Meet Pat Flynn
Pat Flynn is a beloved thought leader in the areas of online entrepreneurship, digital marketing, and lifestyle businesses. He overcame career adversity at an early age by finding his own path and true passion. Despite his success in business, Pat’s greatest joys are spending time with his family and friends as well as helping inspire and educate others on how to succeed with their own entrepreneurial careers.Pat is routinely praised for his authentic leadership style and business principles. Forbes recently named him one of the ten most transparent leaders in business. The New York Times profiled him as a case study in smart online business building. And countless podcasts and blogs have featured his story and the techniques he uses to manage and grow this audience.
Presently, Pat enjoys focusing on writing books, growing his top-ranked business podcast, and speaking at conferences. His personal memoir, Let Go, is available now.
Here’s what Pat saying about himself:
The Personal Origin Story
Hi. I’m Pat, a regular guy who used to have a regular job. I love the little things in life and never take myself too seriously. Laughing with friends and enjoying my family are two of my favorite things. Today, I consider myself the luckiest person on earth.
But that wasn’t always true.
After graduating from the University of California Berkeley, I began my dream job working for an architecture firm in San Francisco. Life was good. Two years later, I proposed to my amazing girlfriend, who said yes. Life was great.
And then it wasn’t; I was laid off in June 2008.
I was scared of the unknown I faced. And I was scared of the disappointment I’d bring to those I cared about. I didn’t know what the path forward looked like. And with the economy in crisis, I wasn’t sure how, when, or where I was going to find another job, especially one that I liked. It was all a bit maddening. Then a crazy idea popped into my head: I could work for myself.
Although the entrepreneurial path was risky, it was invigorating and felt right. Thankfully, while still working for the firm, I had unknowingly built a popular blog as a means to organize my notes as I prepared to test for an elite industry certification. That’s where I decided to focus first for my online business. The rest, as they say, is history.
Looking back, getting laid off was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. Without my 9-to-5 job holding me back, I’ve since been able to earn more money while working less hours. The end result is a lifestyle built around quality time with my family, my dream come true.
Pat’s Guiding Principles
I have a few guiding principles to keep myself grounded and focused on the right things. After all, in the world of online business, it’s just as easy to lose your path as find it. These principles keep me on course.
1. The best and worst things in life are usually the things that happen unplanned.
When bad things happen, learn from them and vow to not repeat the behaviors that allowed them to happen. When good things come along, take advantage of them and learn how to stimulate more good things like them to happen. That’s called creating your own luck, which is a far better option than trying to control the uncontrollable.
2. Whether success or failure, I want the satisfaction of knowing my results are my own.
The greatest thrill in business is to experience success that you manufactured yourself. The joy comes from knowing that I did that, me. Taking pride in one’s craft and working hard for one’s own rewards is the opportunity of a lifetime. Failures and missteps will happen along the way. That’s natural. When they occur, get up, learn from them, and move forward.
3. The right path is the one you make yourself that leads to your version of happiness.
We all have different ideas about what happiness is, which is why we shouldn’t all follow the same path. To embrace our unique passions and enjoy our own forms of fulfillment, we must be willing to step off the prescribed path and forge our own. No matter what your goals are, there’s always more than one way to realize them. Find yours.
Transcription of Pat Flynn’s Week
How to Grow a Consulting Specialty | Day 1 interview with Pat Flynn
How to Become a Consultant Podcast with Joe Sanok and friends.
Grow a specialty, grow an audience, and grow an income.
The top consultants helping you to become a consultant today.
Joe Sanok: Welcome to the How to Become a Consultant Podcast Session 2. I’m so glad you’re here with me and once again, thank you, Legendary Lion for supporting this podcast right from the beginning. You know one thing, I’ve loved about Legendary Lion is how well they’ve collaborated with me as a consultant and so when I want a logo designed for one of my clients, Aaron will work directly with that client, sometimes even bring me and on those calls and it’s been just great support.
So, legendarylion.com, they do logos, they do website design, they really partner in an awesome way with you as a consultant. So it kind of adds something new to what you’re doing without you having to help build the sites or help make logos. So check them out, legendarylion.com.
So, this week, of my gosh! I am so excited. So Pat Flynn, oh, my word. So, I had been following Pat for a while, and he has just inspired me in so many ways and when he decided to accept this interview, I was just thrilled. So Pat Flynn has smartpassiveincome.com as well as the Smart Passive Income Podcast which is a weekly podcast all around building income in a passive way, and he just launched so many other podcasts.
He started foodtruckr.com where he has a food trucking marketing podcast. He has the 1DayBB, the 1 Day Business Breakthrough Podcast, where he and Chris Ducker sit down with a business owner’s question and kind of round table what they do once a week, and then every day, he has the Ask Pat Podcast. Then each of those are 10-15 minutes. People leave a message and talk about it. So, Pat, is just an amazing guy doing amazing work and you can see it in his monthly income reports, as well. So, without any further ado, I give you the awesome, Pat Flynn.
Joe Sanok: Pat Flynn, welcome to the How to Become a Consultant Podcast.
Pat Flynn: What’s up? Thanks for having me.
Joe Sanok: Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to do this. This is awesome. So, today, we’re going to be talking about how to build a specialty as a consultant, then tomorrow we’ll be diving into, how do you build an audience around that? On Wednesday we’ll be hitting how you do build an income and then, on Thursday, we’ll just kind of talk about whatever we didn’t cover. So thanks for taking time out this week.
Pat Flynn: Yeah, it’s going to be a fun week.
Joe Sanok: So, how do you build your specialty? What are some of the nitty- gritty, like say there’s someone that’s brand new to becoming a consultant, like I was using the example, some of these like mowing lawns, and they want to consult other people mowing lawns, or you know any job, like you made the jump from being an architect or maybe that jump found you. And you became a kind of worldwide consultant now. What are some of those first steps of becoming a consultant and building that specialty?
How Pat started a consulting specialty in the Architecture Industry
Pat Flynn: I mean, for me, when I got started it was understanding, you know essentially understanding really what pains and problems and issues people were having. And so you know not only picking sort of a target audience and things like that, but understanding and really truly understanding what they needed help with. There’s a great quote by Jay Abraham, who says, “If you can define the problem better than your target customer, they will automatically assume that you have the solution.”
So you really have to get to know your audience and when you use the same language as them, when you can empathize with them, when you can just share what they’re already feeling, that’s going to help you make these connections and that’s where you kind of start to understand well what do you have to offer and what can you do to connect with other people.
So I feel like for me, when I first started, you know, I had passed this exam in the architecture industry. I knew about it and I knew tricks and tips to help people go through that. I just started sharing information. I just started posting that and that, even though I wasn’t like, I didn’t really consider myself “an expert” at that time, the fact that I knew and I’ve experienced this exam before, and I knew more than somebody else, meant that I had the ability and the permission to help other people. And that’s the big thing, even before you start doing anything, you have into your mind and understand that you are qualified to this. People need your help. You have value to provide and the trick is just understanding what it is that you can do to provide a solution, but also that you deserve it. If you truly care and help and want to help other people, I mean the world needs more people like that.
Joe Sanok: Well, I loved what you said about share what they’re feeling. I mean, I know when I launched at the Practice of the Practice which is my consulting blog and podcast, all about just running a private practice, like I’ve been a counselor for years and knew that if I wanted to grow my income, grow my influence, I had to move beyond just my hometown. I had to figure out some sort of forum, but for me I had to kind of go back like, it had been you know 10 years since I had first kind of jumped into counseling and go over those things that first year that I just didn’t know, you know like how do you file an LLC? How do launch a website? Like what are those basic, basic things and like what are some tips you have about maybe really getting into your potential audiences how to know how to grow that specialty?
Tips to really get into your potential audience and grow your specialty
Pat Flynn: Well, you can see who else is out there serving that audience already and then you can pay attention and listen and see sort of you know you can visit blogs for example or listen to podcasts and see what the audience does to respond and react to. You know read books and look at the reviews and just understand, you know what’s missing. I think that’s the big thing and if the big advantage that you might have. You know you might feel like, “Oh, well, maybe it’s too late.” Or “I’m coming in late in the game.” That’s actually an advantage to you, because you can see what else is missing. And then, you can come in and provide that solution beyond just the fact that you are different than anybody else and people are going to connect with you, anyway. Right?
And so understanding what to do and what those problems are, it’s just about listening and paying attention to what’s out there, but they also feel like reaching out. That’s really important, too, and making connections with other people who are serving in this industry, as well. That’s why I feel, I mean, you cannot do this alone, I feel, and I think a lot of people who are getting into any kind of business want to just do it on their own and are worried about the competition and talking to other people, because they’re worried about, you know, the competition. But I don’t believe in competition. I believe in you know, collaboration. You know, if you’re all there to serve the same audience, you can help to bounce each other, ideas off of each other and help each other out and you know that’s how I feel I’ve been able to grow is not by doing it alone, but by connecting with other people, both online and offline, to just offer value to those people because I know they can offer value back to me and especially if you’re first starting out. Again, it gives that advantage because you’re coming in knowing what’s missing and because you’ve listened and had these chats with people.
Joe Sanok: Well, I think that like that’s a good point about collaborating and I definitely, in my private practice, have felt that way and as I grow as a consultant, you know I think about all the people that I know, you know, where they were out of a year ago. Most of us are going to keep growing and so if you really invest in each other when you’re just you know at whatever level you are, within a year or two, you’re all going to start to grow and so I when I look at like John Lee Dumas, Chris Ducker and you. It’s like you guys have all helped each other grow and in doing that, you’ve probably moved faster, you know, moved forward faster than you would’ve had you not been collaborating with each other.
Pat Flynn: Bam. Absolutely that. And you just have to understand that you’re not going to know all the right answers right at the beginning. So you have to find them and you know there are different ways to do that, because there’s no better way than just asking somebody. You have to be okay with asking. I was somebody, who when I first started, wanted to do everything myself, and if I didn’t know how to do it, I would figure it out. I didn’t want to ask anybody, because I don’t know if it was my you know my pride or whatever or it’s just maybe that’s the person I am. I’m a problem solver. I’ve saved time and money by making these connections with people and putting myself where my audience is already.
And then also, you know, being on the phone, I think a lot of people don’t understand the power of just regular conversations. I mean, we don’t even use the phone for a phone anymore. It’s everything else but a phone now. But there’s so much power in having a conversation. Maybe it’s through Skype or whatever, but even getting a few people who might be interested in what you have to offer in this world, that you just get in the phone with them, and that’s how you can understand and get that language. And you know, there might be potential ways to look at survey results or run a survey yourself and things like that, and even ask you know, people who you connect with on social media, but that you know that’s so one level. That just surface level. It’s when you get six, seven, eight, questions deep, is when you when you get that gold, that information, the language that they use and the true problems that then you can use as a center for your practice.
Joe Sanok: I know that. I’ve tried to make a routine of, you know if I get an email from somebody, you know. Maybe once or twice a week I’ll just pick up the phone and call their private practice and say, “Hey so and so, I you know, got this email. It sounds that you’re struggling. I decided to call to see if we can brainstorm and you know you could call my assistant to schedule a time. You know if I miss some… And it’s amazing how many people like, “I can’t believe like you left a message”, like I have a voice mail from Joe Sanok! I’m like, “I’m just Joe Sanok. Like I’m just this regular guy and it’s like you know, when you needed to know people then you are just Joe Sanok and by taking that time out to really understand that specialty.
Kind of the other thing I thought of as you were talking is, I had such an aha moment, when I started looking at my google analytics and I found that my number one page, other than my homepage was an article I had written about how to name a private practice. And it was this total just like blog post that I hadn’t really thought through but it was ranking on the first page of Google when you googled how to name a private practice, and I was getting all this traffic from that, and I realized that I hadn’t even thought of like what are simple, simple parts of running a private practice. And so I think in a specialty, thinking through what are those just like super basic things? Like how to change the oil in a lawn mower, or how to paint a house or you know, whatever it is is is your specialty, what are the—drill it down to like, just like you said kind of the seven questions deep.
The curse of knowledge
Pat Flynn: Right. I mean, it’s so hard though because there’s a thing called the curse of knowledge and when you know something it’s hard to know what it’s like not to know it. And that’s why these conversations are really important and asking just direct questions, like you know what are those first steps? Or what do you feel you need help with the most? What are you struggling with the most? I mean, understanding all those key questions are really good, too. You know, if you had a magic wand, what would life be like right now for you? If, what’s another question? What’s something that you do every day that you hate? You know related to X? You know, and then you can help provide information, software tools, solutions for that, that sort of thing. And again getting simple, for sure.
Joe Sanok: So, Pat, what’s one action item that anybody at any point can do today to start growing their specialty?
Today’s take-away for a consultant
Pat Flynn: This is a good one. I would get on the phone, and/or Skype call or try to get a conversation, a real conversation and just talk with that person and try to figure out exactly what they’re dealing with and struggling with and need help with. And maybe what they’ve done to start and also why they haven’t kept going. What are those fail points? Understanding where people dropped off is incredibly important for your practice, too.
Joe Sanok: Awesome! Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income and a whole bunch of other things. Thank you so much. Tomorrow we’re going to be talking more with Pat. We’re going to be diving into how to build an audience. So, we’ll talk to you tomorrow.
Pat Flynn: Boom!
Joe Sanok: I am just so thrilled that Pat took the time out for us to learn from him, in regards on how to build a specialty. I just love just what he’s encouraging us to do. Please take some action today. Will you go to iTunes and rank us there? It would be so helpful as we are a new podcast. If you are enjoying this, or if you listen to a few more, please go to iTunes and write an honest review that would so much to me. Check out, becomeaconsultanttoday.com to learn more about the work that we’re doing and special thanks to Legendary Lion who sponsored today’s podcast. Thanks for letting me into your ears and into your brain. Have an awesome day and I’ll talk to you tomorrow.
To discover more about how to grow a specialty audience and income, visit becomeaconsultanttoday.com.
How to Grow a Consulting Audience | Day 2 interview with Pat Flynn
How to Grow a Consulting Audience | Day 2 interview with Pat Flynn
How to Become a Consultant Podcast with Joe Sanok and friends.
Grow a specialty, grow an audience, and grow an income.
The top consultants helping you to become a consultant today.
Well, welcome to the How to Become a Consultant Podcast Session 3. I hope your day is going great. Here in Northern Michigan, I’m looking out at the water and it’s just a beautiful day up here. My daughters and I had a great weekend. I know it’s Tuesday, but it just so fun to spend with family, and I hope that you take time out as you’re going after all of your consulting to spend time with your family, your friends and just remember like figuring out like what’s the reason that you’re doing all this hard work.
So today, I want to thank Legendary Lion who’s our sponsor today. They do awesome websites that are just beautiful, responsive websites. Aaron has such a great eye for just making websites be beautiful. They did practiceofthepractice.com, becomeaconsultanttoday.com, my counseling website. So, check them out legendarylion.com. Thanks a lot guys for sponsoring this.
So, again, we have Pat Flynn. Yesterday, we talked with him all about how to grow a specialty. You know, as I think about growing a specialty, just a little bit after yesterday, taking the work that we’re already doing and starting to kind of chunk it out and think a little bit about, I don’t know, just like what are the big areas? Like are you doing crisis work as a counselor or are you as maybe you have a loan mowing business and it’s a green lawn mowing business. Maybe there are people that want to learn that, like just starting somewhere with a specialty and getting going with it is so important.
That’s my little piece of kind of what I thought about after I listened through Pat’s podcast.
Without any further ado, I give you the Mr. Pat Flynn.
Joe Sanok: Alright, Pat. Welcome back to the show. Really glad to have you here. We’re going to be diving into how to build an audience. So, yesterday, we covered how to a build a specialty. So, where should we start in regards to building an audience?
Where to start in building an audience
Pat Flynn: Well, there are a 101,000 different ways to do—a 101,000—that’s weird.
Joe Sanok: I like that.
Pat Flynn: I’m going to write them all down.
Joe Sanok: Not 102,000?
Pat Flynn: No, no. Really what it all comes down to if I had to sum it up in one sentence is, just provide value and build solutions, create solutions or write solutions for the main problems that your audience is having.
We talked a little bit about that yesterday in terms of you know, finding out what those problems are. But then it’s all about just providing those you know, solutions and doing it in a way that would help build credibility, and there are many different ways to do that.
You can create a blog and I’ve started businesses and practices through blogging, you know, to build authority not only with people but through Google and then people searching Google, and if your site’s number 1 that automatically proves that you know something about whatever this person is looking for. But then also, podcasting, obviously, people are listening or watching this and that helps build authority in a totally differently way and the reason why I love podcasting is people can hear the voice and the inflections and the dynamic and truly how somebody might care.
So, you could perhaps, start to build your platform on a podcast on iTunes for example or Stitcher. Video is another one, as well, and I think whichever one you feel most comfortable with is where you start. A lot of people aren’t great at writing but they’re great on video. Some people are deathly afraid of video, like I was. So that’s why I started blogging first. Whatever the case may be, you want to go out there and just create these amazing epic piece to be resources to help people like you had mentioned the other day how you had created this resource to help answer some of the simplest questions on how to name your practice and now it’s being searched for and found in Google and that’s so cool.
So, that is one way to help build an audience, but another way that I think a lot of people miss out on especially consultants is, they don’t necessarily think about that email list. It’s really important to collect the emails of people who land on your site the moment they get there or not the moment they get there but you know, before they leave. You want to collect their email addresses.
Joe Sanok: At some point.
Pat Flynn: Yes. And there are a lot of different strategies for that. I’m mean, we could talk the whole day about email strategies specifically, but what it does is when you collect those emails that allows you to continually build that relationship with them over time perhaps through an autoresponder series which is a series of emails that you’ve pre-written that gets sent out sequentially over time after people subscribe. I mean, just imagine being able to continually provide value in articles or links back to older websites or even links to other websites and colleagues and friends who you know would help, as well. I mean, that’s just people like building trust with you. And then you could eventually get down to a pitch or a recommendation or something perhaps that you’re an affiliate with, but when you come out with new content, that email list becomes a traffic generator, as well and making sure on top of that, making sure that these things are easy to share, so using social media will help build your blog, as well.
If you were to start on one social media platform, I would say and recommend Twitter. Twitter just seems to be the easiest way to connect with people and make those fast connections to not only just direct traffic to your site but build those relationships and that’s the last thing I want to say in terms of building your audience, building relationships with other influencers. Again, don’t see them as competition but as colleagues, as companions who are together with you that are going to help this audience. You might want to take the opportunity to retweet somebody else’s stuff on Twitter, for example or you might even link to their article or blog or website or podcast or videos on your own site to just show that you know, you are aware of them and you feel they provide a value and they might do the same for you.
Guest posting is another great thing to do. If you have some specialty that you know, you can pair perhaps some case today that you’ve done before or some stuff. You can share that on somebody else’s site who already has built an audience and some of those people are going to filter down and come back to your site. Then of course if they subscribe to your emails, great. And then when you come out with the next post you send out an email saying, “I have this new post about such and such who’s going to help you do this, great.” People land on that post, they share it, new people come on your site, they subscribe. Next time you come out with a post even more people are getting the email which means more people are sharing and so you can see it’s starting to grow over time.
Joe Sanok: So, you made the transition in a lot or addition to becoming a consultant to focusing on the food truck industry. What are some strategies you used specifically in that because you don’t own a food truck, you probably eat at food trucks, but you became an authority in that space without being a food truck owner. I mean, that’s a huge kind of transition to jump into and I think that just shows people that if you have a certain skill set you can really apply it anywhere. So, maybe, can you talk a little bit about building that audience?
How Pat was able to transition and focus on the food truck industry
Pat Flynn: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, really, it’s just authority through association, mostly through a food truck or by connecting with food trucks, by understanding how they’re doing it so then I can share that information. I become the curator of that content, essentially. I mean, just take a John Lee Dumas, for example. When he started his business, he didn’t have a business, but it became—these interviews with all these amazing entrepreneurs and his show is great. And now, people see him as an authority because he’s interviewed people like Seth Godin and Gary Vaynerchuk and Tim Ferriss and all these amazing entrepreneurs.
So, to help build your authority and help build traffic, you know, bring these other experts on board and that not only helps you become associated with them and people are like, “Wow! You interviewed this person or you’re connected with this person” but you actually through those interviews—and again, this is why I love podcasting—I mean, you and I, Joe, we’re building a relationship here. This is a super long awesome conversation and I love that and now, you know, that relationship’s going to be built and we’re going to help each other out in the future and that’s really cool and you can do the same thing with these authorities that you’re building a relationship with through these interviews.
One thing I do specifically on FoodTruckr was my very first post that went out was a post that featured 50 different food trucks and their answer to one question. And so that immediately showed everybody else who eventually came to my blog that you know, I had these connections with food truckers, that I knew them, that I actually took the time to get answers from them and that post in a whole has become the number 1 post on the blog and shows that you know, it is valuable. I wasn’t the one providing that content. I was just the one managing and curating that content.
Joe Sanok: Well, I bet that each of those food trucks sent people then to show off their name being on FoodTruckr.
Pat Flynn: Right, right, although, the funny thing about FoodTruckr is when you think about it, for example, everybody following a food truck on Twitter, they’re just people who eat at that food truck. They might not necessarily be people who also want to start a food truck. So, it’s not—it doesn’t quite align itself in terms of social on this particular site, but in most cases, when people share you know, that [sounds like:through the eyes] is going to come in and resonate with which you have to offer to.
Joe Sanok: But I think that just goes back to that every single specialty that you’re growing as a consultant is going to be unique and different and you really need to know that audience because I’m guessing that food truck owners aren’t sitting down and reading long-form blog posts while they’re trying to, you know, create their URL. They’re probably going to you know, listen to a podcast while they’re driving home or things like that more than read something that’s long-form.
Pat Flynn: That is something exactly that I found out through having real conversations with these food truck owners. That they’re on a truck 16 hours a day, prepping and driving and all this sort of stuff. So, they don’t necessarily have time to read and that’s where the podcast came from. The podcast was done [sounds like: we were] actually was just featured on the front page of iTunes recently.
Joe Sanok: Man, that’s awesome. So, what’s one action item that anybody could take today to start to grow their audience?
Today’s take-away for a consultant
Pat Flynn: I would do some research and see who else is in the space with you and build relationships with them or reach out to one of those people and see if you could build a relationship. Perhaps, just connect with them on Twitter. I think that would be a great start.
Joe Sanok: Super. Well, Pat, thank you so much. Tomorrow, we’re going to be talking about how to grow an income as a consultant, and we’ll catch up then.
Pat, who’s done such a great job growing an authentic audience and for me, I think one of the big things that he’s been doing recently is instead of doing a Facebook page, he’s been doing Facebook groups and I think that it’s just for me, it’s been working really well, also because it just easier to kind of keep people engaged and like Facebook with their pages are making you pay so much for like reaching your own audience, and so the people that are on my How to Become a Consultant newsletter get invited to the private Facebook page so that’s something that I’ve started doing, as well.
So again, thank so much for tuning in. Tomorrow we’re going to be talking more of Pat Flynn all about how to grow an income, and I would love to have you go into iTunes and write an honest review. I am going to reading those, and we’ll be sharing some of those on air, as well.
Thank so much. I really appreciate it, and thanks again Legendary Lion for letting us or being our sponsor.
Thanks for letting me into your ears and into your brain. Have a great day. Talk to you tomorrow. I should slow down a little bit there.
To discover more about how to grow a specialty audience and income, visit becomeaconsultanttoday.com.
How to Grow a Consulting Income | Day 3 interview with Pat Flynn
How to Become a Consultant Podcast with Joe Sanok and friends.
Grow a specialty, grow an audience, and grow an income.
The top consultants helping you to become a consultant today.
Welcome to the How to Become a Consultant Podcast Session 4. We’re already at number 4. Today, we’re talking with Pat Flynn again, all about how to grow an income as a consultant and I mean, this is like what Pat does. Pat’s kind of the guru around this. He has the Smart Passive Blog and Podcast. He’s all about just working hard now so you can kind of sit back and relax later. Because I haven’t seen him do a lot of relaxing. He just kind of keeps going to that next level, but so many of his principles like just that idea of making money while you’re sleeping and creating products that will kind of run themselves. I’m still figuring out how do I make things scalable, but still have my personality in it? That’s kind of something I’m sorting through. I still got to figure that out, but I’m more right now kind of building the audience around this How to Become a Consultant Podcast.
So, thanks so much for tuning in and without any further ado, I give you Mr. Pat Flynn, talking about how to grow an income.
Joe Sanok: Pat, thank so much for being on the How to Become a Consultant Podcast. It’s been a busy week for us.
Pat Flynn: It has. Launch the information and hopefully people are already taking action.
Joe Sanok: Yeah. I like that idea of not just kind of consuming things but actually doing something with it. So, I hope that every day they’re taking action on these things.
So, on Monday, we talked about how to grow a specialty. Yesterday, we talked about how to grow an audience and today, how to grow an income, something that you are by far, one of the gurus of so we’ve got some new consultants out there. What are some places that they can start to grow an income?
Start growing your income as a consultant
Pat Flynn: Well, I feel like—and this is just sort of a mindset thing that your earnings are a byproduct of how well you serve your audience and so again, making sure and this is a theme that I keep coming up with that’s probably, you know, I’ve said it way too many times but I can’t say it enough. It’s, you guys serve your audience and so understanding this audience you built which we talked about yesterday, talking to them, understanding—okay what are the things that they might potentially pay for? What are they struggling with, what can you do to make life more convenient for them?
And so, really, what it starts with is it’s just, what’s that one big problem that you could solve for them and then creating the solution for that? Monetization can come in many different forms, obviously: books, courses, software, things like that. So, I can’t give you—I can’t for you, for those of you listening right now, but that’s where those conversations with these people and eventually, over time what happens is, as you build these audiences you continually provide value for them, they’re eventually going to start to share tidbits and share with you exactly what they would need. This has happened multiple times on multiple sites of mine. You know, you’ll find people saying, “I wish I had this” or “I wish I had that.” You just have to pay attention and listen. That’s where those solutions can come out of.
There are many different ways you could do it, and the one thing I would say is creating your own product is great. It’s fantastic, [sounds like: profit margin is fantastic]. It might take a while and there are ways to serve your audience that can utilize products and services and tools that already exist and so you can earn a commission. This is sort of referrals or affiliate marketing where that comes in and so the most important thing is to understand the goals of your audience and where you want to take them and then understanding the information tools software that can help them do that. Sometimes, that is free information, sometimes it’s paid information, sometimes it’s stuff that you can create on your own, sometimes it’s stuff that other people have also already created.
You have the opportunity, even today, to find a product that is out there that can serve your audience. Now, I would recommend with affiliate marketing specifically that you be a little bit careful when you’re recommending these other products because you know, you’re basically telling your audience, I trust this product, use it. If that product or that experience isn’t good, they’re going to be upset about that product, but they’re also going to lose that trust that they have of you. I always for myself, in all my businesses make sure that I actually use the products that I recommend first just so I know that they’re going to take care of my audience.
What that does is, when you share something that’s great, they’re going to remember that it came from you. When you come out with your own products eventually, it’s going to be something that they’re going to be you know, that they’re going to get.
I feel like if you are, over time, providing all this great free information, helping people out in a scalable way, that allows you to then have the authority and permission to you know, ask for money. I think that’s a big important thing. You know, if you want generate an income, you need to sell stuff and that’s something that a lot of people have a hard time with. You know, they don’t feel like they either deserve it or they don’t want to be too pushy and they’re like, “Oh, I’ve been giving stuff away for free and you know, how can I ask for something now”?
If you’re [unintelligible] because they need a more convenient way to do something. They need that push, they need that product that you have in order to better their lives. So, a lot of mindset stuff goes along with selling, interestingly enough.
Joe Sanok: I agree and when I think back to when I first launched Practice of the Practice, my website for counselors in private practice, I was like, “I’m going to monetize this right away” and I had like adSense ads at the very top and you know, I made like $3 a month and that was like, look at me, I’m monetizing this, but it wasn’t serving my audience, like it was just annoying and when I took those down and started just creating content, that’s when, for me, I was able to land more consulting gigs which were significantly more than $3 a month. It just became so much easier to monetize the website because it didn’t seem like I was just trying to like make money off of it. I was creating content that was helpful.
I love that flow that you know, really just serving people really well is going to build your specialty, it’s going to build your audience, and then ultimately you can build an income off of that.
Provide value and make an income as a consultant
Pat Flynn: Right and you’d mentioned consulting. I mean, there are ways to provide value and make income through consulting and one-on-one, you know, non-passive stuff where your time is actually traded for that income. You get paid X amount of dollars for X amount of hours of work to help people and that’s great. That’s fantastic.
You know, we had mentioned on Practice of the Practice about you know, being able to scale that, which can be difficult. You know, a lot of people who are consultants, they feel stuck in that you know, they can’t stop working or else they’re going to stop making money. That’s where you have to kind of brainstorm and see what else you can do to provide value to these people. Is there anything that can automated, perhaps? Maybe a course or a book or something that would at least introduce people or maybe there are people out there who cannot afford your services, your one-on-one services and you can create a particular solution in a digital format that can help those people, too, for a lower price. You’ll be able to serve everybody there.
Even off of that product, you know, if people enjoy it and they want more, they can always you know, get either consulting. You could even do consulting not one-to-one but one-to-many. You could do group coaching, you can use tools like Google Hangouts on air, or go to webinar to have groups of people come on, sign on and watch you live. Help many people. Do Q&A’s, office hours, those sorts of things where you can scale your accessibility. It’s pretty awesome what’s available to us these days.
Joe Sanok: Well, I think that anyone that wants to become a consultant like just what you said to have some additional add-ons, it not only helps you create a way to serve your audience better, but it also helps you take some of that burden off of you.
Pat Flynn: Yeah.
Joe Sanok: If it’s just you, I mean, for example, when I do consulting I have an E-book that I send them, I have a member’s newsletter that they automatically get subscribed to, they get you know, some paper work to run their practice and so it’s like I can then say each of these items is worth X number of dollars so this whole package is worth this.
But I know that those add-ons aren’t going to take me extra time and so to have those extra products then creates larger value, but then it’s not going to actually take that extra time.
Pat Flynn: Right and I mean, it helps created leverage for you, too. Like you said, that’s where the passive income comes in. You’re not actually putting time in to deliver those every time because it’s automated. You’ve already put in the work to put that content together. It’s investing your time upfront and having those things work for you. Then you can get into some advanced stuff where maybe people download a free thing or get that free newsletter and in that in newsletter, puts them into a funnel which then you know, [sounds like: jet feeds] them content that eventually leads into you know, your mid-level course and then in the middle of a course they’re going through that, you might ask them, “Hey, do you need any more hand-holding? Well, you can pay for this much time with me here if you need help” and you know, getting really intricate with it.
It can be really amazing what you can do, and you don’t need a lot of people to go through it, either. I think the big thing to realize is—and this based off of an article that everybody should read by Kevin Kelly called, 1,000 True Fans. I mean, just imagine. If you had 1,000 true fans like just a thousand people in this world with seven billion, who truly cared about what you do, who want to support you and maybe support you with just a hundred dollars a year, that’s six figures already, a thousand people.
I say, you know, work towards those thousand true fans, and then if you can deliver content on an automated basis, and perhaps, you’ve already put in the time to create that, then you can imagine sky’s the limit.
Joe Sanok: Absolutely. Now, you had said and I think I know what you mean, but I just want to clarify. You had said, office hours. What would that look like to have office hours? I’m assuming you don’t mean people just drop into your office.
What Pat meant by office hours
Pat Flynn: No, maybe your virtual office. Say you have a specific time every week or month or what have you, based it off of how often you want to do it but let’s say every Thursday between 5 and 7 p.m. Pacific, you are live on the internet to you know, and the link is distributed to people who had paid for access to that. You just sort of are there and answering questions and people get to know you and can hear your voice and interact with you. I mean, that’s how you’re building relationships but also helping people at the same time. That’s a really big value add in your product, being able to interact with people and get that sort of—it almost seems like one-on-one especially if their questions get answered, but you’re serving many people at the same time.
With two hours helping one person, that’s two-to-two, you know, two hours to help one person, whereas if you were to spend two hours and 40 people that just multiplies everything for you.
Joe Sanok: Well, lots of times people have the same question, and then you can kind of kill two birds with one stone by answering those questions and they might say, “Oh, I was going to ask that but so and so asked it” but they’re then paying less, you’re making more and serving more people.
Pat Flynn: Absolutely.
Joe Sanok: What kind of platform would you use for something like that?
Which platform to use
Pat Flynn: Well, Google Hangouts on air is great because it’s free up to like a million people. If you had a million people on and watching that’d be awesome.
[cross-talk]
Joe Sanok: Everybody can just pay a dollar.
Pat Flynn: Yeah, yeah. Exactly. But Google Hangouts on air would work and you could use perhaps the membership site platform like you know Wishlist member, anything that would get people access through a login to get access to that particular link or page. You can even have that page on a private page that you know, has the video and maybe a chat room in it, as well. That’s the most economical way to go about it, I would say.
You could also do a conference call. I mean, conference calls are still popular in many niches at freeconferencecall.com. There’s a great one. GoToWebinar is probably the one that most people use, then it’s the most supported; however, it’s also the most expensive.
Joe Sanok: I know I use freeconferencecall.com actually for my consulting calls. I tell people they can set up an account so they can record it because it will send you a free mp3 of the call and so a lot of times people are like, “Well, I don’t want to take notes while we’re talking but I don’t want to lose that content.” That’s a great add-on that consultants can use to have their clients just record the calls and be able to go back through it.
Pat Flynn: For sure.
Joe Sanok: So Pat, what’s one action item that anybody could take today to grow their income?
Today’s take-away for a consultant
Pat Flynn: If you wanted to make income today, I think you know, the easiest, quickest way to do it would be advertising. We didn’t mention that because I don’t feel like that’s how you can best serve your audience. So, I think the best thing to do is to—you don’t want to create anything without validating it first. I think that that’s another big thing and a mistake a lot of people make. You know, they spend months creating a course, for example and it might not be exactly what their audience might want.
The big action item for you, similar to what we did a couple of days ago, is to talk to somebody in your audience, and tell them your plans. Perhaps, it’s a power user or somebody in your audience who has you know, expressed interest in what you do and you know, you can get them involved, and see what they might enjoy seeing in terms of a course or how you know, whatever they feel would be best to serve them in terms of enhanced content beyond what they already get for free on the site.
Again, I would reach out to somebody in your audience and tell them that you’re looking to provide even more value and that you have ideas for courses or scaled webinars and things like that. Just talk about it. I think talking—a lot of people don’t talk about their ideas enough. And that’s where you truly understand okay if it’s going to work or not before you start putting time, money and effort into it.
Joe Sanok: Well, I like that idea of working with somebody to help work out the kinks, too, because to let someone know upfront, “Hey, will you be my guinea pig, kind of consulting client? I’ll give you a discount from what I think that I’m going to be charging, eventually.”
Pat Flynn: Yeah, give it to them for free or whatever.
Joe Sanok: Yeah.
Pat Flynn: They would be happy to help you.
Joe Sanok: Right. The person that was my very first consulting client, it came out of that I had done a webinar that was just a total failure. I mean, the way the amount of people that signed up for it, the amount of just money that came in, we had committed to this like six- or eight-week program. The platform we used like froze—I mean, it was terrible. But I called her up, and we talked for about an hour just kind of working through her issues and out of that, she wanted to do 10 hours of consulting with me, and she became kind of that first person that really jumped in.
I think that I love that point that just asking is going to be the thing that leads to an income and serving well.
Pat Flynn: Yeah, it’s funny because I mean, we don’t necessarily think that that’s something we should do. We’re online. We can all find out answers anyway but I mean, you really need to have conversations. The best way to grow your online business is to get offline.
Joe Sanok: Yeah, absolutely. Well, Pat, tomorrow, we’re going to kind of wrap things up and we’ll just kind of talk about any things we didn’t cover. So, thanks a lot.
Pat Flynn: Awesome, thanks.
Joe Sanok: I don’t know if I can even say anything to top that, how darn awesome this Pat Flynn, so many cool things that he had to say, so many tips.
I’m interested in what you are going to take some action on. So, I would love for you to connect with me on Twitter. My Twitter is @OfThePractice. I keep all of my Twitter kind of in one spot.
So, it started as my Practice of the Practice one, but now it’s expanding into consulting.
Let me know what action you’re going to do and use hashtag consultant 0004. Why don’t we do that? I would love to hear from you what you’re going to take some action on.
Also, thanks a lot to Legendary Lion for being our sponsor today. They make amazing websites, legendarylion.com and we would love to have you do a review in iTunes. That would be super helpful to help the podcast get into that new and noteworthy section.
Thanks so much for letting me into your ears and into your brain. Have an awesome day. Talk to you tomorrow.
To discover more about how to grow a specialty audience and income, visit becomeaconsultanttoday.com.
Passive Income and More Questions | Day 4 interview with Pat Flynn
How to Become a Consultant Podcast with Joe Sanok and friends.
Grow a specialty, grow an audience, and grow an income.
The top consultants helping you to become a consultant today.
Welcome to the How to Become a Consultant Podcast Session 5. We made it to number 5, almost through this first week. Pat Flynn has been with us all week long and been just telling us so many just amazing tips. I almost said value bombs, but I feel like John Lee Dumas, Chris Ducker or Pat Flynn all those people say value bombs and that feels like I’m being kind of a poser by saying it, but given us just tons of value grenades. Maybe that will be my new—I don’t know if I’m going to be with value grenades.
Anyway, Pat Flynn’s been with us all week, Legendary Lion has been our sponsor and Legendary Lion—just let me tell you a little bit about Aaron who owns Legendary Lion. So, Aaron is just this guy that has such a beautiful eye for design. When you’re looking for a specialized website that’s really going to stand out, then you absolutely want to go with him and I know for me, in the counseling world, counseling websites aren’t usually very pretty and Aaron has done just a beautiful job of helping me capture what I wanted to through Mental Wellness Counseling and the work that I do there. So, check out legendarylion.com, beautiful work, amazing job with very reasonable prices, as well. And so, check them out.
So, again, today, we have Pat Flynn with us, and that we’re just kind of rounding out the week and then tomorrow, we’ll be talking. We’ll be having a listener question, and I’ll be talking a little bit about my experience as a consultant and then next week, we have the one, the only Chris Ducker; Chris Ducker who wrote Virtual Freedom as well, he’s got the 1 Day Business Breakthrough and the new business podcast. He’s done some crazy work. You’ll definitely want to come back next week to check that out.
And I give you Pat Flynn. Here he is.
Joe Sanok: Well, Pat Flynn, welcome back on a Thursday, today. We had a busy week this week covering how to become a consultant. I know you’ve a million projects going on. I’m interested in how do you keep everything organized because I don’t know. Like I can’t keep up with you, and I don’t know how you keep up with you.
How Pat keep things organized and keep up with his numerous projects
Pat Flynn: I do have a lot of things going on, and it seems like they’re all going on at the same time, but luckily, a lot of the businesses that I’ve created and a lot of things that are working for me are things that I’ve already put time and effort into and that are sort of automated now.
So, for example, greenexamacademy.com my site, helping people pass the LEED exam, you know I only touch the site one hour a month. It’s already—it has all the information it needs. Everything is automated and you know, books are distributed all automatically. And that’s what’s so cool about doing business online, now. We’re able to serve our audiences without actually having to, in real time, do that because things are out there and available to do that for us.
Securityguardtraininghq.com, another niche site that I have, foodtruckr.com, those are all sort of automated now which I’m really excited about. And that sort of opens up a lot of free time for me to do other things, but yeah, I am working on a lot of things. I enjoy doing these. I’m the [3:08] of online business so I love to just experiment and try new things and it’s all organized in many different ways, but I feel like and to sum it all up, each new thing that I’m working on has a specific folder.
You know, you can imagine this on a computer or even the physical folders and you open that folder and that helps you understand that that’s the project that you’re working on. All the other folders that you have, all the other ideas that you might be thinking about or want to work on or are working already, you’re not thinking about that. So this is sort of like digital folder or even physical folders which I use to use, I don’t use it anymore, because it’s just I found it more efficient to use the digital folders but I mean, imagine for bringing up a project that’s how you know to focus on that. And within that project, there are different steps to take to get from point A where you started to wherever you want to go. And that’s how you know what’s the next task to work on.
So I need this system to be able to focus because I have so many things going on. I’m not saying that’s the best system for everybody. Everybody has their own way of becoming efficient and focusing in being productive, but that’s what works for me. So, I focus on one project, one thing at a time, and I will say I usually buy books on my Kindle but that I read on Kindle but I have to buy this book. They call it The One Thing by Gary Keller. I had to buy it because I have it right upfront to always remind me to work on that one thing.
And then lately, what’s also been helping me build and grow and stay organized is putting a team in place. You know, I’m a point now in my business where or just recently, I came in a point in my business where I could go one of three ways. I could just continue working just me and you know, plateauing, you know, not being able to grow anymore.
I could continue to work with just me and try all these new things I want to do and build and grow and burn out, which a lot of people do or I can hire a team. And I’ve been working on a hiring a team. Now, these aren’t employees. These are people who I have as consultants or they’re contracted and they’re sort of in an at-need basis. So, whenever I need to work on something new or have this new idea, they all come together and we work on it. And that’s how sort of that is structured with me right now.
Joe Sanok: Well, I loved your—I think I was going to ask Pat where you were interviewing some of those members to your team, and I think you guys were having chicken and waffles in Cleveland, was it?
Pat Flynn: Yeah.
Joe Sanok: My sister lives in Cleveland, so I was thinking about that and yeah, it’s amazing how like I added Zoe, my assistant that I’ve talked about before in August of 2014, and it’s amazing how when you start to add those people in, it just frees up your time to be able to actually work on your business rather than answering phone calls or returning emails and you know, having somebody else help you, can just help you move forward faster and oftentimes make more money, because you’re focusing on the things only Pat Flynn or Joe Sanok can do.
Pat Flynn: Yeah. I mean, it’s hard though because there are things now that I don’t do that I love to do and enjoy doing, but I know on a higher level, I shouldn’t be doing as a business owner.
Joe Sanok: Now, what about kind of giving up that control like I mean, I think most entrepreneurs are—they have big vision, and they know how they want it but then maybe that contractor’s not going to do it exactly how you want it. How do you sort through that?
How Pat manages his team
Pat Flynn: I mean, you got to make sure you hire the right people, too, and that’s why you want to work—if you’re going to start to hire people you want to work on small projects first just to see, then find this like, what communication is like and also help them understand why you’re doing what you’re doing, what your true values are.
You know, everybody in my team knows it’s always about serving your audience and having the best customer experience or best audience, reader, subscriber, watcher, viewer, listener experience. That’s what it’s all about for me. And so they know that’s the goal and any decision that they make on their own is all based on that. You know, having this sort of mission statement that they understand is very important, as well. You know, things aren’t always going to right, but you have to let go, and you have to do it carefully, but you also have to trust the people that you hire, as well, and you know, it’s hard. It’s hard. I’m still getting used to it right now, actually.
Joe Sanok: Well, I think that idea of having a minimum viable product like getting something out there then tweaking it as you go is just so much better than having an idea in your head that you don’t launch because it’s not perfect.
Pat Flynn: Right, absolutely.
Joe Sanok: Awesome. Well, Pat Flynn, from Smart Passive Income and a variety of other things, thanks so much for being on the show this week and taking time out. What is a final action item that anyone can take to just help them move forward as a consultant?
One final action item for a consultant to move forward
Pat Flynn: I think the big thing is you know, think about what you would like your practice or your business or brand to look like in a year. You know, truly think about that. What would be the ideal situation in a year? And then sort of work backwards from there. Now, I think a lot of people we, especially, people and you can do a lot of one-on-one stuff all the time. You know, we just continue working. You know, we work and we work and we don’t necessarily know what we’re working toward.
Think about what life is like a year from now, what your idea of life would be like as a consultant. Would you have products? Would you have things working for you? Or would you continue to work the way you are now? Or would you up your prices and you know, and then you can work from now to those things in a logical way without sort of just working for work’s sake, but you’re working for a purpose.
Joe Sanok: Awesome and Pat if people want to get hold of you how can they connect with you?
Pat Flynn: Smartpassiveincome.com would be the best way. Everything else that I’m doing is connected there. If you’d love to connect with me on Twitter, I’m @PatFlynn.
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