1127 AP 1127: How Do I Use My Podcast to Sell More of My Products?

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Pat Flynn:
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Pat:
What's up everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 1127 of AskPat 2.0. You're about to listen to a coaching call between myself and an entrepreneur just like you. And today we're talking to Amanda from Amanda Write Now. W-R-I-T-E Now, by the way. She helps teachers, and she needs to sell more of her stuff. And she's been selling. She's been doing well, but especially during this downturn and with the summer and how just crazy the last year has been with school, we need to focus a little bit more on how we can drive more sales, how we can turn more of her subscribers, her listeners of her show. By the way, she has a great podcast. You can check it out. It is called, let me pull it up for you really quick. It is called The Workshop Teacher Podcast with Amanda Write Now. You can check that out on your favorite podcast app. Again that's The Workshop Teacher Podcast. So let's help her out.

Pat:
If you are listening to this and you want to make more sales, you want to understand how to use your assets to better help people, and especially if you have a podcast, how to use your podcast to actually sell more of your stuff, this is the show for you. To do it without being sleazy either. So hope you're listening and listening intently. Here we go.

Pat:
Hey, Amanda. Thanks for coming on to AskPat 2.0. How are you today?

Amanda Werner:
I'm great. Thank you for having me.

Pat:
I'm so excited. Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself, Amanda, and what it is you do. And we'll go from there.

Amanda:
Okay. I teach eighth grade English currently. I've been teaching for 13 years, and I've been an entrepreneur for about seven years. I teach teachers how to make their curriculum and their lessons more meaningful and real world. That became very important to me when I first started teaching, and I have a website. I have a podcast. I have a membership for teachers, specifically middle school teachers.

Pat:
What is the name of your website and podcast?

Amanda:
Well, my website is amandawritenow.com. So W-R-I-T-E because I teach how to teach writing. And the podcast is called The Workshop Teacher Podcast.

Pat:
Very cool. First of all, thank you so much for doing that because I'm very thankful that my kids go to a school where they work really hard on context with their work and real life situations just to make it more graspable and more meaningful, like you said. I think you're doing such amazing and very important work. So that's great. Are you on Teachers Pay Teachers or what's your platform? What's the business component of this?

Amanda:
Yes. So I started on Teachers Pay Teachers, and then I started branching out from there when I discovered people like you. I started my website and then my membership program last year actually.

Pat:
Oh great.

Amanda:
I've had up to 135 members at one point. Yeah, last summer was really big for me just acquiring new members. But the numbers are dropping. I had 50 teachers stay with me for a whole year, which was really, really amazing, and I've been meeting with them one-on-one to talk about year two. So I'm excited to expand and just spread the message of meaningful writing curriculum.

Pat:
That's great, and again thank you for doing that. Really quick before I dive into where you're at and what we can help you with, I'm just curious how has the COVID-19 pandemic situation... I know it's had a massive impact on teaching and teaching style and stuff. How have you been going through this?

Amanda:
It's been extremely difficult, and it's been just really challenging trying to figure out how to best support my students, their families, and all of the members in my program and myself. So I've suffered from some health issues just from all the stress and mindfulness and things like that and meditating have been really important and valuable. But I really should probably be taking care of myself more.

Pat:
That's a big lesson for all of us listening is it's almost like in the airplane when they say, "You got to put the mask on yourself first before you put it on somebody else." It's so that you're available to help other people, and you don't pass out. So definitely mental health and physical health really important. So thank you for speaking on that. What can I help you with? What's on your mind these days?

Amanda:
Well, I have a podcast, and I have 40 episodes on the podcast. And it was going really well. But I quit. I stopped podcasting I think it was November. I was just too overwhelmed to continue, and I want to start it back up again. And I want to really focus in on how I can use my podcast to market my membership. Of all the things I do, I mean, I'm everywhere. I'm on YouTube and Instagram and just all over the place, Facebook, Pinterest. Of all the things I do, I receive the most heartfelt emails about my podcast and just people seem so... Like I'm their friend. It's just such a personal platform, and I know the power of podcasting. I've been really, really curious about your Amp'd Up Podcasting Program actually. I think my question maybe is answered in that program.

Pat:
Perhaps. I'm more than happy to help you through anything related to that, and we can talk about the components of that in just a minute to see what areas might make the most sense for you to focus on, whether it's in the course or not. But when it comes to why you quit before. You said it was because you were too overwhelmed. Can you talk a little bit more about how you were feeling when you decided to put pause on it? We'll not say end it; we'll say you put a pause on it. What was going through your head? What were the challenges around that time?

Amanda:
Well, I teach full time. I also have a five-year-old daughter, and I was also writing curriculum for my members every month. So I created this membership but I also was creating the product at the same time. So it just became too much.

Pat:
Not enough time, too much work, other priorities. Those kinds of things.

Amanda:
Yes.

Pat:
So tell me how things will be different when we start the podcast again?

Amanda:
Well, I'm not creating new curriculum. I'm using the same curriculum that I created last year. So the product is made. I mean, of course it could be revised and improved and added upon. And I'm also going point eight next year, which means I'm not going to be teaching full time.

Pat:
80 percent of the time or...

Amanda:
Yeah. So I'm only teaching four sections of English rather than five. I'll have more time.

Pat:
Okay. Well that's good. I wanted to make sure that there was some mechanism by which you could change things so that you don't get to the overwhelm status again. In terms of how you produce your show, and this takes us into the kinds of things I teach in Amp'd Up Podcasting. The A in the Amp'd Up Podcasting stands for automation. Let's try to automate that process as much as possible. Even if you can't hire anybody else right now to do the work for you, there's still things you can improve and become efficient with. Where would you say you spend most of your time when it comes to producing your podcast?

Amanda:
Well, I actually hired my brother. So he puts everything together via Audacity. So it's a pretty quick turnaround, and just creating the content comes really easy to me and recording everything. I mean, it's probably a 30-minute process. It's just a matter of sitting down and doing it.

Pat:
Pretty efficient already. Okay, that's good then. That's absolutely good. And then in M in AMP stands for marketing and the P stands for product. You had mentioned, and we can talk about this now, how might you use your podcast to promote your stuff? It's obviously, as you said, a really amazing tool for getting intimate with your audience. They feel like they are your friend, and I'm not surprised by that because I felt the exact same way. This is why I tripled down on my show in 2010 and I created four additional podcasts, and now we're at episode 1000-something in AskPat. I'm right there with you, Amanda. So I think that's really smart to go back to what was working best for you. And as you know, when you build that relationship first, it's so much easier to have a person understand how you can help them. It becomes less aggressive of a sale, and it just becomes a natural part of that conversation that you've been having with them this whole time. So I love that.

Pat:
What are some ways that you imagine you might use your podcast to help you with your promotions and your course, and I'll come up with some ideas afterwards. I just want to see what you, if anything, have come up with first.

Amanda:
Well, in the past, I actually created episodes based on blog posts. So I would look back at all these blog posts I'd written, and then I would just talk through a blog post and that would be an episode. So I would tell listeners to go to amandawritenow.com to download materials or get more information or watch this video. And I have a popup on my website, and so I have people opting in. So in the past, that's what I've done. I'm considering doing a challenge and a Facebook popup kind of thing this summer. But I'm not sure how the podcast would relate with that. I don't know.

Pat:
Sure. A challenge is a great idea. A challenge is a great way to get people who perhaps have been sitting on the sidelines or didn't have an excuse to do something to go and do something because they're doing it with a whole bunch of other people. There's a start date and an end date. I'd recommend that with a challenge. There should be some very specific outcome that's a very achievable feeling to them. I've done challenges where I try to help people build their email list, and it's specifically a three-day, zero to 100 email challenge. It's very possible for people to think they can do that versus if I made it get 1000 emails in a week. It's like, "Well, that's a lot. I don't know if I could do that. No thanks." So make it simple. Make it easy for people to do.

Pat:
Now how might the podcast relate to that? Well, you could have the podcast announce ahead of time when this event starts. You can have people register on a landing page to get access to notifications to materials and whatnot related to this challenge. And then the moment the challenge starts, what happens is you can send these emails out that share the information and help people through the challenge. A popup Facebook group is often really good for these live challenges, and the way that the podcast would play a role later would be the link that you mention should redirect to a landing page where that challenge is now evergreen. Meaning now that it's an email, people can go and do the challenge on their own. There's just no live component to it. There's no more Facebook popup groups. So you might have to change or remove those messages out of the email sequences.

Pat:
Or you have a wait list for people to sign up for until the next one. I know a lot of people who run these challenges every other month because they're so popular, and they do them live every month. It does take a little bit of work and coordination. Again, when you have these Facebook groups, it's added support for those people. But what's really cool is they can support each other. But you can make it evergreen. For the longest time, my challenges have been evergreen, and I've mentioned the challenges before in the past on the podcast. And now when people go there, it's just register now. You'll get your first email immediately, and then in three days you'll hopefully have this result. So that's how a podcast can be used.

Pat:
Of course, the beauty of a challenge is you've gotten people some results. So perhaps it's part of maybe the first lessons in your course, or even something that would qualify them to then receive something or get something that would then make them understand, "Wow. I need to take this to the next level now. Let's get into the course." So the challenge should equal opening up the course afterwards in that sort of sense. It can be done in a more live fashion where there's an end date to the promotion and maybe a discount or some bonuses that go away. Or it can be done in an evergreen fashion where they just get emails for a certain amount of time afterwards.

Pat:
So that's a great idea, a challenge, and I think that a summer, especially for this target audience, could make a lot of sense now that I know a lot of teachers are taking a break finally and are often during this time are also probably a little bit overwhelmed with, "Well, we don't even know what 2021's going to look like. So I want to get something done and have something significant happen this summer." So I think this is a good opportunity for you for sure.

Pat:
How else might you use the podcast if you have any ideas to promote your course?

Amanda:
I love all of these ideas. I don't know. I'm not sure. I guess that's why-

Pat:
No, I just wanted to see to make sure I don't overlap with stuff that you were already doing. Let me just hit the home run with you on the number one thing you can do with your podcast. The beauty of a podcast is it's a great platform for storytelling, and when you pull the story of some of your existing students out and you spotlight them, you interview some of your previous students. And you highlight them. You make them the hero of the story. I don't know if you follow Donald Miller in StoryBrand, but this is exactly what he teaches.

Pat:
As a podcaster, you have this amazing platform, more powerful than video in my opinion, to pull out these stories. And they will become a much better sales mechanism for you than any sales page because a teacher can listen to a teacher just like them, hear the struggles that they had, the objections that they had to perhaps even getting into the course in the first place. Yet they got in and now here's life afterwards, here's what they got as a result, or here are the results of their students now as you probably talk about in your show because of the things that you learn in this course.

Pat:
And I did this in Episode 275 of the Smart Passive Income Podcast. I invited three members of my podcasting program, my beginner podcasting course, Power Up Podcasting, to each tell their own story. And it wasn't positioned in a way where I was like, "Hey, tell me why my course is awesome." You don't want it to come across like that. You essentially just ask them questions like, "Well, why is this important to you," or, "Why did you want to start a podcast, and what were some of the struggles you had? What were the big obstacles that you were facing, and then what helped you get through it?" And naturally without even asking, your name, your program will come up. It'll just come up. It'll come up very naturally, and I selected three different types of avatars or types of audience members. And not necessarily gender or age but more objection differences.

Pat:
For example, I had a person come on to talk about how they struggled with technology, and her name was Dr. B, and she's over 60 years old yet she was able to start a podcast. So now somebody else who goes, "Technology scares me. Oh, but she was able to do it. Oh, I guess I could do it too." And then another person who used the podcast to take an offline business online, and then another person who grew their business and scaled it with a podcast who didn't start from scratch.

Pat:
So now I covered a lot of bases, and I'm guaranteeing you have students of your course who you probably know the names of who might be great to invite on the show. How does that idea sit with you?

Amanda:
That's actually one of the questions that I was thinking about asking you because I felt like I only had one question so I better make it a good one, and so yeah. Right now my podcast is just solo. It's just me. So I would love to get people on to talk about their stories. But what I was thinking originally was troubleshooting, kind of coaching like what you do. But getting people to actually sign up for that is, I feel like, a challenge. It's nerveracking coming on saying, "Well, these are my hangups. Help me." You know what I mean?

Pat:
Yeah. I mean, true. But you're here doing the same thing. Why are you here?

Amanda:
You're Pat Flynn. I'm just Amanda Werner.

Pat:
You're Amanda, and you're teaching this stuff. And you are an authority. You are, and you have to own that a little bit. And I think that if you position it as... So here's what might be going through your head. You can correct me if I'm wrong. But maybe you perhaps feel a little bad or guilty "using" their story to help sell more courses. It feels like it's only for you, and I don't know if that's actually the case. But that's a common objection to this strategy. The way that I reframe that for myself and to try and help others is: Number one, if a student of yours... I mean, your students, your eighth grade students, when they do some amazing work, how much do they love to be recognized for that work?

Amanda:
Well, they are 13. Sometimes they do; sometimes they don't. It depends. But yeah.

Pat:
Probably because they don't want to be seen as the nerd in front of their friends. Maybe for that reason they don't do it. But internally you know that they want to know that they're doing things right. They want to know that they are internalizing what is it you're teaching. They want to get a good grade, and they want to be recognized by the teacher for that. So perhaps these teachers aren't going to have the same anxiety or angst about that, but from my experience, at least in adults, we love to know when we have done things right. And we can offer and help others do the same thing too. And I think teachers, most teachers I know want to help other teachers succeed too. So this would be a platform for them to talk about their experience and the kinds of ways that they maybe uniquely used your content to structure something of their own to help others too. It also becomes a recognition platform. You're offering them a place to look good in front of other people, and it's a great way to recognize your students.

Pat:
And then the other thing in terms of just offering help, I'm going to offer you help for free just in exchange for allowing us to share this with everybody else who might also have the same question. More often than not, you're going to get a yes. The truth is, you don't know if people are going to say yes or no. But we're already assuming that they might say no or might be scared. But you don't know unless you try. So this could be a really amazing thing.

Pat:
You could almost structure it as even an award program if you will. A recognition program within your course. "Hey, I'm going to be awarding every month the Teacher of the Month here for somebody who's put in the good work. And I want to invite you on the podcast to talk about the unique ways that you've used this content. We're going to be sharing this with other teachers who are in the course and who are not in the course. And whether that inspires them to come and take the course too or not, it's still going to be helpful. And I just want to recognize you for the hard work." I think most teachers, as far as I know, also want that recognition. In fact, they deserve it more than anybody in my opinion, and you have the ability with your podcast platform to offer something like that too.

Amanda:
I love that. Yeah. That's brilliant for sure. And I have raving fans. I did read Pat's Books Superfans. So I definitely have these 50 teachers who've stuck with me for a whole year. They have stories, and I have testimonials from them. So I definitely see myself doing this for sure.

Pat:
Yeah. I think it's going to be a lot easier than you think, and again, the story from your student will sell more courses, more than you can sell those courses yourself because it's not you selling them anymore. Just like those who also need this help, and I guarantee you if you were to just ask via email or on your social platforms like, "Hey students, any of you want to share your story on the podcast? I'm going to be opening up a few spots for you. Let me know or just say yes down below if you're interested." And I guarantee you're going to get people go, "Yes, me. I'd love to share." It's just going to blow you away. So that's where I would start.

Amanda:
That's awesome. So would you use... I mean, obviously you use Squadcast [affiliate link].

Pat:
Full disclosure, I'm an advisor for this company as well, but they capture the best audio. And even though you and I are seeing each other right now, currently they don't have video recording enabled, and that's okay. I think it's just a fun way to interact with each other and make this a more real conversation. But anyway, you could use Zoom. You could use Skype. You can just make it easy.

Pat:
In fact, if its finding to be a little bit difficult to schedule a call, which can sometimes happen with interviews, it is something that you can actually do through a tool called Speakpipe. I don't know if you've heard of Speakpipe before. But this is how I used to collect voicemails in the old version of AskPat where I'd send you a link, and you would press record on your computer or your phone. And you would just record a question. You could use that same tool, and then as the creator, the owner of that account, I essentially get your voicemail as an MP3 file that I can just drop in or your brother can just drop in to the show.

Pat:
So it's better if it's a real conversation because there's real interaction, but if you only had the ability to send a link to then collect the story in a more convenient time for them, then that could work too. They're still going to hear their own voice and be proud of that, and other people are going to hear that too. I like the real conversation though because then you can actually guide some of the questions and guide a little bit of the inspiration and motivation to have other people sign up too.

Pat:
A great question to ask by the way would be after the course has been mentioned and you talk about it, you can probably just ask, "If you were to know somebody listening to this was on the fence and they weren't quite sure, what would you tell them to help them understand that there is indeed value here, or how would you share this program with your friend?" You don't want to lead with that, but that's often a very good question to get to the meat of why a person really would want to take this, as opposed to just like, "Amanda's great. She taught me everything I know now." It's just a generic testimonial, which we see those when we ask for testimonials in email form. So I think that will be a great opportunity as well.

Pat:
That by far in my opinion would be the number one way, plus to offer lead magnets like you're already doing to build your email list through your podcast. I would definitely lean into that. You don't have to promote in every episode. That can sometimes come across a little too needy or aggressive. So you can have these things that you offer for free. More of a giving versus a taking approach. And then of course through the emails, you can followup and hopefully guide people to the next challenge or direct sale or older podcast episode that you featured one of your heroes on. Yeah, those would be the big ones as opposed to some common ways that people promote their own courses are they finish a course and they go, "Hey, this episode was brought to you by my own course. It's called this. You can get it at this price here." It feels more like an ad versus a more organic part of that conversation. So yeah, I hope that helps.

Amanda:
It does. So I do have a course, and I have a membership.

Pat:
Right.

Amanda:
So would you recommend me more promoting the course or... I always am like, "Well which?" Because members get the course.

Pat:
That's going to be up to you. Sorry, I was just using course as a more general statement of product. It could be the membership, and there's also opportunities for people during these promotions to get... I don't know if you have this built in mechanism, but they can get maybe seven days for free or the first month for $1. A lot of people who have memberships have experimented with those kinds of offerings as a bonus, especially after a challenge or some sort of promotional period within an email. That can work too. But either one would work. Whatever I feel that you feel would be most valuable makes sense.

Pat:
The only issue would be well, if a person were presented with both, hopefully it's clear enough for them to understand which one makes the most sense, and that messaging and positioning is going to be really key if people are indeed able to see both in one spot because you don't want to have people go, "Well, it could be this one." If you have people start wondering which one's better, then you haven't done your job of positioning those things clear enough for people. You want people to go, "That's the one I need." "Oh, I need the membership because I want the community, and I want access to Amanda. I want to have this be an ongoing investment into my future as a teacher." "I don't do online courses, so the membership is the obvious one for me."

Pat:
Anyway, a lot at you. I know it might be sort of like drinking from the fire hose here, but obviously this is recorded so you could listen to it later. And hopefully this was helpful for everybody else listening too. Might you have any final additional concerns or questions here?

Amanda:
When are you opening Amp'd Up Podcasting? And you have a membership or is it just a course?

Pat:
We are coming out with a membership very soon. It's going to be called SPI Pro. More on that later. But yes indeed. I'm going to be following in your footsteps and having a membership for SPI members. And Amp'd Up is... We actually just wrapped up a promotion for it. However, since you're here on the show, if you wanted to reach out, it is indeed something you want to get access to. Just reach out to [email protected], and we can talk for sure. But it seems like you would be at that level. I think the biggest thing is, keep the current podcast feed that you have. Just start a new batch of episodes. Maybe you launch with two that way there's sort of two big high value ones on one day, and people can get... You just make a big deal out of it again, and you relaunch. You don't have to create a new show. There's going to be old subscribers who come back. Some of them are going to leave. It's just going to be a nice new start for you, and with this now in mind, all these things we've talked about today, I think it'll be a home run for you in getting more people into your program.

Amanda:
Thank you so much, Pat. This has been incredibly helpful, and I just appreciate this opportunity.

Pat:
Absolutely. Definitely happy that you're here. Thank you so much for being a fan and somebody who supports SPI. We're here for you as well. One more time, where can people go to get access to all your great stuff?

Amanda:
amandawritenow.com is the main hub, and then my podcast is The Workshop Teacher Podcast.

Pat:
Write now, W-R-I-G-H-T Now.com.

Amanda:
R-I-T-E.

Pat:
R-I-T-E. Okay.

Amanda:
I'm a writing teacher.

Pat:
Got you. Sorry about that. Your last name starts with a W so I thought it was a play on Wright, but Wright isn't even your last name.

Amanda:
Nope.

Pat:
Amanda Write, W-R-I-T-E, now.com. Is that correct?

Amanda:
Yes.

Pat:
Okay. Perfect. Check out the show and we'll have all the links in the show notes and whatnot. But Amanda, thank you so much. Can't wait to followup with you later to see how this goes. Just keep up the good work.

Amanda:
Awesome. You too. Thank you.

Pat:
All right. I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Amanda. You can again find her at amandawritenow.com. That's W-R-I-T-E. amandawritenow.com. And also The Workshop Teacher Podcast. And hopefully these tips and strategies and tactics were helpful and inspiring to you. And a lot of these things that we talked about in this episode today my students have used as well to great success. So this stuff is proven. This stuff will work, but you have to take the action. Of course, that's what it's going to be about. You can't just sit here and listen to podcasts all day. If this is like your fifth podcast of the day that you've listened to, stop, do. Stop, do. Do things. Do things. The first thing you can do is just make sure you know what to do next. Prioritize. But number two, make sure you hit subscribe if you haven't done so already. The next episode's coming next week. And then of course, take action. That's what I want you to do.

Pat:
Thank you so much, Team Flynn. I appreciate you, and you are amazing. If you want to get coached here on the show just like Amanda did, you could potentially get selected by going to askpat.com and hitting that application button on the page and filling out that form. And hopefully we can connect. Hope to see you there. Thank you so much. I appreciate you, and as always, #TeamFlynn for the win. Peace.