Transcript continued from the Episode 011 Show notes
The second thing I wanted to cover tonight is a standing segment that we’re going to be adding and we’re calling it Internet Marketing Motivator. The reason that I wanted to add this segment is because I know that to be successful in online business it fundamentally takes two things.
I’ve been at this several years now and it’s pretty obvious to me that the first thing that you need to have in order to be successful in online business is enough knowledge about online business in order to be competent and successful. If you’re not competent you don’t know what you’re doing you’re not going to be successful and that’s obvious.
Most information marketers out there on the internet that are in the internet marketing niche are trying to attack that very problem. There’s tons of ebooks and audio and podcasts like this where people are trying to teach you about internet marketing. So, that’s thing one and obviously there’s a glut of information out there about internet marketing.
The second thing that you need, I think, is a proper mindset in order to be successful with internet marketing. You’ve got to have the proper motivation to see it through. Most of the people that I’ve seen fail at internet marketing failed because they quit too soon and because they lacked the proper motivation to really get things done to be successful. So, that’s something I want to address in each and every episode of the Mason World Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast.
Now, the first thing we’re going to talk about, the very first motivational tip that I have for you with regard to your internet business is simply that you need to set goals. I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to say, “Mark, I know this. Everyone tells me that you need to set goals and they tell me that you need to write them down and so forth.”
Well, there’s a couple of things that I want to tell you about your internet marketing goals that I think will really help you. The first thing I want to tell you is your goals need to be reasonable, it’s very important. I told you just a second ago that most people I know that have failed in internet business failed because they quit too soon. The corollary to that is one of the reasons that they quit too soon is because they were expecting results too quickly.
So many of the headlines that people read out there talk about how you can make 27,000 dollars next week using this magic formula or you can be making money with this technique in a week or you can be killing it with Adwords in 47 minutes or whatever it is. The truth of the matter is building a real internet business that adds value to customers and creates value for you in the form of profit takes awhile.
So, you need to have goals that recognize the fact that it’s not going to happen overnight. Now, it’s certainly possible that you will put up a web page and become rich overnight and I hope that happens for you, that sounds fantastic. But, the reality is that it’s going to take you some time and some work and so your goals need to reflect that. So, my first recommendation is that you have realistic goals.
The second recommendation is, of course, not only that you write these goals down, but I’m going to make the very simple recommendation that you put them on a sticky note in front of your monitor. Internet marketing is one of those funny things where almost every time you’re working on it you’re in front of your computer and if you’ve got your goals in front of you and you feel that need to go check Twitter or your email for the 700th time or your Clickbank stats for the 800th time that day or your Adsense revenue stats for the 900th time that day, if you see that little PostIt note sitting there saying that, for example, you have a goal that you wanted to make three sales of your information product this month then you know that you can look at that and it will help you stay focused.
So, my second tip for you is to get that goal written down or those goals written down and put them on your monitor. Then my third tip for you regarding goals is make sure that you have some short term goals, some medium term goals, and some long term goals. Your long term goal may be that you want to make 5,000, 10,000, 20,000 dollars a month from your internet business so that you can quit your job. That’s a fantastic goal, especially if you know really what you want your business to be like and if you know why you’ve set that goal those can be fantastic goals.
But, you really need some intermediate goals. You might need to have a goal, for example, to get your first blog up, or you might need to have a shorter term goal that has to do with making 100 dollars a month online or 1,000 dollars a month online before you get to that 10,000 dollar a month goal. So, it’s really important to have short term, medium term, and long range goals.
The problem with only having a long range goal is that sometimes it can seem so far away that it can actually become a demotivator for you in your business, so you want to make sure that you have something that you’re striving for really to get done this week. Those are the best sort of near term goals. What’s your goal for this week? So that you can stay motivated and focused in your business.
So, those are my three tips regarding goals. I hope that’s helpful to you in your business and you can look forward to internet marketing specific motivational tips every week here on the Mason World Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast.
For the last piece of the podcast today, episode 11, I wanted to address a topic that comes up periodically so you can know where I am on it and that’s this topic of whether or not it’s possible to actually make money online without resorting to the business of teaching people how to make money online.
In fact, internet marketing marketing to other marketers can be a little bit of a sleazy business. If you look online you see a lot of sales letters that are targeting people that are looking to improve their life situation, looking to make a little extra money and they’re making unfair or unfounded or unreasonable promises about how this person can solve all their life problems by just buying this ebook or whatever.
That’s fine and some of those are perfectly legitimate products, but it could lead you to ask the question, “Hey, is it really possible to make money online without selling people make money online stuff?” That’s a lot of times what you see. The answer is absolutely yes.
I think the two best business models for this are business models that we’ve discussed previously in the podcast. One business model is the business model that I like to talk about a lot and that we’ll focusing this podcast on in future episodes and that’s the business model of affiliate marketing where you provide valuable content or other kinds of helpful information to people in order to help them select a good product that’s right for them. That’s the kind of affiliate marketing that I like to do, there are certainly other kinds of affiliate marketing.
The other way you can make money online that’s an excellent business model is take some expertise that you have and package it up into an information product, either an ebook or a series of videos or an audio, and sell that product online. While you may see a lot of those in your daily internet travels that are related to internet marketing, you can make an absolute killing doing this sort of thing outside of the internet marketing niche and a lot of legitimate marketers do exactly that.
In fact, one guy that I’m very impressed with I have on the podcast today. Let me tell you a little bit about my relationship with Pat Flynn. Pat is the webmaster over at the Smart Passive Income Blog, SmartPassiveIncome.com. He’s also launched a brand new podcast that competes with this podcast actually called The Smart Passive Income Podcast. It’s an outstanding podcast, there’s plenty of room on your iPod for both of us, I recommend that you go over to iTunes and give that a listen. It’s fantastic. In fact, in episode two of that podcast you’ll find an interview with yours truly, Pat and I exchanged podcast interviews.
What you’re about to hear is an interview with Pat where he’s going to explain how he got started in internet marketing. Now, unlike a lot of people he didn’t get started in internet marketing trying to teach people how to make money online, he got started in internet marketing by selling a wildly successful information product.
He’s going to talk all about that and subsequently he started a second business, not including the SmartPassiveIncome.com brand, but he started a second business selling iPhone applications. So, there’s two great examples of ways that you can make money on the internet without having to resort to teaching people how to make money online. I think it’s a really important point.
A lot of times people will come into internet marketing and expect that they should be working on teaching people how to make money online, after all that’s the example that they have in front of them. They’ve bought a lot of ebooks and they’ve purchased all these things and they think, “Well, I’m going to create my own ebook.”
You can certainly do that, I’ve done it, that’s what this podcast is all about, that’s what the MasonWorld.com blog is about, but I will say that you may find that the competition in non-internet marketing niches is considerably less. It’s hard for me to make a recommendation to people not to pursue internet marketing, after all I’m in the internet marketing niche in addition to my other niches, so it would be disingenuous for me to tell you that you shouldn’t be in internet marketing.
Certainly it would have been crazy for me to recommend to Pat Flynn that he stay out of internet marketing, because he’s had some crazy success with the Smart Passive Income blog, he’s doing really well over there. So, I’m not recommending that you not pursue internet marketing as a niche in your internet marketing business, just understand that I think there might be a lot better opportunities for you out there depending on what kinds of things that you’re interested in.
That gets us into the interview with Pat Flynn. Let me tell you, I’ve known Pat since he lost his day job. Pat will explain in the interview how he was caught up in this kind of crazy economy thing as an architect and came out with his first information product as part of his activities in the Internet Business Mastery Academy, that’s where I met Pat. I hope you enjoy this interview. Pat is awesome, the interview is great. Without further ado we’ll get into it….
Mark Mason: Hey, I’m back on the phone again and I just couldn’t be more excited. I’m thrilled to bring to you tonight one of my absolute favorite really relatively new internet marketers from the Smart Passive Income blog. I’ve got Pat Flynn with me tonight.
I’ve been following Pat almost since the beginning of his internet marketing career. We hooked up early in his internet marketing life on the Internet Business Mastery website. I saw him build an amazingly successful information product business right before my eyes inside the Internet Business Mastery Academy.
He then went from that to launching a successful internet marketing blog, something that is incredibly difficult to do with so many people in such a crowded niche. Then turned right around and launched a successful iPhone apps business. This has just been a hat trick, really amazing to me.
Pat, I’m really excited to have you on the podcast. How are you doing this evening?
Pat Flynn: I’m doing excellent. Thank you so much for having me on the show. I’ve been listening to your podcast and it’s just really cool to actually be on the show now, so thank you.
Mark Mason: Well, you are joining quite a distinguished list of guests that I’ve been able to coax to come on the show, so I really appreciate having you here. How are things in San Diego?
Pat Flynn: Things are good. Actually, today was a pretty crazy day. It was lie 97 degrees, so it was really hot.
Mark Mason: That sounds like Texas.
Pat Flynn: It felt like Texas, but then in the evening it started to rain, so I don’t know what’s going on.
Mark Mason: I’m glad you didn’t wash away. I saw a tweet from you that you thought maybe you were in Australia or New Zealand based on the weather.
Pat Flynn: Yes. Melbourne, Australia, one of my favorite places, just four seasons in a single day basically.
Mark Mason: There you go. So, it’s really great to have you here. One of the things that I’ve been talking about on the podcast, as you know, is trying to build people up to this idea of how you can make money on the internet, how you can build a business.
One of the questions that I get from time to time is… Is it really possible to make money on the internet some other way besides teaching people how to make money on the internet? I always laugh about that, because the businesses that I really admire on the internet are businesses that don’t have anything to do with internet marketing.
One of the best examples I could think of and one of the reasons I wanted to have you on the show is your green architecture business, the place that you very first got started. I was wondering if you could just start off the interview just by giving us a little brief history about how all that happened and how that’s an example of how people who have some domain knowledge can make money with information products on the internet?
Pat Flynn: Sure, no problem. What’s funny is a lot of people ask me that same question. “Can I make money by not telling people how to make money?” I always tell them my story because it’s exactly that.
From the beginning, I went to school for architecture at the University of California Berkley, loved architecture. I graduated and got a great 9:00 to 5:00 job, I loved what I was doing. I was traveling around the U.S. meeting with high end clients, designing Hilton Hotels in Vegas and whatnot. I was just loving life.
I could see my whole life planned out, 401k, retire at 65 and enjoy life then. Then all of a sudden the whole economy thing happened and one by one everyone in our office was getting laid off and eventually it was my turn.
That was a pretty dramatic moment in my life and it was nearly impossible to get another job in the architecture field just because no one was building, there was no credit available for builders or anything like that. So, I looked for a solution.
I thought about going into another field or something related to architecture like engineering. But, I had been listening to a podcast, The Internet Business Mastery podcast, and those guys, Sterling and Jay, inspired me so much. I really always wanted to do internet business, I heard success stories and these guys just inspired me.
I was like, “That’s so awesome.” I was kind of living vicariously through what they were doing and the guests that they had on the show. My only experience doing something online at the time was a blog I created for myself.
So, what I did, this was before I got laid off, I was taking this test called The LEED exam, which stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, and I created this blog to keep track of my notes for me. I knew how blogs worked, content management systems, and it was really easy for me to study on the computer. When I was traveling I could just go to any computer or take my laptop and study instead of carrying around a whole notepad.
Also, I must confess that my handwriting is like chicken scratch, so that’s why I created this blog. I passed the test, all my notes were on there still, and when I just for fun checked the analytics, the website visitor statistics, thousands of people were visiting my site from around the world. I freaked out.
I freaked out at the beginning, because I was like, “Whoa. This is like an invasion of my privacy.” I didn’t know how the internet worked with keywords and Google and stuff like that, but apparently I had been writing content that was related to keywords that people were searching for related to this exam.
So, they found me, they were using my notes. I later enabled comments and people were commenting and asking questions and I would help them out. I just became this authority, this head figure in this niche, the LEED green building exam niche.
I wasn’t an expert, I didn’t think I was an expert, I still had to look up stuff all the time to give people the correct answer. But, I knew more than they did and because of that I think they trusted me. That really helped as I started to build my website and actually take it a step further.
This was after I actually passed the exam, I took it a step further and made sure that all the content on there was perfect for people who were studying for the test, because I knew exactly how hard it was. I knew the lack of resources that were available for the test at the time, so I wanted to be that resource and help people out.
That’s exactly what I did. Right before I got laid off I was helping tons and tons of people pass the exam for totally free and I never planned on making money from this website at all. Until I got laid off, then I was like, “I guess I’ll do something online. All these people I’ve heard about are making money online.”
“Let’s see if I can do anything with this blog I have. I know I have traffic and I heard that if you have traffic you can do things with it to make money.” So, naturally the first thing I did was put Adsense on my blog, a little link text and little banner ads. I think the first month after that I had made 35 to 40 dollars.
I was blown away, 40 dollars for doing nothing basically. All I did was put some code on my website and let it run and I had 40 dollars in my pocket. That just seemed amazing to me. Unfortunately, at that time that wasn’t even enough to fill a tank of gas. I was in Irvine, California at the time.
Mark Mason: Right, especially not in California.
Pat Flynn: During summer it was like five dollars a gallon. So, from there I did more research. I asked a ton of questions from different gurus, I joined Internet Business Mastery Academy, just trying to figure out everything that I could do to make more money online, because I knew it was possible, I had 40 dollars and I wanted it to be more.
So, what I did from there was I sold private advertising on my website, little 125×125 pixel ads on my sidebar of my blog. My first deal was for 50 dollars for the first month. That was amazing too. So, I had the 50 dollars from this one company for one ad and 40 dollars coming in from Adsense, so I had almost 100 dollars. That was pretty amazing to me as well.
Then from there I added more private advertising, but still it wasn’t enough for me to sustain a living. I was getting married in just a few months and I had to figure out something to do. So, what I did was I gave myself an ultimatum.
I said, “Pat, you have three months to actually make this into a sustainable business. If you don’t then you’re going to go look for another job.”
Mark Mason: Three whole months? Wow.
Pat Flynn: Three whole months, I didn’t know if that was too long or too short, I just gave myself a time and wanted to make sure I got it done in that time.
So, from there I had read about people creating their own products and I learned about ebooks and how to write them. I created a study guide for the LEED exam, totally elecrtronic, I wrote it in Microsoft Word and it was just a PDF.
That took about a month and a half, so I was half way through the time and I was really scared. I didn’t know what to expect. I would have been happy to sell one copy. Well, the first month I launched that ebook on my website, my existing blog, I made 8,000 dollars in the first month.
That was more money than I’d ever seen in two or three months of work at my normal job, way more than that. That just blew my mind. I knew it was possible, so I took it a step further and I created an audio guide to go along with it.
Again, these are just tips and tricks from internet marketing friends that told me, “You should do this. Check out this guy who did this.” So, I’m just following people’s examples. I created an audio guide to go along with the ebook, so I had two products, an ebook and an audio guide.
I sold them together for a discount price. After I launched the audio guide, that month I think I made 20,000 dollars and I peeked in March of 2009 with making 30,000 dollars in one single month just from one product, one study guide. 30,000 dollars, I couldn’t believe it, I pinched myself.
I still pinch myself because I can’t believe it happened. But, now that I’m into internet marketing and in business I know exactly why that happened and that’s why I created the Smart Passive Income blog, because I want to show people that it is possible to make money online without having to tell people how to make money online.
I’m sure most of your listeners have never heard of the LEED exam before, it’s such a small tiny little niche in the corner of the world, but just selling an ebook for it gave me half my salary working as an architect in one month.
Mark Mason: I work at a company in my day job that has a LEED certified building and I had never heard of LEED before, so there you go. It’s a pretty obscure niche to be making 30,000 dollars in one month.
That’s just an amazing story and I remember it like it was yesterday, because I was there. All of this was happening inside the Academy essentially. It’s just shocking.
Pat Flynn: Lots of credit goes to the Academy. They helped me out a lot, you helped me out, and Sterling and Jay and everyone else in there. There’s a lot of people in the Academy too who also make a good living not talking about making money online.
Mark Mason: Yes.
Pat Flynn: Shawn Newnann I think he has a site where he teaches people how to speak Indonesian. There’s a guy who has a site that teaches people how to play the guitar and they’re making a killing too.
Mark Mason: Yes. With great products that help people at a fair price. They do this thing that my friend Nicole Dean always says, they make the internet a better place and they help other people profitably. That’s another way I like to say that.
Pat Flynn: I love that.
Mark Mason: That’s such a great thing. But, you didn’t stop there. The Smart Passive Income blog is one of the top blogs that I recommend people go read. I recommend all my listeners go over there, sign up for your list and download your excellent resource on ebook creation.
That’s very good, by the way. I haven’t had a chance to mention that to you. That’s outstanding.
Pat Flynn: I appreciate that. I just wanted to tell people exactly how I created the ebook that had generated all that income, so I laid it out on the line right there.
Mark Mason: If there are people listening to this that want to know how to do that, that resource is just outstanding to get a real perspective on exactly what it takes.
You didn’t stop there, right? You’ve now launched this other business where you’re creating sometimes it’s like five or six iPhone applications in a month. Is that right?
Pat Flynn: Yes, that’s right. I don’t do it myself, I don’t program, I don’t even know where to start with programming iPhone apps. In case you’re wondering how it all works, my buddy and I just come up with ideas and we outsource them to people who are good at creating iPhone apps.
My business partner knows how to program, but we don’t choose to do it, because there’s people out there who are experts in iPhone programming only and we outsource our ideas to multiple programmers at the same time to act like there are four or five of us that are working on it at the same time.
We can get a lot more done in a shorter amount of time, the quality of the products are much better than we could ever do, and we’re doing maybe four or five iPhone apps a month and that market has just taken off. We’re doing pretty good with it, so it’s a lot of fun.
Mark Mason: It’s amazing. Did I see that you have a breathalyzer application?
Pat Flynn: Yes. That one just came out. For those of you who don’t know, my iPhone app company is LOLer Apps, which stands for Laugh Out Louder Apps, and they’re all gag apps. I’m sure you’ve heard of iFart by Joel Comm.
Mark Mason: Yes, by Joel Comm, right.
Pat Flynn: That thing made on Christmas Day I think it was 2008 he earned over 25,000 dollars in a single day.
Mark Mason: A dollar at a time, right?
Pat Flynn: A dollar at a time. He has other apps and there’s other people. I think there’s an app called Doodle Jump right now that was done by two independent developers. They just cleared the 3.5 million dollar mark.
Mark Mason: Yes. The Words with Friends guys are from here in Dallas.
Pat Flynn: Really?
Mark Mason: Yes, they live right here in Dallas. I haven’t met them, but they live in one of the suburbs here in Dallas.
Pat Flynn: I’ve got to talk to those guys.
Mark Mason: Absolutely. I’ll try to set it up for you.
Pat Flynn: I was going to say because my wife got kind of mad at me because I played that game for too long.
Mark Mason: So, that’s just been another successful thing for you. Do you do anything special to promote an iPhone app?
Pat Flynn: A few things. We run what’s called AdMob Ads, it’s kind of like Adsense for iPhone.
Mark Mason: I see.
Pat Flynn: You can do both ends of it. You can create ads to click over to new applications or you can put code into your existing application for ads to automatically generate and show there and you get paid per click.
So, we have a number of free apps that have AdMob Ads running, kind of like Adsense. Whenever we come out with a new app usually with a paid app we’ll pay for advertising, which is equivalent to doing Adwords.
Mark Mason: Right.
Pat Flynn: So, we do that. We do a little bit of article marketing and going out to different review blogs.
What’s been really helpful is we’ve noticed with a lot of other iPhone app developers, especially ones who have multiple iPhone apps, on each of their applications they have a “more apps” button, so people can click on the “more apps” button and see the other apps that are available. That’s been helping out tremendously.
Mark Mason: Right. I’ve seen that and I buy those other apps, because I’m already invested in what I know is a good app, so I’m expecting that those same developers are also going to deliver something of a similar quality on their other apps.
Pat Flynn: Exactly.
Mark Mason: So, that works really well. That’s really smart. Well, that’s amazing. I hope everyone who is listening to this is convinced that it is possible to make money on the internet without teaching people how to make money on the internet. It’s important that that point is clear.
For people that are starting out on the internet, a lot of my listeners are trying to get started, they have a 9:00 to 5:00 job, they’re trying to get things going or they’ve lost their job and they’re trying to get things going, so what I ask every guest is…
Can you tell me the three things that you wish you had known when you started or the three pieces of advice that you would give someone who is starting out about internet business? Three things that somebody really needs to know, either technical things or technique things or mindset things or whatever you think is important.
If you could only pick three things what would they be?
Pat Flynn: Sure, that’s an excellent question. I might have to take that question for my own podcast.
Mark Mason: And you’re welcome to do that. As long as I get 100 dollars on every download you can use it.
Pat Flynn: Okay, for sure. Three things. The first thing I really wish I knew was that it was really possible to create a successful business online. I think not believing in it slowed me down at first.
Although it may seem like things happened pretty rapidly for me, I do know that I could have done things a lot earlier. Maybe before I even got laid off I could have started my internet business, I didn’t have to wait for that to happen in order for me to do it.
Not believing in it slowed me down. You have your doubts and you’re scared and because of that you don’t take the action that’s required for you to see the results. It’s huge. You have to take leaps of faith almost.
Although you can do research and try and make sure that you’re taking the right steps, you’re eventually going to have to take a leap and you’re going to have to take bold actions in order to make things happen. Just stepping out of your comfort zone, that’s a huge thing.
Tim Ferris in 4 Hour Workweek, I remember specifically this one exercise that he has. After each chapter he has different exercises to help you with the mindset of being a successful entrepreneur.
One of the things he suggests you should do is to go to a crowded area like a mall or just in the middle of a sidewalk somewhere on a busy street and just lay down and look up and just not worry about what everyone else is thinking, because it’s training you to step out of your comfort zone and do things that you might not normally do.
That’s kind of what it takes in order to be successful online. You’ve just got to do it. My best teacher for everything I know, although I talk about Internet Business Mastery and I learned so much from them and from you and everyone else, all my mentors online, my best teacher is experience and just doing things. I can’t stress that enough.
Mark Mason: Yes. You miss every shot that you don’t take. Right.
Pat Flynn: Exactly. It’s like in golf when you stroke a putt and you don’t even reach the hole. Well, you didn’t even give yourself a chance to sink it.
Mark Mason: That’s right. So, your advice to everyone listening is to rush out to their local shopping mall and lay down?
Pat Flynn: Yes. Well, no. Just understand that you’re going to have to things that you might not be comfortable with. You’re going to have to take risks. You won’t see the rewards until you take action.
Mark Mason: Okay. Very good. So, thing number one is take action, accept the risk, don’t worry about failure. What’s thing number two?
Pat Flynn: Number two is all of my success has come from helping others first. Before when I was trying to make money off of Adsense and stuff those ads didn’t really do much for the reader of my blog. I was trying to make money for myself, just getting people to click on the site.
What really skyrocketed my income was providing a product, the ebook or the audio guide that I created, that was really helpful. Because that was really helpful and people appreciated that they were happy to pay for it, happy to recommend it to their friends and their coworkers.
I say this all the time. Karma online totally exists. I don’t know if it’s just like a spiritual thing or if it’s actually technical and Butterfly Effect type of stuff, but it really exists. If you help people, like you were saying the Nicole Dean quote from earlier.
Mark Mason: Right.
Pat Flynn: That was just an amazing quote that sums it all up. Making the internet a better place profitably. That’s the other thing is just understanding that your first priority should be helping others and as a side effect you will make money doing that.
Mark Mason: Yes. The quote that I shared with you before, but that I learned actually when I was selling knives door to door, which is a story we’ll have to get into on another podcast.
Pat Flynn: It’s not Cutco is it?
Mark Mason: Actually, yes.
Pat Flynn: Okay, yes, we can talk about that later.
Mark Mason: We’ll have to. I did some sales training with Zig Ziglar and what Zig says is that you can get everything that you want in life by helping other people get what they want.
Pat Flynn: Absolutely.
Mark Mason: I really believe that. That’s what I do in my day job and it’s what I do on MasonWorld.com and I know it’s what you do on Smart Passive Income, because that blog rocks.
Pat Flynn: Thanks.
Mark Mason: People should pause this recording and go over to your website and check it out. It’s just really fantastic.
So, I got thing two. Thing two is help other people first. I like it. What’s thing three?
Pat Flynn: Number three is, and this was hard for me because I’m a control freak, I like to make sure that things are happening and that I’m doing them the right way, the way that they should be done or the way that I want them to be done, but the truth is you don’t have to do everything on your own.
Actually, you shouldn’t do everything on your own. We’re good at certain things and we’re not good at certain things. For those things that we’re not good at we should definitely find those people to fill those gaps, people who are good at those things that we’re not good at to take care of it for us.
They’ll be happy they’re doing things they want to do and then you’ll be happy because you’re not doing things and you can spend time doing what you enjoy or doing what you’re good at. In other words, I don’t want to blatantly say “outsource it,” but that’s kind of what it is.
It’s understanding what your strengths are and focusing on your strengths and not focusing on things that you shouldn’t be focusing on. For instance, when I first started that blog to help me pass the exam I didn’t know anything about WordPress or hosting or anything like that. It took me a month to set it up the way I wanted to. Literally, a month.
Mark Mason: I understand. I know exactly what you’re talking about.
Pat Flynn: I really wish I just knew that there were people online who did this thing for a living who could do it in five minutes and I would pay them 10 dollars or whatever, or however much they’re charging.
On the flip side of that, I’m glad that I went through all that hardships and learning everything because now I understand how some of those things work. Although I would never take on those things as primary jobs I understand how they work.
So, if there’s something that needs a little bit of tweaking that needs to be done on my website, for example, I understand how to do that. I’m not totally lost. Even when I created SmartPassiveIncome.com, which was my follow up website to GreenExamAcademy.com, I knew the process of how to create the blog, but I just outsourced it, I paid someone to build it for me.
I think that helped out a lot, because I have a custom template that a lot of people like and it’s unique and I think that’s been helping with pushing the traffic and new subscribers and getting people excited about the website.
Mark Mason: Yes, your website is beautiful. Again, people should pause this recording and go check it out.
What you just said resonates with something I heard you say earlier with your iPhone apps business. Your partner is a programmer, he doesn’t program, but he can speak intelligently to programmers that you’re hiring and that’s really important.
Pat Flynn: Yes.
Mark Mason: So, I love that. I love those three tips, they’re excellent. I’ll give you the best example, I think, of that. You came out with, as you often do, one of these amazing in depth tutorials about Facebook Fan Page landing pages.
I read that and I understood what I wanted, but I didn’t really want to learn FBML, which is Facebook’s markup language. I looked at it for five minutes and I thought, “I’ve got something else to do.”
I sent the URL for your page to my developer and I said, “Go read Pat’s post and then make me one of those, please, and send me the bill.” I got something that was very nice.
Pat Flynn: I remember your landing page, it is quite nice.
Mark Mason: I had nothing to do with it other than being smart enough to send my developer to your website. To be honest with you, besides expressing what I want I can’t add value to the landing page design process. No amount of me messing around with Photoshop is going to get a good result.
I just don’t have that skill, so that’s just wasting everybody’s time for me to work on graphics and positioning some sign up box. That’s not what I do.
So, that’s great advice. People need to do that and they need to do it sooner rather than later. I know it’s very hard. The reason that resonates so much with me is because I tell people exactly the same thing.
They need to start small, but start outsourcing the stuff either that they don’t like to do because it’s sucking out their life force or that they’re not good at.
Pat Flynn: Right, exactly.
Mark Mason: This has been absolutely fantastic.
Pat Flynn: Mark, we’ve got to do it again sometime.
Mark Mason: I really appreciate you being here, I’d love to do it again. Let’s talk a little bit about how people can get a hold of you. The internet is a big place and there a few things that I recommend to my readers that directly compete, if you want to use that word, with what I do here, but it doesn’t bug me because, as we talked about before, I just want to help people.
Reading your blog will help people, so tell me a little bit about how people can find you on the internet.
Pat Flynn: Sure. When I’m not at a mall laying down face up you can find me on my blog at SmartPassiveIncome.com, that’s the hub, that’s where everything happens. I talk about everything that I do online, even my income reports down to the penny exactly where it all comes from.
If you just want to say “hi” or “hello” probably the best way to find me is on my Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/smartpassiveincome and we have a growing I guess you could say fan base there, I don’t know what they call them anymore.
There’s a great community there. If you even have a question there’s a lot of people there who will answer before I do. So, come say “hi” on Facebook if you have time.
Mark Mason: Very good. I really appreciate your time. I really encourage people if they have any interest at all to go to your website and download your ebook on ebooks, it’s really a fantastic read. Great job.
Pat Flynn: Thank you.
Mark Mason: Okay, sir, thank you very much. I wish you all the best and I will be in touch.
Pat Flynn: All right. Let’s do this again soon.
Mark Mason: Thanks. Bye.
That wraps it up for this episode 11 of the Mason World Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast. I hope you enjoyed it. We’ll be back in a couple of weeks with another episode where we have another interview with a guy that’s killing it online without selling stuff that teaches people how to make money online. Until then, we’ll see you soon. Thanks.
My name is Mark Mason from MasonWorld.com, I hope you have an absolutely fantastic day. Thanks.
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