How To Test Your Next Business Idea Before You Start It With Pat Flynn

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What's up, party people? It's Brad and I'm back at you with another episode brought to you by stiletto coffee.com. this is coffee for driven women with exquisite class and a touch of sass. It is a tremendous coffee. The beans are my absolute favorite and I am biased, but it's really amazing. My wife started the coffee company and I've been supporting her and helping her throughout. You'll hear us talk about that in today's episode. But if you're a woman and you love coffee, this is great for you. And if you've got a woman in your life that you'd like to give as a gift, I can think of nothing better than Stiletto Coffee. It comes in a beautiful black satin gift bag and we just hear tremendous reviews about it. So I want to jump into today's episode. We're going to talk to Pat Flynn. He's the host of Smart passive income podcast and the author of a brand, a Wall Street Journal best selling book called will it how to test your next business idea so you don't waste your time and money. Listen, if you've been in the podcast circuit at all, you've probably heard of Pat. He's got one of the top podcasts out there called Smart Passive Income and it's just really a terrific, terrific resource for anybody. And that's why I asked him on the show because we're going to talk about business and product validation, how to know if it's going to, if it's going to work or at least get some kind of an indication if you are brand new and just getting started or you've got a lot of experience. You're going to get a lot out of this episode because Pat and I talk about the reasons why and different methods that you can validate your product before you bring it to market. So let's get to it. Let's see if Pat is on the other line. Okay, I'm recording. All right. So, Pat Flynn, welcome to Bacon Wrap business, buddy. How are you?

Thanks for having me, Brad. I appreciate it.

Yeah, it's fun. And this is, I've been a fan of your Podcast for a long time. I've listened to it, and you've always got some great stuff. And I've kind of tried to take, you know, take a few notes of what you're doing. Right. And do them on my own show. And when did you start that podcast?

That was July of 2010.

Look at you, Mr. Early Adopter. You know, it's funny, like, how long have podcasts really even been around? They've been going since the mid-2000s, right?

Yeah, for a long time. I mean, I thought I was late because all the people I was in circles with in that podcasting world were like those nerds who just knew it like the back of their hand. Right, right.

But now, what do you think was the. Was the reason for the resurgence? Was there anything just in particular? Because it's crazy how overly over in the past two to three years, it's just exploded.

Yeah, I think it's a combination of just the tools and the information that's available to us now to have anybody really start a podcast and then just some of the more bigger names in the world that are connected and very much loved by, I don't know, the common people, I guess, they see it and then, I don't know, Serial, I think, was also had a big part with it because Serial was the first major podcast to go mainstream. You know, SNL did a spoof on it, and it was just huge. Millions of downloads in just a couple weeks. And that really put podcasting in people's mind. Minds. And then a lot more people started doing podcasts. And everybody just is talking about it now.

Absolutely. Well, and probably when they started to do the really highly produced ones and people realize that there's really good content over here.

Yeah, yeah.

So that's cool. So, you know, as I mentioned in the introduction, your podcast and Your website is smartpassiveincome.com or search for that on itunes. Tell me a little bit more about your backstory and how you got started with this, because then I want to dive into your new book that's bestseller and just really rock it. And I think it's really, really, you know, a terrific concept for a book and things that people need to know. But before we do that, tell me. I want to know a little bit more about your backstory. And I mean, the smart passive income. What else are you doing to earn this income?

Yeah, I mean, most people know me from that site and podcast and YouTube channel, all related to smart, passive income. That's where I build businesses publicly and run experiments and different marketing strategies and just share everything that happens, things that go right, things that go wrong. That's why I sort of call myself the crash test dummy of online business. Because, you know, a crash test dummy, they put themselves on the line, they just get into that car, and then they, boom, hit that brick wall. And they always report back for everybody else's safety. And that's what I feel like I do. But before that, I actually had a very successful business in the architecture space in the online world, and that is helping people pass a really difficult architectural exam. And I actually was laid off from the architecture industry, which is what got me excited and interested in this online business space. And then I took some knowledge I had about a very hard exam called the lead exam. I packaged all that up into a website. Study guides, classes, practice exams, and it just. It just did very, very well. Over $200,000 in the first year after monetizing. And then Smart passive income was created to just talk about how all that happened, what I wish I had done differently, because really, I wanted to just share it with everybody, because I didn't even know this whole world existed until I got laid off. And I didn't. You know, if I had known it was. It was there and I was. It was possible for me to do this, I would have done it much earlier. I felt like I wanted to give somebody that they could trust to just share everything. And that's why every month, you actually see a monthly income report where I share how much money I make down to the penny, where it all comes from. It doesn't always go up, but it's always a lesson. And the lessons around those numbers are always what's most important in terms of how those things happened. It's just been a wild ride. It's been a lot of fun. I'm doing a lot of keynote speaking now. It's like, it's just crazy that I could say I get paid to speak now, because I was definitely afraid of that before 2011 and when I started. And the podcast has grown to about 25 million downloads now, which is insane. And it's been top 10 business podcasts for over five years now. And now I have this book, and it became a bestseller. It's incredible, the journey I've been on, but I'm very thankful when I think back. And all this just for having my boss say, you can't work for us anymore. That was the best thing that ever happened to me.

It's so funny, because the exact same thing happened to me. And I was a, I was working at Prudential Investments and I was a financial analyst, et cetera. And I had a great kind of cushy job. I liked it. I was bored to tears. But the best thing that could have ever happened to me was that I got laid off. Because I also had just happened to have read the four hour Workweek the month that I got laid off, had I not had my eyes open to this whole world exists over here. I remember I got into the business of, you know, I guess online and information marketing because it was not even chasing a four hour workweek. It wasn't chasing riches, it was running away from the, you know, from the idea of having to put my resume together and go schlep around and ask for a job.

Right, right. That's so cool. Four Hour Work week had a big influence on me too, right around that time also. So Tim's had had some good success helping people out, I guess.

Yeah, it really has. And you know, one of the things that you said that also resonates with me, me and I think that all the listeners should take special note is you assume the role of a crash test dummy. Well, in order to do that, you had to know and you have to go into it every single day you wake up, I may be in a crash today. And that's okay because you're going to learn something from that. The only time you fail is if you fail to take a lesson away from it. And when I started my business, I remember that I wasn't focused on the end result of having freedom and financial freedom and time freedom, etc. I was just using it as a marketing laboratory. I've always said, just trying to figure it out one step at a time. And every time I did something, I developed a new skill and if I screwed it up, I became an accidental expert in fixing it. And it just kind of created and created and grew. But I think that was a really important distinction that you said, which was, yeah, I'm a crash test dummy. I'm going to try it out. If it fails, I'll try something else.

Yeah, it wasn't always like that though. I mean, in the beginning with me it was survival. You know, that's really what building an online business was about for me. And then once I got a business up and running and automated, then I started smart passive income. And that's when I started to consider myself as, you know, this leader in this space where I can help people through example by being transparent, by putting myself in line and you know, it's funny that tagline didn't come until I hired a designer to help me design my website. And he just needed a placeholder for a tagline. And he's like, oh, well, you're kind of like a crash system. And it kind of just stuck there. So it's been pretty cool that that actually worked out nice.

What's been your biggest crash?

Oh, gosh. Do we have, like, five hours to talk? Because there's so many. I mean, the biggest one, I mean, there's a lot of different examples, but the one that I use in the book, that's very relevant to how people are now and what they're doing is, you know, I spent 15 grand on building a software that never made it to market. And it was because I rushed into it, I didn't validate the product, I got way ahead of myself, and communication with the developer was bad because I didn't even fully flesh out that idea myself. I just wanted that income, that money that I saw my friends were making when they were making software products. And that was the. You know, there were two things that were wrong with this process. One, I was chasing the money more than wanting to serve my audience. And two, I was just. I didn't know what I was doing, so I rushed into it and just didn't follow anybody else's example. So, you know, big lessons learned from that was to validate your idea beforehand. Because when I had finally had this product that was done, I had spent about 10 grand developing a product, a WordPress plugin that actually worked finally. And I shared it with a couple of my friends and Mastermind colleagues, and they were like, dude, Pat, how much did you spend on this? And I'm like, like, 10, 15 grand. And they're like, it's not that good. It's not a good idea. And, you know, my, my. I love my Mastermind groups because they're very honest. I mean, you have to be. And if only I had brought them this idea first and then potentially had this feedback, it would have saved me a lot of money. Or at least I could have been like, okay, well, what would make this good and then turn it into something that would actually be better instead of just kind of guessing, which is what a lot of people do. We build things because we guess that our audience is going to like it or we hope, which is even worse. You have to know. And once you know, you have that motivation, you have data behind it, and you can move forward full steam knowing that it's going to Work.

Yeah, I've had a couple of those myself where I had the concept for something and I just, I spent a lot of time and energy developing it out and then it just kind of landed with a thud because it really wasn't what the market wanted. And, man, it's a hard lesson to learn and thus the importance of validation. And this is like a good segue into your book. Will it fly? Tell me about this book. The subtitle is how to test your next business idea so you don't waste your time and money. I can't think of a better book, especially not only even for new entrepreneurs and people who are just trying to get into the business, but anybody, because it's very easy for all of us, especially if we've had some success, to just jump right into something else and forget the ground rules and the fundamentals of finding out if it'll fly. So tell me more about this book and how it kind of came around.

You know, it's interesting. As entrepreneurs, we often hear the phrase, just ship, right? Just do it. Put it out there, ready, fire, aim, as they say. And that's good advice. You don't want to wait too long. You don't want to worry about perfection. You need to actually take action in order for things to happen. But if you take action on nothing, if you take blind action, then you're going to potentially be even further behind after you finish. It's really important to do some stuff up front, which is what this book is about, to help you validate your idea, to make sure it's something your customers will actually want to buy. And, you know, four hour work week. Tim Ferriss, he was the first one to kind of talk about validation in sort of the online world. And in his book, in I forget which chapter it was, it was called Testing the Muse. I think part two of that, where there was these examples of two physical products. I think one was a yoga DVD and another one was like sailor shirts or something. Do you remember? Does this ring a bell?

Oh, absolutely.

And so what he would do is he would set up landing pages for those particular products and actually drive cold traffic to them through Google AdWords. And then he would keep track of how many people actually clicked on the buy now button. So it actually looked like those products existed. And he could tell based on the number of clicks, how many, you know, if it was actually something people would want or not before actually, you know, fully building out this business. And that was like. That was like a huge light bulb for a lot of People like, whoa, that's actually possible. But for one, Tim hasn't really updated that. I mean, that's not really what the book was about, essentially, but it's just a part of it. And there's been a lot of validation literature since then, a lot of blog posts and stuff. But a lot of it also assumes that you have this large audience already that you could. You could tap into. So I wanted to create this book to help everybody. Like you said, those who are just starting out, who don't have a list, don't have any contacts whatsoever, but also those who have a business, who have contacts, who want to just make sure that their next move is the right move. This is going to help you because it walks you through a process, a very iterative process to help you understand, like I said, if you're going to have paying customers, that's how you know if something's actually going to work out. You can't just assume. Even if people say, oh, yeah, totally, totally, Brad, I would totally buy it if you made that thing, I would buy it. You can't assume that they will. They're maybe just being nice to you. You have to actually have them transact and even beforehand. And you might think that this is kind of ludicrous. Like, what? You're getting people to pay for stuff before it's built, and you're actually telling them it's not built. But this happens all the time. It's like, you know, we pay for tickets to events all the time before they actually happen, right? Indiegogo and Kickstarter. We're paying for ideas now before they happen to. And those people are obviously are validating their ideas to see if they can get enough, following enough pledge money beforehand before moving forward. And so this idea isn't actually all that far off what's happening today day. It's just a matter of getting in front of a small sample size of your target audience and sharing this idea with them and then actually asking them to pay for it up front. And if you get a certain amount of those people to pay, then, you know, and if not, then the cool thing is you're not just left in the dark. You're not a failure. You can go back to that failure point and be like, okay, well, how come this didn't work? You go ask those people who said they were interested, but then buy. Well, how come you didn't buy? And they'll tell you right there. So it's no longer about guessing. It's just about going through the iterative process. And at each point, if you're met with failure, you kind of understand why before you move on to the next point. And this way you're going through it in a way where you know that by the end of it it's going to work out.

Right. You know, it's funny that you mentioned the Tim Ferriss ones because when I first this is one of the smartest things I did was I actually followed Tim's directions and I validated the very first product I ever built ahead of time. And I. The quick backstory is I had no idea what to create as an info product. I happen to really like bar tricks, little, you know, bar magic. And a book by Neil Strauss had just come out called the Game. It was all about, you know, pickup artists and people who use magic too.

It's a good book.

Yeah, right. So you know what I'm talking about. Neil was talking about he's using magic tricks. And I remember reading it going, that's kind of cool. I I've done bar tricks and it flirted with women. It was kind of cool. So what tricks did you do? And those didn't. And he never explained them. So I was talking with a buddy of mine who became my partner and we decided wonder if there would be a market for anybody like pickup artist magic tricks. We just take some of the tricks that I already know and some of the ones that are on the Internet and just kind of package them up for the people who have just read this book and who want to break the ice in social situations and with women. But I never created a product. I had no idea if it'll work. So I created a single page. Never wrote a page, a copy before in my life. But I just wrote the copy for a product that I would buy if it existed. And at the bottom of it it just said click here to get the course. Excuse me. Just like you said, enter your email first. But then I didn't even have them buy. I just said thank you for your interest. You know, this course is almost done. You're on the notification list to where it's not. I'm not even taking money. But I did take their email and I built up like an email list of about 600 people. And I was talking with them and they were clamoring around asking me, you know, when is this going to come out? And I just run some Google Ads to it. But I knew at that point, okay, people want this. Let's. I can't tell. I mean, I don't have to Tell you how much fire you can get under your butt when you know that there's somebody out there who was like, dude, I will give you money if you create that.

Yeah, yeah, totally. Now we have these tools available to us to collect pre orders, so you can actually collect the payments and just have that in sort of an escrow like situation without them having to actually give you money over PayPal, which can still happen too. I mean, Noah Kagan validated Sumo Jerky, which is a beef jerky subscription service. He validated that in 24 hours by talking to a bunch of people and actually asking them to pay for the service before it even happened. And he was able to generate $1,000 in profit in 24 hours. Oh, wow. So there's a lot of people doing this in all different spaces. It's not just physical, it's not just informational. I mean, there's all, there's service based stuff, coaching. You can validate anything, really. Again, the idea is just take it. It's like on Mythbusters. I don't know if you've seen the show mythbusters, but whenever they do these large scale experiments, they first do them in a small scale to understand what happens first for their safety, to just see what's wrong so that when they go full scale, they can build it the right way. It's the exact same thing. Your ideas that you're testing, they're like these myths that they're testing on that show. And so you do a small scale experiment to see what happens. And if it doesn't work out well, then you fix it, you tweak it until it does, and then you go full scale with it the way it should be. And that way it's safer. That way it's more guarantee that it's actually going to work out in the end. And that's what you do. And of course, once you have those paying customers, you will have that fire lit under you to just do it, of course. And then by then, you know, those initial customers, they're going to be your evangelists, you know, because they're part of that first round. They're going to be the first round of testimonials when you go full scale. And it's just, it's sort of similar in the software industry. You know, running with a, with a beta group, just a small beta group with an mvp, a minimum viable product, and then working with them to actually create it into something that they want instead of something that you think they want and maybe don't.

Bingo. And the, the interesting thing that you said as well about validating this prior to will somebody pay for it? So I've done this with some of my clients who are more in the information space and maybe they're experts or info product creators or high end coaches and that's the concept of sell it before you create it. So if I'm going to teach a class on, oh, just make up something here, how to be an expert, you know, Facebook marketing mastery.

Right.

I do a webinar, I do something else to where I sell people into a, you know, into a multi part course that I'm going to teach over the next, I don't know, six weeks as opposed to creating the whole thing and then hoping I can sell it. Because if I don't get anybody to buy it based on the strength of my ability to put it in front of people and persuade them to buy it, I don't have to create it.

Right. Or even the webinar itself is part of the validation process. Process. If you can't, if you can't get people to sign up for a webinar.

Oh exactly.

Well then you need to work on your messaging, you know, and then that, and work on that part first before you move on to the next step.

Creating the whole thing. Cool. So let's take this into the real world in a very live situation. Actually it's. I wish we had this conversation a few months ago. So my wife and I have been supporting her through this whole thing. Just recently created a, or launched a brand new business and one of the things we did, did not do was validate it beforehand. I totally went on gut instinct. Now the business has only been open for about a month and so far so good. Although I would have loved to have had validation prior to it because for a million reasons. So let me give you a little bit of the background of what we're doing and then this will be a great way for you to say well here's a handful of the ways based upon your research that this could have been validated prior to because I didn't know how to validate this first. So our, my wife's coffee company, it's a coffee company for one, it's called Stiletto Coffee and you can go to stiletto coffee.com so it is a very high grade specialty coffee, amazing coffee if you like that and it is marketed towards women. So she's got an amazing backstory in this. A portion of the proceeds go to help women's charities initiatives, micro loans towards women owned Businesses, et cetera, but the entire brand, it's a very classy, sassy brand. And the difference we're trying to make in the marketplace is not necessarily a different kind of coffee, but it's tapping into a very big market with a unique angle that we're not just selling the beans. This is for a very specific type of demographic. And we know when they see the brand and we build rapport with them through the branding because it's not a pure direct response play that we were betting that it would do well. So, so far, so good. However, the hard part about this is the. I saw the, you know, the need. I'm sorry. One of the big pulls of this would be the entire branding experience. And once they saw it with the. Was all about, from the packaging to the detail to the messaging, that. That had to be in play before we could even validate it. Had this been like a weight loss coffee or some kind of a functional thing, it may have been easier to say, hey, would you buy this? Because here's what it does in a situation like that. Is there anything off the top of your head that says, okay, if you were going to do, you know, launch a consumer product similar to this, how might you validate before going into all of the necessities of launching the product?

Well, it would start with, okay, so your target market. Women.

Yep. A certain demographic of women.

Okay. And then so you find some of those women and you just talk to them and you ask them if this is something they would be interested in. You literally just have a conversation.

So we did that. We didn't pre sell any, though.

No, you're not doing that quite yet. Cool. But you could have after those conversations, like, hey, do you want to. Okay, so you sounded like you're interested in this. What if I said, hey, if you give me $10 now, make sure that you get one of the first whatever it is that you're selling. Yep. And that would be a way to really gauge, well, you know, some people might be like, I don't know. And then you go, okay, well tell me why you don't know. What's the reservation? And then that would give you some insight for things that you can then make sure to include in further copy or emails or pitches down the road. So again, you can use those little moments in those conversations to really help you move forward. But if you get people to pay you, then that's great. And that's again, confirmation that somebody is actually really interested in it and they're voting with their cash. Not just their voice, but they also become a person who was now invested in what it is that you're doing. Somebody that you could call at any moment's notice and say, hey, what do you think about if we did it like this? Is that something that you would actually do? Or, you know, you'd be. You'd have these people who have paid money when that, that transaction, as we all know, is a huge deal. It doesn't. And again, the asking for the payment up front, it's not about making money. It's just about whether or not they would actually, in their head, say, yes, I would part with this money for this idea. And when you do that early, then you have them as a resource, and so they're actually quite valuable to you. Now at that point.

That's great. You know, one of the things we thought about doing was launching kind of a crowdfunding campaign, whether it's a Kickstarter or crowdfunder or something of that nature. And that's. That's also. I'm sure you talk about this in your book, but talk about a great way to validate your idea is, you know, kickstart it, crowdfund it, indiegogo it, just to see if there's anybody out there who will support you. That wasn't available several years ago. And the fact that it is now gives entrepreneurs so much power to do that before spending a lot of time and energy.

Right. Kickstarter is great. I love it. The only issue that I have with Kickstarter for validation is that the pledge prizes can eat up your life. I know this because, for example, if I were to say, if you were doing stiletto coffee on Kickstarter, well, then if you're going to give away a T shirt for everybody who purchases it at $15, well, who's your fulfillment house? How many sizes of each size are you going to get? What's the design? And you see how it's like, starts to add on to what's most important here, which is your idea. Now, that being said, there is a service out there or an application that you can use called Celery. You can find it@trycellary.com which is an interesting name.

How do you spell Celery?

Celery. C, E, L, E, R, Y. Okay, sorry, I had to write that down just to make sure I didn't know off the top of my head either. And this allows you to create your own Kickstarter campaign, essentially, and have more control over it so you don't have.

To follow all of their stringent rules.

Exactly. So it's a way for you to do it on your own. Plus it's a way for you to collect pre orders.

More importantly, and that's a great point that you bring up is that sometimes people will just jump in for the swag and everything else, and they're not necessarily. I mean, it's not really a pure. It's not really a pure validation.

Here's the thing, Brad. If you, if you talk to somebody in person and you share this idea with them and you can't convert some of those people, then what's going to make you convert those people later when you're not even talking to them in person, you know, so try to do that first. And again, it's not everybody, not everybody you speak to is going to say yes. There's a lot of reasons why people say no, but it's just a certain percentage, like 10% of the people you speak to. That's all you need to really have this thing in your head that says, yes, this is actually gonna work.

Right. And there is something, I think, that switches in somebody's brain when you don't just ask them, hey, do you like this idea? Because most people don't want to disappoint you. They'll be like, yeah, it sounds good. Or they'll maybe they'll offer a few reasons to. It won't work. But when you ask them to put up money, they either do it and if they don't, it opens a door for you. Like said, well, what would, what would make you. What, what could I do that would make you actually spend money on this? And why or why not? I can see how that can create so much more real world intelligence than, you know, than just guessing at it.

Hopefully that was helpful.

Absolutely. So what is. Are there any favorite kind of anecdotes or stories or validation tests that you talk about in the book that just kind of really stand out?

Yeah, I mean, there's one. You might know him, his name's Brian Harris from videofruit.com yeah, he validated his first ever product, which is a Boot Camp or Bootstrappers guide to creating explainer videos. So it's a very niche thing, but he actually started this which actually allowed him to quit his job, create videofruit.com he's gone on to do a lot of amazing things now and make a lot of money and build successful businesses. But it all started in a Facebook group. In a Facebook group where he was sharing how he was creating These videos. That's how he was able to build authority in this space inside this Facebook group. So again, it doesn't. You don't have to have a huge audience. You just need to get in front of an audience somewhere. And that was his method of doing it. So after a couple weeks of providing value and showing people how he was doing these videos, he eventually asked, hey, if anybody is interested in learning more about how I do this, shoot a DM or direct message with your email address and I'll get back to you. So he got like 25 people to send him emails, and he had a conversation with each of them. And with each of those people, he asked them, hey, you know what? Like, I'm going to be coming up with a course about this. If you want access to it, I'll give it to you now for a discount price. Here's the link. And if I get. I think he said if he could get five people, he would then build the thing, and if not, he would just refund the money. He actually got 19 out of the 25 people to buy it. And then he created this course and he launched it and made a few thousand bucks, which is great, but it was more so a way for him to validate that this is the right direction for him. And later he started to continue to talk about when he was creating this course because it wasn't created yet. Again, he was just validating the idea of creating it. As he was doing that, he was building his email list because he was sharing the progress in that same Facebook group. And by the time he launched it at full scale with everybody, he obviously, the people who paid earlier, they get access to it already. But he then launched it for. In front of everybody, for a lot more money, made a lot more sales, and that's when he was able to then quit his job.

That's awesome. I love that.

It's just because he tried it out and tested and, you know, if it didn't work, then he would have tried something else.

That's so cool. You know, it is amazing what we can do these days with, you know, with the tools available, with the resources and tools can be as little as social media. Everybody out there, you don't have to have a big group. You could have, you know, a Facebook fan page, you could have your Twitter. You could have anything like that. And just using those to. To ask these questions and to engage in the conversation. I read. Who is it that did. Maybe it was Noah Kagan who did this. He had an email course. I think called email 1k showing people how to get their first thousand email subscribers.

It could be Brian, actually.

Man, Brian. But anyway, what he was saying was he goes, here's a. Actually, I think this was Noah when he was saying this. He goes, you could easily just create a tweet that says, I'm thinking about writing a book on paleo eating or whatever. You know, something, I'm making this up, but I think that's what he used. Or, I'm starting a newsletter on paleo eating. If you'd like to be notified, you know, tweet here or say yes or go here, whatever. Just starting it out. He goes, it can be as simple as starting that conversation anywhere in social media, because you'd kind of be surprised. Don't go out and start it and make it perfect, but start the conversation, see who's interested, get their feedback, see what they want, and then build into the demand. As opposed to trying to create the demand out of nowhere?

Yeah, totally. I mean, a lot of people go into this book with an idea in mind already. I mean, obviously all entrepreneurs. We have thousands of ideas. But then as you go through the book and do the exercises, do the market research, find out really what the problems are, your target audience is having these ideas often morph into something completely different, which is exactly what you want to happen, because now they're based off of the research and what the market wants instead of just what you think they want. And so, yeah, that's cool to hear that. And Noah's a great guy. He's a case study in the book, too. Is he nice with his sumo jerky company? And there's a number of others, too. But it's just so cool to see people do this because, again, it takes a lot of the anxiety out of working so many hours and putting a lot of stress into something that might not even work out. That's why a lot of people don't start businesses is because they're not sure if it's going to work. Just imagine if everybody who had an idea followed through on them, how much more awesome stuff there would be.

Oh, completely. So tell me, what some of the stuff you're. What else are you working on these days? You've got your podcast, your various businesses in that you're obviously promoting the book like crazy. Is there a bigger. Is there a bigger game to the book besides just getting a really quality book out there? I mean, are you working with people? I'm asking this completely out of ignorance. Are you working with people, like in consulting Relationships. Are you doing anything of that nature? Like, if people are like, man, Pat's got it going on, I want to give him more money.

Well, I mean, a book in everybody's. Everybody's. Everybody who publishes a book should have a reason for, for doing it right. You shouldn't just publish a book to publish a book. There should be something else beyond that, I feel. And so for me, it's really the start of a conversation for people. That's why it's sold on Amazon. It's not sold on my website. I could have sold it on my website. I have a huge audience. I could have sold it for a lot more. I could have turned it into a course instead. But a book I felt was a very. Because this is very again, at the start of a person's journey. I wanted this to be a low barrier to entry, not an intimidating, great way to just provide a ton of value and help people out in the beginning parts of their journey. And if I do that for them, they're going to want to continue that conversation with me past the stages of this book and into their future and their business and their lives. This is the start of a long term relationship I have with my audience. And so the cool thing about this is that it perfectly leads into other future courses, for example, that might come out, which you'll see coming from me later on. There's actually a free computer companion course that goes along with this book too. So it's not just a PDF file bonus that you could download. You actually get access to a free course that is a companion course. So it's actually laid out chapter by chapter. In each of those chapters you get bonus materials, videos that walk you through some of the stuff that I explained in the book, downloadable worksheets, all the links that are mentioned in the book are there too, plus some other bonus stuff. And then what's cool is about the platform that I'm using to host that free companion course. It's called teachable.com.

Ah yeah. The encore is one of the. The founder of that is one of former guests on bacon wrap business.

Oh yeah, Ankur is great. He and I started a relationship like a year and a half ago and to see what he's been able to do with Fedora, which is now teachable, has been amazing and it's a great tool, super easy to use. And I love it because now that people are getting access to this course and actually 25% of the readers who picked up the book, because we've sold 16,000 copies at this point, there are over 4,000 people. People in that course coming directly from the book, which is. 4,000.

Wow, that's awesome.

So it's a free course, but 4,000. Now I have their email address, and when I come out with these courses later down the road, it's going to be on teachable also. And they already have their username and login, so it's going to be very easy for them to go into another course if that is a course that they want to get into. So there's that. But I have a lot of bigger plans. I mean, five years down the road, I'd love to have. I do a lot of philanthropic stuff. I've built schools around the world, and I do education in homeless shelters around the San Diego and LA area and stuff. I want to go bigger with that, though. And I think these courses and the opportunities, the more money that's going to come in the future, that will be used a lot toward that. My big goal is to, within five years, have some sort of nonprofit organization that helps kids learn entrepreneurship. And it's really a big passion of mine because. Because I have two kids of my own. My son is 6, my daughter's 3. And my son, he's in a STEM school. And I could see, because of the way they teach, he has this sort of entrepreneurial brain, which is great. He understands that they teach, for example, that there's no such thing as. I can't. It's just. I haven't figured it out yet. And I love that. And he's very much wanting to solve other people's problems. And if he only knew or begins to learn some of these basic entrepreneurial principles right now, I mean, imagine the impact that that will make on not only him, but all the people that he affects from this point forward. So I want to connect with a number of kids and help them learn these basics of entrepreneurship at the start of their lives so that they can take it into the future with them. That would be my goal.

That's so awesome. And I love that mission. That's. I mean, I can't think of much more that will have a bigger impact and ripples throughout society than, you know, getting them young and giving them the skills and mindset, even more importantly, to be able to solve problems and add value to the world. So are there any nuts you're trying to crack right now? I mean, obviously trying to get the book in as many people's hands and get in front of as many people, but is there anything you're Looking for help with, whether it's myself, my listeners, any connections you're trying to make that just right out of grasp.

Well, thank you, Brian. I appreciate that. Right now my book was self published, which I don't know if I mentioned, but you know, to get on the Wall Street Journal bestseller list as a self published book, you know, I'm quite proud that I was able to do that. And I didn't even know if that was possible. I wasn't eligible for the New York Times, however, because the book wasn't in retail bookstores, like physical bookstores, like Barnes and Noble. But that's kind of the next step that I want to take. I want to see if I can, as a self published author, do this again. I'm the crash that stummy. I'm going to see if this is possible or not. And I know it's possible, but it's very difficult. That's why you want to go traditional, because they have the connections with Barnes and Noble, for example, and they would just buy books and put it in the store for you. But I don't have that relationship yet. So I know that if I were to get my book in the print house that Barnes and Noble buys their books from then, which is, which is called Ingram, then the next step is just to get Barnes and Noble to understand that this book is in demand. And so I want to. On one day later this year, probably earlier or early this year, I'm gonna have. And I'm just, again, I'm just experimenting with this. I'm gonna have everybody in my audience and everybody else who wants to participate just on one day or maybe a weekend or something, all go into Barnes Noble or go into. I'll go online on Barnes and Noble and just search for the book.

That's awesome.

You know, even though they know it's not. I did this the other day and it's not in the catalog, it's not there. But I know that they, I mean, if they should keep track of that because they're going to want to know what books are being asked for and then see if that actually equates into books being ordered, shelf space and whatnot. I just want to see if that's possible. But I think it could work.

I love it. I think that would be hilarious to just see it just blow up.

It would be a lot of fun. Plus it would make headlines. And I know that if I were to do that, any second book that I created, create, if I were to go with a traditional publisher, I'd Get a much larger advance because I've done it on my own. And so I think it'd be a lot of fun. We'll see what happens.

Should just hand out a bunch of books, a few hundred books or whatever to your smart, passive army and just have people go there and then put it there. And then when people go to try to buy it and it's not checking out, they're like, I don't understand what's going on with this. Maybe we need to order more.

That's funny. James Altucher had a strategy he shared at one moment in time a couple years back called reverse shoplifting, which was essentially that, oh, really?

Maybe I heard it. I may have heard it from him.

Maybe. I mean, he. You put the book in, in the bookstore, instead of, you know, stealing one, you put one there. And when somebody buys it, it will let Barnes and Noble know that they're out of it, which means, well, they need to get more.

I wonder if I did hear that from James or if I just came up with that on my own, but that's brilliant. Yeah, that's awesome.

Hey, we're doing it for the self published author because that's what most of us, we're at that level where we can't get access to the traditional publisher. So I think it'll. Either way, it's going to provide some information for people. That's why I do what I do.

Absolutely. Well, that's cool. Pat, if there's anything I can do for you, man, in the future, just let me know. And I look forward to. Now that I know that you live in San Diego, we've got to meet up at some point. For my listeners, you can go get the book. I just ordered it while we were talking and I just. Yeah, absolutely. Will it fly? And I'll make sure and take a look at it, give you a nice review on there and obviously promote this to the podcast and the following. So, guys, if you're listening on itunes, click the picture of the podcast and you will see a link to the book and you can buy it right there. If you're on an iPhone or an Android, you can grab it. I truly believe that business validation, product validation is so important. Whether you're just getting started or you are experienced. Especially as I mentioned earlier, the more experienced you are, the more cocksure you get and you think, okay, I can just will this into existence. But going back to the fundamentals, practicing your dribbling, that is going to more likely get you better results than not. And obviously, if you want to hear more from pat, go to smartpassiveincome.com or search for it on itunes and the podcast directories, and you can hear much more there. Pat, is there anything else you'd like to leave us with before we jump off?

Thank you so much for having me on. I appreciate you promoting my book and sharing it with the world. Like I said, just want to get it in as many hands as possible. Best of luck to you. And if there's anything I could do for you or your listeners, let me know.

Yeah, I absolutely will. I appreciate that. Hey, speaking of books, to my audience members out there, I love. I read probably two or three books a week, I think, and I love recommendations. So if you have any book recommendations that you'd like to share with me, send those to askbradaconratbusiness.com to share it with me and maybe I'll read it and discuss it. If you've got any other. Any other things about your business you'd like to discuss, you can also reach me@askbradakenrapbusiness.com and the best thing you can do in the world for me, though, is share the podcast with your friends, talk about it, give us a review on itunes, and just keep listening because I enjoy doing this, hopefully as much, if not more, than you guys enjoy listening to it. Without any further ado, though, Pat, thanks for being on the show, and I look forward to jumping into Will It Fly.

Cheers. Thanks so much.

Absolutely. Bye. Bye.