Pat Flynn - Strategies To Turn Followers Into Superfans

The question that I ask myself and my team asks ourselves every day is this, like, have we earned a fan today? Because when you think about the thousand true fans, that's a fan a day for less than three years. Some people struggle with business for years before they make it, but if you just had one new fan a day, less than three years.

This is an intro. Intro, intro, intro.

Hustle and Float Shark with your boy, my boy, Matt Wolf.

Joe Fear.

Hey, what's up, everyone? Welcome back to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast. Today we've got someone who's become quite a legend in the digital marketing world. Today we've got the one and only Pat Flynn on the show. He is back. This is actually my third time interviewing him, but the first official interview on this show, if you remember, we had Pat Flynn on a few months back, but that was actually an interview that we did during a live stream and then we pulled that live stream into the podcast. So this is the first time we've actually interviewed him for this show specifically to talk to him in our normal style of the show. So we get a lot of the backstory and a lot of the breakdown of the tactics, and it kind of has more of that normal flow feel to the show. But Pat was. Was an awesome guest. We really, really enjoyed talking to him. And I think we probably could have gone two hours if. If Pat was available for two hours, because we just had so many different rabbit holes and topics that we wanted to go down. So in this episode, we discuss with Pat how to. How to build super fans in your business, how to grow an audience ethically, how to promote affiliate offers to the audience and make good money through affiliate marketing in a very ethical way that makes customers actually thank you for doing it. And then, you know, we wanted to dive even deeper and talk to Pat about some of the things that we've never had the opportunity to talk to Pat about before. And that's how he got involved in some of the various deals that he has equity in. You know, he's got equity in companies like ConvertKit and LeadPages and Teachable and Samcart and all of these various tools. He's worked out equity deals. So he's not just an affiliate of these products. He actually is an advisor and gets like some sort of Rev Share deal. I don't know how all of these deals are structured. We didn't get into. Into the depths of each deal and how he structured them and how much he makes off them or anything like that, but we were Curious about how he leveraged his podcast into these advisory and equity deals. So you're going to get a lot of info on this one and just a lot of really great insights into building an audience that loves you, promoting affiliate products to them and then actually leveraging a lot of these potential affiliates into actual advisory and equity deals and taking these things to the next level. I think you're gonna really, really, really love this conversation. Get the notes on this one. If you go to flowchartgroup.com flowchartgroup.com that's where you can sign up to join our free Facebook group. When you go to that page to sign up for our free Facebook group, one of the questions is asking for your email. Now, it's optional. You don't need to give us your email to join the group. But if you want to get the notes from this episode, you need to give us your email. We'll email you the notes and you got to do it quickly within two weeks of this episode going live. It's sort of this ever rotating thing where only we're giving you the free notes for the two weeks most recent episodes, if that makes sense. So go to flowchart group.com join the Facebook group. If you give us your email within the next two weeks, we will directly send you the notes for this specific episode. And this is just a great conversation. Pat is just such a likable guy with so much valuable information. So I think everybody's going to really enjoy this one. So let's jump on over with Pat Flynn.

All right, Pat, we're rolling. How you doing, my friend?

I'm doing excellent. Thanks for having me, guys.

Yeah, my man. So we, what, it was eight months ago, maybe it was towards the beginning of this whole lockdown pandemic. We did a. Well, you were part of the live stream. We're doing an affiliate marketing live stream. And your session, yours And James Schramko, which I know James Schramko was the one that I think connected us or reconnected us, and it was just fire. I mean, everyone was just like, okay, Pat and Schramko, it's like so actionable. And these are people that have been dying to get into affiliate marketing. So I think combining that with Superfans, your. Your newest book of what the three you have out, I believe you have so. Which is awesome, man. I think it's just going to be the perfect combo hybrid if we focus on that with this discussion. And I think it's kind of unique. I don't Know, if you've combined those.

Two before, but no, I haven't, actually. You know, I usually just talk about, in general, what can happen when you build a super fan. You know, that fanatic who you just come out with something or recommend something, they're. They're on it. Right? Like, that's what we're talking about. But that doesn't happen overnight. Like the moment people find your page or your website or hear you on a podcast for the first time. That's not going to incite them to do that right away. There's a journey. There's a sort of, like, process to that. And once you unlock that, though, it's like, you know, I have fans who I can just. I can literally promote, like, a block of ice, and people would buy it. And I'm like, first of all, I would never sell ice.

And, you know, everything I sell is fire. No, I'm just kidding. But secondly, it's like, that's the kind of craziness that can happen. But it's a process. It takes time. And affiliate marketing, I mean, just that in general, is the easiest way to start generating an income. Because these products already exist. People out there in the world are already buying them. You just have to be the person that people trust, a fan to make that recommendation to them. And the cool thing about this whole thing is everybody wins. That's the kind of marketing I like, where everybody wins. You win because you get a commission, your customer or subscriber wins cause they're getting something they need, and the company wins cause they're getting a new customer. And so, you know, it's just a beautiful situation.

It is, man. So really quick. And I think what's interesting right now with the pandemic, with the world just kind of changing at light speed right now, the way that you started back in 08, I think it's fascinating, and it's probably a good time to revisit that little story, even though people might have heard it again. But I think that'd be a good way to start off and kind of give a little bit of hope, but also perspective from your side and how it relates here.

Yeah, for sure. I hired a PR person when the pandemic happened because I know that my story from 08 is very similar to people's stories now. No, we didn't have a pandemic then, but we had a recession and everybody was losing their job, including myself. And I actually went into a deep, dark hole. This was June 17, 2008. I had my dream job I had just proposed to my girlfriend. We were just set for a perfect life, and all of a sudden, all that got taken away from me. And it was hard. I had no plan B. I had done everything I could to have this secure job, and yet I still got let go. And I just was very confused. Didn't know what to do. Was sitting in bed watching Back to the Future, like, every day because that was the only thing that I could escape with. And I would, like, just hope that there was an actual time machine I could go back in time with. And of course, you know, after one hour and 56 minutes, back to reality. And so, you know, after a few weeks, though, I started to realize, like, what am I doing? Like, I'm just sitting here hoping things were different. When things are different, hop things were back to the way they used to be. But it can't be like that. And we're in the pandemic now, and there's so many things that are different right now. But then I started to think about, well, okay, well, what does this make possible, right? Like, what actually now is unlocked for me as a result of this, you know, here in the pandemic now, this has definitely unlocked the ability for me to slow down a little bit and be more closer to my family, to do a lot of fun things together at the house, to actually reduce the amount of travel that's going to happen, even when things open back up again. And that's huge. And back then in 2008, when I got laid off, what made possible was this idea of, well, maybe there is something else that I can do. I thought I was going to be an architect for my whole life, and yet here was something telling me, well, maybe not. So then I discovered this podcast. Long story short, I ended up, through inspiration from that podcast, building an online business, helping people pass an architectural exam that did very, very well. I ended up making over $200,000 a year doing that. And then at the end of 2008, I decided to just share all that, to just share honestly what happened. I had no idea this world existed. I just dove super deep into it. And probably the biggest lesson I learned was that, like, you know, with my upbringing, trying to be perfect, coming home with a 96% on my math test, and my dad saying, what happened to the other 4%? Like, that's how I grew up, right? And I was graduated top of my class all the time. No mistakes. If you want to be an entrepreneur and you want to make money, you have to make mistakes. You have to put yourself out there, you have to fail. And that was a very hard thing for me to learn. And a lot of us, I know, we feel like we're failing right now, or we're making a lot of mistakes. We're just not sure what's going to happen. But you can either tell yourself that's because things are bad, or you could tell yourself that's because we're setting things up to be good later and you get to make that story back to the future. It's not real, but there is truth behind the idea that the events that happen now and how you react to them and what you do with the opportunity writes your entire story of your future. So I'm very grateful now because now having a business owner, having been a business owner for 12 years, a podcaster for 10, YouTuber, author, keynote speaker, all these things, like, I've helped millions of people all around the world in many different ways. And, you know, my favorite thing still to this day is, number one, the fact that I can have my own schedule and be with the family most of the day. And number two, every time I go back into my inbox every day, there's at least, you know, a few people who say, you know, you've changed my life. Thank you. And that's really cool because I didn't plan for this. So the layoff was the best thing that ever happened to me.

Now, do you think right now, in this current sort of pandemic that we're in now, do you think going the path that you went down, content marketing, podcasting, that sort of thing, do you think that's still a sort of viable path that people should be experimenting with right now?

A thousand percent. I think it's even more valuable during this time when we can't see other people in person. So how might we actually connect with others? It's online. And when you can pick a platform to start on, whether it's podcast, blog, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, wherever. There are people there who could benefit from knowing and learning from you, from getting motivated by you and all the great things you have to share and, you know, a part of. Also what I struggled with was, well, I didn't go to business school. I'm supposed to be an architect because I went to school for architecture, right. And I had to let go. And that was the name of my first book, Let Go. Not just because I was let go, but because in order for me to grow as an entrepreneur, I had to let go of the ladder. I thought I was on the corporate ladder and that path. And here I was presented with the entrepreneurial ladder, and I had two hands on it and one foot, but I still had that other foot on the. On the corporate ladder. Right. You can't climb a new ladder if you still have your leg on the other one. I had to let go, and that was a little bit of a leap. Um, there are ways to help yourself and connect with other people and learn from the right people to get a stronger grip on that new ladder, if you will. But when I let go, things started to fly.

Is that really. I love that analogy. The whole climb, two letters at once. Yeah, good luck with that. So when it comes to perfectionism on your side, like back in the day, is that something you still struggle with? And if so, how did you let go of that?

If a little bit, maybe 1000%, I still struggle with it. I think it's just I've been conditioned to want to be perfect. Part of what helps me are deadlines. In fact, if I have a deadline on something, I only have so much time to work on it, and then it's there, Right. So now I'm sort of forced to go, okay, this can't be perfect, but I have to have it good enough to unlock the next stage or to be a product for my audience and something that at least is the first iteration. Right. I mean, I. If I still had believed in perfectionism and tried to go down that route, I would not have books, I would not have videos, I would not have a podcast. And the idea of just incrementally getting better over time now excites me more than being perfect right from the start. It almost is like this idea. I heard this study once of hotel reviews, right? There was a study done of hotels, and based on customer reviews, they would see which hotels were better. The hotels that got the highest ratings were actually ones that had had mistakes happen, but then they were able to fix them. Like, the customer service was great. Those hotels ranked higher than hotels that actually were perfect, which is really interesting. And so we could treat our lives in sort of the same sort of fashion.

Yeah, I guess it's like if you take that analogy or that story that you just said with hotels, and go look at some of these travel blogs or what's the rating one TripAdvisor. That's the one. And you see all the reviews, and it's like the hotels that have the complaints, and there's no responses from the hotel, but then the one that might have some complaints, but every single one's responded to. You could see it's just that trust built immediately from the new prospective person. I'm sure that's how a factor of fans getting built as well in that relationship.

Absolutely. I mean, one thing that I talk about in my book is this principle of never leave any handshake unshook. I think that's how I phrase it. And how many times do we have comments and replies to things? And, you know, I saw this the other day. My friend of mine created a Facebook group, and he's like, yo, we got like a hundred people in now. And people are commenting and they're sharing things. And he didn't respond to any one of them. He was just so stoked to have this membership. And he was like, well, they're going to talk to each other, right? And I'm like, well, you have to lead up to that. That's not going to happen right away. And especially with like, hey, I'm Jim, and I'm from here. And this is like my struggle. If they don't get an answer, it's like, okay, well, this is not my place. Like, I'm gonna leave and find somebody else. One of my favorite things to do, instead of, like, waiting for somebody to reach out their hand, although, you know, Covid, you know, whatever, and then me shaking it, I want to reach out my hand first. And actually, at the end of the book, I talk about this thing called the what's up? And the what's up is so easy because all you have to do is on Instagram, for example, or Twitter or Facebook. Anybody who has recently interacted with a post that was meant for many, go to the individual who commented and reach out to them in a video, in a direct message. And in that video, say their name, say hello, thank them for the comment. Literally no other thing than that, right? This is what we like to call digging your well. Before you're thirsty, you're establishing these relationships. You're creating very personable moments such that by the time you might need something, or if you're a marketer, perhaps you might have an offer. Well, now it's not, oh, you're only reaching out to me because you have an offer. It's like, well, no, you've already spent time building these relationships. And I'll tell you, these personal messages, 98% reply rate, people's minds are blown because they're not expecting it. And it's. The analogy is like, when you're at a restaurant and you're drinking your water and it's like half empty. And you go, hey waiter, can I have some more water? And then you give them more water. Most people online are giving the water when people ask for it. But what if that person didn't even have to ask for water and use the waiter come around and pour it for them? That little kind of attention goes a very, very long way and that's what makes people go, yeah, I like this place or I like this person. I'm gonna stick around here because you know, I get treated well and I'm being paid attention to because that's human nature. We want to know we belong to something. We want to know there's connection. Especially today.

I love that. Yeah. And that was something in your book, I forget what. I think it was one of the chapters but you're talking about Bonjoro and it was ConvertKit and that's something. I was just smiling, lighting up because on the affiliate side of stuff and even our new members all send out random loom videos, custom videos, and either thanking them, welcoming them or just answering a question. And like you said, almost every person responds. Most people say, you just made my day. That was completely unexpected. I'm like, it's so simple but it's those non scalable things. Yeah, yeah, it's so worth it. And we preach that all the time. I read it, I was like, yes, they're doing it too.

You said a keyword there. It's not necessarily scalable.

Not everything in business has to be automated. There are certain things like this that should have some real personal touch. I mean, I would try to become as efficient and as automated as possible so that you have time to go the extra mile that others won't. One thing that I do is every Friday I go out on a walk. So today actually after my calls today, I'm going to take my dog out on a walk. I'm going to have my phone in my other hand and I'm just going to start going down the line and I'm not going to be able to get to everybody but number one, I'm getting exercise, my dog's getting exercise and I'm making real connections all at the same time. And no, it's not in front of a studio camera and beautiful light. I'm just on a walk in, it's choppy and it should be that way because it's real life and I'm real life. Trying to make a connection.

That's the best and that's the key. I always go outside when I do my item. I'M just going to sit in the backyard, chill on a chair, and everyone's like, dude, it's like, I'm just hanging out with you. I'm like, that's the point.

Yeah, exactly. Like, Matt from Convertkit was hired to do the Bonjoro videos for new customers. Like an email software company creating personalized videos that mentions people's names and also the website, if they included that in the form, Matt lost like, I don't know, 20 pounds or something like that doing this too.

Yeah, man, that's so cool.

Well, I guess my next question on that topic would be, once you do sort of achieve scale from your personal brand, let's say you have hundreds of thousands or even into the millions of people paying attention, how are you keeping up with that? Or are you just kind of getting through who you can get through and next day do it again?

That's a fantastic question, because there came a Point in 2013 where I was getting burnt out on trying to answer every single person's comment and question and email, and it just became impossible. If I wanted to answer everybody, I would have no time for anything else, including family. So how does one scale with that? I think if you're just starting out and you're small, your superpower is your ability to actually do that still. Right? And so don't discount the 100 email subscribers you have, because those are 100 humans, a hundred actual people that a brand like me couldn't personally connect with. All of them. And so use that to your advantage. Small is great, right? But as you grow, you start to kind of struggle a little bit. And if you just continue to do the same thing you were doing, you're going to burn out or you're just going to let a lot of people down. And so what I ended up, what ended up happening? Take in point, my email inbox. It got to a point where there was over 10,000 unread emails. Like, it got crazy. And I just felt bad because every day I'd see, oh, there's another 50 emails that I'm not, not going to answer and I'm going to let these people down. So I had to build systems. I had to have Jess come on to help me manage my inbox, because many of those emails, most of them didn't require an answer from me and many didn't require an answer at all. And then what we do together is she only lets me see the emails that I have to respond to, and at the same time, she answers as Jess, not pretending to be Me for things that she knows how to answer already. And you know what? Nobody's ever said, you know what, Pat, I had a question. I asked you a question, and Jess answered it. I was so mad because you didn't answer it. They're so stoked that I've built something that can help them even faster than I can do myself. The other thing that I do is on my website and many other places, you know, I basically set the expectation, like, I cannot possibly reach out to everybody anymore and respond. My team and I were going to do our best and, you know, just know that we see your emails and we will get back to you when we can. And then, of course, if I have the time or they do get a response right away.

We set the expectation that they weren't going to get one right away. They're blown away. So now there's like a little bit of a bonus. There's an airline company, KLM Dutch Airlines, they had at one point this thing on their Twitter account. Their artwork for their Twitter page or cover art would say, you can expect a reply within 30 minutes. And they change it every five minutes. They just know the volume and they calculate that. And so I was looking at that, I was like, wow, that's really neat for especially an airline company. But now a person will sort of complain about something and at least, like, give them the 30 minutes to, like, respond and not feel like they're not being heard or whatever. So I just, for fun, tweeted them and I was like, hey, LM never been to that part of the world before. Like, where would you recommend that go? They replied in 13 minutes. And I was like, dude, this is sick. And then, like, you know, they sign it off with the name, the initials of the person, whoever it is. And I felt like I was talking to real. This is a company that has thousands of employees, an airline company. And it feels personable. So don't feel like you have to have a personal brand to make it feel personable. So then we were interacting with each other and I was just like, hey, like, how do you do this? And they're like, well, we know people want to get answers soon, and we've built the system to do that for you here on Twitter specifically. And now it's just like, wow, I'm impressed. I'm impressed.

That's the thing, man. I mean, a lot of folks, we just lose track of people when there's just a screen in front of us or even not zoom, you know, just text. And it's kind of wild. It's something we've talked about a lot is like, how do we bring that personal connection even if we can't be right there with each other? And I know your book is so super fans. Everyone should definitely grab that link in the show notes, all that fun stuff. And. But I want you to go through kind of your perspective of. Because you mentioned the thousand True fans concept, and that's a pretty, you know, it's a pretty famous article that was written what, like 10, so 12 years ago?

2006 or something like that, 15 years ago.

So I want to hear your perspective of. You don't have to bring everyone. You don't have to even have funnels, really. Because I, like, there's a line you said somewhere. I don't know if it was in the book or a podcast is Funnels aren't. They don't create fans for you. Funnels aren't creating fans for you. It's this process that you take people through. So, yeah, yeah, I'd love your perspective on the whole thousand True fans concept.

Funnels are important, by the way. I mean, it creates systems to then allow yourself more time to do these things that can help you gain more fans. But they're not created overnight, and they are created by the moments that you create for them over time. From the moment they find you to the moment that they're paying VIP dollars to go to your event and spend time with you and take photos backstage. And, you know, they feel great about it. Like they just take you up on that offer. But, but when it, when it comes to fans particularly, the most important thing is like, you know, a lot of us are building to get more eyeballs, and that's great. But if you try to serve everybody, you're actually going to serve nobody. Right? It's like the difference between, you know, if you're going to open a shoe store and it's like a general shoe store, I want basketball shoes and casual shoes and the high heels for the women and the kids shoes and the ones who are going to be running a marathon. It's going to be so difficult to have a unique selling proposition unless you make everything cheap as heck, right? And that's who is selling the general shoes. There's Walmart and Target and Shoe Pavilion and whatever, right? I would much rather go, okay, well, who am I serving first and what are their needs? All right, I'm going to serve marathon runners, right? Like, that's my niche. Okay? That wipes out millions of people. There are millions of everybody Mostly wears shoes now I'm only focusing on such a small percentage of people who need shoes. But you know what? I'm going to be more successful because the riches are in the niches. And I know it's pronounced niches. Don't at me on that. But it rhymes better.

So now I have my shoe store where branding wise, I can tie into the psychology of the runner. I can create something, an environment where a person can come in and feel like they're going to be running their first race or they're winning the race. The shoes in particular. The distribution line is so different now because I'm only focusing on shoes. And it all ties into who am I serving. I can have them come in and I can go, hey, where are you running next? And oh, I'm running my first marathon. Cool. Here's some shoes that will help you if you have wider feet. Here's shoes that will help you, you know, whatever. Like all things become easier when you niche down. And the cool thing is with thousand true fans, like the numbers, when you run the numbers it's like, well, that's so obvious. I don't need a million fans. I don't need to make the next Uber or, or, or Tesla or fidget spinner or whatever. I just need a thousand true fans. Those true fans. So let's do some math here. Like a thousand people paying. Let's go, let's go, let's go. Like generous here or light. $100 a year for something. I spend $100 a week on Pokemon cards. Seriously, because I'm a fan of Pokemon cards. And $100 a year, that's like if you're a fan of something, you're likely going to spend more than that. But let's just say $100 a year, $100 a year times 1,000 people is a six figure business. And likely if you're focusing so deep in that little niche, you could probably get thousands of dollars from an individual who want to go deeper with you. And so it's this idea of you want to go one mile wide, one inch deep, where you can only serve each sort of sector of that landscape just a little bit. Or do you want to take a little chunk an inch wide and go a mile deep with them? And now you're serving them with some software products at the top. And let's go vertical. Now you're serving them some coaching programs. Now they're traveling to go to your mastermind group. The same person now can interact with you in many different ways. And you have this, like, ladder now that they're climbing to go higher and higher into your brand and also to become more and more of a fan.

The question that I ask myself and my team asks ourselves every day is this, like, have we earned a fan today? Because when you think about the thousand true fans, that's a fan a day for less than three years. Some people struggle with business for years before they make it. But if you just had one new fan a day, less than three years.

Six figures.

Yeah. I mean, and that's amazing. And I'm thinking of the whole fans plus funnels. It's exactly what you said. It's like, okay, you track this fan, and then the funnel can help bump that $100 to the thousand dollars and beyond.

Exactly.

Yeah. So it's that blend of the two of them. Super powerful. Talk about the. I know you have this whole pyramid in the book. This is how it's all structured. And I like the book, how it's extremely tactical. And that's, you know, it's like story and tactics, but you have a flow. I think it's what, four steps. The pyramid of fandom. So, yeah, maybe lightly cover that and show us the process of what it takes to become a super fan or attract super fans. That is.

Sure. And I like what you said about funnel plus fan. I'm thinking of, like, fanl There you go.

It's all yours.

No, I'll give that somebody else. So if you imagine, like, a pyramid, right, Or a triangle, and you divide the triangle into four different sectors, the largest sectors on the bottom right, the baseline. And this is essentially, this triangle represents anybody who's ever found you. Right? Anybody who's ever found you an engagement pyramid or the pyramid of fandom. The largest chunk at the bottom is what I like to call your casual audience. These are people who just found you. Maybe they found you through a Google link or a link on another website or a mention somewhere or just kind of randomly on social media, they don't necessarily know who you are yet, but they've come to you for something that you've done or offered or because somebody else shared that link or something. And this is the largest space. And as new people come in, this is where they come in. They're not subscribed yet. They're not followers. Our job is to convert them from there to the next tier, a little bit smaller, but more powerful. And that's the active audience sector. And this is where people are now subscribed. They're following you. This is the point at which they know who you are. When you come out with something, maybe even a product to sell, they're like, okay, cool, I like this person. I'm active in their subscribership and I'll see if this works for me or not. And they'll at least sort of entertain the position of the offer more than just somebody who finds you randomly for the first time and then moving up from there. We need to convert our active audience members to feel like they're a part of a connected community. And the connected community is really where the magic starts to happen and where your brand starts to differentiate itself from other brands doing a lot of the same things. And when you think about community, you think of people not just coming because of you or you talking to them or them talking to you, it's them talking to each other. There's like that commonality of the brand to have as a baseline for people to find each other and talk to each other and have some common ground to start off with versus just random people. And that is so, so powerful. If you imagine going to a baseball game and your team is down by three runs and there's two outs, you, your guys up to bat with two outs and boom, he hits a grand slam to win. You're high fiving and hugging people that you've never met before because you're in the stands with the home crowd and they're all wearing the same symbol that you have on your hat, right? It's like that's the kind of feel that a community can have. And of course fandom is on top of that in a little tiny pyramid. But that's like the thousand true fans up there who are just wacko for you, right? And it's cool, and I say that in kind of a human way, but it's so important to understand just how powerful a small group of fans can actually be. I mean, these guys are going to wave your flag so high they're going to promote your stuff without ever asking. If you have a troll show up in your audience, like you won't even know because they're already fending them off for you, right? Like that's how important a fan can be. And this progression of casual to active to community to superfans is really the way that the book is structured. And each chapter is sort of like, okay, here's how you do. Here's how you convert somebody from a casual audience member to active. And that's really where it starts. And it's funny cause we're talking about A pyramid. And what happens when you flip that pyramid upside down?

You got your funnel.

Your funnel, we got our funnel. But the problem with the funnel is when you build it and you should build it, it's like, oh, all we have to do is pour from the top and everything happens. And it's like you lose the human factor. Whereas if you flip it over and you think really about where's most of the engagement, where most of your repeat customers coming from, where is most of the money being spent? It's at the top of the Pyram, but it's not a funnel anymore. You have to climb the pyramid. There's gravity sort of working against you here. And so it does take work. And this book will show you how to like, you know, have anti gravity, if you will.

Yeah. And you make a good point that it's like you can grow from within. You don't need to keep pouring gasoline and find more of the casual fans. You can and you should. But yeah, figure out what you're doing with the people you already have. There's a common. I mean, you probably hear it all the time too. How do I grow my podcast? How do I get more emails on my email list? All very important, but at the same time it's like, how many people do you already have subscribed, roughly? Obviously we don't know the numbers, but how do you actually make those guys super fans? Those gal super fans. Instead of just need more traffic, need more traffic. It's probably focus there with the people that kind of know you first and work them up the pyramid or the ladder here.

That's so important because imagine somebody who's in your community who goes to their friend and goes, yo, you gotta check out this community here. Because Hustle Flowchart is just amazing. And this is what the guys do. And this is like how it works. You gotta check it out. A recommendation from a friend. There's no better recommendation than one that comes from a trusted friend. I think it was Mark Zuckerberg who said that. Right. So now people are coming into the pyramid, growing it from the inside, and they're not coming in casual anymore. They're coming in active already because somebody convinced them to do that. So your marketing engine is already built. You just have to feed that engine a little bit and help them help the brand even more and more. And like you said, like, I have done very little, like actually SEO in my website is very poor right now. I have hardly spent any money on advertising ever. It's all from within the brand. And when people talk about the podcast, when people talk about how I've helped them with others, they already feel like they have somebody they can trust when they land on my website, even for the first time.

Now, this, this question, I'm not. I'm not totally sure where we're going to go with it, but I'm curious. With the smart passive income brand, you've got your blog, you've got your podcast.

It kind of became a standard in the industry for how to do content marketing, right? Your brand grew huge over the years. I'm curious what you think that the sort of X Factor is about. Your brand, your blog, your podcast, what differentiated you from all the other stuff that was starting around the same time that no longer exists? What do you think was different about what you were doing?

That's a great question. I know the exact answer because we've looked for this answer before. I think that's so important is that as you're building a brand, to actually hear from those who are following you, why do you follow me? Right. So that you can just do more of that. Why guess anymore? If anybody's marketing and guessing, you're doing it wrong, you have to know that you're doing the right things. And just then you can support that and the people that you're serving. So over the years, I've come to understand that people come to me and have come to me and have found me for a number of different reasons. Number one, in the entrepreneurial space in general, which, especially in the early 2000s era, was filled with and riddled with Lamborghinis and mansions and these dudes who are like, get rich quick. And all those nasty ads. And I'm not gonna mention any names or anything, they go, oh, my gosh, this is so refreshing. Cause it's just like a dude, he's not talking about his mansions. And it's. And for a while, I made this joke where that, like, my Lamborghini was a 2012 Toyota Sienna. And I made that joke after I knew that that's what people were hooked on. The fact that I talked about my family and that I was doing this for financial security with my family so we could spend more time together. And I feel like I've definitely done a good job of representing the kind of entrepreneur who wants to do this for their family, not the one who wants to live a laptop lifestyle on the beach, by the way, who uses their laptop on the beach because there's sand. This doesn't make any sense. I don't know why that became a thing. But that's one reason. Another reason, and this was almost accidental, was back in October. No, October, November of 2008. This was the first month after I launched my ebook@greenexamacademy.com, my architecture website. I just wanted to share. Hey, guys, this is actually working. Here's how much money I made from that website. This is on smart, passive income. It was brand new. And here's how many things I sold here much I sold it for. Here's some things I'm going to try next month. People started to share that like crazy. They were like, dude, this guy, business guy, I don't think he knows what he's doing, but he's sharing the whole process along the way. He's even sharing like where he's failing. And every. It's funny because every time I share more about the things that I've done wrong, my brand grows bigger. And it's kind of counterintuitive because I think a lot of us have noticed that some people only tried to put their best foot forward, you know, and they only share the good parts. But I think it becomes A, more real when I share all the parts. But B, having this sort of behind the scenes look at everything builds trust. And it also gives something for people to feel special that they have that other people aren't having. I talk about that in the book. The sort of, you know, bringing people backstage with you, right? And kind of showing them around a little bit, that builds trust, like a factory tour kind of situation. And every month, the income statements continued to grow as far as viewers, people started to share it and it's what I become known for. However, in 2018, I had to stop them because we were getting $250,000 plus a month now at this point, and people were coming in and they were like, I can never do that. Pat, this isn't inspiring to me. This is deflating. It feels far removed. So even though we're still making great money, we've removed the income reports because they've served their purpose. But in the beginning it was definitely like, wow, I could do that too. That's within my range. And somebody's showing me exactly how to do that. And then number three, and I think, you know, the number one thing that's, that's helped contribute to my success was like slow growing the relationships, not trying to go so fast. And I had spent years developing relationships with my audience and other people in the industry serving them. First I go to people who are, you know, in the industry. And I go like, hey, here's how I can help you, or what do you. What might you need next? I volunteer at their events and other things like that that aren't required but become noticed. And those. Those things have all played a role because relationships is really the key. And I feel like I have the ability to sort of connect with somebody through a lens in the camera or through a microphone really, really well. And oftentimes that's because I know exactly what a person's going through. I know who my target audience is. I know the objections they have in their head. And that's so, so key. And that's what I talk about in my chapter called Learn the lyrics. Right? Cause I tell this story about my wife, who is a huge Backstreet Boy fan, right? Like, almost, like dangerously a fan of them. And what I ended up finding out was that her first memory of this band was in a moment where she had just broken up with her boyfriend. And the song Quit Playing Games with My Heart playing on the radio. And this is her exact words. I heard it all the time. I heard that song all the time. But this time, it hit different, because in that moment, every lyric in that song was like, literally what she was living at that time. So knowing who your audience is important. Knowing how they talk is even more important. And when you use those same words and you tell stories that relate to those people, I mean, they're going to listen, they're going to come to you for advice. And I think it was Jay Abraham who said, if you can define the problem better than your target customer, they're going to automatically assume you have a solution.

That's right.

Yeah. I love that. You know, at the risk of sort of sounding like a fanboy here, the way I discovered you. So I quit my day job back in 2009 and started sort of figuring out, okay, how am I going to. Joe and I had a business going online already, so we didn't quit blind. We were making some money. But I quit back in 2009, started digging around, found smart, passive income, and went, this guy, I think, is the exact same age as me. He lives in San Diego. He just got laid off from his job. He, like, he's starting an online business. He's doing it through content marketing. He's starting his podcast. Like, literally everything lined up. Yeah. So what I was saying, the original way that I discovered you was back in 2009, I quit my job and I started digging around for other people that were doing online marketing, specifically Content marketing. And I can't remember if it was 2009 or 2010 when I did, when I found smart, passive income. But around that time, I found you. I read your bio, and I was like, he lives in San Diego, I believe. If I. If I'm right, I think you're about 38, right? So you're right around the same age as me. You're in San Diego. You're doing content marketing through blogging and podcasting. You just left your job. I mean, you got laid off. I quit. But we were both recently out of the job, so pretty much like, your story and my story almost, like, lined up perfectly. And I've followed everything you've done ever since.

Yeah. That's so great. Thank you, Matt. I appreciate that. It's so funny to hear these stories. I love it. And that speaks to a chapter in the book about just connecting with other people and having commonality with your audience. And this is. You know, I remember when I started my podcast, I had this idea to connect with my audience that at the beginning of every episode, I would actually have my voiceover guy read a fun, random little fact about me. And I went to my mentors and my podcasting friends at the time, and I was like, guys, I got this great idea. I told them, and they were like, pat, that's like, the dumbest idea I've ever heard. Why would you waste your time, let alone, like, pay your voiceover guy to do that for you? Like, what's the point? And I was like, you know, I just. That's me. And I wanted to, like, connect with people. And they're like, okay, we'll do whatever. Well, 65 million downloads later, they're coming back to me, and they're like, pat, dude, that was actually really genius move. And I'm like, I just want to be a human online because we are removed from the direct connection. But on a podcast, I can just share the fact that I was in marching band and I was obsessed with it, or the fact that I'm a huge Back to the Future fan, or the fact that I'm scared of spiders or half Filipino or whatever. And if any one of those things I just said relates to something that you've been a part of or are, you can't help but go, oh, no way. Let me dig a little bit deeper, right? And I had this woman once who I was at an event, and I'm walking around this woman screaming from the other side of the room. She goes, pat Flynn.

Big baby Pat Flynn.

And I'M like, what the heck is. I was with a friend and I was like, what the heck is she doing? Like, I thought she was drunk or something. And I come up to her and she goes, oh, my gosh, Pat, I'm a huge fan. Thank you so much. Like, I appreciate you. I listen to your show every day and I'm like, yeah, but why did you call me a big baby? Like, I just don't. What? And she was like, she got really flushed. She didn't understand. Like, she knew that I didn't get it. And she's like, oh, my gosh, I'm so embarrassed. Like, I remember in one of your episodes, you'd mentioned that you were an 11 pound, 12 ounce baby. And that's like, that's what I remember. Cause I had a huge baby too, and I was just like, oh, that's so funny that, like, before we meet, you literally say the thing that we're connected with. I just happen to forget that because I have 400 plus episodes of that. But that is true. I was an 11 pound, 12 ounce baby. I set a record at the hospital. Haven't grown much since, but I.

Fat baby.

Yeah, fat baby. And just that was all my growing, I guess.

But you're adding the weight in the facial hair now.

Yeah, exactly. It's all about connections, right? So the theory is like, let's just be more of you. Like, embrace your weird. If you're super weird because, you know, obsessed over Back to the Future, just let it be known. Put it into your content every once in a while. It's not going to be the center of everything. I remember following Jeremy Shoemaker from shoemoney.com. he's gotten famous from sharing that $100,000 AdSense check. I followed him because I ran across a blog post where he was talking about ufc and that was like, oh, you're into ufc? I was into UFC at the time too. And I was like, yo, this guy's sick. And then I got into. Deeper into his content and I was like, cool. Like, just that little thing did it for me, man.

It's the little things. And that's where I mean all the way. I want to make sure we pivot to affiliate marketing a little bit more the rest of the time we got. But it sounds like right from the beginning when you started, you were pretty dang open, you know, just to freely share your journey on the podcast and all that. And I mean, I only wish that we started this bad boy a long time ago. We're four years in on our show here now. But I think that's. It's probably the best way you could have started, or anyone start is to, yeah, put the relatability out there, the challenges, anything you're learning, even if it's a progress along the way, it seemed like it was like that combined with what you're doing with interesting people, it's just an amazing way to connect. And like we were saying before, podcast is still probably one of the best ways to do that at scale.

Yeah, for sure.

You know, I think that you make a great point. Like, it's a small thing that I talked about myself about. Like, literally, I had my voiceover guy to it. I didn't even say it. And I think that actually worked out my benefit because if I started a podcast going, hey, it's Pat Flynn here. Did you know that I was in the marching band for seven years and, like, actually took an extra architecture class in college just to be in the marching band one more year? Which is actually true. It'd be like, okay, well, why are you talking about yourself for so long? Like, I came here for affiliate marketing advice. Like, can you get to it? And I see this all the time. I actually see it. And people don't even know they're doing it because we are taught to share how much knowledge we know and our credentials. Like, I do website reviews on the weekend on my YouTube channel. And so often I see people's webpages are like, hi, my name is Brendan, I'm this and I'm an mba and I do this, and I can help people do this. And I, I, I, I, I. And I'm like, you need to have more you's, meaning the audience in the language and the copy. And the more you can do that, the more you're going to connect and then you earn the right to talk about yourself and your credentials. But we need to nail the problem first, like I said earlier, and then people will listen to what you have to offer and why you're different.

So I have one last question before we sort of shift topics here. When it comes to digital marketing and the stuff that you talk about a lot, how do you stay passionate for so long on the same topic, putting out as much content as you're putting out on this topic? I know for me personally, I've been doing digital marketing stuff since 2007, and, you know, my, my passion for it kind of goes like this all the time. I have months where I'm kind of like, I don't even want to talk business stuff anymore. And then I have months where I'm just really excited about the latest technology or something like that. So I'm kind of curious, how do you. How do you stay excited about the topic you're constantly talking about?

That's a great question. There's two. Two ways I go about it. Number one, I think about the person who hadn't heard all the other interviews that I've done, who has never been on my blog. That person deserves. Because they often will have the same problems, if not a bigger problem than other people who have already served. So I'm not going to take the self. Not that that's a selfish thing to do, but like, I'm not going to remove the ability to help somebody new simply because I've already helped people before. Right. And so that's kind of how I think about it. And that's. I don't know if that's just a mind trick or something that I do to just retail tell that story in a different way, but that helps me because. And this is how I get so excited every time I come on a new podcast and I tell a story that I've told hundreds of times before. I absolutely love it because it might help the new person who's just being introduced to me for the first time. And that motivates me for sure. And the second thing is I also know that there is always more room to grow. And for me, part of what motivates me is the challenge to always get incrementally better every single day. And that's fun to me to see. You know, if I create a YouTube video, how much better, if at all, was this video than the last video I did? And I look at the numbers and I sort of play this little gamification with myself to try to improve. And I think as a byproduct of that, I end up in a great space. But at the same time, on the micro level, I'm excited about the next thing because I want to compare it to the other thing that I just did and see, like, did that work? Did it go better? And then I can. And then the other thing about this is I can take that information that I'm learning and then share it with everybody and help even more people. And that kind of like spirals. That's kind of how I keep myself motivated with stuff that on the surface for sure, definitely can be sort of just kind of repetitive in nature.

Yeah, it's almost like you have a deeper meaning. You're doing these constant split tests of how you're presenting it into the world, and you're like, oh, okay, that one's hitting better. Let's refine that. Yeah, yeah, no, I could relate to that for sure. Now, when it comes to affiliate marketing, and I want to bring up equity deals you have as well, or advisory deals, which can be a kind of hybrid combo thing you mentioned, that's one of the simpler ways to get started in business, to at least raise some revenue for yourself or bring revenue in affiliate marketing, specifically. Affiliate marketing, yes. Not the equity part. That's a later progression. But I guess. Yeah, I know you have a whole course on affiliate marketing, too, that we'll shout out as well, because I know it's amazing. Yeah, of course. So when it comes to affiliate marketing and content and putting everything out into the world, and superfans, of course, what's your perspective there for someone that just wants to get started with getting their first affiliate commissions in, how would you go about doing that? And then from there, we can maybe progress into 2 rev share deals and equity. Kind of the progression there.

Yeah, the equity stuff is amazing, especially because it started with affiliate relationships and then it kind of grew into that, which is really cool. But as far as superfans are concerned, the work you do to build superfans means the affiliate marketing will be much easier. There's less crazy copy needed. There's less. More aggressive marketing tactics. Literally, the more a fan somebody is of you, the less you have to do to convince a person to go through one of your links to get a product. Right. And of course, there's a lot of nuances to this, like making sure you choose the right product that does align to their goals and how you promote it and how you showcase that product to show that it's simple and easy to use and whatnot. But as far as affiliate marketing is concerned, like, I think the biggest thing to realize is that you're always supposed to come from a place of service. But the best way to do it would be as far as content platforms is to use any mechanism you can or any content platform you have to have access to in its best form to showcase the product. That. And what I mean is, you know, podcasting is great for storytelling, right? So, for example, I promote ConvertKit, which is an email service provider. Now, I could go on a podcast and go, okay, here's how you do email marketing. First you got to go to this page here, and then you click on this button again, podcast not going to work. Right? That's what the YouTube channel is for on video. I have a demo video. If you look up ConvertKit on YouTube, I usually hone in on number one or number two spot and people watch that video whether they know me or not because they're there for just to learn about the product. And then if I give them value, if I share some tips along the way, they like how my style is. They might download my lead magnet and or go into through my affiliate link to get the thing that I've just convinced them that is so easy to use. So that's video, but what about on a podcast? Well, here's what I did. I invited Nathan Berry, the CEO of ConvertKit on the show and I had him come on not to talk about email marketing. I had him come on just to tell the story behind ConvertKit to learn from what he learned about building it. It almost failing all these crazy things. And throughout that people listening can now trust that product even more. And then of course at the end I go, hey, and by the way, if you're interested in this product and email marketing, you can either watch the Demo video on YouTube or you can go through this link here if you want to get a free trial, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And that's the cool thing, the hard thing with affiliate marketing is you're not selling your own product. So we have to convince the person on the other end that that product is worthy of purchasing. Another great way to do this is to just show your own experience with it. This is one thing that's worked really, really well for me is not creating blog posts to go here's the product and here's how great it is. And I do do that sometimes. But instead think about it like this. Goal. Build a website. Cool. Here's a free blog post series. Five blog posts that will go from from scratch to having a website. Day one, you got a nail branding and it's all stuff that people can do with a notepad. Day two, you got to get a domain. Here are some suggestions I have for picking a domain name. And by the way, if you're looking to actually get a domain, here's the hosting service I would recommend, right? Okay, step three, step four. Okay, step five. Keyword research. Really important. By the way, there's a keyword research tool that can save you hours of time. I would love for you to join me on a webinar to show you exactly how to do keyword research for free and also introduce this product to you. Cool. I'm getting people signing up and then My favorite thing to do in a webinar, especially for software. If you're selling software, like just showing people how to use it and how much time you're saving doing it is the best. So I have this approach that I want you all to take, and you can use it whichever way you want. It's demonstrating the free way to do something and the headache free way to do something. Right? Free. Headache free. So on this webinar, right, I have 35 minutes up front. Hey, guys, I'm going to teach you how to do keyword research for free. You literally don't need to pay anything. I'm going to go into Google AdWords Keyword Tool. I'm going to do all the hard effort of putting it in Excel file. It's just like, you know, it's working and I'm getting the data I need, but it's taking so much time. And then I go, hey, by the way, remember that thing I told you? This is the product that does come with a cost. But I'll show you why this matters and why this is such a great investment. Because everything we just did in the last 35 minutes, boom, we just did it in two seconds. Here's all the data you need, and here's what you can do with it. People's minds are blown. They're like, oh, my gosh, look how much time saved. Like, the juxtaposition of free versus headache free becomes the reason why that person's more comfortable spending money with you. And of course, if you've helped them not just learn about keyword research, but all along the way, getting their brand in line, getting them up on a domain name, helping them with building their website and picking a theme which could also come with a commission. Like, I now have four payment moments with a person by teaching content for free.

It's the best.

It's awesome.

And you're creating a super fan throughout that process, I would imagine.

Exactly, exactly. And what happens, Google's like, oh, my gosh, Like, a lot of people are coming to this or sharing it. Let's rank it really high, right? So it's just like, everybody wins. I love it.

It's the best. Yeah, I love it. Yeah. I mean, that's an amazing model and I think you touched on that in the live stream last time, too. But now with this bigger context of superfans and content that you can layer on that, it's just an amazing formula someone can swipe just right now.

Yeah.

Now, when it comes to, let's say, equity deals, I know that's, that's progressing quite a bit. What are some of the, I guess the qualifiers that make someone feel like, okay, I'm worthy of getting an equity deal or approaching a company as an advisor? Yeah, like how, you know, at least like having that hat on. Because I feel like there's a worthiness first that someone has to kind of frame in their minds and then it's positioning of how to actually show up and be someone of value there. What's your perspective there? And how would you approach a new deal?

Yeah, you can't just go to a random company and be like, hey, I advise companies. Do you need an advisor? That's not going to work ever. Right. All the advisorship work I do. And I'm now an advisor for six to seven companies. And I say that because one's sort of getting acquired right now, which is cool.

Nice.

There has to be some sort of relationship ahead of time. All the companies I've had, I've had a relationship with, from Clay COLLINS over at LeadPages before he left as CEO, to Nathan Barry, to Ankur over at Teachable, to the guys over at samcart, to Squadcast, and there's even more works and there's more deals in the work right now. And the beauty of this is like, typically, I mean, it's different for every company, but you know, one call a month just to kind of essentially tell them how things are on the front lines and what I think could be done better or a couple board meetings a year and literally that's it. I'm not like an employee, I'm an advisor. When they need help, they can come to me for help. When I see that there's a relationship that I could connect that company with somebody with for, I don't know, investment opportunities or whatever. Cool. If that's there, I'm going to help them out. Also what's really cool is I can go to a company that I'm advisor to and I can be like, hey, I, you know, I believe that this product should be like this. And let me show you why. And here's some feedback from my audience too. And they actually like implement it. Like a lot of the stuff that people use on ConvertKit and on lead pages as a result of specifically what I thought back in the day how like I'm using these tools and now I get to even shape these tools and I even get to have equity in the company such that if it were to go, you know, exit at one day, I get a nice big Check. Like, that's awesome.

But that relationship has to happen first, and you need to almost sort of have the ability to prove yourself, right? And that can come in many forms. Maybe you are an affiliate already and you're just, like, churning volume, right? That's a great starting point, at least, because then that company will know, well, you've done a lot for them already. What else can we do together? Right? And let's take it to that next step in the relationship.

Sometimes it comes from you spending the time to do deep research on that company, what they're doing, what they're doing wrong. And literally, like, one time I wrote a report for a company. It was like four pages. It was like 10 things that this company, not gonna mention names, is not doing to the best ability. And it was sort of like a pitch deck, but not really. It was just more like a friendly email. And these guys came back and they're like, dude, this is exactly what we need. We never had any perspective like this before. Like, let's talk. And so we talked, and I said, you know, I have this unique perspective in this blogosphere and as a podcaster, that I could provide for you. You know, sure, we can do a higher affiliate deal, but I don't need more money. I would love to, you know, influence the company and even help out even more. Can we talk about advisorship? And, you know. Yes. It's just. It's just super cool. And again, if you have value to add, that's where things open up.

Yeah.

I love it.

Perfect, man. Well, I want to. We have a few more minutes here, so let's. Let's wrap it up. Shout out your affiliate program as well, the name of it, and we'll link that in the show notes just so people know about it.

The affiliate course.

You said the course. Yeah.

That you have the course. Yeah. 1, 2, 3. Affiliate marketing, you know, it's literally easy as 1, 2, 3. It's not an overnight thing, but I try to simplify things. I think we as entrepreneurs often overcomplicate everything. And one thing I like to ask myself, and I would recommend we all ask ourselves, is, well, if this were easy, what would it look like? Right. When it comes to affiliate marketing, I've distilled it into the main things that people need to know to make it work. You know, 1, 2, 3, 1st, 2nd, 3rd. And you follow that process and people. The nice thing about this course is, like, it's one of the ones that it's so obvious that there's a ROI on it. And if you don't get the ROI, you just within 30 days get your money back. So it's like, there's no reason not to get it. Right. So anyway, I don't want to pitch it too much here, but that's cool. I appreciate you allowing me to share that.

Of course, man. It's super relevant. And then of course, Superfans, the book I know Pat Flynn.com is your. Your main website. Is that how they can find it?

Smart Passive Income, probably, right? Smart Passive Income Blog and podcast, both of those websites.

It's. It's everywhere. You can look up Superfans on Amazon. I'm just very proud of that book because although it didn't get Wall Street Journal bestseller like my other book did, it's selling more books. And that's what matters most because people are sending me Instagram messages every day of the exercises that they're doing and implementing and actually having it have an effect. Like, remember the what's up? Strategy I shared with you earlier? Like, that's one that I talk about in the book. And I get messages every day of people just like, hey, I did a what's up? And this. Look at how happy I made this person. Like, thank you so much. And this book is like, it's not revolutionary things. It's stuff we already have access to. It's not brand new information. It's just like, hey, y', all, let's like focus our efforts here because this is what matters. And here are some ways that you can do that.

Connecting, man. It's connecting at a time where I think people really need this message. And that's where. That's what we've been preaching too. It's like, this is the year to really double down on your connections and then fan base as well. Gonna take you far.

Agree with that. 100.

Cool. My man. Well, any. Any last things anyway. Instagram too. Go follow Pat on Instagram. He has some of the coolest damn videos.

Joe was watching all the Tiktoks.

Dude. I've been having a lot of fun scratching my creative itch. And. And the nice thing is it's only contained to like 30 seconds, so I don't have to sort of overwork myself for that. But yeah, thank you. Pat Flynn on Instagram and Pat Flynn anywhere else. Clubhouse or whatever's new Clubhouse.

Shout out. Yeah. All right, my man. Thanks for your time, man. It's been fun.

Cool. Thanks, guys. Cuckoo.

What was that about?

I don't know. Getting your attention. Did he get your attention?

Not really. No, I just thought Joe's lost his own cuckoo. Lost his mind.

We are, Matt.

We are lost is mind.

What? I don't know. I'm losing my mind currently. You're hearing it melt.

Done lost it anyway.

Yes. Dude, that was a good episode. That was a very good episode.

Yeah.

I'm very happy with this episode. And this just all the topics, like, it's kind of this mashup of things that I feel like is just so timely and needed for everyone to hear and experiment.

Well, I honestly felt like we probably could have chatted with Pat for two hours, you know, Like, I feel like this was like we needed to go.

Walk his dog and shoot videos, though.

Yeah. So we didn't want to take up like Pat's entire day. But, you know, we got through about half of the things that we had on our notes that we wanted to chat with, but we got through all the best bits.

We did. Yeah. Well, what was your favorite bit, Matt? Takeaway here. Something we want to highlight.

Well, so, you know, I really liked the. Towards the end of the discussion when we were actually talking about the equity stuff. Right. Because this has sort of been our long term play with our business. And, you know, if you're. You're playing hustle and flowchart bingo with us, which isn't really a thing, but maybe someday. This is one of the things that I bring up quite often is that back in 2013, you and I were in our office in front of a whiteboard mapping out like, this is our vision for our business. This is where we eventually want to take our business back. Then it ended with us buying a professional sports team.

But not just any team, Matt.

Yeah, but screw those guys.

The team that's dead to us now.

Yeah.

But it will go unmentioned.

But the really big. The real game plan that we mapped out was to build an audience, build a platform through podcasting and blogging. Once this platform gets large enough to spin into doing advising and equity deals so that products and companies could leverage the platform that we've built. Right. That was our game plan eight years ago when we fucking mapped it out.

And we didn't really know.

Excuse the language.

Yeah. I mean, it was eight fucking years ago and it feels like a long time.

It just feels weird to curse after a Pat Flynn episode because he's so wholesome.

Oh, man. But even just think about back then in 2013, we didn't know what that meant, advising companies or equity. But I don't even know what put it on our radar. You Tim Ferriss was it? Okay, that makes sense because we, Yeah, I mean, yeah, we were looking at Tim Ferriss.

I don't remember when he started his podcast. It was probably around that time.

Yeah.

And we were noticing that he would go on and he would talk about a product and that product would sell out on Amazon like overnight because he, he talked about that on his show and next thing we know he started talking about companies that he was an advisor in. And these, the valuation of these companies would go up solely because Tim talked about it. And we're like, that's where we need to be. And then you look at some of these other brands, right? You got like George Foreman for instance.

Right.

He was a boxer, he was really well known name got very, very famous.

A lot of kids named George.

He's got a lot of kids named George. But then he went and put out the grill. I don't really think he was involved in the grill at all other than the fact that he slapped his name on it.

He maybe did a little signature for the top logo or something and hopped on some car commercials.

Yeah.

For some people, this name I probably shouldn't mention, but Donald J. Trump.

Who's that? He's, he hates that.

By the time this comes out, I think he was the ex president of the US.

Maybe or maybe for a couple more days because this episode's actually coming out pretty quickly after we recorded. But you know, but if you look at his business, most of the hotels that are like Trump hotels, they're not hotels that like his company built, they're hotels that a different company built and then went to Trump and said, hey, can I put the Trump name on it? I'll pay you a licensing deal.

So that's more of a licensing arrangement. But still. Yeah, it's in the same kind of vein.

Same vein, yeah. But I mean basically he, he built a platform in the form of his brand that's like the platform that he built. And now because this platform is built, he can just lend this name to people. Right. I guess it's the, there's some parallels. I guess it's not the exact same thing.

Similar though, but like. No, I think. And that's why it's in the same vein. And this is where I think us not knowing what we were wanting to do or where we thought our end goal would be or not end goal, but future goal. Back in the day we didn't know all the nuances of okay, you can get equity or what's an advisor do or what does what Does Rev Share in a company? Like, what are royalty agreements? License deals? Like, because of all the friends that we've had on this podcast and our mentors and stuff. Yeah, like, like the Roland Fraziers of. Actually, I'll just say Roland Frazier, James Graham, James Schramko, Bob Serling on the licensing front and deals Rev Share. I mean, like, it's, it's really cool when you start to mash all the possibilities and notice that, yeah, it's really your connection to people and your influence, your platform that allows you to get to a point, I guess that's quote unquote worthy too. Get equity in a company or be an advisor. License deal. Yeah. Yeah. Because I like the way that Pat said it's really, it's, it's kind of the evolution that if you just keep stacking the content and just doing the work of everything we talked about building fans, you're going to get the opportunity if you put value out there.

Yeah, yeah. And then, you know, talking about affiliate marketing specifically, you know, we've been doing affiliate marketing since 2007.

Right.

When we first started our first blog, we weren't doing it effectively back in 2007, like less than three figures a month.

I mean, the first, first one was my wife buying it. It was a CPA thing and just making us feel good.

But, but the way we do affiliate marketing now.

I don't know if I want to say it was modeled off the way Pat Flynn does it, but there was definitely some influence there.

Well, there was a lot, wasn't it? Bluehost was a big thing, you know, like actually it was the example that Pat gave on the episode, which is you can have like a five phase series and or email sequence and it kind of walks you through how to start a blog. I remember one of his big affiliate plays back, like way back when, I think it might still be, was selling bluehost as an affiliate.

Yeah.

And it was just like right in line with that little example that he gave. He didn't name bluehost, but I know in the past it has been.

Yeah.

And it's super smart because you're giving value as you're also inserting, you know, different products and services that you can potentially make a commission on. But it's giving value along the way.

Yeah. Well, I mean, even if you just kind of look at what we're doing with ThriveCart. Right. So with ThriveCart, we've got a written blog where we have like sort of tutorials with visual elements in it. We've got YouTube videos where we can actually show people inside of ThriveCart and show them how easy it is to set stuff up. And then we've done podcast interviews and live stream interviews with the founder of ThriveCart. So if you look at the way we've promoted ThriveCart, it is like he broke down exactly how we did it.

Yeah.

It's like, that's what we're doing.

Yeah, yeah. And I like what Pat said because you reminded me of a point which I was like, that's really cool. And it's very clear how he said it because we, it wasn't as clear when we started ThriveCart. We just had a feeling like, okay, we need written content out there. Gotta have some video stuff for YouTube, really, it's to capture organic traffic and get our keywords out there. And it sounded like, yeah, he, he does things similar, but specifically, I like the fact that when he's an affiliate, let's say ConvertKit, you know, he'll make a video around ConvertKit and a walkthrough, show how he uses it and all that stuff. So people are discovering Pat through that keyword of convertkit, the thing he's promoting and he's giving a ton of value. But then the next step is. Well, a. They're getting to know Pat now. Yeah.

He's simultaneously building a brand and promoting.

A product and he's growing an email list because he said there's a lead capture. He's taking them somewhere to go a little deeper with them outside of YouTube. Yeah. It's like double dipping into so many directions and you're leveraging another brand to get that new traffic, those potential new fans coming at you.

Yeah.

Super smart. And I think that's, that's probably the best way to go out there, especially if it's a visual type thing.

And then the other, the other sort of last sort of putting a bow on, on this conversation was the whole doing the things that don't scale. Right. Like the. I think the reason we've been effective with our sort of networking and staying in touch with people and, you know, we don't have anywhere near the amount of fans that Pat has, but we do have, I would say we have over a thousand true fans. Right. And I think the way that we've built those fans is through doing a lot of the stuff that doesn't scale. If you DM us on Instagram, you pretty much always get a reply. If you tag us in an Instagram story, we're usually going to reshare it to our stories to sort of acknowledge that we saw it. You know, when. When people email us, they pretty much always get replies from us. You know, you make videos for every single guest that comes on our show. And then when new clients sign up, you're making a lot of them videos and stuff. And these little things that don't scale, they're only sort of impacting one person at a time. But that impact is huge on that one person. That one person is now an evangelist for us. That one person is now out there. Like he said, if somebody starts to. To spam you on Facebook or to. To, you know, the haters start to pop up, these are the first ones to jump up and defend your honor.

Haters are gonna hate, but your fans are gonna. I don't know what, you need a rhyme there? I know I need a rhyme. I was just saying it and hoping that you would come up with something.

Haters gonna hate. Fans gonna be great.

I don't know.

Fans gonna create a gate.

It's getting better. It's getting better.

Maybe something will come. We keep riffing a little bit more. We're horrible rappers. Peter's gonna hate, but fans are going to skate. Yeah, Rollers skate.

Haters going to hate. Fans going to collaborate.

They'll probably do that.

No, we're getting there.

Okay, well, if anyone has better ideas, go post it on Social and tag us. We'll share it and make you awesome. All right, so, okay, so right here.

There was an edit point. Joe and I went on for another 45 minutes thinking of rhymes.

That's true.

So I had to edit all that out, but here we are again.

Wow, we sound fresh after that. 45 minutes.

Wow.

Did we come up with something good, Matt? Nope. Damn.

Still looking for it.

All right, so same thing applies. If you still want to go post something. You know what's going to happen now?

Somebody's going to send us an MP3 of them, like, singing a rap for us. That's what happened last time we did something like this.

We'll use it somehow. Feel free to send it to us. You could find us somehow.

Yeah. So total change of subjects.

Wrap it up.

Yeah, But Clubhouse. So Pat kind of mentioned Clubhouse at the very, very, very end of the.

Episode, very briefly, but we caught it.

Yeah.

We were going to bring up Clubhouse if we had more time with Pat, but we didn't really get into it on this. This round one. Is this around one or two?

Let's call it round one. Okay, well, one and a half.

One And a half.

Yeah. Not to confuse anyone of that little mini episode that we had of him. Yeah. Like last year.

Technically my third time interviewing Pat, but whatever. I don't want to confuse people. Anyway, next time we'll probably talk to him a little bit more about Clubhouse. But we've been so hooked on Clubhouse.

Sort of.

Sort of. Well, I was way more hooked on the first few days, and then I. And then, like, the. The shiny wore off a little bit.

The first week was crazy.

Yeah.

My head was like, oh, this thing is on set. But now I'm just like, this thing's pretty cool.

Yeah. Well, so we have a therapy session that's going to come up at the end of January, and on my schedule, I basically have the plan for that therapy session to talk about Clubhouse and how we see it progressing in the future and how we're using it in our business and all that kind of stuff. So that episode will come out. That'll be the last episode of the month, because our therapy sessions are always the last episodes of the month now. But that specific one will dive deep into Clubhouse and the results we've seen and how we're going to use it and all that good shit.

But follow us, Follow us. So you can find Mr. Matt at Matt Wolf, and I am at Joe Fear. It's very difficult to find us. But, yeah, if you have Clubhouse or if you don't, either way, find yourself. Find your way in. Yeah, I think it's like joinclubhouse.com I believe is their waiting list.

Yeah. And they still have, like, the whole invite thing, but, like, if somebody's already in there that you're friends with, they can let you in. So it's actually pretty easy to get in.

Yeah, yeah. Or at least it helps out. Is like, if you have. Yeah. If you're waiting on the list and someone else is already in there and they're in their phone or. Yeah, if you are in their phone contacts, there's a higher life using them. Is it the higher likelihood you're gonna get in quicker? Yeah, that is true.

And you do need an iPhone also, which is kind of a pain in.

The butt right now. But it's awesome. I mean, I would say it's podcast interactive. Like, it's interactive podcasting. Obviously. It's kind of like a. Yeah, we were talking about yesterday. We're hanging out with Joe Kearns, Mike Alvarez, the dudes that are helping out with the email. It's like if you had a zoom call like that and just shut off the Video and it's.

And other people were able to sit around and listen to your conversation.

So it's just crazy. I mean, the fact, like, I made a post about this a couple weeks ago since this thing will go live, but if you check it out, just hunt me down on Facebook, you'll see my initial thoughts. Matt also had initial thoughts. You posted a little earlier, and you can see why we're so excited. There's just so many different opportunities and ways to connect and do deals with people. So if you're talking about affiliate marketing or equity advising, licensing, shoot. That's like the best way right now to initially connect with someone without much rapport. You can kind of just jump in and you don't even need an introduction. You just start connecting because you're sharing a room, you're sharing a stage. You'll understand a little bit more once you get in there. We don't need to do that.

I think it's really hard to. It's a hard sell without being in there and experiencing it. Right? Because when somebody told me Clubhouse is like this audio platform and you go into rooms and you listen to people talk, and then you could jump in and you can talk also, I kind of didn't get it. And then when I got in there and started playing around with it and I went. Went into a room and Naval Ravikant was talking to, you know, Marc Andreessen and.

And a head person at Apple. Yeah, Ravikant was in there.

Is Barry Weinstein's in there? And I'm just like, geez, like, when is it. When are you ever going to be in a room with these people and get to hear listening on, like, be a fly on the wall in these conversations. Right?

I mean, and then guys got like, Perry Belcher, Grant Cardone. Our very first time is all. They're all just hanging on this platform.

Our very first time ever going live on Clubhouse, Joe and I and Brad Costanzo, we did a live all about how to connect with influential people. And Tyrese Gibson popped in on it, and we invited him up onto the stage to talk about how to get connected with influential people. And he ripped for 45 minutes about, like, how to connect with influential people in the entertainment business.

And he talked about his experience, like his game plan when he was at a private party, when he was meeting Jeff Bezos or he knew he would meet him because there were only like 20 people at this party. This thing, like, he walked through his whole and was basically just like, have a really good question that no One typically asks Jeff, have that in mind, so you can at least break the ice that way and sound interesting. And he said it was awesome, but it was just. Yeah, the fact that he hung out for like a good hour and a half before we brought him up on this quote unquote stage. And then he riff for 45 minutes talking about, from his perspective, how to connect with influential people. And he basically said, it's the same game for him as it is for everybody else. It's like you got those butterflies. I remember that he's always trying to push himself. So he feels a little scared, a little nervous. He's like, that's the stuff. That's the shit. That's when you're in the zone.

And the other thing about Clubhouse is none of these conversations are recorded. So you've got to be in the platform, listening in live to hear these conversations. Right. So that sort of creates the addiction element to it. You don't want to miss some of these conversations. But we're on there. We're doing panels almost daily lately during the week on things.

Probably won't be daily all the time.

But often lately we've been doing it daily because, full transparency, we're trying to grow our following on there. And that's how you grow a following.

Yeah, but in early.

So we've been on there fairly frequently, talking about things like podcasting and affiliate marketing and overcoming imposter syndrome and connecting with influential people. But follow us at Mat Wolfir and let us know if you discovered this podcast through Clubhouse, because our number, our download numbers have been going up steadily since we've been on Clubhouse. So if you're somebody that found this because of Clubhouse, ping us on Clubhouse.

And let us know. Do it. Yeah, maybe we'll hang out in a room or something. It'll make a lot more sense once you're actually on Clubhouse. You know, all this room talk. So go join and we'll let you in if we can.

Yes, sir.

All right, sir.

Sir.

Joe.

Yeah.

Last thing before you bolt out of here. Y' all listening? Thank you for listening this long. Go get the notes. I don't think we mentioned them yet, but everything that Pat was giving us here and everything we chatted about, what Affiliate marketing, fan building, all that fun stuff. Go to flowchart group.com. that's flowchartgroup.com and you'll get them for free. You gotta be quick. Within two weeks, you'll get the notes of this episode Action guide. Sorry. Yeah.

And that was not the last thing that was the second to last.

Second to last thing. So give us the last thing.

Last thing. We're talking about Easy Webinar.

Dang. Right.

Casey Zman over at Easy Webinar, those guys are just killing it with that software right now. I mean, it does automated webinars. It does live webinars. It does hybrid webinars. Casey's constantly sending us screen capture videos going, hey, check out these new features we're rolling out. So they're constantly adding new cool stuff in there.

He's going to give us a nice walkthrough pretty soon here and we'll have a lot more details to share if he allows it. Yes, but either way, you should check it out for yourself. I mean, you heard even Pat was talking about webinars. He uses it in his business. So even as an affiliate marketer, you can use webinars. There's so many formats and ways. So if you go to easywebinar.com hustle, that's easywebinar.com hustole hooking you up. Fatty discount. So go check it out. There's a monthly and annual option and you'll get a better discount on one of those. To go see Hustle and flutart. Nope. Why did I say that? I don't know. I don't know either.

Easywebinar.com Huzzahl.

That's what I meant to say. And share this around to a friend that needs it. You know what? There's probably someone out there, so go share it. We love you. Thank you.

Thanks everybody for listening to this episode of the Hustle and Flowchart podcast for taking the time to listen. We want to give you something a little bit special. Every single episode that we do, we actually have somebody on our team take notes. We basically have a Cliff's Notes version of every episode where you can go and find all of the tips and tactics that laid out all of the resources that they laid out, all the good stuff from this episode. We actually have a nice simple notes version that you can find on our website. So go to evergreenprofits.com find this episode that you just listened to and give us your email address and we'll send you the notes. Thanks for listening.

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