AP 0476: Why Do You Write Ebooks Instead of Create Courses?

AskPat 476 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up everybody. Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 476 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 great question today from Laurence.

But before we get to her question, I want to thank today's sponsor, which is FreshBooks.com. Love this company. Making it super easy for all of us to manage our business finances. They serve over three million small business owners, including myself, and they can serve you too. It makes it easy to keep track of expenses, income, and also invoicing too, to make that very professional, so you can get paid sooner and get back to work. So if you want to check it out for free for 30 days, head on over to GetFreshBooks.com and enter “Ask Pat” in the “How did you hear about us?” section. Again that's GetFreshBooks.com, enter “Ask Pat.” All right, here's the question from Laurence.

Laurence: Hey Pat, it's Laurence from the site Learn to Code with Me. Right now, I'm in the thick of creating my first ever online course, and I have a question for you. Why are you writing ebooks instead of creating an online course? You often talk about how you write every morning, the series of books that you're working on that will be coming out soon, book writing tips, and things like that. But I'm curious, why did you take that route, instead of sharing this information through an online course? I am constantly thinking about my next move, and what I should do after I finish my own course, so I'm very, very curious to hear why you chose this path. Also, I already had a question featured in Episode 299, so if this question does get answered, there's no need to send me another t-shirt. Thanks so much for all that you do, and keep rocking on these broadcasts.

Pat Flynn: Hey Laurence, thank you so much for the question, your second question featured here, and I thank you for offering to not accept the t-shirt, although we will give one away to a lucky listener. So if you are listening to this episode, use the hashtag #AskPat476 in some capacity, whether you're asking a followup question or have a comment on it, or just even say you want a t-shirt. Use #AskPat476, and after a week we're going to pick a lucky winner, and I'll reach out to you on Twitter and I'll hook you up with Jessica, my assistant, who will hook you up with that t-shirt. Again, that's #AskPat476 if you'd like a chance to get a t-shirt.

To answer your question, this is a fantastic question. I'm deep in the middle of book writing right now. Actually, I've already finished the first draft of my book, and at the time I'm recording this, my second draft is almost complete. It's actually been very difficult to convert my first draft into a second draft. It's much harder than actually creating the first draft. But anyway, why am I writing books instead of creating an online course? Well, the truth is, I'm doing both, or I will do both. The book is going to be first, and that's going to lead into the course. And then another book, and then another course. That's kind of the rhythm of what you'll see on SPI next year.

The book is a book because the content that is involved in that book, I felt was more suited for a book as opposed to a course. Yes, I could have created a course, but this book is going to be a lead generation tool, pretty much. It's not going to be given away for free like all of my other books, this is going to be a way to begin to have my audience start paying for things, which they haven't ever really paid for anything that I've created, because I haven't created anything. This is going to be the start of something great, because I'll be able to finally have my own stuff, instead of just making money off of affiliate marketing. There's nothing wrong with that, well, there is something wrong with that, and the thing that's wrong with that is you don't have total control over your income. At any point, any of those affiliate relationships could sever, and that's why I recommend to everybody do things sooner than I did in terms of creating your own stuff, and so I'm very encouraged, Laurence, to hear that you're creating your own course.

I think that's great, and for the stuff that you're doing, coding, it just makes sense that you would have a course instead of a book. Now that's not to say a book wouldn't make sense for you and your business and your avatar, but for any coding and demonstrations and things like that, it just makes sense for you to have a course. Again, like I said, the book that I'm writing, the content within that book, which I'll tell you what it is right now, in case some of you are just hearing about this for the first time, it's a book about validating your product or business idea. You're just a brand new entrepreneur, you're just starting out, you have an idea, or maybe you're an entrepreneur, you've been working for a while, and you have a brand new thing that you want to try out. Well, how do you know that idea's going to work or not? What a lot of people told me, what they fear about starting something new, is working so hard, putting time, money, effort, sweat equity into it, and not having it work out, wasting your time and money.

So literally, it's going to help you understand whether or not that idea you have is one worth pursuing. It allows somebody to take that idea and go through a number of litmus tests, thought experiments, and also market research, to understand whether or not that's something they should move forward with. The idea is people are going to read that book, and understand whether or not their idea is going to work. If it doesn't, great, it's a win, they've not wasted that time and all that effort down the road to look back and say, “Wow, I wish I didn't do that.” They don't have to worry about that. Or, they go through the book and the book validates their idea, it's given them permission to move forward with it, and then so what's the idea? Well, they wonder what the next step is, and that's where my course comes into play. That's where the rhythm of the book, course, book, course is going to happen next year.

Again, just being honest, and that's the approach and the strategy I'm using. Never done it before. I've written a book before, but never for the purposes of … and the book is in itself going to be very valuable. I don't feel like people are going to feel the need, or feel like there's something missing where they would have to get the course, but it would be a logical next step. Not holding anything back in this book, actually I'm putting a lot of time into it to make it as best as possible for everybody out there. A lot of this book is coming from the survey results that I took in July of this year, which essentially told me that there's a lot of people who are just starting out, and that this fear, the fear that their business idea's not going to work out, is one of the top fears. So I'm addressing that in this book, and then that will lead into the course. So the course will be the next step, okay you have this idea, you are down with it, I've given you permission through this book to move forward with it, and here are your next steps to actually creating that idea and turning it into a reality.

So Laurence, I hope that answers your question, and thank you for setting that up nicely in terms of me creating buzz and building hype around the book, and I'm really excited because it's going to come out in January of 2016. That's the plan, and it's going through a number of people to make it great for you. I'm really, really excited about it, seriously. Thank you for that Laurence. We're going to send you, not you, but some of you who are listening who take action and use the hashtag #AskPat476. Again, send any tweet but use that hashtag. I'm going to randomly pick somebody who uses that hashtag a week after this show goes live, and we'll send you a t-shirt. I'll hook you up with my assistant. Laurence, thank you so much for the question. Everybody's welcome to ask questions here on the show, even if you've already been featured, because these questions are great. You are what make this show possible. Head on over to AskPat.com, you can ask a question right there on that page, and if you get your question featured, you can get a t-shirt too.

To finish up, I want to thank today's sponsor which is FreshBooks.com. Not only do they make keeping track of your business finances simple and stress-free, but if you do any invoicing, if you are a coach for any reason, or have clients, or you do student work, and you need to bill people monthly, or weekly, or however often you bill them, FreshBooks makes it really easy. I've actually been on the other end of FreshBooks, in terms of invoicing where somebody sends me a FreshBook invoice, and it's super simple. Just a couple clicks, I already paid my bill, and that person gets paid, and everybody's happy. They also have an award-winning mobile app too, so you can keep track of your business finances on the go. Go ahead and check it out for 30 days for free, by going to GetFreshBooks.com and entering AskPat in the how did you hear about us section. Again, that's GetFreshBooks.com, enter AskPat.

Thanks so much for listening in, and here's a quote to finish off the day by shark Kevin O'Leary. Shark because he's on the show Shark Tank. He said, “I like to take risks, that's how I make money, but they are calculated risks.” Take care. I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat. Bye.