Pat Flynn How To (Profitably) Launch Anything

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Hey, fastlaners, Ryan Daniel Moran here. Welcome to Freedom Fastlane. Today I'm going to be joined by our friend of the show, Pat Flynn. I asked Pat to come on because a couple questions are regularly asked of me and they include, how do I make sure that an idea is going to be viable in the marketplace? I hear you talking about different business models or I hear, hey, I want to take my business in a different direct. How do I make sure that that direction has merit? How do I make sure that my customers want this new product that we're going to release? And also we're going to talk about how to get paid up front before a product even exists. The reason we're talking about this is by following a methodology that Pat is talking about in his new book, which is called Will It Fly? We can identify how we really can mitigate our risk when taking a new business decision. Whether it is releasing a new type of product to our existing customers or it's releasing a brand new product to the marketplace without any foundation, without any business experience, there are ways to make sure that it has a desire in the marketplace. And we really can test that by getting people to see by actually pay, vote with their dollars and say, I want this thing. We also talk about some of the head noise that goes on in the brains of entrepreneurs over the sticking points of releasing products to the marketplace, over feeling confident, over releasing anything or charging money for anything. And we talk about is it actually ethical to charge money for information that's within your head? We talk about all these things on the show and you'll also hear what it sounds like when Pat Flynn is unnecessarily censored. If you catch the unnecessarily censored word head over to freedomfastlane.com enter it into the show notes for a chance to win Pat's new book, Will It Fly. We're giving out five copies of the book. If you grab the unnecessarily censored word head over, we'll randomly choose 5 comments over on the blog that catch the unnecessarily censored word. One other thing. Pat has a big audience, right? Pat can put out a piece of content and it be heard by tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people. We go into, how do you have the same type of results of proving a concept without necessarily having the big audience to start with? However, many of you are already sitting on very large audiences. You either have relationships or you have assets right now that will allow you to leverage where you are to make your next product or your next move much more impactful. It can come from an existing customer base if you're selling to Amazon and you're taking regular sales. Or it might be that you're putting your content out where a lot of eyeballs are seeing it, and you have other people on your list or other people within your small sphere that have a lot of eyeballs that can help you run this process. We're currently doing a video pre launch for the tribe over@freedomfastlang.com tribe. One of the videos is all about how to leverage this process, how to get in front of a lot of eyeballs so that you can work that next product launch or test your next idea or use it as a pivot point to go much bigger, to go from where you are to where you want to be. You're probably sitting on it right now and no one's talking about it. So I talked about it in one of the videos in this series over@freedomfastlane.com tribe. Head on over there and watch the series and just for now, enjoy today's chat with Pat Flynn. Welcome to Freedom Fastlane, everybody. Today I am joined by the man, the myth, the legend, and my good friend, Pat Flynn. Pat, welcome to Freedom Fast Lane.

What's up, man? So stoked to be here. I appreciate it.

Well, Pat, you are one of the most popular speakers at Freedom Fast Lane Live this past December, and people stated that you had some of the biggest takeaways as far as what was immediately implementable. Implementable. Implementable.

I love. I like that word. I like that word.

I don't know if it is a word, but we'll go with it.

Implementable.

You heard it here first.

No, I have to say that, like, you put on an amazing event. You know, I go to a lot of events, I speak at a lot of events, and especially it being the inaugural one, I was completely impressed. I loved everybody who was there. Community was awesome. Very supportive. I felt very comfortable on stage. But, you know, I keep hearing great feedback from the talk, which is awesome, too. But, yeah, that's great. I mean, that's what I always try to do with whatever I talk about, you know, not just say, you know, this is what to do or why you should do it, but like, okay, here are the steps. And, you know, so I'm happy to share whatever I can today to help help your audience out.

Well, thank you for that and thank you for the compliment. And, you know, one of the things, the way that I want to kick this off is something that you said that's been ringing in my brain for, for quite some time now. And you kind of said it in passing when we were on stage doing the Q and A part. But you said, yeah, I've been jabbing for a while, meaning I've been, I've been kind of setting, I've been setting up my audience for a while.

And I. Gary Vaynerchuk reference.

Right. And I said, why don't you do the right hook? Like, where's the ask? And you kind of said, I'm really happy with where I'm at and I'm operating with a really long term mindset now. I think I operate with a long term mindset, but I still, you know, do the ask every, every year or so. I at least do workshops and masterminds.

Yeah.

So I want to hear a little bit what's, what is the long term play and how long is your long term play?

I mean, my overall goal is to be the entrepreneur, the person who is leading this. You know, I'm on the leading edge of all these, these things that are coming out and able to discover things before other people do. Very similar to Gary and you know, him being a year or two ahead of, you know, Snapchat and all that stuff. Like, I want to be that way with a lot of the stuff that people are using to grow their online business as well. But, you know, in terms of jabbing for a long time, there's a lot involved with that particular statement. You know, a lot of it has to do with the fact that, you know, for a while I didn't believe that I was worthy of selling information or helping people out in that way where I was going to be getting paid. I mean, a lot of my income, most of it has come from just simply sharing a process and also recommending products that I've used along that process and earning a commission as a result. And for the longest time it was, well, this is a beautiful thing because, you know, I'm not, I'm just sharing a process. I'm not asking, I'm not being aggressive with it. And I always had this. And I think this is because when I got into Internet marketing, the entire space was just all about right hooking the whole time. And it just disgusted me because nobody was trying to build a relationship with me first. And so that's, that's my long term game is to build a relationship where, and I know it could. You know, I do a good, great job of that on my podcast, on my Blog on SPI TV where people really feel like it's because I am.

We'Re friends. And using these different platforms I'm able to scale building friendships. And the long term game is to be that trusted advisor in their lives. Going back to the Jay Abraham kind of methodology, you want to become that trusted advisor. I know for some people it can happen fairly quickly, but for a lot of people it takes multiple touch points, it takes multiple value bomb dropping opportunities before one then finally transacts with you in that way where they're paying you back. I know that I'm growing as an entrepreneur as well. I've made this really great mind shift over the past year of coming from this sort of scrappy beginning, just kind of figuring out as I go to now, planning ahead becoming more of a CEO of my business. I'm still growing too. I'm getting a lot of inspiration from you, Ryan, and how you're building your team and growing your business. And I'm learning from a lot of other people too. A lot of people have said, why haven't you right hooked? And for a while is because I didn't think I was worthy. Now I know I am. And then it was because I'm a little bit scared to do it because I don't want to let people down because I've been just doing this for so long in this way. But I also know that if I want to grow a long term business, I need my own assets and I need to be confident with selling. And if I'm not confident in selling, maybe that's because what I'm selling I'm not sure about.

I want to go into this deeper. I want to unpack this and pat this.

Yes, some more because this is really important. I mean, how many people don't sell because they're afraid of selling?

That's exactly right. And I'm going to share a very vulnerable story with you in a second. But I want to go into that deeper because so many entrepreneurs will have had that thought or I think that's probably the reason why there are wanttrepreneurs because there's this idea of I either need more information, no one's gonna buy my thing, what value do I have in the marketplace? And that comes up a lot. So I'm very appreciative of the fact that you share that. So would you dive into that a little bit more? Because so many people are probably saying, but it's Pat Flynn. How could he not feel like he had value in the marketplace? I've had it where people say to me, you know, I love this, this and this and this and this. And it's like, yeah, thanks, but. And it's all my internal noise I almost can't accept. I think we've all had that where we can't accept the compliment because of what we believe about ourselves.

Right? Yeah. I definitely think that's part partly how I grew up. It was to just be very humble and not be cocky and that. You know, I get that from my parents and I've. I'm, you know, I know I stand out in this space as somebody who's very humble and, you know, does. Isn't cocky or anything like that. Even though I do share an income report, I do it in a way where it's not about the money, you know, it's about the lessons and stuff. And I try to give and I give and I give and I give as much as I can, you know, jabbing all the time. But when it comes to selling, you know, for. It's like, for a while, I was like, I didn't think I was worthy of that. But then I realized, and a lot of people in my mastermind groups were telling me, like, pat, you're actually doing a disservice by not selling because people want to pay you back. They want to buy stuff from you, and you're not giving them the opportunity. And I didn't think that was a good enough reason. I was just like, oh, well, why should I sell something just because I know people would buy it? In a sense that that's a good way to approach it because you just don't want to sell random stuff. You don't want to sell crap. But at the same time, if you know, you have something that can help somebody and you don't put it out there, then actually people aren't going to get what they can out of it.

It's your responsibility to bring value to the marketplace.

And for the longest time, I didn't believe that. I thought, well, that's just. That's just what you say to trick yourself into selling stuff. But then I realized it's the absolute truth. Because some of the stuff that has changed my life has been stuff that I've paid for. And it's because I pay for those things. I have skin in the game and I pay more attention to it and actually go through the process and actually get the results. So if I'm not providing my audience, who chooses to work with me, who chooses to pay with me, an opportunity to do that to get skin in the game, for me to be able to walk them through a process and actually give them results in that way, well, then I am not doing my audience the best I can. And, you know, that mindset shift has been happening for me over the past year and a half, and I'm very thankful for a lot of the other people out there who are being a great example and who, you know, I reach out to. And we just have conversations about this. I know now that I have incredible, incredible information that can help people. And I'm confident in the selling that I'm doing and that I'm going to do. And there will be no reservations at all. And I feel like if there's an ounce of reservation in anything that I sell, it's not worth selling. Yeah.

Amen. Now, let me ask you this. I had my shift on this topic in college when I was studying economics. Strangely, most people know I grew up extremely religious. And when I started profiting in my business, I actually felt bad about it because kind of in my community, what was held up was the Mother Teresa example of giving everything you have away and living a very meager lifestyle. So when I started to have means, I felt bad about it for a long time. Until an economics professor that completely changed my life. His name was Dr. Tom Lehman. He gave a presentation before I switched over to studying economics, which was kind of my pivot into it, where he talked about how in a free market economy, money is the way that we deliver or that we measure our value in not in how much you make, but where we spend it. So people put their value on something when they spend money. It's like a voting process. And it was this big aha for me when I thought of it that way, because I realized that if I was putting out good things, that money should show up because people were voting for that information or that concept or that way that I was helping those around me. And that if I wasn't doing that, if I wasn't collecting money, then I wasn't allowing people to vote for what was most helpful. So that was where my shift was.

I like that a lot. I like the voting analogy because when you vote for something that you believe in, the vote is just the initial, yeah, let's do that. Like, I'm, I'm. I believe you. Like, look. And then that person has to follow through. Right? It's not just the vote. It's what happens after the vote that I think is really important. Where I think a lot of people don't Follow through or don't. Don't think of that part. They just think of the transaction. But the transaction is the vote. But then you have to deliver on that vote.

Sure. And in today's world, where most of us have guarantees and there's things like chargebacks, you know, they can take their boat back.

If they want. I wish we could do that in politics, but we can't. So that was. That's where I had the big shift. What about for you? Where was the shift for you where you realized that you were doing a disservice by not selling things? Because I am guessing you had to hear it more than once. And I'm guessing that people had to tell you, hey, sell me something. And you're like, but I wrote about it in this blog post. Yeah, but sell me something. I'm sure you had to hear that.

I mean, it was literally people in my audience telling me that I was not helping as much as I could because I didn't have something to sell. And it just sounded so crazy to hear that. Initially I was like, you want to pay me money?

And then it kind of happened again and again and again. And no, it wasn't everybody, but it was the loud ones. And because of that, I started to listen and I started to then survey people. I then started to ask the quiet ones what they thought because, you know, those people who don't speak up unless they're asked upon. And they had a lot of the same feelings, too. And this is where a lot of the secret sauce of what I do now comes from. These conversations I have with people, these interactions. And, you know, for the longest time, I was just somebody who was kind of hiding behind blog content. And then I kind of shifted more toward putting my own personality and being more open and upfront with people on my website. And then it shifted to, well, even behind the scenes, like reaching out to people, talking to people, having conversations. And through those like that progression, I've learned more and more about what people want and need. And I feel like. And I've learned from my audience that I hadn't been doing everything I could, including not selling stuff. And that's where a lot of the shift has come over the past year. And now this book is coming out, courses are coming out. I've already told my audience about it, and I'm completely confident in where things are headed with spi And I also have a lot of bigger goals, too. It's interesting when I think about my reasons for doing what I was doing and how much I've been able to grow as a result of meeting goals and realizing how small those goals actually were. For example, in the beginning, when I first started out, a lot of people know it was after I was laid off. My initial goal was just to simply survive. And then after that, it was to, okay, well, to support my family and have financial security and be free in that way. And then I reached that goal, and then it was buying a house and having a certain amount of money in investments, and I was able to reach that goal. And now it's doing a lot of philanthropy and bigger things. And now I'm getting into. I'm getting inspired by people who have these goals that are outside of what it is that we see them do. For instance, Gary and the jets and you and the Indians and a lot of people related to any other thing that they are passionate about. And for me, my big passion right now is because my son is in kindergarten, my daughter's about to go to school. It's education. And I've been diving into that quite hard lately in discovering just how terrible the education system right now is. And, you know, now that my son's going through it, although luckily he's in a STEM school, that's great. But I know not everybody has that kind of access. And so I want to do what I can now, knowing that I am actually capable of making these big changes and actually stretching where I think my limits are to make bigger change in the world and just beyond me, just beyond my initial or immediate network and going big, getting a lot of inspiration from people like Elon Musk and, you know, just trying to take away those limits that are in my brain. I mean, my brain is great at coming up with great ideas, but I also know I don't even know how big I can go. I'm trying to. Trying to wrap my head around, you know, what is actually possible.

Insane.

So.

Let'S talk about that a little bit deeper in the sense of you start to realize that you're going to do a good service by launching books or programs or whatever it is that you've got coming down the pipeline. What resistance points came up as you started to make the shift? And I asked this because I know that even when I get something, my old patterns sometimes come back and they keep talking. Did that ever happen for you?

Always. I mean, it's like my book is in presale at the time of this recording, and still I'm very nervous because I. What if people don't get value out of it? Like I know they can, but I know they can. I have proven it. I validated the exercises and the content in this book. I have living proof that this stuff works. Yet still it comes in. And I've just learned over time, through all my experiences, with all the different things that I've pushed myself to do from starting my blog, selling ebooks, podcasting, getting on stage especially, that every time these little thoughts, big thoughts actually in my brain come into play, it's a sign that it's just there's something awesome that's going to happen on the other end. Always. That has always been the case that when, when the greater the fear, the greater the reward on the other end, you know, it goes with this risk reward type of thing. But.

I would be more nervous if I wasn't nervous, if that makes sense. So I use those things as indicators that I have to keep going. Other times, you know, while I'm in the middle of building those things, I often struggle and come to points where my brain's not working or it's not coming out like I want it to or whatever. And then those doubts come into play where I'm like, well, maybe I'm not qualified to do this. But then I think about all that I've already done and I often forget that. And I'm very thankful to be reminded on a day to day basis from a number of my audience members from the pile of thank you notes. I have here at home a special category that my assistant created for specifically thank you notes in my email archive that I can go to when those feelings come about. I have a trigger in my brain that when these feelings come about where I don't feel like I'm qualified, I go to these places where I can see where I've already provided value and I know that I'm qualified, then it just proves to me that the results are stronger than these fears that are actually coming in.

I had a friend have a friend, his name is Kevin Wilke. And Kevin gave me a great piece of advice that made the shift for me in a time like this where when I was confiding in him that I felt like I couldn't charge for something, he said, you've got some self worth issues going on. And I was like, I suppose. And he says, okay, I want you to go home, pull out a journal entry, and this is right when I started my regular journaling practice. And he said, I want you to write down a list of all the reasons why you have something of valuable to say and all the Things, all the times you showed courage and all the times that you made a difference in one of your customers life. And I want you to read it every time you wake up in the morning and every time you go to bed. And I did that until I had the confidence to move forward in my business. Now, one of the things I know, one of the other strategies that I know you encourage is to just test, test on a small basis. You know, you don't have to dive into an entire new empire. Day one, you say just test, get some validation in the marketplace, have some people give you feedback. Would you share some experiences in doing that or some ways that those who, you know, maybe they don't feel like long term that this could be.

They're not sure if that's where their value is or if the marketplace will take something like that, but they'd like to find out how might they go about doing that?

Right. I mean, have you ever seen the show mythbusters?

Yeah, a few times.

I mean, they take these things that people say that, you know, are sort of myths or kind of unknowns or, you know, they're not proven, and they put them to the test. They use scientific processes to actually do small scale experiments so they know what's going on. And a lot of times these tests that they do, they're for things that are quite big, giant explosions and whatnot. But they always start small scale so they can see how things will work before they go large scale. It should be the same way with your business. The reason they do that is so they know what's going on. They can be confident with what it will be like when they go full scale with your business. You can run controlled experiments with sample sizes of your target audience to really, really understand exactly how the market will react to what it is that you're doing. And, you know, you've probably heard things like this before, you know, focus groups or what, what not, things like that, same idea. But validation has to happen in a way in order to be completely sure. You need to get customers to pay you upfront before you actually build that thing. And that's how you will know for sure whether or not this is something you should continue to do. It is so important that you do that because a lot of times we build businesses. Well, first of all, a lot of people build businesses just because they think it's something that their audience or particular market would want, which is a complete mistake. You have to do some kind of research. You should never build something based on only assumptions or what you think you need some validity somewhere. But then the often bigger mistake is when people get validation through just what people say. They show a prototype to somebody or they explain their idea to somebody and they say, yeah, I would totally buy that. But then when you build that thing and then it's time to actually collect a payment for it, they don't buy it because they tell you what you want to hear, not exactly what you need to hear, or they're just trying to be nice to you. That's why you should never tell, like a loved one about your idea because they're going to tell you, yeah, that's great. You know, they just want to support you, which is great. You know, it's great to get that support. But in order to know for sure, you need to speak to and interact with your target audience. You need to get in front of an audience. If you've built a blog or a following already, even on social media, it's a great place to start. Now, I know there's a lot of people who come up with ideas and they want to go through the validation process, but they don't have an audience. And of course you need sample size of your audience to validate. And the trick there is you can get in front of audiences that are not your own.

Amen.

You know, you could do guest posting, you can get on other people's podcasts, you could do, you can get involved in forums and social media groups and you know, LinkedIn groups and Facebook groups are some of the most incredible places to validate ideas, to get a handful of people to raise their hand and say, yes, I actually have that problem. Speak to them, you interact with them and then share that solution and actually get them to pre order it with all honesty up front about why you're doing what you're doing and the fact that this isn't something you've built yet. I think this is the big shift in validation nowadays is, you know, back in the day, you know, Tim Ferriss talked about validation. He talked about microtesting in chapter 10 of the four hour workweek, which is called Testing the Muse. And for those of you who might not remember or don't know, he talked about validation in a sense, especially in retail, where you could set up a landing page for a particular product. Anything that you think that might sell or that you've sort of figured out through research that might be possible to sell, and then you drive cold traffic to it through targeted ads. Back then it was AdWords, today it would be Facebook. And then you Just keep track of how many people. Click on that buy now button. You don't have anything to sell, but essentially you're just seeing through how many people go through the act of buying, whether or not that's actually worth pursuing, which is great. But nowadays the way to do it correctly is to talk to people. You interact and you be honest with them. You say, hey, this isn't built yet, but if I can get 20 people, you actually tell this to the people you're interacting with. I want to build this for you. If you have this problem, this can be the solution. And I want to make sure that this is something you guys want. You can get it at a discounted price. The price doesn't even matter at the validation stage. It's just will they pay for it? And if they do and you get a number of people and it doesn't have to be that much, and I'll tell you how much it is in a second because that's also where a lot of people get, you know, hooked, caught up on this. Then, you know, and you have paying customers, you have a little bit of money, money to fund that development project, if it's software, for example. And again, it's not necessarily about the money, it's the fact that you have confirmation from paying customers that you can go and build this thing. And not only that, the other benefit is you have a group of early adopters who can influence what that product becomes so you can build it in the way that it's meant to be built for them. Instead of again guessing or doing what's called in the software space.

Feature creep. You just add everything onto it when you don't need much of it. You just need what needs to be there through talking to your audience, those paying customers up front, your beta group, essentially, it's exactly the way you need to do it. It's very Eric Reese Lean Startup MVP method. But the idea of getting in front of an audience, again, it doesn't have to be yours. Interacting with an audience after you've hyper targeted those who have that particular problem, that solution that you're going to build for that problem, and then actually getting pre orders, I mean, that's no better way to do it. Ton of people are doing this nowadays and you know, you might think that getting people to pay for stuff up front is kind of weird or, you know, why would people do that? But now more than ever people are doing that. I mean, how many of us have backed a project on Kickstarter because we completely believe in that product. And they've showed us, we've built a relationship with these people through the videos that they share and through their journey and talking about the story of how this thing was created and why it's created. And people are paying up front to get not only the thing at a discounted price, but to get early access to it and to be able to influence what those things become. Or, you know, a lot of times people are like, your stretch goal should be this and all that stuff. This is very common. And now you can do this privately on your own instead of through a platform like Kickstarter. And actually, I, you know, Kickstarter is a great validation method. You know, you get to know whether or not this thing is going to work and people are behind it. But it does come with some cons. For example, it's not. It's not necessarily a controlled environment. It could go gangbusters and you could. You could, you know, make a lot of money, but also drown in all the fulfillment you have to do with these prizes and stuff that you offer, depending on whatever pledge, you know, ladder that they're at. But again, this validation thing, it's incredible. And, you know, I've been doing this myself with the smart podcast player and a few other things and a lot of other people across all different spaces, software, coaching events, subscription services, and it's incredible. And it's more for the confidence more than anything, because once you know, that changes everything, then you just go bigger, you go full scale. If you don't know, you are really lost and you don't know what to do, and you Never really put 100% effort into it because you just aren't sure if you're just wasting your time.

Do you think that the same process can be done with physical products in the same way that it could be done in an information or coaching practice?

Absolutely. I mean, there's no reason why I couldn't. With physical products, you can speak to people, interact with them and work with them. And what I think would be great is if there was some sort of prototype or even a 3D model or some sort of images or graphics or wireframes about that thing that you're building, and then you can talk to them, and if they are convinced that this is something that they would, you know, benefit from, you can collect a payment upfront. But again, like, what people do on Kickstarter that's actually very good is through the process of then building that thing, you stay in direct contact with them. One thing people do with both physical and digital products is they create a special Facebook group for those who are sort of early adopters of that thing to help manage and facilitate the conversation around the building of that thing. And just to keep people informed. You know, they've pre ordered or they paid you money for that thing, so you want to make sure they are up to date. And you know, if you go through this process and you discover that, you know, it's just not, you know, you didn't get enough people to really get behind it, well, then you just refund those people who did purchase, if there were any, or you could reassess and actually deep dive question those who didn't purchase who you did and were able to interact but didn't pay and ask why. And in that way you can figure out what the problems are. Instead of what most people have done is you build the thing and you shout from the rooftops like, buy my thing. And then nobody buys it and you don't know why. And you're wondering, is it because of the product? Is it because of the way you shout it? Is it because of the specific roof that you're on and you have no idea? And that's why it's really important that these sort of interactions happen. And with a physical product, absolutely. And if you're, let's say for example, you have, you know, at least one product already and you know who some of your customers are, hopefully you've collected their email addresses or whatnot. You could reach out to a number of them and tell them this new idea you have. Maybe it's based on other problems that they might have or something that is in addition to or great second product that people would get in addition to that first one they got from you. And you just talk to them about it and say, you know what, I'm actually going to build this thing. If I can get 20 customers, you can be one of the first and you can help shape what it becomes. I'll keep you posted along the way. You can work with me. We'll do this together. Here's the pre order button. If I get 20 people, boom, I'm making it. If not, I'm just going to pay you your money back.

Scott Volker shared that exact story on our episode together where he talked about how he said, I'm not gonna do this unless 25 people pay me and sold out in minutes.

Right.

That's a great validation. If you sell out in minutes, then pretty good chance that you could have sold more than 25. I was having a conversation Yesterday with our, we have a full time retail rep on our physical products brands. And he was saying that he was having a conversation with some potential carriers of our products in retail. And he said that the way it's usually done, usually done in retail, when it's a new product entering a potential carrier of that product, they come to them with a prototype or a model and they say, this is our product. They, you know, they pitch it to them and if they decide to carry it, they go, okay, time to scramble. And they scramble and then order and make the product. They actually validate it through retail that most products in retail that we think are big brands are actually validated through this process. That blew my mind. It never occurred to me that that was the case. And what he told me was that there was a very distinct advantage that we had because we've already proven the concept on Amazon, through our customer list, through our website, and we have a following now. You have a following now too, Pat. And I want you to talk about the difference or the benefit of having a group that has rallied behind you or that at least believes in something that you do. And I ask this, I asked this for a very strategic reason. Because so many of the physical products brands that I coach, or so many of even the information marketers who have just an email list of customers, they don't realize that they're sitting on an asset that they could leverage for something else. So if you've got a customer list of physical products and you don't realize that you can use that customer list to validate an additional idea or to validate an information product when you're selling physical products or vice versa, somebody who's selling an information product or has a blog that is thinking about selling something additionally, they don't realize that they're sitting on an asset that they could leverage to get validation for future products. So would you speak to that leverage point? Since I know you do have an audience and that is part of the way that you are validating your next ideas.

Yeah, I mean, that's how I validated the idea that this is the book I needed to write. And it was done through surveys, you know, where you collectively understand what the entire audience is doing in sort of one full swoop, like with a survey. And I validated this through actually sharing that this is the book that I'm going to write and who would want to actually like. If you want to pre order this, sign up to this email list. And that's how I've been able to understand that, you know, I've had 4,000 people who beforehand I, before I even started writing who were like, yes, I want that book.

That's really smart, Pat, because you know what it's like. I'm sorry to interrupt, but that's so smart because getting an email address, even if you did nothing else but share your idea on a squeeze page with a video explaining your thing with a prototype and saying, you know, sign up if you want notifications for when this goes live and it's a physical product that doesn't exist yet, you haven't placed an order for it yet, but now you have a pre launch list or you could do that on a Facebook page. That's what we did with Zenactive, the yoga company, was we, you know, we built up the list and said, who wants this thing? And then that was our pre launch list. I never thought to do it with email addresses in the sense of here's our thing and your email address if you want to pre order it. And then that can be your validation. If nobody signs up, might be a sign that nobody wants your thing. And if a lot of people sign up and people start sharing it on social media and in forums and it starts to bring on a life of its own, pretty good sign. You should do that thing. I never thought of doing that before. Thank you for that.

Yeah, I mean, it's like Jay Abraham back in the day, pre Internet era, he would buy classified ads for all of his book ideas and he would actually collect orders for all of them and he would determine which book he would write next based on which classified ad submitted the most orders. And then he just refunded the rest and quickly wrote that one that had the best, that, that best return. And you know, going back to that asset that you have, that, that list of customers or people who are interested in what you have to offer. If you can't validate an idea with them, then that idea won't work at all. Amen. What's going to make somebody who's cold, who doesn't know about you, who isn't in your brand already buy something versus somebody who's already there? So you need to definitely take advantage of the hard work that you've spent to build that customer base or that email list and tap into that. And you don't even need to tap into so many people. If you're worried about sharing a product that may not ever exist because it might fail, well, then just take 100 people on that list or even 20 people and kind of segment that out and work with that group. If you can't convince one of those 20 people that this next idea you have is great, well, then you wouldn't have bothered the extra. The other people on that list. Again, you're kind of taking these small samples of your audience, experimenting, and then moving forward as you begin to validate and say, okay, well, that. Okay, let's keep going. Okay, let's keep going to a point where then finally somebody pays for something and you get enough people who do that to say, all right, this is the one that we're gonna do. And that's how you approach it. I mean, so many people are not utilizing their email lists in this way or their existing customer base. They're just thinking of them as just when they come out with a new product, that's who they're gonna go to and then see which of those people actually will purchase or not.

Yeah, we've done it with just a simple yes or no on a survey. If we had such and such a product, would you it yes or no? 80% said yes. Might be something that we want to consider.

I mean, in that sense, I would say, hey, here's a product. You can pre order it. Now, like, just being straight up, it's not existent yet, but if we get out of this survey 50 people to say yes and actually pre order it, we will collect your payments, then it's actually something that's gonna, that's gonna go forward. Yeah, that's.

That's fantastic.

Yeah. And again, you know, testing that on a smaller segment just so you don't have, you know, you can maximize your income by getting the pre order and the special discount that comes with that. Just with a smaller segment then going full scale and then asking actually people to order it pre order at full price is a great thing to do. So just keep that in mind. And in terms of like, how many people, because I had mentioned this earlier, I don't want to skip over it. How many people do you need out of the number of people that you ask and interact with that you pitch your idea to, to see if they would pay or not? How many people do you need in order to have that green light to move forward? And it's actually not very many. And doing the research and talking to a bunch of people who do validation, a lot of them consider the 10 to 15% range to be the magic number. So if they were to ask 100 people, can they get 10 people? If they were to ask, you know, 20 people, can they get two? It's not very many, but that goes along with the same graph as the sort of innovator early adopter. And then the mass market comes in, if you can get those early adopters to really get in tune with what you're doing. And that's a good amount. And so it's actually not that many. But again, if you don't get any, well, then aren't you glad you didn't build that whole thing up front?

Yeah, exactly. So let's talk about the book. I mean first. My first question is, Pat, why now? I mean, you've had, you've been doing smart passive income for so long. You wrote Let Go, which was a huge success. Why this book and why right now?

Well, this book now for a number of different reasons. For one, because I am becoming CEO of the company, I am starting to create these assets. And this is a very great foundational first step toward all of that. All the courses that are coming down. This is a very sort of low barrier to entry, not super overwhelming in terms of delivering value to people and also getting more exposure for the brand too, in a way that allows me to inject my personality and what I know I can do to build a relationship with people at the same time in the growth and then in the change to CEO and these more SPI related assets that are coming down the road. This was an obvious first step for me. The topic specifically came about from a number of different things, like I said, surveys and whatnot. But actually it first started because of Ask Pat. So I have a podcast called Ask Pat, which answers a voicemail question for my audience five days a week. And it's been really cool. It's been doing very well. I've made tens of thousands of dollars from it through sponsorships and whatnot. Five plus million downloads. But a cool byproduct of this is that people are sending questions in all the time. I get about a dozen questions a day, and I'm able to see what the biggest problems are that people have. And not only just kind of in a data analytical way, understand what that is, but actually hear it from their own voice. And by far the number one question that people had, and the number one concern that people have when they're in the beginning stages of starting their business is how do I know if this thing is going to work or not? And I can completely relate to that. I mean, time is of the essence, of course, and people don't want to waste their time. And oftentimes they just don't act at all because they don't want to do something that isn't going to work out in the end, with a little bit of time up front to make sure that this thing that you're working on is actually worth working on. It can change the whole game for a lot of people then, in terms of the overall timeline of spi, and it's been three years since Let Go came out. I didn't know what my next move was. I was in a little bit of a transitional phase, but in that kind of phase for a very long time to see which way I wanted to go and what my main goals were. And this is sort of the beginning of me owning that I have some good stuff to share that will help a lot of people, and I'm confident in it. And I have no shame in asking for you to pay for this information. And, you know, this is kind of my way of validating that for me in a small way, because a book is obviously a lot cheaper than if I were to do this initially with a $499 course. So it's almost a mental exerc for me as well to get even more comfortable with that, to validate that, yes, people are enjoying the content that I have to share and actually are paying for it, which will allow me to grow even more as a CEO and actually charging more for bigger things that are going to help people even more than a book would.

I think this validation piece is so important to fuel all the other efforts. I want to share a vulnerable story on this because we talked about the fact that it's very common. It's almost weird if you don't have thoughts from, like, negative thoughts about your value and why people might listen to you. And you and I had dinner together with a few small people at Freedom Fast Lane Live. And even after that dinner, when I received all of this validation from some of my best friends, some of the. Some big shakers in the industry, saying it was a phenomenal event. I even still went back to my hotel room and said, is this event good enough? Should I do it next year? Is this making a difference? Even with the validation, those thoughts still come up. It's important to recognize that they're not true, that your thoughts are not reality and you are not your thoughts. They are. They are projections in your brain made to keep you safe. They mean nothing about what is actually true in reality. What is true in reality is what people vote for, is what actually shows up in the marketplace and what wins. And you will never know what is true, what your True capability is until that idea is tested, validated in the marketplace, that is what true. So Pat, what would you say, what process would you recommend for someone who has been sitting on an idea or has been listening to Freedom Fast Lane and has been reading Smart Passive Income and has seen these models of what works, but still has these thoughts in their head of yeah, but I'm not sure that it's gonna quote, it's gonna work for me. How do I validate the idea? What process would you recommend they go through to start getting feedback in the marketplace?

Well, the first thing you want to do is actually refine and define what this idea is. Because our brains, they do a good job of coming up with ideas, but they don't do a good job of organizing and putting order to them. Once you start to see what your ideas are and the exercise that involves that is mind mapping, actually writing down on post it notes, for example, all the different components of what this idea is, all those special ideas that you have related to this thing, once you see it all laid out there, you begin to see this monster that you created that is this idea that is so cool, but also oftentimes too much. And then you can start to really narrow things down, define what it is, add more things based on what you see, and then actually turn it into something that makes sense. And I think that's where a lot of people struggle is they get these ideas and they just go. And then because they haven't defined what it is or what the true value is that they're providing or what the components are that should be there, it just becomes this huge mess and they begin to focus on things that might not need focusing on at all. And so by defining and refining what your idea is, that's going to help you moving forward, of course. And then I would actually talk about your idea with as many people as possible. And this might sound counterintuitive because you don't necessarily, you know, everybody is afraid of that other people will steal their ideas. Right? That's the number one concern and why people keep their ideas secret. But that can bite you in the butt big time. And it has for me.

Yes, hypothetically, somebody could take that idea and roll with it. But you know what? You're the one that's doing the research. You're the one that's going to take action. Everybody says they're going to do stuff, you're going to be the one to do it. So that's the first thing I want to say. But also in terms of Having other people steal your idea.

The benefits of sharing your idea far outweigh the benefits of you keeping your idea secret. I agree. Because what happens is when you talk to other people about your idea, they begin to A, poke holes in it and help you look at it from different angles, which is what you need. B, help make it even better and actually turn it into something that is more helpful for them and what it is that they need. And C, just the more you discuss it, the more it becomes real. And the more real it becomes, the more likely you are to take action on it. The more excited you are when you start to figure out and kind of shape it into something that you can then actually test and then collect payments for. From that point, then it's about understanding your market. I think this is where also a lot of people skip ahead and they kind of just put up a sales page or start selling something without understanding what it is that's already out there. I mean, your idea might be great, but how does it differ from what's out there already? You need to understand, and if you don't, you're just guessing and you're just relying on luck essentially to make things happen. You never want to rely on luck. People get lucky, yes, but if you rely on that to move forward, you're not going to get lucky at all. So you need to know what's happening. They always say, stand out of the crowd. Well, how do you know how to stand out if you don't know what crowd you're in? So I have this exercise, and this is very useful no matter what phase in business you're in. But this is probably one of the most useful exercises that I've come across. And it's sort of adapted from something I learned from Neil Patel, but I call it your market map. And these are creating the three P's of your audience. First, discover the places. Make an Excel file or spreadsheet and list all the places where your target audience exists. Where are they online? Where are they offline? Forums, blogs, social groups, anything. Where are they? Discover all the places that they're at. The second P are the people who are the influencers out there, the people who have already earned the trust and authority with that particular audience. You want to list all those people. You can find the top social accounts, you can find them. A lot of them will overlap with who owns those websites that you just mentioned or that you just collected, so on and so forth. Who are the leaders in that space? And then the third P are the products. What is being served to that audience already. What are they paying for? How much are they being charged? Like, all those things, once you understand these three Ps, the places, the people, and the products, you get this incredible vision, a map of the market, this bird's eye perspective that you can then use to position yourself in a way that you know will stand out. You could see what's out there. You could see how this audience is being served and how they're not being served. You could see the holes. You can see what's working for these people and what's not working for those people. And you can put those and incorporate those into your business. And a lot of people who come into business and who have ideas, we often stop ourselves because we say, oh, that person did it already. Somebody did it before me. Well, first of all, great, because they validated that market for you.

Exactly.

But B, you can see what they're doing and do it better. Different is better than better, though. You can make it a little bit better by actually creating something that's different based on what it is that's not working, and you can incorporate that into your business. So, again, this gives you a really cool overview of what's happening in the market. But not only that, if you continue to move forward with this business, business, you have this amazing tool with you. You have a list of all the places where you could potentially advertise or guest post or any of that stuff. You have a list of the people who you should be building a relationship with, who you can connect with at conferences, who you can follow on Twitter and see how they do things and actually connect with them and get them on your show, for example. Then you have the list of all the products that you could potentially become a JV partner with or share as an affiliate or just use to understand the market even better. And how people are paying for things just becomes this incredible tool that is sort of multifaceted and used different parts of the process.

Well, Pat, take a couple minutes and tell us about the book. Tell us where they can find it, who it's for, and what they're going to get out of it.

Yeah. Thank you, Ryan. And again, I want to thank you for having me here. I mean, you've been so gracious with, you know, allowing me to get in front of your audience and share these things. And, you know, I'm always happy to be here. I mean, you guys who are listening, you're some of the best. I got to meet you not too long ago, and so I look forward to seeing you again at a future event. But anyway, the book is for people who are just starting out with their business or those who have a business, but they feel kind of stuck. You just want to make sure that that next move you're making is one that you should be making, which is a very tough thing to consider with all the options that we have out there. But this book is going to be that guide, sort of that flight manual, if you will, for you moving forward. And what's really cool about it is there's a lot of exercises in the book. A lot of books include exercises, but a lot of times they feel almost tacked on. And you aren't really sure if the author just kind of put them there because they thought it was relevant or did they actually do them them. Well, all the exercises in this book, the results of them will help you to the next step. But not only that, I do these exercises with you. I actually do them first and show you and kind of lead the way for you so you can feel more comfortable doing them. Because I know a lot of times when you come across these exercises, you just kind of skip them over. You aren't exactly sure what the process is like. Well, I do them for you first and then you can follow my lead. Not only that, there's a really cool companion course that goes along with the book that completely free. And the cool story behind this. This is cool for anybody who's. Who's coming out with a book.

It was very much inspired by the Walking Dead. And you know, my wife and I were big fans of the Walking Dead. We watch every episode. We literally go to the conventions and stuff. We don't get into the cosplay or anything yet, but mostly because we haven't hooked up with anybody who could do the makeup for us. But anyway, whenever an episode of the Walking Dead starts, you hear the voiceover guy say, go to Walking Dead story sync to watch and get behind the scenes background information and all this other cool supplemental stuff that you could watch while you're watching that actual episode, which is really cool. It's one of the coolest things I've ever done while watching something is just to get this other information that just enhances that watching experience. Well, I wanted to do the same thing with the book. So the book has its companion course. It's laid out chapter by chapter. In each of those chapters, it mentions and it shares any of the bonus worksheets, the videos. They actually walk you through the process that I talk about in the book. All the links that are mentioned in the book are actually listed out there in the companion course as well to make it easy. And there's also bonus interviews and stuff that takes the content from the book even further. So it's kind of a read along and allows you to get deeper into the content and actually give you specific examples that you could use moving forward. So that's pretty cool. The book in terms of where you can get it. You can check it out at willitfly.

I'm really excited because this is self published. I know a lot of my friends who've inspired me to write books, they've gone traditional. Well, I like to try things differently. I want to self publish and this is a Kindle version, there's a paperback version. And we're trying to make some waves in the self publishing industry as well with this.

It's going to be really interesting to see how far it goes. I know it's going to fly, but the question is how far? And already it's been making an impact. I have a launch team that's behind this, a group of about 500 people in my community who have come together. They had to apply for this and they got early access to the book. They've been already doing a lot of the exercises and I've been getting a number of emails from people saying this is a game changer and it's changed a lot of their lives already. So I'm excited to share it with you and thank you for those of you who do pick it up@willitflybook.com and again, Ryan, thank you so much for having me on, allowing me to share it. I love the way you interview. You get really deep. I love how you unless you unpat everything that I say and I think that's really smart. So if any of you are doing interviews of any kind, like take example from Ryan, like go deeper. One of my biggest pet peeves, pet peeves with interviews is like the list of questions that you know they answer and then you go to the next question like it should never be like that. All of the golden information comes four questions, five questions, 10 questions deep after that seed question. And Ryan, just keep what you're doing, keep doing what you're doing because you're doing an amazing job. And you know, this is like the 40th interview I've done about will it fly? And it's been one of the most fun. So thank you.

Well, thanks for that. You know, I used to say in college I have a face for radio and I went by radio face Ryan. So, you know, not everybody can have a, have a face for the, for the. For podcasting, but some of us are blessed. Well, Pat, you know, you more than anybody are. I believe that entrepreneurship and capitalism is how we change the world. I believe that one of the biggest problems in the world is that we don't have enough entrepreneurs. It's not that we don't have enough a government. It's just the opposite. It's not that there's no opportunity. It's that we don't have enough people tapping into the opportunity. And you as much as anybody, especially with this project of inspiring people to finally put them over the edge, to put something into the marketplace, to become entrepreneurs and to take responsibility for what shows up in the marketplace. Thank you for changing the world. Keep on changing the world. And thanks for sharing with us on freedom fast lane.

We'll both do it together. My man.

I believe it is your responsibility to be a free person, to be an entrepreneur and to be compensated according to the value that you bring to the marketplace place. It's your responsibility and you cannot know how you're going to be compensated. You cannot know how to best serve your neighbor unless you test the idea. So many of you are sitting on good ideas. So many of you are sitting on cash flow businesses that you want to build. So many of you, 100% of you know my methodologies for building million dollar businesses. I've talked about it more times than sometimes I'd care to. And you know what to do. You just haven't done it. So why don't you just do a test? Why don't you just test the thing? Is there any harm in testing? Can you lose at all if you just put your idea out in the marketplace and get some feedback? If you're sitting on a profitable business, how much are you losing by not testing some new ideas? By not leveraging the customers that you have and giving them other products and services that will expand your base and expand your profits. We're doing an entire video series on this for our breakthrough business Bootcamp. It's a training series that we are pre launching and then releasing here shortly. You can get all the details and all the content. We lay out the strategy in depth. This isn't one of those pre launch series where we like hold back all the secrets because I don't have any secrets. I put them all out there. If you go over to freedomfastlane.com tribe, you'll see the pre launch videos for the breakthrough business Bootcamp you'll see how you can work in additional products to your existing business that you didn't know were possible before. We'll also cover how to get in front of audiences that can help you launch products that can help you launch new areas of growth through the assets that you already have or the relationships that you already have, or if you're just starting, how to test your ideas through audiences that already exist that you don't necessarily have to build. We cover all of that over@freedomfastlane.com.

And I hope to see you there. Thank you for listening to Freedom Fastlane. Please share this episode with someone that you know that is sitting on an idea and hasn't actualized it yet and just needs some feedback in the marketplace. In order to become an entrepreneur, we need more entrepreneurs in this world. We solve the world's greatest challenges. Our greatest challenges are not going to be are not going to come from government. They're not going to come from anybody but you. So we need as many entrepreneurs, all hands on deck, to solve the world's greatest problems to boost our incomes. All of you who are upset about the economy, do something about it. Start a business. Join us over at freedomfastlane. Com Tribe and as always, thank you for listening to Freedom Fastlane and I'll talk to you on the next show.