, like I said, a conversation. Of course, in a real conversation you don't just ask somebody a question and then nod your head and say, okay and my next question is this. To me, that doesn't seem natural. I feel like the best information that comes out of interviews are when you get three, four, five levels deep after an initial question. Asking people after they answer your initial question, ask them, why did you feel that way? Or what were you thinking when you did that? Questions like that can help guide your interviewee into the parts in their brain that actually have that golden information that will provide value for your audience.
A lot of things going on in your question here Dylan. I apologize that I can not answer your question specifically what you should focus on. I think it should be based on your audience, a survey. You can use surveymonkey.com to survey your audience. I would even go deeper and connect with some specific people in your audience and ask them for help or ask them for guidance. They're going to feel special and feel like they're a part of it. They're going to become super fans as a result of helping you. Of course, the last thing I want to share is that you have to understand that not everyone who is following your personal blog is going to listen to your podcast. There might be people who aren't even going to want to give it any time at all or even a chance because it's just not a topic that they're interested in. That's okay. I do think that a podcast must be focused in one or another. It should have specific angle or specific reason for people to listen to it. There are a lot of podcasts out there where people are just talking about whatever.
I'm not saying that's not possible for you. You might have built a personal brand big enough where you could just do whatever you want. It's really just about you. You are the brand. If that's the case, you might want to try it out. The cool thing about doing anything online is you can always try it out. Experiment. See what happens. If it doesn't work, you can pivot, adjust, be flexible, and keep moving forward until it does work out for you. Dylan, thank you so much for your question today. I really appreciate it. An AskPat t-shirt will be headed your way. I don't know when your 20th birthday is but happy birthday man. I wish I was doing what you're doing at that age. I was playing World of Warcraft and wasting months of my life doing that. Anyway, congratulations to you on your blog and your upcoming podcast. Again, all of you listening. If you want to start a podcast, I recommend heading to PodcastingTutorial.com. That's a redirect to my free tutorial with six videos. No email or opt in required. It's right there all for you.
The only thing I ask of you is that if you're going to do a podcast, that you commit. That's the only thing I ask of you if you go through that tutorial. Again, that's PodcastingTutorial.com. I also want to thank today's sponsor once again, LegalZoom. LegalZoom is an amazing company. I've used them half a dozen times on different things from filing to LLCs to a partnership to filing for trademark and copyright. A whole bunch of things. They make it super easy. It's a lot more economical than going through a lawyer. They will take care of you. Again, they are not a law firm. They can't help you legally but they can point you in the right direction. Thank you again, Legal Zoom. Make sure that when you go to LegalZoom.com you use the referral code “Pat.”
Thank you so much. Of course, as always if you have a question, head on over to AskPat.com. I’m going to end with today's quote from unknown. Anonymous. I don't know who sent this. This is an awesome quote. “A calm sea does not make a skilled sailor.” Cheers, and I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat.