Create Content That Makes You Money with Pat Flynn

If you have a community, you will survive and future proof your business. If you go into a space and people say it's saturated, the question to ask is, is it saturated with great value? And the fact that it's saturated just means there's so much more opportunity. You might say, well, the world doesn't need another podcast. But truth is, the world doesn't need another shitty podcast. So how can we make it not that.

How do we retain views? I know we start good and I've got that part down. But then after you're a few minutes in is where I'm losing people. Are you thinking like, people are about to drop here? So let me insert something.

I'm not thinking about it from a minute per minute standp, but I am thinking about, okay, well, why would a person continue watching? What do I have to offer later that would get them to stick around?

What is the framework you use to teach people so that the video does well?

So the first thing is to learn how to.

There's a lot of fake people online. You know, it's like smoke and mirrors. And there's a lot of people who offer things but don't fulfill and they don't really care. They're just trying to make a quick buck. And you're like the antithesis of this. You're a teacher to so many people. How does that transition happen? And where was that first start for you?

No, I had no idea what I was doing. But eventually I had discovered a podcast. It was called Internet Business Mastery. Well, these guys, Jeremy and Jason, they were just storytellers. And they brought a guy on named Cornelius Fitchner who was telling a story about how he had made six figures teaching people how to pass the PM exam, the project management exam. And I was like, no way. This is crazy. Is that for real? And I remember I had taken a number of different exams on my way to becoming an architect and how difficult that was. So I said, could I be somebody who puts my information online? And immediately those demons in my head started talking. Who are you to pretend to be an expert and actually share this stuff? Nobody's going to listen to you. You didn't go to school to teach any of this stuff. You barely passed the exam. Like, this is a fake. But I was desperate. I had to make it work. And I think that was also really important. I didn't have a safety net. I had to make it work. So I did things that I wouldn't have done if I was just comfortable. And I've always found that the Best things happen outside of that comfort zone. And now, 15, 17 years later, if I'm comfortable, I'm worried it means I'm not pushing myself far enough. I don't want to be in danger zone, but I also don't want to be complacent. Complacency means maybe you're going to start to get a little cocky or, you know, you might not do the things that you need to do to stay on the front and leading lines of what's happening and the trends that are happening out there. So to make a long story short, I had started a business helping architects pass an exam. And again, I had no idea what I was doing. I was using WordPress and just blogging, and eventually I had written a study guide. And I sold it for $19.99 in October of 2008. And that month, just from one PayPal button on my homepage, I made $7,809.55, which was two and a half times more than I was making as an architect. So I always thought that in the middle of the night the FBI was going to come and swat me because it just did not feel real. I did not want to believe it. And even a year later, after succeeding in the income growing to 20,000amonth, 30,000amonth, I had increased the price of this guide. At this point, I had launched an audio book to go along with it. I was still going in for job interviews as an architect because I did not believe that that's what I was supposed to be doing. And what I was doing, the metaphor is I was climbing two ladders at the same time. If you imagine trying to climb two ladders at the same time, how impossible is it to excel at either one of those? And I knew that eventually I had to let go of one in order to excel at the other. But it still, it was very difficult for me. Until May of 2009, I got a call from my boss, the same one who let me go. He said, pat, I started my own firm. Things are getting better. Now we have some of the clients that you've worked with. Some of your friends and coworkers are coming to you. I want to offer you one year free rent to come to Irvine, California. I'll pay for you and your family to come up. I'll give you a raise, and I'll give you an office. What do you say? Five seconds. It didn't take to say, no, thanks, this is not what I want anymore. Because this new life that I had gave me a Much, much higher ceiling. But it also gave me a lot more freedom. Freedom and time to do what I want, when I want, with who I want. Now, I wasn't rich or anything at the time, but I've moved on from surviving to then learning how to thrive. And that's when all this stuff about going deep with content creation, YouTube, podcasting in 2010, writing books, speaking on stage and, and really just going deep at learning one at a time. People see what I do now and they see all these books, podcast episodes, the multiple YouTube channels, the millions of subscribers, and they want the same thing, which is cool. But I didn't do all of those at the same time. I did them one at a time. I learned, mastered it, optimized it, then removed myself from that process and then moved on to the next thing. Too many people are trying to start too many things at the same time. And it's hard because there's so much information out there now that tells us how to do all of it. But if you don't stay narrow and focused, you're going to spread yourself so thin and likely either burnout or just not compete on any of those platforms. So the big thing is, you've heard of like, fomo, right? Fear of missing out, Very, very hard thing. We all struggle with fomo, but there's also this thing called Jomo, the joy of missing out, right? I don't believe in that either, because I'm like, I'm not gonna kid myself and pretend I'm joyful for this thing that I wanna do. Here's the secret, the joy of opting out. I'm gonna tell myself, you know what? I know I wanna do that. I know that would be so much fun. But I'm going to recommit to the things I've already said yes to. I'm going to opt out of that. And that's me stepping forward and commanding what, what I want to happen in my life and what I'm saying yes to and what I'm saying no to. And saying no is one of the hardest things to do.

Yeah, and I feel like that's such an important point, Pat, because there's this value where, you know, I don't know if this is like a chart or there's a name of this, but it's like you get excited about the thing, like could be launching the podcast, the YouTube channel, or short form content. And it gets really exciting because, like, you're in it, involved, and then you find out, okay, that excitement wears off. The motivation wears off. And there's this valley of, like, man, this isn't as cool as I thought. Now it's becoming work. And even though you're passionate about it, it's like, dude, I'm not as pumped as I was, like, six months ago. And then now you're in this valley. And then I feel like in that valley, it's like, oh, wait, maybe I should do this or maybe I should do that. And I heard this thing at this thing, and I should do that. And I'm like, cool. And then you just start going and you go to the same high and back into the valley, and then you start something. And I feel like I see that with so many people. And in my experience, the real results come when motivation died a long time ago, where it's just like, man, it's still fun. But you do have to push past that part where, like, dude, it's not easy. This isn't as exciting as I thought it was, but I see the other side. Like, I'm getting ready for the other side. Yesterday we had a talk about, like, staying ready, getting ready for what's to come, and just knowing that. So, like, in that valley. Can you talk about this? Because I think there's a lot of people. And by the way, we're gonna get into, like, specific strateg for YouTube, and some of you guys want to start a podcast. Some of you guys want to grow your channel. We'll get into all that.

But this is cloud talk. We'll get into the dirt.

Yeah, we're about to get into the dirt. But more importantly, I think, like, first and foremost, get your mind right. Like, if you're in that valley, Pat, you were in there. Like, what do you do to push past that, to stay committed to the strategy that you originally think? Like, how do you know to keep going? Or how do you know to pivot?

Yeah, the valley could be a dark place. It's scary, it's cold. But the valley, usually, if you think about landscapes, that's where. That's where everything grows because that's where the water goes down. Right. So there's a metaphor there, for sure. There is a transition between that motivation and what I like to call the honeymoon period. In a new business, you have that itch, and you're thinking about it all the time. Eventually you get to the point where, okay, now it actually feels like work, and now it's feeling like a chore to keep up with it. This is where the transition between motivation and inspiration have to change. Now to discipline you have to stick it through and give yourself. What I like to do is give myself a specific time frame and not worry about the results of the things I'm doing and basing my happiness on, well, how is this going so far? But rather, my happiness and being proud of the work I do is based on am I committed and committing to this thing. For example, I started a recent YouTube channel, Shorts Channel from scratch. Didn't link to it from anything else. It's in the Pokemon space. I'm sure we'll get into why Pokemon in a little bit. But I started this channel, I said, I'm going to create a video every single day. I'm going to open a pack, and I'm just going to optimize this thing and we'll see how this goes around. Day 2025, I was just seeing hundreds of views a day. And normally in my previous life, I would have said, that's a failure. Why would I keep doing this? It's just going nowhere. But my goal is to get to 60 days. And so I didn't really care. I didn't really care about the numbers. All I cared about was making each video better than the last. Right. 1% optimization every time kind of stacks. Day 35, one of those videos hits a wave. 1.5 million views in 24 hours. All my other videos that I thought was a waste of time also grew up because everybody who found that first video went into my backlog. Here's the thing. You've got to be cringe before they binge, all right? And the more cringe you are, the more you're going to force yourself to learn how to not do that anymore and find the things that work really well. You got to be cringe before they binge. You got to be a disaster before you become the master. Whatever it is, all it is is you gotta get through the motions of doing it. So for those of you who have been afraid to hit publish, you are waiting every. Every day you don't hit publish is a day you are not rewarding yourself with the learning that can come from that and, of course, the potential for one of those videos to skyrocket. And then now across TikTok Instagram Shorts, that shorts channel is now 260 days in, and we've already received our gold play button from YouTube. And across all those platforms, it's over 1 billion views. Wow.

Clap it up for that. That's crazy. And this was a side hustle. This was just a side passion project that he wanted to see. See through and see the results. And somebody yesterday had a bet at the bar. It was Mel. She entered into a contest or a course.

It was Mel.

Yeah. With who was it? Perry. To do a thou. A hundred posts. 100 days. A post every day for 100 days. You the learnings that you'll have in 100 posts.

Oh, yeah. I mean, they often say quality over quantity, but if you're just starting out, I think it's the opposite, honestly. Like, don't sacrifice value. But the more you publish, the better you just the more you do something, the better you get at it.

And you're talking about a small improvement.

Every time, every time. In 2020, when the pandemic hit and there was nothing, nowhere to go, I said, you know what? I'm very afraid of getting on video live, but this is something I want to get better at. So here's what I'm going to do. Since we're going nowhere, I'm going to go live every day at 9am to my audience. This is on my Patflin YouTube channel. And I'm just going to go live and tell a story or two and teach and that's it. And I did that for 365 days straight. And as a result of that, I'm more confident on stage like this. But I also go live now in front of my Pokemon audience every single week, in front of 10,000 people every single week now. And I have no problems with that. But it sucked at first. It was so bad and cringe. And you know what also happened when I did this every single day? I learned exactly how to make it so easy for me that I didn't have to think about it anymore. I could just walk in, press a few buttons, and it became second nature to me now. So much so that I got invited on a lot of virtual webinars and things like that. And I knew how to switch camera angles and add music and sound effects live just on my own. And I wouldn't have done that if I didn't just commit to the year of doing it and getting better. And just so much can happen when you just focus on the commitment through not how is it going today? How am I getting better today? Is the question.

It's so huge, right? Because I see people who are consistent. And then you look back a year ago on this exact same video. So yes, you showed up consistently, but you didn't get better. So that's the thing. Intentionally seeking feedback is important too. I love asking other people in the room, hey, what do you think about this, where do I lose you? And they'll tell you. You have to give them permission, but.

They'Ll tell you, can I speak to that really quick? Because this is something that's so on top of my mind. So I have another YouTube channel about Pokemon called Deep Pocket Monster. We create these stories and challenges around the world of Pokemon. You know, we try to finish a set in 24 hours or whatever, and we create these stories. And what we do is we invite people in our community to see our edits before they're live. And we watch them live while they're watching our video, we look at their eyeballs. When are they looking down at their phone, when are they at the edge of their seat? This is pure feedback that tells us what to keep and what not to keep. Just that feedback alone in one video. We cut like a six minute portion out that we thought was incredible, but people were just bored. So we took it out. And this video has 18 million views and has accounted for $80,000 in ad revenue.

That's huge. That's crazy. But that's being intentional. And Ryan Leak talked about this yesterday. We have to be intentional.

You don't have to guess your audience is there and they will literally tell you what works, what doesn't, what you should do, what they want, what questions they have. This is all guidance for you. Like, if you're going into this, like, I don't know what to do. You haven't done enough research.

Yeah, you can ask people who watch your stuff, like, what was most valuable about this? Tell me where I needed, like, where do you want me to go deeper? I've just asked people in the actual YouTube video to let me know in the comments and they actually do. Like, they'll tell you, have him back on, talk more about this. Or we'll talk about an email thing. Like, dude, you talked about these hacks to get people to open and read your emails. But I would love an episode on how to grow your email list. I'm like, cool. I got that idea from a viewer and that video is going to do really well. So. And imagine if somebody had the courage to actually type out their thing. There's a lot more people that were thinking it that didn't say it because most people don't even put themselves out there. So what I want to do, Pat, is for the time that we have together, I think this will provide the most value to the audience here and people watching afterwards is let's get into top of funnel, which is the content strategy. Which we're talking about right now and pushing forward with that. But then beyond that, how do you convert that audience into what you call super fans? Pat has a best selling book called Superfans and it's about building a community and how that can be so impactful for them and for your business. And so I would love to get into that concept, but first and foremost is gonna be the content. And then at the bottom of this funnel is conversion. And you can do events, you can do webinars, you can do different things like this. And Pat teaches all of this. And so I think we should start with that top of the funnel. If somebody's in here right now and they're trying to decide, hey, I'm doing a little bit of Instagram and short form. I'm also really, I'm kind of like dabbling in YouTube. I also started a podcast and did a couple episodes, or I was thinking about starting a podcast, but I'm not really like, what would you be your recommendation on where you should pick to go with that? Tunnel vision strategy?

Yeah. So we'll go over the Superfans framework and how to do this. And it's really interesting because it's literally the inverse of a funnel. Right? The funnel is you get traffic. Some of that traffic converts onto a webpage, converts into email, converts into sales, etc. The Superfans model works like this. It starts from the bottom up. You have your casual audience. These are people who've just found you, right. They don't know who you are or what you're about, but there was some piece of content that captured their attention. I'll teach you how to what really works from there. But you got to convert your casual audience again, people who just kind of come across your stuff into an active audience. These are your subscribers, your followers. People who are now like, okay, I like what Neil's doing. I kind of vibe with this guy. I'm gonna subscribe and see what else he has. They're not necessarily customers yet at this point, they're becoming one. Then from there, it's the conversion from active audience to connected community. This is where magic happens. People feel an association with not just your work, but you and your brand and your personality. It's where people connect with each other. Right? It's the difference between somebody just kind of watching a game at home versus being in the stadium high fiving a person just simply because they're wearing the same ball cap that you are. Right. That's where community happens. It's where a Name can be created for a community, right? You got your swifties, you got your Beliebers and your directioners and your little monsters and your beehive, like all that stuff, right? Like, that's community. But superfans come from those moments that you create for those people over time. And that's the biggest thing here. Super fans are not created the moment people find you. They're created by the moments you create for them over time. What is the experience that you're taking people through? Right? They say the customer journey, but once they become a customer, that's the end. No, I think that's the beginning with my lead exam business. So my website that I help people with, with architecture, which still is around today, actually, 18 years later, I was helping people through an exam. And there was one woman, her name was Jackie. I remember she reached out a few times and I had to help her through this exam. And, you know, months later, she came back. She was like, pat, I passed the exam, thanks to you. Thank you so much. You've helped me get a raise and a promotion and all this stuff. And she was super thankful. And that was it. Or so I thought. Because several months later, I do an audit of who my customers were, and there were 25 new customers from the exact same firm that she was at. I saw. Cause the emails were from the same firm. And I was like, what happened? So I reached out to Jackie and I was like, hey, did something happen? And she's like, yeah. And I convinced everybody in the firm to go buy your book. And I was like, you did that for me? She's like, yeah, well, you did this for me. So one person turned into 25 customers. How many of us are just one touch point with each customer once and that's it, versus the one customer that you can go deep with, who will now fly your flag high and represent your brand. Who will be there to defend you from trolls when they show up on your social feeds? These people are so important. And there was an article written by a guy named Kevin Kelly back in 2005. It was called A Thousand True Fans. This was a game changer for me because I thought you needed millions of subscribers and millions of followers to succeed. But the truth is, you just need a thousand. A thousand true fans. A true fan being somebody who, if you're a musician, they're waiting backstage to get your autograph. If you have a business, they're buying your product before they even read the sales page, right? Those people, if you have 1,000 of them paying you $100 a year, which is like nothing compared to what like, I mean I pay for more than that for like Apple services and stuff. $100 a year times 1,000 people, that's a six figure business right there. Right. And so going for fans as a byproduct will grow your business because those people will become your marketing team for you and they'll do it without you even asking.

Yeah, it's huge. But like, I do believe also Pat, that nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd. And so sometimes people are fans because more people are fans. Sometimes people start commenting because there's already something going on. There's already a conversation there. Like sometimes people come into a tent because there's music on and there's people dancing in the tent. It's like so I do believe, like it's true for super fans. But then also because of you're doing this and you're going deeper with people, it seems to me that the other part seems to take care of itself. That's been my experience. Like I didn't actually go for like these like super growth hacks. I just was making a community and started with like a few thousand people and then it just kept growing from there. But within the bigger community is always this small group of fans.

Right. As far as top of funnel your casual audience. Again, people who've just found you. The way to convert them is to do I like three things. Number one, it's really important to understand their language. What are they going through? What are their problems? What are their dreams, aspirations? What are their fears? What are the things that are stopping them from where they want to go? I think it was Jay Abraham who said if you can define the problem better than your target customer, they're going to assume that you have the solution for it. So you got to go deep in the psyche of who it is that you are serving and exactly what they want. I know a lot of you are in real estate. Do people want a home? No. They want a place to raise their family and build memories and create life together inside of their home. And that's the level of depth that I'm speaking of here. So understanding the language. In fact, I have a spreadsheet of words that my audience uses. One fun thing that I love to do is in my email list one of the very first emails that automatically gets sent out because you can create autoresponders. Right. Here's I got this from Ryan Levesque, who wrote a book called Ask. One of those first emails has a question and so people subscribe to my newsletter and they get an email back that says, hey, really quick, I'd love to hear from you. What's the number one thing that's challenging you right now related to blank? What's your number one biggest struggle right now? And then you get all these answers back. This is a few things that gets people to tell you what they are needing help with. It's great for content opportunity, product creation. It helps their email service provider or their email client know that your email's legit, so it's whitelisted so they'll get all the emails afterwards. But more than that, you could start to actually copy the words that they're using and just give it back to them. And when you do that, everybody else is like, oh my gosh, you're in my head. How do you know so much about what I'm going through or what I need? Well, I didn't guess because other people, just like you told me, and they're.

More likely to tell you in a one to one format than in a group.

For sure. That's why email's great, because it still feels a bit private versus like doing that in a Facebook group. You're gonna just get people who are, you know, just a few people who are louder.

Yeah. And so what Pat's saying here is like whatever your lead magnet, some of us are using lead magnets here, or some of us have like a webinar or an event or something that you're getting people to sign up for that first email that goes up to the person which, like, here's the guide you requested or here's your confirmation. He's saying in that email you need to ask them a question, like, what do you really need help with? Like, what is one thing that you want to work on? Or like, and ask it in the easiest way possible.

But.

And Pat, maybe you can explain or help me get more responses on this email. I feel like as you get further along, people are more willing to respond because they want to talk to you. But in the growth phase, I wouldn't get a lot of responses to that email. So then I made it multiple choice. It was like a quick, like, do you want help with this, this, or this? I didn't get the words, but at least I got a little bit of insight.

Yeah, I mean, multiple choice is great. It makes it easy, but I would try to get them to tell you what's going on. And it just takes one or two people to really dive into the psyche of what your audience Is like. And, you know, another thing I like to do is tell them that I will reply back. If you are just starting out and you're smaller, guess what? You have a huge advantage over others who are bigger than you because you have the opportunity to make more of a personal and direct impact with those individuals. So in those emails, again, in the beginning, it's more possible. I'm not able to respond to everybody now, but I would say reply back. I will reply back and give you a little guidance or at least point you in the right direction.

Yeah. So I've done this by accident. Now I know why. But I've done this by accident where I will send out email and some of you guys get these emails and it'll be like, hey, here's the thing I'm doing. Do me a favor and just reply back, I'm in. To let me know you're gonna be there. How many of you have got an email like this from me? Okay, cool. So when you reply, like, if you were a new subscriber, what Pat is saying is if this email, which it is, is coming from a marketing automation platform like GoHighLevel or Brevo or whatever you're using, some of you guys use different services. Okay, so it's coming from even the Typeform thing, right. That email might be the first email they're getting from your domain. And so if you respond, if that individual gets the email and they respond to it, it tells their email service provider that this is a safe email because why would they ever, like, replied to it? Another way of doing this, I heard, is clicking links within that email that tells their thing. So now you, you have much more likelihood of landing in the inbox on the next emails that you send, and you just have higher deliverability. So I've been doing this for a while, but they'll reply, I'm in. And I put in there. On the last one that I just sent out, I said, I will be reading all these personally. Cause, like, I'm building my community. And I did. I went through all of them. And then sometimes when we do our big webinars, like that one that I was telling you about with Gary, we got thousands of responses on this. And then so Sam was going through all of them and she's like, man. So I'm guessing you must have done something in your email copy because your inbox just like it was exploding, right? Because people were responding. But it was cool. Like, now we're in conversation with these people. So I love that. I Love that strategy. But letting people know that you're actually gonna read this, this isn't just some automated thing where it's going to nowhere and nobody's gonna read it. I think that's really a big tip there. So as you get into getting more of these people, like, which content strategy would you recommend? And then also then we can get into the tactics within that, you know, like, I think you're big on YouTube, right? Like long form YouTube.

YouTube is great. Long form and short form. Podcasting works, TikTok, Instagram works. They all work, so long as you stick with it and go deep and learn how to do it. What doesn't work is, is doing all of them and never showing up because you're lightly touching each of them.

So you went deep on YouTube?

I went, okay, so here's the timeline. 2008, blogging. I learned all about SEO and writing good titles and all that stuff because the blogosphere was like the thing. 2010, I went all in on podcasting and learned about how to tell better stories, how to be a great interviewer, and I went deep with that. I studied these things because I wanted to be the best at each of them. Right? 2011, I started speaking on stage. I hired a coach. I read books like Stand and Deliver by Dale Carnegie. I learned how to be humorous because I wasn't at all. 2013, I started writing books again, one at a time. But only when I felt that I could get time back, either through tools or team, was I then able to find time to put elsewhere. Because if I didn't do that, if I stacked everything on top of everything else, even after mastering one, I would have gotten burned out or just not spend as much time with my family.

That's the big learning here is like, when you wanted to add something more to your plate, you had to take something off.

Correct.

So then how you take it off is you hire people to help you.

You hire people, or you use tools and automation, or you figured out that, okay, maybe this wasn't the best opportunity, let me put it away and move on to something, something else.

Put it back in the oven or like, on hold. Yeah, okay. This is great because I'm guilty of this, and I don't know if anybody else can relate, but I just keep adding things. And then one day you find out that you're like, dude, this is not sustainable. Like, I'm burning out. I don't know how I'm gonna keep up with all this stuff. And then you can have a break. You can have Like a nervous breakdown. Like, you get just. It's just like too much, you know, and it just overwhelms you. So I would highly recommend this, and I'm actually gonna take that advice as well. But if you get into podcasting more, I love that strategy because I'll tell you a really quick story, Pat. So recently I wanted to start a podcast. I was told the world does not need another podcast. You know, and Chris is my friend here. He has a podcast for a while, and there's a few others that are starting in the room. But I was like, the world doesn't need another podcast. You know, like, whatever. It's too crowded. It's too saturated. But what I found through people in my network is like, it's actually not saturated if you just did the thing. Like, if you researched it, if you really focus on the packaging and you do it with intention, it's like, wide open, bro. Am I wrong in thinking this way?

Now let me break it down. So if you go into a space and people say it's saturated, the question to ask is, is it saturated with great value? Is it saturated with amazing content? Usually not. And the fact that it's saturated just means there's so much more opportunity to capture attention from people who are seeing all this mediocre stuff out there.

Nothing is saturated because most people suck at it.

Yeah.

Okay, cool.

Yeah, and that's great. See what this person's doing and they're bad at and just do it better. Right. Or do. Or do it different. And true. You might say, well, the world doesn't need another podcast. But what I think the truth is, the world doesn't need another shitty podcast. Right? So how can we make it not that. And it might take some experimentation, it might take some research, but it also takes you doing and trying and iterating and failing. Fast fail forward. That's how you learn. This is what I like to call lean learning. You learn as you go. And the other thing that stops people, when getting into these things, you try to learn everything about it first before even implementing. Right. You capture all this information, then you're getting overwhelmed, and then you go nowhere versus this. What do I need to know to take that first step? Okay, well, I need a microphone, and I need to know how to record these things, and I need to know what my audience wants to hear about. Okay, cool record. It's gonna be bad, but I think it was. It's funny you mentioned shoes earlier. Cause I'm wearing MKBHD's shoe. I think Gary did his with K Swiss. This is another company. And yeah, buying shoes from creators is a great way to get their attention. I was able to get an interview with mkbhd. I. Yeah, I mean, it works and also shows just like Gary's not a shoe person. I mean, he's not known for shoes. When you get to that level, when you have that loyalty in your audience, like, you could launch literally anything. With my Pokemon audience, there's like a character that we created because of these challenges we do. It's a kitchen timer with Google googly eyes. We named it Steve. People have said, please, I will pay you money to put Steve on a shirt. It's a kitchen timer with eyes. But that's because I've created this as a part of the lexicon of our brand. It's a part of our culture in the brand. Anyway, when I interviewed MKBHD for this podcast, which again, because I bought his shoes, he was happy to do, he said that his first 100 videos were for less than 100 subscribers. And that blew me away. I mean, this guy is like 18 million subscribers now. But the start, he was learning what was happening. And eventually, like video 97 or something was about some tool that eventually took off from Samsung. And then, you know, he's the world's best.

What that tells you too is like, everybody. I know it sounds cliche or cheesy, but like, everybody's one piece of content away from a totally different outcome. So like, with MKBHD, it's like, okay, that 97 video sets off something. But like, anywhere, that's the Valley, you know, where it wasn't exciting for videos number 12 through 97, you know, and he still pushed through. So this is really cool. I think, like, with the long form content strategy, I'm getting more and more sold on. Like, I believe that in this, like, current attention economy, everybody's fighting for attention. You've talked a lot about. The value of information has fallen because information is so prevalent. Meaning, like, you can get the best information in the world for free on YouTube right now. You have to search for it sometimes. Sometimes it just pops up in your feed. But because of that, like, the reason why that is the case is because people had to raise the bar for what they're teaching. So in this room and watching are people who really want to teach the audience. They have expertise, some of them feel more qualified, some of them feel less qualified, whatever. But they have things that would help the audience. Okay, cool, we're there. Now you want to teach it What I really admire about you and how I even came across your content was you're just really good at teaching and you would just go live on YouTube and teach for an hour about a topic. Here's how to do your email list, here's how to do a webinar, here's how to start a podcast. And he just hits the live button and teaches a masterclass. And so what I would love to learn from you, and I think people would get a lot from this, is how do you like, how do you get so good at keeping people attention? What is the framework you use to teach people so that the video does well as well? It's not just like, I want to teach, but also I want my video.

To get a lot of views, right? I mean, again, all the information we ever need is out there. We're no longer at the point where information is the thing that's valuable, right? Back then, back in the day before the Internet, having information was key. You were the smartest kid in class. Cool. You're going to be successful. You had an Encyclopedia Britannica in your house. Oh, my gosh, you're higher class because you have encyclopedia. You have information. Right? Now, we all have it in our pockets, so what's the difference? It's the packaging around that information. So there's a few things that we can do as content creators to wrap that information in a way that gets attention and that gets people to retain and also share. So the first thing is to learn how to tell stories, right? You can teach the same kinds of things, but when you tell it in a story, especially a personal one, that is from you, and it relates to the audience and what they're struggling with, I mean, you've got them. When you, again, understand who your audience is and what they're going through, if you can say, hey, I went through the same thing too, and they will connect with you and they would prefer to learn from you. In fact, in May of 2009, with my architecture website, the company that wrote the questions for the exam that I was teaching came out with their own guide. And I thought I was screwed. I was like, why would people buy from me when they could buy from the company that writes the exam questions? I had more sales that month than I had ever had before because people started looking for other guides, found mine, and they're like, oh, I like this guy. It seems like he's just a couple steps ahead of where I was. He was talking about what exam day is like and the pressures of. And this is Stuff that the other company wasn't even touching because I was more relatable because I was telling the story of what this exam did for me. Not just here's the information. Right? So story is really key.

So do you lead with the story? Is that how you start off? Okay, so start with the story.

In my keynotes that I do. I know this is more of a Fireside chat, but if you've ever seen one of my keynotes, I tell a story, I hook people in and people want to know, where is this going? And then boom, I drop the lesson in. It hits home much more because it's in context in a way that relates to that target audience. And that's why I could take the same presentation and just change the stories to match the audience. It's the same lesson every time, but I just change it up because I just know who I'm speaking to. So that's a great tip because you could take and maybe write down all the things that you know and then ask yourself, okay, who is this for? And what can I share about myself? My life success story about one of my clients or failure even that would relate to this person that's watching. And what you do is when you tell a story, you bring people in who might not know they need that information up front. If you lead with, here are five tips for whatever. If a person's like, well, I don't need that, then they're not even gonna see it in the first place. Versus really utilizing, especially on YouTube, the browse and suggested traffic that can happen, which is not search based, but rather recommended based, recommendation based. I mean, you can get so many videos in front of people who aren't even actively looking for your stuff. If you tell a story, they're hooked. And on YouTube, the trick is to just keep people watching longer. If you're helping YouTube keep people on the platform, which makes them more money, they're going to push your video out to more people because you're doing them a favor. Right? So great. Hook retention and then tell those stories.

So this is great. I love this because so many people in this room would start a YouTube video and say exactly what you said. So in today's video, I'm gonna teach you the three programs that you need to know to get a property under market value or even worse.

Welcome back to the channel. Right. How many of you start a video with like, welcome back or thanks for nobody's raising their hand because you're embarrassed. That's okay.

Yeah.

But that is a very Common thing to do, right? Because you think you're building this audience and most people who watch your videos are your subscribers. But that's not true. If you want growth, it is people who don't even know you exist, they don't give a crap about who you are yet. Tell a story that relates to them and helps them and then you can wrap your lessons in there. And then again, if you can describe the problem or tell the story in a way that relates, they're going to come to you for the solution.

Okay, so I'm just going to use a super basic example. I know all of us teach different things, but if I were to use the example of like these, maybe, you know, in real estate, mortgage, for example, in this niche, people have something they would love to teach the audience. They would also love to have a piece of content that's long form that they could direct their people to almost to serve as a vsl. Because okay, you've got this video that teaches it. I can use this. It's not like short form where it's up and it has a limited shelf life and then it's dead. It's like I can make this video and do good job, be intentional and this will serve me for like a long period of time because not only will it get organic reach, but I could drive traffic to it through my emails and stuff like that. And I could put a link to it on my website and I could put a link elsewhere. So that video, starting off that video, instead of saying, you know, the. I'm going to go through these four tips or these programs that can help you or how to structure your offer. It's like I would start with the client success story. Would you say that would be a good way to start that video? So I want to tell you about John. You know, John just. Or my client John just closed this deal. Like what. What is how we would practically start.

I wouldn't even start with my client. You're already telling people that you probably have something to sell them at that point versus meet John. Here are his kids. They, they're an average family, but there was a big problem. They didn't have enough money.

And is this the first word out of your mouth as the video hits play? Meet John?

No. I would even try to find something that is curiosity driven within the story to start with first.

So could it be like an enrolling question?

It can. And what we're doing here now is asking questions back and forth to try to find what the hook is. And this is what we need to do, we need to have these kinds of conversations. This is why masterminds are key. I have several YouTube masterminds that we just bounce back and forth ideas for. I have a producer on my Pokemon channel who I text. I'm like, what do you think of this idea? What if we did this? What if we did this? You have to explore and lay it all out there. And you got to lay all out the sand before you start to build your sandcastle. You're not building it with all the sand on the beach, just the ones that are right there in front of you after you find it. So again, finding something compelling in there, something interesting that would hook an audience. And if you're not sure, you could use tools like social media like X and Instagram and stories to just see if these hooks would work or not. So Alex Hermosi does this. Right. Uses X a lot for that.

A short form hook that works. Could be the start of your YouTube video. Right. Like, like, people don't know this. Like, most people don't know this, but there are ways to get into a property without paying these high interest rates or like, interest rate just hit this high. But there's a way around this or whatever. Like your topic is. I thinking just starting off with something better than Here are the tips.

Yeah. I mean, if I could think about this a little bit more. It's good to start a video with something moving and something related to the topic. So I would have a camera zoom in on somebody writing their signature look up. And I'd be like, john, what just happened? We just bought a house. I can't believe it. I didn't think this was possible. Hey, I'm Pat. I helped John get a house. I'm going to show you exactly how I did this because if you don't think you can get it, you can, but it's not going to be easy. Let me show you. Right. So we've seen the end result. We've given a person an idea. We've, we've, we've actually made the viewer go, I want that to be me. That's the end game. How did John do that? Well, I got to stick around and watch this video, I guess, to find out.

Yeah. Or like, maybe even identifying the problems.

Like.

And the crazy thing is, he didn't even think this was possible 60 days ago. But I'm gonna walk you through this process and what we did.

You're better yet, in the moments that he doesn't think it's possible, you go John, what's going on? I don't think we're going to be able to get this house. Why not? I just can't afford it. Well, what if I told you that you could? And you see his eyes light up in real time, Right? Instead of going back and telling the story of what happened, what about capturing the story as it's unfolding?

And you can do this, honestly, like, you might be thinking practically, well, I'm not going to be able to film people as they're learning this from their competitor before they got to me. Right. But how many of us get that text from people, from the referral partner? And so, like, when you're telling the story, what we learned yesterday, Sharon showed you, is, like, show proof. So did you guys see yesterday when I was presenting, when I'm telling you a story, I put the screenshots of the actual conversation. It's not like I think you guys think I'm lying, but I'm just, like. It just connects the dots in your head. Like, oh, this is real. And people read the text and, like, you see the heart. And I love just screenshotting real communication. Like, don't dress it up like it's a DM you got, it's a text you got, it's a message you got. And just showing that to the audience, like, so meet John, and you show the text.

He can't.

Like, he didn't think this was possible. Like, he felt like you can sometimes read the despair in somebody's message. Like, this isn't going to work. Like, we're just going to give up. Let's put the thing on hold. And I think telling that story to start and then getting into the tips would crush. Because honestly, like, I don't see very many people doing that. I just see the other video and then people asking why the other video doesn't reach a lot of people.

Or you start the video literally the middle of something happening, right? Like, you're on the phone, speakerphone, and you're talking to John, and John's talking about. He's like, I don't know if this is going to work, Pat. What do I do? And I look at the camera, I'm like, well, I'll tell you exactly what we're going to do. And, you know, just have a conversation. And, like, you're literally start. Like, a person starts watching, like, what's happening? I need to know what's going on. This is like, like, like you would a Netflix series, right? Like, a good story, a good movie doesn't just go, here's exactly what's happening. No, it unfolds as you go. And you're just excited to learn more as it's going on.

Yeah. And this is like the stuff, what we're doing here. You're like, well, you guys are figuring it out as you go. That's the start. Okay, cool. Now we get into the teaching moment. Right. And you're really good at frameworks, I noticed. Like, I'm going to walk you through this thing, and sometimes you have a process, you've named it, and all these kinds of things. So how did you come across this process? And is there some formula that you use for teaching?

Yeah. So having a framework, a proprietary framework that you can create is a must because it takes this information and it turns it into something that's digestible, that's easy to remember and easy to share. My favorite way to do it now is to go to my friend ChatGPT and say, hey, I'm trying to build a framework around these things that I'm teaching. Please find an acronym or come up with a easy to remember and easy to relay process that I can use for my audience of beginner entrepreneurs, for example. So, okay, I'm trying to. I did, literally did this the other day. I was coming up with an email newsletter and trying to create a framework around building authoritative content. And I was like, okay, Here are the three Cs that you need to build authority. Content. You need to be clear. So you have to have clarity in what you're talking about. If you're not clear, then how could you build authority? How could people trust you? Right. Then you need to have consistency. If you aren't showing up consistently, then how are people gonna build a relationship with you? And the final C is so clarity, consistency and confidence. If you're confident in what you're saying, then it's gonna come across more. If you're not confident, how could people build trust with you? I was like, oh, my gosh, the three Cs again. The pyramid of fandom and super fans that I taught you. Casual audience, active community and super fans. You can make that. And when you do that, it becomes yours. And what's cool is it usually doesn't involve inventing new info, but you're inventing a new way to absorb that info. Right.

Packaging.

And then create packaging. Exactly. Then create a little graphic that goes with it that is now sprinkled everywhere. Right. Visually speak about it, and all these things turn into something that then becomes your own proprietary stuff, a part of the culture of your business, your brand, and how you do what you do.

Yeah. And I heard this again, going back to frameworks, Alex Hormozi taught us this in our. In our last event. He said, proof, promise, plan when he does his videos. So he's like, proof meaning like these screenshots or this. And, you know, this is the promise I'm going to make. I'm going to teach you this thing. And then the plan is this framework. Here's the framework and all that. So that's just one thing of, like, I remember these three P's. You know, it's like when you teach in this format, it becomes, like, etched. I won't forget that shit. You know, it's just like, etched in my mind. So I love that concept of teaching and frameworks.

Can I share one more thing that has worked really well for me also using ChatGPT, it's metaphors. Metaphors are such a fun, easy way to create memorable content. Put the lesson that you're trying to teach into ChatGPT and say, Please give me a few metaphors that would relate to this. And then how do you start your content? Start with the metaphor. Because people are like, okay, what is this about? Yeah, I know what it's like to swim in a pool. Yeah, but have you tried swimming upstream? Well, yeah, that's hard. Okay, well, that's just like this thing that I'm about to teach you. I'm going to make sure we always swim downstream when it comes to your mortgage.

Yeah. It was crazy that you said this. I love this because it connects the dots. So people were talking about inflation in our industry, like, inflation slowing down, but it's still a problem. And they're like, well, okay, did we stop inflation? Did we not? And then someone's like, dude, it's like this, man, I gained this much weight during COVID right? And then I stopped gaining weight, but I'm still gaining weight. And at the end of the story, it's like, yeah, inflation has slowed down, but my weight is still going up. It's just not going up as quick. And then everybody in the comments is like, I finally understand inflation. I'm like, it's been five years of we've had post Covid inflation, and to make somebody understand it, you had to make it relatable in some metaphor. And so I'm wondering, like, how do you think more about these? And then again, the answer is, use AI, please. Like, tell it the problem you're having. And how do I come up with a Metaphor for this that would be easily understood by the audience. And it was cool because, like, sometimes I feel like, Pat, we're dumbing it down. But even me as a smart person, I appreciate that. Like, I think I have a relatively high iq, but it took me less brain power to understand, and I appreciate it. And then the guy who isn't so bright, he's like, dude, thank you, man. I finally got it, you know, so it works.

Exactly.

So, okay, so we're doing this. We're teaching in frameworks. We're naming our thing. It's a unique video that nobody else is creating in your space because now you started it off with a cool story and how you're going to help this individual. You tied it to an individual, a real life thing that somebody can relate to, and then you're teaching in a framework. Now my thing on YouTube, let's just say this video is going to be like 20 minutes. Patrick. I noticed on all my videos, even the ones that do well, there's this curve, and sometimes it looks like a brick fell out of a window, and then sometimes it's like somebody tossed the brick. But either way, it's going down, bro. Like, there's no straight line. It's gonna bleed down. It's just, how quick is it go down?

Is your retention graph?

Yeah. So the views, like, how do we retain views? So I know we start good. And I've got that part down. And I think a lot of people in this room are like, okay, I understand. You must start well. Like, it's. If we have to start with a hook, we got to keep them. But then after you're a few minutes in is where I'm losing people. And if I. How do you, like, think about what Are you, like, inserting hooks throughout the episodes, throughout the teachings? Because, by the way, Pat, does all this live? Like, we'll get into that in a moment, but, like, you're doing this in real time. Are you thinking, like, okay, I'm thinking people are about to drop here because we just stick. So let me insert something.

I mean, I'm not thinking about it from a minute per minute standpoint, but I am thinking about, okay, well, why would a person continue watching? What do I have to offer later that would get them to stick around?

Are you previewing what's to come?

Oftentimes? Yeah, it could be as simple as that. Hey, I'm gonna give you some strategies and we are gonna get a little advanced. This Facebook thing I'm teach you a little bit later is probably Gonna be the biggest game changer if you haven't learned this yet. Okay, now I gotta stick around.

Is it like I'm teaching three? And by the way, number three, No.

I mean that's very buzzfeedy. And we've seen that, right? Number four is a crazy one. Like that just doesn't make. I mean that's almost. No, it's too forceful. But what I would say, like even rewinding a little bit more important than the video itself. And it sucks that it is this way, but for long form videos on YouTube, it's the title and the thumbnail combination. Unfortunately, if you don't have a great title thumbnail that invokes some click or curiosity. I mean, you could have the best video in the world. It's never going to get watched. Title and thumbnail are everything. So there's a resource that I want to share with you called Thumbs up tv. You can put your thumbnail there and a title. It'll show you what it will look like across all the different devices. It's free, you don't even have to subscribe to it or anything. And that's really handy because you can see this title that you have. Oh my gosh, on mobile, the most important part of the title is cut off. Nobody's even seeing it. Right. Things like that can be really helpful. The other thing I love to do is to take inspiration from other channels and other spaces. This is in fact the best research you can do on YouTube is going to other YouTube channels and looking for what we like to call outlier videos. So if you go to any YouTube channel that has any number of subscribers, you're gonna see most of the videos have sort of a baseline view count, right? They have kind of an average. But every once in a while in their little library, you're gonna see one that's like blown up for some reason. That's an outlier. Look at that video. What's the title structure? What's happening in the thumbnail? Why is this blowing up? And you can pull from that. I'm going to give you an example. There was an engineer who created a video and he wanted to test the theory as to whether or not you could cook a chicken by slapping it fast enough. This is the age old question. Anybody see that video? Yeah, some of you did. So there was this theory that if you slap a chicken fast enough because you're creating friction, you could cook it. And so many people on Reddit talked about it, all these scientists trying to figure it out. He Built a machine to slap a chicken. He called it the Meat Beater 3000. And he had this structure of the video. Right. Here's all the research that was done. I'm going to build it. Here's a time lapse of me building this machine. Here are all the failures of this machine. Here's test number one. And then the temperature thing inside. And he was actually able to get it pretty close to cooking temperature for chicken, which was pretty amazing. It's a hilarious video, too. But what I like, I noticed after watching that video, first of all, I never would search for can I cook a chicken by slapping it? It just showed up. But because of the title and thumbnail, I was like, oh, my gosh, now I have to know what happens. Just like there was another video that went viral. Can I are raising a grocery store lobster as a pet with a picture of a lobster with a little rubber band on its claw. It's like, now I have to watch this. Right? Because it's so intriguing. You want to know what's happening? Anyway, with that. With. With the Meat Beater video, the structure of that, I took and put it into Pokemon, because in Pokemon, you can get your cards graded and authenticated. But for years, people were talking about how you could shake the card in there and were wondering if it could be damaged. So I said, okay, I'm just gonna follow this person's title thumbnail. I'm gonna follow their same framework, and I'm just gonna answer this question instead.

So the learning here is there's a question in the title for that particular.

Framework of a title thumbnail question with the subject matter spoken about very large on the thumbnail. And it just makes you want to know what happens, like, is this possible or not? It's baked in there. Right. So I followed that same thing. That video went viral. I built a Lego machine to shake this card thing, and it worked. And I. Again, it was already a proven framework because of this person's outlier video.

Yeah, this is great.

You don't have to reinvent it.

Yeah. So there's a tool. I don't know if you've used this before. If you've seen it called 1 of 10, and it was on. I found it on X. Somebody was promoting this. And so I just signed up for a free trial. And if you go to oneoften.com I don't know if it's 1 of 10. Just search 1 of 10 YouTube and it will come up. But basically, they just tell you the outliers. So you Type in a topic, it will tell you the outliers. And then if you connect it to your channel, it'll start to recommend videos that you should create based on outliers that it sees within your niche. So what's crazy is like, it'll tell you this was a 5x10x20x100x of what that person normally gets. And success leaves clues. So I'm like, okay, what is unique? If Pat is telling us, like, hey, this is the first step, it's gotta be the title and thumbnail. Because without that, nothing else that we're talking about happens. So what is unique about this title and thumbnail? And then how can I apply it to my space?

In fact, starting with the title before you film the video is the way that it should be done. This is so different than what I was taught growing up. And like with blogging, I would usually write the blog post or write the email, then figure out the subject line or the title later. But with video, when you think about like a seed idea that you have and then come up with a title that works, in fact, that often changes what the hook of that's going to be. It often changes the whole style of the video. I did a video once where the seed idea was. So I had bought some Pokemon cards and I received a package and it was damaged and I was like, this is terrible. I should teach people how to package their cards. But if I just created a video that was called how to package your cards. If you weren't packaging your cards, why would you watch that video? So I started a brainstorm. I came up with 20, 30 different ideas and the idea that stuck was which shipping company damages my cards the most. So this completely changed the way I was filming this video. Now I'm going to take the same product in the same package and ship it with USPS, UPS and FedEx. I borrowed another idea from another channel. A guy sent an airtag to North Korea. I put an airtag in each of those so we could follow along. This video popped off because even if you didn't care about shipping your own cards, you wanted to know the answer to which company was best. And by the way, it was usps. The cheapest one was the best one.

How can we create this? Like, I feel like when we're teaching, some of us, and me included, think, well, my topic isn't that exciting. Like, it's not that engaging. How can we create this same curiosity to where people will want to stick around to the end because we're talking about retention in the video. You know, now you've got them. You did a better title, you did a better thumbnail. You did a better hook in the beginning. Like, what would. What would they be curious about? To find out if this. These programs are going to help them get a home or this. I know when we do, like, real estate videos, like, sometimes people are just browsing the properties, which is amazing. But, like, when you're actually teaching, I feel like people get bored of the concept.

Well, if you're approaching your content with, oh, this stuff is boring, then it's gonna be boring.

You already lost.

You're already lost.

Versus I'm talking about the inner voice in my head that I don't tell.

Anybody, versus how can I take this boring topic and make it exciting? And again, personality is an important part of this too. Nobody is like you. This is your biggest advantage that you have over everybody else in your space. Nobody's like you. You are a hundred percent you. And nobody's like that. So you might as well use that to your advantage.

I believe, like, your personality needs to be at the forefront of your personal brand. I mean, it's personal, right? It's supposed to be in there. And so many of us are just trying to, like, blend in with everybody else. And it's like, dude, those. Even the things you talked about earlier of literally, like, dressing up your office with the right type of, like, the right type of tchotchkes and like, all these cool things that you have, people, like, are attracted to that, or the clothes you wear or the hat, the team that you support in your content. Nothing related to the actual thing you're teaching. But it's like, that is a form of personality, meaning somebody who's super introverted. They're like, I'm not going to tell jokes. I'm not super funny. I'm more bland. Well, it could be literally the shirt you're wearing, bro. Like, you know what I mean? It doesn't have to be something crazy.

Just like how in my personal brand, I talk about back to the future quite often. And it's gotten to the point now where when people see back to the future related things or they're driving by a DeLorean on the street, they'll. They'll message me and be like, hey, Pat, I was thinking of you. It's like, I don't even have to be there to trigger a thought to me because I've made that a connection to who I am as just a person. Right? Like, the personal stuff, I mean, you don't have to share every bit. And everybody has a different line. But people connect with people. The more human that you can be, the more you can show up, the better advantage you will have.

Yes. I love this. Okay, cool. Yeah, clap it up for that. Okay, so as we get into, like, I want to get into some really cool tactics here that you are. You are crushing it with and have been crushing it with for years. Okay, so this is the. The next piece of this process is like, okay, you're making a better video. We can figure out the topics. We can talk about that. That's a whole episode. But for people who are making these better videos and now they want to turn it into a business result, you're really good at getting people into the funnel. Like, maybe they're not ready to become a customer yet. What is the best way to get those people into the funnel? But then also know that, like, we need to make a living, so we can only talk to the people who are ready to go. But, like, how could we use our content? Or, like, what would you suggest to keep those people engaged and nurturing?

Yeah. So if you have an email list, it's great. You can create emails and write things ahead of time that could be helpful answering the top questions. These are just kind of table stakes at this point. Like, what questions and obstacles do people have before they make that decision? If anybody has any doubts or any questions, they will not take action with you. So remove those doubts. The other thing I like to do is to. And it doesn't matter what platform you're on. It's to tell the success stories of your clients and showcase them. There's a book out there by a guy named Donald Miller called storybrand. And this is how to wrap a hero's journey into your customer or client's life such that other people will want to go on that same journey. And then you being the guide, right, you are not the hero of the story. And your brand, your customer, your client is. You are the Yoda. And everybody wants to go to Yoda, right? Or Obi Wan, whatever. Whatever you prefer. One of my podcast episodes, I was coming out with a podcast course back in 2017, and I had launched it in a beta launch to about 100 users. And I found three people to come on my podcast, and I just asked them to tell their story. I knew that if I could get that story out of them about how now they had a podcast and they were successful with it, that they would do the job of selling for me. So I asked One of the women, her name is Dr. B, 65 years old, started a podcast. She was deathly afraid of technology for obvious reasons. So I asked her on the podcast. I didn't say, hey, tell me why my course was the best course and you should, like, why you recommend it to everybody. No, I just asked her, why did you want to start a podcast? And she was helping people who were living with ADHD and helping them through that. She told this very beautiful story about her own kids and herself. I was like, great, so why didn't you start a podcast before? I was so afraid of the technology, I could even barely click a mouse button, like, all this stuff. And then I said, okay, well, what had happened now that you have a podcast? She's like, my gosh, Pat, I have this map, and every time I'm in a new country, I put a pin up. And it's only been three months, but I'm already in 33 different countries teaching people around the world. I've already gotten hired to do public speaking. I've already gotten asked by different sponsors to come and work with me. And it wouldn't have happened without you, Pat. You made it possible. I didn't. I didn't pay her. I didn't cue her to say that. She said that organically and on her own. And when I did this sale that same week, so I coordinated it, so that podcast episode came out the same launch week. I got dozens of people emailed who had bought, who said, you should probably thank Dr. B because she was the reason why I'm in this course with you now. So customer referrals, customer journey, customer hero story, showcase that story, tell that person's struggle, showcase what has now happened as a result.

Okay, so I'm thinking practically somebody signs up, they get a lead magnet. Okay? They're like, okay, here, you can get this free guide.

I'm already out. I'm checked out.

You don't think that's.

It's too much.

Let's go backwards, and I have an idea for, like, how you could insert this story into, like, an email that would get people to move forward, but before that happens, they need to get into the funnel. Are you talking, like, this story would get them into your funnel? It could be both.

It could be both. What is the. Out of the seven mistakes? I don't know if this is a hypothetical or not. What's the number one? What would you guys say?

The number one mistake is for people who start the real estate process in this room. They don't. They don't look at the numbers first. They look at the properties without looking at the numbers.

What happens if you don't look at the numbers but you go through the process?

So you start looking at properties that may be outside your budget or worse. You get attached to a property and your wife loves it and the kids love it, and then you find out that you can't afford it or oh.

My God, that's a story right there. Can you imagine a person, you're following their journey and then like how disappointed their family is? I mean, you can go, really, you can lean into this. As much as you feel comfortable, you.

Could be like, imagine this, guys. You look at this and you tell that story and then blah, blah, blah. And then I guess that's one of the things, right?

So you tell that story outwardly. You can do that in a 60 second short. You could do that in a much more longer form, video or both. And then you go, okay, well if the numbers are something that scares you, you don't want to go through what John just went through. Here's a calculator that I have on my website. Put your numbers in where you're at.

And here's a survey, whatever.

Yeah, here's a survey. Or here's this one worksheet that I have that's going to work you through it. It's super easy. In fact, let me you and you just run through it real quick. And now I'm feeling more comfortable. A. I am now desiring to make sure that I know the thing that John didn't know. And you've now helped me by giving me the tool to make sure that doesn't happen. I'm all in on with you now, Neil. Yes.

You know what's really cool that you just said, which is just something that you, I'm sure you teach this as well, but you just kind of said it like, show them. And don't just like walk them through, actually show them. And I'm like, I did that recently to show the thing I'm about that I'm offering. And the number of people who signed up to get the thing exploded during the time I was showing it because I was doing this during a live webinar.

People want to see what they're going to get before they get it right. We go to Amazon and look at all the reviews right before we buy.

So it's like this concept, I'm telling you guys, it works with your content, but also works when you're offering something is show, don't tell don't just tell them, show them. Right? So it's like, hey, I have this survey. You just answer a few quick questions and it's gonna give you this outcome. So literally like you cut to B roll or you show them like you're gonna log in here. I'm telling you guys, it takes you 60 seconds to do this and you're gonna click here, and you're gonna click here and it show it on the screen. So they can be like, okay, that's not that bad, versus you just telling them. And they're like, oh, he's probably bullshitting me. Or it's gonna be harder than I think. You know, I don't know what happens, but when they saw it, I'm like, all of a sudden I saw the number of people doing it go up. So there's definitely an insight there. And then the next thing is like, okay, cool, these people are now getting interested in learning about something. But I think what you're saying here is you're giving them something easy to do that provides actual value. And value in this case is time saved, mistake avoided.

The quick win is huge, right?

Quick win, yeah, it's a quick win.

So I used to be huge into video games. Anybody else a gamer in the crowd? Nice. So I got a game my junior year of college that almost failed me out of college. It was called World of Warcraft. I had to delete it off my computer because I was just playing it all. I was so addicted to it. But I remember the first levels, like you choose from like Horde or Barbarian. You get put into this virtual world, you slay a few creatures and all of a sudden you're in level two. You get new weapons and all this stuff happens. And it's like, oh my gosh, I just missed my class. Right, because you're sucked in, right? Those first few moments are really important psychologically. Like, games do this to keep us in the game, but we need to do it to keep our audience with us. So Ramit, who I talked about earlier, in fact, I did not like Ramit at first. I thought he was like kind of big headed and kind of arrogant. That's kind of his style.

He seems like a dick to me, but I don't know him.

Yeah, that's what I thought too. But I remember coming across an article of his in 2008. The title was how to save 30% on your cable bill in less than 10 minutes. And I was like, really? No way. And he had a script. You call your cable company, you read the script in 10 minutes. So this was back when I was still working in architecture. During lunch, I called my AT&T cable company, u verse and I went through this script and I saved. I saved 25%, like, in 10 minutes. And I was like, oh, my God. Like, Ramit is God.

Was this a blog title?

I will teach you to be rich dot com.

Okay.

Yeah. But he, like, he gave, like, him giving me a quick win removed all of what I had previously thought about him because he gave me something that put money in my pocket immediately.

And could this be, like, how to save X number of dollars in certain amount of minutes on a home?

It could be that.

On a mortgage, on a home purchase, potentially.

But by then, if that's where you're targeting, that's already so far down the line in the process. Right.

So it's back up the truck.

Yeah, back up the truck a little bit. How do I find a neighborhood that has the right school for my kid? Maybe you just tell me about a resource that gives me the rankings of schools around neighborhoods. And now, like, I'm more knowledgeable than I was five seconds ago about something that's really important to me. Yes.

Okay. So it's like, yeah, sometimes we get in, myself included, we get so caught up in the bottom of the funnel. And as we have to decide, like, as we have to keep reminding ourselves, people are not quite there yet. Especially on with online stuff. Yeah, we need to give them a quick win. So I love that you said that. So we offer that quick win and then make the thing. Somebody make the thing. People. Something that people would actually want that would give them that win. And you'll get more clicks. I think I see a lot of people will make a lead magnet. And I've tested so many, Pat, and sometimes I'm super disappointed because nobody wanted it. And I'm like, what? You know, I just made this thing and I thought it would be cool, and nobody clicked on it or nobody wanted it. And then. But that's just because I probably went too. It wasn't easy. Like, I lost you. Pat's totally outside the industry. He's talking about World of Warcraft and Pokemon, and I'm talking about real estate, and I'm telling him about it, and he's like, dude, I wouldn't click on that. But that's the audience, you know, like, that's what we need to do. Test our ideas beforehand. So. Okay. So I was just thinking giving them that win, and then now they're in the funnel. And you said earlier about this customer success story. Like this is what happened. And they didn't think this was possible and they thought like actually stay in the pain for a moment there and tell them about it. How would it really affected that individual and how you were able to give them that win. We actually went through a process for this on Friday here at this workshop about telling customers success stories. So that could be an email that you send out or would it be a video that you make?

That could be an email. An email with a video. I mean you need to test this. You need to figure out what works for you, what works for your audience and your style. The stories are great. The other side of this is using logic, right? There's two kinds of buyers. There's an emotional buyer and a logical buyer. If you can service both, like one email is more of an emotional email. I literally think about this in my email funnels. Okay. This will be an emotionally relatable connected email. The next one is going to use numbers and be logic and speak to the people who are more left, right, brained. Yes, they have a brain. Yeah, but they're thinking about the numbers, right? And so now I have another email to capture them and then I'll have another email that's maybe a little bit more scarcity driven, where there's like a certain time period to take action, which always works really well. Like 75% of our buyers for our programs on the last day, usually it's like 14 or seven day period. They always act on the last day. So you have to give some reason to make a decision. Now. That's our job as marketers, to get people to have clarity so they can make a decision now, one way or another. Even if it's a no, at least they're making a decision versus I can wait till that. I'll figure it out later. If you are allowing your audience to say I'll figure it out later, you're doing it wrong.

So this could be in the form. I'm just thinking about simple ways people can introduce scarcity. First thing is, okay, you put the email out there. In the email. The call to action would go where? Like at the end of the story, let's just say we're doing email, for example. Tell the story. And then it'd be like bottom of the email, if this is something you want to learn about or like what's that Call to action?

It's great. Call to actions are a continuation of what you've just shared. It's like the pure next step, right? You're just continuing the conversation elsewhere and you're closing with wrapping up this whole thing that you've set up.

So if you've been thinking about this process or maybe you're just like John and you want to get started, this.

Is the next step. Yeah, but that's not like, that's not convincing me to click now. What's getting me to click now? What if the main offer was just so valuable that that's all you needed? Right. What if the bonus actually came after the purchase and surprised somebody and had them go, oh, my gosh. Like, I know now that my money is being put in the right place. That's how I like to do it.

So just quick, quick framing here is a lot of us in the room. What the people. I think I can speak for the group, the people that have the most success from our client perspective are those who put together a strategy with us upfront. Meaning, like, everybody kind of agreed here that you don't want to start the process without a strategy. Let's jump on a call.

Right?

People don't want to jump on a call because that's work. That's not a quick win, that's not easy, but that's what's required. So if we've got them in with the quick win and then now we want to get them on a call.

Yeah, I mean, this, we're getting into like sales call opportunities now. And there's a whole strategy on the way you frame those. Right. Not saying like, hey, would you like a book a call with me? It's which of these three times work out best for you? Right. Like, those kinds of little nuances go a very long way in converting. But let me ask you a question. How many clients would you need to say yes to you per month? I guess, to do really well? Like, how many? What's our number that we're talking about?

Okay, so from, from this, it's a high margin business.

Right.

So each client is extremely valuable to our bottom line. So I would say, like the number of people who say yes to booking a call is not a closed deal, but that's the next step.

So I would say how many people would you need to close to, like, feel like have a really solid business?

I think five.

Close five. That's it, bro.

It's a high friction, high margin business.

It is. But there's also the opportunity to go so deep with fewer people. I mean, that's the game we're playing now. We're in the game of building relationships and serving people. With our superpower and what we know in that part of their life. Now, the hard part about what I know this work is, is, well, the same person after they close is not necessarily going to be a customer the next year or after.

So it's transactional.

Correct. However, that one person whose life you just changed will absolutely know people whose also lives you can change. To go back to my Jackie story.

And then it's like activating these people. I'll just give you, as we wrap up here, I'll give you guys a quick story. And I think you'll appreciate this, Pat, because you've had the same happen and that's how your business has grown. But I remember at our last event, even just for this mastermind, many people are in this room because somebody told them about it, it wasn't necessary. And I remember talking to Sam about this and a few other people and they're like, dude, you don't need to like sell it. So like, you don't need it. Like, it's more of just an invitation. But the people here invite other people. Then there's nothing stronger than somebody who already knows about your thing. So, like, I think about this in our real estate business, like the number one best client that we could all have is somebody who was referred to us by an existing client because they've already edified you, they've already told you how great Pat is and what an amazing work job he does. And he's going to take excellent care of you. Dude, don't call anyone else, just call Pat. The sale is done before you pick up the call or email, it's over. So activating more of those would be the game from the existing group. And I think, like, I've just found that it elevates my status with these existing people when they see my content on a consistent basis. So even though I'm not getting the same number of direct referrals from those videos, just me simply making the content, even if you didn't optimize all the things that we just talked about, like, even if you just did it and it was a 50% of what we talked about, if your existing database of people saw that you're a content creator that's providing helpful information that's shareable and all these things, like you just are going to be thought of and referred to more. So I just feel like it's a great conversion tool of like just getting people, keeping that people warm because you're trying to keep in touch with people at scale. In our industry, they May not need you for like five years, bro.

And it's a competitive industry. I understand that. But that also is an opportunity because different is better than better. So just being different, seeing what everybody else is doing and like asking around and going like, who have you seen or who have you worked with? And why don't. Why aren't you a fan of them? Then? Just don't do that.

So I'll just give you guys this thing. I brought this up on Friday. Pat, this is crazy. This guy started an Instagram account and this is a YouTube video. I thought of it as you were telling me this earlier, okay? This guy started a Instagram account called Realtors Hate Me. Okay? And I told you guys about. Some of you already have checked it out. And his thing is he's sharing the story of how he's going to sell his home without a Realtor because he believes realtors are worthless. Okay? He's just an angry consumer. He's had a really, really bad experience in the past and he's like, middle finger to all the real estate industry. I hate you guys. Cool. Whatever. He starts putting out these videos and in the comments are all these Realtors arguing with him. As a result, the videos are going viral and he's took his account on short form. Like 0 to like 15, 20K follows in 30 days. Crazy. Like, I think this is a YouTube video, by the way. Like, you tell this story and maybe you talk about where he's right, where he's wrong, where people add value. This could be a whole thing that you could talk and teach in an actual video.

I mean, that comment section must be gold.

It is.

100%.

So I was just looking in the. Just sidebar. I was looking in the comments for the Realtor, who would have been like, dude, best of luck to you. And let me know if you ever need anything free of charge. Like, I'm here as a resource. Like, that would have stood out because most of the consumers are bashing the industry and all the realtors are just piling on and giving the consumer more ammo. So, like, in this industry where maybe our reputation isn't the greatest, what Pat is saying, like, about actually caring and building fans and providing real value and taking care of them, I believe it's like the biggest differentiator in 2025 going forward. Like, this will be the secret sauce that people are talking about. Like, that actually grows your business.

If you have a community, you will survive and future proof your business. Absolutely.

Yeah. It's crazy. So, like, you talk just Last tactic, I guess on the community building part. You built your community. I remember it was on some platform and then you talked about moving over to, I think, Circle. Some people in our group we use like school. Sometimes people just have an email list. Sometimes people have a podcast. Do you recommend, like actually having a place to house your database of people and people who want to learn from you? Or is it not necessary?

Yeah, I think it's important for people to connect with one another and it doesn't really matter which tool you use. I'm an advisor to circle. School is great just so long as people can see that they're not alone. People don't. People. People want to feel like they belong. It could be a Facebook group. I mean, it could be anything where they're answering each other's questions. You're showing up. Maybe you're coming in with some high value webinars or information, or maybe they get first access to stuff before it goes onto YouTube. Like having some value there can be great, but all it really is is just like touch points to remind people that you are a brand worth following and have this personality that is easy to connect with. And look, there's other people that are here too. I'm not alone, right? People don't want to feel alone in this world. And with that community, you can move them around and shift. If you start a new thing here, you can take them all. And now you're starting not from scratch ever again. I think that's. That's really key and that's where you can actually seed a lot of success stories from. That's what we do in our community quite a bit. Anybody who shares a success story, because we have this ritual and it's really important to, in communities have rituals that people get used to doing of people sharing their wins. And so we'll go in there and if a person has a really cool win, we'll like extract that and that becomes a story that gets put on the podcast. And again, it's all sourced from within the community. And of course, what do they do? They say, oh, like, I love the SBI community. It's amazing. They sell it for us, which brings more people in and then we create more success stories that we pull from that then bring more people in. You see how it kind of just keeps continuous cycles.

And so this video that you're teaching, if you're teaching these tips or you put it together for your clients, it's like, this is just an example of what I do for my clients. This is just A sliver of the work. You know, how I go deeper with my clients to get better outcomes, save them money, save them time during this process. And, you know, then you're like, at the end of that video or at the end of this live webinar, you can actually give them an opportunity to work with you. And so it's really cool when you do this in the correct way, it actually works. And it's just in the packaging of the whole thing. It's literally like moving pieces around. Inserting one line in the beginning makes it so much better at the end. Like, I love small tweaks. Big result.

Yeah.

That's so huge. So, Pat, one thing here. We're going to talk about your new book, just to wrap up, but before we do that, what would be your one piece of advice for content creators? Maybe specifically in our industry or just in general, like, content creators in 2025, what would be that advice?

Just show up. That's really it. Just show up. People can't build a relationship with you if you're not showing up. You can't get better and understand what's working or what's not if you don't show up. What's the worst that can happen when you show up? Well, definitely not the worst. If you didn't. That's it. Show up.

Simple. Simple to say. Not as easy to do. But, like, I think about this a lot, like, the consistency everybody tells you, but it's just crazy to see what happens when people can connect with you. For example, I saw one of your first videos along, that came up in my feed. You had either the DeLorean or the skateboard from Back to the Future behind you. You didn't say anything about it, by the way, but it was just in. Is this in your home office or something?

Yeah, I've got. I spent too much money on Back to the Future stuff.

Yeah. So I don't know if anybody else had that. That was one of my favorite movies when I was a kid. So I'm like 40 years old learning about a webinar, and the dude teaching me about the webinar has a Back to the the Future hoverboard behind him. What does this have to do with anything? But I swear, like, it makes that person relatable to you. So, like, when Pat's a gamer and he's sharing all these things, anybody else who has the same interests, you want to learn from that person even more. And I just feel like too often, Pat, like, we're hiding those things.

Yeah, I mean, even if you don't have that shared interest, like, not a lot of my audience are as big of a Back to the Future fan as I am. If you are a fan too, like, awesome, we made a connection. But even if not, that's now something that you know about me that you don't know about the other person selling you the same thing too. Yeah, right. These are the things we know about our friends. We might not enjoy all the same things our friends do, but we know that about them and as a result, we have a relationship with them. Like it has nothing to do with the business, but also everything to do with the way business should be done today, which is a relationship based approach.

First thing first, before I forget, okay, is Pat, you wrote a new book. It's called Lean Learning. Can you just quickly tell us about this book? Because I just got an advanced copy, it has a few typos on it, but I'm the first person in this room to get this book.

Yes, you are. So Lean Learning the Subtitles how to Achieve More by Learning Less I really wrote this book for my kids who are entering their teen life now and entering a world where there's just so much information that it's going to be very difficult to navigate. And I know we're all going through that, as well as content creators of, to entrepreneurs, as teachers, parents, et cetera. This is my first book outside of the world of entrepreneurship. I mean, it still has to do with it, but this stuff is so important to me because a lot of people have come to me and have seen me achieve a lot across many different fields and they go, how do you do that? So for the last three years I've been distilling that into my learning framework. And Lean learning kind of as a preview is just kind of what I like to call just in time information learning, the things that you need to know to take the next steps, not just in case learning, which is what's been holding us back. So for someone like us, where we only get paid if we close the deal, I was trying to think, I'm like, how could I monetize that? Right? Where we want to give these conversations up front for free so that we can engage with them and create a relationship, but also not give away all of our worth as well. Right. So there's a few things. If you do this in more of a one to many situation, it becomes less of your time individually. So I like the idea of bringing people into community. One idea I had while you were speaking was a Limited time community, you know, do I, do I want to, as if I'm a new homeowner or new buyer, like join a community and be in there forever? No, but if I knew that I was in it for 60 days, by the end of 60 days, I'd have this much and be able to move on from that. Now I'm more interested because I know it's not a forever, but I also have an end goal or there's an end game there. Referrals are key as well. Even if you talk to somebody, it might not be a right fit right now. I still might know somebody who is the right fit. And if I still jive with what you're saying, I'd be more than happy to pass your information on. So that's another thing too. And then just sometimes just realizing that it's not always going to be a close right now. So playing the long game is really key. And then also understanding that the more that you iterate, even if you don't sell, is an opportunity to get better at selling the next time. You can learn from those who say no and ask, okay, well, how come this didn't work out? What could I have done better? And then you can take that to the next person. Right. In my business, we have different channels.

There's a different market, if you will. We're looking for should you have more than one YouTube channel for each market?

In general, the rule of thumb is different audience, different channel. Same audience, same channel. So a lot of people want to have shorts and longs in the same channel. Well, if it's for the same audience, then cool, keep them on the same channel. I would worry about spreading yourself too thin across different channels. If you could pick one and go deeper with it, I would go and start there. That way you can kind of master that, get those numbers up, and then you can feed some of those people to the other one if you want to start with one and then maybe build on it later. Correct. Okay. Thank you, sir. Yeah, thank you.

I wonder if you could walk me through the process of how you come up with the story, because I know it always starts with like, so I was in a card shop and then.

Right, right. So here is the big secret that I've realized since telling story on YouTube. I film the thing that happens first. I don't even know exactly where the story's gonna go. I don't know how it ends. I'm just in it. So for you, you might be dining somewhere, going somewhere and just filming all this stuff. The magic happens in the voiceover. So I can wait to figure out what the story is again. Something interesting might happen during the thing that I don't even, I can't even plan for. It just happens, right? Maybe a thunderstorm came all of a sudden. Okay, cool. Like my day is kind of weird now. So the story that I was telling you before is kind of off. If I was doing it in real time versus, okay, I got to tell you about the story because I was out somewhere, it was sunny and then all of a sudden things just changed in an instant. And you are taking that almost as B roll. And the voiceover is what's doing the storytelling, right? Because you can edit the voiceover. You can do that later. You can fine tune it, you can put it into ChatGPT to refine it and cut the number of words in half. All those kinds of things. Things can happen after you film. So doing it in stages like that has been really, really helpful. Just so I don't feel like I have to nail that first shot. Got it. Does that make sense?

Yeah, a lot. And it's.

I.

It makes sense because I was like, how is it so premeditated that he filmed the clip he needed? But it makes sense that you do.

It after the fact. Right.

And then would you, would B roll like that with voiceover be something that you can only do in short form or is that something that you could also execute on a long form basis?

So on my main Pokemon channel, we use voiceover as well for a video. We did a video that was an hour and a half story where most of it was voiceover. But every once in a while we'd go to the sort of like real time voice of me in the moment. Right. Something surprising would happen and I'd look at the camera and go, oh my gosh, I can't believe that happened. That was like me talking, but then it go into like my head voice. Remember Doogie Howser and like you could like hear him or like he would talk on the computer. Like you'd hear his thoughts for the day. Like that kind of can come out. And that's a great method to pull out lessons, pull out stories after the story happens, you put them in voiceover. Now people are like in your head. Got it right. So I can make that fine tuned and tell it in a way that hooks people in. I can say in the voiceover later, oh my gosh, I can't believe that happened. But what's going to happen next? I have no idea. Yeah, I Didn't say that in real time. I said that after. But I put in a open loop that then closes later to keep people watching. So again, all these little advanced strategies, but storytelling with voiceover is really the secret.

Yeah.

That's awesome.

Thank you. Yeah, I got in. You did, like a magic pack one day. And I play Magic the Gathering.

Cool.

And then now I'm just watching Pokemon cards being open.

So, yeah, no, thank you. So this channel that Jill's talking about is called Should I open it or Should I keep it sealed? If you've seen those videos on YouTube, that's me. And one thing that happened just to tell you about cringe before they binge a little bit in the beginning. So these are close up videos of me opening a pack of Pokemon. And it's really close to my hands, right? And I have these weird looking thumbs that are like wider than they are long, like they're club thumbs, like Megan Fox thumbs. And people would make fun of me for it in the comments. They're like, dude, this guy's thumbs are disgusting. Why can't I stop looking at his thumbs?

It's like wild.

Yeah. And in the beginning, I was like, you know, going back to my childhood, like, oh, my gosh, I'm gonna hide. I don't want to do this no more. Like all these thoughts. But I said, you know what? What if I embrace this? What if I make this my thumbs a part of the brand, right? So one day I bought some fake thumbs on Amazon. I put them on and I didn't say anything. And people were like, oh, my gosh. He's like, so embarrassed about his thumbs now. Anyway, there's a Pokemon named Diglett that looks like my thumb. And I just started calling my thumbs Diglett Thumbs. I went to a convention last week in LA collecticon. I signed 30 or 40 diglett cards. No way. I swear. More than my favorite Pokemon, which people know me for. I'm signing Digletts now. And there were even a few people who were like, I recognize you. Are you the should I open it guy? And I'm like, yeah. And they're like, are you really? Let me see the thumbs. It is you. Oh, that's cool. It's like I've taken this thing that was so hard for me to embrace at first, and I've turned it into something that now when people open a pack of cards and they see a Diglett, they will always remember me, right? Just like, there's a woman, Sally Hogshead, she grew up being made fun of for her name, Hogshead. Now, that's her logo in her brand. And she is one of the top business consulting firms in the. In the world because she's taken that thing that is uniquely hers and embraced it. So I would recommend that for all of you. I'm not saying you have to share your bunions to people or make a jingle.

Maybe, bro. Maybe. Guys, clap it up for Pat.

Appreciate it. Thank you, everybody.