AskPat 587 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up everybody? Pat Flynn here and welcome to Episode 587 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. All right, here's today's question from Kevin.

Kevin: Hey Pat, I've been listening to your show and it's been freaking awesome. You provide so much value each show. Thank you for that. I'm the creator of HyperLush.com, which is a blog where we tell incredible stories about entrepreneurs. Recently I created a course over building your brand over Instagram. My question is about conversion funnels. On your site you always preach giving free value, you give free ebooks, you give a bunch of lead magnets all over your site. Then obviously you sell products to your list, and your software, and things like that. There's a lot of other marketers who simply buy traffic to landing pages that they create, that have a video sales letter, and then optimize their funnel. They don't really provide much free value, except in the form of a sales page or a sales video.

This is done by a lot of people who make tons of money, such as Eben Pagan, Brian Moran, Brian Levesque, and et cetera, et cetera. This is an approach that seemingly it takes less time to adopt this approach, and it seems like they're making a lot of money with it. On your end I just want to know what your opinion is on this, and why you think your approach is better. Or maybe you don't think your approach is better, and maybe you think their approach has certain pros and cons, and just sort of talk about this. Yeah, I'm really interested to hear what you have to say about that. Thank you so much if you answer my question, and bye.

Pat Flynn: Hey Kevin, what's up? Thank you so much for the question today, I really appreciate this. There are 1,001 different ways to build a business online, to generate traffic, and to actually sell information, and products to customers. My thoughts on my approach versus other people's approach is that I feel like this is an approach, the way that I do it is great for me, and I'm comfortable with it. That's the approach that I take. I'm in here for a long-term relationship with my audience, so that starts with giving value first. Just like when you go to a place, and you meet people for the first time. If you start to offer them stuff that they've never even heard of you before, but you start to sell things to them, they're kind of, a lot of people are going to be put off a little bit. I feel that it's better to start with first, the relationship building, and figuring out what you can do to better serve them.

Now, there are different strategies out there to kind of hyper-focus that finding of whatever that pain is, and that's through paid traffic, and targeting, and what not, and getting people to really start to raise their hands and say, “Yes, I have that problem.” Then offering them a solution right away, because it's a big pain that they have that they're willing to pay for. If the sales process is right, if the copies great, if the funnels are streamlined and optimized, I mean it can work out very well, like with some of the names that you mentioned.

Is there a right or wrong way? No, I don't think so, and I think it depends on the different niches that you're in, and your level of comfort for doing one of those things. I feel like I don't do cold traffic, because simply I don't have my own product yet to sell beyond just some of the software, like you mentioned. Which, we have used cold traffic in the past to then introduce them to my email list, then serve them through providing value in some of those first emails, but then not getting too long when we get to a webinar, or selling them something. I'm talking specifically about the Smart Podcast Player.

A lot of these guys, I mean they're great, and they've nailed it down. I feel like they have a lot more money to play around with though, to figure out what is optimizing their sales. When you spend tens of thousands of dollars, sometimes a day, or a week, to really hone in on the data, and what's working, or the headline copy that's working, the headline copy that's not working, what offers are being utilized better than others, you can more easily hone in on what that messaging is, and what that offer is so that you can make a lot more money. Then at that point, it's a matter of exchanging, essentially you're kind of giving away quarters, and getting dollars back. It's like you're just putting quarters in a machine, and it's giving you dollars out. That's really what Facebook advertising, and providing cold traffic to sales pages and funnels like that can really do for you.

That is my ultimate goal, to have a product out there that can sell in that way. I'm very, very happy and comfortable with the way that I've approached it too. I think that the cool thing about my strategy is that it allows me to have a little bit more of a passive income. Meaning that once you start to build that relationship, once you build these systems of automation, you have your blog out there, it's automated in the sense that people can get onto my email list, they get stuff, and it's providing offers to them for affiliate products and other things that I own automatically, without having to pump money into the Facebook system, or any sort of cold traffic advertising system. That it's just running on it's own now. The cool thing is, I haven't spent a dime on Facebook for Smart Passive Income, and anything related to conversions on that.

I've definitely obviously saved a lot more money, but it's a longer approach. Like I said earlier, it's kind of a longer term game for me here. I feel like a lot of these other people who are making a lot of great money, that's fantastic. But they have to keep working at it, or else it's going to stop. You gotta put money into the machine to get money back. For me, the machine just kind of runs on it's own. Because I've put time and effort into the relationship building front at the beginning, it's working out and paying off now for sure. Working hard now, so you can reap the benefits later.

Now, I love all approaches that we talked about in terms of building business. I don't think there's a wrong answer. This is just what I prefer, you're going to have to figure out what works for you. I think it's really interesting, right? There's a lot of different ways to go about it. I love the long term game, I love being able to build the relationship and provide value first, so that value can continue to come back to me in return, and I continue to be rewarded for it. People have started to evangelize the business, and become an ambassador for it, and that's something that I feel that raving fans are more likely to do than somebody who you've just met on Facebook for the first time.

That's my approach, those are my thoughts. If any of you have some thoughts about this, I'd love to hear about it. You can use the hashtag #AskPat587 and we can continue this conversation on Twitter, that would be awesome. Hashtag, #AskPat587, and what do you think? Is there a better approach? Is there a wrong answer? Is there one that you feel works out best for you? What are your experiences with the Pat Flynn approach, I guess you could say, versus other approaches of online marketing?

Kevin, this is a great question, thank you so much for planting the seed in our heads, and for having me be able to discuss it here today. I appreciate you. We're going to send you an AskPat t-shirt for having your question featured here on the show, so you'll hear from my assistant Jessica in the next couple of weeks so we can collect your information, and we can send that over to you free of charge. I also want to thank today's, or actually before I get to today's sponsor, again one more time. Just want to thank everybody else out there who's asking questions.

Please, if you have a question and you want to potentially get featured here on the show, just head on over to AskPat.com. You can ask right there on that page.

As always, I love to finish off with a quote. Today's quote is from Chris Brogan. He says, “Don't settle. Don't finish crappy books. If you don't like the menu, leave the restaurant. If you're not on the right path, get off it.” I love that quote. Cheers, thanks so much. I look forward to serving you in the next episode of AskPat. Bye.