How to Build a 100M Views YouTube Business: Niching Down with Pat Flynn

How to Build a 100M Views YouTube Business: Niching Down with Pat Flynn
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[00:00:00]

The Power of Storytelling in Content Creation
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Pat Flynn: I learned this early on when it comes to, and this is a good lesson for not just storytelling, but with just content in general, and why storytelling is so important. If you can get a person to connect with you on an emotional

Allan: Mmm.

Pat Flynn: that's gonna be the difference between you and AI.

Introducing Pat Flynn: The OG of Podcasting
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Allan: Welcome to the Lean Marketing Podcast, where we unpack strategies and tactics to make you more profit, help you build your business, and build a business that you love. And more importantly, do it with less marketing, less time, less resources. I'm your host, Allan Dib. Today, I am joined by a very special guest.

He's one of the OGs of podcasting. He's an expert at building communities online. He's an author, but most of all, he's very, generous, kind, helpful human being. Welcome to the show, Pat Flynn.

Pat Flynn: Allan, thank you. I have to hire you to do all my intros because I, I love that. Thank you for that.

Allan: Well, every word is true. in the very highly unlikely circumstance that someone doesn't know who you are how do you usually introduce yourself? do you say you're a podcaster, you're an online marketer, [00:01:00] what are you?

Pat Flynn: Yeah, it kind of depends. I typically say serial entrepreneur and then I have my hand in a lot of different things, but if I'm with a number of other YouTubers. I'll talk about that first. If I happen to be with people who know nothing about business and they're asking me what I do, I often mention one of my inventions first because that always seems to spark an interesting discussion.

It's more traditional in terms of business model. But in general, I'm an online entrepreneur and you know, I'm the owner of Smart Passive Income. There we help a lot of people. Entrepreneurs, especially those just starting out, understand how to take what it is that they know and share it with the world and serve others and get paid for that in some way, shape, or form.

And I've been doing this since 2008. So like, Allan said, I'm definitely an OG.

Pat Flynn's Journey: From Architect to Online Entrepreneur
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Pat Flynn: I'm 41 now, but I started in my mid twenties and the story was I was going to be an architect. I was set out to do that. In fact, I was on my way. And then I got the rug pulled out under me in 2008. I had lost my job with the rest of America [00:02:00] with the housing crisis and the recession.

I ended up finding my way into the internet through the means of podcasting. It was a podcast back in the day called Internet Business Mastery. And on that show, I learned about this idea that you could build a business online. And I started to put together some knowledge I had about a very particular exam.

In the architecture industry called the LEED exam. LEED stands for energy Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. And it's a very niche exam. It's like a niche in a niche. But this is a test that I had just passed right before I got laid off. So it was like top of mind. I started a Put my notes online on a website and I started to get involved in forums and start answering questions there.

And soon I just became seen as this expert on this very niche subject that was gaining popularity at the time. And in October of 2008, in late 2008, I ended up publishing an ebook, had no idea what I was doing. It's just a PDF file. And I just had a orange button on my website that said, pay now for your book.

And I figured out a way to send it to people after I [00:03:00] got their payment. And lo and behold, that month I had generated 7, 908. 55 from a 19. 99 e book. Which was two and a half times more than I was making as an architect, which kind of blew my mind. It didn't even feel real. And then a lot of people started asking, How did you do that?

Can you teach me? Can you show me? And I said, I'm not an expert, I just, I'm just doing my thing and I guess I could post about what I'm figuring out as I go.

Building Smart Passive Income and Niche Websites
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Pat Flynn: And that's what Smart Passive Income became in late 2008. I just started to share everything. I started to build and try new things. I built an iPhone app company at the time and shared my experience with that.

Ended up sunsetting that after a year because it just got way too competitive. I started to build niche websites. I built one about security guard training. That actually, That case study put me on the map in 2010. That was the one that I think most people started to learn about who I was from, because I had publicly chose a keyword, built a website, showed people all the steps on how to do that.

And in [00:04:00] 73 days I got to number one in Google for security guard training. Was I a security guard? No, I was able to find writers and find out how to put that information on a website and be the sort of expert curator of that information to then help people. And that website blew up and it, you know, started generating a few thousand dollars a month all the way up to about 12, 000 a month at its peak.

And what was really cool was people saw that and they were like, Oh, this guy's not just like saying things, he's doing things. And I'm just going to follow his lead. And part of that is, Oh, well, I'm going to use the same tools he's using. So I was doing affiliate marketing at the time. And so my affiliate marketing revenue started to blow up.

I started to generate over a hundred thousand dollars a month on these tools that I was using myself and showing people how to use first. And then, so I started to combine that with YouTube and started to show people. More insight on how I use these tools and people found me on YouTube and then found my other stuff and then it just started a pile and pile and then the podcast was a really big moment when I finally launched that in 2010 that [00:05:00] was huge because I was early on in that as well.

I helped other people start their show. I was a part of Tim Ferriss starting his podcast as well. I helped him out a little bit and you know, I wasn't the first interview show. I wasn't the first podcast, but I definitely. have been consistent and have been consistent for, gosh, fourteen years now, almost at a thousand episodes on just the Smart Passive Income podcast.

I have over twelve hundred episodes of Ask Pat and have done a lot of podcasting and I just have become a better communicator and that led to me speaking on stages and writing books and all these other things that have just stacked on top of each other. One thing I've been saying lately, Allan, is when people ask, what do you do now?

One thing I often mention is I'm a YouTuber.

The Rise of Deep Pocket Monster and Community Building
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Pat Flynn: Because I recently started a Pokemon YouTube channel. Yes, about Pokemon, those little characters from the anime. And this channel has now blown up. DeepPocketMonster is what it's called. We are currently at 915, 000 subscribers within 4 years. It grew to 100, 000 subscribers in 11 months and 28 days.

It's generating anywhere between 30, 000 to 40, 000 a [00:06:00] month in ad revenue just from YouTube alone. And It's now turned into a live event that happens twice a year and I'm now getting invited by Pokemon to the World Championships to be a creator there to attract people. It's just like bonkers and I'm 41 and I'm playing with cardboard with cartoons on it and it's amazing.

I feel so blessed to be in this position and you know, I gotta thank my kids because they got me into Pokemon during the pandemic and they've stopped. They've grown out of it. I have not. I have not. I've grown more into it.

Allan: Well, there's so many little leads I want to follow here. But the thing that I've noticed, especially around online marketers is often like, you'll read a comment and people will have this sort of skepticism he's selling a course about how to make money. You know, that's really the only way, whereas you've.

Shown that, hey whether it's security guards, whether it's Pokemon, whatever, there's a way to get your message out there, build an audience, build a following, build a real business [00:07:00] online that's not just about, here's how to make money online or whatever, or, podcasters will make courses around how to build a podcast or whatever else, but you've shown that, Hey, you can take an interest and it may be something that you're not an expert in because I mean, we caught up pretty recently in, person and you weren't into Pokemon.

You weren't, you didn't know anything about it. It was just, you just got into it because your kids were into it. Right.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, and then I started to dig deeper into really what this is about is serving the communities that you are being a part of. Understanding what is missing and what could you bring to add value to that space or the other people there. And what I found when I did research in the Pokemon space in 2020, because, I mean, the real reason why I dove into it deeply was because whatever my kids are into, I want to get into as well.

They were into Fortnite before that. And I ended up taking lessons. on how to be good at Fortnite, just so I can keep up with my kids. And then, you know, now we have a lot of stories to tell about, you know, victory royales that we had. Like, we literally were talking about it the [00:08:00] other day, and this was years ago.

And it's because I didn't want to do, and I love my parents, but my parents just kind of watched me do things. And I want to participate with my

Allan: I love

that. out of interest, how do kids find you being a YouTube star? Is it like, Oh, wow, dad is really cool. Or is it dad stopped being cringe or like, how do they?

Pat Flynn: my daughter who's a little younger. She's about to turn 12. She thinks is the coolest thing in the world and she'll often come home and be like, Dad, can you know you sign another Energy card for one of my friends like they saw that you're you know, deep pocket monster and that's cool. My son who's 14 now He's like, I don't want my friends to really know what you do.

Like it's it's he's at that age now which is fine, but The other part of this is they both actually work in the business, so they are actually on payroll, and there are some benefits to having your kids on payroll if you pay them under a certain amount. I'm not a tax advisor, by the way, but talk to your tax professional.

But you can have them on payroll, and that way you could [00:09:00] shield money from the government and pay them instead up to a certain amount, and they don't have to report that.

Allan: that's cool.

Pat Flynn: And. And so what's really cool is they are learning how to manage money now at this age. And they're not just spending it all, they're actually saving half of it goes into their Roth IRA.

They're 12 have a Roth IRA already with tens of thousands of dollars in it because of the work that they've done. But they're doing the work, they're learning what it's like to put something like this together. In my role, and my wife and I talk about this all the time, we're here to just show them that There are so many different options for them when they grow up.

We're not telling them to do this or be this or whatever. We're just saying here is how some people do it, here's how we do it, here's what it's like, and we love to talk about different opportunities for them and whatever they are into we want to get into because We don't want to misguide them.

We want to be a part of it with them and have them lead with whatever direction they want to go. But anyway, I just have a lot of fun with that. But yeah, the Pokemon thing's kind of taken off and it's blown up. But it's also been a great case study for all this stuff we teach at SPI.

[00:10:00] Because we teach you to we teach marketing and such and they're like, Oh, Pat, you started this brand new thing and a thing you didn't know about. And you did it again. Like, I guess you're the real deal. And it's like, yeah, that's it's there. And we teach this and like you teach your people like those opportunities are there.

I've just now had so many reps along the way that although technology changes, what won't change is you're building something to serve people and how you do that may change, but that's really what it's all about. And that's what it comes down to. And what the beauty of this is, and we're in a world now where you can build an incredibly successful business in a very lean manner by just serving Hundreds of people.

You don't need tens of millions and, you know, like a billion people to use your product. We always assume that like, oh, we have to create the next Uber or eBay or, you know, Tesla or whatever in order, to succeed. And I commend those who go that big, but that's huge. You know, that that's a different ballgame. it was Kevin Kelly wrote an article called A Thousand True Fans.

Allan: Yes.

Pat Flynn: And this article was so important to me [00:11:00] when I first started because I wanted to go huge. And I thought that this exam that I was teaching about was too small. But it changed my life because I realized that I didn't need millions of customers.

I just needed a few thousand. And Kevin Kelly's thesis in 1000 True Fans is the idea that you don't need to be a blockbuster hit. In order to create something incredible for you in your life, you just need a thousand people. If you have a thousand fans, loyal fans who pay you, for example, a hundred dollars a year, which is less than ten dollars a month, that's like very, that's on the lower end compared to what some people pay for things they're a fan of.

Trust me, I'm a big fan. fan of Pokemon and spend way more than that. That's a hundred thousand dollar business, a thousand times a hundred, and you can have a six figure business by finding in a niche in a niche and becoming the go to expert, the favorite, the resource for that group of people.

And the beauty of that, there's less competition because you are, you have this specialty. The competition no longer becomes competition. They become complimentary. They, in fact, will go to you [00:12:00] because you have that specialty. I was like, I remember helping this podcaster student of mine. She is a dog trainer and her name is Jenny and she wanted to do a dog training podcast, but she was so afraid because there were already so many dog trainers who were, who had podcasts.

So I said, okay, well, what niche do you want to focus on? The riches are in the niches. And she said, well, I don't know, Pat, like, I mean, sometimes people hire me because I do train some more violent dogs, more aggressive dogs. And I said, that's it. Start there. You don't have to live there forever, but start there.

That's going to be your messaging. And so she did. She started a podcast and it was all about training more aggressive dogs. And you know what happened? It blew up. And in fact, her competition that she thought was going to be like the ones that were going to take listeners away, are now reaching out to her to have her on the podcast because they don't have that specialty She has it and shows she's now partnering with them and doing business deals with them because she has that specialty and I think that's so Encouraging for all of us who are starting out and doing business today as you can do very well by going very [00:13:00] narrow And it's why I don't think those opportunities will ever go away

Allan: Well, when we look at our own search history, if you look at your own search history, you're typing in very specific things. You're not typing in car or doctor or whatever. You're typing in very specific. I've got a pain in my knee that is aching or whatever. And so you're looking for very specific things.

And of course, so are our audiences. And I think that's something that's kind of a fear. Like I'm going to limit my market. I'm going to limit the things. Every fiber in your being as an entrepreneur, it feels like widening the net is the way to go, but it's kind of counterintuitive. You've got to really be super specific so that someone reads, hears, or sees your message and says, Hey, that's for me.

Wow. What Pat Flynn is talking about that's for me. And so I think you've been incredibly good at doing that. you

know, I've always thought of you as the person who helps beginners who want to get online, right? And so whether that's through your podcast, whether that's through your YouTube [00:14:00] channel, and you know, I've sent a lot of people your way who, do want to get, kind of get that start in online business.

That's not really our area. We generally work with people who've already got traction and want to kind of get to the next level. So I think your content is incredible for that.

In terms of but how do you think about pivoting to a different area?

So like, you've been super well known in the podcasting game and online as the online business guy. And now you launched this YouTube channel. That's Pokemon. That's nearly at a million subscribers in a totally different area. Did you have any fears around it? Did diluting your personal brand about people like, Hey, what's going on?

Pat Flynn's lost. His mind is now on Pokemon cards and all of that sort of stuff. Or what were your thought processes there?

Pat Flynn: I mean, it did come to mind. It's like, okay, when I, if I spend time here, I'm not spending it there, right? That's just obvious. I, there's only one of me. However, I do have a team of people who I know will take care of business where I need it to be taken care of. And they've been doing an amazing job for [00:15:00] years.

So I've actually been building this team such that I have time. to come back to me and I can choose to where I want to put that time and I have chosen to put it in into this new thing without diluting what has to be done and it's cool now because we also have this community that we're focused on SPI Pro and our all access pass that has all become sort of not self run but it's like self perpetuating because the people in there who are learning are also teaching and you know I talk about this in my upcoming book.

One of the best ways to learn is to teach because it forces you to understand how to structure something in a way that would then be able to help others. allows you to understand how much easier it could become, therefore then making it easier for yourself. And so, There's this incredible sort of self perpetuation of learning and discovery and, winning happening in the community all on its own.

And that's been really amazing to see. We've switched to the community first model. We used to have a course model, DIY, self paced, all this kind of stuff. And that was working really well between [00:16:00] 2017 and 2020. But we started to notice a shift in the market in obviously the pandemic was happening at that point, but also just the way people prefer to learn and what was getting people results no longer were just getting access to the information that was before what wasn't possible and now was possible with online courses and those kinds of things, but now information is freely accessible everywhere.

Everybody has access to the same information. If information alone was The deciding factor, then we'd all be where we wanna be. But that's not true, obviously. So we started to go, okay, well yes, we're generating revenue with our standalone courses, but is that what is of best service to our audience? And it became very clear that the answer was no.

Because we had experimented with a couple cohort based runs through our courses, meaning we took students. Kind of in a group through the courses together, you know, still the virtual courses, but we gave them homework. We gave them these lessons during this week, and it went, you know, 6 to 10 weeks, depending on the course and every single time people got [00:17:00] better results.

And we're like, we need to switch our model to a community first model. And because of that. It doesn't need me to be in there all the time anymore for it to work, which is amazing, and it in fact works really well without me. That's not to say I'm gone. I'm still doing the things I love the podcast.

I'm in there. I'm doing office hours. I am still connected with the audience, but now I have this extra time to put elsewhere. And so what? was once a fear, which was the dilution of where I was and where my time was, actually has been able to stack on each other. People who have found me on Pokemon, who go how are you doing this?

Like, how are you so good at YouTube, and where did you get this money to invest in these Pokemon cards and all this stuff? Oh, go check out SPI. We actually have been doing this for years, and I'm teaching other people how to do it, too. Cool. So we have a lot of new students who are coming from the Pokemon thing, even though it's completely separate, I am still the common factor there, and vice versa, too, Here's the coolest thing that has happened, Allan. I host an event called Card Party. And this is [00:18:00] the party convention, if you will, for the Pokemon space and it kind of combines what I love about entrepreneurial events, which is like the keynote and the breakouts and all these kinds of things. The Pokemon space never saw anything like this.

They just have like these giant conventions where people are vending and that's it. So I was able to combine those two worlds and it's become such a massive hit. We're running two events next year in 2025. But at this last one that happened in Orlando, we had 3, 700 people come, all Pokemon nerds from around the world, and all the best top creators are there, big brands, eBay, and a number of others are there sponsoring, etc.

But the coolest thing is one of the dads came up to me, because it's a very family friendly event too, because I'm very family centric A dad came up, he's like, Pat, dude, I listen to your podcast all the time. I, he heard his son on his iPad in the other room, but he heard my voice on his son's iPad. And he was like, what is, did he just get on my playlist or something? And no, he checked and it was like me doing Pokemon. So now he's like, Pat, you [00:19:00] like, are such a major part of our world now because we watch the Pokemon thing together and then I'm listening to the business stuff I'm like I'm so sorry like I'm way too involved in your family more than I ever thought I would be and he's like no I love it so that's been really fun to see the sort of multi generational thing because it's actually not just kids who watch the channels it's a lot of people my age who you know used to watch the anime play the games play the card game who are watching me because of the nostalgic factor of it and now bringing their families along for the ride so.

Allan: so did you build a totally new team for the new thing or did you deploy your team resources to the new thing? How did you go about that?

Pat Flynn: Completely different team. The team is very lean, in fact. It's me, a producer, and an editor. And then a Discord server guy. That's basically it. Just four of us, and You know, profit margins are really good. Right? My other team for SPI that runs the show there is ten full time people.

And so, you know, that is less profitable. But it

Allan: Well, that's, that's

a [00:20:00] pretty lean team as well.

Pat Flynn: Yeah true. But just as fulfilling. You know, it's different. big difference is You know, just the way the revenue is generated currently, it's generated through recurring revenue on SPI through the memberships, which is great.

This new model has provided us first time recurring revenue, which is fantastic. On the Pokemon side of things, it's mostly ad revenue from YouTube. Some merch sales I sell, like backpacks and shirts and stuff like that. I don't sell any cards or I don't flip any cards like some other people do. And then brand sponsorship deals at one point, we had a sponsor who bought an entire year's worth of sponsorship for 20, 000 a month for an entire year, just for a 30 second spot in our Pokemon videos.

So, just, there's a lot of money getting put into that space as well

Allan: So I want to go to community building. I want to go to podcasts, but just before that, I want to talk about personal brand versus sort of a business brand. Cause I noticed with both smart passive income and deep pocket [00:21:00] monster, you've kind of gone business brand, although you're the Head of both and you're the face that shows up and does the content.

How do you think about business brand versus personal brand, especially in an information type of business? And would you do anything differently than what you've done?

Pat Flynn: You know, we had once considered changing Smart Passive Income to PatFlynn. com. I do have PatFlynn. com, but that's more of like a business card website right now. There's a few reasons why we didn't do that. Number one, because of where we knew things were going. It wasn't just going to be about me anymore.

It was about the community. And, we also aren't so keen on the domain that I got in 2008 that we still have. That's why we always say SPI now, not Smart Passive Income, because the words passive income have grown to become a little bit associated with passive income. Maybe not so great parts of the internet.

So we've been purposefully saying SPI, even though the domain is still smart, passive income. Back then it was like, okay, a big draw was, Ooh, passive income. Yes, I want that. And then I could get in front of those people and teach them the right way to do it. But there's been a lot of people who have [00:22:00] taken that word and then have put scams behind it and other things.

So, we want to disassociate ourselves with that as much as possible. And it may turn into a brand name change down the road, but it will not be pat Flynn. com because it is not about me anymore. And that's part of the reason why, It didn't go that route because it was going to be much bigger than me.

It was going to be the team. It was going to be about the community, not about me. That being said, there's a lot of incredible creators and people who have built a business around their name. You know, Amy Porterfield, Cody Sanchez, and a number of others. And that's great. I mean, there's no right or wrong way to do it.

I think it's just a matter of personal preference. With the Deep Pocket Monster, I didn't also want it to be about me, but I did like the name and the brand. I do love creating a brand and giving meaning to random words that were never put together before. I really love that idea, that like, Even the word Google back in the day, when like Google used to mean a number with a hundred zeros behind it.

That's what a Google was. But Google has become Google because of what Google made it. And then same thing with Depocket Monster. Like, what is that? Well, Pocket Monster is [00:23:00] what Pokemon is short for. And Deep Pocket is okay, lots of money, which I do a lot of higher end stuff on the channel and I give away a lot of stuff, kind of Mr.

Beast style, but also deep because I also like to bring in a lot of my values and deep philosophies and life and entrepreneurship into the channel. So if you watch me live stream every Monday, which I do, we typically have two to three thousand people watching simultaneously, which is kind of wild, watching a grown man open Pokemon cards every Monday night.

Like families get their dinners and they go to the table to watch. It's crazy. And they're most 65 percent of our viewers are watching on a television on Deep Pocket Monster. It's pretty wild.

Then I can instill some values. I can talk about some life experiences. I talk about bullying, which I was bullied when I was a kid.

And I can bring that to the audience and show them that things are going to be okay. And that you need to be a part of a community who lifts you up. And that, you know, often times those people are people who've had stuff happen in their lives. And I can just talk from personal experience, and people really appreciate that.

I always get Parents pulling me aside at these events saying like, thank you so much for bringing good [00:24:00] value to our children. And I am really inspired by that. But there's nothing wrong with putting your name into it. There are some cons if you want to talk about that in terms of like, okay, if you are building a business to sell, which is a best practice, right?

You shape a business such that it could be sold. That means you put systems in it. so that it runs on its own, that you don't have to be a part of it. But if you did want to sell it, having your name attached to it does make it a little bit harder. That being said, people connect with people. And so it takes a little bit more effort to, if you don't have a name behind the brand to make it feel more personal, to, to relate more with an audience.

And that can still be done. That's what I did with SPI. Sure. SPI was, the domain name, but I was still the face of the brand and still am. My voice shows up on the podcast, but it's more the language and how I connect to the audience, right? Like, for example, I soon found out that SPI grew to what it was because I was different.

And I think it's important to know what your differences are. What makes you unique in your space? And what I thought made me not [00:25:00] cool. I thought it was not cool that unlike the others who were out there teaching entrepreneurship around this time in the early 2010s, I wasn't in a mansion. I didn't have a Lamborghini.

I wasn't on a beach with my laptop. I was at home trying to run amok with the kids and just make sure nobody died. Like that was my, I was surviving. And so, That then became my thing. Like, I was like, okay, well, here's my Lamborghini and I'd point back. It's like my 2012 Toyota Sienna van, right? It's like, here's my beach house.

It's not at the beach and it's just in a suburb here next to a good school because that's what I care about and it's like parents connected with that and people who like resonated with that and I soon realized that in the beginning, I tried to create a brand that served everybody, that everybody would love.

And I found out that was not the right way to go. I needed to find out who I was, what made me special, and then lean into that. And yes, that is going to push some people away. Like you said, it almost is counterintuitive to not [00:26:00] cast a wider net. But when you go narrow, your values are clearer, your mission's clearer, who it is you connect with is clearer, it's much easier to talk to those people, it's much easier to find them, and it's much easier for them to, when they find you.

to go, Oh, that's the one I like. That's who I resonate with. That is somebody just like me, or they serve somebody just like me, or they're speaking my language.

Allan: I love that leaning into. the things that you care about, the things that you are. I recently spoke to Chris Doe and he talks about himself as a introvert, right? So a lot of people in our space are kind of loud, we're the expert, And I love just how he's built a personal brand and he just leans into the fact that, you Hey, I'm an introvert.

I'm actually uncomfortable being on stage. I'm actually uncomfortable doing podcasts, but I do it because that's the price I need to pay to, serve you and to reach you. So, I love that. He's pretty open about that because a lot of people are kind of, you know, putting that veil over and covering it over and trying to project this false confidence when

Pat Flynn: right? [00:27:00] But he knows this stuff. Like you, you just can see it in his videos. There, there's one video where he's teaching pricing and he's actually interacting with students in real time. And he's not loud. He's not aggressive. He's whiteboard, but oh my gosh, I'm engaged the whole time. And I'm almost intimidated by him.

Just because of how good he knows his stuff.

Allan: Yeah, super smart guy, really intelligent.

And, you know, that's a lesson I really learned a few years ago about sales because, I would see these loud cigar chomping people who are like, who's got my money today or whatever. And I thought that's the way that you needed to do sales to be successful at sales.

And then I worked with a mutual friend of ours, James Schramko, and you know, James is a quiet kind of reserved guy, but he's excellent at selling. He's an amazing salesperson. And I'm like, hang on. So you can actually be a, you know, reserved, quiet person, not loud, not, going crazy and still be really successful at sales.

And so the conversation I had with James is look, You've got to [00:28:00] be your own personality. Like your own personality will come across, whether it's on a sales call, whether it's in content, whether it's whatever, and trying to be someone that you're not is going to be the path to failure versus just, Hey, you know, if I'm introverted or if I'm quiet, or if I'm a different type of personality than what's normally expected, then that's something that's still going to really work and resonate with a group of people.

Pat Flynn: For sure, James is very good. He's gotten me to pay him tens of thousands of dollars. He was my coach at one point and I do owe him quite a bit. Yeah, he is very reserved, but he's very good with his question asking and his analogies, and that's what I've, I've really picked up on how he does, like, he has a great way of explaining how things connect in a way, like, he got me to connect things that I didn't

know, like, if you know your stuff, just be you, and I think that's a huge lesson, you're right, we, In the media, in the movies, we get so jaded by the cool factor and how things should be based on this made up [00:29:00] world.

But the truth is, this is this world and people connect with people and, you know, so long as you're there to serve, if you ask the right questions and there seems to be some fit between your solution and what you have to offer and a person's needs and problems, then there really isn't any selling that needs to be done.

It almost becomes just the natural conclusion to the end of a conversation when you both find out, hey, I have something you need. totally.

Allan: totally. My most successful sales approach was just. probing questions. So tell me more about that. And when did that start? And is that a priority to solve that right now? And what else have you tried? And that's something that, that I'm pretty good at getting to the bottom of something.

And rather than being kind of loud and brash and all of that sort of thing. So I found that extremely effective. And so that was a lesson that I learned to not shy away from who you are, whether. it's even a perceived flaw in yourself to even to exaggerate and magnify it to some level rather than try and hide it or cover it [00:30:00] over.

So that's something that I try and now bring to my speaking, my content, in a sales process, in copy, all of that sort of thing, rather than trying to be something that I'm not.

Pat Flynn: It's so much easier to be yourself than try to be like somebody else.

Podcasting and Community Building
---

Allan: It sure is. So there's two things that I think of you as a world class expert. Number one is podcasting. The other one is community building. So, I recently attended, I think it's a mutual friend of ours, Omar Zen Home. He had a 10 year anniversary for his podcast, the $100 MBA, excellent podcasters as well.

So, I'm fortunate to have friends like yourself, like Omar, who've just built. Massive audiences and massive podcasts. And it would seem to me that showing up is on a regular basis and just putting content out there is a very large key to the success because you've been, Omar just had the 10 year anniversary of a hundred dollars MBA you've been doing this for well over 10 years as [00:31:00] well, and I feel like I can't remember who I heard say this, but.

It really resonated with me. He said, look, if you do something for a very long period of time, it's almost unreasonable that you won't be successful. So, especially if you keep improving, keep iterating. Is that it? Or what are your thoughts around building a successful podcast? And, you know, I'm asking kind of selfishly, cause I've only launched my podcast this year and I'm trying to make this as successful as I can possibly make it.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, well, tip number one, more probing questions. That's always going to be something that, especially with that sales experience you have, you can kind of channel that and you're not selling the guests. You're probing to get this amazing stuff, which you're doing a very good job of, by the way.

I just wanted to point that out. I think.

The Importance of Repetition and Quantity
---

Pat Flynn: Reps is key. And this is a new, not new, but recently I've been in the camp of quantity over quality when you're starting out. And that's a big thing to open your eyes to, because oftentimes we think quality is the most important thing and [00:32:00] quality is important.

I'm not saying sacrifice value, but what I'm saying is get those reps in because the every time you do something, the next time you do it, you can do it a little bit better. You can do it a little bit better. James Clear, Atomic Habits, 1 percent better each time, that stuff's gonna stack, you get to 100 episodes in, you're gonna be a pro by then, and you'll understand the systems better, you're gonna understand what the audience likes and dislikes better, cause you can read that in your data, you can begin to get more comfortable behind the microphone, you can practice storytelling in this episode, you can practice punchlines in this next one, and a little bit of more comedy in this other one.

You could practice going really deep with this guest over here, and you can practice just kind of being silly on and telling dad jokes on this next one. So reps is key. And this is why it's so important to in the beginning, just get started because there is literally no way to get reps unless you start going.

And it's this permission to make mistakes that also needs to happen as well. I think a lot of us grow up, at least in my you know, I'm a millennial. And when I grew up, it was like, [00:33:00] A plus or die was like my grades had to be perfect. And so perfection was ingrained into me and I had to be perfect.

And I had to let go of that in order to become an entrepreneur. And I think it's really important when you're a creator, especially on a podcast where there are many opportunities. Too perfect. You can edit stuff later. You can go back and edit the crap out of your audio files, but at some point you're going to have to say, okay, that's the last stroke.

I'm going to call this painting done and then send it. And you can always add more brush strokes, right? To, you can always erase something and add something else. And you got to have to just, what I would do is give yourself a time deadline for when you create and just try to hit those reps.

The other. Mindset shift that I've actually gotten recently from Dr. K on YouTube. He's a HealthyGamerGG is his YouTube channel. And he said something on a, it was just on a short, but it kind of blew my mind. I listened to it four or five times. And he said, you never actually achieve anything. And I heard that, and as [00:34:00] a overachiever, I kind of pushed back initially.

You know, I, as a, especially Enneagram 3, if any of you know about the Enneagram scale, an Enneagram 3 is somebody who puts their value and worth in how other people respond to you. So, when people are getting value for me. That's when I'm at my best and I feel great. And I love the thank yous and I want to get more of that because that's me serving.

And that's proof that I'm valuable. It's a very also dangerous game to play because you are putting your worth and self value in how other people react to the things that you do. You're giving up control. And so success is a very delicate thing because it's not actually you that's determining that success.

It's other people. And YouTube or podcasting or anything like this, it's very easy to. Have success be defined as the number of listeners or the number of views and or those kinds of things. I mean, you get daily emails or you check daily what your numbers are, and you're just hoping for bigger numbers.

But when you don't make that your success, you make your success, rather, you came out with an episode this week, and you're going to come out with an [00:35:00] episode next week. And then you're going to come out with an episode the week after that you make your success. The fact that you came out with the episode like you said you were going to,

doesn't matter what the results are, you've won, because when you have that be the focus, you're going to get better, and eventually, at some point, sometimes sooner than later, sometimes later than sooner, you will see the numbers come because you're continually improving and you're getting those reps in.

So that would be my best advice for anybody starting out, like, Commit. And I think a lot of us, especially today, and especially the younger generation, we just don't want to commit. I mean, people are getting like 10 jobs in two years. Like, it's not necessarily their fault, but you know, it's like, where's the commitment to the thing that we said we're going to do?

And we get bright light syndrome, where you see this new thing, we say yes to that, which means we now say no to the thing we once said yes to, and the cycle kind of continues. So I think you're right. The reps and then just the longevity of this, the sticking with it. has been really important. But it's also been the [00:36:00] relationships that I've been building along the way.

That's the beauty of podcasting is we can have, just like we have now, have had a, what do we've had, a 40 minute conversation. And we've gotten to know each other that much more through this documentation of this conversation you and I are becoming even better friends and you were just on my podcast recently or I had an interview with you just recently so that's like now we have multiple hours under our belt of a relationship and you know when we see each other in person the next time our relationship will be that much stronger right and who knows where that'll take us it could lead to a partnership it could lead to just An amazing friendship, which I can see that you know, who knows?

It's the only reason why I was able to easily get in contact with Tim Ferris in the first place and Gary Vaynerchuk and all these big names who have come on the podcast. It wasn't because I just tapped him on the shoulder and asked, it was because I had a podcast and. I reached out to them at the time that they were coming out with books, and I said, Hey, Tim, I'd love to have you on the show to talk about uh, your 4 Hour Chef book that's coming out.

I'd love to support it, cause 4 Hour Workweek was massively important to me. Let's have you on the [00:37:00] show. My big mistake on Episode 51 with Tim was I fanboyed for the first 15 minutes. Don't do that, everybody. Gary Vaynerchuk and I, we've I've been on the board of Pencils of Promise and built schools around the world together because I was able to initially have a conversation with him on the podcast.

So the relationships you can build with a podcaster are amazing and so don't be afraid to ask to have people come on your show, but always see what you can do to serve those other people first. And the other way to grow is to be a guest on other people's show, which you've been doing a good job as well, I see.

Finding Your Unique Voice in Podcasting
---

Pat Flynn: So, final thing I'll say here is that there are a million and one interview shows now. There's a lot, right? It's getting saturated, even though compared to YouTube or blogs, it's not even close. So there's still a lot of room in the podcasting world, but everybody seems to now have the same sort of interview format, right?

It's the easiest one to do. It's, you just ask the questions and just have the guests talk. If that's the case, we need to go a little bit deeper. We need to go and find something that's going to have people go, the reason I love Allan's show is because it's unlike these other ones, it does this. Yes, it's an interview show, but this [00:38:00] is unique to Allan, or unique to Pat, or unique to you.

And so it's really important to discover what that is. And again, you might not know what that is up front, but It'll come over time as you begin to find your voice, as you begin to fall in love with this medium, and understand what you like and dislike about it.

Allan: one of the big goals that I've had this year is to get better at speaking. And that's one of the reasons that I wanted to do this podcast. I'm like, I'm going to record something every day. You know, it's not a podcast every day, but sometimes it's a video, it's a loom video, whatever.

I'm going to record something where I'm speaking every day. And so I've been very consistent in getting the podcast out now every week. But one of the things that I've, done is I've refused to listen to the episodes because I know I'm going to get into editing mode. I'm not, I'm going to say, Hey, cut this out or whatever.

So I've got someone who does the technical editing makes sure that it's all technically edited. And then I've got someone who does the editorial editing, who cuts whatever she thinks should be cut out, who leaves in whatever. And I refuse to [00:39:00] listen to the episodes because I know I'm going to get into that perfectionist mode.

I'm like, I'll cut that out or remove that arm or whatever it is. So. For me, my goal is to talk to cool people like yourself and to get better at speaking because that's something that I really want to do this year. So I'm looking at it as an infinite game. I'm going to do this for the next 10 years just because I want to get better at speaking just because I want to meet with cool people.

And that's it. if the side effect of that is going to be building an audience, building a following and providing a lot of value, I think that's great. But my success metric is going to be, did I get better at speaking? Did I pump this out every week? Are we connecting with really cool people?

Pat Flynn: I love it. It will help you. It completely changed my life, just the medium itself, and becoming a better communicator.

Mastering Storytelling
---

Pat Flynn: The one thing I would recommend that I wish I did earlier, that I'm doing now, that I'll pass on to you and everybody else, is obsess over Storytelling. Storytelling, in my opinion, is going to be the most important skill in the world [00:40:00] in, in, in not too long from now.

With AI and everything coming in to level the playing field, it is those who can creatively put words together in a way that captivates an audience that will win. And so I'm studying storytelling like crazy right now. There's a book that I would highly recommend called Save the Cat, and it's actually a screenwriter's book to write a screenplay for a movie.

Allan: That's the second time in 24 hours I've heard a recommendation for that book, which is, yeah. So it's, I don't know, there's some, something about synchronicity that's going on. I mean, you and I had a bit of a philosophical conversation and it's the third time this week I've heard Enneagram. So you mentioned the Enneagram.

It's the third time this week I've heard that. So I'm like I'm taking direction from the universe these days when I hear it.

Pat Flynn: Save the Cat is really great. I've actually, now that I've understood the beats of a good movie and stuff when I watch movies now, I actually can see when they're doing what they should be doing and why it's so captivating. And the [00:41:00] opposite is true as well. I can see where they're losing me and why.

And this has become something that has played a big role in how I'm now starting to film Deep Pocket Monster videos and even storytelling on the podcast a little bit more. The idea of Save the Cat is just one strategy in a number of storytelling weapons that you could have under your belt.

But the idea of Save the Cat specifically is in a lot of movies, like if you start a movie and the main character, you don't know who this person is. Like, one of the first scenes, they save a cat from a tree. You immediately know a lot about that person. And you immediately want to root for them, and if something happens like a challenge, if they go through something hard, you are more likely to sympathize and really root for that person because of that first save the cat moment.

So, what I've been doing, for example, in my Pokemon videos now, is I've had my version of a save the cat moment where I will give some kids just some free cards at the beginning of the challenge or I will do a [00:42:00] trade with somebody and I'll say yes to a massively lopsided trade that is not in my favor because I want this person to walk away with something very valuable and so immediately the audience goes oh this guy's a good guy so when the time crunch happens and I'm you know might lose this challenge people are really rooting and wanting like we had a video premiere yesterday.

We had, I think, 3, 000 people watching this premiere live, and so there was a live chat when this video came out. It was a 48 minute Pokemon video, and most people stuck around to the end. And at the end, something happens, and people were, like, crying. Because of Pokemon. And that's one thing I learned from somebody who you and I were with recently, Ryan Dice.

I learned this early on when it comes to, and this is a good lesson for not just storytelling, but with just content in general, and why storytelling is so important. If you can get a person to connect with you on an emotional

Allan: Mmm.

Pat Flynn: that's gonna be the difference between you and AI. Right? And Ryan said at one point, I mean this was like 2018, he tweeted [00:43:00] this or something like that.

He's like, if you can get a person to laugh, To cry, to get upset, or to just have a beaming smile from the work that you're doing, you've connected. You've engaged. You've got them. And use that power for good, obviously, but That's why storytelling is so key, because a person puts themselves in that situation, it becomes a relatable situation, and when something happens on camera, or in the story, they feel it, they, like, I don't know physiologically or psychologically, like, you know, what happens necessarily, but I imagine that there's some brain firings that happen that make it feel more real, and so imagine the power of that level of engagement, and how much more important that is than just access to information.

This is going to be the key. The magic tool in the futures is the power to tell a story

Allan: I 100 percent agree. I used to have a mentor who used to say, if they cry, they buy, right? So, emotion commits the crime. Logic [00:44:00] does the cover up. So, Hey, I bought this because it's this logical reason, but no, nine times out of 10. You just thought it was a cool thing or whatever it is, but then you use logic to kind of fill in the details and, you know, backfill why you made that purchase, why it was a good return on investment, why it's whatever it is, but often it's an emotional purchase.

Pat Flynn: For sure. I don't know why my mind went to something dark there when you said that,

like, if they cried, they buy it. Like, buy it

Allan: no, no, no, meaning if you move someone emotionally that they, they,

Pat Flynn: right.

Allan: they buy. That's,

Pat Flynn: Asterisk. Make sure that asterisk is in there.

Allan: I recently connected with someone who's an amazing storyteller, Matthew Dix, and one of the storytelling ideas that he conveyed, especially in a short form, which stuck with me. And I've heard this from Scott Adams before, and he's an excellent storyteller too. he basically said in some circumstances, especially in short form, like if you're relating a story on [00:45:00] stage or something like that, filling in less detail is often more powerful than more detail.

So, and he gave an example. He said, look, if I say, I was at my desk and the phone rang you're now imagining. your desk and your phone. So is it a, you know, landline? Is it a mobile phone? Is it a glass desk? Is it a wooden desk or whatever? Whereas if I had said, you know, I was at my mahogany desk, it's now become less relatable to you because you're like, Oh, I don't have a mahogany desk.

And my desk in my office is made of glass or whatever else. So I thought that was an interesting thing, especially in short form, when you're talking about something you want them to be filling in. What their phone looks like, what their desk looks like, what their, and I remember Scott Adams said this, you know, I know he's been cancelled and all of that sort of thing, but I used to be a fan of Dilbert, the Dilbert cartoon.

And he said, I purposely didn't say what kind of business cause you know, I, I watched it for years and they've got an engineering department, a sales department, [00:46:00] but you actually don't know what business, he never reveals what kind of company it is. And he goes, because I want you to feel like, Hey, it's at the place that you work.

Right. And it's very, that makes it very relatable. So, because you fill in the details from your own life. We have an engineering department, we have a sales department. I thought that was an interesting idea when it comes to storytelling is strategically leaving out some things so that the listener or the reader can fill in their own details from their own life.

Pat Flynn: Yeah. Usually we hear, the opposite because if you just say like, My phone alerted me. It's like, okay, well, how and where is it? What kind of phone? Right? So I think there needs to be a balance.

So

if you know that your audience are all lawyers and they all sit on the same sort of cherry wood desk, then mention the cherry wood desk because it's like, yes, that is my desk, right?

Versus if everybody might be working at home or at the office, then don't say either one of those if you're casting that net. So. [00:47:00] All that to say, it's so important to know who it is that's in your audience. Detail those things that are relatable, and perhaps leave room for imagination where specificity isn't necessarily required, so that they can fill in those details with their own life.

Building and Sustaining Online Communities
---

Allan: Pat, we finish up I want to talk community building because you're an expert at that.

It's something that in my opinion one of the most challenging things to do online, because this is now a situation where you're not just broadcasting. You're not just sending out the email. You're not just creating the content and someone's a consumer. You're now building a peer group of people who support each other, who create content for each other who communicate amongst themselves.

And I kind of think about it like this. you go to church, right? You don't go to church because of the pastor or the priest. You go, because of there's a shared faith. You want to interact with other people who believe what you believe. You want to exchange ideas.

You want to encourage each other, all of that sort of thing. [00:48:00] So What have you been your biggest learnings? So if someone's kind of new to this, what is the best way to create a community that's really going to thrive online?

Pat Flynn: It is challenging, but it's also very powerful if you think of a stadium

full of people who don't know each other, who happen to all be wearing the same colored ball cap. And their team hits a Grand Slam home run to win the game. You have people who don't even know each other. High fiving, hugging, heck, maybe even kissing if they win the world championships, who knows?

All because they have this commonality, and that's the most important thing. A community needs something in common for people to come together for, and that's going to be really on you as the creator to create that feel and that safe space for people to come together who have that Commonality, if you just create a space and you're like, Hey, everybody come in here.

What's it about? Oh, I don't know. We just want to hang out. Well, no, that's not going to happen. But if you're like, okay, busy, single moms, we know what you're going through. This is crazy. And we need to stick [00:49:00] together, come to this group, because we're going to have these deep conversations about what we are all going through.

Nobody else understands what we're going through, but us. So let's be one and come together and unify to all help each other out through these tough times or whatever. I'm just making that up. But yeah. When there is something in common, then people have something to connect with, even if they don't know each other, right?

So that's really key. I've wrote a book called Superfans that was for the purpose of helping people build and understand the power of community. It was actually, it's like the how to of Kevin Kelly's A Thousand True Fans. It's how to build that community. It doesn't start with you building a community and just like forcing people in there, right?

You want to have people come in there because they need connection. And that's what really this is about, a sense of belonging, a sense of connection. They connect with you first, and they might find you in many different ways, and that's great, But like you said, it's not just a one to one conversation at this point.

It's not you teaching them or talking to them and them talking to you. That's great that they're active audience members. Now they're not just like passerby's they're in your audience, but the [00:50:00] job then is to put them into the community. So how do you do that? And there's a number of different ways that you can do that.

My favorite way is to. is to have a common language that you all share together. That's number one, right? If you can define the problem better than your target customer, they're going to automatically assume you have the solution. That's what Jay Abraham said. So if you have this common knowledge and understanding around a particular topic, then already people are going to be gravitating toward that thing because it's something that is obvious that relates to their life.

Another thing that I love to do is to spotlight people in the community. as well. When you spotlight a person who's in your community, who's done something amazing who has overcome some challenges other people see themselves in that person, in that example. And so they want to come together and be a part of that as well.

There's the idea of crowdsourcing and using your community as the idea generation pool, right? When you get ideas for content and courses and discussion points from [00:51:00] the pool of people inside of your space, then it's going to be very obvious that stuff that is spoken about is going to be stuff that other people in that space resonate with.

It's sort of self perpetuating, which is really nice. I think it was the company Lego was almost bankrupt in the early two thousands and they turned it around and they had a new CEO come on board. They did a number of things, but one thing that they did is focus on the fans and what they wanted and not just pumping out tons of product, but actually focusing on the fans and what they wanted.

And they even have a website now called ideas. lego. com where anybody, any one of us, you or I, Allan, we could build a Lego structure with the Legos we have, submit it. And if it gets. enough votes from the community, they'll actually manufacture it as an official LEGO product and give credit to the person who made it, which is really cool.

So it's getting people involved from the inside and then sharing those wins, sharing those stories. For us at SPI, We really had to develop a safe space that people could have conversations that they were already [00:52:00] having, but then putting them all into one spot and having those people connect with each other.

One thing that we love to do in our community that's worked really well is to help make introductions, right? Because we could put a bunch of people in a space, but if you imagine like doing that in real life, it's like, okay, now everybody's up against the walls and they don't want to talk to each other sometimes.

Especially online. It's like you just kind of feel alone in that space, even though there's people there. You don't want to be the first to chat. You don't want to be the first to dance on the dance floor. So what we'll do is we'll say, hey you know, Jenny, you seem to be in a position where you might need some help with bookkeeping in your business because you're just starting out.

Well, Jackie over here is an amazing bookkeeper and she actually has helped a number of businesses do that too. You guys should chat. Like you guys go chat. So it's kind of up to us. We can't just like put people in a room and just kind of hope we have to put people in a room and then guide. And that's the big thing with creating community.

It's going to take a little bit of a kickstart right before that engine starts to go and it starts to take on a life of its own and a heartbeat of its own.

Allan: How do you get people to come back? Because I've found with communities, a lot of times [00:53:00] someone's at the peak of excitement when they buy, they do the intro, Hey, I'm Jenny I'm an accountant, or whatever it is. They maybe log in one or two more times and then kind

Pat Flynn: you never see him again.

Allan: Exactly.

Pat Flynn: So, you need to have rituals, right? Every community has its own set of rituals. Your own neighborhood might have its own block party that you have every 4th of July. Same thing. You come out because, you know, It's just established that on the 4th of July, you come out and you have hot dogs and cokes with everybody on the block.

So you do the kind of same thing. It could be a weekly thing. We like to do things where we share a win of the week at the end of every week. We also have, in SPI Pro, this thing where we have people share at the beginning of a quarter what it is that they're working on. And we do that. Actually have a thing at the end of the quarter to see how they've done on that.

So now we're holding people accountable and that's pretty cool because it actually is giving people a reason to actually make sure they do the work because they know they're going to come back and share. Their progress on it. And of course, because they are held accountable, they do the work. It encourages others to want to join in on the next round.

And we have these sort [00:54:00] of rituals that happen. And the other thing that's tough with community is online communities. People are from different places in the world. And so aren't always able to make the sort of lives that happen. And I know a lot of people make the live thing. A big feature of a live community, but then not everybody's able to show up live, so people who don't often feel like they're not getting the value that they paid for, and then they leave.

So one thing that we like to do is set up the sort of the tone that like coming live is the bonus, but here is the content that is coming out. It'll be out on this day and it'll be about this thing that again was crowdsourced by the community. We often have the community ask us what they want more information about or who or what kind of topics they want an expert to come in to speak on.

And we'll go and find those people or we'll present that in a workshop ourselves or what have you. And then it's on the calendar and it's like, okay, on this date, this information, will it be available if you happen to be able to catch the live? Then you get to ask some questions as [00:55:00] well, but either way, this content that you wanted is going to be here.

And so that provides a really nice kind of workaround or repositioning of what the live component means. And we do change the times that we do have sort of an Oceana audience that we like to do lives for where every once in a while I will stay up into the wee hours of the night to make sure I'm there for them.

If I am, you know, the person giving that topic and sharing that information, And I think really it's about, I mean, we have this thing called a town hall as well. So I think it's once a quarter, maybe it's every other quarter. I can't remember off the top of my head my community director would know.

But we do this thing like a town hall where we have everybody come in who wants to voice How we can improve the community and the things they want to see in there and the things that are maybe not as smooth as they wanted it to be and my entire team shows up and we listen and we comment on the things that are going to be coming and people can look forward to so it really helps the audience understand that we are not just like putting you in the Community and just letting you be [00:56:00] and just hoping you keep paying But we have these things that are continually happening we have them on the calendar if you have events that happen have Months of events laid out because then people will see oh, this is coming a few months from now I need to make sure I'm there for that.

I'll stick around and I see this is coming and there's more value coming The other part of this that we've learned early on is that Many people will feel like they need to take part in everything in order to get the value and if they miss something It's like oh I miss this or oh, I don't have time for this So therefore I should stop paying and I should not be a part of this community or as we try to reposition it as There are, will always be things happening and way more than you actually need.

So you come in here with a plan and whatever things match your plan and where you're going. Yeah, participate in those. The other things, you don't need them. Don't worry, they'll be there for a replay, or they'll be there as a resource when you need them. Don't, like, don't absorb everything. You will be overwhelmed.

And that's the one thing that we've [00:57:00] noticed, and still are working on, is like, people just have this idea of when they're paying for a community, that they literally have to watch everything. And it's like, no, don't. Like, that's No.

Allan: Yeah. Yeah.

It's I think I remember James used to say, it's kind of like a supermarket. You take the items that you want that are relevant to you. And the ones that aren't are there when you're ready for them or whatever else I

think, um,

Pat Flynn: with those metaphors.

Allan: is,

Is so all of those things that you outlined.

That's great if I'm logging into the community daily or weekly or whatever. Do you have a mechanism for, okay Allan hasn't logged in for a month or two months or whatever, we need to reach out to him and say, Hey, log in or do whatever, or how do you deal with that?

Pat Flynn: Yeah. I mean, we can set up some automations inside of Circle to reach out to people who have been inactive to, you know, help them and encourage them to sign on. One thing that we also love to do is, We'll create a new thread, and what we'll do as well as a [00:58:00] team, we'll see on Slack, like, Hey guys, new thread, everybody comment on it, so that we get some momentum on there, and then tag a few people too, who should be a part of this as well.

And that way, we can kind of build momentum together in that. In some cases, we reach out to people who haven't. active in a while and say, Hey, this new post came up, seems to be hot. Like want you to check it out cause we think it's helpful. And we'd love your input on it as well. That stuff really does help.

The other thing is we'll often try to create these more important events, not that The other events aren't important, but every once in a while, we'll have like a big event or a big guest come on and we'll make a bigger deal about that and reach out to everybody and encourage people like, Hey, if you haven't come in a while, this would be a good time to come back.

The other thing to know is like there is churn that happens. I mean, we are very lucky to have a very low percentage churn. We have like a 4 percent churn in our community, which is amazing, which means there's a good sticking rate. However, there is a pattern to that. And you'll see that when you run these launches.

To bring people in you'll find that especially if they've been on like the annual plan a year later That'll be a time where a lot of people drop off. So If that's the case, I mean, you'll have to look at your [00:59:00] data and have to have some data come in, but you can actually see when the drop offs are likely to happen and then offer that big event, for example, right before so that it gives people this like, Oh, yeah, this was amazing.

And then the bill comes or this notification comes. Hey, would you like to renew? Of course, we just did this amazing thing that was super helpful. So you can kind of like plan and time these things around those those moments of decision because, you know, and we do want people to stick around obviously, but only if it is value to them.

And so our, it is up to us. That's why I love this model more, even though we initially lost money on it because we were selling our courses for hundreds of dollars and it was just DIY, no community, no. Support other than email and one office hours every week. Now it's like all hands on deck. We've hired for this.

We are not as profitable with this model, but we've gotten many more people to stick around and get better results. In fact, people

Allan: did you fold all of your courses, into the community or?

Pat Flynn: All the courses are in the community now. Yeah. For a much, much lower monthly price, [01:00:00] but now it's up to us to continually provide that value and guide people through the courses in the order that makes sense for them individually.

Such that they would stick around long enough where we'd be able to generate more revenue than if they just purchased one and we're kind of done with it. So now it's like we have to, as a company, earn that revenue over time by helping people on the journey versus, hey, pay us a lot and then it's up to you to figure this out on your own.

And I think I just feel much better about the model that we have now. And you know, the results speak for themselves.

Allan: I love it. I love it. Pat, you've been incredibly generous with your time, incredibly generous with your knowledge. You've got a new book coming out called Lean Learning. Not, quite now. Do you have a, an approximate release date

Pat Flynn: Approximate release date and you know, I think if you write a book and it has the word lean in it, you're like awesome, so I just wanted to say

that real quick.

Lean Learning, likely to come out June 2025. That's the perspective date. This is my first traditionally published book. I've self published three.

And even though I didn't need to do that, I [01:01:00] really wanted to experience what it was like and to hopefully reach some broader audiences through distribution here. And I'm just having a great time. Thank you for

Allan: that's really cool. That's really cool. And of course you're at smartpassiveincome. com. Your community is an awesome resource for anyone who wants to learn the basics of building a business online. Your stuff is always super top notch, your YouTube channel, your podcast. I highly recommend anyone and everyone to follow you online to join your community.

Anywhere else we should direct people.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, if you wanna see what the Pokemon thing's about, you can also check out Deep Pocket Monster on YouTube, and we're about to cross a million subscribers. One thing I also love to do with the community there, for example, is every milestone, we've had these coins made metal coins that we've had made, and then they go, like, they literally go crazy over them.

I've seen a few of them on eBay for, like, hundreds of dollars, cause there's a limited run of them. And it's like, people go crazy over these things. We don't sell them, we give them away to people who win prizes and stuff, but yeah. Like, little things like that. [01:02:00] I mean, with Community we even have, like, a timer.

I don't know if anybody's watching this right now, but there's this timer that we've given a name to. His name's Steve, and so this is Steve the Timer, who times my challenges. Well, People have fallen in love with the idea of Steve that we're, we have Steve plushies now,

Allan: That's

Pat Flynn: like, this is the, like, there would be no way anybody in the world could sell this, except for me, because we've built this community and this language and these characters around this, these challenges that I do around Pokemon, and it's like, it's such a fascinating thing.

Community is so powerful and use that power for good, please, is maybe my last message.

Allan: Amazing. Thank you so much, Pat. It's just been such an honor and a pleasure to have you on.

Pat Flynn: Thank you, Allan. Appreciate you. Thank you.

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