hosted by: AskPat 786 Episode Transcript
Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up, everyone? Pat Flynn here and welcome to Episode 786 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 question from Eric from Ghana which is awesome. But before we get to his question, I just want to let you know that, hey, I'm thankful for you and your attention. That's it. I just want to say thanks. All right now, here's today's question from Eric.
Eric: Hello Pat. My name is Eric. I'm from Ghana, where you're building your Pencils of Hope. I love listening to your show. I've been listening for the past three months and I think you're giving very, very good content out there. I want to ask one question. I want to start my own Internet business. I'm new to this Internet business world and I want to start an Internet business who is teaching people like myself, how to do it. So basically, I want to teach people what I learn and so that they can do it themselves. Recently, I've built my own blog, www.InternetBusinessAfrica.com, and I want to teach audience. But my question is, which track do you recommend to me to document my whole process? I don't know what to talk about, I don't know how to actually go about all this. I'll be grateful if you answer this for me. Thank you, bye.
Pat Flynn: Hey Eric, thank you so much for the question and for checking in, so awesome to let me know that you're from Ghana. As many of you might know, I work with Pencils of Promise. I'm an advisor for the company and the organization, and had built a number of schools in Ghana. So I'm thankful that you're calling in and I can't wait to get back there. It's a beautiful country, and I'm just so thankful to have had that experience of going there, in June of 2014.
Anyway, let's get to your questions. So, how would I recommend you document your process of learning an online business so you can teach others what you're doing. I'm thankful that you want to document the process of how you learn, to teach others. A lot of people who want to teach others online business, take the approach of “Hey, look at me, I'm an expert,” and then share information that's just regurgitated from other people. And, it's hard to trust those people because when a person realizes that they are learning from somebody who has yet to experience that success themselves, the trust factor goes down. It's like, “Oh well, why aren't you working on your own online business first, before you teach any of this stuff?” And that's where I think I came in at an advantage in 2008 when I started www.SmartPassiveIncome.com.
I already had a huge success under my belt, completely outside of the space of teaching online business and that was with www.GreenExamAcademy.com and helping people pass an examine in the architecture space. And that specific business did so much for me in terms of growth for SPI and social proof, and proof in general. So, I would recommend a couple things Eric. For one, when you document this process, be very open and honest with people who are learning from you, that you are not an expert yet. That you are building your business as well.
And I would recommend that you do whatever you can to succeed in a business outside of helping other people with their businesses first. You can sort of do double duty and like you said, document the process of what you're learning, but hopefully you're going to put what you learn into practice, not just on the site that you're documenting this stuff, but in a separate business. And I think that would be more inspirational to people and it would show people that you are there being honest and learning along the way and what's cool is after you succeed with that second business—which is what you would start with actually, so it would actually be your first business—that would be, like I said, great proof for you and people would have this whole journey of following you and seeing how you're building this other thing and the things that you're learning along the way. Very similar to what I do on Smart Passive Income when I run these new experiments from the Niche Site Duel, to stuff that I'm doing this year related to physical products. . . I’m going to be sharing a lot more information about that very soon, and kind of giving people an over the shoulder look at something else that I'm doing and what I'm learning along the way too.
So, that's what I would recommend in terms of how to approach it. In terms of how to document, I mean I think the best way to do it is through a blog. And don't worry so much about the design and making it perfect. Just worry about getting content out there and sharing what you learn. I do feel that sharing what you learn is an amazing way for you to learn and it would actually motivate you to take even more action on this sort of outside business. But that's what I would try to recommend, Eric, and if you don't feel that you can do both at the same time, well, work on this other business first before you actually teach other people.
So, that's what I would recommend and I want to thank you so much for your question, Eric, and you'll hear from my assistant in the next couple weeks or so. We’re going to get you a t-shirt. Somehow we're going to get it to you in Ghana, and we're going to collect your address and it's totally on us, so, thank you so much for your question and I want to wish you all the best of luck. And remember that approach, being very honest about where you're at if you're teaching people business but, if you had to choose one over the other, I would work on a business outside of it, and document that even in a Google Doc or something. Just sharing everything you love along the way but not yet publishing that until your other business is actually up and running yet. So, that way you can have that information available to you when you're ready to start sharing with the world.
So, thank you Eric, I appreciate you. And everyone else out there listening, thank you so much for taking your time today, I really appreciate it. And if you have a question that you'd like potentially featured here on the show too, just head on over to www.AskPat.com, and you can ask right there on that page. Thank you so much, and I look forward to serving you in the next episode.
Until then, here's a quote by Henry David Thoreau, and that is “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured, or far away.”
All right guys, see you in the next episode. Bye.