We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - TIP 020 : How to Create Passive Income - with Pat Flynn (Investing Podcast)

Episode Date: January 31, 2015

IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL LEARN: Who is Pat Flynn? Where should people start in creating their own asset? What is the difference between blogging to generate passive income and blogging to build a brand? How did Pat create a couple different assets with little to no start-up capital. Where does Pat get the inspiration for his assets. Ask the Investors: How do I factor in exchange rates when buying stocks? BOOKS AND RESOURCES Join the exclusive TIP Mastermind Community to engage in meaningful stock investing discussions with Stig, Clay, and the other community members. Pat Flynn’s book, Let Go – Read reviews of this book. Free Mind Mapping Software, FreeMind. Eric Ries’ book, Lean Start-up – Read reviews of this book. Tim Ferris’ book, The 4 Hour Work Week – Read reviews of this book. Gary Keller and Jay Papasan’s book, The One Thing – Read reviews of this book. The Currency Website: OECD.org. New to the show? Check out our We Study Billionaires Starter Packs. Our tool for picking stock winners and managing our portfolios: TIP Finance Tool. Check out our Favorite Apps and Services. Browse through all our episodes (complete with transcripts) here. Support our free podcast by supporting our sponsors.   SPONSORS Support our free podcast by supporting our sponsors: Hardblock AnchorWatch Cape Intuit Shopify Vanta reMarkable Abundant Mines HELP US OUT! Help us reach new listeners by leaving us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts! It takes less than 30 seconds and really helps our show grow, which allows us to bring on even better guests for you all! Thank you – we really appreciate it! Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm

This is episode 20 of The Investors Podcast. Broadcasting from Bel Air, Maryland. This is the Investors Podcast. They'll read the books and summarize the lessons. They'll test the waters and tell you when it's cold. They'll give you actionable investing strategies. Your host, Preston Pish and Sting Broderson. All right.

How's everybody doing? This is Preston Pish. And as usual, I'm accompanied by my co-host. Stig Broderson, and this is lucky episode number 20 of The Investors podcast. And as always, Stig and I are so excited to have you guys in our audience. And so if you haven't noticed, I am very pumped up for today's episode. In fact, I've been anxiously awaiting for this episode for over a month. Our guest is the one and the only Pat Flynn from the Smart Passive Income podcast.

Pat, I cannot thank you enough for coming on our show today. We are just so thrilled to have you. Hey, thank you so much for having me on. And I'm definitely not the one and only. I think if you look up Pat Flynn and Google, there's like a million of us. But I'm so happy to be here. I'm the one from the Smart Passive Income podcast. Quick question for you, Preston.

Does anyone ever call you the Fresh Prince of Bel Air since you're in Bel Air, Maryland? No, I love the name. It's rough. Bel Air reminds me of, you know, Will Smith from, Fresh Prince of Bel Air here in California, but you're in Bel Air, Maryland, which is pretty cool. It's a big difference between Bel Air Maryland and Bel Air, California. Let me tell you. That's awesome. Well, thanks for having you today. So thrilled to have you. So in addition to Pat coming on the show today, we have our good friend Hari Ramachandra from bitsbusiness.com and he'll be here to help us ask some questions with Pat. So Hari, always a pleasure to have you.

Thank you, Kristen. And Pat, it's a pleasure in honor to join Kristen and stick today. I've been following you since 2009. And you have inspired me and also given me a lot of resources and help. And thank you for that. Yeah, my pleasure. That's awesome. 2009. So you're one of the early Pat Flynn followers. That's crazy.

Yeah, early board. So as you guys know, Stig and I, we're always talking about investing. And we're typically talking about one type of investing. And that's buying assets that already exist. But today we're going to do something a little bit different. We're going to be talking about the other side of the coin and discuss. us asset creation. And let me tell you there's no better guest to have on the show to talk about asset creation

than Pat Flynn. This guy's the real deal. And he's a person that we absolutely track, like you heard Hari say, he's been following Pat since 2009. So probably the person that we track on the internet more than anybody else. And I know that might sound a little bit stalkerish there, Pat, but it truly is the truth. And so we're really pumped to have this interview. You're a pretty special guest for us.

So we're going to start off the episode with a little bit of a story. And so the way that this starts is back in May of this past year. Stig and I were out at the Berkshire Hathaway shareholders meeting where Warren Buffett has a shareholders meeting. And whenever we were leaving, I was getting on a plane and flying through Dallas back here to Bel Air. And I ran into Hary. Never knew Hari before. And he was wearing a LinkedIn jacket. And so the two of us just started chatting.

And so we were talking about accounting and like investing and like all this hardcore like balance sheet stuff. And while we were on the plane, so we got on the plane, so we were talking before we got on the plane, we get on the plane and as luck would have it, who am I sitting next to but Hari? So we keep our conversation going. And Hari goes to me, I said, I'm going to send you this book that Stig and I just wrote. And Hari says, well, do you know this guy Pat Flynn? and I said, I have no idea who that guy is. And no offense, Pat. I'm sorry.

No, no, take it. But I said, I have no idea if that is. And he says, you need to go to this guy's website and check this guy out. And I said, okay. So he shot me a link after I got back. And I go to this guy's website, this Pat Flynn. And I pull up his site and I was literally floored. I was just like, what is this?

And like, right there on. On the front of his page, it says, I'm your crash test dummy for online business. And I'm like getting kind of curious. And I see that this guy has an income statement on his website right there for like the world to see. And I click on this income statement and I'm going through it. And like, you got to realize that's stigginized forte is income statements, balance sheets, cash flow statements. Like, we live in that stuff.

And so I'm scrolling through this and I'm looking. I'm like, this guy just made like, you know, whatever it was, 25K. on, you know, this one item. So then I click on and I'm looking at it. And I mean, I am just pouring through his page. And then I see that he has a podcast. I have never listened to a podcast before in my life. Never.

So I click on the podcast and I subscribe. And I was like, I'm going to try this out. You know, I've got an iPhone. Let's try this thing out. So I see that he has an interview with this Pat Flynn and Tim Ferriss, who I knew, so, or knew of. And so I listened to this podcast. and I'm driving in the first day, and I'm listening to this. I was like, this is freaking gold.

Like, this is amazing. Like, why am I not doing a podcast? Like, this stuff's unbelievable. And so I'm just listening to the next one. I'm like hooked, like absolutely hooked. And so I had to tell you that story, Pat. I really did. I had to get that off my chest because, dude, we would not have this podcast if it wasn't for you.

I'm serious. Like, I didn't even know what one was. And so... I didn't realize that you guys have the show because, I mean, that's pretty freaking cool. That's awesome. Thank you for sharing that with me. Dude, it was literally a week later.

I was on Lance Ravencraft's website. One week after I listened to the first podcast, I literally bought every single thing that he recommended. Like, right then and there, I was like, this is what I'm going to do. Like, it was like all these alarm bells went off. Like, this guy is showing you. the path of what you need to do. And we just went out and, I mean, we went after.

I mean, this meeting, the shareholders meeting was in May. And we bought all this stuff. And I sat, I saw your site. I probably didn't do anything more for like another three months. And then I went back to it. And then I listened to the podcast. And then we've stood all this up within that short amount of time. So that shows you what this guy is putting out there.

And you know how much we've paid Pat for all this information and stuff that he's given us? We've paid him nothing. He has literally put all this out on the internet for free. Okay, so you guys are paying me back right now, though, with everything you've just said. This is a form of payment. And I'm half joking here. I mean, really, when you provide value, just like you guys are doing right now to all the listeners out there, if they can use that information and it helps them, they're going to try and find ways to pay you back to.

I mean, that's just the law of reciprocity. That is for real. And that's kind of how I've been able to build my businesses over time just by giving away as much free information as I can. and it always comes back to me in one way, shape, or form just like this. And we're living, you know, and I think that your thought patterns are now wearing, and they're coming into our stream and we're experiencing the exact same thing. If there was like a theme for like 2014 and the start of 15, it is reciprocity. That's the thing that we're learning more than anything else.

So that was a long intro. I did not intend on that taking that long. Okay, I really didn't. But I had to say that because you have no idea what you have done for our, podcast, for our websites, or everything, it's just totally amazing. So with all that said, I'm going to fire away the first question. Boom.

So, Pat, you're becoming a household name. I really want you to tell our audience your story because they might not know it. Tell them your humble beginning of getting laid off as an architect and then walking them through the general steps you took to do what you love, to stay true to who you are and eventually crush it by pulling in 116K and a 7,000. in a single month back in 2013. Yeah, I mean, man, it all kind of started when I got pulled into my boss's office at an architecture firm I was working at. And I was just climbing the corporate ladder at that point.

I was the youngest person just previously promoted to job captain and was doing just everything I could to just improve and climb that ladder. I was doing a lot of things that weren't asked of me in my job description. And everything was going great. I foresaw myself being in this industry for 40 years, having my own architecture from down the road, being this world famous architect. And then all of a sudden, my boss calls me in. He sits me down. He says, Pat, you're one of the youngest, brightest guys we know. Unfortunately, we have to let you go.

And I was like, what? Like, how does that what you just said connect with what you just said there? And I was just for, like, I don't know if you've ever gotten the wind knocked out of you. But it was, it was like that times 100. because I had just done everything right up to that point. And it was just so frustrating. And I couldn't even think at that point. I had just proposed to my girlfriend.

And she said, yes. So I had that in my head too. And just I thought I failed. I was like, what did I do wrong? I must be a complete failure. And obviously it wasn't me. It was the economy back in 2008. And I just got kicked.

You know, it was this toilet drain. And I got pulled down under with it. And my initial reaction was, okay, I'm going to call every. architecture firm that I know, every contractor that I've ever worked with and just beg and plead for a job because this is what I went to school for. This is what I've been doing for the last three years. I don't have anything else right now. And at the time, it wasn't, I didn't feel lucky, but now looking back, I'm like, luckily there was nothing open. Everybody was firing

everybody else or letting people go. And after a couple months of a buffer period, I had a buffer period actually because I was job captain I was in charge of certain projects they couldn't just let me go that day I had you know two or three months to kind of work with those clients that I had and kind of have myself you know get away from those in a slower period of time than just that day so I had some time but I had a termination date about three months later after that that business meeting and every day I was taking the train because I moved back with my parents my wife moved back with her parents too because we were saving money for the wedding and on that train ride I saw I saw switched from listening to music because I just got bored on my playlist to this thing called

podcast. And I had never listened to podcast before. And I discovered one called Internet Business Mastery with these guys named Jason and Jeremy. And they were awesome. And on one of their shows, they featured a guy who was making six figures a year helping people pass an exam, which is called the Project Management Exam or the PM Exam. And that's when a lightball went off for me, because I had taken an exam as an architect that was really hard. There wasn't much information for it. And I had actually created a website to help myself pass that exam. And I had actually created a website to help myself pass that exam. Myself and a couple of my coworkers

never, ever intended it on being something that anyone else in the world can find. I didn't know how Google worked or keywords and all that stuff. I didn't know how that worked. I just built that site for me and a couple co-workers. And then after I passed that exam, I just let it sit there. There's no reason for me to go back until I heard this interview and I went back to that site.

I put an analytical tool on that site to keep track of traffic because I wanted to build this into a business just like that guy did. And the next day, once one full day of traffic registered on that site, I saw that there were five or six thousand people already visiting my site every single day. Oh my God. And I was floored.

And I first I had those reactions like, oh my gosh, I got to take it down because, you know, it wasn't like, yes, business opportunity. It was more the resistance and the fear that we always fear when we dive into something new, right? And it was like, oh, what if the information's wrong?

What if I get in trouble for doing this? Like, I don't even know what's going on here. But then I started, to get involved with internet business a little bit more. I reached out to those guys in internet business mastery. I joined their program. I talked to a lot of people there and found out that I had a great opportunity on my hands and that I really had to begin to figure out how to potentially monetize this thing.

And so to make it a longer story short, I published a book, a study guide in October of 2008 that took about two and a half months to launch. And it mostly took that long because I was just afraid. I was just scared of what people would think of it. But I eventually launched it because I had nothing to lose, really. And in that first month, I made $7,908.55 cents selling a $19.99 e-book. And the really interesting thing about that month especially was I got a number of emails from people who had already passed the exam a long time ago who purchased my book anyway. And they said, Pat, finally you gave me a way to pay you back for all of that free information you gave me when you helped me pass a few months ago.

And I was just like, oh, wow. This is awesome because my whole perception of internet business before this was like scam, scam, red alert, red alert, you know, this whole, yeah, you know what I'm talking about. This internet scammers, like here I was in internet business and doing it in such a way that I was providing value. I was getting paid for and getting these incredible notes of thank you. And that's, it kind of took off from there and the business kept growing. I started to add more products like an audio guide and practice exams and it just exploded. And I was able to make within a year over $200,000 from that.

business. Now, I tell that story, and it sounds like it all happened overnight, but I just want to make sure everybody knows that that site was up for a year and a half. It had time for Google to find it. I had for a long time pumped content into it every single day, again, like I said, for myself and for my audience, or for my coworkers. So I just want to let everybody know that this, like any business takes a long time. And you hear these stories about overnight successes, and they're a rare case. They can happen. But what I teach on my site, smart passive income.com, which I created because people were like, oh my gosh, how are you doing this? You need to share this, that it could actually be done in a legitimate way. That's the kind of business I teach. The better

you serve your audience, the more rewards you'll get back, just like I talked about. And so on smart passive income, now what I do is I, like I said, on the crash test dummy, I build new businesses and I just test out things and see what happens. And whether it goes well, which sometimes it does, and maybe sometimes it doesn't. Actually, most of the time it doesn't. It's always a lesson for everybody watching so they can learn from my mistakes, my wins and my failures and successes. And that's kind of what has launched me into this sort of leadership role in the area of online business and entrepreneurship, but also, and what I like better is, is the authenticity and the transparency behind it. And I see a lot of people sort of taking on that same

strategy. Just, you know, don't try to put up a front. Just be real. And we're in an age now where people want to do business with other people. And the more you can be a human being on the other end, on the other end of that website, the more chances you have to make a difference and to actually make a real connection, a human-to-connection over two computer screens in that way by just sharing everything. And that's kind of the approach I take.

And so, sorry that was such a long story. I get so pumped when I talk about this stuff because it's just, it makes me relive this amazing journey I've had and hopefully it inspires some of the listeners out there. You know, and before Stig jumps on his question, I just want to highlight, I tell people this all the time.

Some of my biggest set, The things that like when you're in the moment and you're experiencing it, like you said, it was just like gut wrenching. You just didn't even, you just like want to throw up. When you're going through that, you're like, why me? Why is this happening to me? This is just so horrible. Why should anybody else experience this?

But what's amazing is when you fast forward in time and you're able to look back at that experience, I can honestly say every time I didn't get what I wanted and I had like that major setback, It has truly been the biggest blessing and the biggest gift in hindsight because it led me down and it led me in the direction that where I'm at right now. And I know you would feel the exact same way. I mean, you just described that, Pat. And I see, Hari, you wanted to chime in. You obviously had the exact same stuff happen to you as well. It's just, you know, when you experience that and you have that horrible experience, you have to keep that in mind.

Like, hey, this is happening for a reason. I'm experiencing this setback because there is some. something really big that's about to come. And I just need to keep a positive attitude and continue to work hard and stay passionate and stay real, like Pat said. I just wanted to add, Pat, that, you know, whenever I have met any friend who I know well or who I wish well, I've always shared your website, even though if they're not in the online business or not interested in entrepreneurship, the reason is your inspiring story. What I have found is, for me, at least, personally, when I read about your story a long time back, as I said,

one thing that helped me was that it took the fear away after listening to your story. And it made me better at my work because now I was not working with the fear in my mind, but I was giving it my full and I knew what could be the worst that can happen. You'll get fired. And thank you for that.

And the second thing that I want to add is you call yourself crash test dummy. I wouldn't call you a dummy though. I mean, you're too modest for what you have accomplished. But the wise chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Charlie Munger famously has quoted or said that the best way to learn is from others' mistake. And you are putting out yourselves there day in and day out and making those mistakes for us. And thank you for that. You're welcome.

And even when I go back to that initial site that I created for those people passing this architecture exam. The exam is called the lead exam, by the way, L-E-E-D. It's interesting because I on that site shared myself and the fact that I didn't get 100% on the exam that I was teaching people how to pass. And a lot of people are like, oh, you shouldn't put your score there because that's, you know, you're showing that you don't know everything. Why are people going to buy stuff from you if you show that you make mistakes? but fast forward a little bit after that conversation, the United States Green Building Council, who administers that exam,

they came out with their own study guide to compete with mine. And I think it was a direct result of seeing how successful mine was. And I thought I was done. I thought, oh, why would people buy from Pat, who got 183 out of 200, when you could buy a set of study guide things from the actual company that puts on this exam, who writes the questions.

My sales went up. a lot when that happened. And it was because people connected with me. And the fact that I was a real person on the other end with a face with a name, somebody who was actually in the same seat as they are in now back in the day when I took the exam. And so, yeah, just being real, I mean, that's really what it's all about. And I love what you were saying there, Preston, about the whole, you know, it's not a, things happen for a reason, right?

And that's cliche to say. We hear that all the time, but it's true. But it's not just what happens to you. It's how you react to it. to what happens to you. Every time something happens to you, that's the universe or whoever you want to think of saying to yourself, okay, here's your test.

How are you going to take this next opportunity? I think it was a Greek, Stoic philosopher, Epic Tennis, who said it's, I pulled up the quote here because I knew I was going to butcher it. He said, it's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters. And it's so true. And looking back at that layoff,

maybe I didn't react to it in the best way right away. But I mean, it's okay to feel terrible about situations when those things happen. But then you eventually have to just wipe off that dust and move forward. And you can either move forward or move backwards. And hopefully we'll all move forward when these things happen in our lives. And I've always found that when, like you said, when I've talked to several other entrepreneurs, they have a similar story. Something tragic happens or something where they have to make a huge decision.

And then they find that success. I mean, I hear that over and over and over. and over again. That's not to say if you have a job and you don't like it, you should just quit tomorrow and then something amazing will happen. But, I mean, there's something to be said for that. I think I, because I got laid off and didn't have a plan B, I made decisions that I wouldn't have normally made

if I still had my secure job. I took risks that I wasn't normally used to taking. But again, I was just like, you know what, I have to take this risk because I would much rather live a life full of O wells than a life full of what-ifs. Yeah. Yeah. So Pat, you know, great points. My question is that, you know, many, there are many people out there that have ideas and would love to create their own assets. But I think that they're scared and perhaps they don't know how to start. Where do you think that people should start? Perhaps just general advice. I mean, the first thing I would do is just take everything in your brain that you're thinking of about this particular idea and put it on paper. Like it starts to take, you know, because our brains are a mess. right we go from one thing to another the moment you start to organize it and put it on paper i would even put it on post it notes just take this idea that you have put it in the center of your table and then start to make post notes right around it's just a cloud doesn't have to be organized or anything and what's really cool is no matter what that is whether it's a book or product or business or a website you're going to start to see patterns and groupings and those become chapters those become categories on your website those become different products for that business it's really cool when you start to mind map that's that's a sort of

strategic term for what we're talking about here. There's even mind mapping software that will help you do this as well. One of my favorites is called Mind Meister. That's one of my favorites because you can actually share that and collaborate with other people on your team, which is pretty cool. Or there's another one called Free Mind, which is a free one that you can use to do that as well. But I just love using old school pen and paper and notepads and things like that.

Another thing I would do when you have this idea is talk about it with people. Now, this might sound counterintuitive because you might think, oh well this is my idea i don't want anybody to steal it right and i get that but nobody's going to be as driven as you about this idea nobody's going to steal your idea and if they do you can do it better than them you have to realize that whatever this idea might might be but the purpose of talking about it with other people is because you will begin to have a conversation about it it flushes out these little hidden gaps in your idea you might even find out through conversation that this is a terrible idea and instead of working on it for two years spending a lot of money and putting it out there

and then having people tell you it's terrible, why don't you talk about it now so people can tell you it's terrible or they tell you it's awesome and that you have to do it, in which case you would be even more motivated to do it. And what's really cool is if you can begin to talk about this, not just with your friends and family,

but with people who are in that target market as well, they will, as your potential customer, help shape what that thing is. Again, we're talking about something hypothetical, whether it's a physical product, an informational product or a service, whatever. but when you talk about it with your target customer, with their pains and their wants and their needs in mind,

really you need to build a solution to a person's pain and that's really what it comes down to. When you could do it with them, I mean, you just are creating a product that they need. You're not guessing anymore. You're going basically off of what they say, and that's how you could validate it as well. You might also find that there are companies out there,

websites, products similar to what you're thinking about. should that stop you? Absolutely not. That validates the fact that you are on the right track and you might think, oh, well, you know, I'm late to the game. I'm at a disadvantage. No, you're actually at an advantage because you're coming in late in the game, meaning you can see it from a bird's eye perspective and see how that audience is being served and where they're not being served. And you can come in as the better solution. And you don't have to reinvent the wheel here. You don't have to create like a like, like, try to reinvent walking like the Segway tried to do. And what do the segues do now? They just roll down the boardwalk with their little tour guides, right? Like you don't have to reinvent something. You can just take something that's there, an idea and make it yours, put your own voice behind it and make it better and serve that audience better than they are

being served right now. So those are a few tips for you in terms of validating your product. And then from there, it's just a matter of finding the right platform or the right people to work with to help you put that together and get, you know, At the same time, it's really important. And I didn't know if we were going to cover this later, but it's also really important to connect with other entrepreneurs as well.

If this is a path you want to go down, whatever it is that you're interested in, you should always connect with other people who are interested in the same thing as well. It's human nature to be a part of a group. And I can't tell you how important being a part of other entrepreneur groups has been for the success that I've had because I've gotten so much great advice.

I've been held accountable by those people. I am in three different what they call mastermind groups. Napoleon Hill talks about in his book, Think and Grow Rich. There's the power of being in a little group, maybe five to six people, some are bigger, some are smaller, but you hold each other accountable, you talk about each other's goals, you share the same values, and you work toward the same thing. You don't have to be in the same niche or market, but as long as you're all there and

focus on helping each other, and it's the power of at one, you know, basically the way these meetings, these mastermind meetings work is one person is in the hot seat. That person shares something they need help with or a problem that they're having, and everybody else collectively helps that person out and just has a discussion. about it. Like, this is such powerful stuff. That has to be in there as well. And I would get involved with that sooner than later. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. All right. I want you guys to imagine spending three days in Oslo at the height of the summer. You've got long days of daylight, incredible food, floating saunas on the Oslo Fjord. And every

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You're up. Okay. A lot of things you just mentioned is on your website and as well as your book as well, let go, which I thoroughly enjoyed reading. Thank you. However, my next question is about branding. Back in 2011, I listened to your talk to the financial bloggers conference, I believe. I might tell the name wrong, but I loved the talk.

One of the things that caught my attention was the concept of branding. At the time, I was working at LinkedIn, which is all about building brands or all about helping professional build their own brands. And when I listened to your talk, at that time, I was happily employed at LinkedIn. I had no issues. My job was safe. So I had no intentions of starting something on over. I wanted to know how can I use this platform that you talk about, the websites, the podcast,

to build my brand as a professional or as a business owner to help me in getting better job opportunities or better consulting positions, for example. Right. Well, I mean, the platform itself, the blog or the podcast or the video channel or whatever it might be, that becomes your platform, essentially. That becomes your area where you can share messages and help other people who discover it. Tell what you're all about and what you have to offer them and how you can help them. What's really cool about the branding thing is a lot of people think about branding and they're like, oh, okay, what's the colors? What's the logo? You know, what's it going to look like? But I really want you to think even beyond that or actually even before that, what makes you. unique. Your company or you, if you're branding yourself as a personal brand or your company or your product, like you have to understand what they call what is your unfair advantage. That thing that you can bring, that nobody else can bring. And once you discover what that is, and you might not know what it is at first, maybe it's going to take some time to find out what it is or some conversation between you and your target customer or your target market. But once you find out what that is, you got to milk it

because that's what's going to help you stand out. And that's truly the, the, the, the, the, a big lesson there. That's something I picked up because I remember in 2010 with smart passive income. My website was doing okay. I just started my YouTube channel and my, you know, I didn't have nearly as many people visiting the site. I only had hundreds a day. Now I have, you know, 20, 40, 60,000 people coming to the site a day. So I was in the very early days and I remember going to one of my mentors and I told him, dude, like I have all these business ideas I want to do now can I pitch them to you and just show you what I'm thinking of and I showed him these five different business ideas again completely brand new and he's like these are great but they don't have any of you in it

and I'm like what do you mean there's no me in it he's like there's no pat Flynn people connect with you that's what makes you special you just have this unique ability to make real connections with people in this digital world somehow you're able to do that and I I never heard anyone tell me that before but when he said that that's when smart passive income became smart passive income became smart passive thinking with Pat Flynn. And that's when Pat Flynn and personality started to get injected into everything because that's what made me unique. And I knew I had the unique advantage of being able to really make a true connection

with people, although we all have that advantage as well because nobody is like any of us. And it's, it's, oh, it's so funny because I think about back in a, back in high school, my friends and I, we like made business cards. Like we didn't even have businesses, but I don't know if you guys did this too, but we just ought to be cool that business cards and put our name and our phone number and our email on there, right? Got your suit on.

Yeah, but we try to make those business cards look so professional, right? With like three squares and a little swoosh coming across like a corporation, right? But we're going away from that time now where people want to know who that person is and not just like what their icon looks like.

But what does that person look like? And that's what makes those real connections and that's what's going to help you stand out is you. So what's unique about, you and people might be like oh well you know i'm not unique or anything but yes you are you just have to figure out sort of what it is that you do and even if if you do something that somebody else may do already or i people are going to connect with you just because people are going to connect with you

i mean that's just the way it is i remember for those of you who have listened to my podcast um at the beginning of every episode i put a fun little fact about me which my voiceover guy reads and i remember pitching that idea to some podcasting experts and they were like pat this is the dumbest idea I've ever heard. Why would you waste your time and money having another guy talk about you and these random fun facts? Nobody cares about your facts.

They just want to get into the business stuff. Well, I did it anyway. And, you know, my podcast is now 13 million plus downloads. And when I go to conferences, people always start with something that they connect with based off of those little fun facts. Like people come up to me and they're like, dude, how's your fantasy football team doing?

I'm like, I don't want to talk about it this year. It's terrible. They're like, dude, I play the trumpet too. or Pat, I'm half Filipino also or I was in the marching band too. Like, that's what they say and that's how and why they always end up saying the same thing

when I meet them. They always say, Pat, I feel like I know you. Yeah. Which is such a cool thing. Yeah. And then all the business and the money and the income. I mean, that's just a byproduct of building real relationships, I feel.

And it's so true because, so, I mean, I've been listening to your podcast for the last six or seven months and it feels like we have had these conversations for a while. And this is the first time I've ever talked to you in my entire life. So what he's saying is 100% true because it's just so natural to talk to you because we've been listening to all those different things. And you do know those little nittinoid things that you're talking about that are just

like no one else would ever know. Do you know any? Do you remember any weird facts about me? Well, of course, I played the trumpet in high school and you played the trumpet in high school. So it's like whenever I heard that, I was just kind of like laughing. It was just like little things like that. you do relate to the other person because of things like that.

Yeah, that's what they call, or I'm calling, the moment of activation. That's the, yes, and that's how you're going to remember that person and then you always come back to them. The thing I want to say about brand that a lot of people don't get is it's all about trust. Whenever you're building this trust, like you can hear how we're saying all this stuff to pack because we've been listening to his podcast. He has built an enormous amount of trust, not just between the three of us, but all these. these other people that are in his audience and that's a brand. And let me tell you, there's extreme value in that, the trust. And that's the thing that you need to focus about. And that's the thing that you need to really think about whenever you're trying to build a brand is,

how can I build trust with the people and my, you know, my customers or my audience or whatever it is for your product that you're trying to create? So let's go to the next question. Unless Pat, did you have any follow up that you wanted to say on? No, I just wanted to tag on the end of what you just said there. I mean, that's where really building these assets are coming from is first with building trust of people. Yep. Yeah. Okay. So one of the things that I try to tell people is the rewards to creating an asset versus buying an asset are like being in two different universes. People often invest in the stock market thinking that they'll become a millionaire in a few years and if they only have a few good picks. And it just doesn't work like that. If you're doing 10%

returns in the stock market, you're doing a great job. But if you're you're doing a great job. But if you create an asset, you could literally have a thousand percent return if you create value for your customer. Could you tell our audience how you've created a couple different assets with little or no startup capital and the income that those assets have produced for you? Sure, absolutely. One of them was a case study they've actually shared live on smart, passive income. I sort of built this site over time. And I wanted to just show people, you can build a website and here's how you do it. And it could even be in a niche where you don't really know much about. you just want to be there to serve that particular audience

if nobody else is already doing that. So using this keyword research tool that Stig was talking about, Market Samurai, I discovered that there was a term out there. Security Guard training is a term that was searched for quite heavily in Google, but very underserved in terms of what people find when they search that term. And there's a lot of sort of numbers and things that go along with that, but I won't get into that here.

And so I decided, okay, I'm going to build a site that's going to help people looking to figure out how to become a security guard. I'm not a security guard. Funnily enough, my mom actually is, but that didn't really have anything to do with this. And I just started to do the research. And that's how it went down.

I actually called using the phone. Remember what that is? I called actual security guard companies in different states because every state in the U.S. I found through my research had a different requirement. And I just called and said, hey, I would love to know how to become a security guard in state of blank.

And then I just created the business. best website out there that share that information. And that site, since I created it in September of 2010, has been at the top of Google because it just provides that valuable information that people are looking for really easily. And it's been there for over four years. And every month, it's generating between $2,000 and $3,500 for about 30 minutes of work per month in terms of just making sure it's still running and still just checking stats and optimizing it. I mean, that's a pretty darn good investment if you think about it. And in terms of what it cost to build that investment or asset, it probably cost, let's see, the domain itself, maybe $6.95 per month.

And an email list service provider, you know, maybe another $20 per year on top of that. And time. That's essentially it. So that might sound crazy because that's not even that much money. It's just mostly time. So that was like a million. percent return. A million percent return and it's still going. I mean, that's, that's, that's this, that's my definition of passive income that used to be able to create these businesses that serve people and it can be done in an automated or semi-automated way and then they can pay you back and return longer over time if you put in the work up front to do it. Another one that I've gotten into recently is, uh, is in, in, in around the software realm.

Um, I had, uh, my team build a custom, uh, WordPress plugin. which was a podcast player for my website for my new podcast when it came out last year called Ask Pat, which is a five-day-week podcast. And I thought it would be crazy if, for those of you who don't know how podcasting works, essentially, usually what you do is every time you come out with a new blog post, there is an embedded audio file in there and then the iTunes directories or whatever reads that there's a new audio file in there. And so essentially you'd have to create a new blog post every time you want a new audio file to go in there.

Well, Ask Pat was coming out five days a week. and I didn't want to just overflow my audience or overwhelm them with blog posts after blog post after blog post. So I decided to just post those audio files onto another server and just have one player on one page be able to continuously update what those episodes were. And so I created this podcast player and at first it was called the Ask Pat player because that's all it was used for. And then people started asking me, where did you get that player? And then I thought I was cool because initially my answer was, up, it's mine. nobody can have it, it's fine. Like, I custom built it.

And I don't even know how to code myself. I hired somebody, obviously, to do this for me. And then, obviously, after maybe the fifth or sixth email, I was like, ding, business idea. And so my team and I got together to figure out, okay, how can we turn this into something that's really easy for people to use? It's already there. We just need to figure out, okay, how can we make it easy for people to use and put

in their feeds and put in their show titles and things like that. And then that was launched mid last year in B, beta, meaning we only sold it to a limited amount of people in a closed group with not all the bells and whistles in there. There's a really cool book called The Lean Startup, which talks about this whole thing of a minimum viable product when you sell it, meaning you just want to build the solution. You don't need to put all the bells and whistles in there. And if you do it in a closed beta group, you can work with those first initial customers and have them tell you what else you can do beyond that, that they actually need instead of what you think they need. And so I've been working

with those beta customers, there was about 400 or 500 of them actually. So initially already, you know, I was making money, you know, between $50 and $80 per license that we were selling 400 customers now. And then it was closed because we were working closely with them. We added new features. We tested software is a whole different beast. This is sort of my first foray into it. There's a lot of things I can break, especially because there's a lot of versions of WordPress and there's a lot of themes and a lot of themes on different versions. I mean, it's just crazy. So it's not as easy as I thought it was, but we still put it in the time and effort and we just launched last week version 1.0, which means it's open for good. And we've been making sales

every single day, $97 for an annual license. And every customer, they're paying $97 a year. And we already have, you know, a couple hundred customers at this point. And that's a recurring income. And now I'll have to do because that system is set up, the purchasing process and the delivery of that code is set up. I just have to focus on marketing and making it better. And it's going to, it's going to, that itself is a business out of the very, you know, the whole slate that I have. So those are a couple examples for you.

That was, that's phenomenal. That's, so that just shows you guys. There's, there's enormous opportunity reward, uh, when you create your own asset versus buying somebody else's asset that they created. And that the big myth here is it doesn't take a lot of. capital to start it up. Everyone thinks that they have to have $100,000 to create an asset that's bringing in $3,000 a month. He did it with, you know, like under $50. You know, I mean, the software did obviously cost a little bit more because I had a developer team and stuff. But I mean, really,

I mean, in that case, maybe I invested 15K to get all that set up. And then, you know, we, we were in, you know, positive numbers halfway through the beta period. And now, everybody who comes on and signs on is a, is pure profit. Yeah. Minus like the recurring sort of $6 for the domain. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Hey, stay, go ahead.

So, Pat, I think that everybody who has been following, know that you have a lot of different projects going on. And I'm just thinking, where do you get the inspiration for which assets you create? I mean, a lot of the inspiration comes from my audience and what they need, just like that player that I was talking about. I mean, that was a direct result of people asking, hey, I need something like that. And when you build an audience, even if you don't have a product that you maybe have a message or something that you're good at that you just are showing people how to do, if you just

listen carefully, you're going to hear your audience tell you what they need. And that's where a lot of the inspiration should come from, your target audience. Now, it obviously comes from a lot of other places too. I mean, for the day in and day out, my number one inspiration is my two kids. I have a daughter who's two years old. My son is five, and especially my son, I mean, he knows what I do now. And he watches me on the computer. Sometimes he listens to me in the office when I'm podcasting every once in a while. And he asks all these questions. And I want to be there as an example for him to show him that you could create whatever you want. You could do whatever you want. And I know, again, that's one of those cliche things. But I just want him to know that, that,

you know, cool things happen when you put in the work, you know, and you serve people. This year, earlier this year, we did a campaign on SPI, my blog to build a couple of schools in Ghana, which was really cool. And I told everybody, hey, if we can raise $25,000, I will match 100% of that $25,000 and we'll build two schools because it cost $25,000 per school through this program called Pensals of Promise at pencilsofpromise.org. I interviewed the founder of that company. And that is what inspired me last year to go and see what else I could do beyond myself, my family, my community. I wanted to do something worldly here. And we were able to raise together over $54,000. And I'm actually headed to Ghana, in June, and

June to visit the schools that are being built and meet the children there. I mean, so cool. My son, unfortunately, won't be able to go, but he's going to see the pictures. And he even knew what was happening. He knew what was happening. Like, every day during that campaign, he would be like, how much are we making today for the kids? How much are we making today for the kids? And I'd show him, like, look at Becky, donated $100. And he'd ask questions, like, why are they donating money? Like, why? Like, I pick up the poop in the backyard for a dollar. Like, this is a lot of picking up. And I'm like, you know what? People are willing to pay it forward when they see that other people are in need and they know it's going to come back to them. And when we shape your form down

the road, I'm trying to teach that as much as I can to my kids. And that's where I get most of my inspiration from is actually thinking about them when they're 40 years old, having a conversation at a cafe, you know, they're married and they have kids too. And just getting together one Thanksgiving, be like, you know, talking about mom and dad, you know, like, what's that conversation going to be like, I wanted to be positive. You know, I don't want it to be like, oh, man, they were so mean or they never amounted to anything. I wanted to be we were lucky kids.

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All right. Back to the show. Yeah. That's awesome. Pat, I think the thing that a lot of people don't think about as well is you're talking about the, how it'll come back to you. But the thing that I think a lot of people don't understand is the compounding impact that happens whenever your son interacts with another person and he has a positive impact on them. And then that person then goes on and has the and it spreads and it spreads and it spreads like wildfire and it's compounding and it's exponential and that's the thing that I just that's where I lose that's where I get in my thoughts is it's not like it's just coming back to me it is going to another person another person and then it's just spreading and it makes you just realize I'm truly just creating this world around me

all the time and I'm thinking if I keep doing that and I keep acting in that manner for another 20 or 30 years what's the world going to look like you know it just blows my mind it just blows your mind when you think about it and I'm not like the start of this I mean I am for people who I'm connecting with but I'm doing it as a result of Jason and Jeremy who did it as a result of somebody else

who did it you know it's just like the way the world works I mean I just love all that positive energy that's why I always do every day I try to do one just random act of kindness this is something I try to teach my audience to do every once in a while just be randomly kind to someone today

like just the effects that that could have on a person's life, which could have another effect on somebody else. Like one day I went into Starbucks and I just do this every once in a while. I bought the person behind me a coffee. And he happened to be there with his son. They were having a terrible day I found out because after I bought them that coffee, they wanted to just sit down and chat and ask like, why did you do this? And I think he knew that this was awesome and wanted to be an example for a son.

But I found out that the son had accidentally broken his mom's iPad and the mom yelled at him and they were just having a terrible day. and he felt, he felt terrible and just felt the whole world was crushing on him. You know, he's only like eight years old. And then when he was, he was just, he was just so taken aback of strangers kindness. And I know that this is something that this kid like years down the road. I mean, he's obviously not going to think about it every day, but maybe one day we'll think about it and do something for somebody else. Yep. Yep. Definitely.

So Pat, one of the quotes in your book, Let Go, I really like. and try to kind of, you know, still make sense of it, is by Tony Robbins, you say the path to success is to take massive, determined action. And I know you exemplify that. And you have been doing it for years. However, when I started building my blocks, I have failed at many of them so far. And a lot of reasons is what you have already pointed out. Some of them was lack of interest. Some of them, I just did it for kind of trying to figure out or looking cool. In the end, as you say, that your success is a byproduct of how you are serving others or how you are helping others.

However, my question is, how do you go about or how do you advise for somebody who is starting to build his own blog or website? I have seen a post where you have chronicled the evolution of your blog or smart passive income. They use an interface. And I can see that it was pretty basic in 2008, but by 2009, it kind of got award quite a bit. So what is your advice? Like, you know, should somebody focus on the look and feel of the UI right from the get-go

or wait until he collects some good audience? And do you have any recommendation for any web designers or so who are good at helping our beginners? Yeah, I mean, there's a couple things there. You're talking about massive action, and that's important. You always want to take bold actions with what you. you're doing or else you know little actions little results big actions big results um but with that being said i mean notice it's massive take massive actions it's not take massive perfect action and the whole idea behind is you don't have to be perfect you just have to go and you're going to make mistakes you are going to

fail we realize that that's going to happen but use those things as learning experiences so you can keep moving forward you can read all the books you want you can listen to all the podcasts in the world and have all that information but it it you might as well not have ears or know how to read if you don't put those things into action, right? You're just as good as somebody who doesn't know how to read if you don't put those things into action.

I think it was Mark Twain or somebody who said something similar. Einstein had a real similar quote to that as too, as far as just saying... It could have been Einstein, yeah. You can't just read all day long. You have to go out and you actually have to create and you have to apply what you're learning and be creative.

Right. And the thing about that, then the reason I bring this up first is it doesn't have to be perfect. You just got to go. And as we all, know we learn by doing mostly you just got to and and when we're babies right when we learn how to walk we get up we stumble we get up again we keep trying do something different so and so forth i mean we lose a lot of our childhood tendencies in that way and discovery and curiosity and learning when we're older just because we don't want to fail we don't want to look bad and and it feels bad to fail but

no failing is good as long as you use those things as learning experiences and to your other question or to your to your question about the user interface or what the website looks like um it's hard for me to look at those, the archive of what my site used to look like, because those were terrible. But I hope that shows you. I took action and it wasn't beautiful action, but I just had something up where I can begin serving my audience. I put myself in a position where I could finally start writing content. And even when I started the podcast, I remember I recorded episode number one, which came out in July in May, and I recorded that three different times because the first time wasn't good enough. The second time, I actually had scripted the whole thing. So it was like 20 pages of

what I was going to say. And it sounded too robotic. And the third time, I was trying to do some blend between the two and it just didn't sound right. And the fourth time I recorded it finally, I was like, you know what, screw it. I'm just going to go. I'm not even going to edit this. And let's just you what happens. And then over time, you'll notice if you've been a long-time listener, it improves over time because I'm just doing it. And the same thing goes with your user interface and your website. Put yourself out there, just get something that works and focus on what's actually going to help people. And then over time, you can make it perfect. You can change things, tweak things. And you're going to discover that some things that you may have thought that you

would have wanted when you first started maybe doesn't even need to be there. So, you know, do yourself a favor and don't worry about it. I think a lot of people, people use design specifically and the way things look as an excuse to moving forward and doing those things that are actually scary. Blog design, yes, there might be a theme out there. That's perfect. There might be a way to just tweak a little bit of code so it looks better. But that, I mean, that's just a hidden form of procrastination, I feel. You've got to just take action and actually get something out there that can actually help people. Perfect. All right, Pat, we're getting close and I don't

want to go over the hour because I know. Yeah, no, I talk a lot. I'm sorry. No, I don't want to go over because I think you're probably going to go to the beach after we're done here. No, no. All right. So, Pat, can you describe the importance of persistence and up being passionate about what you do? I have no doubt that those two factors had led to your enormous success. But for a lot of people that are interested in creating their first asset, starting out with that foundational level, I think that those two things are extremely important. So I just was wondering, If you felt that way and if you do just kind of describe the importance. Yeah, I mean, persistence for obvious reasons like we've just covered.

I mean, you've got to keep going. You're going to fail. You're going to make mistakes. You've got to keep going. And I think what's really important about that is understand why. Why should you keep going? And it's really hard to forget why sometimes. And for me, I'm very lucky because my why runs around all day, sometimes naked or in their underwear.

But I'm talking about my kids, by the way. I'm not saying. But, you know, it's like I see them every day. And I'm like, okay, I got to get, when I go into my office later today or tonight or whatever, I'm going to be in work mode because I want to be able to be able to play with them tomorrow, you know, that sort of thing. So I see my why every day. And that's why I am persistent because I want to be there.

Like I said before, also as an example for them when they're older as well. And, you know, in terms of passion, yeah, I mean, that's obviously there. I enjoy what I do. You might be thinking, oh, do you, are you passionate about security guard training? No, I'm not passionate about security guard training. but I am passionate about helping the people who are looking to become security. My why is I just want to help people.

And I know that's very general, but then you've got to narrow it down. Okay, how are you going to help people? And in that case, it just so happens to be I'm helping a certain set of people, people looking to start a security guard career and connect them to the information that they need to become a security guard

and to fulfill that role as the person providing that solution. Sorry. So absolutely have a passion. for serving more than anything and have fun with the process too. I mean just a passion for I have a passion for figuring things out and just experimentation. That's what I have fun with too. And you have to know what drives you and use that to your advantage as well. So yeah. Okay. Okay, Pat, your time is extremely valuable. We know that. And we can probably not extract everything that you know in a single interview. But if you had to pick the top three books,

just three books you would like to recommend to our audience for creating the very first assets. What should they be? I mean, there's a billion books that are great out there, obviously. But I'll just name a few, and I also have a book club on patflin.com where I recommend a cool book, sometimes fiction, or sometimes fiction, but mostly nonfiction, mostly business-related, but not always.

But three books I would recommend. The first one is one that was, I first picked up that was really inspirational, that showed me sort of the idea of creating this. asset that could potentially be walked away from for a little bit. I mean, with anything I'm talking about these websites and stuff, it's not a set it and forget it type of thing. I mean, it's a set it and forget it for a little while potentially and take breaks from it every once for a while. And that's the cool thing. Like your website's up 24-7, 365. You can take breaks from it every once in a while. It's flexible. That's the cool part about it. But it's not a,

once you have it up there, it's that way forever. I mean, just like with, you know, your portfolio, you got to check and make sure it's, it's up to date. And, you know, It has the shares that it needs to have at that moment in time. So it does require upkeep. But so the first one is the four-hour work week by Tim Ferriss. Definitely super inspirational. It tells you also a lot about automating and just mostly sort of the idea of that whole 80-20 effect. You know, what 20% can you do to get 80% of the results and doing that in many different areas of your life too?

So that's the four-hour work week by Tim Ferriss. there's also one that I would recommend called The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan. And that's really important because anybody who's looking to start something new is likely wanting to start 100 new things at the same time. And when you work on 100 things at the same time, nothing gets done. And even within a particular project, maybe you pick one thing you want to do. Well, within that one thing, there might be 100 things to do. And then you kind of just jump all over the place and you get nothing done. this book really lays it on the line as far as what, I mean,

essentially the consequences of losing your focus on that one thing. And so I have that book very close to me at my desk here because often I will get distracted by bright, shiny objects, as we all do. And it brings me back to reality on what I need to do and what I need to focus on at this current moment in time. And then I would also recommend, I don't want to feel like this is a plug or anything.

And if, you know, seriously, if anybody out there listening wants to get this book for free from me, just let me know. It's my book Let Go, which Ari mentioned already. It just talks about a lot of the psychological stuff that happens when you're transitioning. And a lot of the, you know, I talk, I get very personal with that book in terms of all the things I went through and the other people that were involved as well. Because this isn't just you who's going to go through this journey. It's the people around you who are watching you go through this journey as well. And I talk a little bit about that in the book too.

and hopefully it just gives you a dose of inspiration before you sort of take that massive action. It's a super short read. And so if you want that book for free, if you're listening to this, just go to just email me or send me a note on Twitter. How about that? At Pat Flynn. Or we'll put it in the show notes. We'll put it in the show notes. Cool.

Thank you. That makes it easy for me. So, yeah, I'd love to give that to your audience. One thing that I would like to add about Pat Flynn's Let Go is the coolest thing about that book is it's not just like any other. book, it has multimedia along with it. It's kind of a new, new type of book. Maybe Pat will be able to explain it better. I bought it on Kindle, unfortunately, and then I had to go to his website to get all the videos and stuff. But Pat, you have a different format of the book as well, right? Yeah, it's really cool because, I mean, I launched it on a platform called snippet app,

which if you have an iOS device, like an iPad or an iPhone, you can you can download it the book off of the snippet app, which is a really cool multimedia experience reading platform where you're not just reading the text, but there's very, very high quality images. There's also video. And then in the snippet app itself, it actually incorporates social media too. So you can see people having conversations about certain parts of the book as well using hashtags, which is pretty cool. And you could just pick it up on Amazon though or go to the show notes on the site. And, you know, if you wanted to leave a review afterwards, that's cool. You don't need to buy it on Amazon to leave a review, but that is always helpful. Yeah, it comes with a lot of cool videos, including

interviews with me in specific locations. Like I went and took my videographer with me at specific locations where certain decisions had to happen or things were made. And also in an interview with my wife in there. And also one with my dad who initially when I got laid off was like, you got to go back to school and get your master's degree, which he's always right too. And he was right. I could have done that. And I could have gone out of that with more knowledge and maybe a better job after the job market it came back, but I knew that because of the path I had taken, I had already done everything right up to that point. And getting kicked out just was such a big blow to me. You know, I needed to take control for myself. And so you'll hear in that interview with my dad a little bit of

interesting back and forth about that. And especially your interview with your wife got me in because I showed it to my wife and there you're appreciating your wife's work like, you know, with your kids, how much you ever put in. And my wife was like, you never say this to me. Oh, man. Just do that pet, you're getting us all in trouble, man. Yeah, that's not what I mean to do, but if you want to make your wife really happy, really quickly just say, you know, I appreciate you out of nowhere. But, I mean, she has the hardest job in the world. She takes care of the kids.

Oh, that's true. At-home mom, and she does that so I can do these things, and I love her for that. And so anyway, yeah, you'll see all that in the book and why it's called Let Go. It's not just because it's, I got Let Go for my job, but there's a lot of other things in there, too. You know, if that doesn't tell the audience what kind of person we're dealing with here, I don't know what else will because I totally agree with you, Pat. I look at what my wife does. We've got four kids and it's truly amazing. In order for me to be down here recording, you know, my son was trying to just beat down the door and come in. And it's like, he wants to see dad. And, you know, it's so true. She's the one that's there sacrificing her time and working so hard and fantastic point. It just shows you the class act that we're dealing with. Pat, that wraps it up. We cannot thank you enough to come on our show.

You have no idea. I mean, you can name any Hollywood celebrity, and I am much more starstruck by having Pat Flynn on my show than any one of those people. So really appreciate it. The podcast, everything, it's all because of your site and, you know, standing it up. So our audience can thank you if they're enjoying our podcast as well. So thank you for taking time out of your day to come on our show. Thank you guys for having me. Thanks to all the listeners out there for hearing me out. And I hope I've been able to help in some way, shape, or form. And also if you want to just let me know that you like this, or maybe you didn't like you, maybe you think, thought it was terrible. Just let me know on Twitter at Pat Flynn. I'd love to hear from you. I'm very responsive on there. All right, Pat. So if you guys want to find more of Pat Flynn, you go to smart passive income.com. It has the links to everything else, you know, his podcast. The blog is endless with information, just tons of information.

to help you start to create an asset and start to have these gargantuan returns with a small amount of capital. So Pat, fantastic. Thank you. Cheers. Thank you. All right. So it's that time in the show where we play one of our questions from our audience. And this question comes from Aaron. Hi, Preston and Stig. This is Aaron Squitzato from Melbourne, Australia. First off, can I just add that I'm a firm believer in the saying, content is keen. The information you guys deliver is second to none. and I've learned so much from Buffett Books as well as listening to your podcast. So a big thank you from all of us here in Australia. My question is, what are your thoughts on investing in international markets versus local stocks?

The reason I ask this is I'm very interested in US companies and the indexes. However, I do have to factoring the exchange rate when valuing US stocks. Are you able to shed some light on this topic? Thanks very much, guys. Hope to hear from you. All right, Aaron. Fantastic question, and this is a question that we also get asked a lot because a lot of our audience is international. So Stig, being in Denmark, I'm sure you have a good response for this one.

Thanks, Preston. And yes, I deal with this. And yes, I struck it with this. Quite a big deal, actually. Because, you know, Aaron, like you, I'd like to invest in America. And, you know, just like you, I guess, that's because there are so many great businesses over there. Now, the covenant to that clearly is that we also have the problem with exchange rates because we're not just buying great businesses.

We're also buying it in dollars. And if American dollars is not our own currency, then that will alter the price. Now, what I do is, there are a ton of different stats you can look at, but I have like one key stat that I look at. And that is the OSEDs price level statistics. And what that is doing is this is all due to a thing we call the law. of one price. And what that is doing is

saying if the price level is too high in a country, it might be because the exchange rates is overvalued, and the other way around, of course. Simply because you should think as exchange rates as the price of another currency.

So just like you can have a good that is overvalued or undervalued I mean, in other words, expensive or cheap good, you can also have an overvalued currency, which means an expensive currency, or undervalued currency, which means it's cheap currency. So it's actually just the same thing. So just to just actually to sum this up, I mean, we know that in the long run, the price lower than the exchange rates, because they're missing

the same thing, they're going hand in hand. So by looking at this, you know, very neat stat, you have a good indication of whether or not the currency is undervalued or overvalued. So, stick, correct me if I'm wrong, because I don't really deal with this problem. them a lot. So really the first step would be, let's look at the valuation of the currency and see if we can get past that gate, like almost treat it as like the first check that you've got to get past. So if your currency is undervalued, that's a good move for you to be able to step into a foreign market and then buy stock. If it's overvalued, well, then you might kind of get double hit as you go to the next step. Then as you go to the next step, then you've got to do the valuation

on the index or the market or the stock that you're getting ready to enter into that foreign country. probably the United States. So that's kind of like your two-step process as you're going through this. So if you can't get past that first gate, well, then that's where you need to look domestically at stocks internally and make that decision on what you can buy in your domestic country because of the circumstances of maybe where the currency's at so you don't take on that risk of getting double hit. Hey, everyone, we're so excited to have you with our podcast.

Please share it with your friends. The more people, the better. We're really trying to build a community here. And I don't know if anyone's ever checked out our forum. I don't think we've ever talked about our forum. But if you go to Warren Buffettforum.com, that's where Stig and I hang out. And that's where we field a lot of questions. Whenever people will send us questions, we often refer them to different posts that we've had in there where we've already answered the question potentially.

And there are some really smart people hanging out in our forum. So definitely check that out if you got some questions. And if you want to send us a question and potentially have it played on the air, go to ask the investment. And you can record it there and we'll play it live. And if we play it live like we did for Aaron, we'll send you a free sign copy of our book, the Warren Buffett accounting book. So that's all we got for today. I hope you guys enjoyed Pat Flynn. We were pretty excited. I don't know if anyone noticed. But it was a great episode. Hari, thank you so much for coming on the show. You guys can check out Harri's blog at bitsbusiness.com. And we'll see you guys next week.

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