AP 0654: How Can I Run a Weekly Q&A?

Note: Since this episode published, I've been using Facebook Live for live, public question sessions, and it's working great! That's another option you can explore. Huzza is no longer available.

AskPat 654 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 654 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.

We have a great question today from Andrea, but before we get to her question I do want to thank today's sponsor, which is freshbooks.com, making it super easy for all of us to manage our business finances, especially if you're doing any invoicing.

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All right, now let's get to today's question from Andrea.

Andrea: Hey, Pat. It's Andrea Olson from Go Diaper Free. I was just wondering what is the best way to do a weekly Q&A for a course that you're running on an evergreen basis. So my coach course I'm turning into an evergreen program, and I just wanted to know what is the best technology to use for my weekly 30 minute Q&A? Thanks so much.

Pat Flynn: Hey, Andrea. What's up? Thank you so much for the questions today. I really appreciate it. I think the best software you could use which is not the most inexpensive would be GoToWebinar because with GoToWebinar you can create what's called a recurring webinar, which you can set it to come out every single week, which for people who are already subscribed to that recurring webinar, they would get those emails. They would get those reminders, all automatically, which is great. And for those who are just joining the program they can click on a link to just register for that and you can just say on that page or in your email followups after they've purchased or what-not that that happens every week. I would…

Hopefully, you would want it to be every single week or every single month or whatever frequency you choose, as long as it's consistent. I think that's what would make this recurring webinar thing work and work for you, obviously, and work for everybody else too because it's evergreen. And so you would just say, “Okay, we're doing a webinar every Monday at 4 p.m. Pacific, and for those who have just purchased, here is a link to sign up for the recurring Q&A that happens every Monday that is live, 4 p.m. on Mondays.” And so that's how it would work. They sign in, they register, or I think there's a way to have it automatically register actually using some additional tools beyond that, but that's how it would work. But I would say that GoToWebinar is quite expensive, especially once you get to the cap limit at 1,000, when you might be paying hundreds of dollars a month just for that. Now you might have less than that and it might work out economically for you.

Now, there are other webinar softwares out there that can do similar things but they just don't work quite as well on the recurring webinar stuff. The webinar software I typically recommend nowadays is WebinarNinja.co. [Note: I no longer recommend Webinar Ninja. Check out my resources page for my current recommendation for webinar software.] There's actually a discount code, “Pat Flynn,” if you wanted to use it. But the recurring webinar technology with WebinarNinja, that's the only thing that I feel is missing about that particular software is the recurring webinars, the ones that happen every single week at the same exact time and doing that registering thing like I talked about. People will still have to register for each separate one, which is not good. You don't want to do that, and so if you're gonna do that recurring webinar for your coaching, I wouldn't use GoToWebinar.

Now, if you want the cheap version, which can still work very, very well, is I would have a private link that you would share just for these members who are in your program and share again, just for people who have purchased. Now they don't have to necessarily register for it, but what you could do is you could set up a Pretty Link. So I know you're in WordPress, or I believe you are, and a Pretty Link might direct to yourwebsite.com/coachingcall, and everybody would just know based on the emails and the messaging that it's at Mondays at 4 p.m. And you can have auto responders send out, I guess if you wanted to, or you could send your own broadcast out a day before that happens or have your assistant do that to kind of get that.

I mean, that's again the nice thing about GoToWebinar is they have all those emails in preparation before the webinar to get people to actually come on the webinar. But you'd have to do that a little bit more manually yourself this way, but that link that they click on would then take them to a Google hangout that you would then, before you set it up, you would just change in Pretty Links every single week. So the link would be the same for everybody, but the link for you would be different. So you would just set it to … You would update the link in Pretty Links so that the link that they have to click on is the same, but the link to the new Google hangout where you're gonna be at is gonna be different, but they wouldn't know. They're not gonna know at all.

And you know, what's cool about Google Hangouts is it's more about your face, and your face on the camera which is great for coaching calls. You can field questions a little bit differently. There's a little bit more of a public community questions and answers sort of situation going on there. You could highlight the questions that you're using or that you're answering for everybody. That's nicer than GoToWebinar's sort of Q&A feature, which is … I'm not sure if you've used it before, but it's a separate box and people don't get to see each other's question. So you'd have to be there and it's a separate box and you'd have to field those questions yourself or have an assistant do that.

There's other pieces of software you could do where you can do private events.There's blab.im, I think, but that one is kind of dying out. There's another one that's like it that I found recently that is very intriguing, which is Huzza. So H-U-Z-Z-A.io, and for a relatively smaller monthly fee, you can get those private calls. And what's nice about that is you can actually get up to four people live at the same time and there's a nice looking chat feature there, too. So that could be an option to you. So H-U-Z-Z-A.

So those are kind of three different levels, three different options for you, and hopefully one of those makes sense for you, Andrea. So best of luck to you. I think an evergreen course with the accessibility to you on top is a great idea. I hope you're charging quite a lot for that because accessibility should be something worth a lot, 'cause your time is worth a lot for sure. So Andrea, best of luck. Thank you so much. We're gonna send you an AskPat t-shirt 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, you know what to do. All you have to do is go to askpat.com, hit the red record button, and ask your question. Please keep asking questions, 'cause this show wouldn't exist without you.

So thank you so much. I appreciate you, and here's a quote to finish off the day by Christopher Penn. He says, “Find your spirit, and no challenge will keep you from achieving your goals.” Go out and find your spirit, and also if you want to check out FreshBooks for 30 days for free, freshbooks.com/askpat. Make sure you put “AskPat” in the “How did you hear about us?” section. Thanks so much. I appreciate you, and I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat. Bye.