https://www.listennotes.com/e/db5357f485764446bb66cdbca4814299

Storytelling is going to be the most powerful number one skill in the world that you can learn right now. Learning how to tell a story, make a connection, and emotionally have somebody hang on to your words and listen to you. That's how you make movements. That's how you make change. Pat Flynn, the founder of SPI. He helps people build passive income driven online businesses. Has created this empire that makes over seven figures a year. Pat Flynn is back onto the show here. So I've developed a framework called the 20% Itch Rule, where 80% of your time is dedicated to the things that you that you are committed to, that you reserve and even protect 20% of your time for experimentation, for fun, for something new. If that were to fail, that's okay because you still have the 80% that you're taking care of. You're still taking care of business. Tim Ferriss taught me a question. That is, if this were easy, what would it look like? Because I, and I know many of us, tend to overcomplicate or believe things are more complicated than they actually are.

If someone is going through a period of just maybe they're just not 100% sure of themselves or sure of the direction they're going, what would you say to that person here tonight on what they could start to do to unlock more opportunity for them to feel better and create what they want as well?

Okay. What if you just.

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Do you remember a time, you know, maybe 10 years in with smart passive income where it started to not be fun anymore?

In business, it's often the best practice to optimize, to automate, right? The problem is when you automate too much of what you have going on, you start to remove maybe some of the parts that were actually fun for you in the beginning. And we hear it all the time, you gotta automate, you gotta, you know, get rid of yourself, take yourself out of it. But if you totally take yourself out of this thing, it's a soulless thing now. and for a while I was starting to feel like it was just, I was just going through the motions. It was publishing a podcast episode and immediately dreading the next week that I had to then create another podcast episode, the Content Hamster Wheel, as they call it. And that's a hard trap to be in because you have these handcuffs and if you slow down then you start losing followers or starting to lose momentum and it just felt like a job. And I was like, I'm in this space so I don't have to do the job but now I'm just, my own boss of my own job and I feel like even less fulfilled as a result of that. So I've always found, and thankfully I wasn't in that position for a long time, but I did discover it and it felt and it led to procrastination. It led to just not great content. It was just I had to get the schedule out. So I put something out and I found that what really helped me was just finding the fun again. Finding the fun again and now I'm a 42-year-old man playing with cardboard with cartoons on it. And I'm having the time of my life. And as a content creator, especially when you are having fun with whatever it is that you're doing, your passion comes through that screen, comes through that audio file, comes through in those words and those emails, your audience can feel that too. And today, more important than ever, it's not just about the information you're sharing. I mean, how many of us are overwhelmed from all the information that's available to us today? Right? So overwhelmed. I mean, back in the day when we started, information was valuable.

It was scarce.

It was scarce. If you had an encyclopedia Britannica, you were upper class because you could afford that information and others couldn't. Now we all have the same information and same resources on our phone. So if information were the key, then we'd all be successful. So it's not the information. As a creator, it's about packaging. that information? How do you actually create an emotional connection with somebody? You do such a good job of this, the stories that you tell. Storytelling is going to be the most powerful number one skill in the world that you can learn right now. No matter what industry you're in, whether you're an employee or an employer, learning how to tell a story, make a connection, and emotionally have somebody hang on to your words and listen to you. That's how you make movements. That's how you make change. So I'm big right now on storytelling. And I'm trying to teach my kids that as well. And they're now on stages and talking in front of people with hopefully some good skills behind them.

So how long was it for you where you felt like, I'm just not enjoying it. I'm just showing it because I have to. I'm trying to keep growing this thing, but it's not growing at the speed that I once had it. So it's just kind of stagnant.

Like three or four years in there. You have the honeymoon period, as they call it, in the beginning. where you have those butterflies about your business, you can't stop thinking about it. The what ifs are the what if this works? What if this blows up? What if this is successful? But those what ifs start to transition into what if I wasn't meant to do this? What if this doesn't work? What if this fails? What if somebody out does what I do? And you start to question the imposter syndrome starts to come into play. And that is a very common thing. Who here has tried to do something outside of their comfort zone and has felt that imposter syndrome? get in the way, almost everybody in the room. And...

Even when you're making it.

Even when you're making it. When I started my business, so a quick story, my business journey started not by teaching business, but I actually created one, helping architects pass an exam. I was laid off in 2008, it was a bad fiscal year. Alex.

I love this.

I got laid off from my dream job. I went to Berkeley, got a 4.2 grade point average in high school, graduated magna cum laude from Berkeley, got a great job in the Bay Area, was living my dream. And then I got the rug pulled out from under me in 2008, and I didn't know what to do. Moved back in with my parents two months after I proposed to my girlfriend.

Wow, really?

And she stuck around, thankfully.

Wow.

Did she move in too? She moved in with her parents as well. Wow. And I was like, this is great. This is awesome. Can I come over and hang out with your parents now? It just was not a good thing. And it wasn't until I discovered online business and I discovered that I had some superpowers. I had taken an exam that was very difficult in the architecture space and I passed and I started to share that information online. In no way did I feel like an expert. But because I was the one to step forward and say, Hey, I just did this and you can do it too, I started to be seen and positioned as the expert. and that was so weird to me, it was so new to me. And I remember in October of 2008, I launched a study guide. It was a PDF file of my notes, and I sold it for $19.99, and I was deathly afraid. I had no idea what I was doing, and I was like, this has to work. And I remember I launched it at 12 a.m., so midnight, and it was on my website that I had, and I had some traffic coming to the website, so I was hopeful. I was crossing my fingers. I wake up, at 6:00 a.m. and I go to check my email, no sales. And I'm like, okay, well, I'm gonna start looking for architecture jobs. And that's exactly what I did. I worked on my resume and I was just like, well, tried it, didn't work. I'm looking for proof that I was not meant to do this, right? That confirmation bias. Few hours later, I checked my email, nothing. Reconfirming that I was not meant to do this. Sent more emails out to architects and engineers. Later that afternoon, I got an email.

Ding.

PayPal.

Come on.

Notification of payment received. $18.38 because of PayPal fees. And I was like, this is amazing. Where did this, I made money. Yeah. That was the first money I had ever made online. And immediately, Not two minutes later, I thought something was gonna go wrong. I thought the FBI was gonna show up. You know, I could go through hours with you talking about all the times I didn't believe that I was supposed to do what I was supposed to do. Even when I was making $35,000 to $40,000 a month. You talk about rich, but with scarcity. That's the mindset I had. I was still looking for architecture jobs, even though I was generating revenue. And it wasn't until I let go of who I thought I was supposed to be, that sunk cost and literal cost that I put into college, into architecture, not wanting to disappoint my parents, all those things played a role in me believing that I was supposed to still be an architect. Yet there was this new world. the business world. And essentially, I was climbing two ladders at the same time. How can you climb two ladders safely at the same time?

That's tricky.

But that's literally what it was like. So eventually I had to let go of one ladder, which was scary and dangerous. But this new ladder had endless height to it. It had opportunity. had more freedom. Freedom was way up there. Didn't know how I was going to get there, but I knew that there were other people who had stepped on those rungs before me. And so I trusted myself. I had to let go to grow.

But after four, five, six, seven years of kind of reaching the top, then maybe the growth not accelerating as much, you started to fall back into a sense of this isn't as exciting anymore or what happened then?

Yes, however, I've always sort of looked for the next fun thing. I think that's something that has helped me. I do a lot of things, Lewis has mentioned a lot of the things I'm into now, Pokemon. I also have an invention called the SwitchPod. I have started and sold software companies. I'm an advisor to 12 different companies. I do a lot of things. And I've learned over time that, and this is what they often say, you have to do one thing and just lean into that really well. Have you heard that before? Lean into the one thing. people who say that. And that's great. If you are disciplined enough to do that, I am not. So when I was told to do that and tried it, that's when I started to feel like this wasn't fun because I wasn't able to scratch that creative entrepreneur itch that I had. And so I've developed a framework called the 20% itch rule, which isn't anything really new. Google practices this. I know a lot of other friends of ours practice this, where 80% of your time is dedicated to the things that you are committed to, the things you've already said yes to, but you reserve and even protect 20% of your time for experimentation, for fun, for something new, to allow you to scratch that itch such that if that were to fail, that's okay because you still have the 80% that you're taking care of, you're still taking care of business. But honestly, even when I've quote unquote failed in that 20%, I've started and failed a lot of software companies and other things in that 20% of time. It's always a lesson learned that then I can apply to the next thing.

How do you not let that lesson of failure become a belief that you can't create something next time?

Because I've created something before. I have literal proof that I can do it. It just didn't do it this time. But I have proof. And that's what I found that best combats, at least for me, all of these feelings, the imposter syndrome that comes in. Even backstage, I wanted to throw up. Literally, and I've done this 350 times. But I think about, well, I've been on stage before and I have delivered value and I've spoken to Louis before. There's no reason for me to believe that this is going to be bad. I have proof that all these feelings are false. And when I'm starting new businesses, I think about the same thing. And for anybody out there who's starting a business and wants to really get over that imposter syndrome, My best advice would be something I call the 1-1-1 strategy. Find one person who has one problem and get one result for them. Just start with one. Because if you can't find one, how are you going to find 100, 1,000, 10,000? Find one. It's much easier. It's going to help you figure out where these people exist, how to talk to them, how to interact with them, how to help them through that problem. And trust me, when you help them get that result, all the fear of, I don't know if this is gonna work, is this even real? Can I even actually help somebody? You've done it now. You have collected that proof that all those things that are keeping you from succeeding are false. So the 1-1-1 has been really helpful for my students. I wanted to pass that forward to you. Start simple. Tim Ferriss taught me a question. That is, if this were easy, what would it look like? And it's been a guiding light for me because I, and I know many of us, tend to overcomplicate or believe things are more complicated than they actually are. are. So if this were easy, what would it look like? If I'm writing a book, how do I sell it? How do I market it? How do I get it out there? I don't know, but all I know is I need to write that book first. If this were easy, okay, I'm gonna open Word and just start writing. I'm gonna go to a mentor who's done it before, who's gone through those mistakes so that I don't have to make them myself. That would be easy if I learned from somebody else. So mentorship and getting coaching and things like that are really important to me as well. And that's how I've been able to fast forward my success and fast forward skill acquisition to do things like enter the world of Pokemon and have on my Shorts channel 1.7 billion views in 230 days.

It's crazy, man.

It's been wild.

And this fiscal year you've done that.

In this fiscal year, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Wow. Incredible. So, you know, when did you launch this? This new hobby.

So here's the story of Pokemon. I know people with Pokemon, like Pikachu, like those things. Yes.

Does anyone know what Pokemon is? Pokemon fans.

Nice.

Not many though.

Has anybody ever heard the channel, Should I open it or should I keep it sealed? That's me. I have it. That's me. Anyway, it's just me opening packs and you see my weird looking thumbs and all that stuff. That's the shorts channel. But before that, the Pokemon channel actually started during during the pandemic. Because my kids got into Pokemon. So my kids were younger, they got into Pokemon, they started collecting, and anything the kids get into, I want to get into as well. I researched those things. For example, Fortnite, back before Pokemon, it was Fortnite. My kids were playing Fortnite, and I was like, what are you doing? And they're like, We're playing Fortnite, Dad. Don't talk to me. So what do I do? I hire a 15-year-old from Fiverr to teach me how to play Fortnite. No, I swear to God.

Wow.

Like mentorship, I'm telling you.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, he's 15 and he was really good.

He's good.

And I was like, okay, I was starting to get it and going through reps with him and after three weeks, I was able to hang with my kids. And then actually we were starting to play together and it became such a fun bonding experience during the pandemic to do that. And then like kids do, they moved on from that and they moved into another hobby and this was Pokemon. So I said, okay, Pokemon, I just know about a few things, but, But I grew up playing Magic: the Gathering, not Pokemon.

Now, why didn't you go into Fortnite videos or like, let me start a.

Business on Fortnite because my kids are into this right now? I didn't see any opportunities there that really piqued my interest. I guess if I look back, I probably could have found something, but I like things to come to me. And in the Pokemon space, they did, because when I started to research a lot of YouTubers who were doing Pokemon, I also noticed that they were all doing the kind of same things, and nobody was really telling good stories. Again, I'm all about stories. So I said, okay, I didn't create a YouTube channel that day, but I got involved in the community. And that's when I became a moderator for some of these Pokemon creators. That's when I started to have conversations with other collectors and go to events. Again, immerse myself in that space before even trying to create anything. How do I know what to create if I don't even know who these people are yet? And I started to learn more about what they liked and what they disliked. And I started my channel in January of 2021. We got to 100,000 subs in 11 months and 28 days. I remember because we celebrated that day together on a live stream. We had, I think, 7,000 people watching that day. We got to 500,000 people or subscribers in three years, and we're now 1 million beyond that in only one year.

In another fiscal year.

In another fiscal year, yeah.

Cool.

And it's just been the the funnest thing because I've just wanted to have fun. And I think because of that, it's attracting not just kids. In fact, it's a lot of people our age who grew up with Pokemon who have now more than an allowance. They have a lot of money to spend on this. Yeah. And during the pandemic, everybody was all nostalgic and wanting to relive their childhood. And now they're bringing their kids along with them. And it's grown to the point now where I host two live events every single year called Card Party that each now will host 5,000 people. We had about 3,500 last year, and we're hosting two events this year. I have a relationship with Pokemon. Oh, by the way, this also, speaking of just like opportunities that pop up, this Pokemon thing allowed me to open packs of Pokemon on Ford Field at the Detroit Lions Vikings game this past season, because for whatever reason, they, for good luck, opened packs of Pokemon before the game. I found out that their TikTok manager was a big Pokemon fan. So we had a connection. And then I just pitched it. What's the worst that can happen? He would say, no. I said, Hey, what are the chances that I could get out there and open a pack with you on Ford Field?

That's a good line. What's the chance?

What are the chances?

Yeah, it's good.

And he said, Come on by, January 6th. It was the number one game of the season, by the way. And I got to open a pack. And that video was one of their top most viewed videos for a while. which means that they might invite me back. I also now with the San Diego Football Club, the new MLS soccer team.

Is there a team here now?

Oh yeah, first year.

This year.

First year, Major Leagues this year, yes. That's cool. And they invited me to come out because a bunch of their guys watch the channel. And it's like when you put yourself out there in the world, your vibe will attract your tribe. And it's been the coolest thing, you know, to just be me. And for the longest time in my life, I didn't feel like I was good enough. I was short, like literally five feet tall in my senior year of high school. I was bullied. I never felt like I belonged, except in the marching band, where all the other nerds who were picked on existed. And that's where I found my home in marching band. And then I eventually realized that when you embrace your weird, that makes you unique. And it brings other people like them or like you together. And now I have this community of a million followers of other weird Pokemon nerds.

It's amazing.

42-Year-Old Pokemon nerds.

It's amazing, man. And what I'm hearing you say, I don't know if you guys heard the words he said, you know, by being more curious, by having more fun, by creating more joy, I started to put myself out there. By putting myself out there, I started to create opportunities. By creating opportunities, I started to attract opportunities to me. I'm being generous. I'm being grateful. I'm having fun. I'm expanding my joy inside of me is what I'm hearing you say. And that joy, that energy, people can feel that energy. And it may sound weird that energy is what created you, this Pokemon empire of community and opportunities. And the first business you had, or not the first, but smart passive income, that energy created and launched that as well. And the energy of, ah, this doesn't feel good anymore, also can start to bring something down. Or if you're not having fun, can start to bring it down as well. So what I'm hearing you say is the energy is what's allowing you to launch create and continue to believe in yourself, not necessarily the results right away, but the energy.

Right.

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I once heard, I think it was our good friend Chris Ducker who said, Do what you do best, delegate the rest. And that's what I've learned to do. Now, that's not easy to do when you're just starting out because you have to wear all the hats. But eventually, with SBI, my entrepreneurial brand, I'm just on the podcast and I'm writing email newsletters, which I love to do. I'm no longer hitting publish in WordPress anymore. And that's allowing me to have more energy for the things I love to do. And I found people who love hitting publish in WordPress. There are those weird people out there, right? And it's been really cool to see even in parallel your evolution as well, and the new phases of your life, and you're newly married, and now your new book. It's just, I'm so proud of you, Louis. Thanks, man. I know that we both have gone through some, rough patches and hard times over the years. And I'm proud of you.

Thanks, man. I appreciate it. Proud of you too, man. Appreciate it. It's been a fun journey. For someone in the audience here right now, you know, whether it's Alex, who's a 65% piece, whether it's the four, you know, bros over here who are trying to become multimillionaires and open their heart at the same time or anyone else here, if someone is going through a period of just maybe they're just not 100% sure of themselves or sure of the direction they're going, maybe there's a little bit of self-doubt maybe they don't even talk about it to anyone, but inside they're like, Hmm, something's not working in my life, my career, my business. Like it's not coming effortlessly to me. What would you say to that person here tonight on what they could start to do to unlock more opportunity for them to feel better and create what they want as well.

My mind goes to a lot of creators who I work with who struggle because they're doing the work and they're not seeing the results. They're creating the videos and they're not seeing the views. They're publishing on TikTok and they're not seeing the likes. And a good friend of mine, Alex, a different Alex, once said, Count uploads, not likes. and I was like, man, that is so powerful. When you have, for example, let's say you're gonna try to build an audience on TikTok, for example, instead of like, I'm gonna try to get this many views or I'm gonna just try to get this many likes, what if you just went daily for 60 days? And that was your goal, daily for 60 days. And on TikTok especially, we know this as creators, the strategy is to, you know, have some quantity and stay relevant by publishing daily and not even worry about the views. So if you get to the 60 days, you've won no matter what. You've done it because that is the thing you can control. You can control your production and your publishing. You can't control the algorithm. You can't control whether a person likes this video or not. Yes, we look at those and we we base decisions off of those things, we pivot based off of those things, but when we base our mood on something that we cannot control, you are letting external factors potentially break you. And I heard this quote once, An egg broken from the outside, life ends. An egg broken from the inside, life begins. So it has to happen from the inside. And when you base your success on the work that you're doing, putting in the reps, not only will you still feel like you've gotten the job done and then go, okay, well, this didn't work out, but I gave it a shot. Let's pivot and talk to and find other people who've done this and help guide me. So the mentorship thing again, coming up. But also when you have those reps and you're not caring about the numbers, you're caring about your production and your storytelling. You will get better, you will get faster, you will go from one hour editing to 20 minutes to 10. And things just start to happen. With my Shorts channel, I started the Shorts channel again is in the Pokemon space. I started it with the 60-day experiment in mind. And I said, I'm just gonna go to 60.

And this is part of that 20% of your time. Correct. Experimentation, I got this new idea, you're running your main business, it's not, scaling as fast as it once was. It's more in maintenance mode. You're not getting as much excitement and joy.

So let me use 20.

I have another itch I want to scratch. Yeah, let me try this. Let me try this little Pokemon thing and just see what happens.

Right. So you give yourself kind of a 60-day window. And then as far as the learning that can happen, and this is what my next book is about, it's about the information overload. Lean learning is what it's called. It's finding the difference between just in time information, that's what we want. Not just in case information.

What do you mean just in time information?

Just in time, whatever your next thing that you're focusing on is, within that, your literal next steps, that's what you're focused on. That's it. Only allow yourself to learn about those things and those things alone, knowing that when you get past that, there will be other resources available for you, trusting That's because we know there's so much information out there now versus just in case information, which looks like a person who subscribed to 25 different podcasts, listens to every episode because of the golden nuggets that they will never put into action, right? A big moan in the audience right there. I might have just called some of you out. But imagine.

These are like degree chasers for me. It's like going out for the next certification, the next degree. thinking you're going to learn something that will eventually give you the courage to then launch something. Right. As opposed to, let me learn enough in a short amount of time, see if this even is going to work for me, if I even like it, and then I can keep mastering. Then I'm going to need to know information, more information after that.

And the momentum begins. You start to get excited because you've gotten part one done and you move on.

Right.

How many people read books all the way through and never take any action?

Yeah.

What if you read chapter one of Lewis's new book, you took action on that, and then you read chapter two.

So funny, I had a guy come to us, Summon a Greatness last year, and he said he left after lunch on the first day. And he goes, not because it was bad, but it got the exact thing I needed to learn. That one thing I needed to learn, I went and applied it that afternoon, and I just was like in motion after that. That's cool. I was kind of like, well, you could have stuck around for the party, man. It was cool, you know? But I liked that he said, listen, I came and I was ready to learn, and and I didn't really learn anything in the beginning, but then I found one thing and I was like, that's it. I need to go apply it right now and take immediate action. So we left after lunch and just went to work.

So the Shorts Channel, I was learning about telling a 60-second story and how to do that best. I found a company to create a little jingle. Should I open it or should I keep it sealed? And that's the jingle.

That's literally what I sent them.

It sounded just like that.

And I said, you, sent You said.

This, you recorded it, and I said, Please make this sound good.

For those that don't know this channel, like it's something I've become obsessed watching, and it's, the jingle is so catchy that the Pokemon world like sings it at conferences. So it's like something you did on a phone.

Oh, there's been parodies of it now. Like somebody opened a package of bologna and was like, Should I open it? And then they open it and they're like, oh, this one's This is valuable. Oh, why is there mold on this one?

Like it was, it was really-- so his whole thing is, should I open it or should I keep it sealed with a pack of rare Pokemon cards? And if you don't get the rare card inside, you should have kept it sealed because the pack would be more valuable later to sell.

Right. So the concept is really simple and easy, but I adorn it with these other flavors. Yeah, you make it fun, you make a unique question. Add some spice and salt into it like you're dancing. Then, if at the end it's a bad pull, I have a second jingle, which is like a bad version, and then I have a good one for when I pull good cards. And 35 days into the 60-day experiment, I was getting just a few hundred views a day.

Really? Yeah.

And I was like, if I was in my older self and not thinking about just controlling what I can control, uploading every day, getting to day 60, I would have given up probably by day 14, two weeks in, this is going nowhere. but I said 60 days. Day 36, one of the videos hit 750,000 views. All the other videos started to get some love. And then every video after that, I'm at a point now where after 24 hours it's pretty much a guaranteed million views on a new video. It's crazy. And it takes me 10 minutes to edit every day because I've done it every day and I've gotten the system down. I have templates, the same music, the same canon, the same Cadence, and then I can go to the Detroit Lions game again.

So what happens though? I mean, I don't want to get too far ahead, but what happens in three, four years when it becomes dull for you? Like you're in the honeymoon phase of like, man, everything is crushing and millions of views.

This man is crushing.

And I'm at two billion views now in less than one fiscal year and it's crushing. And everyone's coming out to my events and 5,000 people this year, then 20,000 people. Then it's a Super Bowl event. And then what if it starts to tail off or stay stagnant or people stop showing up or the money doesn't come in as much? When the external doesn't grow at the level of your excitement and your joy and your internal abundance, how do you prepare for that to not let it rob you of your joy?

If I believe that that's going to happen, It's going to happen. Whether you think you can or you can't, you're right. Henry Ford. And so I don't believe that's going to happen because if I did, it would affect my content and the quality of it already. I would reach too far. I would maybe try to add too many explosions in the videos like a Mr. Beast video. Now it's just like ridiculous, right?

Let's get 50 million away at 100 million. It's like, yeah.

Oh, my gosh, he's playing games, that's for sure. Squid Games. He's a master at it. Oh, completely. If that starts to happen, I will find the fun. That's it. Hey, guys, finding the perfect gift for.

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How many of these 20% itches that you've created have actually launched into a successful business or something over a million dollars in profit over time.

So I started my podcast in 2010, and at one point we started inserting questions from the audience at the end of those episodes. And they were really great. We even used a tool called SpeakPipe to collect those voicemail questions so people could hear other people like them at the end of the show. It was really fun. The problem was it was just random questions that had nothing to do with the podcast. So I wanted to start a second show to house all those questions and just have a show of me answering and essentially coaching people. It's called Ask Pat. Called Ask Pat, yeah, that became Ask Pat. Although I said, well, it takes me forever to create one episode a week. How am I going to do five a week now? I need to go to somebody who does a daily show. A daily show. And we know a guy named Johnny Dumas. who has a daily show and I literally took him out to coffee and I said, John, coffee's on me, tell me how you go daily. And he literally told me, he recorded.

Them all in one day.

Tuesday, I think, he records an entire week's worth of episodes, so he batch processes, so he wakes up on Tuesday and he just knows he's gonna grind for eight hours and get all those hour-long episodes out. Ask Pat was gonna be much shorter, so I was like, okay, I think I could carve out a day. What else do you do? What else? I have an assistant who then takes those voice mails and edits it for me. Oh, cool. Tell me more about that. So I got the system. I found it from somebody who had done it before. So I didn't have to invent anything because somebody had already done it. And that Ask Pat Show turned into, I think, two and a half million dollars worth of sponsorships and of course leads coming in for the courses and memberships and such. So that is one example of a 20%. Interesting. The SwitchPod, which is a travel tripod that my videographer and I invented. We had no business inventing menting something.

A physical product.

A physical product. We have never done that before. But we saw a problem and I wanted to scratch that itch. I itch a lot, I guess, is what I'm realizing after. How long did it take for you.

To, 'cause you did a Kickstarter with that, I think.

We did a Kickstarter. 2017, we went to Vid Summit. Everybody was using those gorilla pods, you know those things with the balls that kind of like do this. And we were like, there's gotta be a better way. We didn't know where to start. But we knew that we had to figure out like a shape that people would like to hold. And the idea was the legs could fold together to turn into the thing and you can hold, and then you can like open it up and turn, you know, put it back down. But again, we didn't know how to do that, so we made it out of cardboard, and then we gave it to YouTubers, and we just said, hold this. And they're like, what is this? And they're like, open it up, open it up. Oh, that's kind of cool. So it's like a tripod that opens and closes really easily, and we're like, yes, okay. What do you like about this? Is it too big? Is it too small? We removed the guesswork. We just let the people who were going to eventually buy this Tell us how it should look. And once we got the prototype, we're like, okay, cool, perfect shape. Where do we go from here? So we asked somebody and they said, well, you should probably 3D print this. Oh, you could do that? Yeah, go to that place at the end of the street. They 3D print things, just give them a file. Okay, so we did that. And we had the thing actually working and putting cameras on it now. And then eventually, again, learning as we go, just in time information, right? And eventually we were like, okay, we're going to sell this thing now, but how do we sell this? Well, Kickstarter could be cool. We can get a whole community behind it and crowdsource this thing. Okay, cool. How do we do a Kickstarter? Mm. But we know it's possible. So we went to some of the people who were going to an event who were speaking on stage about a physical product that they had sold on Kickstarter. So we made sure to go to that same event. to pay the extra money to go get the VIP tickets so we could spend some time with them. And we eventually exchanged names and numbers and we were able to have a 30 minute call with them, which was one of the most helpful 30 minutes of my life to just go over what you need to know and mistakes that they made on Kickstarter. And eventually February 2019, we launched this thing. We had a Kickstarter goal of 100,000 and we hit that in 11 hours.

Wow. What did the whole campaign do?

The whole campaign did $415,000 with 4,836 backers.

It's amazing.

And we never done that before, but we were learning as we went. And now this product is just automated on Amazon. It's a 3PL or a third party logistics company handles the fulfillment after Amazon gets the purchase order in.

So it's not something you're spending tons of time on now. It was like a lot of time early on to launch it, market it for the first year.

I'm spending two hours a year on it.

And how much does it do in sales total in the year, fiscal year?

Gosh, I think we're in the 300 to 400,000 per year range.

So it's still six, seven years later, still generating sales with you doing two hours a year on it.

Yeah. I mean, I have a teammate who does take care of more of the customer service stuff. And, you know, again, I've been able to do what I want to do with it, and they do what they want to do.

And, sure.

You know, it's doing its thing and, you know, right now we're in the middle of potentially finding a buyer for it. Who knows? We'll see.

And what about other projects? What projects that you spent a lot of time in that didn't pay off? And how do you deal with that lost cost in terms of time, energy, resources?

In 2013, I had two friends who launched WordPress plugins. These are like premium software things that you can include in your websites. And they come with a payment. Usually plugins are free, these are premium ones, and they cost like $37, $99, whatever. Two separate people, they didn't know each other, they launched two different products around the same time, and they each made over $100,000 in a week. And I was like, Bro.

One week.

One week from their software launch. And their audiences were smaller than mine at the time. And I said, oh, let's do this. And so I was like, I need a creative. I need to create a WordPress plugin too. So I found a developer on Google, hired them. It was going to cost $10,000 to do this little idea that I had. Didn't tell nobody about it because I wanted it to be a fun secret. I want to launch it big and surprise the world with it, right? And what was supposed to take $10,000 in six weeks took about $20,000 in six months because I didn't know even exactly what I wanted. I was working with this developer overseas and they weren't understanding what I wanted. They would give me something and I was like, this isn't it. And they're like, what do you want? I'm like, I don't know. And we just kept going back and forth and wasting time, wasting money. Eventually I got it to a point where it was worthy to share now. And it was like, okay, we finally got something. We got through that. And I wanted to share it with a few friends. I don't even know if I shared this with you at the time, but I shared it with a few buddies. I was like, Guys, I've been working on this secret project for the last six months. Check this out. I did a little demo. Meh. And I was like, wait, what do you mean, meh? Like, well, it's kind of cool. I mean, what if it did this though? And like, it shouldn't do this. And what if it did this? Yeah, it would actually be better if it was like this. And I was like, I don't have any more money to spend on this thing. I did this backwards. So I learned two really important things from this $20,000 lesson. which I never launched this thing by the way. I learned, number one, with new ideas it is worth it to share upfront. I was afraid some people were gonna take this idea and steal it and that's always the fear, right? But the truth is if you're the one doing the work and if you're the one who's passionate about it, somebody might like the idea but you're gonna be the one to execute it. And there are so many more benefits that can come from people saying, Well, what if I did this before you build it versus after and getting that feedback that you want that, right? The second thing I learned, which was a more important lesson, was when I did something simply because I was chasing the money, it always failed.

Really?

That has been the case every single, that was the big one though, that made me go, okay, before I start something, why am I really doing this? who am I doing this for?

But don't you want to make money as well?

Of course, of course. But if you don't know who you're doing it for and the service that you're offering to them, how much value you could bring to them, how much more convenient something can be because you're the one to step up to create something, then you're just shooting darts at a dartboard.

So sometimes going after the product just for the money doesn't give you the piece as well.

I know a lot of people, we know some of these people who are multimillionaires. They have mansions, the nice cars, a huge team, and they are miserable because they're not actually excited about the work they do.

Yeah, but they lost the joy.

Absolutely. And right now, I mean, I'm in my 40s now, and, you know, my kids are getting older and. I just don't have room in my life for BS, and I want to fill as much time with joy as possible.

So you're not thinking about, can I make a lot of money with this thing first? Maybe that's in there of like, maybe this can make me money, it's got to make some money, right? But you want to go after the joy or the excitement of it first, and the possibilities and the creativity, And then does it also have the potential to be worth my time financially?

Maybe a better question would be, who can I help right now who could pay me a lot of money and be so thankful for that?

Why do you want to feel like someone's thankful for what you do?

As an Enneagram three, that is my lifeline.

Is that the same as Alex?

I don't know what Enneagram Alex is. Probably not. You're probably a one since you're more, if you don't know what the Enneagram is, It's one of the several different kinds of ways to understand more about who you are and like the different numbers mean different things. Like my wife, for example, is a six, which means she's very loyal, but it takes a little bit of time to break through that barrier. But once you're in, she will die for you. Which when I learned that about her, that opened up so many more amazing conversations in our relationship. This is a side tangent, by the way, but I used to take her to these business events with me like this. She's not here tonight, by the way, and you'll understand why in a second. I used to take her to these events and I was like, babe, there's so many amazing people here. Go talk to them, like hang out, have fun. We're generating revenue, we're making money, and these are amazing people who we can build partnerships with. It's like you're just sitting there. A lot of you know where this is going already. I'm like, you,'re just sitting there. She's like, you,'re sleeping there. On the couch. But I didn't understand, because I was like, there's this opportunity, but I was seeing it from my lens, not her lens. And when we discovered the Enneagram and had this common language, and I discovered that, oh, it was because she was protective. It was because she was unsure and has this barrier, and that's something that could be a good thing and could be a bad thing. And she was just protecting us by not building relationships, because we eventually found out that there were people who were trying to get to her to get to me.

Interesting.

She was protecting me and I didn't know that. And so, and she's learned about me. She's like, oh my gosh, you gotta go on stage and like, you gotta be cocky and like talk about all your business and how much money you're making. And I'm like, no, I'm showing people that it's possible. But then when she learned that As an Enneagram three, my value comes in knowing that I am of service to other people. That thank you is really important to me.

Again, you appreciate appreciation.

Correct. Again, it could be a bad thing because if my self-worth is based on whether or not Louis says thanks to me tonight, that could be a dangerous state.

I'll say thanks.

I appreciate it.

But how do you do that then if you're putting yourself out there a physical product and if no one buys it then no one is appreciating the value you've created.

It's hard.

If you're putting out videos every day and no one watches or likes it, you're not getting that virtual thank you or appreciation. How do you continue to appreciate your value even when others don't appreciate your value?

What are you basing the appreciation and value in return from? If it is from likes or comments that can be very dangerous. If you know that what you're putting out there is of service to people, then oftentimes you just have to believe that there are people out there who are benefiting from it. And I remember for my podcast, in 2011, I had it running for a year and a half and it was feeling like the machine and I was like, you know, kind of, it wasn't growing as fast as the blog was at the time. So I was questioning the work and the time it took to edit and put together the podcast. And I was close to giving up on the show, you know, 50, 60 episodes in. And right around this time I got an email from a guy named Michal from Poland. And the subject line of this email was, Pat, please read you saved my life. And I was like, Dane, that's a good subject line. I'm gonna open that for sure. And so I read it. It was like an essay. He had found my show in the early days. Again, I never met this or didn't even know this person existed. He had found my show early on. when he was bedridden because he got in a skiing accident. And he included x-rays of his ankles with nails and plates in them. And he said that he felt like he was letting his family down because he couldn't go to work. He felt like he was letting his kids down and it was just crushing him. And he found my show and he said he would listen to it every day and it would encourage him to keep trying and keep going. And he said that there was one particular episode where when I talk about goal setting, I often say, go for the almost impossible. possible. And he said with two broken legs that he was going to go run a marathon.

Wow.

And there was a marathon a year later after he discovered my show at the, it was the Warsaw Marathon, 26.2 miles. And at the bottom of this email, there's a picture of him crossing the finish line, holding up a sign. And the sign said in Polish, so he translated it for me and said, thank you. Gaby, his wife, and his kids, and Pat Flynn.

Wow. That's pretty cool.

And, I mean, I'm bawling. My mascara's dripping on the keyboard. And I realized that That's just one person who was listening to the show that I didn't even know existed. How many more people like him were out there? So I'm gonna keep going, no matter what. Wow.

Hey, guys.

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It's pretty cool, man. It's pretty cool. I've got a couple of final questions for you. You've got a book out as well. It's coming out in so the recording of this will come out before then. It's called Lean Learning. Why did you want to write this book? And what's the main, who is this for specifically? And what will they gain from diving into the lessons?

I wrote it for my kids. My son is 15. I don't admire him for the world that he's growing up in right now. and my daughter's 12. It is so confusing, so overwhelming. It is astronomically harder, it feels, to know what the heck you're gonna do. And I know a lot of us are falling in that same path, whether you're 15 or 50, that you just are overwhelmed and confused with everything that's available out there to you. 'Cause like I said, information is no longer scarce. It is everywhere. We're not just at a buffet line. And as humans, we hoard information. It's like food in the wilderness that we just see a fruit tree. We take every fruit because we might not come across another tree like that. We're just, you know, our brains aren't evolved enough to handle the world that we live in. And so this book is an answer to that. It's how to understand how to navigate learning today. And the story that I tell in the beginning of the book is about my son when he was in preschool. His teacher had sent an email that was really odd because during the day apparently in the hot San Diego sun, I'm from San Diego as well, woo, let's go. I'm so grateful that you're here for the last leg of your trip, man. I'm so, so thankful for you. Imagine near summer, super hot, and these preschoolers have an ant infestation in their classroom. So they have to eat lunch outside. But they usually eat inside. San Diego is basically a giant anthill. We all know this, right? And they're burning up out there. So the teacher drops everything they're doing, and I'm learning this after the fact, they spend the whole afternoon after lunch brainstorming with the entire class, the teachers leading this, she writes all the ideas that the kids have and pastes them on the whiteboard. There's like dozens of ideas of how to solve this problem. How do we fix going outside and eating lunch and not burning? Somebody said, let's just eat the ants. Which this is a clever answer. Some countries maybe. But they eventually take, you know, all ideas are good. Cool. They're all out there. The kids are seeing their own ideas up there. And together the teacher goes, okay, which of these ideas seem like they would actually work? So she's doing what we do as entrepreneurs, right? When we brainstorm something. And eventually it's one post-it note where they're gonna build a sun shade out of blankets and PVC pipes. So this email was, hey parents, if you have any leftover blankets or sheets or anything, Please bring them to school tomorrow. We have people bringing PVC pipes. They're going to be building a project. And we're just like, this is interesting. You know, what about math? Well, we arrived the next day after school to pick up, and we see these giant sun shades in the middle of the courtyard where they have lunch. And I'm just, like, blown away. And I know it doesn't seem like much, but if you're five years old and you have a problem, And then you solve that problem in a way that you never thought possible before. That is life-changing, bro. And I've seen what that kind of style of teaching has done for my kids in the way that they handle the world today. And so this book passes forward a lot of those strategies and strategies that I've learned to accomplish a lot of things in a short period of time. Lean learning how to achieve more by learning less. And dude, like this is supposed to be about your book, bro. Thank you.

I'm here to serve as well, man. Both hold it up.

Oh, look at that. Of course, of course yours is bigger than mine, but why'd I say that? I don't know why I said that.

You gotta, sometimes it's not about having more, it's having less. You know? Unless you're Alex, he needs more to feel peace.

Yeah, 35% more.

Yeah, exactly. 35% more. I've got two final questions for you. The first one is, what are you grateful for in your life today?

My wife. 16 years together. Thank you. She has had to endure a lot of societal pressures as her choice to stay at home as a mom. And it's been really hard for her.

She stayed at home the whole time.

Stay home the whole time, hardest job in the world. And I just, I'm so proud of. Thank you. See, I'll tell her tonight, you should have been there. And now with the kids getting older, you know, there's a transition in both of our lives on like, where are we gonna go next? And we dream together. And that's my favorite part. We sit at night and almost every night we dream about the future together. And it's my favorite part of the day. Oh, that's cool, man. So that's what I'm grateful for. I'm grateful for, I mean, practicing gratitude is something that's so important. I used to use a journal called the Five Minute Journal. Every morning, you write down three things that you're grateful for so that even if you have a pretty crappy day, you're at least grateful for three things. At the end of the day, you talk about three things you wish you'd done better. So I love that format. I stopped using the journal, but it has trained me. to think and be grateful for things like this chair and water, like the things around us that we take for granted. And I remember, and you know this too, our work with Pencils of Promise.

I think that photo was at a Pencils of Promise gala.

Was it? Yeah, in New York. So Pencils of Promise is an organization that builds schools around the world. We were both on the board of it for a period of time, and I had built a couple schools there and had the opportunity to go and see those schools being built.

Where'd you go, Guatemala?

Ghana. Ghana. And it was, I mean, kids playing, smiling, without shoes, in the dirt, with sticks, happy because they have a place to educate themselves.

Yeah, it's pretty special.

And then I go home, I'm like, the Wi-Fi is so slow on this plane right now. You know, it really puts it into perspective. So I've learned to be grateful for just like the little things like pen and paper to write things on. Yeah. You know, everything.

That's beautiful. Pat, we appreciate you. Thank you for being here, guys. Let's give it up for my friend, Pat Flynn.

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