How to Take Your Brand to the Next Level – Interview with Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income

Sharon Tseung 0:02
This is the Digital Nomad Quest podcast with Sharon Tseung teaching people how to build passive income, become financially free and design their best lives.

Hey guys, it’s Sharon from Digital Nomad Quest. And I am super excited for today’s episode because we are interviewing Pat Flynn, who is the founder of smart, passive income. He’s changed the lives of tons of people around the world, including myself, because what he does is he helps people build passive income driven online businesses in an ethical way. So he’s given all this value for free online, and he just helped tons of people out there, Pat Flynn himself has created this empire that makes over seven figures a year in passive income, and he’s gotten 50 million downloads on his podcast. He has hundreds of thousands of subscribers spoken at hundreds of conferences. He’s even featured in Gary V’s book crushing it. He’s a top player influencing people are all around the world. So I really think this episode’s gonna help you guys a lot. It helped me a lot. This episode is all about building up your brand. So getting your brand to the next level. I asked him tons of questions about podcasting, YouTube, blog, email, everything. So I covered tons of topics as a two hour interview. So I hope you guys get a lot of value out of it. And hope you guys enjoy.

Hey, Matt, how’s it going?

Pat Flynn 1:22
Good. How are you? Sure. Thanks for having me.

Sharon Tseung 1:23
Yeah. Thanks for joining me today. It’s really cool to speak with you. I mean, I met you four years ago at the traffic and conversion summit. Wow.

Pat Flynn 1:32
Yeah, that feels like ages ago.

Sharon Tseung 1:34
Yeah. So long ago. And I remember being so excited to kind of hit up your podcasting seminar. And you were nice enough to chat with me and stay in touch with me. So really, thank you for that. And I just really respect that you make it a point to connect and engage with your audience.

Pat Flynn 1:49
Yeah, I mean, it’s one of my favorite things to do. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned since doing business for, like, 10 years now, it’s that it’s always about the people, the people that you help. It’s the people you connect with, who can tell you what they need help, and bus help you create solutions, and then everybody wins. And so in my business in my world, and the way I teach business is I teach people how to have conversations with people, I teach people how to connect with their audience. That’s one thing that I try to lead by example, with, which is how we got connected. I got really interested in what you were up to, and all the amazing music that you produce, and the music videos like that’s the coolest thing ever. So it was it was cool. I the feeling’s mutual. Awesome, thanks so much. I mean, I haven’t been doing music that much lately. But I’m trying to get back into want to grow my blog and my brand. And that’s actually kind of what I wanted to talk to about today. In today’s video and podcasts, I want to talk about growing a brand. I’m currently at a place where I’ve been blogging for like a few years, and making a bit of passive income. But a lot of it’s coming from Etsy, and Amazon and I’m trying to do more with my blog and make a bigger impact. I want to kind of use YouTube and podcasting and get it all to the next level. And I know you’ve done the same thing you’ve like diversified into these other platforms, not just blogging. So I want to talk to you about that. So my plan was to produce video content, like once a week, convert that audio into podcast episodes as well, and then launch courses and do affiliate marketing. So I guess my question is, is does that sound? Okay, in terms of frequency? And then what I mean, what would you do in my position, I guess whether it’s you or anybody else listening or watching this, to this right now, the platforms and the frequency by which you produce content is secondary to truly understanding what your audience needs help with and who those people are going back to what we mentioned earlier about people, it always starts there. I mean, I have a best selling book called will it fly. And when you go through that process of testing, and validating your ideas, and then creating courses or selling anything, it always starts with communication with your audience. And so it’s really cool to know that you’ve already got a little bit of a head start with some of these things, smaller passive income things that you’ve done. And I would try to really hone in on who is it that’s buying from you? And what are their needs? What are their goals? And then the podcast content, the video content comes secondary to that, because it’s a way for you to use those platforms to speak to those people. And the more that you can answer their questions, the more you can interact with them, if possible, the better. And this is what Google is awarding This is what YouTube is awarding people who find answers to their questions. Those people who supply those answers, they get rewarded, they get put to the top of the algorithms. And that’s what that’s that’s great, because we have the answer. So, you know, you could do that through conversations with people. If you have an email list, or you have social media accounts, just what I would do is try to get in conversations with people one on one, that’s the best way to do it, it’s a tough thing to do. And for introverts, like me, and I’m pretty sure most people are introverts, in my opinion, who tried to get into business, who aren’t naturally quote naturally good at it. It’s because we’re scared to talk to people. And that’s why it seems like the people who are always at the top are these exuberant, very outgoing kind of people, it’s because they have a little bit of an advantage, they are okay with talking to people. And that’s what we as introverts have to do, we have to step out of our comfort zone, so that we can talk to people. But in terms of like frequency, it doesn’t really matter as long as you’re consistent. And so I would say weekly producing on YouTube, starting with that platform first and then taking the audio out. What this does is it allows you to get more bang for your buck from that initial piece of content is a very smart thing to do. So taking the audio out of your video putting that into a podcast, you can even then go further and repurpose it by taking the text out of that audio, the transcription and then using that as a blog post and then taking micro snippets of that, and turning that into pieces that can go on social media that then all lead up to the bigger sort of video or the podcast and the whole episode. You see a lot of people do this Gary van der Chuck Lewis house from school of greatness, they take little pieces of their interviews, little pieces of bigger content, and they share those and they’re about very specific things. So let’s say we do an interview together, and maybe it’s this one, and there’s a part in the middle, that’s a minute long, 60 seconds, that’s just like, Wow, so impactful. You take that. And then you can post that on Instagram, on Facebook, on Twitter, and that becomes something that piques people’s interest so that they’ll go wow, I need to I need to see this whole conversation or, well, I didn’t know this Pat Flynn guy, but he sounds really interesting. Like, I’m going to go check them out, or Wow, I love the question that Sharon asked, then I want I need to know the rest of the story. And again, it’s going back to the people and what would interest them based on their needs, their problems their wants? And that’s I think that sounds like a great plan. So you know, in terms of platforms, Yeah, totally. I would just challenge you to see if you can have those one on one conversations with people because then in those conversations, you can say things like, Hey, what are you struggling with the most? That’s a beautiful question to ask people, because then they’re going to tell you, and not only are they going to tell you what they need help with, which then triggers in your mind, okay, maybe I should create a podcast episode about that. Find an expert, I can interview who knows about those things. But what it also does is it allows you to understand the language that they use really important to understand because even if you know the problem, and you create the solution, if you don’t know the language that they’re using to describe the problem, you can’t tell them you have the solution in a way that they they would understand, I think was Jay Abraham who said if you can define the problem better than your target customer, they’re going to automatically assume you have the solution. So in your videos, in your podcast episodes, if you speak to those problems that people have, and you get them to go like, yeah, that’s totally me. Or Oh, my gosh, like how did Sharon get in my head? How does she know that I’m going through the situation right now. Like, it’s as if she’s right there with me. And then in your podcast interviews, trying to get into the head of your audience, again, going back to who they are and what they need, by trying to tap into what questions they might ask. If they were in that room with you having conversation with that person, then that’s when they go, Wow, Sharon gets me. This is my girl, I need to follow everything she does, because she obviously knows what what I’m going through. And she is finally somebody who I know understands. So paying attention to the language is really important, just like in music, right? Like the example I use is with my wife, she’s a huge Backstreet Boys fan. And I was asking her about how she got to be a fan. And the first kind of time she remembered listening to their music. And it was because she had just broken up broken up with a boyfriend, she was 1515 year old teenage girl, really upset about that relationship, then heard a song called quit playing games with my heart, every single lyric, and that song spoke to what she was going through in that moment. And because of that, that triggered in her mind, like, wow, this, this group, like they know what I’m talking about, like, they understand that using my language, and that’s the language that a teenage girl would use, right? Like quit playing games with my heart. Like, that’s what they would say. And you think of like Taylor Swift fans, they’re all over her because she speaks their language. And any any musician speaks the language of their audience, because they they are themselves like great musicians are themselves. And like I said earlier, your vibe attracts your tribe, you’ll you’ll attract those those people. And it’s kind of a two way conversation. So that’s a long winded answer to say, Yes, I think the platforms you’re choosing are great. And the plan you have for repurposing content is awesome. And if you can combine that in that Venn diagram of platform to the problems and needs, then that middle part is going to be the beauty area that’s going to help your brand grow and help. Really word of mouth spread. Have it happened organically.

Sharon Tseung 9:22
Cool. Wow. That’s like such a good thing. Yeah. I know, you send out this email newsletter in the beginning, where you ask, I think, what stage they’re in, like, what problems they’re going through? Do you individually ask people? Or do you kind of mass do it through your email platform?

Pat Flynn 9:41
So if I happen to be in a one to one conversation on social media? I’ll often send them a DM and go, Hey, by the way, like, super cool that you’re following me? I appreciate it. If If you could answer one question for me, you know, what’s your number one biggest challenge related to blank? Or what’s your biggest struggle right now that I can maybe find answers for you for and it’s very easy to do on social media, people are used to having conversations right? Like that. And it’s kind of cool, especially because sometimes we’re so used to getting people sending us dm asking for things. This is like unique, you’re getting a DM of a person asked me how they can help you that’s very like, Whoa, this is different, I need to pay attention to this person. So that’s number one. But on my email list, the way that I set it up is on my email list, I give away a little bit like a free value might be a PDF file to you know how to start your podcast or a PDF file on tips on affiliate marketing, like just kind of a couple pages, very valuable, but people will in exchange for that give me their email address. And then one of the first emails I send out after is an email that says exactly that, but in a more automated fashion. So it’s an email that I pre write, and I use an email service provider called Convert Kit. There’s many other different kinds of like it. And what it does is I can time it so that those emails go out, you know, certain amount of days after they subscribe. So what happens is a person again, in a very different way gets an email from somebody going, Hey, how can I help you? Or what are you struggling with? versus, hey, here’s an email, go buy my stuff. So now again, triggering them in this in a similar way, like, Oh, this person is actually looking to see what I need help with. That’s cool. But also, then they answer. And again, they’re telling you in their in their language in the inner voice. And what I like about the email situation is I can keep track of those replies, I can automatically put them in a folder, so that when I need ideas for what content to create, or when I want to see if there’s any patterns for like, recurring things that people are asking for that that is assigned to me that, wow, that’s a very important thing I need to figure out how to answer. And that could turn into a blog post that could turn into a video or a podcast, or if it’s asked for a lot, and it’s a big topic, maybe it’s a course that people would pay for. And then I can go through the validation process of seeing, you know how best I can provide a solution for them. But yeah, the automated thing is great, because like if you subscribe today, like tomorrow, you’ll get that email. But then if somebody subscribes tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, they’ll get that email. So now as a content creator, I have constant flow of ideas that I don’t have to guess anymore. Like these are coming straight from the mouths, the ears, the fingers of my audience. And so again, they’re guiding me, they’re guiding me, my goal in business is to teach people how to take the guesswork out. And it always goes back to the person that you’re helping.

Sharon Tseung 12:24
Awesome, man such a good answers and actually wanted to ask you more about email, because I just got Convert Kit, actually. And I want to, like utilize it. And I use your link to

Pat Flynn 12:34
Why did you Why did you use my link?

Sharon Tseung 12:36
Well, I’ve been listening to a ton of your podcast actually asked has been super good. Cool. So I just wanted to support you. And just like everything you’ve helped me with, with the podcast and everything.

Pat Flynn 12:46
Cool. So I was able to create content myself through the podcast, and whatever that helped you in your life for whatever you need, needed help with. So as a result, you wanted to pay me back. And you seek out an affiliate link, which I have made publicly, you know, available on my website, to Penny back. And I make that clear, like, hey, if you go through this link, it’ll be an easy way to pay me back if you’ve gotten any value from me. So it’s kind of a win for both sides. And there’s no reason why anybody can’t do the same thing. I mean, how many times do we recommend our favorite movie to our friends or a restaurant down the street to our friends, it’s literally the same thing. Earn trust over time, because we’ve helped each other out, we’re buddies, and you can be buddies in real life. And real life includes online. And when I have a recommendation, like people who trust me are going to try it. And that’s the cool thing. But that that comes with a lot of responsibility to you know, especially at my level where I have an email list of, you know, 250,000 people and I can, I can literally say, hey, go buy this product, and thousands of people will buy it, like, that’s cool. But also very scary, because if I promote something for the wrong reasons, then it’s going to come back and bite me in the butt. Like it’s gonna it’s gonna like even though if I promote a product cuz as a big Commission on tied to it, like, Sure, I might get a big payday. But I’m also going to get a bunch of people go going, Hey, Pat, like this doesn’t, this doesn’t align with your brand, it didn’t work for me like you like it said it was going to work. It just it I don’t like this product. And now I don’t trust you anymore. That trust that you have with your audience is the most important thing. That’s the new digital currency is trust with your audience, because that turns into people transacting with you. So yeah, I mean, you’re displaying the example of what it’s like to have a creator share value, and then having a person as a result, to think that person, you know, purchase through your link, and then I get paid, you get a tool that you love, and everybody wins. And you are building that sort of clout right now, at the same time, and there’s going to be people in the future who may be listening to this who go you know, what Sharon had a really great podcast episode there. And she mentioned Convert Kit for my email service provider, and I’m going to look for her link, because she helped me out and it’s just a nice way to kind of have good vibes. And you know, I I, I can’t remember who I think it was a woman named Nicole Dean literally, like nine years ago ago who said, Pat, like whenever you do business, just try to make the internet a better place. Like, if that’s the only thing you remember from this conversation we have. And I think it was in a podcast interview I did with her. She was just like, just trying to make the internet better place like everybody wins when it happens. And you will, you will be rewarded for that. So that’s my advice for you is just like, how can you make the internet a better place or a better place, especially for your audience? Yeah, definitely. I think it’s all about providing value. And I guess going back to the different platforms, was there one that kind of work best for you? Would there be one you recommend? Most? Yeah, I mean, for me, my little history of platforms, I started out blogging, I started in very late 2007. I then moved on to YouTube after that, and I never really treated YouTube, like it was a primary platform, that was a big mistake. If I were to treat YouTube like a treated now back then I’d be way ahead of the game. Because no matter what platform you choose, you should go all in on it, for sure. And I was just using YouTube as like a repository for a video every few months, just because I just was scared of it, really. And then the podcast came out in 2010. And I started the podcast every other week. And I had done that for a few months. And it was it was hard. And I didn’t understand how it all worked. And I was just like, Okay, well, I’ll try it for a little bit and see what happens. And then I remember going to a conference. And even though I blogged three times a week, and only podcasts at once every other week. So one podcast for every six pieces of blog content. When I went to this conference, everybody couldn’t stop talking about my podcast, podcast, this podcast that spot and I was like, What about my blog? Like, I’m spending 90% of my time on my blog, like, what about that stuff? And I’m like, No, I don’t like a story you told on your show so great, or that guests you had was amazing. I was like, wow, okay, I should probably start listening to people and put more time into the podcast versus the blog. So that’s what I did, I kind of did flip flop, and I double down on the podcast, I cut my blood log in half. And then actually now cut off the blog for just once a week. And the podcast. Now, my main show comes out once a week, my other show ass pack comes out once a week, it had come out for five days a week for a while, and then I slowed it down. But for me, the podcast really was the big one that allowed me to in my way, connect with my audience best different people connect with different people in different platforms for them. And so what I would recommend for anybody listening and you Sharon is just pick the one that you are most interested in, that you feel like you can have a long term passion for that out of all of them, you would wake up in the morning, and even though you don’t want to do it, you would still go and do it. And for me that was that was podcasting. And that was partly because I was scared of getting on camera not so much anymore. And right now like podcasting and YouTube, to me are kind of flip flopping on my favorite right now because I have a lot of fun with the creative aspects of YouTube. But podcasting is so much easier to produce. But it’s only one layer, it’s just audio and find the ability is terrible on podcast versus YouTube, which is like it’s so engine and there’s 500 million active channels, and however many videos are viewed every single second. Versus podcasting. Well, there’s not very many people there. But that’s also great, because that means you can stand out. Like, there’s no there’s less than, there’s less than 1 million active podcast right now. I mean, the numbers are crazy. So we’re just starting out. So if you can get an early on that, that’s great. So pick, I would choose either YouTube or a podcast to start as your primary platform like you’re building content, specifically for that. And you’re repurposing your content for the other platforms that sort of secondary places to put those for now. And then what I would do is work hard to get to a point where you have your systems down, you have your procedures down, you have maybe a team that helps you or maybe not, but you just get so good at how you do what you do there, that you get some time back to then start putting some primary time into a new platform. So you can start to be everywhere. I used to teach this strategy called be everywhere, when people saw that I had a blog, and I had a video channel and I had a podcast. And it was like no matter how you consume content, I’m everywhere. Like there’s no excuse not to get me. I remember teaching this in 2011, after I had all these platforms, but I didn’t stress the fact that you can and should not have all of them at the same time at the start, you have to pick one, master it and then move on to the next master it then move on to the next which is what I did. Too many people then went Oh, okay, I’m going to start all those things. Plus, I’m going to be on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, all at the same time. And then what happens with their energy, none of those platforms have a chance to do any damage for them in a good way. Because they’re spread so thin. So just choose one and learn everything you can about it, collaborate with other people there. That’s, that’s the exciting thing about YouTube. And I know you have YouTube experience with your music. So for you, I would recommend that because you have, you know, a little bit of cloud there already. And it sounds like with the podcast, it is actually video for and then audio second, which is great. And you can get into a lot of search engine terms and keyword related micro content coming out of your show as well. And, yeah, it’s just, whatever you do, just make sure that you can continue to have fun doing it. Because the truth is, if you don’t have fun doing it, and doesn’t mean you’re gonna have fun 100% of the time, but it just means like, you know, you can imagine yourself doing this for a while, then you’ll stick with it and be consistent enough to start to see results.

Sharon Tseung 20:31
Okay, that’s really interesting that I guess blog was not as big as podcasting. So I’m probably gonna have to like rethink my strategy. But I definitely was thinking YouTube, and then yeah, just taking that audio from the YouTube videos. And I mean, do you do that? Or do you just do everything separate?

Unknown Speaker 20:50
I currently do everything separate. Because I want to build could because I am everywhere. And I do have a team where I can create content primarily just for each of those places. Yes, I could repurpose things, but I don’t because I have a large audience. And I don’t feel like I need to right now. And maybe I’m shooting myself in the foot. However, I will say that I am going to be starting a new podcast soon. And it’s going to live on my personal branded site, Pat flynn.com, which is an it’s there. But it’s kind of just been dormant for very long time. But I’m excited to start shifting some energy into new areas of life that I want to talk about on a show. And this will actually be a video interview show where I then take that audio and yes, put it on to an audio platform and directories like Apple podcasts and Spotify and all those places. But it’ll be primarily a YouTube show.

Pat Flynn 21:47
And actually, today, my team was in town, we were actually just jamming on that because it’s going to be a lot of fun. We’re putting a lot of effort into the high production of that. And I’m excited for it. Because now on this platform at Pat Flynn com, I can talk about Yes, business stuff. But I can also talk about parenting. Because I have two kids, I can also talk about like tech stuff and Tesla, which I I’m a huge Tesla Elon Musk fan, I can talk about anything I want. Because it’s Pat Flynn. And the business stuff is mostly going to live on Smart Passive income. So I’m excited about that. And I’m kind of just trying to feel where my energy is and where I want to go in the next few years and put more effort into that. That’s not to say you shouldn’t be blogging. I mean, if you want to blog, that’s cool. But I think that you have some talent that, you know, should be seen. And so that’s why I mentioned YouTube for you.

Sharon Tseung 22:36
Cool, um, just out of curiosity, what’s the podcast going to be about?

Pat Flynn 22:40
So it’s called tend to live tentatively, you’re literally the first person to notice

back in time, so it has a Back to the Future theme. I don’t know if you could see, like, for those of you that bike on this table, I’m writing a book right now it’s coming out in August. It’s called super fans. So for this book, I had to take a picture of of all the backs of the future. I’m a huge, huge, like, huge super fan of me too. And because my audience knows that they often send me stuff. So this all this table stuff right now there’s like 50 pieces of from a Yahtzee set to a levitating DeLorean to like, here’s like, back the future monopoly set. Like, this is stuff fans have sent me because I’ve helped them. Anyway, I like Back to the Future. So I wanted to have something time and back to feature related for my Pat Flynn show, cuz that’s a very me. But it would be a interview show where I would bring creators on to talk about how they got to where they’re at. So going back into time with them, showing them like their first pieces of content to see like how different things were and where they are now and then actually fast forward the time to the future to talk about where they want to go and where they think things are going. And so this this is that’s the theme of the show. And then ultimately, what I want to do is move that show from inside a studio to inside a DeLorean, which is the car from Back to the Future that I wouldn’t own, which I do not own yet. But it’ll be something that I want to track during the first few seasons to like, you know, if I get sponsorship money, I want to be like, Alright, guys, we’re raising money for the DeLorean. So we can move the show anyway, just, I’m just being more of myself there, and I’m having a good time with it. But I also want to use that platform to start to reach more general audiences outside of just entrepreneurship. And really, it’s just a place to experiment. And I think that’s a big part of business. And that’s something that we’re all doing what you’re doing Sharon it’s like, you’re trying these different things, and you’re seeing what works, you give it some time to react, whether it’s a good reaction or bad reaction, you have to give it some time. And then you reassess sort of like, okay, had this met our expectations? Do we want to keep going stop or start something new, or continue doing it. And that’s kind of what business is all about. Like, and with two kids, I have a son who’s not and a daughter who’s six, like, this is stuff that we’re teaching them every day, it’s like, you can’t be perfect on your first go around. And if you want to start a business, it’s like riding a bike. like nobody ever goes on a bike for the first time. And just pedals like they’ve been like they’re Pro, you have to fall and then you know, put your feet down to hold you up because you don’t know how to balance yourself. But then like, even when you get up for a couple tries you do you do a couple petals, and you’re doing it but then you fall off. Like it’s the exact same analogy with with business and creation. It’s like it’s all experimentation. It’s all getting used to The Balancing Act. It’s all, you know, trial and error and failures are great. I love failing, I failed so many times, and I try to fail as fast as I can. Because then that those are teaching moments for me, because then I can go Okay, that sucks. And why? That’s the big question. Don’t just go Oh, that sucks. I’m not any good. Like, of course, I’m not any good. I’ve never done this before. But if I can learn from that, then the second go around? Well, I at least know not to do it the way I had just done it, I think was Einstein who said like insanity is trying to do the same thing over and over and over again and trying to get different results. And that’s true with anything. So I just try to learn from my mistakes and keep pushing forward.

Sharon Tseung 26:11
Cool. It sounds like you have a lot on your plate like how do you I guess balance everything? And what is your normal day look like? And if you’re going to add this podcast, will you have enough time to do everything here? I mean,

Pat Flynn 26:23
we only have 24 hours in the day, and you should be sleeping for a lot of that. I do have to admit I don’t sleep as much as I probably should six hours a day, which is probably the minimum I should be getting, I should probably be more like seven or eight. Anyway, that’s that’s

how I balance everything. Well, number one, it’s it’s understanding what my priorities are. That’s number one. That also plays into me learning what to say yes to and what to say no to. And the fact that when you say yes to something, you’re also saying no to something else. And so that’s why understanding your priorities are important. Now, when I think first started out, and before I had kids, I was saying yes to everything, because it was just like opportunities I never had before. And in the beginning, it kind of has to be a little bit of a hustle and a little bit of a grind. And you do have to speak for free, you do have to try things out that are a little bit risky. But over time, you start to get your legs and you start to understand sort of what works and what doesn’t. And for me now, what has been really helpful is really understanding where I want to where I want to end up. And if I have an opportunity in front of me, and it doesn’t align with my core values and what my audience wants, but especially where I want to be in the future, then it’s an easy No, for example, you know, I have a company that I promote, it’s a hosting company, and I’ve I’ve made over a million dollars promoting them, which is a sign that wow, what if I had my own hosting company and I actually had an opportunity to partner with somebody for a hosting company where I would be like a 50% owner, and it would probably literally make me hundreds of millions of dollars. But then you think about what your day might be like, if you’re owning a company of that sort of nature. It’s like I gotta wear a suit and go to an office. And I got to have like, all this infrastructure and insurance and like, worry about up time and like stress out like, I do not need that in my life, that’s not worth nine figures. To me. It’s not at all. And so I need to build for what I want not for, you know, just what’s out there. And that that’s really important. Because if you don’t know where you want to go, then what are you doing and why you’re just kind of running out of energy, you might be actually backpedaling and not even knowing it. So understanding your goal, it’s like the navigation menu, right, you put the address in so that even if you were to get off course, like the little voice goes, Oh, make a U turn up there. So you can get back on the course. And that’s what we need. And it’s it’s most entrepreneurs who go, Oh, I want to start a business, I want to do something. So I’m just going to pick whatever first opportunity there is, and just go with it, which is okay to start. But then you don’t course correct for where you want to go. And I go to these conferences and I we sit in the bar after the conference and we chat, we get honest with each other. And I can’t tell you how many people I’ve talked to you who are very successful on paper, they have literally millions of dollars in the bank, employees, very successful company and they’re unhappy, it’s because they’re not doing something that fulfills them. And that kind of sucks. Because when you’re an entrepreneur, it’s like you can design whatever you want. And if you if it’s gone under control, something went wrong, it’s usually because they didn’t have any sort of address and that navigation menu. The second part of this, or third or fourth, or whatever number we’re at now, is the fact that I’ve since built a team since I’ve started, I would 100% not be able to handle everything I do without my team right now, it’s only because I have a team that I’m able to work on multiple projects at the same time, which is not recommended at the start. And for many people, you have to be yourself and only you at the start and you have to bootstrap and you have to wear all the hats and that’s okay. But if I could go back in the time, I would actually hire sooner, because I also now understand how valuable My time is. And time to me is worth way more than money. And you know, you can always make more money, but you can’t get your time back. So to me hiring somebody to do a job that even I could do myself is worth doing at a certain price point. Because I should probably only be doing things that only I as Pat Flynn can do. Right, I should be the only hope I should be the one hosting my show not editing my show and putting graphics on my website anymore. I had done that for six years. Like I said, I wish I had done it sooner. But another part of that was just and I don’t know if this is just a guy thing. But like, we have so much pride and like doing everything ourselves. It’s like we don’t want to ask for directions, we want to figure it out ourselves, right. And I remember spending eight to 10 hours a day on YouTube trying to learn how to do like website design, because I wanted to do it myself. And I wanted to like put my stamp on it. And it just was hard. But I felt like a sense of pride and finishing things myself. But then I remember my first hire, I hired her to edit my show.

Unknown Speaker 31:05
And I was like, we’ll see how this goes. And she actually edited it better than I did and faster. And I’m like holy crap, I’ve been missing out on so much by just like trying to keep it all for myself. And then I just started starting to get on this fix of like, oh, what else can I can I hand off, and I just started hand off everything as much as I could. to a point, obviously. And now I’m at a point where, you know, I wake up and I think about Okay, who am I going to be talking with today on my show? Or what kind of content? You know, new content can I create for my audience no longer have to edit that show? Or I have to, you know, answer my emails, I have somebody to help me with my emails. Like there’s like I try to get rid of all the sin my life right now. Because and again, it wasn’t always like that. But that’s what I’m working toward. And there’s still a lot of those. But that’s kind of what I want to shoot for. So I can be happy as much as possible.

Sharon Tseung 31:56
Cool. I have a lot of questions that just came up from that. But 30 gun, let’s go. Yeah, I mean, in terms of how you split your day, though, what percentage goes into podcast? What percent goes YouTube? Yeah, percent goes to blog. Other things like how does it work?

Pat Flynn 32:12
So Monday, is my writing day. When I wake up on Monday, I know that day I’m going to write, I’m either gonna be writing inside a new book, I’m going to be writing emails, or writing blog posts. That’s all Monday is Tuesday’s recording day, I wake up on a Tuesday, and I know I’m going to be recording stuff for my show. And we already have planned ahead of time what those shows are going to be or who I’m going to be speaking with, whether it’s on my show or somebody else’s show, Wednesday is my meeting day. So my all my team meetings, I want them to happen on Wednesday, because that’s when I wake up in the morning, I want to be in the mindset of Okay, today’s meeting day. And that way, kind of like dividing my week into those specific tasks allows me to just be fully into that task the whole day versus what a lot of people and this is what I did for years was having to do the podcast stuff from like nine to 10. But then after that, I’m start writing and then I’m take a little break, and I’m going to go into this meeting, and then we’ll go back to podcasting in the afternoon. And that can be done. And for some people, that’s the only way it can be done. But there’s this thing called transition time, which is something that eats up a lot of our day, my goal is to have one focus, so that I can get into flow state flow state is a state of mind where it’s kind of like,

it’s, it’s kind of hard to describe it, you you’re in this, like, automated mode of producing, and you’re just in the zone, right? Like many sports players and athletes call that you know, it’s like when you’re hitting every three pointer, right? It’s this, you’re in the zone, you’re you’re flowing, and the same thing happens as a creator. But what happens is, when you start something and you stop, you don’t, you can’t just get immediately back into something else, it takes time, it takes transition time. And you know, if if if consider that it might take 20 to 25 minutes to get back into flow state. I mean, that’s if you’re switching between five or six tasks, that’s two and a half hours a day you’re quote wasting on sort of like medium to medium level work versus like the good hardcore deep work, like Cal Newport talks about in his book. That’s like, that’s where I want to be. So I allow myself from maximum flow state, if you will, by doing it that way. Thursday is when is Thursday, Thursday, sort of like more of a cleanup day. So meaning like if there’s anything left over that I didn’t finish. That’s, that’s on Thursday, and office hours with my students on Thursdays well, and then date night with my wife at night. And then Fridays, usually just like, you know, either Fridays, usually reserved for reading or learning. Because it’s like, it’s good to learn. So I had like four days of action, taking one day of learning, when they have reached that Friday is also research. That’s also like, if there’s anything new that I’m excited about that I want to explore, I give them myself time to do that.

Speaking of giving myself time to do those sort of other things that can. So that’s, that’s something that usually distract people, right, like the new shiny object, which is a very common theme. And you’ll find this everybody finds us as you start to grow and try something and it starts to get a little hard, your brain goes, Okay, let me go to something else. It’s actually fun, because now this is getting hard. Let me find the new fun thing that’s actually going to give me more energy. That’s, that’s the part where you have to like, keep going. And that’s why having those days where I just grind on those things and get into flow states really good. But I allow myself time on Friday, to do research, to learn to have that space to get distracted. That’s like almost you can call it like my let’s get distracted day. Speaking of that, within each day, there’s social media, right? And social media can be a huge distraction as well. I mean, we could sit on Facebook for hours. And now there’s like apps and I think even iOS tells you like what your screen time is for things. And it’s kind of depressing to see at night, like you’ve been on your phone for four and a half hours, like what did I do with my day. So that’s, that’s tough. So one thing to battle that is I’m in my schedule, during breaks, or in between sort of work sessions, because I don’t, I don’t literally work for six to eight hours straight, I have breaks in there, I usually work in one hour chunks. And with 15 minutes, 20 minutes breaks in between where I’m usually, you know, exercising or getting a glass of water or walking outside or wherever just changing the environment. So when I go back into work, I can get back into flow state little bit better, I’m not distracted with some new task, I’m literally just putting pause on it. And then coming back to it, it allows me to transition back into it a little easier. But on social media, I actually schedule in the day, I actually have in my calendar, a couple 15 minute moments. And it’s different each day, because different days of different things that happen. But I literally give myself time to get distracted on social media and go in there and interact and start conversing with people. So that’s why whenever you see me on social media, most of my interaction with my audience is done in chunks, you’re like, oh, Pat was very active during this part of the day. But then like he was nowhere to be seen at this other part. And that’s because that ties into another production strategy that I have with everything that I do. And that’s called batch processing, instead of just doing one thing, when I’m doing it in that because I have a full day to do it. I’m going to do like as many as I can. I’ll record three to five podcast episodes on Tuesday, which then allows me to get ahead, so that next week, maybe I only feel like doing a couple and that’s okay, because the last week I did a lot. And then next week, I’ll come back and then do a bunch of podcast episodes. And then next week, I literally just want to take the day off because my family wants to go to Disneyland because the schools are off or whatever. And then we’ll just go and that’ll be okay. Instead of every week, being in the content hamster wheel, this is a very scary thing to do, which is like you only create you only plan for for what’s happening next week. Right? If you go once a week, it’s like you hit publish, and you’re like, Oh, my God, I have to do this all over again. And so what am I going to do, I have to start from scratch. So what I do to tackle that is every quarter, I plan a session with my team, if it’s just you, you can do just you. And I will literally sit down with them for three hours and just plan out as much as possible, all the content and the ideas that we have for content that’s going to come out for that whole quarter, or for the for the next quarter. So that when Tuesday comes around within that quarter, it’s already been discussed what podcast episode I’m going to be doing. It’s already been planned, who I’m going to be talking with it’s it’s already been on the calendar and even on my mind, because it’s been on the calendar for so long, like stuff about that topic I’m going to be writing about, so that there is no moment when I’m creating content that I go, Okay, what should I be writing about today? or What should I be creating podcasts about today that that hasn’t happened for years? And I gotta tell you, it’s the best feeling in the world. Because it’s only during that planning session. It’s like, you got a plan to plan, essentially. And so I know I’m just kind of brain dumping everything on you right now. hope that’s okay. That’s

Sharon Tseung 38:50
great. Yeah, hopefully it’s helpful. Yeah, it’s super helpful. I get distracted really easily. And these are really good productivity, tips and hacks. Back to the point about growing your team you wish you did it earlier. I had a question about, I guess Exactly. When do you think is a good time? Because, like, do you think I should hit a certain income point in order to hire the as I have hired project by project basis, but not some person that’s like on my team? I know, you hire MBAs from I think the online jobs pH site that you’ve recommended that before when you’re starting out and stuff like that. Do you have any advice for when you start doing that?

Pat Flynn 39:31
Yeah, I mean, there’s a couple places to get vas that are great. And you’re talking about a online jobs, pH is also Virtual Staff Finder. com, which is my buddy Chris Ducker site who vets Filipino VA is are super, super inexpensive. And it’s just because of the economies of the Philippines, like you could literally pay an assistant like $600 a month for 40 hours a week. And like when I first heard that I’m like, that’s like, that’s, that shouldn’t be right, like I pay them more. But it’s really interesting, because when you try to pay them more, they they actually don’t want it because then the more money you have in the Philippines, the more of a target you are essentially and that’s plenty to supply for their families there. It’s just really interesting how that works, versus starting out by hiring an in person, you know, co worker or employee, excuse me, that will cost you know, $40,000 a year. I mean, that’s, that’s hard to do when you’re just starting out. So starting with somebody overseas can be can be very great. And Philippines, specifically, great English, they care very much about security and their jobs. So they’re going to stick around for a while. I’m half Filipino myself. And it’s very much just a cultural thing, which is interesting. But you don’t want to just hire somebody, because everybody says, Oh, you gotta hire somebody. The point at which you should hire somebody should be based on when you understand that it is not worth your time to do something anymore. That that’s really it, when it makes sense to pay somebody to do these things, so that you can spend your time doing better, better, bigger things, right. And so when you’re starting out, there’s no like, I would never recommend somebody who’s literally just starting out to go, okay, you also have to have a VA right now to do these things like how would you even know what to tell them to do. And that’s a big challenge that people who hire people like that on a non project basis, the project thing makes sense, because it’s like, okay, here’s the fee, at the end, you’re going to have this and then when we’re done, it either is delivered or it’s not versus a VA, which is like they’re working for you, you have to give them work to do. So that’s a challenge. I remember when I heard my one of my first few days, that was like going to work with me every single day, I was like struggling to figure out what to give them I was like making up stuff to give to them. And that’s, that’s wrong. What you want is to work for yourself. Just you create what you want to create and do it yourself, grind through it and learn and feel how hard that is. But then, but then master it, get your style down, get good at it. And then what you do is you hire a VA to basically clone you so that you personally don’t have to do those hard grinding things anymore. And you can sort of remove yourself from that. And that’s then set in motion. And it should only be for things that are recurring, like editing a show or repurposing your content, and you have to train them to do that you can’t just go, Hey, VA, this is what I want in the end to go do it. What’s nice is by doing it yourself, you’re actually also developing a training plan at the same time for somebody who will help replace you for those tasks. The best way once you hire somebody, to show them how to do something is to literally film yourself doing it. So it is editing your podcast interviews, and then repurposing them into audio content. And then repurposing that into blog content. Like literally just do it one more time yourself filming yourself using a tool like QuickTime, which is free or Screen Flow for Mac or contagious studios, these are the screen recording software’s and then you can just go, Hey, VA, super cool that you’re here with me. And we’re going to be working together, here’s what I want you to do, just do exactly what I do. Here, like just literally do that there’s no room for error, because I’m just showing you exactly what you should do. And then of course, they might have questions, and it’s going to take some time for them to understand exactly what you mean in some moments. And that’s okay, when you work with somebody, you’re gonna have to learn each other’s language. And they’re going to have to understand that to fill in those gaps that you maybe you didn’t even know where they are when you deliver that video content to them. And then it’s just a machine. And then it’s just a machine. And then then you should wisely use your time for other bigger things, building relationships, creating more different kinds of content, to interact with your audience to build those products, whatever that might be. But yeah, hiring people is is scary. It’s a very scary thing. But it’s also really cool to know that you can make it a win win win situation for everybody. It’s a win for you. Because you’re like removing these things that either a you don’t want to do, but need to do, or be things that you can do, and can even do very well. But you shouldn’t be doing as somebody who’s growing as a business owner. It’s really cool that it’s like support somebody’s lifestyle and help somebody make money by having them do the things that you don’t want to do. Like it’s it boggles my mind every day that I can have people on my team wake up and go, I’m excited to edit Pat’s podcast today. I’m like, you are a weird person. But the crazy thing is, people exist like that. And you might not think it, but you can find them or train them to be that. And, and it’s really cool, because then you like, like I said earlier, you can focus on what you really, really want to do is just understanding what are those continuous, recurring things that you do that you can then go, Okay, I’m over this. Now. Let’s hand that off. So I can start getting energized about other things that can supplement what I’m doing.

Sharon Tseung 44:40
Yeah, I can definitely see myself needing someone to edit like YouTube, and podcast episodes. And another thing is, like I wanted to what you mentioned earlier was transcribe the audio into like all the tags and putting that into blog posts, I noticed a lot of people just do the takeaways and not the whole transition gripped, but I was thinking that the transcript would be good for SEO purposes. So I was wondering, do you know if that helps to have the whole transcription into that blog post?

Pat Flynn 45:11
It does. And I have confirmed this with somebody who I hired for SEO purposes, SEO is search engine optimization, meaning how high can you rank for certain keywords and be found and get traffic organically? It does help. So when you have a transcription, I mean, an audio file that’s maybe 30 minutes long, could be pages and pages of text. And that’s pages and pages of text that Google can sort of crawl through your website and see and go, Oh, wow, Sharon’s talking about this, apparently, because they don’t yet crawl through our audio. on YouTube, they do crawl through your audio, because there’s artificial intelligence and machine learning there that is now able to do that. And I would imagine that with your audio that might happen in the future. But currently, that’s not how it works. And so you need that text. So the problem is, and the reason why most people don’t do this, is because it can be very expensive, especially when you have a human being actually transcribing the stuff so that you have less errors, there are tools out there, that can sort of automatically take the audio and turn it into transcriptions. There’s one called Timmy t m, I, there’s another one called otter o tt er.ai. These are automated tools that are fairly cheap, instead of paying $1 per minute. So it’s like a 30 minute episodes, 30 bucks every episode just for the transcript, that’s a lot. With Timmy, it’s just 10 cents a minute. And with otter.ai, it’s even less. Now, I will say that they’re not perfect. But you can get pretty close. And what I like to do for transcripts is to let people know, hey, you know, if you are using one of those automated ones, just let people know, hey, this transcription was automatically created using this tool here. And if you wanted that to be an affiliate link that’s even cooler, and go, please excuse any errors that the machine made when transcribing this for you. But we’re doing this for you your own convenience. And that way, it’s sort of like off of your plate. If there is a mistake, it’s like oh, well machine got this wrong. And that’s a little trick I like to use with that. So that you can still get the SEO benefits. Usually, if things are spoken clearly if it’s doing a good job, but also not have to worry about it being perfect.

I only recently started putting transcripts on my website like that, because for the longest time, I didn’t understand that that was that was the case. And also I like to do because of my fairly large audience. I do have hearing impaired people who are listening to my show who would prefer to you know, read it. And there are people at work who probably shouldn’t be on the web, and they want to discreetly consume the content and read it or listen to it as well.

Sharon Tseung 47:46
Yeah, I sometimes download your transcripts and read it to also you you like kind of have a little thing where you can scroll through I think with the transcript, does that still work for the SEO purposes?

Pat Flynn 47:58
It depends. There are many different tools out there. So what Sharon’s talking about is there’s like a box in my show notes for each episode that encloses the transcriptions so that the whole web page is not like miles long, like the transcript lives in a frame inside of that blog post. And that can be helpful because it just reduces the clutter on the page. But some tools are blocking search engines from seeing that the one that I have doesn’t do that. But it’s also customized. And my team and I are working actually because we’ve been getting a lot of requests from people to create something that we could offer to others that would have this SEO benefits and have a very similar functionality for people. So we’re trying to create something and that’s, that’s something that I like to do. Like if if I hear so many people asking for something, it’s like, oh, well, I should probably make that if nobody else is going to do it. So you should do that soon.

Sharon Tseung 48:48
In terms of video length, podcast length, and blog posts length, do you have recommendation? I know that in ask Pat, you had 10 minutes segments before? And then I think it’s grown to 30 minutes ish. Now. Is there a reason for that? Yeah,

Pat Flynn 49:02
I mean, that change? So the first 1000 episodes of ask Pat, were answers to my audiences voicemails that were coming in. So person would ask a very specific question, and then I would have a very specific answer. And that would only need 10 minutes. And that was fine. 10 to 12 minutes. But what was lacking in that show, the way that we’ve structured before was I couldn’t go deeper with those people. And that’s often where a lot of the answers lie is two to four levels deeper after that initial question is asked, and I couldn’t get there, because it was just the voicemail. So I experimented with the start of last year.

The episodes being coaching calls. So instead of a voicemail, I’m like literally speaking to that person and coaching them live in that call, and recording that and sharing it with people. And the reaction is just like, Oh, my gosh, this is so much better. And it does take a little bit longer. But the amount of time is the same, because instead of five episodes a week, which I did for the first thousand, it’s just one episode a week. So it’s very similar to my other show, except instead of just an interview, it’s actually coaching. And you can hear me ask deeper questions and go deeper and go deeper to find sort of the root of the problem and then sort of dissect that and try to help people out. So that has needed to be longer, because that takes that much time to do it. So the answer for how long something should be is, however long it needs to be to be honest, to provide the value that you want to provide. And so I remember when I first started my podcast, I thought I was smart. I was like, Oh, I’m going to do this research about like TV shows and how long TV shows are. And I’m like, oh, they’re 22 and a half minutes long. Because that’s what you know, all these really rich broadcasting companies have understood that’s like, the attention span for people’s and, you know, attention. And, like, I’m gonna make my podcast exactly that. And I remember doing my first interview, and we were at, like, 22 and a half minutes. And I was like, I feel like I’m just getting started here. Like, there’s so many more things I want to ask, it would be a disservice to my audience ago. You know, what, Mark? Sorry, we’re at 22 and a half minutes. And I know, we didn’t even dive into anything valuable. But

that doesn’t make sense, right? On the other hand, if if, you know, these as Pat shows, were trying to be 2320, the initial thousand as Pat episodes if they were, you know, trying to be that amount of time, 22 and a half minutes, but I already answered the question in 12 minutes, like, does that mean I should just had nine minutes of random gibberish like No, that would, that would decrease the sort of quality of the show it would dilute it. And so it’s as long as it needs to be as the answer. Okay.

Sharon Tseung 51:46
Yeah, that’s good. Going back to the whole thing. He said, a lot of people are introverts. So I feel like I am pretty introverted, even though people think I’m not because of the music thing. Yeah, but, uh, I feel you said you You are too. And it took a while to get to that point where you’re comfortable speaking at conferences and doing these interviews? And I guess, do you have any tips on like, how to get there? Because, yeah, even like just interviewing you. It’s kind of scary for me, right?

Pat Flynn 52:17
Yeah. And you’re doing a great job. And

there’s a lot of tips with that, because I was definitely a shy kid and introvert. And that means like, it’s hard for me to go up to a person and talk to them. And one trick that I have. So there’s a few things number one, just number one, understanding that well, if I don’t talk to people, what does that mean, for my business, it means I’m not able to understand more about my audience, it means I’m not able to make really beautiful connections and build rapport with people who might be great partners with me, or I’m not able to make friends with people who I can help like, I’m not able to best serve people, if I just let that fear get in the way. So that’s number one. And that often will be enough for for me to go You know what, like, okay, Pat, just get over yourself. Just go. The second thing is, I often tell myself, okay, well, what’s the worst that can happen? And when you honestly think about the true realities of the worst thing that can happen, it’s probably not as bad as we think. And I remember going to conferences, and like seeing a person that I wanted to shake hands with and say hi to and I get like, the sweaty palms. And I imagine the scenario where I’d like, go up to this person, I’d stumbled my words, and then I’d like shake their hand, but it would be like the wrong hand and actually shaking, they’d be like, why is your hands so wet? And and I’d like cry and like, end up dead in a ditch somewhere. Like, literally, that’s what I would think, like the worst. Like, that’s stupid, right? Like, none of that stuff. Whatever happened. Like, the worst thing that can happen would be I’d go up to a person and just say hi. And like, what are they going to be like a day? And say no, like, you know, they’ll say hi, back. And that’s probably the worst thing that can happen, like no further conversation. And that’s, that’s not bad. Like, okay, maybe you could try again later or move on to somebody else. Like, it’s not as bad as you might think. So that’s number two. Number three is I implement something I like to call the three second rule. And I learned this from this is gonna sound really weird. And I just, I promise you, I just read this for entertainment. But this there’s a book called, I think it’s called the game by Neil Strauss. It’s a book about this underground world of like, pickup artists, like, dudes who it was just I read, because it was just so interesting. And the dude who wrote it was on Jimmy Fallon or a late night show. And I was just like, what this sounds crazy to me. So I read it. It’s just like, a weird world of these dudes who are like, just trying to pick up these chicks was just like, I was like, whoa, this is these guys are desperate. They have to like go to classes for this, like, just be yourself. But anyway, there was this thing they call the three second rule, which I then started using and networking, not to pick up chicks or dudes or anything. But it was it was specifically to get me to go talk to people that I was afraid of talking to you and what they what they would teach these guys, it’s like, if you see somebody that you want to talk to, you just just do it within 30 seconds. Because if you do it within three seconds, you’re not going to give yourself enough time to psych yourself out to go think about those weird random things that probably won’t even ever happen to think about what they might say you just go. And then what I’ve learned after that, it’s just really the hardest part is just to start, right. It’s just like, I always worry about like, what am I going to say first and like, you know, how am I going to start this? Am I gonna be awkward, but usually, if I just mentioned something that connects both of us, like, hey, so would you What did you think of the event so far? Then you’re on and it’s like, easy after that. It’s always the start. That’s the hardest part. Yes. So that’s kind of what I learned about being introverted and and learning about that about yourself is really important too, because then you can know how to deal with it. You can’t change from an introvert to an extrovert, you’re just one or the other. And there’s, there’s middle grounds, right, then there’s a spectrum. But knowing where you’re at is important, because then you can make decisions based on that you can’t go Okay, get today I’m going to be an extrovert. Like it doesn’t work like that. Right? You have to know who you are, and go, you know what I’m going to tell myself these things, I’m gonna not allow myself time to psych myself out, and I’m gonna remember what’s the worst that can happen. But I’m also going to remember what’s the best I can happen if I meet these people, and you’re just one relationship away from somebody who could literally change your life. And so I think about that, too. It’s like, maybe the next person I meet can be the person who’s going to help with this big thing I’m struggling with Maybe, maybe not, but maybe, maybe, maybe. And then the other part about being introverted is that I just realized that, you know, and I can’t remember who define this. But it was like, a way to know whether you are an introvert or an extrovert is to understand how you get your energy back. You get your energy back by being alone. And like, going back to your hotel room and like not wanting to talk to people, that’s just how you recharge. That’s that’s your way of recharging is being alone, and that’s me. But that doesn’t mean you can’t be friendly with people and go up to people. It’s just how you recharge and extroverted people, it’s like they recharge, by being with other people like that. It gives them energy. For introverted people, people suck energy out of us. But that’s not a bad thing. It’s just, that’s just the way we work. And just so understanding is is sort of step number one.

Yeah, definitely. I definitely

Sharon Tseung 57:13
read that. Like, there’s no bad thing about being an introvert is just how you’re wired. And you can use that to your advantage for sure. And I’m actually taking, like, improv classes. Yeah, I finished my last class yesterday, and I think I’m going to do the intermediate one. And it’s like, scary as shit. And like the, the second one you actually have to perform in front of friends and family. But yeah, it’s like crazy, cuz there’s something I don’t want to do. But I’m like, this year, I’m trying to do stuff or anything that scares me. Actually, I’m reading will it fly right now that I try to read a book a month. So this month, I’m reading your book, that’s all. Yeah. And I remember how to get a quote saying, if it’s something scary, then it’s a sign, you’re supposed to do it. So I’m doing that now. So I’m just like, anything that scares me. I’m just gonna, like go for it. That’s That’s

Pat Flynn 58:03
such a good lesson. And that’s something I’ve learned over time to when I think about the most interesting and best things that’s ever happened to me. It’s always been right after something really scary. Like when I started my business, which was an amazing thing for me, was right after I got laid off, like the worst depressing moment of my life. When I started my podcast, it was such a scary thing. And I actually waited a year and a half, because I was so fearful of what people would think about me. But once I finally started, it became this amazing driver for my business. Before I got on stage, I remember throwing up and just being so scared of it and saying no to opportunities. But once I finally got on stage and started learning the craft and getting coached for it, it’s become one of the best things I’ve ever done my business to and it’s loving more connections. So now I go, Okay, well, what can I be scared of now, like, what’s going to challenge me and give me that fear. Because if I’m doing stuff now, and I don’t have a little bit of that nervousness, then I know I’m probably not reaching high enough. And so to give you an example, Flynn con, which is my first event, which I’m stoked to see you at is coming up. I’ve never threw a live event before 500 people coming to San Diego that I’m going to be responsible for. It scares the crap out of me. Like I’m so scared. But that’s why I know I need to do it. And that’s also the reason why I know it’s gonna be awesome, because I’m so scared that I’m gonna make sure this does not fail. Like I’m so nervous about it. I’m gonna put put forth more effort than I probably need to to make it the best thing ever. Yeah, continually look for those sort of scary moments. So are you doing like the Yes. And sort of exercises?

Sharon Tseung 59:38
Yeah. Wait, so have you done it? Or

Pat Flynn 59:40
my son took improv? Wow, really. But on the last day of class, like he and his classmates performed in front of us, it was hilarious and was cool to see him step out of his shell. I definitely want to want to do it. Yeah, you should. I mean, definitely challenge me for sure.

Sharon Tseung 59:57
Yeah, I think it’s helped me a lot. And it’s pretty cool that he liked it at such a young age.

Pat Flynn 1:00:08
It was actually my wife’s idea. But yeah.

Sharon Tseung 1:00:10
Okay. You know, you speak at all these events, like you’re doing all these things that put you outside of your comfort zone. Was that always something you wanted to do? Like? Did you imagine yourself being this speaker podcast host? What drives you to do all this stuff?

Pat Flynn 1:00:26
Yeah, the answer is No way. Especially with speaking stuff. Like if you had asked me 10 years ago, if I wanted to be on stage in front of thousands of people ever, let alone put on my own event, it would have been a straight up No, like hell no, no way. And it was because it’s just I didn’t see it. I didn’t think I had the skills or I wouldn’t know what to do or how to do it. And it wasn’t until 2011 that a friend of mine needed some help. For his first event. His name is Philip Taylor. He runs an event called fin con, not Flynn con, but fin con.

Sharon Tseung 1:01:00
I’m going to that too, actually.

Pat Flynn 1:01:02
Which is Oh, yeah, fin con is awesome. The financial blogger conference. And he asked me to speak and do a little bit of a breakout session, which is, you know, one of the smaller sessions, not one of the keynotes. So I was like, Okay, I’ll do it for you. And I’m super scared, but I’m going to try it and see if I like it. And then two weeks before the event happened, PT calls me. And he goes, Hey, Pat, our closing keynote had to bail. How would you like to come and close the show for us? And I was like,

and this was like, 350 people. And I was like, I’ll, I’ll do it for you. Because I want to help you out. And you’re my friend. And after I hung up, I was like, Oh my god, what have I gotten myself into? It’s like the scariest three weeks of my life, trying to set up for that. And I remember scripting every single word, I was going to say, I wrote 20 pages. And I’ve memorized every single word because I was just so afraid. I didn’t, I didn’t. I thought that’s how they did it. I had no training, nothing. All that was driving me was like, okay, there’s going to be 350 people there. They’re all bloggers, they all will see the success that I’ve had blogging and they want to know how I was able to do it. Let me just tell them how I did it and and see what happens. So I got on stage. And that video is literally live on youtube, still. And it’s just either so many mistakes that I can point out now. But I did an okay job. And I just remember after speaking, there was this line of people who were there who were like, thank you so much. It was super inspirational, like, how can I give back to you like, This helped me out so much. And all these comments like that, like one after another? I was like, Did you see the same presentation I give because like it doesn’t, didn’t feel like I gave a lot of value. But I mean, it was it was very well received. And, you know, whenever you get that kind of feedback, you’re like, wow, I need to do this again, because this was pretty awesome. So then I got like I do with everything, very serious about it. I wanted to be the best at it. And so I read books, I hired a coach, i and this is what every I did the same podcasts and did the same thing with blogging and everything I do now even with fitness related things. I’m like, okay, I want to run a triathlon. All right, I’m going to find a coach who can train me like, for me, it’s like, I could spend eight hours a day, you know, learning things on YouTube until I happen to figure it out. Or I could just go to somebody who’s done it before, who can teach me the quick way to do it safely. And effectively. And then I just started saying yes to as many opportunities as I could sort of offering to speak on stages for free. And still being scared of even today, even now, eight years later, I am still scared of getting on stage. But again, like we talked about, that’s a sign that I need to go up. And it’s a sign that I’m going to put forth the effort I need to to make it great. And now people are saying that they’ve never seen a speaker like me that, that that you know, I’m getting conference directors, just, you know, saying I, you know, have to have you back every year because you had the biggest and best scores out of everybody. And just super cool because I was somebody who’d never wanted to do it before so that it just shows you that it doesn’t really matter what you think you can or cannot do. What matters is Do you really want it. And if you really want it, you can find a way to make it happen.

Sharon Tseung 1:04:09
I mean, do you feel like you really want it because of the impact you’re giving as well as, I guess, fear is driving you now for everything like you lean

Pat Flynn 1:04:18
in fear, the fear is driving me for sure. Because it is I do get a little bit of a drive, like it’s a little bit weird. But I get a I get like a suit I get super high. After I talk. It’s like the most euphoric feeling in the world, like after performance, like if you performing on stage in front of people, like when you’re done, it’s like, wow, like you’re on top of the world, you kind of have all this energy that you didn’t have before that feels good. I used to perform and you know, music wise with marching band and things, very similar feelings on stage that I do on a football field, after after a good performance. So the fear is driving it for sure. The impact. Absolutely, like I mentioned earlier, it’s those comments, and it’s just even one person getting help. It’s like you’ve impacted that person. And the more that you can have impact on this world, the more impact the world will have on you. And I found that to be very true. And then thirdly, like it has had a direct impact on my business, just literally giving me connections to other speakers at events, like being in the what’s called the green room, which is like the area where the speakers get to hang out before they go on stage. It’s like all the other top players are there too. And you’re in that room, well, you must be a top player to to them. And so I’ve been able to make all these amazing connections with people by just being a speaker and getting introduced by other people. And then you start to get to know people who and then you start to see them again later. And then they start to introduce you to their friends. And then you start to get into these pools of people who you’re like, what am I even doing in this room right now, with all these amazing people? Oh, it’s because I said yes to these opportunities. And, and, and because I have worked on my craft. And that’s something anybody can do. It just takes time and patience. But it also takes a level of just Okay, I’m gonna, I’m gonna, I’m going to, I’m going to try and perform my best and put myself in these situations to give myself these opportunities. Because you know, a lot of people will Pat, you’re so lucky. Like you got to speak on the same stage as Casey, nice dad, and you got to meet them backstage?

Yeah, in a sense, it’s maybe lucky. But I also can go draw a line to all the things that I said yes. To all the opportunities that came my way. And I took them that led up to that moment. So in a way, yeah, I was lucky. But it was also like, an I made this lock, you know? So you know, you can make your own luck.

Sharon Tseung 1:06:31
Yeah, I mean, you work super hard to get to where you are, it’s not really luck. Yeah,

Pat Flynn 1:06:35
that’s for sure.

Sharon Tseung 1:06:36
Yeah. And when you’re talking about the high, like, I totally understand, because when I would perform, I remember I used to like hyperventilate a little bit before going on stage, but then the after feeling like people approaching me, that feeling was like super good. I knew I should keep doing it, but I didn’t. So maybe now is the time to really face fear a lot more. When it comes to the conference you’re creating now, you said it’s like super scary for you? What are the steps to sort of creating your own conference? How difficult is it?

Pat Flynn 1:07:09
Yeah, I mean, this is a beast, unlike anything else I’ve ever attempted to tackle, because there’s just so many moving pieces. I mean, I’ve done live meetups before, where, you know, you rent out a restaurant, and you bring people in, and you might be on the mic for like, five minutes. And then you let everybody network with each other kind of happens on its own. This is like a controlled event with programming elements with stage design with, you know, music, with lights with experiences with, you know, you got to feed these people, you gotta, you gotta put them in a hotel room, you got to make sure that there’s a workbook and information on where they can go to get food and, you know, swag and, like, name tags, and, you know, having the names on both sides of the name tags in case it gets flipped around, like little details like that. And, you know, for me, a part of this is the fact that, you know, I’ve spoken, you know, over 150 different stages over the last eight years, it’s like, I kind of have an idea now of what works and what doesn’t. And, you know, what makes a great conference experience and just being a part of these all these conferences, that I think I could do it on my own. And this was just, again, one of those another experiment where I think it’s the right time to do it. And I figured, you know, instead of dedicating all this time and effort into other people’s stages, like why not dedicate a little bit more time and bring people to me instead of me going to them. And you know, I have this amazing crowd of super fans who have been with me for years, and some not so long, and they want to be a part of something bigger, and they want to meet other people just like them. And I think I attract a certain kind of people who are very kind and empathetic, but also driven. And I want to bring all those people together, because magic can happen when you do that.

Part of this is also finding people who have done this before, who can help manage it for you because I have to be there to perform and create content and interact with people on building relationships.

A lot of the other stuff has to happen behind the scenes. So a team, having a person come on to be sort of like a wedding, right? It’s like you are the person who everybody’s there for. But we all know that you aren’t the person who did all the work to make all this happen, like you are this year, the decision maker is the bride and or the groom. But it was the event coordinator. It was that person working with the cake person with then you going into make decisions about like what food to have, but then you weren’t the cook. So you have to find all the people who can who can help support you in this way. And I think a large part of it is just having gone to conferences and understanding what those experiences were like, and then trying to mold my own experience for my people at my event.

Sharon Tseung 1:09:45
Man, yeah, it sounds like a lot of work. But I’m super excited to go and I know you’re going to have like teachable and Convert Kit, come on, at the smart bar right to help people out. I wanted to get my teachable stuff and my Convert Kit stuff going so that I can like talk to those people and

Pat Flynn 1:10:03
get help with it. I’m stoked to hear that because we’re doing something different with sponsors. And this is where a little bit of my creativity and my team have come into play with this to make it different is yes, we will have sponsors, but they’re not going to be there with booths just to like, sell you stuff, they’re going to be there to actually provide support. So if you think of like the Genius Bar to Apple Store, that’s the equivalent but except of Apple stuff, it’s like your email list, your online course your podcasts, they’ll be companies there to actually support you with that, because I think that can help you determine whether or not these companies are right for you if you haven’t gotten involved with them. But if you are a customer already, it’s going to help you stay on board them even longer, which is just as good as a new customer. So that was the idea there. And they’re all really excited to be there and support you. So I’m stoked to see how that turns out. Because it’s definitely something none of them have ever been a part of you. Definitely experimental

Sharon Tseung 1:10:56
to cool, you promote these products. And you talk about how it’s all about you’re you work there because you like know everything about these products. I wanted to ask a little bit more about kind of email and core stuff with you. That’s cool.

How often do you send emails because I don’t want to bother my audience too much. So I’m wondering what’s a good amount of emails this, then

Pat Flynn 1:11:20
If you had something that was really helpful for them? Why do you think it would bother them?

Sharon Tseung 1:11:26
That’s true, if you provide value.

Pat Flynn 1:11:29
Yeah, exactly. Now, obviously, there’s a line there, like you could send 10 helpful things in an hour. And it’s like, Whoa, okay, like, slow down person. So that there’s a liner, obviously, but I think most people err on the side of caution when they should be erring on the side of, you know, providing more value. And with email, I think it really is a determination of the expectation that you set. So if you tell people, hey, I’m going to send you a weekly newsletter, and then you send them an email every day, you’re you’ve changed what their expectation was versus what actuality was. And that’s not good. But if you say, Hey, I’m going to send you a newsletter, every time I find something new, that’s going to be helpful for you. It may be every day, maybe every week, it’s just as I find them, I’m going to send them to you. And as long as every email fits that sort of constraint, then people can be angry at you. And then of course, over time, you can listen if they if they are too frequent, and you’re getting more more comments like, Hey, this is a little too much for me, then you can slow it down and you can change it. But for me, it really depends on where people are at in the system, because I have built out this intricate sort of email web, where depending on where they enter from if they enter based on a podcasting related tool, like my podcast cheat sheet, well, then it takes them into a podcast related series of emails that then eventually get them to understand that I have a bigger premium course to offer, should they be interested in it? Some people come in on my general list on my main website, and then the first few emails are about that they’re challenging struggle, and then it kind of works to determine Okay, well, where does their focus want to be? What level are they at, so I can give them more information about that stuff. So, you know, I would say once or twice a week to start is a good starting point. And usually what happens is, you know, over time, they go, Oh, yes, I want to opt in to get more information about this. So yeah, that’s my emails. And it’s, it’s, it’s just something that, you know, you want to make sure that when you create emails for your audience, you

try to keep it simple, try to keep it simple. And especially with something like Convert Kit, which is simple to use, but also has some advanced features, can be really fun to get in the into those advanced features where you start to have like, people be able to split off into these funnels, and then over time split off into these and you have this giant web, like, I would start simple, if you want to tag your audience start tagging them based on like 123 different things. So for me, for example, have an audience of people who want to start a business, but there’s different segments in that audience, like people who have yet to even start a business. And then there’s the people in the middle who have started and they’re getting kind of a little bit of results. And then there’s the people who are just crushing it right there. Also following me, if I send a person who’s crushing it, a beginner’s guide to how to build your website.

That’s like, it doesn’t align with them. Right? Even though we’re all interested in building businesses, they’re at a different level. So what I can do is go Okay, I’m gonna send this email to everybody about how to build a website, except

advanced audience and the medium audience who already has a website, so only. So you can do it in the only send it to these or don’t send it cities. And that can be really helpful. So a good example is if you’re a photographer, and you start to understand like, who has a Nikon camera and your audience and who has a Canon camera and a Sony camera, if you get like a coupon for Canon, like stuff, Canon lens, then you can just say, hey, I want to send us canon coupon just my Canon people. Because your Nikon and Sony people like they wouldn’t care. And that way, you’re not over sending them emails that don’t matter to them. The most important thing is you want to send emails that matter to people.

Sharon Tseung 1:15:12
Yeah. Is that Is that why you on the homepage, you don’t really have like a free opt in, you can make it anyone who wants to join the newsletter they can join, and then you segment within that first email.

Pat Flynn 1:15:22
It is Yeah, and that that one, which is on the bottom of the homepage, right now, by the way, the homepage is getting re done. But currently, that’s like, just kind of like a like a, like a last for like filter for anybody on that page, who’s just like, Oh, yeah, I want to join the newsletter. Usually, people are joining the newsletter on a more honed in topic elsewhere, because they’ve landed not on the homepage. But they’ve landed on a specific piece of content from SEO, or a link on another website or mentioned on a podcast episode or something like that. And that’s where I really drive home, like the path that they’re on. So if I create an episode about podcasting, you can be sure them to mention podcast cheat sheet so that people can go directly to that and they get it and they skip all the process of like, what where they’re at or what they need, they go directly to that set of emails that are specifically for the podcasting stuff that I have. Because that’s what I know based on the actions and what they downloaded that they’re most interested in. And again, you want to start simple with that, because you could literally have like 100 different tags, it could just be this mess of a web. So start simple in segment your audience into just two to three buckets at most start

Sharon Tseung 1:16:32
counting funnels Do you think you have going on with email?

Unknown Speaker 1:16:36
Too many? Too many, it’s literally something that’s probably gone a little bit out of control, because always experimenting with new things. Like if I could go back into time, now that I know what I know, I would have just three funnels for the three different courses that I have. And that’s it and just focus on driving more traffic into those and that’s it. Versus we we literally have like, four different ways people can enter the podcast segment, we like to do different ways that people can insert the, into the the mark affiliate marketing segment. And it’s just like, it’s like, just simplify

Sharon Tseung 1:17:08
is that bad, or

Pat Flynn 1:17:09
it’s bad because it’s just harder to track. It’s just bad because it’s harder to track. And and it just confuses people when it’s like, oh, well, you mentioned this free thing. But now there’s this free thing and like, which free thing should I get? Aren’t they the same thing? Not really. But then, you know, it’s just yeah, versus like, just go get the cheat sheet, like the podcast, you want to start a podcast, go get the podcast cheat sheet, it’s gonna help you. That’s the only thing you need right now. And that’s it’s just so much like part of our jobs as people online helping people is we need to make life easier for our audience. And if you, for example, are doing affiliate marketing, and you’re trying to promote an email service provider, and you go, Hey, like, I want to help you get your email list up. Here are 10 different email service providers you can choose from, they’re all kind of great. And they all have a bunch of different features. But like, Here you go, you make your choice. It’s like your helping that person. You’re actually confusing them more. Yeah. Is you just stepping up and going, Hey,

there’s like

20 different email service providers you can use. This is the one that you should use, like, this is the one because x y&z Okay, you trust me, trust my recommendation, boom, it’s like, I’ve helped filter all those things out for people, like I’ve done that work for them. And now they’re going to take my recommendation. And if it’s a good one, then they’re going to go Pat, like, dude, your recommendation was spot on. Thank you for making my life easier. How else can I help you because you’ve already you know, it’s like, they’re going through your affiliate link, and they’re thanking you. And they want to help you out more. It’s like, really cool. Versus like, Hey, here’s all 50 cameras you can choose from and like 100 lenses go Good luck. Like, be somebody who steps into a position where you’re like, No, I know, it’s good for you. Like, I know what you’re going through. This is what I know, help you. It’s helped me in, it’s helped these people. Here’s a case study in case you need proven, you need proof. Here’s a video of me using it. Like, this is what you need. And that’s how I do affiliate marketing. I like step up and own that product that I’m recommending.

Sharon Tseung 1:19:13
Yeah. And do you have like RSS feed stuff running where every time you post new content? Everyone gets the content everyone gets in their emails? Or is it like bucket into different people? Or do not even do the RSS feed stuff? How does that work?

Pat Flynn 1:19:27
Yeah, the RSS feed stuff is interesting. So what RSS is, is it stands for real Simple Syndication. And what that means is a person can subscribe to your RSS feed. And then every time you come out with something like that content pops up for that person wherever they subscribed to your RSS feed. And back in the day, when blogging was sort of the big thing. Everybody was following everybody’s RSS feed, and you would ask people go subscribe to my RSS feed. And that’s not very common anymore. In the podcasting space, that’s exactly how it is still, you have to get an RSS feed from your podcast host to then give to iTunes to give to Spotify to give the apple podcast and then Apple podcast goes hey, did Shannon Sharon come up with anything new today? No. Okay. Tomorrow, oh, there’s a new episode from Sharon Okay, let’s give it to everybody who has the apple podcast app, that’s how podcasting works. But with with blogging, right now, I even though there is RSS feed stuff, I actually rely on my email list to deliver these things to people. And I don’t just have it done automatically, I add my own personal touch and my own voice into it. And because I have a lot of content come out, I come out with what’s called a digest on Friday, where I actually do bullet point, every single piece of content that was created across all the different platforms all in one email, with a little bit of a snippet of like, a teaser of why that would be important for them, or if they needed it or not. And it’s broken down into sections. I even have a section in that email, which is like literally affiliate links for certain products that I have certain deals for. So it’s all in one spot. And that’s been proven to be, you know, pretty well received lately, which is, which is nice. versus an email on Wednesday, when it come out with SPI an email on Friday, when as Pat comes out an email on Tuesday when it published on YouTube and email on Thursday when they publish another video on YouTube. Like, I’d rather have it all on one email versus five emails a week with separate things.

Sharon Tseung 1:21:17
Okay, so you have like those set and forget it emails, but also the once you custom like make for Friday’s right? Correct? Correct.

Pat Flynn 1:21:25
So there are automated emails, depending on the funnel they’re in. Those are there, those are actually set to go out between Monday and Thursday? I don’t have them come out on Friday, because I don’t want the digest overlap them. Okay, she set specific parameters for when or when not to send emails.

Sharon Tseung 1:21:45
I guess I get confused about like, if they joined a funnel, the different emails they get, wouldn’t it stop at a certain point? If you don’t have an RSS thing going? And then only they would only get the Friday one, right? If it’s like the one? That’s the weekly one? Yeah. Is that how it works?

Pat Flynn 1:22:02
Yeah, that’s kind of how it works.

Sharon Tseung 1:22:04
Okay, so I would just stop after the

Pat Flynn 1:22:06
emails have finished, it would just stop, okay, we’re or what you can do is if you have, let’s say, the podcast funnel, and then they get to the very end of that, you know, is that they’ll get the Friday emails, but they’re at the end of the podcasting, when you can actually set rules so that if when a person reaches the end of the podcasting one, if they haven’t purchased yet, they go into the affiliate marketing one. And then you can have it go, like they jumped from there. So this one that’s already pre written. And they can go through that. And maybe that’s more interesting to them, even though they said podcasting was was more interesting. And that’s why they started there. They’ve gone all the way through, which proves like maybe they weren’t as interested as you thought. So you show them something else. And then maybe you have them go through that. And if you have a third segment or something else that you talked about, or it’s okay to just have the one week email, because then maybe in that email, there is sort of that third topic that you talked about that triggers them to go read that blog post that then they then download that lead magnet on that other topic, and then they get put into this new funnel. So the Friday digest can still work for you for your other pieces to capture people with different interests that they have.

Sharon Tseung 1:23:15
Okay, yeah, that makes sense. Because I’ll LIKE, SUBSCRIBE certain lists, and then I just keep getting emails forever. And I’m just wondering, like, Am I missing something? Like, how does that work? Okay, that makes sense.

Pat Flynn 1:23:27
Yeah, I mean, the most important thing is to just like literally draw it out. Like if you could draw a flowchart, like they come in here, and then the next day, they get this two days later, they get that, and then this, this, you can start to understand like, oh, maybe the maybe there’s too many emails coming out during this time, or Wow, I haven’t sent the email one time, I can probably move that up, you know, okay. Visually, it’s a little bit easier.

Sharon Tseung 1:23:48
Cool. So I’m launching, like this course on how to make passive income on Etsy. So yeah, so I was listening to one of your podcasts with, like, Amy Porterfield, and she is talking about the three part video series. Do you do that for yourself? So I guess with your course launches, but was there something that really helped? When you first did that?

Pat Flynn 1:24:11
Yeah, with the course launches, I mean, she talks about this thing called the Product Launch Formula, which is derived from a guy named Jeff Walker, who made this very famous sort of launch sequence, which is a video pure value describing a topic or a problem. And, and, and some case studies in there. And then a few days later, video number two, kind of heightening that problem and showing how some people have solved that problem, then video number three is like the solution and the offer. And that has worked really well in for many years. And it still works. But it’s a lot of production, it’s a lot of coordination, a lot of moving parts, if I were to launch a brand new course, what I would do is actually pre sell the course, even before it was fully finished. Now if it’s already finished, that’s that’s even better, because it’s already done. But to get to that money sooner. And to get to that validation point at which you know, you have students who want this thing, I would pre sell it, I would just have the course up, for example, on teachable with just a welcome lesson. And that’s it saying, hey, on this date, if we get this, you know, so so a welcome lesson in there for the people who join and then when you promote it, go, Hey, guys. So a lot of you been asking me about earning passive income on Etsy, here’s what it has done for me. And here is what I want to teach you. And if you sign up now, before this particular date, at this price, which is a discounted price, because the normal price when I launched this publicly is going to be much higher. But what you get is, you get to have me create this course for you as you go along. Meaning you can deliver like a module a week for them and have them essentially, like do the homework and come back with you and you can communicate with them, they’ll get more access to you. And that way by the end of this beta period, if you want to call it that, you have students who have gone through, and because you’re getting feedback along the way, they’re able to help you fill in gaps that maybe you would have missed otherwise. And next, you would also have testimonials from people like already, so that by the end, when you are ready to launch publicly at a higher price, you’ll have people who can help share it, who will promote it, because it’s helped them already, you’re going to have testimonials. So people who are like, hey, like this is actually work like yeah, it is Look, here my test, take my testers who took it, and who are crushing it now look at them. And then finally, you would have the confidence that this thing would would actually work. And that was a big thing for me, running all my courses have gone through a pre sale process with a smaller set of beta students, anywhere between 15 to up to 50 people in various courses for just testing it and validating it. And when it when I see that it works, then I’m like holy crap, like I have a responsibility to sell this thing. I mean, there’s so many people out there who need help with this. Like, they just need, they need my help. And so it adds a little bit of confidence to you, which makes it much more easy for people to believe what you’re saying, to have that stronger messaging and emails. In those promotions. The important thing about the pre sales, you have a specific moment that you announce it, and maybe you announce it on a webinar, and you show people or you announce it via email or elsewhere, wherever. But there’s a specific date that it ends that they cannot get access to it anymore, because you’re going to be working closely with that group. And again, that is a great way to do like a first, quote, soft launch before you go into the big more public launch.

Sharon Tseung 1:27:35
Okay, I feel like I should have done that. But I like already have it basically done. Cool. It’s living on my site, but I haven’t really talked about it. So if that were the case, do you think I should still do the beta testing thing somehow?

Pat Flynn 1:27:49
I mean, you can do a, you can do a beta thing without having to worry about creating it, because it’s already created, I would say you would, you could even limit it to a certain number of people for the first go around and say that this is going to relaunch later in the year, but just go Hey, for the first, you know, 25 people who get in, I’m going to give it to you at this price. And then the doors will close. And what you could do there is if you get all this like commotion like it sells out in a few minutes or or within a few hours you go, Wow, I did not expect that this was going to be received like this, I opened up 25 more spots. So you know, and then you can you can just kind of play on that. So what I would do is actually listened to an interview that I did with Joey Korean men. That is, oh, he’s actually in will it fly? So you’ll see this at the end. Oh, ok. Cool. So it’s one of the case studies for Joey. It is part four. Case Study number one. And it’s literally somebody who created a online course teaching something he taught animation. And he did it using a webinar. And I would use a webinar yourself so that you can show people kind of behind the scenes of what you’ve done and how you’ve done it, you teach a little bit of value, and then you let people know, Hey, guys, I’m opening up 25 spots for my new brand new course, you get instant access to it, you get it at this discounted price, and you get to work with me and I get to make sure that you’re going to go through the process and, you know, start to make some money on on Etsy, which is great. And, you know, then you could just kind of see how it goes from there. And I would definitely have like an end date to, at least for this first go around so that there’s some scarcity, meaning like, Oh, I have to get it now. Because there’s a lot of fo mo that can play into your marketing. Yeah, I have a specific date when it ends. So that that’s like your cart close, have you send, send a few emails on that last day, you could have it like a three day to five day launch. And then after that, just work with those students, get them through the course get them to get some results. And then you can collect testimonials, and then have another date and let people know ahead of time. Hey, guys, remember that same that I did? Like and I mentioned that course. Well, guess what? These people crushing it now. And here’s an example. In a case study, I you can even interview one of your students and have them go like on your show and go Hey, like, you know, so you’re doing this stuff on Etsy now, like, what was life like before that? Are you scared of what was the most helpful thing that you learned during this process? And of course, they’re just going to talk you up and your course. And then everybody who listens is going to go, Oh, my gosh, I need to get into that now, when’s it going to reopen? When’s it going to reopen, you can just let people know that, you know, on this date, it’s going to be opening and, you know, you can either choose to keep it open all the time. So it’s they’re generating passive income for you. And you can just say, Hey, you know, for the first week after I opened it up publicly, if you get in, in the first week, I’ll give you a bonus. And after you know that way, it’s another thing that you could take away, that will drive people to make purchases now. And then it could just be up there. And it could even be in your email sequence like down the road after you launch it a couple times. You know, after you get their struggles and you go, a couple more emails deep, you can go Hey, by the way, did you know I have this course, here’s a case study from one of my student and you know, that’s all driven an email, it could be just automated so that when a person subscribes, you know that week and a half later, they’re going to get an email already pre written that promotes the course. And you can pitch that for a few days, and see how that goes automatically to all those new subscribers, then, if that’s working, all you have to do is keep getting more people to your website, keep adding to the top of that funnel. And it’ll just keep feeding that that those emails out to people and you can build more passive income from there.

Sharon Tseung 1:31:32
Do you think that three part video series is? Too much?

Pat Flynn 1:31:37
It’s too much.

Sharon Tseung 1:31:38
Okay, interesting.

Pat Flynn 1:31:39
All you need is one webinar or one video

Sharon Tseung 1:31:43
It’s funny because I was working on three part video series. But this sounds like a lot better,

Pat Flynn 1:31:50
which you part like, if you wanted to do one email, or sorry, one video, that’s like, just kind of introducing the problem a little bit talking about it kind of like setting people up talking about the objections. And then you go, Hey, and part two, I want to share with you like the real solution that I’ve found. And so make sure you stick around and make sure you subscribe or Yeah, whatever it is that you’re working through that process. So it doesn’t have to be three. Yeah. It’s a lot to do.

Sharon Tseung 1:32:15
That’s a lot. But that See, I feel like it takes a while though, to get those results. So I don’t know if that’s going to work though. What do you think

Pat Flynn 1:32:23
it takes a while it takes a while. But what you can do is start to share people’s wins along the way. Instead, wait, you know, six months till people got results, you can just go, here’s Jane, she does this. And within two weeks, she was able to get her product up on Etsy. Okay, wow, that’s a huge win that people would love to have to. And then you can just go, you know, we’re continuing to work with them to market it. Because that’s a lot of things that we talked about. And if you want to get in now and get your product up to and join these people in my community, then then come on in. And then once you start to get those success stories and people making money, then you will we want to invite those people on to start sharing their story so that other people can go wow, this stuff really works.

Sharon Tseung 1:33:06
Cool. Okay, this is like super good advice. So I know I asked a ton of questions. I do some like last questions that are not as relevant to kind of just building a brand. But if that’s cool with you, I know we’ve been talking for a while. A little bit more.

Pat Flynn 1:33:20
Okay, yeah. So I see any other investments outside of like online businesses, stocks, or real estate, yeah, I have put a lot of my money into a few things that are going to help secure my financial future. And I’ve been able to diversify that very well. So every year, I maximize the amount that I can contribute into retirement accounts. So that when I’m old and gray, I don’t have to worry anymore. And that’s great. So it’s just kind of financial security there. I’m not a huge spender. So it’s just good for me to start to allocate money in different ways. But I also like to have fun too. So I do have some stocks. And I’ve been investing in stocks, sort of individual stocks, for the last 10 years, just even before I got laid off, I was doing that a little bit. And so I have, you know, Tesla stock and some Facebook stock and some other stocks, you know, that I believe are good companies that I think are going to have some good growth projections. I also have an account over at wealth front, which is like self managed accounts. And I put a certain percentage in there. So what happens is, with my income, I have certain percentages that I know, some goes here, some goes here, some goes here, we have savings accounts for certain things, we have an emergency fund already already funded, we’ve already fully funded our college for kids if they choose to go to college, which is great. And I am also now at a point where I’m doing some angel investing. So I’m taking some of that money investing in some companies that I believe in, through a group of people who are also come, we’re all kind of combining our money together to invest into these companies that are coming on the scene. And, you know, that’s new for me. And that’s literally just a few months into it right now. And it’s just kind of fun and exciting, because it just takes one to go big to heyday. But knowing what I know about business and having been in this world for a while, you know, it stacks things in your favor a little bit, which is, which is pretty cool. So yeah, just diversification. And, you know, I tried some other things like, you know, Lending Club and peer to peer lending and those sorts of things. But it’s, it’s, you know, for now, it’s just like, Where can I put it to get me the most results? Without with the least amount of effort? Truly.

Sharon Tseung 1:35:26
Mm hmm. And you mentioned funding your kids college funds and stuff like that. So what’s your belief around going to college university? I know, we both went to UC Berkeley. So yes, do you want your kids to go to college, I

Pat Flynn 1:35:42
want them to do what they want to do. And I want them to know they have the option to do anything that they So please, I don’t want them to feel like they have to go because my wife and I told them to go, because that’s how I felt. And I really enjoyed my college career, but not becoming because somebody told me to. But it was because I was able to find my people there and really start to find groups where I can feel comfortable being myself. And I think Berkeley just does that to people in general. But

I want my kids to have interests, whatever those interests are. And that takes experimentation, trying new things. We’re also discussing perhaps like world schooling our kids, which means after high school, and he can be done anytime. But it means like traveling around the world and experiencing different things and learning while doing that, which is really cool. And it would expose them to a lot of interest that they may have. And whatever their interests are, should college help support that interest, then I would say absolutely go for it. And we would have a 529 plan that would help pay for that already. But if they don’t want to, because and there’s a good reason, because they have this other thing that is an opportunity for them. And they want to explore that. And there’s options outside of college to help develop those skills. And that’s what they really want to learn. And then we’ll support that. I think just we we don’t want them to be sheep. Basically, we want them to have a mind for their own and have all the tools and skills to succeed with whatever they choose to do. Now I am teaching them to learn the skills of an entrepreneur, because I feel that all kids and everybody should learn the skills of an entrepreneur. Because whether you become an entrepreneur or not, as an entrepreneur, you have to sell, you have to know how to take the resources that you have to get the things that you want to get as a business owner. But even as an employee, you need to sell yourself, you need to sell your skills, you need to be able to talk to people, you need to be able to present your ideas. And these are all things that entrepreneurs just have to know how to do to be an entrepreneur. But it’s not everything everybody knows how to do. And I think it should be. So whether my kids want to be employees or entrepreneurs or something else. As long as they know they have those skills to do and find what they need and get the resources to support whatever their goals are, then that’s it for me.

Sharon Tseung 1:38:00
Cool. Yeah, it seems like you’re such a good father and I really admire your close knit family. Do you find that entrepreneurship actually helps with family time? Or can it get in the way of it. I mean, is your wife an entrepreneur

Pat Flynn 1:38:15
She’s not an entrepreneur, but she has one of the hardest jobs in the world as a stay at home mom, because she’s working 24-7-365

with no pay no recognition. And two more people on the outside, she’s just another mom. But we all know in the family. She’s like the best mom, right? So she doesn’t, but it definitely is something that can bring us together. And it’s actually brought me and my kids together. It is been something that we’ve been able to work on together my business and my son and I we even have a podcast together called all of your bees wax. And they’ve been very interested in what I was doing. It’s because I let them in the office, I talk about what I’m doing. When I go on business trips, it’s not Oh, Daddy has to go work. It’s like, here’s where I’m going, here’s what I’m speaking to. And here’s why this is important. So they understand why I’m doing what I need to do. And they get interested in doing similar things, as well as even invited to my son’s school to speak to the kids about marketing and what I do, which is really fun and neat. And,

you know, the cool thing is like, when I remember when I was a kid work was the thing that took my parents away from me, like I would come home from school, I’d be by myself because my mom would be working, my dad would be working. And then they finally come home later in the evening. Versus me, it’s like, hey, like, let’s have my work, bring us together and allow us to do these fun things. So that that’s, that’s really exciting. But the hard part is when you’re an entrepreneur, I mean, especially when you have one of these phones in your pocket, like your business is always right there. And you can always send another email, you can always connect with another person, you can always check your Twitter feed or your Instagram feed. And it’s hard to turn that off. It’s like one of the hardest things in the world. I mean, we begin, we become addicted to those things. And you have to work hard to set those boundaries, whether our physical boundaries, like literally the only time I could work in the house is here in my office, if I am not in my office, I have a rule that I don’t do work. And that helps me with my phone stuff. Because all the phone stuff I do is not work outside of my office. But it also helps me put my phone away. So I’m not distracted when I am in my office. So those physical boundaries help time boundaries help as well, in terms of Okay, during these times I’m working and I know I’m not supposed to be doing these other things, and vice versa. So that when it is family time outside of work time, I can be fully present with them mentally, not just physically. Because the nice thing about having a nine to five job is you know, at five o’clock, you’re done and you go home and you can’t work because you’re not at work. But when you’re an entrepreneur, you’re at work all the time. And so having those time boundaries is important, because I can also just mentally clock out if you will, with work and clock in with my family.

Sharon Tseung 1:40:49
Yeah.

What so what keeps you going with Smart Passive Income? Because I feel like you could have retired A long time ago, it seems like and I mean, would you ever retire? Or is it just keep going? What’s your ultimate goal?

Pat Flynn 1:41:02
Yeah, I mean, I don’t think I’d ever retire because I have so much fun doing what I’m doing. There’s no reason for me to retire. You know, it’s funny, because I retire means like to put an end to something. It’s funny, because retirement traditionally is like, let me put an end to this, you know, 40 years of work so that I can now start doing fun things. So happen to be working on things that I have absolute fun doing. So why would I stop? Yeah. Now that doesn’t mean I’m always going to be doing Smart Passive income, I have no idea what’s going to happen in in 10 years with technology. But what I do know is no matter what, I’m going to look for ways that I can best help and serve people. And that’s the truth. Like throughout time, people have always needed help. And there’s always people who have been needing to step up to offer that help. I’m lucky to have built a platform now where I have access to a lot of people who I can help and no matter which way the world wants to go, I’ll be there to serve them. And do it in my own special fun way. I also am very excited about Pat Flynn calm and the things that I’m doing there, I’m actually going to be talking a lot about education and kids and entrepreneurship there as well, because that’s a huge interest to me. And what keeps me going is really just just, you know, the the praise the the the Hey, Pat, like you’ve helped me out, like thank you. And I remember what it was like to get laid off. And it was not a good feeling. And I needed some help. And I got that help. And now I’m just paying it forward with with with help for others, too. So that’s what keeps me going. I just, I just love it. And that and the fact going back to what I was talking about earlier about my kids, it’s like, what I do my kids see, and if I can continue to help people and my kids see how,

how well that’s making us and how happy I am because of it and how well off we are because I’m helping people like they’re gonna want to help others too. And it’s just going to make the world a better place.

Sharon Tseung 1:42:46
Yeah, you. I mean, definitely helped me a lot. And I’m super grateful for and it’s great that you’re going to keep doing it. Do you have any last words for anyone who’s trying to build a brand, kind of like what I’m doing?

Pat Flynn 1:42:57
Yeah. I mean, the big thing is to expect to fail. And know that those are going to be your learning experiences, that’s where you’re going to get the most value out of the work that you do. You can’t fail unless you do. So you can read as much as you want, you could watch as much as you want, you could listen as much as you want, nothing is going to teach you more than doing. And it’s because doing gets you to start pushing on those pedals and learning how to balance yourself on this bike we call entrepreneurship or business. And so just keep going. And the cool thing about this is, there’s a lot of people out there who as you are training to ride your bike, who will help push you in the right direction, who will point you in the right direction. And the more that you can connect with those people who are there to support you, the less likely you are to fall flat on your face, right when you’re riding that bike. So connecting with other people going back to sort of round one of what we talked about. It’s all about people, not just the people that you’re serving, but the people that you connect with who you are also providing value to who can provide value back to you as well. Those are colleagues, friends, your network, serve them to, like you serve your audience and they will help you to in ways that you would be so surprised to find so

Sharon Tseung 1:44:16
cool. Awesome. I really enjoyed speaking with you today, Pat, I learned so much. I asked you so many questions, and thanks for answering everything. And I’m sure listeners viewers out there are going to get a lot from this as well. Pat, thank you so much for sharing all this information. And thank you for speaking to me.

Pat Flynn 1:44:33
You’re welcome. Thank you.

Sharon Tseung 1:44:35
Okay, I don’t know about you guys. But that was super helpful for me. Pat was really willing to share all of his knowledge about you know, the questions I asked him and he didn’t hesitate to share the details. So I found that very helpful. He gave so much insight around blogging, YouTube being you know, podcasting, emails, course launches, everything, just how to really give value to your audience. And I think all of this can really apply to your business and help you get it to the next level. So I hope you guys enjoyed. Also, don’t forget to check out his website, smart, passive income calm, and he’s also hosting a conference called Flynn con, which I will actually be there if you want to check it out. It’s going to be on July 26 to July 28. In San Diego. I will put the link in the notes it’s Flynn con calm. And lastly, go follow him on social media and I’ll see you guys in the next episode.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai