Pat Flynn – Benefits of Starting Small

Pat Flynn:
I feel like in the world of online business, at least in this. This jungle that we’re in, you know, I’m the guy in the front with the machete, and I’m clearing the path for people. And I can go, guys, watch out. There’s a tiger over there. Hey, don’t eat that berry, because that will kill you. Like, that’s my job. And I might get a few scratches here and there, but as long as I know I’m helping everybody behind me, then we’re going to keep trudging forward.

Dana Robinson:
Exit Plan is a podcast for business owners and those who want to be business owners. I’m always in search of the lesser known stories of entrepreneurship. In the exit Plan podcast, you’ll hear stories from startup to sale and hear from the professionals who helped business owners achieve their exit. Hosted by me, author and private equity manager Dana Robinson, along with my co hosts and guests, you’ll hear real stories, tips, and tools that will help you plan for the exit you want, whether you are still working at a day.

Dana Robinson:
Job or running a business.

Dana Robinson:
Let’s get started with this episode of the Exit Plan podcast.

Dana Robinson:
Pat Flynn, I am so excited to get you on a podcast. You don’t know this, but back when Nate and I started the Opt Out Life podcast, I think it was seven or eight years ago, we found this guy in San Diego who was the leader of the pack in podcasting, and you were on this list. I think we were either too afraid to reach out to you or you were just too busy with other things. I think it was us being afraid to reach out, but been a fan of Pat Flynn for a long time and so super excited to have you on my podcast. It’s a revision of our old opt Out Life podcast, now titled the Exit Plan. We interview entrepreneurs and figure out what their journey was into entrepreneurship and very often out of entrepreneurship, or at least through some exit, some liquidity event. So gathering those stories is part of the objective and sharing the things that my listeners want to know to level up in business, or in many cases, just to be able to get into business from maybe a job that they have.

Pat Flynn:
Thank you for having me on. Excited to chat. I mean, this is my jam, so wherever you want to take me, I’m there.

Dana Robinson:
All right. Well, I think the funnest part for me, at least, I’ll start with getting what I want out of this. I want to hear your entrepreneur journey, and I’m sure you’ve told it a million times, but you wrote the forward to my book, the King’s Flyswatter, which is out and on preorder right now. So I got a little bit, because you wove some of your story into the forward, but for the benefit of people who don’t know you, my listeners, tell us how Pat Flynn became the Patflin that you are today.

Pat Flynn:
Yeah, I mean, I didn’t think I’d be an entrepreneur. That’s one thing. I thought I was going to be an architect. That’s what I went to school for, went to college for. Got a great job in the Bay Area of California. And I was kind of on my way. I mean, this was pre 2008, but then, of course, 2008 happened and I was made redundant, much like many other people. And I didn’t know what to do.

Pat Flynn:
I didn’t have a plan b. I had thought I had done everything I was supposed to. In fact, I had gotten perfect grades. I went to a great college. I got a prestigious job. Even at the job, I was working, trying to work harder than everybody else to just level up. And I was the youngest person in the firm of 250 plus people to become a job captain. I was in my early twenties at the time.

Pat Flynn:
I had just proposed to my girlfriend. We were about to get married, and then all of a sudden the rug got pulled out under me and I was just flailing. I didn’t know what to do. Moved back in with my parents, my fiancee moved back in with her parents. I felt like we were going backwards. And all I could do was continue to try to get back into the architecture space because that’s all I knew. That’s what I was supposed to do. But eventually I found out that, well, nobody was going to be hiring, and I had to figure something out.

Pat Flynn:
I didn’t want to stay in my parents’ house, and we wanted to start this family, so I had to figure out something. And I remember I was exploring the world of podcasts. And this was very early on in the days of podcasts. I mean, this is when there were maybe less than 50,000 podcasts available. There was one that I stumbled upon called Internet Business Mastery. And I had come across many other people teaching online business and entrepreneurship before, but they all eventually made their way to a checkout page where I was required to pay to get the rest of the information, that kind of thing. These guys, Sterling and Jay, they just gave it all away for free. And it was so inspiring because they told me not just what could happen, but how, and then the how to.

Pat Flynn:
And not only that, I heard so many success stories of other people. And one of those success stories was by a guy named Cornelius Fitchner, who was a guy who had a six figure business all online, helping people pass the PM exam or the project management exam. And that was my big light bulb moment. I was like, no. Like, that’s crazy. I had taken so many exams on my way to becoming an architect. I wasn’t a fully licensed one yet, but I was on my way. And I remember many of those exams were extremely difficult and had hardly any information online.

Pat Flynn:
So this made sense. So I picked the one that I felt I knew the most about. That a lot of people asked me questions about when I was still working at the firm, which was an exam called the lead exam Leed, which is a very niche exam in the green buildings and sustainable design space. And I built a website to teach people those things and put my notes online and started to help people out. And eventually I started to get found on Google, and people started to find the website and share it on forums. And all of a sudden, out of nowhere, I became this expert on this topic. I barely passed the exam, by the way, it is a very difficult exam, but because I was the person stepping forward to help people and the fact that I had my notes online, I was seen as this expert. So eventually, in October of 2008, I ended up taking all my notes and packaging them into a PDF that I just sold through PayPal.

Pat Flynn:
It was $19.99. And in that first month, I had made $7,908.50. That’s net after PayPal fees. And it just changed my life. I could not believe that this happened in this way. I almost felt like I always thought the SWAT team was going to come and just be like, just break down my door and be like, oh, you’re stealing money. Even though I was getting thank you notes from people saying I was able to help them pass the exam, it just didn’t feel right. Right, like, I went to five years of school and was making two and a half times more on this new thing that I was doing.

Pat Flynn:
It just felt weird. But then the income just continued to grow. I started making five figures a month. In May of 2009, I made $32,000 in that single month. I ended up raising the price of this thing, but overall, it changed my life. And then a lot of people started to ask me, how did you do that? And I said, I don’t know, I just did it. And they said, you should talk about that. You know how to post things online.

Pat Flynn:
You should document that journey. That’s exactly what I did. Smartpassiveincome.com came about, and I just started sharing everything, everything I was doing, learning things I wish I’d done differently. And what really put me on the map was I started to share how much money I was making, like, just transparent. Here’s how many sales we had. Here’s how much that profited me. Here’s how much I spent. Some months were up, some months were down.

Pat Flynn:
And I guess in the entrepreneurial space, nobody was doing that. And they thought it was very novel and nice to see somebody just being open about the whole thing. And that’s when people started to come to me and say, Pat, you have just this unique way of teaching online business. It just feels more real because it is real and it feels doable. It feels like I could do it, too. So then I started to lean into that and teaching more of those concepts. Then I started to hear people say, Pat, what I love about the way you’re doing what you’re doing is you’re not doing this to buy Lamborghinis and buy a giant mansion. You’re doing this because you’re just trying to survive and support your family.

Pat Flynn:
That’s what I want to do. Okay, now I’m starting to see the kind of person I’m attracting. Let me lean into that even more. So I started to make jokes about how my Lamborghini was like a 2010 Toyota Sienna and kind of like playing on that lambro kind of feel, but the exact opposite of that. And people started to resonate with that. Then I started to get invited on podcasts, and eventually I ended up writing books and speaking on stage, and the brand just continued to grow like mad. I have a podcast that was published first in 2010, which is now 14 years old and 800 episodes in with 80 million downloads. It’s just been a life changer, not just for revenue and exposure, but also the relationships that I was able to build with people on that show.

Pat Flynn:
And I had become known as sort of a podcasting teacher. Not the only one, but I did help a lot of people. I helped Tim Ferriss start his show and a few others. So that was neat. And today, I like to dabble and try new things and share what I learned. Sometimes it goes wrong. I’ve lost a lot of money trying to develop a software company, and I shared that process. But I also started a website on security guard training, something I knew nothing about.

Pat Flynn:
But I built in public to show people how to get there and how to rank really high in Google. This was back in the early two thousand and tens, and that ended up ranking number one. And I started generating thousands of dollars from that. And that inspired a lot of people to create their own businesses. So I had become known as a sort of crash test dummy. Somebody coined that and I really loved it. It’s like, sure, I’m a crash test dummy. I’m going to build something and I might crash, but either way, even if it’s a fail, it’s going to be a lesson for people watching along.

Pat Flynn:
So I still continue to build and try new things. I started a new YouTube channel in the Pokemon space recently, which has done really well. I invented a physical product in 2019 with my videographer that launched to half million dollars in 60 days on Kickstarter. And again, I just try to finish up because I’m rambling. I had a lot of coffee right before this.

Dana Robinson:
I love it.

Pat Flynn:
I feel like in the world of online business, at least in this jungle that we’re in, I’m the guy in the front with the machete and I’m clearing the path for people. And I can go, guys, watch out. There’s a tiger over there. Hey, don’t eat that berry because that will kill you. That’s my job. And I might get a few scratches here and there, but as long as I know I’m helping everybody behind me, then we’re going to keep trudging forward.

Dana Robinson:
I love that. For those who were maybe around in the time when you were starting to sell your product, there was a popular thing called the launch, the product launch, or these sort of info products that were largely telling people how to create an info product, right? And there was this sort of marketing bro feel to the people who were in that. It was like, oh, it’s $1,000 or was $10,000. There was a mastermind that was $25,000 and people pointing to the sports cars they got that allegedly came from the business that they’re about to show you how to do. I’ve met some of those guys and some of them have been through that and are a little embarrassed about it. And some of them are out there probably trying to figure out what the new thing is they’re going to sling. But I don’t see the sustainability that you’ve created from just being genuine. People still pay you, and maybe they’re not paying you $10,000 for something that may or may not work, but you’ve been able to forge ahead and build a much bigger audience, a sustainable economic structure, and people believe it because it’s real and genuine.

Dana Robinson:
And you’re just saying this. I’m doing this. I think there’s some real magic to having done that.

Pat Flynn:
Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate that. And people are paying me. They’re not paying me in a large lump sum up front for something, but I am. For example, at SPI, we have a membership where people pay monthly to get access to something, and they only continue paying if they’re only continually getting value. That’s what I love about that scenario. And people have been paying for years because they’re getting results and they’re getting an ROI from that.

Pat Flynn:
And I always feel like, and this is one of my phrases, it’s your earnings are a byproduct of how well you serve your audience. Right? So let me continue to serve you over time. And if I’m doing a good job, then I know I’m going to be rewarded back. And the other part about this is, even if a person doesn’t ever pay me, there are still ways to return that favor of service that I offer them. It’s through a recommendation, a referral. Constructive feedback is just as valuable, right? A person who cares enough to go, you know what? I don’t think that that was the right move. Or what if the brand did this instead? Because that’s how I feel. That is just as valuable.

Pat Flynn:
So I’ve been learning a lot about people and community over time, and I just, again, try to pass that forward in different ways, from podcast episodes to videos to my books. Very grateful for the readers of my books. My second book, will it fly? Was published in 2015. It’s about validating your business ideas first before you actually go out there and spend the time and money and sweat putting those things together so that you know that you’re at least giving yourself the best bet moving forward. And that book, even though it was self published, became a Wall Street Journal bestseller. And I didn’t even know that was possible.

Dana Robinson:
I didn’t either. Congratulations. That’s amazing.

Pat Flynn:
No, I appreciate that. So I’m working on my fourth book now, and it never gets easier, by the way, just FYI. But congrats to you and your book. I was very grateful and honored to be able to write and read the foreword for that. And if anybody listening hasn’t checked it out yet, you definitely should.

Dana Robinson:
I appreciate it. Thanks. Let me summarize it and Then ask you a question about how it might bear out in your own life. So the book is partly a parable of a servant in the kingdom a fictitious kingdom in Babylon. And he swats flies behind the king. It’s, of course, not a good job. But instead of becoming ambitious to get out of that job, he gets good at it. And eventually his mentor says, hey, why don’t you start listening to the king and then come talk to me about it? So he becomes very wise because he’s in an environment where he learns to extract that wisdom.

Dana Robinson:
And then that gives him all of the tools that he needs to become both wise and wealthy and make great decisions and have some agency in his life and end up doing great for himself and for others around him and for the kingdom. And then I weave some stories in and out of there of entrepreneurial journeys. Part of what sort of came to mind when I developed the idea was, I get so tired of the shark tank myth that people come to me. I spent 20 years as an IP attorney, and people come to me with this big idea. I got an idea. And they really have this lottery mentality that if they just come up with the best idea, then they’ll somehow become wealthy and have agency. And what I’ve seen in most of my experience as a lawyer and entrepreneur is that the people around me, they learned a bunch of stuff by being really ambitious about that. Learning, learning.

Dana Robinson:
And then that ends up becoming the platform for them to do something in business. Often the stuff from a job that people hate their jobs, instead of chasing mediocrity, they extract everything they can so that if they don’t move up, they can easily move out or over become self employed? In your case, in some sense, I think you didn’t really take the skills from being an architect, but you did take a thing that was kind of like within your reach from a job. And that became the tool, whether it’s in your life or maybe in your kind of sphere of influence. Am I crazy to hate on the Big Idea thing and think everybody should just hunker down, learn some skills, and then turn those into businesses?

Pat Flynn:
I think it is. The hardest road to get to success is to have that big idea and shoot that shot. I think it’s amazing that people have big ideas and should dream big, and you absolutely should. And you should shoot your shot. However, you might be overshooting a million different easier ideas that might be right in front of you. Right? And that’s where I love the parable. And this idea, for me, what I hear is this idea of just being a listener, a good listener, and trying to find opportunities that perhaps are just right under your nose. And for me, I kind of accidentally fell into that.

Pat Flynn:
I’m so grateful. Even though it was the worst time of my life, at that moment when I got laid off, it was actually the best thing because it actually kind of unplugged me, if you will, from the matrix I was in and made me look at everything from a different perspective and go, oh, here’s an opportunity here. Let me help people pass this exam. I could have done that earlier, but it took me getting laid off and having my eyes open to be able to discover that. And what I love about people like us is we’re trying to introduce these things to people before that moment in life. That might be a terrible struggle, because these opportunities are right there. And throughout my history as an entrepreneur, it’s always been about listening, right? My physical product came as a result of seeing the struggles that videographers were having with their joby gorillapods and how just much of a struggle that was to hold as a vlogger. Well, let’s build a better tool for that, right? With just my books.

Pat Flynn:
I mean, my tagline for will it fly? Is so you don’t waste your time and money so you can validate your ideas first. And where did I get that? I didn’t make that up. That wasn’t a big idea. That was literally what my audience was saying in the surveys that we asked them and in terms of what their biggest fears and problems were in conversations that I was having. And so the answers are right there. In fact, my formula for helping people start businesses now is just simply find one person, solve one problem that they have, and help them get one result. And when you do that, there’s so much education and learnings that happen where there is one person that you can help, there are many more. And when you unlock that result for a person, not only do you now have a testimonial so you can genuinely go out there and say, hey, this works, but you unlock the confidence in your brain to be able to do that.

Pat Flynn:
You almost now feel an obligation, a responsibility to go out and find more people like that. And that just starts with one person that can multiply to ten and 101,000 instead of let’s build the next uber or the next Tesla. And those are commendable businesses, obviously. However, for most people, starting small to then go big is the way to go. And even starting small to just stay small and steady and have something that supports your family and maybe doesn’t require you to quit your job, but also just provides a nice fund for your retirement account or a vacation fund or something, like a little bit goes a long way. And as I say in my book, superfans, you don’t need to change the entire world. You just need to change somebody’s world. When you do that, great things can happen.

Dana Robinson:
I love that. Could you have become what you are now if you hadn’t started with a $20 something simple? Was that training wheels vital to be able to spin these big plates now? Millions of followers, big businesses, big bets.

Pat Flynn:
It didn’t feel like training wheels. It felt like the biggest. I felt like I was on a unicycle from day one because it was brand new. I’d never done it before, and I felt unbalanced, and it just felt dangerous to me. But looking back in retrospect, yes, it was sort of a stepping stone to unlocking new confidence, unlocking new realizations that I actually could help people. Even though I never went to business school, even though I barely passed that exam, I could still help somebody, that I could be an expert in somebody’s eyes just simply because I had done it before. And that unlocked a whole new sort of generation of people saying, hey, I can help you, even though they’re not necessarily phd or master’s students of said topic. In fact, what I’ve learned is people are more likely to respond to and actually learn from somebody who’s just like them, who’s just one or two steps ahead versus the person on the podium who’s 40 years into it but so far removed from what it’s like today that it just sounds like gibberish.

Pat Flynn:
So this is hopefully inspiring to those listening who are like, oh, am I good enough? Am I expert enough? Absolutely. Because you have experiences that other people are now going through who could use a little guidance, who could use some information and could just use some accountability and help.

Dana Robinson:
Yeah, I think that I meet a lot of people who have jobs, and they’re paralyzed because they want out. They see the freedom and agency that people have who work for themselves, and they’re just paralyzed. And part of that is also this trap of, like, I can’t make the leap unless I have something really big. And it turns out you really should just do something really small. And probably, I would think a lot of the ideas that circulated around smart, passive income are probably great fertile ground still for people to say, oh, I can do that. And same with will it fly for people to go like, oh, this is pretty low risk. I can do a little something, maybe even while you still have a job and prove up a business.

Pat Flynn:
For sure. We have a student of mine, her name is Andrea. She read will it fly? And was like, pat, I need some help developing my brand. I don’t even know what to do. And we started to dig into, well, what is something that’s a big concern to you right now in your life? What is something that people are going to you for help? And we ended up discovering that she was in the middle of two growing kids in this world where technology is just out of control for a lot of them. And she was doing her best to manage her kids, and she decided to create a brand called better screen time. Right? Not no screen time, just better screen time. And that was her positioning.

Pat Flynn:
And she’s now developed a brand with online courses and coaching and stuff to help parents go through the trouble and pain of working with their teens and little ones with devices. And it’s changed people’s lives and it’s changed her life, too. In fact, not too long ago, she sent me a screenshot during a latest launch of hers. And it was just like all the notifications from her shopping cart coming in. And she’s like, pat, we did it again. Thank you so much. And it’s like, those are the kinds of things that are amazing. And that was something that initially she was like, am I even qualified to do this? And it’s like, have you helped any of your friends? And if not, go help them and see if what you are teaching them works.

Pat Flynn:
And it did. And so she’s been able to now package that and then amplify it.

Dana Robinson:
So there’s the people I see that are paralyzed. That seems like a sort of attainable approach to get over that stuckness. The other end of the spectrum are people like me that are a little bit add or ADHD. I’m undiagnosed, but I’m doing twelve things right now. Probably this might be a mutual therapy session where I’m looking for help, Pat, not just for me, but asking for a friend. How do you deal with the entrepreneurs who are like, got a couple of things that are working and then we get distracted, we do other things and some of those pay off. And so when I look back, I’m like, well, I should have done that because it worked and I made some money on it and it kept the flywheel of kind of my life going. How do you filter? And you probably have a bunch of ideas pointed at you.

Pat Flynn:
How do you pick things all the time? I mean, the big P word is prioritization and knowing sort of where you want to go if we don’t know where we’re going or what our goals are. Anything could be a yes, and it may fit into this or not. And we might even believe that this next thing that’s on our plate could be the one. But where is it even going? I don’t know. We just kind of are automatic mode at this point. Or we hear from certain personalities and authorities, and we might be following ten different mentors and listening to 20 different podcasts. All of that is actually info besity is what I like to call it. We’re getting so bombarded with so many inputs that our brain has no idea on how to organize it, and we have no idea how to act or what to do, and we just simply do the things that give us a quick endorphin hit, which is typically starting something new, only to then lose the motivation.

Pat Flynn:
We have inspiration to start it, but inspiration lasts like one or two days. You need the motivation, and there’s a lot more things to that. And then eventually, if you want something to succeed, you have to create habits around it to help fight when you don’t want to do it anymore and just kind of automate it anyway. There’s a whole sequence of things that have to happen. This is actually what my next book is about. It’s actually one circle outside of the entrepreneurial ring. It’s called lean learning, and it’s about this idea, and it’s not going to come out for a while. I’m not here to pitch it, but it’s just this idea that we’re living in this world where before we used to struggle because there wasn’t access to information.

Pat Flynn:
That is not a problem anymore. We all have access to information on our phones immediately. In fact, it’s just now too much. And we are even getting things that we don’t even know we need because algorithms are smarter than us, right? So there’s so much intake. So how do we filter and focus in this world that we live in so we can get the results that we want? That’s what the book is about. One strategy that worked really well for me to manage the multiple projects that, you know, first I tried the one thing, right? There’s a book called the one Thing by Gary Keller and J Pap san. And it’s like, okay, that makes sense. If you want to succeed, literally just focus on one thing.

Pat Flynn:
It’s so easy. All your energy is focused, and you’re able to not just advance further, you’re able to advance faster. That doesn’t work for me because doing one thing, I feel like I’ve lost a limb because I have an itch to want to do other things. So I’ve been able to develop what I like to call the 20% itch rule, and that is allow yourself 20% of your time to scratch that itch. And this means you’re welcome to do one other thing that interests you, but contain it. Right. Control it. And as far as 20%, that’s a Friday in a five day week, right? So I have a four day work week in our business.

Pat Flynn:
This is why we did it. Because Monday to Thursday, I’m focused on SPI, and then on Friday, it’s my play day. I can experiment between 2017 and 2019. My Fridays were for developing a physical product. Why a physical product? I just wanted to be curious and play. There was really no reason for me to do this other than I’m just curious and I want to figure it out. So I did, and my partner and I, we launched the switch pod on Kickstarter in February of 2019, and it generated $483,000 in 60 days. That itch worked out, and that still continues to sell, mostly on autopilot on Amazon today.

Pat Flynn:
Other things that I’ve done completely failed, but it’s okay because they were contained in this 20% petri dish that didn’t grow out of control and infect everything else. It allowed me to still maintain what I needed to maintain with my other business. Today, my 20% itch rule is allowing me to play in the world of YouTube, in the Pokemon arena. And this is working out. This started during the pandemic with my kids, but then they moved on to other things. I went deeper in it, and we now have about 800,000 subscribers, and we’ve been able to host events with thousands of people in person. And it’s actually the most profitable thing I’ve ever done because the team is very lean. It’s kind of wild.

Pat Flynn:
We’re generating between 30 and 40k from just YouTube ad revenue alone, let alone sponsorships and the events. So it is quite wild, and it’s pretty cool. And again, because I’ve allowed myself to play now, if it failed, that’s okay. It’s okay. It’s just like if you’re going to go to a casino, I do not condone gambling. But if you go to a casino, the smart thing to do if you’re going to play is you have a bankroll, and that’s your bankroll. If you lose it, you’re okay. If you win, cool bonus.

Pat Flynn:
Do not go back to the ATM. And that’s where we, as entrepreneurs, we keep going back into our time bank to keep withdrawing time that is so scarce and limited to put into something else. If you just take a little bit of that time, you bet on it, it may or may not work out, but at least everything else is protected. And your bankroll in your atm is just untouched. I hope that makes sense.

Dana Robinson:
It does. I love that as a means of managing the inevitable, it might just be that we really are add people that just can’t stick to one thing. But also, I see it with entrepreneurs. Maybe it’s, and I’m not sure if this is a common myth or reality, but entrepreneurs are waiting for the thing, right? We’re working on a thing that gets us autonomous, is the way I view it. You want agency. First I need to control my time, then I can control other things. But we’re investing. You get some base hits and you go, hey, that was great.

Dana Robinson:
That was great. You get some failures and you go, wow, that really hurt. I learned some lessons. That was an expensive lesson. But most of us, me included, are betting at least on one of the plates that I’m spinning on being a thing that might blow up and become incredibly successful. And whatever success means is different for everybody else. Dana Robinson here.

Dana Robinson:
Quick plug for my book, the King’s Flyswatter.

Dana Robinson:
You can see it here behind me. If you’re watching this, I’ve got it in my hand.

Dana Robinson:
It’s a beautiful hardcover book, printed to.

Dana Robinson:
Make giftable something that you can share with a family member buy as a gift.

Dana Robinson:
So this latest book, it’s a fable about a person who has a really crappy job. Let’s just start there. This is a book that most people can relate to because we’ve all had crappy jobs. This is the story of Ubar, a servant in the court of a Babylonian king who masters his boring, monotonous job and then learns to listen to the king, hearing him rule the kingdom while quietly swatting flies behind the king. Eventually, Ubar becomes the wisest and most successful man in the kingdom. The story is fun, and it’s easy to read, but it’s not mythology. It’s my story. And as I shared the idea with colleagues and friends, I learned that it was their story.

Dana Robinson:
And guess what? It’s your story if you’re at a job of any kind, one that you love, one that you hate, one that’s just enough to get by. This little book gives fresh perspective on how to leverage that job to get.

Dana Robinson:
You something greater than a paycheck.

Dana Robinson:
The lessons in this parable are entrepreneurial lessons, but not what you might think from the current entrepreneurial zeitgeist. If you or someone you know are looking for a real pathway to entrepreneurship, here’s the secret. Your job is the way out of your job. It’s counterintuitive, but once you see how it works, you can’t unsee it. Learn the way of the fly swatter from the parable of Ubar and from the stories I share from my 30 year business journey. You can get a free copy of the King’s Flyswatter by going to danabrobinson.com.

Dana Robinson:
Do you feel like that’s you? Is there a thing? Or do you think at this point, your flywheel spins and the dabbling is more for your own kind of a personal purpose?

Pat Flynn:
Yeah, I definitely feel blessed and grateful that I have financial freedom and the ability to then just scratch an itch without any sort of sense of, okay, well, why? Well, just because I want to. Right? And that’s ultimately where we all want to get to, right? That agency and that. Just freedom to do what I want, when I want, with who I want. And that’s really what freedom means to me and what I’ve been building this whole time. And it’s not like I was there from day one. Not at all. In fact, a lot of hard work and sacrifice was put into this, but both on my end and my wife’s end to support me as I’ve been able to try to build this business. And she’s like the unsung hero that nobody knows about because she’s in the back end taking care of the kids and making sure I’m scheduled and everything.

Pat Flynn:
So shout out to my wife, April. But, yeah, it’s interesting because things are changing so fast, and there’s all this new stuff. When you become an entrepreneur, you sort of learn to see things. It’s like, again, going back to the matrix reference, when Neo is neo and he sees it, the world starts to look like binary code, right? The green and black. And he’s like, seeing things. His eyes have been opened up to this new language and how things work. And when you become an entrepreneur, especially after a couple of successes, you start to notice opportunities are literally everywhere. Like, oh, man, this is not the way it should be.

Pat Flynn:
I bet I could create something better and faster and more convenient than that. And it’s just like the filter of, okay, should I, do I need to? A good example of this is I’ve recently rediscovered fishing in my life. A couple of years ago, I went to a lake in the morning. I had a day off, it was a Friday, and I went to go on a hike as the sun was coming up. It was like the most gorgeous view I had seen in a very long time because I’m usually stuck in my office at home or on a video camera and the sun was coming up, the water was glassy, steam was coming off of it. And I pulled out my phone to take a photo of it. I was like, I got to share this on Instagram with everybody. I want to share this moment.

Pat Flynn:
And I looked at my phone, I’m like, why am I taking a picture of this for everybody? Can I just do this for me? Can I just enjoy this moment and not have to think about having to share it? And it felt selfish because I’m just so used to sharing everything. But I’ve realized that I need to take care of myself and do things for me in order to better, when it’s time, better take care of my family and other people outside. So I’ve rediscovered fishing and I have a absolute love for it. And I’ve tried really hard and I’ve done a good job so far to not create another YouTube channel about fishing now because I’m seeing so many opportunities for better creation, for products, for all these other things. And again, it’s just a language of discovery that you learn as an entrepreneur that you can’t not, this is me now and forever, right? And so it’s just a matter of, okay, opting out. And again, I love that word because it’s like, okay, I see this, it is there. I could, but I’m going to take the high road or I’m going to be disciplined and go, no, not for me. And that means you’re reaffirming the yeses that you’ve already said yes to.

Pat Flynn:
And that is really key. And why I love that word, opt in and opt out. And where I feel like I am in life right now. And again, I just feel this continuous need to continue to share and help people figure out this puzzle of online business in today’s world, especially because again, things are changing really quickly so that other people can experience the same thing. And we’ve been able to do that with thousands of people who, some have quit their jobs, some have gone full time with their new thing, their podcast, their YouTube channel, et cetera. But no matter what it is, there’s always more opportunities and we’re here to help guide along the way talked about failure.

Dana Robinson:
I’ve had a bunch, so I could talk about it. You have to have had a few if you’re doing these experiments. And I think the worst is for someone who steps out and fails immediately, that’s a tough one. But the worst than that is two or three consecutive wins without a failure. Because you and I have met guys like that, and they tend to be arrogant or worse about their basis for success. You have some failure story that might speak to the people that are going to slip and fall. They’re going to get a little damaged in business. And how do you know when is enough? Is there a lesson? Do you cut the line fast? What are some of the lessons from failure? That might be interesting.

Pat Flynn:
Failure is a prerequisite. It’s mandatory in order to succeed. I remember this one time, I think I was like ten or eleven months old and I was learning how to walk. I didn’t learn how to walk immediately. I don’t remember the time, but, you know, I’m just exactly right. You get up, you stumble, you get up again, you stumble, you get up, you go a little bit further. That’s how we as humans figure things out. Yet for some reason, there’s this romanticism with discovering the right business idea and making it win on the first time.

Pat Flynn:
This is why I think the smart passive income podcast and brand was so welcomed when it came into the scene, because it was one of the only ones that talk about the other side of all this, which is how much sucks sometimes and how things that you plan and campaigns that you put money into don’t work sometimes, and then you kind of figure it out from there. Yeah, you got to fail. One time I remember this was in 2012, I think I had a couple of friends of mine, because we create these mastermind groups and we just share ideas with each other, right? There’s no competitors. We can all learn from each other. And two of my friends from two different groups launched a software company, a WordPress plugin, at the exact same time without, they didn’t know each other, but they just happened to do it right around the same time in two completely different spaces. And both of them had generated over six figures in 30 days from that launch, and both had far less reach than I did. And so my entrepreneurial and mathematical brain was like, oh, if I launch my own WordPress plugin to a larger audience, I’m going to generate more revenue. The software thing sounds amazing.

Pat Flynn:
So I immediately go to Google, search for a software developer, and I hire them and they go, okay, what do you want to make? And I said, I don’t know yet. Let me figure that out. Completely going the wrong order here. I figured something out that I feel was a little bit inconvenient. And we worked together on what was supposed to be six weeks for $6,000. That ended up becoming a six month, $16,000 investment. And eventually it finally, after a lot of back and forth, got to a point where I was somewhat happy with it, and I ended up sharing it with a few friends and a few superfans, like, hey, guys, I made this secret super secret project. I wanted to share it with you.

Pat Flynn:
Tell me what you think. And I was so excited about what they were going to say. And I got the feedback, and the feedback was, meh, that’s kind of cool. And I was so disappointed. I was like, what are you talking about? This is the most amazing thing in the world. They’re like, well, it kind of. But then there’s this other tool that kind of does that and these things. And I was like, oh, yeah, you’re right, but what if it did this instead? That’s a good idea, but I’ve run out of my budget already.

Pat Flynn:
Few lessons learned there. It was a very expensive lesson. Number one, if you’re going to create something, talk about it and break it before you make it, right? Like share these things. I was so much in the camp of, well, I don’t want to share my idea because somebody’s going to steal it. There’s so much more benefit to talking about these things first so that it can be broken without you having spent money on it. That just killed me. It was so obvious when this happened. That’s why I wrote the book.

Pat Flynn:
Like, first validate your idea and then do this. This is what inspired will it fly? The other lesson was, if you chase the money first, you’re going to lose. And that’s like when my buddies made those WordPress plugins and they shared those numbers with me. I had dollar signs coming out of my eyes, and that is the wrong reason to do business. Business should be all about solving a problem for somebody and having the revenue come as a result of that value exchange. That happens. That transformation that you offer, I was doing it for all the wrong reasons. And again, that was a terrible failure.

Pat Flynn:
It set me back quite a bit mentally, but it was a very important lesson. I’m happy to continually share that story because I think it’s relatable and it hopefully can help save people some money, too, especially if you’re working with a developer, especially if they’re overseas, like literally draw everything out the way you want it so that they know exactly what you want. If you can’t draw it out yourself, how in the world are other people going to know what you want if you don’t even know what you want it to look like yourself? So again, such obvious lessons looking back. But when you’re in the heat of the moment and you have that excitement that you get when you start something, it’s like you kind of want to go so fast, but like a runner, you’re going to pull a muscle eventually unless you stretch a little bit first and warm up.

Dana Robinson:
For me, some of the failures have been I’m one to try to finish things and so I have a hard time figuring out where do you say this is no longer efficacious, this business? If you have three side gigs, three passive incomes, one’s generating $50 a month, you go straight to economics. Is there any filter that you would say for the many passive income aholics?

Pat Flynn:
I would say before you even get into a project, give yourself a timeline to shoot for a particular goal, a realistic goal, so that you know you have literally a basis for, how is this going? Something to measure off of. You can’t improve what you don’t measure, but you also are unclear on whether or not this is working or not if you have nothing to measure against, right? Because in many cases you might feel, oh, I only have so many email subscribers. But then you realize, wow, okay, 500 is not a lot compared to some people, but some people have 500 people on their email list and are making six figures because it’s the type of person. So anyway, that’s a separate topic. I think there’s a few things that you need to if you are starting to feel like, well, I don’t know if I should continue doing this or not. The first thing is to ask yourself, have you actually given this the best chance to succeed? Just because you started something doesn’t mean you’re putting everything that it needs to to have the best chance to succeed. And a real conversation with yourself about that can help surface the fact that maybe you were excited in the beginning and you put it aside. And that’s pretty much why it’s not getting the focus it needs to get to where it needs to go.

Pat Flynn:
So you need to make a decision on what you want to do from there and prioritize that perhaps over something else that you may have started in its place or vice versa. Let’s get back to that 20% itch rule and kind of make sure we have time to prioritize what we need to prioritize. I always try to get a second, 3rd, 4th, fifth, and 6th opinion on it as well, because you can’t read the label when you’re inside the bottle. And when you’ve been working on something for so long, it’s kind of hard to see things sometimes. And many times, I got to tell you, I’ve been in groups where I talk about how I might be struggling with something, and they go, pat, the answer is right there. Where? Tell me. I cannot see it. It’s because my nose is pressed up against it, right? And they’ll say something, and it’s like, I just need to send an email about that.

Pat Flynn:
I’m so dumb. It’s like, no, you’re not dumb. You’re just so involved in this thing that you’re not seeing the obvious. And this is, again, why mastermind groups are important. You don’t need to pay twenty five k to be in a mastermind group, either. Both of the ones I’m in are just with colleagues and friends that I’ve met in person, and we just continue to chat once a week. And both of them I’ve been in for over a decade. Like, this is how well we know each other, and they oftentimes know me better than I know myself with certain regards.

Pat Flynn:
So that’s another thing. And then finally, I love to do the exercise of what I like to call the DeLorean exercise. So I’m a big back to the future fan, and I love to put myself in a hypothetical DeLorean and go, okay, if I make this decision to stop this right now, let me go into the DeLorean one year into the future, because it’s a time machine. I go one year into the future, come out of the DeLorean, what’s life like? What am I doing? Am I happy about that decision? What am I doing in its place? Is that making me fulfilled? Who am I with? What’s my day like? Okay, I see it kind of let me come back to present day and let me choose path b. Let’s continue on this run. Let’s say I focus on it. Let’s go one year into the future and say, okay, everything worked out the way it wanted, like I wanted it to. What is life like then? And it’s so interesting because many times when I run through that exercise with people on decision trees, we go in the DeLorean, and we go in the future.

Pat Flynn:
The thing that they are surprised at is, even if the thing worked out the way we want it to work out, they’re not fulfilled. They’re not happy. They’re like, oh, my gosh, I just built a six figure company supplying reams of paper to offices. I don’t want to do that. I see the opportunity, but, man, a year of this? I don’t know if I think I could do that. That doesn’t make me happy. Come back to today, it’s like, okay, even though that is a business opportunity or decision, now we know what that might look like. Even if it worked out the way it was supposed to.

Pat Flynn:
Let’s remove that off the plate, and now we can focus our efforts on this or the next option or whatever it might be. So, outside perspective, DeLorean exercise and that honest conversation about whether or not you actually gave it a real shot, those would be the three things.

Dana Robinson:
I love that it’s funny anecdote. I talked to a seller. I’m part of a private equity fund, and we were talking to a seller about their business, and they don’t like their business, but they are adamant that they’re not going to sell it till its exit value is $5 million, which they said will take them five years. And they already have a thing they like doing. And they could sell that business for $2 million now and put all their time for the next five years into the thing they really want to do. But they’re holding on to this business because the perception is that they need to take this asset and make it worth $5 million instead of the $2 million that’s actually worth. And so that exercise is very challenging to get into the psychology of what’s keeping them stuck. But I think they’re making a horrible decision by not just selling the business for what it’s really worth today to do the thing that they really want to do, so that when they get in their DeLorean, they actually land two, three, four, and five years down the road that they’re doing the thing they really want to do, even though it meant divesting an asset at less than the value that they perceive it to be.

Pat Flynn:
Well, and there’s the cost of not focusing on the new thing. Right. And just the mental state that you might be in when it gets to five. Sure, maybe you’re able to do that, but then you’re just, like, dead inside. Yeah. Right. So, again, there’s a lot to unpack there. And I don’t know this company, but just on the surface, it’s like, how much is your time worth to you? And the other thing about this that I’ve thought a lot about is, like, I can get hit by a bus tomorrow, knock on wood.

Pat Flynn:
I don’t want to, but, like, I want to do what makes me happy today. Yes. Put things into place that can help me continue to be fulfilled and happy and wealthy in the future. But I’m grateful that I’m not in the. Well, I got to wait till 65 to do that. I’m not in that matrix anymore, but I also want to not be in the matrix of, okay, well, eventually I’ll start doing things that I like. Maybe not 65, but why not today? Why not tomorrow?

Dana Robinson:
Like fishing on Fridays.

Pat Flynn:
Like fishing on Fridays. Exactly.

Dana Robinson:
One of your guiding principles is that the best and worst things in life are usually the things that happen unplanned. Having just talked to you for 45 minutes, clearly you didn’t plan some of the serendipitous things you did something, though. So for someone who’s maybe thinking, yeah. How do I serendipitously have opportunities land in my lap? How do I pull a pat? How do I pull a Dana? I love that as a guiding principle. And I look back and reflect and think. It’s a truism.

Pat Flynn:
It’s almost like the think and grow rich kind of thing. Napoleon Hill. Right. It’s like, really, I can just think, like, okay, I’m going to think of a million dollars. That’s what everybody says. I’m going to think of a million dollars, and then it’s going to be in my bank account. That’s not how it works. The idea is what you believe is what you achieve.

Pat Flynn:
Right. How you kind of live your day to day based on the goals that you have helps you take the actions required to be more likely to make those things happen. Right. And so this idea of serendipity, I mean, it’s not like just things randomly happened. It feels like that, and it is maybe a little bit of luck involved as well. But in poker, you could play your best hands and still lose. But as long as you’re placing the best bets and you have, or at least in your life, giving yourself the best cards to play with, well, then when the bet comes, you’re more likely to succeed. So it’s this idea of, it’s like you’re not exactly sure what’s going to happen or even how it’s going to happen, but positioning yourself in the best way possible for those things to happen.

Pat Flynn:
It’s building relationships and not building them because, hey, I’m going to help you. So that two years from now, I’m going to ask for capital for this business idea I have. I’m going to just do what I can to be in your life and help you. And I know that whenever the time comes that if it makes sense, you’ll be there for me too, kind of thing, and just continue to stack those opportunities. And that’s really what it is. It’s opportunity stacking. And if you just sit on your couch all day, not talking to anybody, not putting feelers out there, not creating content to help maybe attract people, then it’s definitely not going to happen. I mean, this is also a mantra of mine, is the only way to predict the future is to literally do nothing because nothing’s going to happen if you don’t change anything.

Pat Flynn:
Right. So again, this is why I love the idea of, this is why I love the Internet, because it allows us more of these opportunities to be discovered, to be found. It doesn’t mean it’s going to happen. But the truth is, if you don’t create something, if you aren’t putting yourself out there, then it’s for sure not going to.

Dana Robinson:
Yeah, I think that’s maybe where the missing link is for a lot of people who haven’t started a little business side gig or anything and not sought relationships, I think maybe I’m putting this on you. But you start a side gig and then you start talking to people and we’ll call it networking. But I met a bunch of people at a thing called think tank 15 years ago, and it was Internet marketers and some people who are. Neil Patel was there hanging out at the beach with a bunch of goofball, and I had a website making $500 a month, and I was like, how do I do this better? I wasn’t there to be a lawyer or to give people advice or sell a service. I was just there kind of looking for, how do I make this $500, $5,000. And along the way, people ask you questions and then you give generously, you activate your curiosity and you talk openly about what you’re doing and you find yourself in community. There’s a lot of serendipity that comes out of that and opportunities that people want to know. How do they fall in your lap? Well, you’re not sitting on your couch at home not doing anything.

Pat Flynn:
Exactly. I mean, one of the most common questions I get is, Pat, if you had like $5,000, you were starting over today, what would you do with that? $5,000. And they expect something like, okay, I’m going to build a website for 1000. You don’t need to spend 1000. I’m going to get this inventory from Alibaba, and then I’m going to run ads and all this kind of strategical stuff. And it’s like, I’m going to take that five k and I’m going to buy a plane ticket to an event where other minds in a space that I’m interested in are congregating. And I’m just going to place myself there and talk and be a part of the conversation and listen and understand and swap some flies, if that makes sense, and just kind of learn and be in there. It’s going to be very apparent very quickly what that space is like and where there might be some holes and the kinds of things that you have to offer to be able to either support, maybe even intern, or get hired by somebody to do something.

Pat Flynn:
I mean, this is exactly how. There’s a guy named Drock, who’s a videographer, who one day was just, hey, Gary Vee. Like, he was in the same space as him. He’s like, let me film you daily. And we’re going to call it the daily V. It was just an idea he pitched, and the Daily V became this big thing in Drock. The videographer has now since moved on, but has created his own brand. Wouldn’t have happened if he put himself in that situation and took that bet on Gary and created something for him.

Pat Flynn:
So that’s just a small example of how many people are doing it. It’s not going to happen necessarily behind the keyboard all the time, and definitely not while just binging Netflix. The other thing about this is, especially online, there’s a phrase that I heard recently, it’s, people don’t care what you know about until they know that you care about them. And so doing what you can to empathize with your target audience, to learn about their problems and struggles, to learn the language that they use to describe those, that’s how you get to become somebody’s favorite. And again, you don’t need to change the entire world. In fact, you shouldn’t even try to do that because it’s going to feel like your message is all over the place. Create the resource, become the number one helper in a space that needs help, and you can just take it wherever you want to go from there.

Dana Robinson:
I love that. So, in terms of community, it’s taken you until pretty recently to kind of flip the switch for you to go from a guy with a bunch of followers to a community. Is the smart, passive income community a place for our listeners to join? Tell us about it. Feel free to make it a commercial. But I feel like, hey, it’s been 15 years getting to this point and I want to know more about it because.

Pat Flynn:
No, I appreciate that. Our first community was called Spi Pro. This is for existing entrepreneurs. And this was sort of our test ground for whether or not people would want even to be a part of the community. And it became very clear, very quick that, yes, in fact, the number one thing people did not want in the communities that we were creating was more content. That’s not what it’s about. It’s about connection, collaboration, partnerships, accountability. And we bring in experts, and there’s workshops, and we create masterminds.

Pat Flynn:
We actually do mastermind matching for you inside of SPI Pro. But our more popular community for the more beginner crowd is what we call the all Access pass. We had these one off courses, I had over a dozen of them that you could take anything from. Podcasting, email marketing, webinar, YouTube creation, online courses, building communities. These were all one off courses that were successfully helping people build those things. But over time, we discovered that people are more likely to succeed when going through those courses with other people. So we actually wrapped all of those courses into something we like to call the all access pass. And that is something that now people pay monthly access to, to not just take one course, but take the next course that makes sense for them.

Pat Flynn:
For example, let’s say it’s the podcasting course. Cool. They create a podcast. What’s next? Well, now you need to build your email list. Go into the email marketing magic course. It’s right there for you. And guess what? Next month, you’ll be able to go through it with other people at the same time. And we have hired instructors to help people through that.

Pat Flynn:
It’s not like learn and show up and get your lessons in person live. You’re asynchronously learning through the courses that already existed, but each week you’re going through module by module with other people. And we’ve seen a two x success rate doing that versus what we used to. So we’re so happy. And we’ve completely flipped the business model to focus on the community aspect of it. We call it community powered courses. And we are trying to not just do this for our people, we’re trying to be an example for other entrepreneurs on how to best teach their students and become sort of successful teachers of information online. So it’s been incredible.

Pat Flynn:
We have thousands of people smartpassiveincome comallaccess if you want to check that out and you can see what’s available in case that makes sense. And our goal there is to make sure you never get overwhelmed or lost. It is a lot of information, but when you are provided a roadmap through that information, it becomes a lot easier. And then also when you connect with other people who are just like you too. So I appreciate you allowing me to share that plug and obviously we’d welcome anybody in there from your audience.

Dana Robinson:
Awesome. Love it. Thanks for sharing that. And as we wrap up, I’m just going to show this beautiful book because this book has got your name on it. My name is bigger. It should be King Flyswatter, everybody. Thank you so much. It’s great honor to have Pat Flynn writing the forward for it and reflecting on the applicability of the book to his life.

Dana Robinson:
I made this know a pretty book that feels like something you’d give to your nephew who wants to be an entrepreneur, but also giving away the book on a platform that I helped launch called Downey.com. Hello@danarobinson.com? If you want to connect with me, patflin.com probably the easiest way for people to get into your ecosystem.

Pat Flynn:
Yeah, or at Pat Flynn on Instagram. I’m pretty active there as well as on X and Pat Flynn YouTube channel, smart passive income podcast. I mean, smart passive income is probably where you’d want to end up and we look forward to seeing you there and helping you out. But thank you again for again, it’s an honor to be on the show and be a forward on your book and to have name on your cover. It just means a lot and it looks gorgeous. Highly recommend everybody. Check it out.

Dana Robinson:
Thanks for joining me on this episode of the Exit Plan podcast. I’d love to hear from you. Feel free to hit me up with questions or comments by emailing me at hello@danrobinson.com or leave comments and questions by calling 858-252-7785 call 858-252-7785 and leave a message. Close.