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- [00:01]
Andrew
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- [04:22]
Pat Flynn
Dude, thank you so much for having me, man.
- [04:24]
Andrew
We are so excited to have you on here. And like I told you before the show, you had a huge impact on just even my career starting this podcast. And there's a lot of really cool things that you have done in the past and you really teach some amazing stuff for entrepreneurs and creators and all these different things. And you have this new book coming out called Lean Learning and it's how to Achieve More by Learning Less. And I want to kind of dive into that book and some of the concepts in that book. But before we even do that, can you kind of talk about you, your background and what you do?
- [04:49]
Pat Flynn
Yeah, so I sought out to be an architect. That's what I Wanted to be after school. And I went to school for that and just got a great job. And I was on that pathway to becoming an architect until 2008. I got let go and all my plans changed. I had to move back in with my parents. I was getting engaged. So, like, this was a tough moment in my life. And it was at this time that I discovered podcasts. Like podcasts were just kind of brand new around the time. There were less than a hundred thousand at the time I started listening. And now of course there's millions. But I found one in particular where I heard an episode about a guy talking about how he was making money online helping people pass an exam. And it was the project management exam. And that was a big light bulb sort of aha moment for me because I had taken a number of exams on my way to becoming an architect and many of them didn't have a lot of resources, especially online. And there was one exam in particular, the lead exam, which is about green buildings and sustainable design and stuff. And I was like, you know what, I'm going to give this a shot. Like, what have I got to lose? So lo and behold, after a few months, I built a website and I started to get traffic and that traffic turned into a community. And that community started to ask me like, hey, Pat, can you just publish like the guide for us? Like, I can go through the website, but if you just had something a little bit more convenient, I'd be happy to pay for that. And this was all new to me. It was like it almost came by accident. At the end of the year, I published an ebook, just a little old electronic PDF file. And within a month it had made $7,908.55. It was $19. I sold it for $19 and in 99 cents. And it was absolutely life changing. And it was at that point that the revenue continued to grow. I added an audiobook and started to really make a name for myself in the architecture space. All the while people were seeing this happen and they were like, how did this happen? Like, not only did you survive the recession, but you're like thriving in it now. And I'm like, I don't know, I'm just doing things. And they're like, just share what you're doing because it's working. And I said, okay, I'll share it. So I started Smart Passive Income, a website just to kind of just again open up exactly what I was doing and things that I was doing right, that were apparently working and stuff that I was doing wrong or wish I had done differently. And I think what put that on the map was when I started to share exactly how much money I was making, I was doing these things called income reports and sharing how many customers I had, how much they were paying. Some months it was up, some months it was down. And I always tried to sort of decipher why that was the case. And people started to follow along on the journey and that turned into a podcast in 2010, later some books as well as public speaking. And now, having done this now for 17 years, first of all, that architecture website still up, still generating thousands of dollars a month, and I haven't touched it in about eight years, like, not even doing anything but making sure WordPress was updated, which is wild. But more than that, I have now been able to open up more time to experiment and try a lot of new things. So that's what I like to do. I like to try new things, kind of become the guinea pig, if you will, or the crash test dummy of online businesses. I've been once told I was to almost kind of pave the way. And, you know, I get nicked up along the way. I might have a few scars by taking these risks, but I'm always able to teach people along the way and have them avoid those scars too. So that's what I' I have an invention now that I experimented with. Between 2017 and 2019, I invented a physical product called the Switchpod, which is with my videographer Caleb, and that's still selling on Amazon. More recently, my latest experiment has been a YouTube channel in the world of Pokemon, which has blown up. And now I'm getting recognized on the street, not for spi, but for opening cardboard with cartoons on them. And it's just the most amazing thing. So a lot of things, I do a lot of things, and I like to say I'm the pad of all trades, master of fun.
- [08:09]
Andrew
I love that. And I think it's one of the coolest things about you is you are that crash chest dummy. I remember for the audience listening, I was telling Pat before the show, I found Pat in 2013, and I used to love those income reports that you'd put out. Every single time you would put out those income reports, I'd just be amazed at, like, oh, my goodness, you could actually make money online. And Pat's laying out exactly what he's doing. And I remember you had a couple of months where you were hitting six figures, like on those income reports, and my mind was just completely blown. Like, you were making at that time, I was working at corporate job, I was at a cubicle, just at an entry level job. And I remember thinking to myself, pat is making in one month, month, three times what I'm making at this current job right now. And it's just so incredible to kind of see that growth over time and then listening to podcasts and all that stuff as well. So that is an OG in the online space for real. And your story is absolutely amazing because that's why I'm so excited to have you here, because some of the journey that you've taken, you've tested out so many different cool things and I think it's just a great, great thing. So Lean Learning is the book that we're going to be talking through today. And I think Lean Learning is a really, really great concept overall because we are so inundated with just the amount of information that's out there now that it's kind of difficult to learn how to learn. And I think it skill that a lot of people need to somewhat acquire because it's not only just learning, it's also making sure that you do what you are learning, otherwise you're just kind of, you know, doing it for entertainment purposes. So as we kind of dive into this and, you know, Lean Learning kind of challenges the traditional approach to education. What was the moment or experience that made you realize our learning systems may be broken?
- [09:34]
Pat Flynn
I have a lot of students that I coach, you know, people of all ages from 18 to 80 on how to build a business. And like, every single time I could see a pattern on what was holding these people back from finding success. And it was wanting to consume more information when they didn't know something. It wasn't, okay, let me test and find out. Maybe I'll make mistakes, but at least I'll learn along the way. It was, maybe I should go to business school. You know, it's like, let me spend tens of thousands of dollars a year to learn stuff that I could probably learn by tomorrow if I just, you know, tried a few things. And maybe that's on the extreme, but that's kind of what happens. And I used to find myself falling into that same trap when I this online business thing. And now having done so many things and people come to me and they go, pat, how are you able to do all these things and learn these things quickly and do them seemingly so well? It's not because I'm a genius. It's not because I'm special or even good at all these things. I'VE just found a framework and a way to approach learning and consuming in a way that is perfect for today's world, which is so overwhelmed because the way we grew up, and you know, we all know this, the smarter you were, the more successful you would become, the more information you could retain, just the better you would turn out in life, right? The better test scores you you get, the better college you'd get into. But now, I mean, think about it. With AI and everything so easily accessible, we all have now access to literally the same information. So if information were the answer, we'd all be where we want to be. But we're not. And information's not slowing down. And where before we treated information like a scarce food source, right? You come across a food source and you're like, ooh, food. I might not find this, you know, bush again, or carcass or whatever. I'm going to hoard it all now. Because that's survival, right? And we treated information that way because it wasn't freely available. You would seldomly come across stuff. And so when you did, you absorbed it, you hoarded it. But now today we're at this buffet line, Andrew of information and we're stuffing our plates full. If you ask anybody, like in general, how many podcasts are you subscribed to, how many YouTube videos do you watch? Like all this stuff, it's, we're stuffing our plates full and the people who are serving that food are also force feeding stuff down our throats with algorithms and stuff we didn't even know we needed. We are not set up for success. So we have to learn how to distinct what it is that we're doing, which is consuming just in case information, and transition over to implementation through just in time information, trusting that when you find what your next step is. This is lean learning in a nutshell. What is your next step in this goal? Whatever thing you want to acquire or do, business, language, whatever it might be, what is the next step? Learn the best way to accomplish just that next step. Don't look at the whole thing because you're going to get overwhelmed. You're going to talk yourself out of it. It's going to be daunting. So what's the next step? Implement that and just trust that when you're ready for the next step after that, that that information will be there because by the time you need it, it's probably going to be even more updated and better than if you were to just consume it all. We grew up traditionally reading the entire book first and Then implementing a few things, right? That's how most of us just consume books in general. Let's read the whole thing. In fact, if we don't finish, we feel bad, right? You can't move on to the next book until you finish this one. Why? It's just how we grew up. But we have to change that now. Lean learning is a framework and principles to understand what to learn, when to learn it, and how to implement it so you can make progress faster and speedrun skill acquisition, as I like to say.
- [12:53]
Andrew
And I think that is just the coolest part about this concept, because it stops you from that analysis paralysis. And like, one thing I used to do is I remember, you know, in the 2010s, I wanted to invest in real estate. And before I invested in real estate, I wanted to learn every single thing I could about real estate, about every single aspect of it. Well, it took me three or four additional years of just learning because I was trying to learn every piece before I even took the leap or took the jump to even go into real estate. And so I realized pretty quickly I could learn as much as I want to here, but without the experience, I'm not going to even be able to understand exactly what happens when you start to invest in real estate. And so the same thing kind of is applying here, where you're just looking at what is the very next step, what do I need to learn next in order to accomplish my goal, and how do I take action when I learn that next step. And so this is one big thing. I think the concept that I love that you talk about in the book, too, is kind of the concept where Tim Ferriss talks about. You know, if it were simple, what would it look like? And that's kind of how you break down some of these frameworks. It's, you know, you try to simplify it as much as possible. What is that very next step so that you don't just get paralyzed by trying to learn more information. So can you kind of talk about, you know, how can we kind of simplify our learning? What are some of the things that we can do in order to make sure that we don't fall into this trap of maybe analysis paralysis?
- [14:03]
Pat Flynn
Yeah. So two things that question from Tim Ferriss is absolutely key, which is, if this were easy, what would it look like that immediately provides a filter for you to go, okay, well, what, at a minimum, do I need to start and figure things out? And then, of course, the figuring it out as you go teaches you more. I mean, I love the school I went to, I went to Berkeley for architecture, five years. I learned so much. But to be honest, I learned more in the first month actually working at an architecture firm and doing the things that were actually required by real clients, you know, like in the weeds of it. So there's something to be said for more of the apprentice model versus the traditional model. Right. And I do see some schools, even progressive schools, now leaning back into that more internship and apprentice type model, which is really great to see because that's how you learn. You learn from actually putting things into practice. But again, going back to the question, if this were easy, what would it look like? I'll tell you a quick story about my first architecture ebook, the one I talked about earlier. So. So when I was researching and finding out that I could actually, like publish something to my audience, I fell into the same traps. I read all the things I needed to. I went to Barnes and Noble and I was reading about marketing and I was like, okay, I gotta learn how to copyright because I gotta write a sales page. And I was getting absolutely overwhelmed and just knew that it wasn't gonna ever happen because it was just too much. But again, going back to the question, if this were easy, what would it look like? Well, let me just write the thing first. Let's not worry about any other part of this process. Nothing downstream is going to happen unless I have this thing written. So let me just get open up Microsoft Word and write the darn thing. So that's what I did. It was messy, but after three weeks, I finally did it. And number one, I had all this motivation now. I was like, oh my gosh, like, I can taste it now. Here it is. I just need to figure out a way to now make this look good. Yes, I need a sales page and I need to learn marketing. But just let me make this look good first. So let me focus on that. Let's find somebody. And this is the second part to how do you know what to do next? Is you go to somebody who's gone down that path before. Because there are many people who now openly share what they've done before. Like I used to with smart passive income, who can tell you which roadblocks to avoid, who tell you which tools to use, who tell you exactly how to do this. And again, finding one person to learn from versus 100 people learn from. Right? So I found a person who told me how to format my book so that it didn't look like an essay, but rather it looked kind of nice with images and it was a landscape format with two columns. Great. Now I had this thing done and I was even more motivated to move forward. So it's okay. I need to figure out how to sell this. I've never done this before. So I went to a group of people who I knew sold things on online. I said, hey, really quick, what tool should I use to sell a PDF file online? And they just said, they all said at the time it was E junkie, which isn't around anymore. And I was just got on that tool, got a button in about a half hour. I was like, cool. I didn't have to like research any of this. Somebody had already done that research for me. So I had this button, a buy now button. But now I needed a sales page and I said, okay, do I have to go to copywriting school and master this? No, I just need, you know, if this were easy, what would it look like? I would find a template or something that already existed. And I asked around and I found a book at the library called Moonlighting on the Internet by Yannick Silver. And this book is hundreds of pages. It's made up 99% of it is different ways to make money online from ebay to, you know, whatever. I didn't need any of that. I just needed the appendix at the back of the book. That was a template sales page that I can just plug and play my own product and put in my features and my benefits. So I use that. And that template has made over a million dollars for me since launching that website. Not by learning about this entire process all up front, but it was by going step by step, finding the right resources at the right time and then trusting that there would be somebody for the next resource when the time was right. That's lean learning in action.
- [17:34]
Andrew
I love that. And I think it's just taking that next action step. You have the perfect example of that. You're just looking. What is the simple next action step that I can take in order to accomplish my goal and take that step? Breaking it down in smaller chunks. And so I think that is really, really cool. Are you trying to make progress with your finances? I've been there. Overdraft fees, missed payments and wishing I had better tools. That's why I switched to Chime. When you set up direct deposit, you get paid up to two days early. Access fee, free overdraft with Spotme and there are no monthly fees or maintenance charges. I also love how Chime sends real time balance alerts and has 24. 7 customer support. And with access to over 50,000 fee free ATMs. It's made managing money way easier. So work on your financial goals through Chime today. Open an account in two minutes at chime.compfp that's chime.compfp Chime feels like progress.
- [18:28]
Pat Flynn
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- [18:29]
Andrew
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- [18:30]
Pat Flynn
The Bancor Bank NA or Stride Bank.
- [18:31]
Andrew
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- [18:33]
Pat Flynn
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- [18:35]
Andrew
Apply it out of network ATMs, bank ranking and number of ATMs according to U.S. news and World Report 2023 Chime checking account required Real Estate it's been a cornerstone of wealth building for generations, but it's also often a major headache for investors. 3:00am Maintenance calls, tenant disputes, property taxes Enter the Fundrise Flagship Real estate fund, a $1.1 billion real estate portfolio built for you. We're Talking more than 4,000 single family homes in thriving Sunbelt communities, 3.3 million square feet of in demand industrial facilities, and all professionally managed by an experienced team. With the Flagship Fund, you're tapping into real estate's most attractive qualities Long term appreciation potential, a hedge against inflation, diversification beyond the stock market market. Check, check and check. All without complex paperwork, massive down payments or soul sucking landlord duties. So visit fundrise.compfp to explore the portfolio and check out historical returns and see just how easy it can be to add real estate to your investing strategy. Carefully consider the investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses of the Fundrise Flagship Fund before investing. This and other information can be found at the Fund's perspective@fundrise.com flagship this is a paid advertisement. Before I discovered Shopify, selling online felt like a constant uphill battle. But with Shopify, everything changed. It's the platform trusted by millions of businesses, including Gymshark, to grow their sales and deliver a seamless customer experience. And here's why I love Shopify. It's home to the number one checkout on the planet and their secret sauce Shop Pay, which boosts conversions by up to 50%. That means fewer abandoned carts and more. If you've never used Shop Pay, it's absolutely amazing. Whether your customers are shopping on your website, in store or scrolling through their feed, Shopify makes selling simple. If you're ready to grow your business, this is the platform you need. Upgrade your business and get the same checkout Gymshark uses. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.compfp all lowercase go to shopify.compfp to upgrade your selling today. That's shopify.compfp Lately, my wife and I have been updating our estate plan. With more kids and changing priorities, we realized the life insurance we had just wasn't enough anymore. It's one of those moments that forces you to think seriously about protecting your family's future. And that's where policy genius comes in. They make finding and buying life insurance simple, giving your loved ones a financial safety net that they can use for things like debt, mortgage payments or daily expenses. And with Policygenius, you can find life insurance policies starting at just $276 a year for $1 million in coverage. And it's an easy way to protect the people that you love and feel good about the future. And you can compare quotes from top insurers side by side for free. And their licensed agents help you through the process. No pressure, no guesswork, just clear personalized options. And life Insurance isn't a one size fits all. PolicyGenius doesn't treat it like one. Secure your family's future with PolicyGenius. Head to policygenius.com to compare free life insur insurance quotes from top companies and see how much you can save. That's policygenius.com In a world right now that is kind of allergic, you know, to execution. And they're really addicted to learning, more so than anything else. How do you personally stay in learn and do mode instead of just, you know, trying to just learn as much as you possibly can?
- [21:58]
Pat Flynn
Yeah, it's about creating deadlines and giving yourself what I like to call voluntary force functions. This is the best way to get your butt moving and stop learning. So, for example, I used to be deathly afraid of speaking on stage. I would get asked a lot because my business was taking off and people wanted to, like, see me on stage and teach these things. But I was like, nope, I don't want to get on stage. Like, I'm just getting anxiety. But I knew it was a thing I should do for my business, but I always avoided it. Until one day, my friend Philip Taylor, who started an event called FinCon, he said, Pat, I really need your help. I need a keystone speaker at this event. And I know you've never spoken before, but I'm in a crunch and I need your help. Could I rely on you to come on stage and give a presentation? I said, okay, I'm just going to. I know that this is going to suck, but I'm going to say yes because I need to do this. And as soon as I said yes, and after, you know, 10 minutes of sweating and, you know, maybe a little crying, I was like, okay, I don't have time to waste over learning my way into this because literally I have three months to figure this out. So what did I do again? If this were easy, what would it look like? So, two things. Number one, I went to a friend of mine who used to speak on stage or was speaking on stages back then, and I said, if you had three months to teach a person who was brand new how to speak on stage, what's the one resource you would give them? And they were like, oh, you got to read this book by Dale Carnegie called Stand and Deliver. So I was like, that's it. I'm not going to ask anybody else. I'm not going to download and read the hundreds of other books about speaking. That's going to be my guide. And it was really, really helpful. Stand and Deliver by Dale Carnegie. And the other thing was, okay, who is sitting in the audience? And if I were to bomb a presentation but still say the right things, what could I say? Well, I would talk about. These are all bloggers. So I was like, I could talk about standing out in this growing world of blogging. Okay, I can do that. I don't know if I'll be able to present it well, but even if at a bare minimum I said certain things that I know about this topic, then they'll at least get some value. So those two things in hand, I was able to then craft a presentation that, you know, wasn't perfect. It was far from, but I did it. And I've since spoken on 352 stages since then and have earned over 2,2 million dollars in speaker fees since then. And it's become a huge part of my brand. And, you know, I now see it as a performance. I've gotten comfortable with it, even though I still get nervous. But that was a force function. It was a way for me to put a deadline with something at stake. I cared about my friend. I was going to do the work, but I couldn't overlearn because I didn't have time to absorb from a thousand different things. I just had to find the one that I could hopefully trust and get into and follow that process. And, you know, after that event, then I started to practice what I like to call micromastery, which is let me lean into this. So lean learning is leaning out like a diet, right? Like, let's lean out. All these things that don't matter. And then once we find the things that do, let's lean into that more so we can go deeper with it. So once I discovered I really loved presenting, I started to use micromastery to speed run that skill acquisition by not just doing the same presentations over and over and over again. Which is the equivalent of like, if you are a orchestra conductor and you have a band or an orchestra that you want to get better at a song, you don't just play the song over and over and over and over again until it gets better, right? You go, wait, wait, wait, hold up this set of bars here. The violas are not doing great at this run. So let's just let me talk to the violas for the next 10 minutes and Micromaster this little run there with them. We can do that in our lives too. And I did that with speaking. So I was like, okay, I want to master all of speaking, but there's so many components to it. There's storytelling, there's where do I go on stage, what do I do with my hands, how do I create the right slides, how do I open, how do I close call to actions? Again, potentially overwhelming if you were to think of all of that. But I went in and said, okay, I want to master the first two minutes of my talk. That's it. And so what am I going to do? I'm going to watch a hundred TED talks, but not all of them. I'm just going to watch the first two minutes and see which ones intrigue me more. I'm going to ask some people who have spoken before. How do you open your talk? What do you think about? I'm going to read books just about creating hooks and compelling intros and that's it. And then master that. And again, I speak on stage and I inject those things into my work. And then now that I've absorbed them, I can add on the next thing. What do I do with my hands in the next one? Okay, let me just watch people and what they do with their hands to see what works best or not. And then the micro skills stack on each other. And if you continue to move forward, it's like, you know, if you see like an angle and you don't go very long with that angle, you don't see a big difference. But over the course of years, you see the difference that those little minute changes in micromastery make. I mean, you can become a world top performer by just thinking small. Actually, sorry, I'm going off the rails here with a lot of the concepts. But I love this stuff so much. And every time I've taught this kind of stuff to people, it blows their mind. Even though it's not new. Like, none of this stuff is revolutionary. It's just, we need a reframe, we need to reset. We need to unsubscribe from everything and resubscribe to all the things that just matter.
- [26:49]
Andrew
Exactly. And it's almost. It's close to that concept. And one thing I love about what, you know, you write about in this book is it's very close to that concept of getting 1% better every day. Well, if you get 1% better with your learning each and every single day, well, you know, by the time you get to 100 days down the road, you are just so much more, well, improved than you would have been, you know, previously. We talk about that all the time with our finances here. You know, get 1% better every week or every month so that you can prove your finances over time. And all of a sudden, you're going to see a dramatic difference in how much wealth you can build. Well, at the same time, if you do that with your learning and you get 1% better every single day, this is just going to stack on top of each other. And I love that you have those deadlines in place, because the deadlines every single time I don't have a deadline for something, it just takes me so much longer than I thought it originally would to actually accomplish that goal. But if you set deadlines with your learning, that's going to give you a timeline of exactly when you need to do this by so you can, you know, do that micro mastery, get to that point in time where you're learning each and every single one of these things, and then you can move forward to the next step. And one other thing I love that you talked about was how you have, you know, you picked one guide when you were trying to learn about public speaking. And I talked about, you know, the analysis process I had in real estate. Well, the reason why I had this analysis paralysis is I was learning, you know, from, you know, this person's, you know, opinion or this person's opinion instead of just picking one, seeing if it works in the real world world, and making sure it fits, you know, what I wanted to do, and then kind of moving on to the next step. And so I love that portion of it, too. I think most people can kind of take a lot away just from the way that you kind of built out how you were going to learn how to speak. And some of those skills that you put together. And so that being said, what are some of the biggest mistakes that you think people make when they try to learn efficiently?
- [28:21]
Pat Flynn
I think it's focusing on the results. And oftentimes those results aren't even things we can necessarily control with various things that we're doing and we put our pride, we put our sense of self worth in the results. Results of those things versus just showing up. Right. That's where I see a lot of people make mistakes because it'll take time often for results to happen. But if you expect things to happen, of course we live in this world now, especially the younger generation who wants results now. Right. Like Google gives us a result in 000085 seconds. Like if it doesn't happen that fast, I guess we're not good enough that, that we again have to be as a, I think Gary Vaynerchuk calls it micro hustle, macro, patience. Right. You need to hustle on the small but you have to give it some time for these things to stack and add up. And I'll give you another example of something that I've done recently that was new. I started a shorts channel and I had attempted and dabbled before. Dabbling is the worst thing you can do when trying things. We think dabbling is the way to go. It's like let me just throw spaghetti on the wall and see what sticks. But that's not a great way. You need to at least commit for a period of time. Again, that time boundary is really key and give yourself a chance. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But if you just kind of of willy nilly dabble on something, you're never going to have an opportunity to go, okay, now that I've given it an actual chance, do I keep going or do I not? Right, so this is the example. Was going to go, started a shorts channel and I said I'm just going to create a daily short video for 60 days. I'm going to commit to 60 days. If I get to 60 and I have done it daily, I will have won regardless of the results because I want to a improve my skills as I create these shorts. But also I want to give it a real shot. And in general, many people who experiment in that kind of way with that kind of thing, they try it for a week and they're like it's not getting results. So let me move on to something else that will give me more endorphins or just feel like it's working sooner. So I ran this Experiment. It was a daily Pokemon opening video where I open a pack every single day. And I got like a fun little jingle in the beginning. If any of you have heard, should I open it or should I keep it sealed? That is the show. 30 days goes by, individual videos are getting maybe 200 to 500 downloads. Not very much in the grand scheme of things. All the while I get fed, all these people are getting millions of views and I'm just like, you know, the comparison game is very dangerous when it comes to skill building and learning. You need to compare yourself to yourself. Now, although I wasn't getting a ton of results as far as views, again, I wasn't worried about that. I just wanted to get to day 60. So I was only 50% through this experiment. However, some things were happening. What was taking me 45 minutes a day to edit was now taking me only 12. I was able to increase my skills of editing much, much faster. So even if this particular 60 day experiment didn't work, if went on to another one, I would already be fast forwarded on the beginnings of that because I have the editing chops now that I didn't have before. So I'm already gaining something, at least from this day 35. One of those videos hits 750,000 views, dude, and it just explodes. And it was almost like the universe was testing me at day 30 is like, okay, let's see if this guy really wants this or not. Because if he does and he sticks with it, we're going to reward him. Now, it wasn't just random happenstance. And although it feels like sometimes, in addition to 30 days of getting better at editing, I also had 30 days of data. YouTube gives you some really amazing data in terms of, well, what people like, what people don't like. Not just number of comments, but you can actually see the retention graph. So I started to pay attention to that and I had 30 pieces of data telling me that whenever there was a price tag on one of these packs, people started to watch longer. There was something about it in the beginning that just caught people's eye. Apparently whenever I was interacting with people in that in real life, not just in my home office, there was something more intriguing about that. And the video that did well. Not saying this is the only reason it did well, but sometimes luck is involved. But I gave enough time for luck to happen. That video did include an in person interaction with a sticker on the pack. Interestingly enough, and ever since then, I mean this has been a 311 day experiment. I'm now on day 312 today, 2 billion views on YouTube, 1 billion views on TikTok, 1 billion views on Instagram, 4 billion views. In less than a year, my TikTok following went from 20,000 to now 1.5 million subscribers. And this YouTube channel that was built from scratch has 1.7 million subscribers now. And it's allowed for a new five figure business to enter my life through just ad revenue alone. I've done now brand deals that have inserted themselves into the business and I have all these like I was able to. The Detroit Lions invited me to open packs of Pokemon on their field. Like this kind of stuff is happening. And it was because I, within that learning experience gave myself 60 days and just kept going. I counted uploads, not likes, as my friend Alex Hodges likes to say. And that's really important in the learning process. Like you get the reps in, right? Get the reps in.
- [33:11]
Andrew
I love that. I think it's another example of you having, hey, here's my deadline. I'm going to go with 60 days of kind of putting these together and every single day I'm going to post. And as I go along with this, I'm going to either learn a ton of different skills on how to edit videos, how to figure out what the best hooks are, how to figure out, you know, how do I keep retention going, all those different things. And then as time goes on, all of a sudden you realize, hey, this is working, I need to continue to do this. And I've learned all these amazing skills and you've grown, you know, massive channels just from doing it. I love that in the concept of just doing this is why it is so important for everybody listening that you have to take action on what you are learning. You have to take action. You have to get out there and start doing some of this stuff for someone listening. So they listened and that, you know, you had all these really cool stories of, you know, just how you have changed your life by doing lean learning. I mean, you started to, you know, take action and you're learning along the way. If someone is listening and they're like, well, there's a lot of different things I want to do. Maybe it's somebody in the corporate world and they want to figure out, hey, what skills do I need in order to make more money at my day job? Or maybe it's an entrepreneur out there and they're saying to themselves, you know, I'm trying to figure out what skills I need to acquire in order to grow my business. How do you. You figure out and decipher which skills or which things you should learn first, and how do you prioritize those things?
- [34:24]
Pat Flynn
Yeah, this is a great question. You know, you could learn a million things that could help make you better, but if you learn them all at the same time, you're going to go nowhere. You're going to be spreading yourself too thin. That's a very common problem and mistake people make. It's like, okay, I want to learn how to do all these things better. You can do them all, but just not all at the same time. So the prioritization happens when you run an experiment that I talk about in the book called the DeLorean Experiment, where, or you put yourself. If you don't know what the DeLorean is, it's a time machine from Back to the Future, right? What you do is you hypothetically make a decision on one of those things that you want to learn. Go into the DeLorean in your head one year into the future, and you will have acquired those skills. You would have done it, like, don't worry about how, but you just end up in that place where it is now a part of you. Right. You're good at that. What is that now unlocked for you? What is your day like? What is. How is life different now? Do you regret going down that route or are you super stoked on it? Right. And then come back to today and then do the same experiment with the next and the next day, and then whichever one gives you the most excitement or maybe more opportunity. When you travel into the future and you kind of think about life then and what that can open up for you. That experiment alone has helped about 90% of my students who have a decision to make figure out which one to do and also which ones. Like, they would never do.
- [35:36]
Andrew
Right.
- [35:36]
Pat Flynn
That's the other part about this. It's like, ick. Like, I don't want to be a part of this community that, like, people who have this skill have, like, ew. So let me move that out of my brain and move into something else instead of Instead the other 10% of the time, Honestly, we just flip a coin. Like, you're going to get more value from literally randomly making a decision on which one to do and then again committing to a time period to focus on that versus just, like, which one? I don't know. Like, every day you don't decide is a day that's wasted. There's no learning happening. Like, the learning happens as you go. And again, that's so counterintuitive. For those of us, especially as perfectionists, especially those of us who. Who are afraid of making mistakes. But you know what? The mistakes that we think are going to derail us become the guardrails that you actually can move within. That's the interesting thing about those mistakes. Yeah. So that's how you prioritize. Sometimes it's just throwing a dart and then giving that time commitment. The other thing, I will say, that often comes up during this time, you know, there's a lot of people out there. Alex Hermos, he says this. There's a book called the One Thing. He says, like, you should only work on one thing thing. Like you should pick one thing and just do that forever for the rest of your life. And I've tried that. I've tried to just focus on the one thing. And I, as a creative entrepreneur, like, I know many of your listeners feel unfulfilled. I have an itch that I want to scratch. And the more I let it just, like, be itchy, the more, like, anxiety I get. Right. I have to try other things. But if you allow yourself to just try all kinds of different things without, without containment, without purpose, then it's chaos, Right? We don't want chaos. So what we need is control. So I came up with something called the 20% itch rule, which is 80% of your time should be used for the things that you've already committed to, the things that you've said yes to, your responsibilities, all the things 20% of your time should be for play to scratch that itch, that curiosity, experimentation stuff that even if it were to fail, you're going to be okay because the 80% is still taken care of. However, it's never a failure in general, even if you were to, quote, unquote, fail because. Because you're learning and you can stack those skills into the things that you're already doing or the next thing, right? So from 2017 to 2019, my percent. 20% of my time thing was the switchpod, the invention that I did with Caleb and that launched in 2019 after a couple years of working on it and experimenting. Every Friday like it was Monday to Thursday is all business. Friday, 20% of the week was my play day to work on this thing. We launched it in February of 2019 and we made $415,000 in 60 days on Kickstarter starter because of this experiment. From 2020 to now, my 20% of my time is this Pokemon channel. Not just the shorts channel, but I have a long channel that has 1.6 million subs and has in some months earned over six figures. And it's again, it allows me to scratch those itches and be curious about other things, but in a contained way that then allow me back on Monday to go back into the things that I have to do and again, re enjoy them because it. I've had a little break from them every week. And so I have this nice balance. And the 8020 seems to work really well. Well there.
- [38:36]
Andrew
And that one resonated with me as well, because I think for a lot of entrepreneurs out there, I own multiple businesses. And a lot of times, you know, early on I would kind of go after one thing that really excited me, but it would take up my entire week. And I'm not focusing on the big things that actually got me here. And so a lot of times I would kind of chase after that and kind of learning this over time. And then your book kind of describes it perfectly, is to, hey, use 20% of your time to scratch that itch, go forward with some of those things, but then come back to what actually got you here into this point in time. And that's really a great way to also just learn skills that are going to kind of overlap within your other businesses. And I think there's a lot of cool things that can definitely, definitely happen there. You draw a line. And we talked a little bit about this between, you know, consistent gains or those micro mastery moments that you have and big moves or those quantum leaps. And so when you're trying to learn more here, how do you know when it's time to go small versus go bigger or bolder?
- [39:27]
Pat Flynn
Yeah, the big, bold moves are amazing because you can have a big jump or a quantum leap into the sort of next stage of your business or life or whatever it might be that you're focusing on. It's when you feel like you've reached a ceiling or that you continue to try to put more effort into something and it's just not like you're like pounding on the wall and it's not breaking right. That when you have that feeling, that's when a big, bold move might make sense. A big quantum Leap story I talk about in the book with Nathan Barry, the founder of Kit. He was at a point where he was balancing Kit and a bunch of other businesses that were very successful. But Kit was not, not where it needed to be. And he had to make a bold move to get rid of all the other profitable things he was doing to focus full time on Kit, which is now doing Very, very well, ever since that moment. It doesn't have to be a huge, life changing thing like that. It doesn't have to be like for me quitting my. Or not quitting, but I had gotten laid off from my job, but that was again, required for me to put focus and effort into something that I had never done before. Sometimes it can be a small moment of time that gets you through those things or up into the next break through that ceiling. And this is what I like to call a Power 10. And this comes from when I used to row at cal. I was on the CAL lightweight rowing team. And one thing that was really amazing was this thing called the power 10. So if you're in the middle of a race, you know, the boats next to you are kind of trying to get faster and you're trying to get faster and you're trying to keep up with them. If you want to just like speed through and make a move on them, if you will, you do what's called the power 10. And this is where the small person on the boat, the coxswain, will say, all right, everybody, power 10 in three stroke, two stroke, one stroke, go. And for 10 strokes and 10 strokes only, the entire team will pull much, much harder. But they'll put all of it into those next 10 strokes and you'll just see the boat fly like a hot knife through butter. It is amazing to see. But there's the fun part of this, is then, well, the next boat next to you is going to do a Power 10. And then you don't want to do too many power tens, like, because then you would exhaust yourself, right? So you kind of have to manage that a lot of times in life. We are coasting, right? We're rowing, row, row, row your boat gently down the stream. But we're kind of merrily about it. We're just kind of coasting. And if you want to break through that next ceiling, you'll have to implement some version of a Power 10 to put a lot of extra effort and pressure in a short period of time to burst through into that next level. Imagine coders doing a hackathon. That's a version of a Power 10, right? All right, guys, for the next 24 hours, team, all the coders in here, I got your picture pizzas, I got your Red Bulls and monsters. We're gonna code new stuff and I'll talk to you tomorrow and we'll see what we come up with. Boom. Right? Like a moment of time with an end, right? It's not a Power Thousand. It's a power ten, A short burst of additional energy for podcasters. You know, every podcaster has their rhythm and cadence, like once a week, for example, but there are moments when you can insert your own power 10. So, for example, if you took, let's say, a week in September coming up, and you were like, okay, we're gonna make this personal finance audit week week, and every day on the podcast, we're gonna have a different guest to talk about a different area of your personal finances. Day one's gonna be somebody talking about your retirement account. Day two is gonna be somebody talking about your estate planning. Day three is gonna be somebody talking about your investments and, like, you know, those other things or whatever, stock market, mutual funds, et cetera. Like, let's do a sprint and let's have a burst just for that week. We're gonna promote it and hype it up. We're gonna get people excited about it. And what does that do? It gives you so many more downloads, so many more ratings, so many more reviews and exposure just in that contained period of time. And now that can get you again a little bit further ahead in your podcasting game. Yes, it does take a little bit more work. You're going to have to record more episodes than usual, but not forever. For a contained moment of time. That's how you can burst through and put a lot of energy into something to get a lot back.
- [43:09]
Andrew
And I love that, I think, because a lot of times when you run a business or you're in your career, you're going to see this cadence come up where you're going to need these timeframes. We're going to have to power through and really try to, you know, give that extra energy so that you can actually take that extra step forward. And I think that's just an amazing way to frame it for sure. Last question before we dive into a couple of rapid fire questions is what's one belief about learning that you held 10 years ago that you've kind of.
- [43:33]
Pat Flynn
Completely flipped on, that the more information I had, the better off I was. I mean, this is the what we're fighting against here in this book. I wanted to learn everything because I felt it made me less prone to danger. I felt that it, like, made me more comfortable because the more I knew about something, the more I could understand it. The understanding happens when you get your hands dirty, unfortunately. Like, you could read all day about gardening, but unless you plant those, garden that garden, and you notice that your particular area has a particular pest, then none of the stuff you read really matters. And then you now start, okay, I have this problem now with this pest. I'm going to read about that. And that's the problem that I'm going to focus on the lean learning to that right now. Right. Forget example. I don't know why gardening was on my mind, but that's something that I did in 2020 and learned. I also learned with gardening that if I plant too many seeds closer to each other, they can't grow to their fullest extent. There's a metaphor there. When we put too many seeds in the ground, we just don't have room in our day and in our life to really see some amazing fruit from the labors that we put in. So anyway, that's the big thing is just the more that I could learn, the better off I was. Right? I was like, it's almost like back in the day, remember when you had like Encyclopedia Britannica, like you were immediately seen as sort of upper class because you could literally afford information that other people could not. But we all have access to it now. The other thing is that I could do this alone, that I could learn these things alone. You have to have people around you, whether it's your family and friends, for emotional support. These are what I like to call champions of your life. There's emotional champions, people who will champion you and your work, but might not know the language of what it is that you're trying to get into, but they'll be there for support. Friends and family are important.
- [45:12]
Andrew
Important.
- [45:12]
Pat Flynn
Your peers and your colleagues, these are people who are in it with you. They're literally doing the same kinds of efforts as you are. And you can trade ideas, you can trade help, you can support one another, hold each other accountable. Your peers and colleagues are huge. This is where the term mastermind comes into play. And then your mentors, your virtual mentors, if you have like a single person that you follow, who you enjoy, who's in a part of life that you want to be in, learn from them, consume from them. Those are the books you read, Those are the people who you pay to get access to their workshops, whatever it might be, or your personal mentors, the people who will take you under their wal wing, who will not just tell you things you want to hear, but tell you things that might be brutally honest to get you to where you want to go. And those people are a gold when you come across those kinds of people.
- [45:53]
Andrew
Exactly. It's the old fashioned saying, your network is your net worth and it's a cheesy kind of line, but at the same time, it's very, very true in terms of just kind of who can help you kind of move forward in life and really teach you so many different things. And I love that part, too. Overall, I'm going to jump into. We have three rapid fire questions for you, Pat. These are kind of fun just to go through to see what you think about some of these. So if you could tell your younger self one thing, what would it be?
- [46:14]
Pat Flynn
Oh, man, don't wear Jinko jeans. Like, seriously, they. They do not look good on you. No, stop. Anyway, there's that, but then there's also the idea of, you know, I was always a person in class who never wanted to raise his hand, who was in the back of the class, never wanted to speak up. I would get anxiety when the reading circle was happening and it was like four people away. I'd start to sweat. I just hated putting myself out there. And I'm not saying you have to force yourself to do stuff that's uncomfortable, but the truth is the good things happen when you get uncomfortable. And if only I had been a little bit more aware of how important it was to speak up, to also chat with other people who, you know, you never know. The next person you might meet might be the game changer partner, the game changer guide for you and wherever you want to go. So I was always the shy kid who just wanted to do things on my own. And I've now learned as an entrepreneur that there literally is no way I'd be where I am today if it wasn't for the people I surround myself with. Like you said. So, yeah, absolutely.
- [47:14]
Andrew
I've heard Jinko jeans are coming back, so it's going to be interesting to see that happen.
- [47:17]
Pat Flynn
I don't know how I feel about that.
- [47:19]
Andrew
What is the best money advice you've ever received?
- [47:22]
Pat Flynn
So the best money advice I ever received was when I have a desire to spend money on something that is not a necessity, but more of a want to wait until tomorrow to decide whether or not I want to buy that again. Impulse can kill you. And sometimes literally, you know, don't touch that thing. And sometimes it requires a little bit of thought and effort. And a lot of times I find that when I don't follow my own advice, it's literally somebody who said something in such a beautiful way that made me want to buy something. Like a TikTok that came across with, like, a shop button. I mean, all these tools are making it so frictionless. To purchase now that I have to step in front of that decision point or else else those decisions will be made for me. I want to have control. I don't want to be taken control of.
- [48:10]
Andrew
Absolutely. That cooling off period is so incredibly important, especially when you impulse purchase something. And I think that's just such a powerful message there, for sure. The last one is my favorite one and it is, what does wealth mean to you?
- [48:22]
Pat Flynn
Wealth to me is not defined by a certain dollar amount, although dollars can help. To me, it is being able to do what you want with whom you want, want, when you want freedom. That's wealth to me. You know, I've had a lot of opportunities, especially in the past. There was one in particular where I could have become a CEO of a hosting company. It would have been very rewardful financially, but it would have totally killed the family dynamic. It didn't go with how I wanted to walk my kids to school every day and pick them up every day, which my wife and I were able to do for years. Wealth is, is the most opportunity and the most freedom that you can possibly have.
- [49:01]
Andrew
I love that answer. And that's the ultimate thing, I think, that most of us are chasing is that freedom and that there's nothing more valuable than having that freedom. So that's absolutely amazing. Pat, thank you so much for coming on here. This was absolutely incredible. Where can people find out more about you, the book, and where can they pick it up?
- [49:16]
Pat Flynn
Thank you so much. I mean, the book at the time of this recording launches in like five days. So I'm in that moment of like, yeah, oh my gosh, like all the feelings at the same time. So anybody who picks it up or at least even gets value from this episode, thank you so much. So much for spreading the word and hopefully implementing a lot of this too. Lean Learning how to achieve more by learning less can be found wherever books are sold. Amazon is great, but even in Barnes and Noble and Target too, it should be there, which is going to be neat. It's my first traditionally published book after three other books. So there's a lot at stake here and anybody who's there to support, I appreciate a lot. Leanlearningbook.com if you want to check out and read more about it and you can find me Pat Flynn on most social media channels.
- [49:49]
Andrew
Absolutely. It is an incredible read. I highly encourage every single person to go out, check it out, pick it up, and Pat's work is absolutely amazing. Again, I've been following it for years and I. You have just made a huge impact on me. So thank you so much again for coming on here.
- [50:01]
Pat Flynn
Thank you, Andrew. I appreciate you.