AP 0417: What Questions Should I Ask My Audience?

AskPat 417 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: What's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here. Welcome to Episode 417 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. We have a great question today from Chris.

But before we get to that, I do want to thank today's sponsor, which is LegalZoom.com. LegalZoom has helped me a ton in the past. They actually were the company that I used to get Smart Passive Income set up, and also work with me on a number of different trademarks, DBAs, doing business as. They also help me with my will. I didn't know if you knew that. But this is National Make a Will month, actually. I don't know. Do you want the government to decide what happens to your property and minor children? If not, make the commitment to protect your family with a last will or living trust today. You can get specific guidance from Legal Zoom's network of independent attorneys in most states, since they're not a law firm. If you want to get hooked up with any sort of services that Legal Zoom has to offer, don't forget to enter “Pat” in the referral box at checkout to save even more. Again, that's LegalZoom.com, promo code “Pat.”

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

Chris: Hey Pat. My name is Chris Holdheide, and I run a site called SideHustleAcademy.com. My question for you is that I have right around sixty-five subscribers on my list, and I'm in the process of creating my first product. To do this, I'm looking to set up some free fifteen-minute consulting calls to help some of the people out on the list. But I also want to learn some of their biggest problems to help me create my first digital product as well. I guess the problem I'm having is, what kinds of questions should I be asking these people so I get the most out of it? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Thanks again.

Pat Flynn: Hey Chris, what's up? Thank you so much for the question today. I'm going to answer it really quick and then backtrack and talk a little bit about what else you can do and what you're up to.

Questions to ask your audience, whether through email or a phone conversation is going to be number one. The number one best question to ask is, what's the number one struggle you have related to “blank?” Blank being whatever it is that you know you're trying to help your audience with. I just asked this question to my audience in my survey in Ryan Levesque's book, Ask. This is the number one question as well. What's cool about this is you get to hear the language. You get to, whether it's on an email, or on a survey, or in person, you get to hear how they talk about their problems and their biggest struggles. That's going to give you more information than anything.

Now there's other questions that you can ask that are along the same lines. For example, “what's something you do everyday that you wish you didn't have to do?” This is a great software related problem if your audience could potentially use some kind of software or something to automate a process. “What's something you do everyday that you dread, or that you wish you had some solution for?”

The third question I want to offer to you, is one that I use all the time. That is, “if you had a magic wand, what is one thing, and you didn't have to worry about working or putting any money into this, what's one thing that you would have changed if you had a magic wand that you could just instantly have or get access to?” Those are some great questions that you can ask your audience.

Now I am also going to give you a power question you can ask on a phone call. If you're on a phone call or Skype conversation, which I think is great. I think doing consultations, fifteen-minute calls here and there. I know a lot of people in the internet marketing space do that too. You can build trust, you can offer value right then and there and then you can also share, “Hey, if this is something you want to do more of, you can get into my course or my product and things like that.” You know, not necessarily pitching them the whole time, but you know, providing value just like on a webinar. Then at the end offering something more if people enjoy that.

But here's the power question. You ask a question, people respond, you follow up with, “Well why?” “Why” is one of the most powerful questions in the world, or “how come?” Why and how come are some of the best questions you can ask your audience, because then you get deeper into what it is that they talked about. A lot of times when they answer a question, it's just going to be on the surface. They're gold, the golden nuggets that are going to help you moving forward with truly understanding the problems and struggles of your audience. Truly understanding that deep language they're going to use that really triggers those emotions. It's going to be in the whys. Even four, five questions deep.

I can't give you an example right now because questions happen organically. But the next conversation you have with somebody in your audience, I dare you to ask why. I hope you would. I do this all the time when I talk to people in person at conferences. You know, I ask them, “Well what's your favorite episode of the Smart Passive Income podcast?” They might say, “Oh the one with Dane Maxwell, episode number 46. That one, I really like that one.” Well why? “Well, I like that one because he just gave you specific advice, just step by step, and he told you exactly what you needed to do.” How amazing is that? That feedback that I got because now every time I bring a guest on, I can say, “What was that specific advice that you would give? I need the step by step.” You know? Talking to your audience can give you that information that you need, so that you can better serve them in the future.

Now a lot of people might be thinking, “Oh man, sixty-five subscribers. That's nothing, Chris. You got to build your list.” I would disagree, actually. You are building your list. You have sixty-five subscribers. You got to remember, there are sixty-five other people on the other end who you could reach, teach, and affect in some way, shape, or form through these consulting calls and these products that you have to offer as well in the future. Imagine being in a room with sixty-five people, and being able to ask each and every one of those people one by one what their biggest struggle is, or what they need help with. I mean, the information you would get with that is amazing. What's the difference, because they're on an email list? There isn't any difference.

Now I can give you some tips, Chris, down the road to get these answers automatically. This is something I'm doing right now, now that I'm on ConvertKit. You can find that at AskPat.com/ConvertKit. This is a way for me to segment my audience based off their answers to certain questions or certain actions they take or clicks that they have, on my emails to be able to segment them into different buckets so I can better serve them in the future. It's sort of a medium to more advanced email marketing strategy, instead of just having everybody on one list.

Now you could do that. But even if you didn't, in one of your autoresponder emails, Chris, you can have a question that is seriously, “Hey guys, I'm here to help you. I need to know more about you and what you're struggling with. Please answer this one question for me. Actually hit reply to this email.” Again this is automated, so it's out there automatically for people who subscribe it. It could even be the first email that they get after they subscribe. “Hey my name's Chris, I'm here to help you but I need to know a little bit more about you in order to do that. Please answer the following question: What's the number one struggle you have with blank? Please hit reply and I read every single answer, and I will respond. Thank you.”

Now, if you have a huge list it could be a little bit more difficult to respond. But if you have sixty-five subscribers and you're getting one subscriber, ten subscribers, even twenty subscribers a day, because not all of them are going to reply, that's the perfect opportunity for you to build a relationship with these people early as you're small, to show them that you are a really person on the other end, but also at the same time through the use of responses, have a bank of these struggles and pains and be able to categorize them. Use your Gmail filters or tag them into a specific category, so that you can have them all in one place. I have all of my responses to this answer in one place. Because I ask my audience the same thing. If I am struggling to figure out what to do next, I just go into this folder and there are all the things that people need help with. I don't have to worry anymore and neither do you, Chris.

I recommend doing the calls if you can. If not, have the emails in there as well. You're going to get some amazing answers. I'm really encouraged that you in the beginning of your journey here, because you only have sixty-five subscribers, you are utilizing that email list. I'm also encouraged that you are already building products, and you're doing it in the right way by figuring out what the problems are and not trying to force people into a solution that they might not even need for a problem that you might not know they have. You are taking the guess work out by doing this work up front, and I appreciate that, Chris. Inspirational. Thank you.

Chris, we're going to send you an AskPat t-shirt for having your question featured here on the show. You'll hear from my assistant, Jessica, in the next couple weeks so we can collect that information and send that to you free of charge for having your question here on the show. For those of you who have a question you'd like potentially featured here on the show, just head on over to AskPat.com and you can ask right there on that page.

I also want to thank today's sponsor, again, which is LegalZoom.com. They've helped me a lot when I got incorporated in December of 2008. They were the company that made it very easy and also very economical for me when I was first starting out as well. Currently, I use a lawyer for a lot of this kind of stuff, but I know when you're first starting out that's impossible. Going to LegalZoom.com is going to help you. Again, this is National Let's Make a Will month to help protect you and your family, and everything moving forward, so you can get a will or a living trust by going to LegalZoom.com. Also make sure that when you do that, you enter “Pat.” P-A-T in the referral box to save even more during checkout. That's LegalZoom.com, promo code “Pat.”

Thanks so much for listening and I appreciate it. Here's a quote to end the day from Florence Nightingale. She said, “I attribute my success to this. I never gave or took any excuse.” Cheers. Take care. I'll see in the next episode of AskPat. Thanks.