Start With A Win - Monetize Your Dreams with Pat Flynn Part 1

Episode Date: January 11, 2023

As a trailblazer and respected leader in the entrepreneurial world, Pat Flynn has spent over a decade navigating the highs and lows of running his own businesses. Through trial and error, he discovered powerful tools for helping people expand their business reach and monetize their skills. His company, Smart Passive Income, offers training programs and community support from a vibrant network of international entrepreneurs. He speaks with honesty on his podcasts about how to turn challenges into opportunities for growth. Transparency in business is one of Pat’s core values. His authenticity attracts a wide range of listeners and learners, and his messages about serving others resonates with the shifting trends in business culture. Anyone can start a podcast, and Pat provides tips and tools for getting started. Using audio/visual media, such as podcasts, creates human connection not found in text. The power of voice allows people to speak from their heart, make an emotional connection, and create loyal listeners who relate to the content. This is just one of the ways Pat uses his influence to encourage the success of others. Working from a community mindset creates a culture of abundance where everyone can claim their piece of the pie.  Main TopicsThe origin story of Pat’s business Smart Passive Income (03:15)Effectiveness in business is about empathy (08:33)The importance of creative play and experimentation (10:35)Anyone can start a podcast (12:10)Tips and recommendations for starting your own podcast (16:18)  Episode Linkshttps://www.smartpassiveincome.com Connect with Pat:https://patflynn.comhttps://twitter.com/patflynnhttps://www.facebook.com/patflynnhttps://www.instagram.com/patflynn/https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGk1LitxAZVnqQn0_nt5qxwConnect with Adam:https://www.startwithawin.com/https://www.facebook.com/AdamContosCEOhttps://twitter.com/AdamContosCEOhttps://www.instagram.com/adamcontosceo/Listen, rate, and subscribe!Apple PodcastsSpotifyGoogle Podcasts

Welcome to Start With A Win, where we give you the tools and lessons you need to create business and personal success. Are you ready? Let's do this. Coming to you from Brand Viva Media headquarters here in Denver, Colorado, it's Adam Kantos with Start With A Win. Producer Mark, how are you doing, buddy? So good. I love it. Although I am a little congested.

You sound a little heavy on the head there. Yeah, it sounds like I'm doing traffic downtown. You can do the helicopter somewhere up here. Exactly. Exactly. Well, I am so excited for today's guest because I've been listening to him for a decade or more. It's been a long time. But today we have an amazing guy, Pat Flynn. He's a father, a husband, an entrepreneur, and he lives and works in San Diego, California.

He owns several successful online businesses. And if you haven't come across them, I don't know where you've been. He's a professional blogger, keynote speaker, Wall Street Journal bestselling author, and host of the Smart Passive Income and Ask Pat podcast, which have earned a combined total of over 80 million downloads, multiple awards and features in production such as the New York Times and Forbes. Pat, welcome to Start With A Win. Thank you both for having me. I love the music in the intro though. I can just imagine a club just all in that beat drop, just all going crazy. Yeah, it's like we're starting with a win.

That's right. Yeah, I love it. Thanks for having me. Well, you know, it's one of those things where we're just trying to bring that energy first thing, uh, as we kick things off, you know, it kind of gets the blood flowing and you get excited. We've had people actually ask us for the intro of the podcast to add to their workout mix. No way. That's great. It's hilarious. I love that you mentioned that though. Cause like energy control is really important. Right. And you got to find that energy and then channel it. I know a friend of mine, his name is Michael Hyatt. He like jumps on a trampoline before podcasting. Right. Just to get his heart. We get with those mini tramps in here. We have

one of those at home. My wife sets it, puts it in the kitchen and she's like, on the trampoline before she cooks something like, what are you doing? And in the kitchen, and she's like, on the trampoline before she cooks something. I'm like, what are you doing? And by the way, I'm not a little guy myself, like 210, 215, and I jumped on it, and I hit the ground underneath it. You got to get the lux one. The heavy guy one. The Fisher-Price one, I think.

Yeah, not the Fisher-Price one. But anyhow, Pat, I've been a listener of SPI, Smart Passive Income, for well over a decade. When did you start that, in like 2008? 2010. 2010, okay. Yeah. Yeah, so 12 years. Oh, my gosh.

I remember way back in the day, so many of those different podcasts. I remember one where you were beatboxing at the beginning of it one time, or somebody was, it was really good. So Mark had to try that one time on ours. But tell us, what is Smart Passive Income for probably the three people left on podcasting that have never listened to it? And what was the inspiration behind that? Yeah, I mean, it actually, the origin story of it comes a couple of years prior in 2008. I was actually on my way to become an architect and I got laid off with the great recession in 08. And that was a tough time.

I didn't know what I was going to do. I didn't have any other plans. I went out to try to find another job. I couldn't get one. And that's when I discovered podcasts. There was a podcast in fact called Internet Business Mastery where I heard an episode of a guy who was teaching people how to pass the PM exam or the project management exam and he was making six figures a year doing

that and it just blew me away i didn't i didn't know this was even possible but then i thought wow i've taken a number of different exams on my way to becoming an architect maybe there's some information i could share online in some way so i took a particular exam called the lead exam and i decided to step forward and and hopefully create the best resource for that. And in a relatively short period of time, after a couple months, the website started to be found on Google, people started to share it around, it started to gain some traction. And then eventually at the end of the year, in 08, I published a study guide, it was a PDF file that you could download. And I think it was like $19.99. in that in that first month I had made two and a

half times more than what I was making as an architect wow and I was just like whoa what's happening here and in the back of my mind I always thought like the FBI was going to come and SWAT team me because I was just like it didn't feel real or even right right I went to school for this many years to make this much and then here I am in two months taking some information I knew about an exam that nobody really knows about except the small niche in the architecture industry. And boom, it's like taken off. And then the income continued to grow and grow and grow.

And then eventually people were like, how are you doing this? Like, I'm just struggling over here and you're thriving in this recession, how? So that's when Smart Passive Income was created to essentially just share everything that was happening, all the good things, all the bad things, what I was learning. There was a lot of information about entrepreneurship back then,

but a lot of it was either hidden behind a paywall or it was just like snake oil, right? And so I was just like, well, I'm just going to share everything. And what I had initially become known for on Smart Passive Income was sharing my income reports. So I actually shared exactly how much money I was making, where it was coming from, how much I was losing, anything like that, whatever was happening. And there were always lessons tied to it. And that's what people started to share around in the entrepreneurial space. And then a podcast came in 2010, a YouTube channel, writing books, eventually speaking on stages, being a guest on other podcasts. And it's just sort of took off from there. The reason it's called Smart Passive passive income, and actually that wasn't

the initial first name I had for it. I'll tell you what that is in just a second. It's really embarrassing. But the name smart passive income came as a result of Tim Ferriss's book, The Four Hour Workweek. In that book, he talks a lot about, you know, building something up front and having it work for you over time versus trading your time for dollars. That's what smart passive income was to me. So building these assets and the website to help people pass an architectural exam. I mean, I could wake up in the morning and see that 24 people around the world had purchased my study guide while I was sleeping. And it just, it was a real thing. And that's why I wanted to be upfront and authentic about it. Uh, the initial name I had for it was passive aggressive income dude, because the

acronym is paid and I was getting paid. And I actually hired a person to draw a cartoon of like a Superman character with like paid on his chest. And I looked at that after I got it, it was a really nice illustration. And I was like, is this what I want to become known for? Like, is this the brand that I want to create for myself? No, I want to be the authentic guy online who just shows really how it's done. No, I'm not making millions, but I am supporting myself through these business endeavors online.

Let me just share everything. And I became known as sort of like the family guy who's doing this, not the Tim Ferriss or the guy with the mansion or the cars in the garage kind of person, but just the person who was like everybody else who was just trying to make it work for his family. And that's, I think what really took off, uh, or that's when things really started to take off for me back then.

And you've been so consistent and, you know, kind in what you're doing that you're, you come in with this, this tone in your voice and people are uptight or whatever, when they're trying to, you know, make a dime out there and you come in and you're, you're like, look, here's, here's what I did. Here's how it worked. Figure something out, but stick with it. And I've heard you say focus. I've heard you say consistency. I've heard you say a lot of these different things over and over. And if there's one person on this planet that's podcasting all the time, it's you that is always out there giving value and people appreciate that. And it's, it's paid you back in life. So congratulations on your entrepreneurial journey there.

Thank you so much. I mean, I look back at when I got laid off and it's like, wow, I'm so grateful that happened. Right. I didn't totally didn't feel good at the time, but I look back and I'm like, wow, that's what released what was holding me back. You know, I, I didn't know what I didn't know, but it was forcefully put into this situation where I had to figure it out. And, and I'm just so grateful for that. And that's why I can really empathize with what other people are going through, especially right now. I mean, it's tough times and, and, and, and people are either using this opportunity to, um, uh, scramble and find new opportunities or, or they're telling themselves, you know, the world is ending and no, the world's not ending. What does this now make possible is what my mentor told me. And that's what I would consider asking yourself if you're struggling through something right now.

And so that empathy is really key. I think that's something that I was able to realize early on is that as a business owner, when you have empathy for who it is that you're serving, everything becomes just so much easier. and everything becomes more, you have more reason to do it. And this is why when I teach this stuff, it's like, don't just try to create something and hope it works. Like go find who it is you're serving and talk to them. What do they actually need? Have them tell you what to create instead of just throwing something out there, which

is, you know, easier to do now more than ever. But that's the problem. People are trying things without actually considering who is this for? What's the language that they use? And how might I best serve them? And even just helping a few people up front. In fact, I always teach people now

because it can be overwhelming to start something. Find one person, help them solve one problem. And that's gonna teach you everything that you need to teach you everything that you need to know. Where, where do those people exist? How might you get in contact with them? How do you relate to them? How can they actually do the things that you're trying to teach? And once you get that one result that unlocks that confidence in your brain to go, wow, I've helped one person. I need to find more people like them. It almost becomes an obligation to go out and find more

people once you know that it can work. And that's why starting simple with one person is the key. There you go. The Business Growth Masterclass by Pat Flynn. I mean, seriously, when you break it down to the fundamentals, the framework of what causes a business to be effective, you just nailed it. And there's something I want to unpack a little bit more in here. And that is, you talked, you know, helping people just getting on your podcast and telling them what you're doing. And then they go and actually buy your, you know, your particular PDF, or I know you have a whole bunch of different entrepreneurial journeys now that you're involved in different online courses and some other, you know, book, or I think you even invented a tripod, right? I did co-invent a tripod that, um, like you might be listening to this

switch pod. I have my hand in a lot of things. You might be like, wow, this guy's kind of all over the place. Um, but it's, it's, it's controlled chaos, right? It's controlled chaos. I spend 80% of my time doing the things that I have already committed to that I've said yes to my team and responsibilities I have 20% of my time which is usually Fridays um are experiment play messy let's figure it out the switch pod was one of those 2019 we launched that to the tune of a half million dollars on kickstarter in 60 days which was amazing and that business is now automated and running mostly through amazon etc lately it's been a new YouTube channel in the Pokemon space that I've created that has taken off. And that's my 20% of playtime right now.

And that's actually seeing way more views and way more revenue on the YouTube side of things than anything I've ever done before. It's wild. Are we having a resurgence of Pokemon? There was a resurgence in 2020 during the pandemic. A lot of people wanted to get back into the things that they grew up with as kids.

Collectibles kind of took off. It's kind of waned down a little bit, but it's here. It's here to stay. Pokemon is great, too, because Charizard and Pikachu are never going to get injured like the sports cards collectors worry about, right? So anyway, I could go on and on about that. Awesome. I've got some friends who have an Amazon and eBay store. They do pop culture and collectibles.

So I think they're getting into the Pokemon pretty heavily now. I have a question for you about really podcasting and giving away really good information. A lot of people are looking at podcasting now. We've been on here several years. We've got hundreds of episodes. Obviously, you've been on for well over a decade. And you see these people come and go, and they're never consistent with what they're doing. And everybody wonders, oh, can I actually do anything with podcasting? Is it too late to get into podcasting? What's your perspective on that? It's not too late at all.

I mean, it's taking a very similar approach to what blogs did in the early 2000s, where initially it was sort of like the techie nerdy people who were creating blogs because nobody knew how to do it. And there wasn't any software to figure out how to do it as sort of a normal person. And then in the 2010s, you know, blogging became like the platform everybody was doing, right? First it was Zynga and then Blogger and then WordPress came about and just made it so easy and accessible for everybody but then what happened is it became just saturated and the cream always rises to the top obviously but then it becomes like huge if you were to compare the lifetime of blogging and that's obviously still around but it's it's it's made way for other media.

Podcasting, I would say, is similar to the early 2010s right now of blogging. So the technology's there, more and more people are getting there, but we're starting to feel like it's saturated, which is probably where this question comes from from a lot of people. But let me ask you a question.

Is the market saturated with really good, valuable content? Is the market saturated with stuff that is valuable content? Is the market saturated with stuff that is completely relatable to target audiences out there? I would argue that no. It's not. It's not at all, right? So if you bring an understanding of who it is you're talking to,

because the form of podcasting, it's mouth to ear. It's so personable. It's what I once heard, the best way to scale intimacy, right? And that's where these stories come into play. The voice, the intonations in how a person says something, it's just levels beyond just text only. And it's a lot easier than video, just like for, as far as like YouTube and stuff. So if you can understand who it is that you're serving and tell stories, bring people on,

share those transformations, inspire, entertain, inform, educate, then as long as you keep going with it, you will attract the audience that's right for you, right? Your vibe will attract your tribe, but it does take time. And unlike YouTube, podcasting doesn't have the algorithms to just get a video in front of somebody. So you need to really play on these stories

that you're telling. Word of mouth plays a big role in this. And being a guest on other shows, connecting with other podcasters, just like how you and I are connecting today is a way to cross pollinate. And it's not a zero sum game where if a person's listening to me,

they're not listening to you. Most people are subscribed to seven or more podcasts. And I found people who are subscribed to 40 or 50, right? So you're not necessarily competing with other podcasters. You have to compete for, well, what is valuable to me right now? And hopefully you can step up and create something amazing like that. I find it interesting because, I mean, so many cars coming out now have Apple Play in them and things of that nature. So you have people that are binging different podcast topics, a lot of the true crime or what have you. And it's interesting to watch that from a media perspective. It's like when Netflix came in and everybody started binge watching everything. I think there's a, we're just at the base of the mountain with podcasting, in my opinion. I think there's a lot of climb left to go because everybody's adapting their media style to fit into podcasting, including, and I was coaching a CEO who has an internal podcast in their company. That's how they do their corporate communication. But here's the thing, folks, for all of our listeners, you hear Pat's voice.

We have really good microphones here in post-production. You hear Pat's voice. He's on a really good microphone. But the reality is Pat said this word that is incredibly important here, and that's intimacy. It's that sound of your voice in their ears. And Pat, how did you, you know, you always kind of, you've been playing with this, and to shortcut, if somebody wants to get into podcasting or recommendations you might have, you know, is that the first thing you would say is just go get a good mic and then start talking to it? Or, I mean, are there any other tips? Yeah. I mean, you don't want to talk to

the microphone because the microphone is not real, right? Just there you go. No, I'm just kidding. But you, I'm just playing. But you consider the person on the other end who is real, right? Who is the listener? What are they going through? What struggles or challenges might they be having? Or what are their goals? Speak to that, right? And your show, your podcast, especially if it's like an educational one or a personal brand, you have to realize that even though you are the host, it's actually not about you, right? It's about how this can serve others. And this is why, you know, a mantra we have in SPI is just serve first. When you step up to serve others, it always comes back in some way, shape or or form, whether a person's going to buy one of your programs or recommend it to a friend, or even provide you the feedback that you need to make it even better, whatever it might be.

But you're right, that intimacy is really key. So first steps would be, and yes, the microphone is probably the most important piece of equipment because that's the voice capture mechanism, right? And there's some really good microphones that are really cheap actually because we're at that age now in the world of audio uh my favorites to recommend are the samson q2u it's like 60 bucks on amazon and it just plugs directly into your computer it's not like sound engineer university engineer style but it's like for podcasting it's exactly what you need and you don't need the box and the other amplifier and the other, like all these other things, you just plug it right in and can go.

So the barrier to entry is really low. The biggest hurdle is not the equipment or the software, it's what's going on in a person's head. Are people gonna even listen to this? Am I good enough? Will I even have anything to share? And this is why conversations and bringing, starting with friends and people you know on first

to just unpack certain things that a person can listen to. And what happens is a listener on the other end, just like right now, those of you listening, you're probably feeling like we're all in the same room together and you're just like a fly on a wall listening and, and, and, and a part of the conversation with us. And that's the cool thing that can happen. So you just need to have and find these fun conversations. And again, the keyword, and I've said this a few times is to tell story. That's the power of podcasting. And the fact that podcast listeners are listening on average for 30 minutes, 45 minutes, an hour, that is huge compared to what a person might dedicate to a video. I mean, now, especially with TikTok and reels and shorts, like

the intention span is much, much shorter. But when a person turns on a podcast, there's a good hook in the beginning and it's relatable. They're gonna put that phone in their pocket and go on a run. They're gonna put that phone down and go on the drive. You have them for so much time. And when you can get into the story and bring emotion into it, make a person laugh, cry, smile, whatever it might be,

whether it's just you or an interview, collect that story, bring it out, and people will just wanna keep coming back, collect that story, bring it out. And people will just want to keep coming back or binge listen to everything else you have. So press record and go. That's really it. All right, we're going to pause the conversation right there. This has just been amazing.

It's been gold, but we've reached the end of our episode. So make sure that you subscribe so you get notified next week when part two comes out we'll see you next time