by: AskPat 258 Episode Transcript
Pat Flynn: What's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 258 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me, and I just wanted to take a quick moment before we get to the sponsor of the show and today's question, just to thank all of you out there who have supported this week's launches of mine.
I've launched two things this week. The first thing is something called the Smart Podcast Player, which you can find at SmartPodcastPlayer.com. The response has been tremendous. I can't believe how well it's going, and I want to thank you all for that support. If you're a podcaster, check it out:SmartPodcastPlayer.com. And my buddy Chris Ducker and I, we launched another podcast, another podcast of our own, which you can find at 1DayBB.com. That's a brand new podcast where we actually take voicemails, just like we do on this show, although it's from a business owner who has a very specific struggle, and Chris and I go back and forth for 15 minutes to break down that person's struggle. I highly recommend you check it out. If you like AskPat, you'll like this one too. Again, you'll check it out at 1DayBB.com. Thanks again to all of you who have left reviews already. And we're running a little contest, which is kind of cool; you might get a t-shirt, or maybe even an opportunity to win some consulting time with me and Chris together. Thank you for allowing me to share that with you and again, thank you for all the support.
Now, before we get to today's question from Warren, I want to thank today's sponsor, which is, again one of my favorite companies as of late because I'm really big in self-improvement right now. And it's not just for health, but it's also for education and business and learning to improve my skills online and with different pieces of software so I can get better and more efficient at them. I'm using Lynda.com to help me do that. That's L-Y-N-D-A.com, if you haven't heard of it. It's an amazing website, probably the number one platform where you can go and learn all the stuff that's going to help you in your personal life and in your business life, from how to be more productive to business-running fundamentals, grammar, getting out of those hard times that you face with your business, to all the different kinds that are out there, including all the latest tutorials for all the latest versions of them. There's super high-quality videos. I highly recommend you check it out. There's also a mobile app to go with it as well. If you go to Lynda.com/AskPat, that's L-Y-N-D-A .com/AskPat, you'll get a 10-day, all-access, free trial to every single course on Lynda; highly recommend it.
Awesome, now let's get to today's question from Warren.
Warren: Hi, Pat. This is Warren Sinco of TheSuperbLife.com. Question for you about podcasting. I been listening to your podcasts for a while now, and I'm very inspired by it. I'd like to start my own on my own site. However, like you in the very beginning, I'm scared to do
it. Not so much to put myself out there—I actually have no problems with that—but that communication portion of it is what's keeping me from doing it. Whenever I have an interview I'm afraid that I might not be able to ask the right questions, or not be able to speak naturally. I was just wondering, how were you able to overcome that obstacle? Because listening to you and your podcasts and how you communicate with your guests, it seems so natural, and I wanted my podcast, if I do ever start it, to be the same way. Any advice is greatly appreciated, and I hope my question gets featured in your AskPat. Thanks for listening to me, and hope to hear from you soon.
Pat Flynn: Warren, thank you so much for this question, and I really appreciate the kind words and you saying that I feel natural when communicating with somebody else on the show, because that is definitely not how it was in the beginning. And you had mentioned that I said that I was scared of putting myself out there, and I'm glad to hear that you're not scared of doing that. A lot of people, that's their hurdle, and you don't have that. Your hurdle is you're worried that you're not going to be as communicative as you want to be and it's not going to sound natural.
I'm going to give you some tricks to help you sound natural when you start talking to other people or you're perhaps going to do a solo show. No matter what the case is, you want to make it feel like you're talking to a friend. That is the most fundamental thing I could tell you, and if you forget everything else I'm about to say, just think of that. You want to talk like you're talking to a friend. When you go to a coffee shop with a friend, you don't sit there, and you don't read a list of questions right? You have a conversation, and you don't necessarily plan what you're going to say to a friend when you go to a coffee shop; you just talk, and you become curious and you listen. You listen to what they are going to say, and wonder, and try to find out and figure out how that all works, whatever it is that they're an expert in or they came on the show for.
That's how I approach my shows now; in the beginning, I didn't think of that. I thought of it as, “Wow, okay, I'm getting this really important person on the show and I don't want to mess up. I don't want to embarrass myself in front of my audience and I don't want to waste this person's time.” Thinking those thoughts, yes, it's healthy to do that because it's sort of your security system, making sure that you got all your points covered, but it's also going to hold you back from having that conversation, that completely friendly, person to person conversation at a coffee shop. To help me get into that mode, I tell the person that I'm speaking to, that I'm about to record on this interview I'm going to have. I always say, “Hey, this is super casual, and I just want us to be like we're at a coffee shop having a conversation.” That usually puts their guard down a little bit too, because sometimes they're nervous as well, or they're worried about what questions are going to be asked, and that makes it more comfortable for them, but I also say that for me too. I say that because I want to make sure that I remember that I'm just at a coffee shop having a casual conversation, and other things may be happening around me, but I'm focused on chatting with this person and learning about them and figuring them out. That's truly, truly, what it's all about.
It goes both ways, that coffee shop strategy, and asking the right questions comes with time. You'll notice, like with anything, writing, podcasting, doing videos, playing sports, the more you do it, the better you get at it. You just have to get started and Warren. Understand that you're not going to be perfect in the beginning, and even after you do over 200 episodes of a podcast, you're still not going to be perfect. This is Episode 258 of AskPat, and I still screw up. I still say “um” every once in awhile, although I've noticed that I have improved. And I have gone back in time and counted those little, random breaks and the “ums” and those types of things, because I've learned that once you start to keep track of something, your mind will both consciously and sub-consciously try to figure out how to improve in whichever way you want to improve. If you keep track, you can then know if you're improving, and that's motivating as well.
In terms of asking the right questions, you're going to get familiar with what questions to ask over time. You're going to figure out what questions work, what questions don't, you're going to save the ones that you know work, get rid of the ones that don't. Like I said, if you come into it saying you're just going to have a casual conversation at a coffee shop, you're going to be way ahead of a lot of people in the field. Warren, that is all I have to say. Put yourself out there, like you said. You're not scared to do and practice. Do it. Perhaps start some of your episodes with some people you know you can be comfortable with already—maybe there's some people who you've connected with in the past, people in your network, other people who have podcasts that you listen to that you're friends with. Have them come on your show. They're going to be happy to promote their show on your show as well. It's going to make it easy for you to get started and get to work with people who are going to make you feel a little bit more comfortable, then you can go and reach out to those people who you might be a little bit more nervous with but again, super casual. That's it.
Warren, I hope that answers your question. Thank you so much for asking it, and yes, an AskPat t-shirt will be headed over your way. My assistant will be emailing you very soon to collect that information. For those of you listening, if you have a question you'd like potentially featured here on the show, all you have to do is head on over to AskPat.com; you can ask it right there on that page, thanks to Speakpipe, actually, using that widget that helps me collect those voicemails from people like you.
I also want to thank today's sponsor which is Lynda.com. It's the beginning of 2015. We want to make sure that we are in our best shape, not just physically but also mentally, and you can use Lynda.com, over 3,000 courses on their website through topics like web development, photography, visual design … I've actually used a lot of the photography courses for my own stuff, and business development and software training, all types of things. You can use them to help yourself improve, and you should be doing that. You might as well try it out, free 10-day trial. That's incredible. It used to be seven days in the past, and they bumped it to 10 days, because they know that you're going to love it; 10-day trial by going to Lynda.com/AskPat. Go ahead and check it out.
Thank you again so much for listening to this episode of AskPat, and before I go, I have a quote today from Will Smith. He says, “You have to remember, fear is not real. It is a product of the thoughts you create. Don't misunderstand me: Danger is very real, but fear is a choice.” Man, I love Will Smith. Cheers, take care, and I'll see you guys in the next episode of AskPat.