From Zero To $1M From Content - My 2026 Strategy (Pat Flynn)

1.7 million subs on YouTube, 1 million on Instagram, 1.5 on TikTok, 10 million views a day.

Most creators get one breakout hit in their career if they're lucky, but today's guest has done it multiple times across totally different industries.

A lot of the Pokémon stuff that I do, which is more entertainment, I'm taking the lessons there and I'm putting them back into the entrepreneurial education world that I'm in.

Pat Flynn is one of the most respected entrepreneurs in the creator space. He's also the author of Lean Learning that shows how creators can grow faster by experimenting more and consuming less.

Quantity is key. I know people say quality is key. I'm not saying sacrifice value. Yeah, but sacrifice a little quality to get quantity so you get more data and more reps in. What I'm learning about YouTube, especially titles and thumbnails and how to keep a person retained throughout a video. I mean, really, at the base of all this is— One of the videos we did had 11 million views. It was like $45,000 in ad revenue from one video. And so we're like, oh, we have a formula now.

What are some of those things that you've learned and been able to take into, you know, all of your content?

If there was one thing to leave your audience with is— that's how we got to 1 million. Should I open it or should I keep it sealed? That was really cool.

There's so much good stuff in there. So, Pat, we're here at Craft and Commerce in Boise. We hosted a mastermind the first day. For about 50 top creators. And partway through, you dipped out for a few minutes.

Yeah, I had to leave.

Tell me about that.

I had to leave because I got a text message from my publisher. I just published this new book and they were like, we have some good news we want to share with you. Now, before this, by the way, we of course are trying to hit the New York Times and stuff. And I had a dream the night before that I hit it and then I woke up. And then I was really mad because it was—

in this dream you were in Japan.

And yeah, I mean, I should have known it was a dream. There were like, you know, Pikachu and Charizard were hanging out with me and stuff. And I woke up, I was like, actually upset because it's always been a really big goal of mine. But I woke up in the morning, I got a message from, from a buddy of mine who said I hit the USA Today. Yeah. And I was like, oh my gosh, made a bestseller list. Made a bestseller list. I could always say I'm a national bestseller. And we were preparing ourselves for just The numbers weren't huge and it's been a very competitive year. We've been seeing it. And so we're just like, you're probably not going to hit New York Times, but you should be proud of what you've done.

Yeah.

Midway through this mastermind in front of these incredible creators where everybody's like in these deep conversations, I get the text message from my publishers and I go out into the hallway. They give me the news that we actually hit the New York Times. I cry for like 15 minutes because literally all the emotions, frustrations with the process and everything, just how happy I was. Hit me, and I came back to the table, and like, my eyes are bloodshot, and everybody stops talking.

Like, are you okay?

Like, are you fine?

Car accident happen? You just got some terrible news? But—

and I was like, I hit the New York Times! And they all like jumped up, and our table made a ruckus. And, you know, I didn't want it to be about me during that time, because it wasn't, but, uh, it was a special moment for sure. A long time in the making.

Yeah. And I think to be able to celebrate it with people who get it right, who either have a similar dream or, you know, have achieved it themselves. Like, yeah, a lot of times we hang out with friends or family back home and, you know, they're like, oh, I'm so happy for you, or that kind of thing. But they don't truly get the amount of work, right?

You know, or what it means. Yes. Like everybody here gets it, right? Everybody watching this gets it. And it's like, wow. Like to celebrate with people. Yeah. Some who have done that before too and have gone through that journey or others who want to go down that journey is really special. So thank you for hosting us.

Oh yeah. Thank you for coming. You killed it with the talk. All of that was really good. So give us the premise of the book because we're going to weave that all the way through the story of building multiple 7-figure YouTube channels, which is pretty crazy. Like you've done it a couple of times, which is hard to do. And so what's the premise of the book?

So Lean Learning: How to Achieve More by Learning Less. Information once used to be valuable. And I think if you're a creator watching this, this is really important because there's enough information already. We're overloaded with it. Yet consumers, we are learning as if information is still that scarce resource. It's almost as if it were like a scarce food source back in like caveman days, right? You come across a carcass or like a fruit bush, you're like, I'm going to take it all because for survival you might not come across another one. So you take it all. And we're still treating information that way. That's how it used to be when you and I first started writing and first started blogging. We were creating information that didn't exist before, right? And therefore it was being consumed. It was being found. Now it's different. We're at this buffet line of information and we're stuffing our plates full because we think we need it all. And not only that, we're being force-fed a bunch of stuff too that is just getting rammed down our throats. And we're still, we're still learning as much as we can. I mean, I can't tell you how many people who I come across who have like, they're subscribed to 25 different podcasts, right? And they feel behind when they're not able to keep up with it. Where are you getting time to actually take action? Learning feels like you're making progress, but true progress happens when you trade just-in-case learning for just-in-time learning. Finding the information you need from the right resource at the right time for the right reason, and then using action to learn versus hypothetical or again, this feel-good idea of just let me consume because it feels like I'm making progress when the other part of this is just getting over-inspired. By learning too much, you're actually getting pulled in too many different directions. You probably already know what you have to do, and it's just this like mask for procrastination, really.

Feel slightly called out. I think people would be like, oh yeah, that's, yep, I do exactly that.

Right. Well, I'm calling myself out and every other person in this world right now.

A lot of people listening are going to know you from, you know, your journey building SPI over a long period of time. you know, especially when you come to an event like this, you're going to get stopped in the street or all of those things. Now people stop you on the street for something entirely different. Well, I'm curious when you get stopped in the street and someone says like, oh, are you Pat Flynn? Which Pat Flynn do you think they're, uh, they're talking to?

Well, usually it's, are you Deep Pocket Monster? Which is the name of my new Pokémon channel, relatively new, 4 years old now. Uh, we're at 1.6 million subscribers, over 300 million views. And in and of itself, it's a 7-figure business now. About something I didn't know about 4 years ago, before 4 years ago, before the pandemic. And it's been, it's been a fun ride and it's just getting started. The ceiling for how many people are curious about Pokémon versus entrepreneur stuff is way high.

I remember, I think it was you and I talking probably like 2016, 2017 about, you know, like the biggest audiences in business and entrepreneurship. And around that time, people were getting to 50,000 email subscribers or 100,000, you know, that was like you were the biggest in the game, right? And you're, you know, at this huge level. And then you step over into like food or some of these other different niches, you know, where the total addressable market is just 10 times the size. And someone's like, oh yeah, I've got 500,000 on my email list. And you're like, you know, it's just another level.

Or like MrBeast, he's got, he's almost at what, 400 million YouTube subscribers?

Yeah.

Like almost half a billion, which is, which is crazy and unheard of. But he's entertainment, right? And I did pull a lot of inspiration from channels like him and Ryan Trahan for storytelling and, you know, getting in front of a more mass audience, right? The demographic is different for Pokémon. You'd think it's a bunch of kids. It's actually not. It's people my age who once had allowance to spend on a pack of cards a week, who have more than an allowance now and are reliving that nostalgia and then even bringing their families along. I mean, an interesting stat is that for my long-form channel, Deep Pocket Monster, I think 60 to 65% of our audience is watching on a television.

Oh, wow. Yeah.

And the videos are an hour and a half long. And these are, these are movies we're creating. I feel like that we're scripting the voiceovers after we're, we're story, we're, we're leaning into storytelling. We're learning about screenplay writing and injecting those things into the story so much so that even if people don't care about Pokémon, they're still enjoying the show and still, you know, following the journey.

Yeah. So there's the phrase, once you're lucky, twice you're good. And I have heard people, and I know you've heard this too, where people say like, oh, Pat Flynn built his business because he was lucky with the timing or whatever else. And I've known you for a long time. So I've seen like the insane preparation and effort that goes into, you know, every one of your business talks, your YouTube videos, all these things over the years. But I think there's been a bit of a perception of like, oh, well, it was, you know, Pat could do that because of exactly when he started or the wave that he rode.

Yeah.

Um, is that something that you've heard and how does that, how does that land?

There's a little bit of a stigma there. I mean, when I first started and I started sharing my success with my architecture website and all that stuff from back in the day, uh, I used to be, I remember a comment very specifically was like, you're just a flash in the pan. Like, this is just a flash in the pan for you. And I didn't even really know what that meant. So I looked it up and it was like, oh, this is just a one-time thing that you're going to never be able to do again. And then even to a point where some people are saying you're a flash in the pan.

Oh, like trying to personalize it to you. Yeah.

I'm like, thanks. Who? I don't even know who you are yet. Back then, being inexperienced, I would take that personally. Right. And I'll be like, I'll show you. I'm going to one day do something again. And actually, that's what did inspire me a little bit to just openly share my experiments. I started an iPhone app company that I then sold. I started a security guard training website, a food truck website, I was like, not only going to do it once, I'm going to do it multiple times and show you all along the way. Now, each time, because it was work in public and building in public, uh, it wasn't always a straight line to success, but I always learned my way into finding how to make these things work. And I've continued to do that. And it worked in the Pokémon channel now as well. And it's just working really well, uh, with a much bigger addressable market. Yeah.

I mean, it's, it's massive. What, tell me about the shift from like education content to entertainment content.

It's interesting. However, I'm also noticing that in education we need to add some form of entertainment in it as well. And that doesn't mean you need explosions and, you know, a bunch of random like quick cuts like Cocomelon to keep people on your channel, though some people may argue you kind of do need that now. But better relatability, I think, is more important. I mean, information, like I was saying, is everywhere. Anything that could ever be said has probably already been said. And as I once said on the stage a number of years back, there are no unique messages, only unique messengers. Uh, Jada Selner said that, and I really believe that to be true. I remember playing on stage, uh, Ludacris, uh, rapping Llama Llama Red Pajama.

That was still one of my favorite openings to a conference talk ever. When you come out on stage and everyone's like, all right, what's Pat gonna, what do we got? And you're just like. Calm and understated, and then you get out the book and then you start reading. And you, did you read the entire book?

No, I read it. I read a couple of pages and then I said, this is how I read it to my kids because my kids were younger at the time, but this is how Ludacris reads it. And he's on, uh, like Q106 or something in LA and he's like, llama llama, rapping in his very style. And I broke down Ludacris's style and the point being like, he's reading the exact same thing I'm reading. It's the same information. It's the same story. But it's read in his unique way where you know exactly that that's Ludacris when he's reading because he's bringing himself into it and his Southern sort of Atlanta rap style into it. So today when we're creating information, like it's interesting, a lot of the Pokémon stuff that I do, which is more, more, more entertainment, although there is some education in there as well for that audience, I'm taking the lessons there and I'm putting them back into the entrepreneurial education world that I'm in. Yeah, right. Like What I'm learning about YouTube, especially titles and thumbnails and how to keep a person retained throughout a video and the stories that you tell. I mean, really at the base of all this is storytelling. I feel like this is going to be the literal number one skill that any, anybody needs to learn right now, especially with AI and everything becoming so commoditized and so easily accessible. And the truth is, again, if information were the answer, then we'd all be where we want to be.

Right.

So it's not. So there's, it's much deeper than that.

Well, so let's go to something like retention. On stage yesterday, you showed and talked a lot about, you know, the retention curves in YouTube and how you studied it and what you learned. What are some of those things that you've learned from growing Deep Pocket Monster and been able to take into, you know, all of your content, not just the entertainment, but also the business?

Yeah. So for example, one style of video that we do on the Pokémon channel, or I did, was I would buy these mystery boxes on eBay for like $500, $1,000, and I'd film myself opening them. And this is really fun because you don't know what's inside. And generally speaking, the mystery boxes on eBay is trash.

Like someone's getting rid of a bunch of cards, right?

And they're trying to like make whatever money they can, but it's still a fun video because you never know what you get. So inherently there's retention in there because you're like, is Pat going to make his money back or not? And generally speaking, I don't. Uh, however, going a little bit deeper into the retention graphs, which is really amazing about YouTube, they give you that data. And now only now after several years, we're starting to see similar things in the podcasting world, which is great retention. I noticed on all of the videos that I did, like the first few people dropped off, meaning the graph went down whenever I showed up on camera.

And you're just like, ooh, yeah, but the data doesn't lie.

A little hit to the ego, but it makes sense. The promise of the video is this mystery box and what's inside. Why would they need to hear me talk about why I purchased this mystery box and all the information about like, this is what intrigued me about the listing. Nobody cared about that. They just wanted to see what was inside. So that shifted our strategy to not— no longer having me do the intro, rather like, let's just start with the box being opened, right? Like right there. And we start to see the retention graphs doing much better and then a slower drop-off. More videos published means more data. Get those reps in. One of the videos we did had a box that had binders in it. It was the first time we ever had like binders in a mystery box video. And we noticed that when I was showing the binders in the middle of the video, the retention graph was absolutely flat.

Which, for anyone who doesn't know, flat retention is exactly what you want.

That's great. That means people are into whatever it is you're talking about. And like, literal 4-minute period where nobody left. And that's insane. And so we looked at that and we're like, binders. What if we just bought binders? Like, screw the mystery boxes. Let's just buy other people's collections if they're selling them. And we found a bunch of people who were, and we just did binder collection purchases. Those videos popped off. We didn't know to do that until we got the data that told us to do that. So the binders were really interesting. Now, one thing that I talk about in Lean Learning is this idea of experimentation, right? Like controlling the amount of additional stuff you have beyond the stuff that you're committed to. Because a lot of people will say, people like Alex Hormozi say, you just need to do the one thing and do it and lean into it and one thing only, like nothing else. And I understand why that's there, because we kind of go everywhere when we allow ourselves too much freedom. But I allow myself 20% of time for experimentation to play in whatever I do. When you look at a week, that's maybe Friday, right? Monday to Thursday, 80%. Friday, 20%. The 80% is the commitments you already have, the things you're already supposed to be doing, the responsibilities you have, etc. This 20% allows me to scratch that itch. I call it the 20% itch rule. Allows me to play and has permission. I have now permission to play and experiment and be creative and see what happens. Between 2017 and 2019, my 20% of time was building the SwitchPod. So this invention with Caleb that I got to, you know, promote at the event a number of years back. So thank you for that. I got to meet Casey Neistat at Craft and Commerce, which was cool. And he was like, it should be smaller and you should just keep it black. You don't need any of the colors. And we're like, done. Thank you.

I remember that moment.

You were there and like he was in and out really quickly, but But that was really helpful. Thank you, by the way.

Yeah, it was funny. Like all the colors, he's like, black, only black. That's all you need.

Yeah. He's like, I don't really want to be seen with like a bright color on this. So just start with black. So that's how we did it. And we launched that in February of 2019 to $500,000 in 60 days, which was really cool. And we used lean learning to do that because we had never invented anything before. So we found the resources we need at the right time. I know I'm going on a tangent here, but even at Craft and Commerce, there were a couple people who spoke on stage who had already promoted and had used Kickstarter to be very successful.

The guys from Studio Neat.

Studio Neat. That's right. And, um, we got to meet them and chat with them and we were like, what were, what, what, if you could do Kickstarter all over again, what's one thing you would want to make sure you absolutely do? And they were like, well, we had too many pledge levels.

It just complicated it.

Yeah. It just caused too much havoc. So then when we did our Kickstarter, we just had two levels, like buy one or buy three. That's it. And it was so easy to manage and everything was fulfilled much better.

Yeah.

So the experimentation, right? We have these buckets of videos now, the collection buying videos, the mystery boxes. We have our educational content, which was a bucket, but we always want to have like a little additional room for a play bucket, an experimental bucket.

Yeah.

So we did a video on the channel where I was just doing trick shots. I got inspired by Dude Perfect.

Yep.

And I was like, I can use these Pokémon cards. There's like these energy cards that come in every pack that literally nobody cares about. So what if we did something fun with them and we tried to come up with a, with a story? And the story was, uh, I would try to land one of these cards into a clothespin and I would start the video like Dude Perfect does. They land a crazy cool trick shot right in the beginning to hook somebody, right? So in this video, I share this at Craft and Commerce, boom, I land this trick shot and it's amazing. My kids go, my, my daughter goes crazy. She's like, you did it. My son comes out. And he goes, I bet you can't land it in this, which is a card saver. Like, it's very almost impossible to throw one in there. And it like turned him into this little— it turned it into this little challenge, right? Can I land this energy card into this little card holder within 24 hours or else I'll lose this really expensive card to my son? So he becomes like this villain character in this world.

He does such a great job of it.

He's still the villain in my channel, like, because we keep going back and forth. And when we filmed this video, the retention graph was flat the entire time. And we even had a little notification from YouTube that said 82% of people are still watching this after 30 seconds, which like never happened. So we were like, oh my gosh, we're learning here. I don't think we want to do trick shot videos all the time. We, we're not going to turn into a Dude Perfect. But what do we learn from this? Well, people love the challenge and it opens up that retention to stay till the end to see what happens. So we said, okay, what if we combine the binders that people love with the challenge? So that's where I did my first binder challenge video where I had to try to complete a set of Pokémon cards in 24 hours or else I lose them all. That video, not only did it have the highest retention graph that we had, And it was a much longer video too, so it added watch time. That saw 11 million views. And that one, the one single video has accounted for 80,000 additional YouTube subscribers. And I think in the analytics, it was like $45,000 in ad revenue from one video. And so we're like, oh, we have a formula now, right? We couldn't have started. We wouldn't have known to start with that formula.

But you're You have all these little learnings, right? Like, that's interesting, that shows up in the data, and you're piecing it together and, and just seeing like compounding returns over time as you keep learning. Correct.

And so now we are sort of money bucket, if you want to call it that, is these challenges and different versions of them. A 2-hour set completion challenge, a 48-hour one, collaborations with others who want to get involved with this, with this as well. And they each stack on each other and they each serve each other, right? A person who watches the fourth one will get served the first one, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And so now that we have this bucket that we know works really well, we can go and do what I like to call micro mastery within these. So I, micro mastery is a lesson in inside of Lean Learning where you take this thing that's big and often overwhelming and you break it down into its little components. And in the world of business for me, I use the example in the book, it was public speaking for me. I wanted to be a professional and amazing public speaker, but it was so overwhelming. Overwhelming, and there were so many resources, and I wanted to do it all and do it really well. So number one, I hired a coach. I got Mike Pachione to help me, and he was really influential in the beginning. Having a mentor to kind of guide you so you're not learning from a million resources, you're just learning from the one. But then getting those reps in, and every time you do, you try to improve one little thing. Very Atomic Habits and James Clear in its approach. So for example, I tried to figure out, okay, if I were to learn one small thing in the world of public speaking that could help me more than anything? Like, what's the highest leverage thing? What would it be? Storytelling. You could have no slides and tell a great story, right? And still compel an audience. Um, just like how if you have a good story and terrible video quality, it could still be a great YouTube video, right? So I learned that and I focused on that, hyper-focused on that, read about it, just found resources, had a mentor teach me storytelling specifically and learn those frameworks. Another time it got, it got to the point where I was like, okay, I'm gonna go to this conference and I really want to nail What do I do with my hands? Because that was always a problem for me.

I was like, put it in pocket. Yeah.

So I was like, I'm just going to focus for the next month on learning what world-class speakers do with their hands. Okay. And so I watched like 100 TED Talks and I just was like looking at their hands.

Crop it all out and you're just like only the hands.

That's all I'm focusing on. Right. And again, just hyper-focusing on that for a period of time. It actually reminds me of my friend, uh, my friend James actually, who is an ultra marathon runner. And he's like a professional. He wants to win. Now, one way to improve with running is just to run a lot.

Yep.

But you can improve faster by micromastering these little things. So he got to the point where he hired a film crew who had an ultra slow-mo camera to film his heel hitting the ground so he could analyze the transfer of power and like the, all this stuff. And he focused on that for like an entire month and had like scientists and like really smart people look at it and analyze it. And then he got to a point where he was able to do the thing he wanted to do with it. And then now it's ingrained in him and he can move on.

Right. And he might have like a 10th of a percent increase in that. But he's like, look, this is the thing that I do hundreds of thousands of times over or millions of times over a marathon.

So that's, that's a great point because if you just make an incremental change now over time, that, that gap in difference, that delta becomes huge. So that's why Micro Mastery works really well.

And so you're not trying to say, okay, I'm going to get better at all of public speaking, right? Because you might have— if you tried to do that, you know, you get feedback on every aspect of your talk, you might get a step function improvement, but that's just you took care of all the basics.

Yeah.

You're not making the most obvious mistakes anymore.

Right.

But then you're saying, okay, I have to break it down and master this one part of it.

Right. So if you want to master, if you want to get super pro at something, you don't necessarily need 10,000 hours, right? I mean, you can get there just by putting the reps in, sure, and you'll be a master at it, whatever it might be. Malcolm Gladwell, right? 10,000 hours. But you could learn something in 2 hours. You could master a micro component of what it is you're doing in 2 hours. If you're a YouTuber, what would it look like to master thumbnails?

Okay.

What would that do for you? It would do so much, right? Because you know this, like thumbnails are 90% of the, of it, the title thumbnail packaging around the thing that you're about to kind of share with the world. If you don't have a good title or thumbnail, you might as well not even have the video. Sadly, that's just the world of YouTube. So hyper-focusing on thumbnails, that's what— that's how MrBeast got big. I went to VidSummit in Dallas and— no, it was in LA, but now it's in Dallas. Anyway, MrBeast was going to speak there and I was like, yes, I'm going to absorb everything I can from MrBeast. I want it all. His entire 2-hour talk was about thumbnails because he knows that's what's most important.

And everyone's like, give me all the tips you want to cover. Of course we'll touch on thumbnails, but all this. And he's like, no, no, no, it's just thumbnails.

It's just thumbnails down to the colors being used and the contrast and the different iterations. And now we have the ability to split test and even learn even faster in the world of YouTube. So that's, that's just an example.

So you talked about storytelling. You know, the packaging really matters. What are some of those things that, that you bring from the entertainment channel that you've done and everything you've learned that you're like, look, if I were to take over running your YouTube channel, you know, you take over running a business YouTube channel and you're like, here are the 3 things that I'm going to absolutely obsess over.

So on the Pokémon channel, again, learning as we go, uh, there was this set I was trying to complete called Pokémon 151. It celebrates the original 151 Pokémon from the Johto region. Anyway, I tried to complete the set in 151 minutes because that's kind of, that's kind of a cool hook. I failed. And the audience loves when I fail, by the way. So I tried it again and I was really, really concerned of failing a second time.

And this— you're going to stores, to trading events, calling people up, right?

Right. Whatever I can do within 151 minutes. Usually I'm at a convention or at some shops or things like that. I was so worried about a second failure because I was like, I don't want to like just bombard my audience with the same set and the same cards and the same challenge. 3 times in a row, but I failed the second time and I was like, well, I have to do it again because I can't leave the audience hanging. But what was really interesting is all the comments on that second video where I failed again, they were like, you have to get this right.

Now they're invested, right?

They're invested. And I did a third time and then I completed it. And it was just like, what was really funny was the third video has more views than both the other videos combined. And what I learned was what we were doing across multiple videos was we were creating a story arc, much like how your favorite anime might be about something like One Piece, for example. We're getting nerdy here, but One Piece is about Luffy in his search for the One Piece, like the hidden treasure. That's the whole, that's the story. But within that, there are many stories or story arcs, right? Like Marineford arc, which takes 50 episodes, and, you know, Fishman Island, which might take 40 episodes. There's over 1,000 episodes, but there's these, there's these moments that have each have their own villain, their own mini story within that. This was my 151 story arc inside of this channel. And so what I'm taking from that is that instead of just like, here's an individual video about XYZ, which is what most educational creators do. It's, let me take you on this journey. For example, maybe I'm trying to sell a product. It launches in one month, and I'm going to share with you exactly how we're going to launch this thing. And it's going to take a few videos. And in this video, we're going to, we're going to work on positioning statements, because positioning statements for your product, the promise that you're making, is really important. And I'm going to learn about it, and you're going to, you're going to see it. And we're going to find out in a month if this actually works. But this is the plan. Video number 2. Now we're going to work on pricing. Here's my education around pricing, but it's built into the story arc that you've now created that gets people to subscribe because they know what's coming. And that's the big secret. People don't subscribe because they like the video they just saw. That's what we think. But that's what a thumbs up or a heart is for. A subscription is I want to know what comes next.

Yeah, I'm opting into this journey.

Correct. Correct. And that was my issue with my first YouTube channel. My first YouTube channel, which was Smart Passive Income, and it was about business. It was random. It was about business. But that's so general. People would subscribe for my podcasting tutorial and then I'd do a video about SEO that they didn't care about. And then I do a video about affiliate marketing. Maybe some of them do. I think in my head that they do. But they initially subscribe because they want podcast stuff. And then when they don't get that next, unfortunately what that does is YouTube goes, oh, the subscribers here aren't watching this video that this YouTuber created, so we're not going to send it out to more people.

So I'm thinking about applying this in business. There's things that both you and I have done of like personal business challenges that we've built in public. I mean, Kit was started that way, right? The web app challenge of give me 6 months. Let me see if I could pull this off. It was in a, I mean, now it would do very well on YouTube, like that kind of content, but you know, did it in blog form. You would do it with the challenges of like building the niche websites or things like that. So there's that category that you can tell your own story as you learn something. But I'm also realizing in business content, you could have the same recurring characters where like, like on this show, for example, I do a lot of coaching as we get up on the board. I could bring people back and then, you know, get the— I don't know how often I could bring them back, but, you know, get the viewers hooked on like, oh, how is Jay's business going? You know, he's on this journey to get to $2 million a year for Casper Studios, his AI development agency.

Yeah.

You know, he was at $500,000 a year when he came on. Here was the advice, like, you know, going on and on. And then I guess you could also then later do a supercut of like the full, you come back and say like, okay, we're now 2 years in. Here's Jay's entire journey. And it's like 2 and a half hours long.

Actually, we did that with another arc that we created. We tried to collect one of every Pokémon. There's 1,025. And that took 8 videos to do. And we were like, what would happen if we just put all these videos together in one video to tell the whole story? And we just took out those moments where we're like, next week, Check it out. We just went right into it. That video is 4 hours and 37 minutes. And we're like, is this going to hurt our channel? Like, what's going to happen? 3.3 million people have seen that. And it has accounted for an additional $50,000 in revenue. And it is, it is an, it is a starter video for many people who then dive into the rest of our channel. So people are watching much longer. And again, most people are watching on the television. And I've also found, and this is very common for channels with very long videos, people are putting them on before they go to bed and they're just— it's just background, which is great for retention.

Right.

I will say absolutely.

That's, that's fascinating.

Yeah. So they'll put it on and it's just like, oh, it's just background. Like I do that with Friends at home. My wife and I just have Friends playing.

Oh yeah. You know, I mean, I've watched all of Friends so often because of exactly that. Joey's just, you know, our buddy.

Right. Exactly. You had mentioned recurring characters and I want to talk about that because in my videos I have recurring characters. Some of them are store shop owners who are now famous people go into these stores and want their autograph now, which is pretty neat.

Like, are there stores that your channel has helped, like, put on the map?

100%, which is great. And they're like, Pat, you've done so much for us. And I'm like, no, you've done so much for me. And they like hook me up and they like, whatever. It's awesome.

Yeah.

Um, everybody can win. This is pretty, this is cool. But there are even inanimate things that have become quote unquote recurring characters. So I told, I told this at Craft of Commerce, we, because a lot of our challenges are based on time. I bought a kitchen timer on Amazon and put googly eyes on it, and we just named it Steve. We even have like foam eyebrows, so it could be mad or sad or whatever. And Steve has now become like a popular request and character. When I take Steve with me, literally a kitchen timer, people want to take pictures with it. We're making a plushie Steve that our audience can buy. We're in the middle of manufacturing that right now. We have merch with Steve on it and he's almost like the villain because I'm up against time. Right.

So I imagine for you, like personified, you know, an unknown or like an inanimate unknown thing, right? Like, oh, we're just racing against time. And now you actually have, you can cut to Steve and Steve could be like gleeful at how far behind you are or upset that you're about to solve this.

Yeah, we've had little stories where like, Steve is at the beach. We like literally put him on the towel and like he's, we just film him. Like it's literally a kitchen timer, dude. Like it's so stupid and cool. I'd say we're world building here. So in your world here in the Nathan Barry Show, like what things could you have that people can know about beyond just the guest? Like maybe you have like a giant ass piece of chalk. It's like, It's like comically huge. And it's like, here, take, take the, the big ass chalk and do this. And it's just like, now you can sell a merch line.

Well, cause we could do a, you know, a very random thing, right? When we're drawing on the board, uh, we've got these pieces of paper that go up there and it's black. Turns out markers that write consistently on black paper are actually a pain. If I were to open that drawer right there, you would see about 200 markers in there as we've tested every different variety.

That's so good. So, so you cut to when you're going into this drawer, you open it and and you see the 200 markers and you don't say anything about it. You don't say like, here are the 200 markers because it just becomes a thing that like, if you know, you know, right? It's almost like the secret menu at In-N-Out. If you ever come to California or wherever there's an In-N-Out and somebody is not like, if you're new and you've never been to In-N-Out and you talk to somebody who's been at In-N-Out, they're going to tell you about the secret menu. Like you need to get an animal style or get animal style fries. It's like, if you know, you know, and we all have the opportunity.

What is it? A double, single-double protein style. Like there's all kinds of—

I mean, you can get a 100x100 if you want.

I don't even know what that is.

So 5x5 is 5 patties. So 100x100 is 100 patties. It would make for good content, I guess, but it would be like, yeah, the worldbuilding that you're creating a sense of brand by inserting these little things that are unique to you because of just what you have, right? Maybe the microphones, maybe you name them like this is Mike and I don't know. Just, and that's how you find out what those things are, right? That they're just, they're just dumb. And they, sometimes the audience makes those things up, right? Like with my, um, with my Shorts channel. So I have a Shorts channel within a year, we were able to get it to, uh, 3.5 billion views and it's generating about 10 million views a day now. So I have 10 million people every day watching me, but not my face. It's, it's my hands open up a pack of cards every single day. And my thumbs are weird looking. They're like Megan Fox thumbs. That's what I say because it makes them sound a little bit better.

The most attractive person with odd thumbs.

Nintendo thumbs, like brachial something or other is like the scientific term, whatever. People were like, dude, your thumbs are gross, dude.

And so that might make you be like, oh, I guess I won't.

Yeah, I started—

watch me open cards. Like, how do I hide my thumbs while I open cards? Which, that would be entertaining in itself.

That would be. And I have like a funny side story to that. But I instead decided to embrace that. I'm like, hey, my thumbs look like Digletts, which is a Pokémon that kind of looks like those thumbs. And they're Diglett thumbs now. And now when I go to events and I get asked and even paid now to come and sign autographs, I'm signing Diglett cards all day long. Wow.

Because of—

that's the connection—

the joke that you, you embraced and you made a meme.

And every once in a while I bought these thumb covers from Amazon that make it look like real thumbs. And I put them on and I open the cards and I don't say a word. And it's like, people are just like, they're in this world now and they get it.

So, so someone just scrolling through and they're seeing it for the first time, they're not going to know at all, but other people are going to be like, oh, if you know, you know. And they're like, Pat, those aren't your thumbs. You know, like where are your actual thumbs?

Or somebody might ask a question and then my community will come in and say, oh, the new guy, check out the new guy here. Or you'll learn, just keep watching. You know, they'll like fight for you on that. Um, it's just so interesting. It's, it's It's, it's belonging, it's brand connection. It's human is really what it is. It's, it's, it's making, it's going back to how things used to be before the internet. Right. But on the internet now.

Oh man, there's so much I want to dive into. Let's talk about the Shorts channel because you built to a million subscribers on YouTube with the main channel. How long did that take?

We got to a million in 7 months.

That's wild. And then the Shorts channel is completely separate.

I didn't link to it from anything.

Why didn't you link to it? Was that— is that Pat the experimenter?

Yes.

Just being like, I want a clean test.

Well, two reasons. Two reasons. This is the most common question. So I have— I have my long-form channel, Deep Pocket Monster, and then I have my short-form channel. And it could have been very easy to just be like, hey, it's Pokémon cards. Like, everybody go check out my new channel.

Audience overlap is substantial.

Yes, but no.

Okay.

Because the reason it— I felt it's different, like the general rule is same audience, same channel, different audience, different channel. Even for podcasters, do I put my podcast on my YouTube channel? You know, whatever. People who watch my long-form videos and sit on the couch with their families over dinner.

Yep.

For an hour and a half is not the same person necessarily as the person who is in their bed doomscrolling at night.

Right.

And just wants a quick fix. Half my audience is on the toilet. I've called them out on it. Like in the videos, it's really funny. They're like, how'd you know?

I know.

And so my theory was just like, it's just a different audience. Like it's a different behavioral audience. Yes, it's the same topic. There is some overlap there. However, there's still a lot of people who don't know the other channel exists. And I wanted to prove that I could do this without getting any help from the outside. So there is no team. It's just me. I'm editing these videos. And the way that I approach this is in a very lean learning way. I said, I want to learn how to do this. So I'm going to give myself 60 days. I'm going to publish daily, which means I'm going to get the reps in. I'm going to base my wins off of uploads, not views and whatever.

The thing that you can control.

The thing that I can control, because I can't control views. I can, of course, consciously try to get better and get more views. But if I get to day 60 and I've gone daily, I've won. And I'll probably learn something at least along the way, whether this thing works or not. Day 30, going daily with opening packs. The videos are getting maybe 300 to 500 views per day. Not much in the grand scheme of things. And the old Pat would have been like, okay, I tried it. It's not like this is— I'm bad at this. But again, the goal wasn't the views. The goal is the uploads. However, something interesting I've noticed did happen at day 30. My editing time personally for these videos went from 45 minutes to about 12 minutes. So I was—

I actually got good at it.

I was getting much better. Yeah. And learning the shortcuts and all this stuff just simply because I was repeating myself. But I also had 30 pieces of data that could teach me some stuff. And one thing I learned, a small pattern that I discovered— again, I think a big theme of this is look at your analytics today— yeah, was that the videos where there was a sticker, a price tag on the pack, had higher views. Something visual in the first second that people could see this different. And when I was in person interacting at a card shop, held people till the end. There was just something about it. I didn't need to know what, but I just saw that that was the case. Day 35, I published a video that incorporates those two things, and I guess I hit the right wave. And maybe there's a little luck involved, sure, but That video hit 750,000 views in 24 hours.

What did it go on to do?

I think 15 million views over time. It still gets views. But then all the videos, everything, everything elevated from there. And it was just like people started to use it in their video, the same song, and like all— it just, it just took off.

Well, so I mean, again, you're finding— you're putting in enough or putting out enough pieces of content, enough reps so that you can actually learn from it. Because if someone's doing this once a month, right, or that sort of thing, you just get 12 reps per year and you can't find a pattern in that. No, there are the chances of finding— you would have to be very lucky to find a pattern in that.

Quantity is key. I know people say quality is key, but in the beginning, quantity is key. And I know that's a little controversial, but I'm not saying sacrifice value. Yeah, but sacrifice a little quality to get quantity. So you get more, more data and more and more reps in. And yet the Shorts channel just continued to explode and blow up. I started to learn even more things. For example, the monetization on YouTube at the time, this was before, before Shorts were up to 3 minutes. It was 60 seconds or less. It's now changed, but back then it was, if your video was 60 seconds or less, it was a short and you can monetize it as a short. And the monetization is different. I mean, the RPMs are like peanuts compared to the long-form channel. So I still think the long-form is king, but with that many views, they were able to stack up. So I'm generating currently about $18,000 to $20,000 a month in— off the Shorts channel, off just the Shorts channel alone. Now I'm also repurposing these videos on other channels like Instagram and TikTok. And I found that on TikTok, in order to monetize, you have to be over 60 seconds.

Okay.

In order to qualify for monetization. So what I ended up doing was taking my 59.5-second video from YouTube and literally just slowing down the last, like, part of it until it extended over a minute.

Yeah.

And then publish that video on TikTok, which then unlocked an additional $5K to $8K per month on TikTok from the same videos. Technically not the same because the ending is just extended just a little over. But that's how I was able to kind of take advantage of both. A lot of people ask me about Instagram. What's Instagram done for you? I've earned $30 from Instagram.

Okay.

From a bonus reel. I am— I was not lucky enough to get in before they removed that.

Yeah.

Yeah. So there are some people who are sort of legacy put into that program that's similar to the others. But it's nothing. It's like, I don't have, I don't like Meta and Instagram really nicely. I mean, they—

Not your favorite.

Not my favorite.

So I want to dive into the monetization and the profit margin on this and the team and all kinds of things. But before that, you have this jingle for the Shorts. Yeah. Uh, what, like, how did that come about? And then how important do you think that is for, you know, hitting 1.7 million subscribers on Shorts?

1.7 million subs on YouTube. 1 million on Instagram, 1.5 on TikTok, 10 million views a day hearing this jingle. And there's also a secondary jingle, which is at the end. If I get a good card, it's a good jingle. If it's a bad card, like the same voiceover woman.

What's the jingle?

It depends. I've actually created like a library of essentially disses. Like it's gotten so bad that like, it's like, wow, you smell like losing or like, like 'Have you talked to your therapist about this?' And it's like, that's how the video ends when I get a bad card, right? And it's so funny because I'm imagining this, like, voiceover artist. Her name's Kim from Australia. I hired her through Music Radio Creative. Like, she's a very famous singer. Okay. And like, imagining her in a sound booth, like, 'You smell like losing,' is just like the most hilarious thing to me. But anyway, so I have these jingles made, but I didn't have that library at first. I just had the initial intro.

The initial one is the, should I open it?

Yeah. Should I open it or should I keep it sealed? There's a very like raw video or audio of me singing that and then giving it to Music Radio Creative to turn into what it became, which is sort of like a '50s sort of like jingle that you'd hear on like a commercial. Like, you know, it was purposefully done to be an earworm.

Yep.

It has become that. And it is definitely something that auditorially marks this as my video. And every day people watch these videos and it becomes ingrained in them. So much so that now people are saying or singing this when they are at card shops and I'm not even there. They're just like before they open it.

Your brand is just spreading.

It's spreading, spreading so much now that it has become a parody for many. Like it's— they're taking this audio and using it in different, in different ways. And for example, there was a guy who did a video that went pretty viral where he was trying to lose weight. Every time he would grab a bag of chips. Should I open it? Should I keep it sealed?

And it was just, it's just like sets it aside. Right.

Okay. This is how I lost 50 pounds. Uh, I, there was a DJ who was like performing at a rave in front of 15,000 people and he inserted that jingle into his set and played it and then opened a pack of cards on stage, which was, which was awesome. Uh, and he and I connected, he invited me to come out and do it like with him. And I just, at the time it didn't work out. Uh, And then I showed this at the event. There was like, I just showed a picture of a coffin.

Everybody lost it. Cause as soon as, like, you didn't even play the reel yet.

You didn't have to say anything.

Everyone's just like, what?

And then I played it and it's this guy at a mortuary who's like, should I open it or should I keep it sealed?

And he's just like, I think, I think we're gonna keep this one sealed. Yeah.

So, so it's been pretty cool. It has been important for distinguishing it from other channels. I'm not the first channel to open packs, right? Like this has been done for years. But I was able to find a way by just spending a little bit of time to be creative, to add my flavor to it. And what's been really interesting, I haven't talked to many people about this, but there's been so many now other Pokémon creators who have put jingles in their Shorts. And every time the comment section blasts them for it, they're like, this is just a Deep Pocket Monster clone. Yeah. You're just a clone. Like, try to be creative a little bit. And I feel bad because I, I get where they're trying to do this.

And because they're like, oh, this works. I'm learning from another channel, all of that. Right. But your audience is like, even though the lyrics are different. Yeah.

Well, this is just a sec. This is just like a dollar store version of Deep Pocket Monster. Right. Uh, and I feel bad and I try to help them. And, you know, there's been some people who have learned, uh, there's a guy named Spot, uh, Scott's PC for Personal Collection, Scott's PC. He has a, a, um, a gacha machine, which is a, in Japan, if you go, that's like the vending machines, you put a quarter in, you get a ball. And that's how he starts his videos. He put a quarter in, open the ball, and it says, I'm going to open packs until I find a Charizard or something. And so he's taken this idea of at least some reason in the beginning to stay till the end. For me, it's the inherent question of, well, am I going to lose money or not on this thing? Should I open it or should I keep it sealed? Right. That's my version. He's found his version, which is great. And so again, there's a line between imitation and inspiration. And it's going to be different for every niche and every creator, but you got to find it.

So did you have the jingle from the very beginning of the Shorts channel? How far in did you add the jingle?

I think it was 10 days in.

Okay, so it came pretty quick. But what was the thing that, that made you say, I need to try this?

It was just a random idea.

Okay. Like, it's part of that, like, 20% experimenting, you know, completely.

Um, and if you go back into the history of the channel, you'll see it when it drops. And it wasn't like episode 1 back then.

Right.

But when I did it the second time, I was like, day 2, day 3, day 4.

And so was it, you, you just put it out on one. Were you thinking you were going to do it on all the additional, all the future ones, or is it you saw how it performed and you're like, well, let's try it day 2 and see.

I was, I had got it done to hopefully be something that I could put in there. Uh, And it just, it just stuck after the, my initial, my very first video was me, um, going to Barnes Noble, buying cards and then opening them in the car.

Okay.

Like the idea being like, I couldn't wait to get home to open these things. Like I'm that much of a degenerate that I have to like open these things now. And I positioned it and I was like, this doesn't feel right. Like it's a little too self-deprecating, but it's also relatable. Uh, but then I tried another thing. Another thing. And then I was like, you know what, I think I'm going to try this jingle to kind of create the idea of being like, can I create a show so that everybody can kind of know like, oh, because I was trying to find the thing that I could become known for. And like the open it in the car guy, because he's can't— he has no patience guy doesn't make sense. Or I didn't want that. But like the should I open it guy, right? So like, what could you become known for? How could people in one sentence share your stuff, right? I was the passive income guy and then I became the podcasting guy for a long time. I helped people like Tim Ferriss start a show and so many others, and I was known as the podcasting guy, right? Chris Ducker was the virtual assistant guy for so long because they kept just hitting the same message over and over again. You don't become the guy by— or the gal— by sharing 100 different messages, right? You hit the same message over and over and over again.

Okay, so then let's talk monetization. Because you've always been transparent about numbers all the way. You know, that was a big thing with SBI. Income reports, do the income reports and people would be like, wait, how much did he earn from Bluehost this month? How, you know, Bluehost, each of these things, it was a lot of money.

Oh yeah. I was making at its peak, it was making six figures a month just from that one affiliate deal. And then their customer service just went to crap. And then I was like, I mean, I'm sure they're great now, but maybe, I don't know. I've moved on, but, uh, they were great and then they weren't. And then that hurt me. As the person promoting that company. And so I eventually stopped.

Moved on from that. But so how do you think about monetization in the entertainment world? Right? Because people aren't making the same level of like business transaction where it's like, oh, I'm signing up for a hosting company that I'm going to be with for like 8 years. And so the LTV is incredible. You obviously have the monetization from YouTube, but what is, you know, what is the business side of Deepak and Manish?

Oh, there's, there's business.

I'm sure.

You know, and I have this unique position of having done business and entrepreneurship and working with other companies. You know what the attention is worth. Yes. And I also would have known to partner— what it means to partner with businesses. Um, fast forward, I'm even an advisor for a couple collectible-related companies now. Oh wow. Like how I'm an advisor for Kitten. Yeah. Um, so like there's still a pair— there's a lot of parallels even in the entertainment world. When people think of monetization in the entertainment world, they generally think of brand deals, right? Like not in, in addition to YouTube ad revenue, it's brand deals, getting a company to pay you a lot of money to be sponsored, to sponsor the video, be placed in the video or whatever it might, it might be. Right. So that's one thing we do. And I do that, you know, at this point in the long-form channel, to give you some metrics, I can charge up to— I've charged up to $30,000 for a 60-second ad spot for one video.

And this is you doing an actual ad read, not just an ad read.

Yeah. And in general, it's for a company that's related to the industry. So another retail card shop or some event or something anything like that. Um, so, so that, that does exist. Uh, affiliate marketing exists in the entertainment space. So one of my first videos that popped off was a video, a how-to educational video about how to correctly store your cards in a binder. And that was the positioning of it. The idea was just like, I want to teach people how to, you know, keep their cards safe.

Yeah.

But me knowing the importance of title, thumbnail, positioning, The title of this was The Correct Way to Store Your Cards in a Binder. And then on the thumbnail said, you're doing it wrong. So if you're a collector and you see that, you don't think that you're doing any of that wrong when you store your cards. But now this opens up the question.

Yeah. Well, now I'm wondering, you know, I'm either like, no, I'm not.

Yeah.

I'm going to watch the video to prove you that I'm not doing it wrong. Or I'm like, am I?

Am I right?

And you really only end up in one of those two camps. Exactly.

Exactly. So this video blasted off right now, 3.8 million views on a how to store your Pokémon cards, like in a binder video. And I recommend a binder in that video as like the best solution. So you don't practice bad binder behavior, which has become this phrase, a part of the culture of the brand now that I purposefully put in there knowing because I knew from the education world and in business that if we create frameworks, if we create these memorable alliterations, Right. People are more likely to absorb them. So I did the same thing in the entertainment channel, like bad binder behavior. And it's this phrase now that everybody uses when they see somebody else. They'll even comment it on other people's channels who aren't properly storing their cards. Like, I feel a little bad, but it's also really awesome. So that company has an affiliate program. And so I signed up for it and I promoted it and we have made nearly half a million dollars for them. Wow. And so I get a commission on that. I think they're in the UK, so I've made, I think, £60,000, like, in take-home money from that, which is awesome. But I also know because I've done business with companies like yours before, that when you are an affiliate for a company and you do well for them, when you do volume, it opens up doors to conversations that you couldn't have had before. So I reached out to them. I said, hey, I'd love to work with you even more deeply. And they're like, we know who you are. You've made us a lot of money. What do you want?

Uh-huh.

And initially I was like, well, it'd be really cool if we had a branded binder, like my logo on it. We could sell it through your website. So I don't have to deal with any of the shipping and stuff. And they were like, totally, we're down to do that for sure. And they did that. We sold a lot of them and I even had them put an expression in the binder in gold foil. When they open it, it reads, good binder behavior.

Yes. You were like closing that loop. Someone, someone bought it and they're all the way through and then they'll be telling the story to their friends. Or whatever, like why it says good binder.

Yeah, they'll be at a card show or something and open it and be like, why does that say that? Or they might be like, oh, you watched the Pokémon or whatever, right? It's kind of cool. But I took it even further when I did this story arc that I talked about earlier of collecting one of every Pokémon. I was like, wouldn't it be cool if we can put them all into one single binder and make it kind of comically big? And I asked them, I was like, could you make like a 4.5-foot-tall binder where every page has 64 cards? And they were like, for you, absolutely. And that was really smart of them too. I mean, they spent a lot of money and did a lot of research and found companies that would— they basically crafted it by hand because there's no machinery that can do that.

And no one's going to mass produce. It's not like, oh, let's make 10,000 units.

No, no, no. Exactly. It's not economically— it doesn't make sense to manufacture that. But economically, it made sense for them to work with their top affiliate, right, to insert this into the story. And now it's in every video in that series. Series, Vault-X is now being promoted again and again, not by a 60-second ad, but literal integration into the story that's being told. Not even just like in the background. It's a part of the story. We even named this binder Chad because it's like a giga Chad.

And, um, when I think what's interesting about that is it goes all the way back to not just the storytelling because it's this, this bigger arc that you're on, but also the thumbnails because now you can have thumbnails where people are like, well, this looks Photoshopped. Like that binder can't possibly be real. And so I click it. I'm like, That's— you actually have a 4-foot-tall binder.

Yeah, that's— that was very much part of the conversation. It needs to be big because it's going to look like so obnoxious on the thumbnail. And I have to credit my producer, Dan Norton, on that. And speaking of team, like, he's my producer. He's behind the scenes, like, helping me with the storytelling a lot. And he's diving into a lot of books and all these kinds of things. He helps me manage the editing team, which is one person, uh, actually two people now. We just hired another one. And then we have a Discord server guy. Like, that's it. It's the most profitable thing I've ever done.

What's top line revenue at for this business? Whatever you want to share.

Um, top line revenue. Well, I can give you revenue. It, there's a lot of monetization happening from all kinds of different places, uh, from brand deals, sponsorships. There's like the, the, the short—

We haven't even talked events as well.

In 2 weeks I'm hosting an event in Tampa and 5,000 people are coming. We've sold our 5,000th ticket while I was here.

Wow.

Um, I spent $0 on marketing for that. Um, it's our 3rd year. First year, this, this is the first year it'll be profitable. Yeah. But like, you know, events aren't necessarily going to be profitable. But again, that's my other book, Superfans. In action, bringing the community together. And we have 800 vendors there. It's going to be a fun time. We're going to play like Price is Right style games, except instead of groceries, it's Pokémon cards. And it's like, we're going to nerd out on this. And people on the outside are like, what the heck?

This is stupid.

And we're like, you can think what you want. We're having a good time. Right? Uh, the YouTube channel and all the brand deals and everything like that, I would guess it's, it's, uh, it's a little over $1 million a year. At this point.

That's amazing.

From stuff. I'm a 42-year-old man opening cards with cartoons on them and having the time of my life.

But I, what's so cool to me about it is it's everything that I've always known you for, which is picking something that you love, becoming completely obsessed with it and saying, I'm going to learn everything I can about this, not in a like academic way, but in a very, very practical like how can we test and iterate and learn and go from there and then just go so deep on, on mastery and to do it with fans in a community.

Yeah. And I mean, the deepness is in the serving of that audience. Wherever I go, I want to be remembered for providing so much value in that space. Like my mom always taught me, like, leave the room that you're in cleaner than when you left. And that's what I'm doing in the niches that I'm in.

Who you really remind me of is Jesse Cole from Savannah Bananas.

And so I love Jesse.

He's amazing. And his whole thing, you know, fans first. That is his phrase that he's built.

They're selling out 80,000.

Yeah. And so I've known Jesse probably for, I don't know, 7 years, 8 years, something like that. And I first met him actually when we were flying to an event. And so I boarded a Phoenix to Cabo flight and there's this guy in a yellow tuxedo on the plane. And like, you know, he was sitting a couple of rows ahead of me. And so I saw him come in and I was like, I don't know who this guy is, but I'm almost certain we're going to the same event, you know? And this is like a business mastermind with like, I don't know, 100 people or something. And so as we're waiting for the shuttle, I meet him and, you know, he's like, yeah, I got this baseball team that used to be called The Savannah Sand Gnats. That was the—

Sand Gnats?

I didn't know that's what it was. That was the previous name.

Savannah Bananas is what I know them for now. Yeah.

And so he bought the team and they renamed it. People were super mad at them for renaming the team. I'm like, they're called the Sand Gnats. Like, what is this? Uh, anyway, so, you know, he was just always doing this and just this deep obsession with storytelling and entertainment and how to hook and hold attention. The first Savannah Bananas game that I went to, they were already popular. Like at this point, you know, maybe 500,000 followers on social, that kind of thing when I went to a game, but they were still playing regular baseball and just adding in all this extra entertainment. And so it was at their home stadium. It was probably 3,000 people, right? And then it's just like compounded and you see his obsession with learning and iterating and serving fans. And now, yeah, the Clemson stadium was 81,000 people. They just did a huge thing at Disneyland.

That's so cool, dude.

Like, it's just all of this. And he's like, hey, there's actually not stadiums big enough. And like taking it on from there. But it's just this obsession with serving people, entertaining people, and putting them first.

Yeah. The world has changed in terms of how we as creators can serve our audience because before we were serving them through information. We were able to, through our expertise, through our own experiences, through our own case studies, share things that weren't available before. Now, pretty much whatever you want to learn how to do, there's a resource to learn how to do that. And so how can we get our audiences to come to us to gather those resources? And it's going to be through personal— your personal brand, the way you show up. It's, it's who you are. It's this worldbuilding that you create. It's how, how do you, how do you become like the anime people choose to watch because something about that anime is relatable, right? There's a reason why most animes take place, Japanese animes take place in high schools.

Yeah.

It's because high school is a moment of a person's life in Japan, at least that was probably the best time of their life because people in Japan, when they move on to the workforce, it's just a grind. Like it's the worst working conditions. So this is why animes are focused around that time when there wasn't as many responsibilities. There were a lot more playful moments, nostalgia, right? And so how can you create those not just nostalgic but relatable, meaningful— how can you bring emotion into what you do and what you talk about? This is how you create more than just subscribers. It's how you create lifelong fans and people who will come to go to at-bat for you, people who will go to your event in Tampa even though you just found them on YouTube. And it's an opportunity we all have. And so this is why leaning not away from information, but leaning toward a transformation of how we show up for our people.

Is there anyone that you, you see in the business world, uh, or any of the maybe more traditional education content creators that you see that is doing this really well, whether it's the story arcs or how, uh, they show up for, for fans or putting in these recurring characters or any of these principles that, that you've seen from the circles that I have been a part of, that many of them overlap with yours.

Honestly, no. The old school OGs are battling this push and pull between like doing what once worked and trying to reposition themselves. And I've been able to do it, but in another space. Yeah. And now I'm learning and I'm trying to bring that back and create more of that in the business world. What's interesting is what I'm seeing on my YouTube feed. I'm seeing a story about a guy who I've never seen before who is trying to build a sock company on Shopify, and I'm into it even though I don't know who this person is because of the way that they're telling the story and the ups and downs and these relatable challenges that they're having. And that's the cool thing. It's for those of you who might be watching who might not yet be at a top level or an authority level, it could just take one story, right, to position you in a way that makes you amazing. I mean, this person isn't an educator per se, but the dude from Sailing with Phoenix who quit his job at a tire store, cashed out his 401(k), bought a sailboat, and sailed from Oregon to Hawaii.

I've seen some of these videos.

He captured the attention of the entire world, right? Not because he was sailing, not because he is teaching anything. But because he represents and did what most people would love to do but never have the balls to do.

Right.

Which is quit his job and sail.

Yeah. I'm thinking about the different times I've seen this play out. I think about Alex Lieberman from Gimlet Media when he did the Startup Podcast years ago.

That was a perfect— that's a perfect example.

He did that so well. And it resulted in, you know, over $100 million exit to Spotify and all of this. But we were all hooked on like, what's he going to name the company? What? Yeah, like what? What's going to happen?

We know some people who bought stake in that company.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's wild. I'm trying to find the balance, though, between there's storytelling of your own business and journey, which works. And especially if you can, You know, use the modern—

you are your own case study.

Yep. And all of that. But then also in the ed— like the education side of it, like I'm hung up on how do you do it when you're not the case study or you're not telling your own journey? Does anything come to mind there?

Yeah. Uh, in a very lean learning way, I'm going to tell you the one resource you need, and it's a book by Donald Miller called Building a StoryBrand. Right. It literally teaches that. And it's been a top seller for a very long time because when you— it's, it's even better to tell the stories of others versus yourself, especially if it's your clients. And when you position them as the hero of this story and you learn the story structure, the story structure of like the hero's journey, the before, the challenges, the, the rebirth and coming out of that hardship, that story itself sells your thing, right? So if there was one thing to leave your audience with, with like, get better at this, is tell the story, surface a story, not of yourself, although that's important, but of your customer, of a subscriber. And that's one thing I love about Kit and what you've done. You've really focused on that and tried to do that. And I think more can be done to surface those stories and tell those stories out there in the world.

What I'm thinking about is there's a creator, I think he goes by Mr. Ballen.

Nathan Barry.

He's a former Navy SEAL, and a lot of his content is telling these war stories and all that, but he's branched out. So he might be telling how he went through SEAL training or being in this battle or something else, but now he's just telling all kinds of interesting stories or things that are fascinating, and he has such a great style to it, but it's just him talking. And there's, B-roll or things cut over it. Uh, but I'm realizing that like that format would work for any niche where you're just like, obviously you have to write an amazing script and deliver it really well and all that, but you're just like, oh, I just collect and tell really good stories.

Right. And maybe it's not even about a real person. I mean, don't make up like a fake story about a person, but you might even just start a video by saying if you were a teacher teaching you know, parents how to manage elementary school periods of life. Imagine you started a video like this. Imagine you're a parent who gets a call from your teacher saying that your kid just bit somebody else at school.

Yep.

We're in a story now.

Right.

I've put you in that moment of considering what would happen. I've taken you away from, is this going to be useful for me or not, to what would I do in that situation? It could be as simple as that.

Right.

But when you know and you can pinpoint certain clients of yours and use that as story to sell to others, it's so powerful. A good friend of mine, I think you know him, Stu McLaren.

Yeah, I know Stu.

God, I hate Stu, but I love Stu so much. But I hate Stu because he's so masterful. When I— every time I interview him— I love you, Stu, by the way— every time I've interviewed him, when I ask him a question, he'll answer like this, oh, that's like my student Amber, because she had this problem and she did this and she did this. And like he remembers their last name. He remembers the name of their product. And like, like it's just so engaging and it proves it, but it also deflects it off of him.

Right.

And it makes me root for this person. But then I want to go to where this person learned from. Oh, yeah, it's from him.

Yeah. And he makes the student the hero of all of it. He just helped them unlock this one little thing and then they achieved what they were meant to be.

I'm like, how do you do that? I brought him to my event once and I selfishly asked him, Stu, how do you remember all of those stories? What's your secret? And he laughed and I said, why are you laughing? And he's like, well, Pat, I have a spreadsheet printed out behind my computer that is sorted by problem. And I just have under each problem my students who have solved those problems in some way. And I was like, that's cheating, right? I was so mad, but it was so genius. And he was able to just go, oh, we're talking about this common obstacle that I'm coming across every time I talk to somebody. So let me write down who in my, you know, who of my clients have already solved that problem. And just, I can tell that story.

Well, because I'm thinking about this, you know, for Kit, we have 63,000 paying customers, all creators who have amazing stories. And if someone's like, well, how do I do this? I could launch into like, well, so in Kit, we have this automation feature and it helps you do blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Lame.

More information. Don't need it.

Nobody, nobody cares. Right. But then, you know, you could say, well, let me tell you about Pat. Let me tell you about You know, and again, you can have— I can visualize that grid. Imagine what Stu has, and it could be problem in industry. And I could, you know, be like, oh, I can have a story about someone overcoming that growth problem. Or, you know, it's not about automation, it's about freeing up their time.

Right. If it's a mindset thing, this is where this really comes in handy. I think there is a— like if people are like, can you show me how to do this automation?

If they want a technical answer, we can—

you're not going to be like, you know what? That reminds me of my friend Jerry, who also once had problems with automation, right?

Like, yeah, there's a balance, right?

But if you are talking to a prospect, typically it's not a logical reason why they are not taking action. There's a psychological reason and emotional reason perhaps when you can pull out these stories of similar people. Who are experiencing similar problems and show— basically paint a picture of their future through a client that you already have. It's magic.

I love that. Okay, so where does Deepak Monster go from here?

So there are some things that we have in the works that I cannot yet share because I don't want to reveal them. But we are thinking bigger and we're getting a lot of inspiration from bigger YouTubers on how to mobilize this community and do fun things with them. That, that's That's very vague. Uh, but that's, that's all I can share for now. But this is just the beginning. We're at 1.7 million subscribers on Deep Pocket Monster, just, just about to cross 1.7 million subscribers in, uh, about 4 and a half years. And we see it as, and we treat it as, we film like we are a 10 million subscriber, uh, video channel right now. That's how we got to 1 million.

That's an important phrase, but what does that actually mean? Like, how would you show up if you're like, oh, I'm a YouTuber who's making content about Pokémon or whatever topic versus we are a 10 million subscriber channel and this is how we show up.

That means we are learning how those 10 million subscriber channels are creating content and how we can reach more people. Because if I stayed completely in the world of Pokémon, for example, there's a lot of Pokémon creators who feel stuck because they're talking about like the investment side of Pokémon. But there are only so many people who care about the investment side of Pokémon. And it's, it, there's a lot. I mean, first of all, those videos are not evergreen. And second of all, again, there's a big ceiling there. What I mean by a 10 million subscriber channel is how can we make this Pokémon thing reach so far that it would reach a more general slash mass audience versus just Well, this is only for you if you care about Pokémon. No. And we're starting, we, like, we've always treated it that way. And that's why we're getting comments like, I don't even care about Pokémon, but I can't stop watching these videos. So for us more specifically is getting deeper with the storytelling. It's perhaps more collaborations because we see a lot of bigger creators grow much faster through larger collaborations. And the bigger the channel grows, the more doors open to do those kinds of things. And just instilling the confidence in ourselves as creators and as a team that we are worthy of that 10 million subscriber channel. I mean, and even if we don't hit it, at least if you're, you know, reaching for the stars, you still might land on the moon kind of thing.

Yeah. You know, we only hit 5 million, like, all right, obviously you're going to keep pushing, but yeah, you're going to hit amazing things.

It's, it's, it's so fun though. And I think maybe that's another lesson to pass on to a lot of creators, especially ones who've been doing the same thing over and over again. They feel like they're just stuck. Or lost even. It's find the fun, whether it's starting a new thing or going back to the thing that you're already doing and maybe turning on a lens of fun and trying to find where can you start to enjoy some of this again.

Yeah. What would this look like if it were fun?

What would it look like if it were fun?

Yeah. I love that. And the other thing that I love is that you're just sharing every aspect of the journey. Like you're, you're doing it, you're in it. People can see you know, everything you're doing along the way, but then you're coming out to the meta layer and saying, oh, but here's the lean learning process I'm going through. Here's how I'm applying it and letting people, I guess, follow on a few different levels, which is really fun.

That's been the cool thing about this book. The last chapter in the book is about the power of teaching as a form of learning. For example, I have a friend of mine who is learning how to play the ukulele. He lives in Hawaii and they have access to like the best ukulele players, right? So he's got this master teacher who's teaching him and he's like a few months into it. And the teacher said, hey, now that you know these chords, I want you to teach your son how to play the ukulele. And the dude's like, I'm learning from you. How can I go teach somebody else? And he, the master knew that by teaching the kid, he would simplify it so much that he would then understand it even further himself. So then the master listened to the son play those chords. And then now this guy has got that ingrained and it's like that much further ahead, right? There's power. In teaching. And by writing this book, I was forced to learn how to create the frameworks around what I've always been doing, how I've created multiple successful businesses and always seem to, as other people say, knock it out of the park every time. I mean, I don't, but I do a lot of very successful things. And it's not because I'm a genius or anything like that. It's because I have a specific way to approach things so that I don't overlearn, but I learn by doing and getting results. So That has forced me to put this into this book, and thankfully the book is doing very well. New York Times.

Oh yeah.

And again, to have that happen here is just such a blessing, and I'm hoping it can take, you know, the level of Atomic Habits or Mel Robbins or whatever. I'm going to do my best to get it to that point where it hits the world because it's an important message that needs to be heard.

It really is. Well, first, thank you for being an amazing advisor to Kit over the last 10 years. Uh, we've been working together for a long time.

You always give me a lot of credit for, for helping Kit get it started in the early days. And I know that the, the audience I had was a big part of that, but I mean, thank you. You reached out to me and took me out to coffee in San Diego back in the day. Yeah. And, um, you showed me some stuff that was really cool and exciting and it hadn't yet been built, but you were building it. And, um, you know, I'm very grateful for the journey that we've been on and, you know, we're still together.

Yep. It's amazing.

All right.

Where should people go to check out the book and then also to follow all the things that you're up to?

Yeah, the book, wherever books are sold and, you know, it's at Barnes, it's at Amazon, Target, and, you know, maybe Amazon would be best. But Pat Flynn on social, like, hit me up. Let me know you watched this and hopefully you enjoyed it. And if you have questions about the YouTube channel, especially like I'm just nerding out about that right now more than anything. So happy to help.

Sounds good. Thanks so much for coming on.

Thanks, man.

If you enjoyed this episode, you'll love episode 36 with John Youshaei, a former YouTube insider who shares what actually works Works to grow your YouTube channel fast. We dig into packaging, retention, and what separates long-term creators from those who fade. Be sure to like this video and subscribe for more, and I will see you next week.