Pat Flynn: The Surprising Productivity Hack Helping Entrepreneurs Achieve More | Productivity | E359

Most entrepreneurs think productivity means learning more: more books, more podcasts, more courses. But Pat Flynn argues that real progress comes from learning just enough to pursue your goals. After getting laid off from his dream job, Pat dove into nonstop learning. But instead of moving forward, he felt stuck, overwhelmed with ideas and no real execution. That experience led to his Lean Learning approach, a strategy that helped him build multiple successful online businesses. In this episode, Pat returns to share why overlearning kills productivity and how content creators and entrepreneurs can cut through information overload, take focused action, and grow their business by doing less but better. In this episode, Hala and Pat will discuss: (00:00) Introduction (02:03) Why Overlearning Is Killing Your Productivity (06:43) How a Layoff Sparked His Motivation to Take Action (15:18) 80/20 Time Management Rule for Curious Entrepreneurs (24:18) Learn It or Burn It: Evaluating Learning Methods (34:01) AI as a Creative Partner for Entrepreneurs (37:24) The Biggest Learning Mistake Creator Entrepreneurs Make (42:49) Getting Past the “Cringe” Mindset and Getting Started (53:53) The Keystone Question for Smart Decision-Making (57:28) How Power 10 Boosts Innovation and Team Building Pat Flynn is a serial entrepreneur, speaker, and founder of Smart Passive Income, a leading resource for online business education. He is the bestselling author of Will It Fly?, Superfans, and his latest, Lean Learning, which serves as the ultimate productivity guide to winning by learning less. Pat has built multiple successful ventures as a content creator, including YouTube channels with millions of subscribers. Sponsored By: Shopify - Start your $1/month trial at Shopify.com/profiting. Indeed - Get a $75 sponsored job credit to boost your job's visibility at Indeed.com/PROFITING OpenPhone - Get 20% off your first 6 months at OpenPhone.com/profiting. Airbnb - Find a co-host at airbnb.com/host Boulevard - Get 10% off your first year at joinblvd.com/profiting when you book a demo Resources Mentioned: Pat’s Book, Lean Learning: bit.ly/LeanLearning Pat’s Pokémon Channel, Deep Pocket Monster: youtube.com/c/DeepPocketMonster Pat’s Instagram: instagram.com/patflynn Pat Flynn: Online Business 101 | E256: bit.ly/Online_Business101 Moonlighting on the Internet by Yanik Silver: bit.ly/MoonlightingonInternet The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni: bit.ly/FiveDysfunctions_Team Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap YouTube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ Social + Podcast Services: yapmedia.com Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship Podcast, Business, Business Podcast, Self Improvement, Self-Improvement, Personal Development, Starting a Business, Strategy, Investing, Sales, Selling, Psychology, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Marketing, Negotiation, Money, Finance, Side Hustle, Startup, Mental Health, Career, Leadership, Mindset, Health, Growth Mindset, Work-Life Balance, Work Life Balance, Manifestation, Life Balance, Goal Setting, Resolutions

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Stop learning. You have everything you need to know for what your next steps are right now. You probably have been learning because you've been scared of that thing that you know you need to do. Do it.

• 0:11Hala Taha?

  Today's guest is the Smart Passive Income founder, Pat Flynn.

• 0:16Speaker 00

  I remember when I was learning how to speak, I wanted to read every book on public speaking because I was so nervous. But if I was reading all of it, I'd never have time to practice and rehearse and get better. The fear of missing out is a hard thing that we have to deal with too. And this relearning how to learn is what is going to be most valuable. We need to make that distinction between just in case learning and just in time learning. Storytelling is going to be one of the most important skills to have, especially as AI is again making just based information completely accessible to everybody. It is the stories, how you wrap that information around in a relatable way that evokes some sort of emotion.

• 0:50Hala Taha?

  In terms of lean learning, what are some things that a lot of my listeners have companies? How can they implement this with their teams or what is the best way to kind of get started?

• 0:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, the most powerful thing to do is

• 1:15Hala Taha?

  Yep, bam. If you've ever found yourself stuck in an endless loop of learning, but still not taking action, this episode is your wake up call. Today's guest is serial entrepreneur and Smart Passive Income founder, Pat Flynn. And he's back on the show with a powerful message. Sometimes the key to achieving more is learning less. Pat's got a brand new book called Lean Learning, and it's a bold invitation to stop cramming your brain with every course, book, and masterclass out there and instead focus on learning just enough to move the needle. In this conversation, Pat's going to break down why overlearning is killing your momentum and what the most successful entrepreneurs do differently when it comes to acquiring knowledge and taking action. Pat, welcome back to Young and Profiting Podcast.

• 1:59Speaker 00

  Thank you for having me. Excited to be here.

• 2:00Hala Taha?

  I am really excited for this conversation. So I was reading your new book and I learned that you call yourself an over learner. Talk to us about what you mean by that. What is an over learner and how has that actually blocked you from becoming your full potential?

• 2:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, so over learning, I think we can all relate to this where we're subscribed to way more than we need to consume, whether it's YouTube channels, podcasts, books. If you think about the way most of us consume books, we go and we read those books and we might then pick up the next one and then pick up the next one. And if we implement anything, it might just be a small sliver of what we had just read. And I think that's a waste of time. And we're at a point now in the world where there's just so much information that we can pretty much get whatever we want, whenever we want, just in the power of our phone. All the information's out there. And if information were the answer, we'd all be where we want to be. But we're not. And the trouble is, not only are we now at this buffet line of information and stuffing our plates full of it, and over consuming and

• 3:02Speaker 00

  similarly to a diet, we are lethargic, we are tired, we're overweight, if you will, with information. We're also being force fed information. There's algorithms putting things in front of us that we don't even know we need and we're consuming it. And when we think about the brain and why we do that, we're treating information like it's a scarce food source. Because if you go back to cave person days or whatever, if you come across a food source, you port it because you might not find another one later, right? This is survival. The trouble is, we're treating information in the same way. And right now, we need to make that distinction between just in case learning, which is what we've all been doing, and just in time learning, which is finding exactly what you need for what it is that's most important to you right now. Knowing that when you reach that next

• 3:45Speaker 00

  step or next phase, those resources will be there. Yet, again, we are just conditioned, if you will, from school or just society on learning everything about everything first, and then probably never taking action at all, or convincing ourselves that there's just too much, or we're not cut out for this. The classic example of over learning is the person who is in their car, listening to whatever the Next podcast is on their list just simply because they have that time. And although, and again, that was me for a while, although it sounds like you're being productive, there is also such a thing called over inspiration, where you now get drawn over here and then you get drawn over there and then you get drawn over here. And every time you say yes to that new thing, you're also saying no to the thing that you've already committed to and that you're never going to follow through with anymore.

• 4:30Speaker 00

  And that's what this book is meant to solve.

• 4:32Hala Taha?

  I feel like this is so pertinent because with technology, everything has changed. There's AI, before that, there was Google. We were slowly moving to this type of learning with Google, but now with AI, things have totally changed. So talk to us about how the way that we once learned was conducive to the technology that we had. But now that we have different technology, we've got to learn differently.

• 4:55Speaker 00

  No longer is the person with the most information, the most successful, right? That's how it used to be. The smartest person in the class would always get to the best college, would always get the best job. The more knowledge you had, just the more power it seemed like. If you had an encyclopedia Britannica in your home, if you were old enough to know what those are, you were seemed as smarter and more wealthy because you could afford information that other people could not. Now what's useful, especially like you said, with AI coming in and just making it so accessible and easy. Again, the information is all there. So how are we going to navigate this? How are we going to understand what is actually meant for us versus just an overconsumption nature that we have? So the idea being find the right resource for the right moment and implement right now.

• 5:39Speaker 00

  Because those mistakes that we're all afraid of making, that we think are going to derail us, become the guardrails that we actually should be working in between. So there's a lot of psychology in here as well, because a lot of us worry about fear of failure. We don't want to make mistakes. And again, we're taught to be perfect. I was grown up in a house where I had to have a 4.0 grand average or better, or else I was wrong or ruining my life, if you will. Also, the idea of FOMO, we're afraid of missing out on that new hot thing. Everybody's talking about or passing around on social. So of course we absorb it, but then that also absorbs our mind, our time and attention away from the things that we should be saying yes to. So the FOMO, the fear of missing out is a hard thing that we have to deal with too. And this relearning how to learn. Is what is going to be most valuable? How quickly can you pick up new things and implement it?

• 6:23Speaker 00

  Versus how much do you know? Because before calculators, right? If you were good at math, great, you were super useful. And then, of course, the calculator was just like, okay, well, I can do this in an instant. And that's AI right now. AI can find information and give you information in an instant. It's how you choose what to consume and how you then implement it that matters most. That's what's going to be valuable in the future.

• 6:43Hala Taha?

  I love this topic. I feel like it's so perfect for right now and for all the entrepreneurs and creator entrepreneurs tuning in. So let's talk about a real experience that you had. I remember when I first interviewed you, I think about a year ago, you were telling me about a time where you got laid off as an architect, which was your dream job. And at that moment, how did you approach learning? And what was your experience like with learning? Did it help you? Or was it actually like a stumbling block?

• 7:10Speaker 00

  Well, initially I felt betrayed because I had to move back home with my parents. I had gotten laid off from my dream job just a month, literally after getting engaged, which made it even worse. I was like, I'm moving backwards in life. I'm moving back to my parents. No offense to them, I love my parents. But I didn't want to be 25 and in my old childhood bedroom where my feet are kind of coming off the edge of the bed. And I'm looking at the wall and I see all the certificates, best attendance, top grades, best citizenship awards, all these things. And I'm like, none of that mattered because I still, even though I did everything perfect, got laid off and let go. So my first inclination, again, because of how I was raised, was I should probably go back to school. Maybe I should go get a master's degree or something. That's what I should do to help, even though that was going to take another two years and so many more dollars

• 7:54Speaker 00

  and delay any sort of moving forward. But that was an option. I then discovered podcasts, and this is why podcasts are so important to me. This was in the early, early, early days of podcasting in 2008, 2009. And I discovered this world of internet marketing and online business and entrepreneurship, something I'd never done before. But I was getting educated in this podcast space through a lot of these various podcasts. And I went back to my old habits. I listened to hours and hours, just every waking moment, I was listening to everything. And as a result, I was getting 100 different ways to make money online. And being pushed and pulled and dabbling and trying this here, trying this there.

• 8:32Speaker 00

  I even got pulled into an Amway conference where they were making a festival out of all these diamond double platinum members who were making money, doing things. And I was like, oh, well, now I gotta sell lotions and cosmetics to my family. Like, no, this is not what I was meant to do. But no longer could I go back to architecture. What's going to be the case here? So then I decided to follow one path. And it was a result of finding one person who is teaching this stuff, who I could follow. I loved how they were doing it. They were very honest and upfront. And shout out to Internet Business Mastery, which was that podcast. And I decided to build a website to help people pass an architectural exam. And I started to get traffic on them. I was like, oh, my gosh, this is working. I didn't set up a website before, but I did it as I was going.

• 9:14Speaker 00

  Then I got the idea to publish a study guide, an ebook. And I was like, I don't even know what an ebook is. So again, I went back to old habits. I started watching too many videos and reading all about it. And it took my mentor at the time, his name was Jeremy from Internet Business Mastery. He said, you have to just stop learning and start doing. Because the more that you consume, the more time it's going to take for you to get the result you want. So I said, okay, I'm gonna write this study guide. I have the information in my brain. I have some of it on my website. Let's do this. And then I started researching again, old habits. Okay, I need to write the book. I need to format it. I need to figure out how to sell it. I need to write sales copy. I need to study that. There's too much here. This is never gonna work. And I almost talked myself out of it.

• 9:56Speaker 00

  Because I went through the whole thing and saw there was so much. But then I said, okay, well, I have to make this work. So let me just do step one. What's step one? Well, I just have to write this thing. What's the easiest way to write it? Well, I'm just gonna open up Word, just get everything on there, and then I'll figure out the rest later. And after three and a half weeks, I had 74 pages in a Microsoft Word document. And I was like, oh, my gosh, I have it. I can feel myself getting there, but what's next? I don't know how to sell or any of this stuff. Okay, I don't need that yet. Let me find somebody who teaches how to format ebooks. So I found somebody to do that. I watched some YouTube videos and just got it done in a couple of days. Stuff that I didn't need to know before, but I needed to know now. I was like, great. Okay, now I have this book. I'm feeling the momentum. It's a PDF file, but how do I sell it? I don't know.

• 10:42Speaker 00

  I asked a couple of people who had sold digital products before. And I said, what do you recommend? And they told me about a tool called e-junkie, which was a website that you could upload your PDF file and it would give you a button to put on your website. I said, okay, great. I did that in a day. I was like, oh, my gosh, I'm so close. But now I need to learn how to write sales copy. What do I do? People go to school for literally sales copy and marketing. I'm not cut out for this. But again, I brought it back down to earth. And I said, if this were easy, what would it look like? And I eventually found a book called Moonlighting on the Internet by Yanik Silver. And this book was a few hundred pages worth of all different kinds of way that you can make money online, from eBay to all these other things. But I didn't need any of that. All I needed was the appendix in the back of the book, which was a Mad Libs-style sales page

• 11:26Speaker 00

  that I can just plug in my product, put in the features and benefits. And I just took that, adapted it to my stuff, put it on the website. And that website has since made over seven figures, over a million dollars by selling a study guide to architects. Not because I learned the whole thing, but because I took it one step at a time, found the right information I needed for that next step, and then just continued to move forward. And that's how I've now approached everything moving forward, from the YouTube channels that I have now with over millions of subscribers, to my invention, the SwitchPod. And I had never invented anything before, but I took the lean learning approach and just figured things out as I went and found the right resources when I needed them. And this is what is now in this book, this process of just-in-time learning and just-in-time information.

• 12:09Hala Taha?

  I feel like something that's really important to highlight is that you not only learned it, but you took action right away. So talk to us about the importance of actually doing the thing that you're learning right away.

• 12:19Speaker 00

  In those days with the architecture thing, I had something at stake that forced me to make a decision. If I didn't have to do that, if I was still in architecture and I was kind of dabbling with it, there would have been no reason for me to do a lot of these things that were outside of my comfort zone or learn things that were new to me. I would have just fallen back to old habits and probably still would have been an architect if I hadn't gotten laid off. So it's important to have a reason to take action or else action is not necessary. And this is why in the book I talk about the importance of what I call a voluntary force function, something that you can put into place that has a time and a date, sometimes a location for you to show up. And have had the learning done so that you're not over learning, but you're actually taking action and making mistakes. So for example, and Tim Ferriss is the godfather

• 13:02Speaker 00

  of this from back in the day. He even had a series on Apple TV where he was demonstrating these lean learning principles. For example, he was trying to learn how to speak Tagalog, which is the Filipino language. I'm half Filipino myself. So I was really interested in how he was going to do this. And he said, in order to force him to learn, he booked an interview on a Filipino news station in about a couple of months' time. So he had two months, he had a deadline. He knew he was going to show up on this Filipino news channel and they were going to speak to him in Tagalog and he was going to have to respond. So he wasn't able to learn every single word, but he found the right words that mattered in a conversation like that. And he actually put himself in a situation where he was forced to learn. He moved in with a Filipino family for a period of time so that he can just,

• 13:44Speaker 00

  again, learn in real time, if you will. Same thing when I was learning Japanese. I tried to do the Duolingo thing. I tried to learn with flashcards. It was just not sticking. But when I was in Japan, ordering food and talking to people about how to get around, I made mistakes, but I found my way through that. And those things have now been internalized. Arigatou gozaimasu. Like, things are now ingrained in me and written as opposed to just cramming, right? The style of learning that we're all familiar with, cramming the night before kind of thing. So the action happens because you have a reason to do so. So putting yourself in that heightened situation helps. If you want to learn how to speak on stage, great. Book a time on stage or sign up for an event and man, you're going to get in motion for learning how to do these things, right? If you want to be a good interviewer

• 14:29Speaker 00

  on a podcast, great. Book an interview and get ready. Listen to these amazing podcasts, like the one you're listening to right now, and how interviews are conducted in a way for you to just fast forward your way there. This is all about speedrunning skill acquisition by putting yourself in those situations. So yeah, the action is key because information without action is what they call just a waste. If you were to audit all the things we've learned in life from podcasts we've listened to, YouTube videos, books that we've read, and then you actually take into account how much have we actually implemented of that, it's going to be a really scary number that's going to be disappointing for all of us because we've realized we actually just are literally wasting our time. And I wrote this book because my kids are soon to be young adults, but the world is so different from the one I

• 15:14Speaker 00

  grew up in where information was scarce. Now it's everywhere and we have to learn how to navigate it.

• 15:18Hala Taha?

  So true. So we've got these influencers like Alex from OZI, who are talking about focus all the time, right? One of his main messages is focus on one thing, focus on one thing, get good at one thing. Then you've got influencers like Gary Vee, who are telling all the 20-year-olds to explore and be curious and to learn. You know, I've got listeners of all ages who listen to the show from teens to 60s, right? Is there a point in time in your life where you should just be curious? And then how do you figure out what to actually spend your time on? Is there some sort of guide that you can give us in terms of how to follow our curiosity?

• 15:53Speaker 00

  Curiosity is great. It's how we learn. It's how we understand. It's why kids, when they're young, they keep asking why, because they're curious. What do we do? We stunt that curiosity, right? And then we say, no, shh, be quiet. It's important to be curious. And I do agree with both Alex from OZI and Gary Vee. When you're young especially, that's your time to try and experiment and understand not just more about the world, but more about you and what lights you up. And when you can land somewhere where you can show up every day, even if it's not great, but you are lit up because of it and the possibilities there, then you're going to eventually get to that point by learning incrementally of success, whatever that might be defined for you. But I also agree with Alex, because many people are dividing their energy across too many things. So focus on one thing at a time is key. But the question is, well, what do we focus on?

• 16:37Speaker 00

  And how do we manage that? So in the book, I have this thing called the inspiration matrix, where you can take any of these curiosities you have and put them through a filter to understand where they might fit in your life. Because some things are going to be what I like to call critical commitments. You cannot escape them. You have to do them. And it's important to audit so that you can understand what those things are. Because if you notice that your critical commitments, the things that you feel like you have to show up for all the time are things you can actually push off or reduce, then that's great, because those aren't necessarily things that are going to get you excited. But a lot of things we just have to do. Where most people can get their time back, though, is in the places of life where we get a spark of inspiration, but they aren't really in alignment with where we want to be in life or what excites us in the long run. And these are what I like to call junk sparks. And this is where most of us are suffering right now

• 17:22Speaker 00

  from the easy access to everything that we have. They give us a little spark in the beginning, and then they often de- Realize from the other things that are important like our passion pursuits or even recreational type things, which we don't need to go deep in, but it's important to have some recreational things, some hobbies to escape the things that are going to take up most of your time, to be able to breathe and to give yourself space. So I'm not going to get too deep into the inspiration matrix and examples. It's all in the book, but I will say a happy medium between Gary Vee and Alex from O C is a strategy that I call the 20% itch rule. Because I disagree with Alex that you should only focus on one thing at a time. In fact, he even mentions how he loves writing books and it's not even necessarily something that is in his business plan, but he loves to do it anyway.

• 18:05Speaker 00

  So even Alex is doing more than one thing at a time. But in general, the 20% itch rule is this. It's 80% of your time being committed to the things you've already said yes to, your responsibilities and the things that you've got going on. But allowing yourself, in fact, giving yourself permission to have 20% of your time contained for experimentation, for play, for scratching that itch and that curiosity. And I found that to be really, really key for me because it allows me to escape the 80%, but then go back to it with more energy when I get back to it. So if you divide the days of the week, 80%, 20%, that's, for example, Monday to Thursday is going to be your 80%. Friday is going to be your play day. And I look forward to Fridays every single week because that is my time to experiment,

• 18:46Speaker 00

  to try, to play such that if even that thing I were focusing on were to fail, my other stuff is still protected. I'm still dedicating 80% of time. It's not out of control. It's like a little Petri dish on Friday that I can play around with. And if it doesn't work well, I can just throw it away. And I have failed before. I've done software companies and other things that have totally failed, but that was again, reserved for Friday. However, many things have done very well on that Friday. For example, the switch pod, which is my invention, that was built between 2017 and 2019. Every Friday, my partner and I, we would work on this project. We'd go to events and hand our prototypes to different YouTubers to get their feel for it. And eventually in February of 2019, we launched and had made $415,000 in 60 days on Kickstarter

• 19:30Speaker 00

  from this quote unquote side project that we had given ourselves permission to try. And even if we didn't win and in those moments where I fail during that 20% of the time, again, because it's protected. It's never failure because I'm still learning. I'm able to put in those learnings into the new things that I try and even into the 80% of things that I'm doing. Another example today is the 20% of time that I'm scratching that itches in the YouTube world, in specifically a niche called Pokémon. So I have a Pokémon YouTube channel that has grown since 2020 to nearly 1.7 million subscribers on this channel and about to cross 300 million views and in and of itself has turned into a five-figure business and has allowed me to connect with the Pokémon

• 20:13Speaker 00

  Company International directly and get invited to different places around the world. I even am invited as a celebrity, sort of like, you know how they invite voice actors sometimes at these Comic Con-type events? I'm now on that list to get invited to sign autographs. It's just crazy. And again, this was contained and it was my curiosity. My kids got me into Pokémon in 2020 and they outgrew it and I definitely have not. And these things wouldn't have happened if I were to only focus on one thing at a time. And in general, for most curious entrepreneurs who I speak with, the one thing at a time is a drag. And yes, beauty Alex is in a special camp because he is making $100 million offers and he is doing acquisitions all the time on so many big levels. But for most of us who aren't at that level, you can have an incredibly successful business

• 20:58Speaker 00

  and an incredible life by having not something huge, but something that allows you to even focus on a thousand true fans. If you have a thousand true fans, imagine them paying you $100 a year for access to you, your item, your product, whatever it might be. A thousand times 100 is $100,000. There's your six-figure business right there, just a thousand people. And you can do that in four days a week and then have something to play with, experiment that can then stack onto that as well. So I think that's the perfect balance.

• 21:26Hala Taha?

  It's great advice and it's really important for entrepreneurs to hear because we're rewarded for being inventive, right? I think of myself and my experience, everything I've built was just something I was curious about. I tried to sell it, it worked and then it turned into a business or turned into another business. But then as you get more and more successful, there's all these ladies in the red dress is what they call them, sexier and sexier opportunities and you've got to learn how to focus. And it reminds me of this quote that I've heard from Elon Musk. He says entrepreneurship is like staring into the abyss and chewing glass. And what he means by chewing glass is entrepreneurship is basically hoping you

• 22:08Hala Taha?

  don't fail because so many of us fail and then chewing glass, doing the things that you hate to do, that you know that you actually have to do. And so that's the 80% that you're talking about. We've got to chew glass, do the things that we know we have to do. And then you've got 20% where you can pursue things that maybe light you up, you're passionate about, you want to invent, so that you don't miss opportunities. Because as an entrepreneur, you need to continually think of how to invent and pivot, and you can't always just do the same thing over and over again, especially the way that the world is moving so fast.

• 22:39Speaker 00

  Entrepreneurship is seemingly very chaotic. We don't know what the plan is, and this is why people who spend the time to, in fact, build an entire business plan soon find out. That's just the best guess, and typically, things never go the way they planned. They seem to work out as you do. So, wouldn't it make sense to start doing sooner? Now, again, not uncontrollably, but in a more contained approach is important. But there is something to be said for having excitement behind it to enjoy the glass chewing, in a way, right? It's all a part of the process, and no pain, no gain, right? I remember certain moments where Elon Musk was sleeping in the Tesla factory, just grinding to make things work out. He was very close to the brink of bankruptcy, and I'm sure burnout. However,

• 23:23Speaker 00

  he had a belief, and he had, you know, a good team behind him. And of course, now that he's gone a little political, you could say various kinds of things about him. But in the early days of building those businesses, he knew what he wanted, he had a mission, and that is important to have your mission and values in place, so that you can draw a line and say, hey, here's what I'm standing here for. Who wants to come along this side of the line with me? And that's important. A lot of us, when we're starting out, we don't even know who we are as ourselves. And it's important to figure out what your values are, what is your mission, especially when you're young? What lights you up? What do you believe in? There's no right or wrong. But if you are not sure, how can people get behind you and your product? If you aren't even sure about what you are, and what are

• 24:04Speaker 00

  you doing this for? So, that again, can only come through experience. And so the longer you wait, or the longer that you only do one thing and focus on that, the longer you are going to be to find out exactly who you are and what you're doing this for.

• 24:18Hala Taha?

  I want to do a really fun segment called Learn or Burn. Okay, and basically I'm going to rattle off five different ways that people learn these days. And I want you to tell me, should we learn it or should we burn it? So let's start off with YouTube rabbit holes.

• 24:34Speaker 00

  I will preface this and say, rabbit holes are amazing when you know why you are in that rabbit hole. So in that case, learn, because maybe you are looking at becoming a world-class speaker. Great, let's go in the deep rabbit hole of TED Talks and purposefully go in there not to just, okay, if I watch more TED Talks, I'm going to get better. But something I talk about in the book is called micromastery. And that is finding a part of what it is that you're doing that you want to master. For example, if you're a speaker, learn how to open your talks in the first two minutes and grab people's attention. So I'm going to watch 100 TED Talks, but just the first two minutes of them. I'm going to get in a rabbit hole of just how people open their presentations so that I can master that, absorb that, and then move on to the next thing.

• 25:19Speaker 00

  Maybe I then micromaster what I do with my hands when I'm on stage. Where I go on stage could be another one. Compartmentalizing those learnings into maybe a few weeks or a few days. Just again, rabbit holes on purpose, that's the key. The whole point of this book is really just conscious learning versus unconscious automation. Right? We want to un-automate from everything and then re-subscribe to the things that matter. Rabbit holes are dangerous and you can find yourself easily in places of YouTube where you eventually wake up and you're like, how did I even get here? Why am I watching Dr. Pimple Popper right now? Right? I don't know how I got here, even though it's very intriguing. That's where it's dangerous, right? So again, conscious learning. So there is a pro and cons, I'd probably, I'm guessing, for all of these things.

• 26:02Speaker 00

  And I hope this explanation helps solidify that. But YouTube, amazing resource. It's literally right there. But be careful, the algorithms, they're there to get you. So you're going to find an amazing video with an amazing title and an amazing thumbnail, like raising a grocery store lobster as a pet. Now you are following Lee on the lobster, which might be great for just a distraction every once in a while. That's fine. I'm not saying don't be entertained. But I'm saying if you're going in there to learn, go in there to learn and learn about the things that matter.

• 26:31Hala Taha?

  How about online communities like a forum or something like SPI Pro or something like that?

• 26:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I'm not just saying this to plug my own stuff. There's many other communities out there. You have communities that Yeah. Communities are one of the most special things that you can do to fast forward your learning. Why? Because you are also alongside other people who are learning those same things. And just like learning something in school that you're interested in, like imagine a robotics club or something, you're into robotics, cool. It's one thing to learn on your own and read textbooks and go deep into a YouTube rabbit hole about that yourself, but being in a room, whether virtual or in person, with other people who are interested in that and you're getting your hands dirty, you're trying things, you're like, hey, how did you do that? Show me that. There are so many amazing things that can happen when communities come together because teachers become amazing teachers by finding other students. And students become great teachers to other people who are just coming in at the start.

• 27:24Speaker 00

  So in the book, I talk about the importance of connection with other people. And there's three levels of having what I like to call champions in your life to support you in your learning journey and your curiosity journey. So the first is your emotional support system. These are friends and family who probably don't understand the language of entrepreneurship or whatever it is that you're getting into, but find those family members and friends who are going to be excited when you get excited. That's the key, right? If you find that you're in communities where when you win, they start to tear you down, you're in the wrong rooms. You want to find the people who, when you're winning, they're like so happy for you and vice versa. That is where magic happens, especially in the second level of champions, which are your colleagues and your peers, right? Mastermind groups and other people in your communities or networks.

• 28:06Speaker 00

  That's where magic happens because you're all doing similar things, but you can share your superpowers amongst each other, right? You can fill each other's gaps, you can support each other, hold each other accountable. But then the third level of connection to other people, whether you find them in communities or you pay to get access to them, or you just happen to be somewhat lucky perhaps, is where you can find a virtual mentor, or better yet, a real in-person mentor, somebody who is going to take you under their wing, who's going to not only just hold you accountable, but be brutally honest with you because they want to see you succeed, even if it's not the nice thing to say, which I've had to have in my life at certain moments. So yes, communities are amazing because you can find those peers, you can find those connections, you can find that accountability. One of the best ways to fast forward your learning for sure.

• 28:49Hala Taha?

  Okay, learn or burn college diplomas.

• 28:53Speaker 00

  Well, I mean, I have a diploma here. I've never used it. I mean, I used it for a few years. But I mean, looking back, it was entry into that space that helped me discover more about what else I can do to serve that audience by creating an architecture exam, right? So I wouldn't say I'd go back on that, but recently we've had some legislation and other things from Washington that said, basically, okay, those of you who had once gotten loans for your student loan have to pay them back now. And this was a big deal because, you know, they were frozen for a while during the pandemic and stuff, but they're asking for you to pay that now. And there was a lot of people who were very upset about that. And I'm not going to talk about what's right or wrong. But what was interesting around that time when that was announced was a lot of people were coming out and saying

• 29:36Speaker 00

  that they had a degree, that they weren't even using it, that if they could go back, they wouldn't have gotten that degree. So I wouldn't necessarily say burn. However, I will say, as somebody who might be thinking about college, I want you to really understand why you would want to do that. We tell our kids, if you go to college, not when you go to college. For me, it was when you go to college and you better go to the best college or else you're a failure. That was how I grew up, traditional household. Thankfully, that conversation is changing a little bit. However, there is still this, okay, if you don't go to college, you're not as successful as you could be. Yet we see a lot of these incredible entrepreneurs who dropped out of college, from Zuckerberg to whoever, to start their thing and actually go bigger and become world-class entrepreneurs.

• 30:20Speaker 00

  So it depends on your path and what you want. Of course, if you want to be a doctor, then absolutely you need to go get a degree and then some. But what do you want and where do you want to go? And you're not a failure if you don't get a college degree. You're a failure if you just don't think about the decisions you're making, especially big financial decisions like that, especially if it comes with a loan. So be careful. And for me, I got lucky that I got into a college and enjoyed the classes I took. Quite honestly, I took architecture because it was the only thing of interest to me. It seemed to like not take as much work.

• 30:56Hala Taha?

  I recently interviewed Rachel Hollis, who is super successful and didn't go to college. And I asked her, what do you tell your kids if your kids are of college age? And she was saying, I recommend them going because I can afford to send them to school. However, if you're a person where you have to take out a loan, I wouldn't necessarily recommend it. Or to your point, I would think really hard about what you're doing.

• 31:19Speaker 00

  That's fair. I think being able to afford it is a luxury. And many people have that luxury, which is amazing. But if you don't, you definitely need to think about it. And if, you know, a lot of people use the excuse of, well, that's where I learned who I was. I became social. I joined these clubs. It wasn't even about the academic part of it. It was about the experience part of it. That's great. There's other experiences that could teach you life skills and how to integrate into the world that aren't just college. Traveling abroad, going to Japan to teach English could be an incredible experience. Or going on a mission somewhere. These are all experiences that can give you a better understanding of and a sense of who you are and what you like and dislike. It took in the season three of White Lotus, one of the characters actually staying overnight

• 32:02Speaker 00

  at a Buddhist temple to understand that that's probably didn't not what she wanted to do. But she experienced it. She tried it. That's a fiction story, but uh, it's just on my mind because we just.

• 32:12Hala Taha?

  Okay, the next one's too easy. It's AI productivity tools. So I know you're gonna say learn, right?

• 32:18Speaker 00

  There are a million AI tools out there. Picking the one or two that can support you with what it is that you want to do. Absolutely. Do that. Learn it. Understand how it works. Get really good at creating prompts, I will say. Learning how to write great prompts is such an important skill right now. More so than just knowing the information, right? Know how to create amazing prompts. However, it is very easy in these hot moments of tech to go, I'm gonna subscribe to this and then this and then this and then this. And all of a sudden, you're spending like 500 bucks a month across 20 different tools to get access to like, well, this one does this a little different and this one does this and this one, you know, does this. It's easy to get caught up in that culture wave. However. It is such an important understanding for where we are in the world today.

• 33:03Speaker 00

  And if you're not familiar with it, you're not going to have access to the ability to create and understand more about how you can integrate it into your goals and your life and perhaps your storytelling and whatever it might be. So yes, I think learn for sure. But again, like anything, you can overlearn. I think it's again conscious learning. When you find the thing that excites you and that you want to learn about, lean into it. And like a diet, you lean out everything else. There are so many tools out there right now that I want to play with. There was one that just came out from Google that literally with prompts, you can basically create movies and it looks amazing, like cinematic. And I want to play with it so bad, but I have this book launch coming up and I have an event to run in at the end of June. Yes, I'm being pulled and compelled there, but I am disciplined enough, thanks to my

• 33:47Speaker 00

  past, to know that that's not what I need right now. And by the time I have time in the middle of summer, after all this stuff is done to play with it, it'll probably be even better, or there might even be a competing tool. So again, conscious understanding of what it is you're putting your time into is key.

• 34:02Hala Taha?

  So you told us a story about how, what was that, 20 years ago when you created your ebook? How long ago was that?

• 34:08Speaker 00

  That was 2008. So I mean, we're talking 17 years ago.

• 34:14Hala Taha?

  Okay, so AI didn't exist. So much technology that we know of now did not exist. How would you approach you launching that idea or similar idea today in the terms of the way that you would learn and what you would do?

• 34:30Speaker 00

  There were a lot of things that I was learning as I was going by doing research and figuring these things out. I was watching videos and picking up resources about, well, what goes in a study guide? And how can I take this information on my website and format it so it looks like a study guide? And that was all done manually back then. Now you can do that in an instant. I use a tool called poppy.ai. I don't know if you've heard about this, but with poppy AI, I can upload my book. I can connect various websites. I can even connect an ebook, a different ebook and say, okay, hey, Poppy AI, take my information that I have on my website and I want to format it in a study guide that is similar to format to this one that you have connected here. And I could just see that probably in two minutes.

• 35:14Speaker 00

  And that way I can easily fast forward the results I want. It's still important to know what I'm trying to get out of this, right? Not just dabbling on AI, but this is a key thing I want to get out of this. And now AI is a tool that I can use now to fast forward that process. I also recommend using AI, and I use it every day, as a creative partner in what I'm trying to do. I use it as in role playing. I tell it sometimes if I'm coming out with a new product, for example, and any young entrepreneur should know how to do this, use AI and say, hey, you are a potential customer who has these reservations about X, Y, and Z, who is somebody who is in this part of life and whatever. And you say, role play and be a customer who I'm trying to sell.

• 35:57Speaker 00

  And tell me why you aren't making a decision to buy when I pitch with you. Oh, my gosh, what an amazing opportunity because now I'm seeing and hearing the objections that my target audience might have before my target audience hears my pitch. And I can address those things. I can get in front of them, right? So using AI as a creative partner has been amazing for me, especially in book writing, creating outlines, understanding goals. What exercises can I include in these books based on this chapter? And it'll just like spit that out for me really quickly. And then I can choose from like the best ones. I can take a piece of content that I write and say, okay, simplify this and cut it in half, but still have the same results. And now I'm helping people save time with AI because my writing is pretty wordy. And then I can cut that in half and make it easier for people to consume and get to

• 36:42Speaker 00

  the result faster, right? So that's an example of how I would use AI to write this book. And it'd probably be even more valuable now because again, information is not what's valuable, it's getting to the result faster. So for my book, listening or reading audience, just like I do with Lean Learning, it's taking all this information and not putting it all in the book. It's just what at a minimum could I include? To get the person the same results and inspire them to take action.

• 37:06Hala Taha?

  I love that you call AI a creative partner. I feel like that's how I use it too. I use it for everything, for researching my interviews, for writing webinars or presentations. I use it in every single activity. It doesn't do the whole thing for me. I have to use a lot of my own brain power, but I love the way that you phrased it as a creative partner. So I have a lot of creator entrepreneurs that listen to this podcast. And when I think about you, you are like token creative entrepreneur, right? You're the definition of a creator entrepreneur. So what do you think are some of the biggest roadblocks when it comes to learning that creator entrepreneurs have?

• 37:43Speaker 00

  Again, trying to find out all the information upfront is often a struggle and being okay with learning as you go. I think I interviewed MKBHD, world renowned tech reviewer, 20 million subscribers now. And I interviewed him when he was around three or four million subs, but he's continuing to skyrocket. But I asked him, when you first started out, what kept you going in those early days? And he said, well, I just wanted to learn about creation. And the only way I could do that was to just create. I wasn't expecting millions of viewers or anything. I just knew that I would get better every time I did it. And he said his first 100 videos were for less than 100 subscribers on YouTube. He got to 100 videos before he even got 100 subscribers. But all those videos stacked and enabled him to learn. And eventually, especially as a creator

• 38:27Speaker 00

  on these platforms, it can just take one to change everything. And it did for MKBHD and it did for me even recently. So for example, I created a shorts channel. I had never done a successful shorts channel. I dabbled with it before, but it was always random what I would create. But I decided that I was going to create a series. I was going to silo it from everything else I did. So I didn't link to it from anything else. I just wanted to experiment with it. And so one thing that I did that was successful this time was I said, okay, I'm going to go daily on YouTube. I'm going to repurpose that on TikTok and Instagram, which is pretty easy to do. And I just want to do it for 60 days. A lot of entrepreneurs worry about, okay, well, am I going to be doing this forever? What if it doesn't work out? And they start to question everything and then not put their all into it, or like try five different things, and then nothing has full energy to actually find success. You have to commit.

• 39:11Speaker 00

  And understand that it is through the doing that you will learn what works and what doesn't. And so my goal was just to get to 60 days. If I got to 60 days, even if I got hardly any views, I would still call that a success because I gave it a chance. So I started to create this series called, Should I Open It or Should I Keep It Sealed? Where I open a pack of Pokemon every day and you know, sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad. I got a fun little jingle in the beginning created and for 30 days I went. And then halfway through the experiment, I looked at the views and I was getting maybe between 200 to 500 views every single day. In general, not doing very well and normally I would have just given up if the views are what mattered. What mattered was just how I was learning and to get to day 60.

• 39:54Speaker 00

  Now, although the views weren't really where I would have hoped maybe they would be. Some things did happen by day 30. Number one, I was able to get my editing time for these videos down from 45 minutes to 12 minutes. So I could crank these out and I was able to actually create an entire week's worth of these shorts in a single day within a couple hours. So my production got faster, again, making progress, but not views because I wasn't counting the views. I was counting the uploads. The uploads are what I can control. I can't control always what happens with the algorithm, but I can control how I show up. So that's all I wanted to do. Day 35 comes around and one of those videos hits 750,000 views.

• 40:34Speaker 00

  Just like fishing, you keep casting out there and finally I did something with that bait to get that large bass. And it happened on that day and ever since then, all those channels have risen up. So I now have with this shorts channel, it's called Short Pocket Monster on YouTube. On YouTube alone, it has only been 305 days, hasn't even been a full year yet. We're at 1.2 billion views. It's generating five figures a month, just on the shorts channel. 1.6 million subscribers, by the way. On TikTok, 1.5 million followers. I started with 20,000 and it went to 1.5 million followers and over a million followers on Instagram. Just from these 12 minute per day videos that are coming out.

• 41:15Speaker 00

  And what was interesting also, even by day 30, I was noticing some videos did a little bit better than others. And I started to analyze because the more you get your reps in, the more you're going to start to see these patterns. Imagine just trying this once a week, that's not a lot of data to go from. So I found that certain videos did well, like for example, when I was in person at a store and that was the beginning of the video where I was negotiating with somebody. For whatever reason, people retained a little bit longer on those videos because I had that data. And videos where the pack of cards had a sticker on them with the price seemed to do a little bit better as well. And that video that hit 750,000 views in a single day did incorporate that. But I also know that it wouldn't have happened if I had just given up because I wasn't getting views. I wasn't counting views, I was counting uploads and that's key.

• 42:00Speaker 00

  So the longer you wait to create, the longer you're delaying the learning process. So that's a big struggle because again, it has to be perfect, right? The constraint of coming out every day forced me to not overproduce. I had only a little bit of time to do this thing, so I just figured out what could make this easy and not overthink it, right? The fact that we have access to all these tools and amazing cameras and all this stuff, that's actually working against us. Because we feel like it has to be perfect and it's just delaying us actually creating. And again, when you have that constraint and you have that force function of you gotta come out daily, well, you gotta get it done. And so you say no to more things to get it done and then eventually you hit if you keep going.

• 42:45Hala Taha?

  This is bringing up the voluntary force function that you were mentioning. The other thing is that you got started, right? You started doing stuff on Pokemon, which I'm sure you probably had some internal reservations, like everybody knows me for a certain thing, I'm in a certain space. And now I'm going to talk about Pokemon, which is completely different than marketing and things like that that you talk about. So I'm sure you had reservations about that. I saw this quote on Instagram for creators that said, "Everything you want is on the other side of cringe." And I think especially younger people, they're really afraid of what people are going to say about them. And I remember when I started this podcast seven years ago, I had friends that were giving me the side eye.

• 43:30Hala Taha?

  I had friends asking me, "Why are you doing this? You already tried to be on radio, you already tried this, it didn't work out." I wasn't even 30 years old, you're too old to start a podcast, you're too old. To be doing this, right? So all this negativity from people that I knew who now are very supportive. But people come around. Once you've had some sort of success, right? They see what you did. And then suddenly you're inspiring, right? First, they're gonna ask you why you did it. Then they're gonna ask you how you did it. That's the world that we live in. So talk to us about you've got this, just fucking do it. I think it's in the book. Or just get started. Tell us about that.

• 44:03Speaker 00

  J F T S. Yeah, just fucking get started is what my mentor told me because I was writing things down too much. I was taking too many notes. And he's just like, just do it. I have a saying and that's you gotta be cringe before they binge. And it's absolutely the case. You gotta be a disaster before you become the master. Whatever the phrase is, the lesson is still the same. You have to just put yourself out there. And the fact that you have other people watching and trying to tear you down just means that you're actually taking the right actions because that's always gonna happen. We just live in a world. Like a bucket of crabs, they say. And if you have a bucket of crabs, you won't ever have to worry about any of them crawling out because as soon as one tries to get above and crawl out, the others take. Their claws and pull them back down. That's the kind of world we live in. So that's why it's again important to surround yourself with people who are going to lift you up.

• 44:45Speaker 00

  For sure, but it's hard and it's the universe's way of testing to see whether or not you really want this or not. When I first got laid off and started doing my architecture entrepreneurial thing, I was getting similar side eyes. I was getting people saying. And why don't you get a real job? That hurt because I did get a real job and then I got kicked out. It was the recession and I didn't have any control over that, but I still felt betrayed and I was like, no. If I'm gonna fail, it's gonna be because I fail on my own terms, not because of other things I couldn't control. And that was really important to me and lifted me up as a creator. I think it was Alex Vermostier, somebody said, success is the best revenge. Let the dogs bark. I like to say, you know, you're walking by a fence and there's dogs there. It could be scary.

• 45:27Speaker 00

  But just let them bark. You're doing your own thing. You got stuff to take care of and. As long as you keep casting that bait out there, you're gonna keep catching fish, not on every cast, but eventually you'll learn. How to do it and great things are on the other end of that for sure.

• 45:42Hala Taha?

  Have you heard of Miss Excel? She's like huge on TikTok.

• 45:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, I saw her speak once. She was great.

• 45:46Hala Taha?

  Yeah. She was telling me that she just started and literally didn't tell anyone. She just started putting out content under Miss Excel, so not even under her real name. And then eventually, when she already started popping off, people were like, oh, my gosh, is this you? Like, who is this? So I feel like that's also a cool strategy. Just do it. Don't even tell anyone. Do it under a stage name if you have to, if you feel so embarrassed.

• 46:11Speaker 00

  For sure. I mean, the shorts channel is just my hands, so it's not even my face. It is my voice. I'm very much me on it. I put dad jokes in there and other things. My thumbs, however, which are very close up because I'm picking up these cards, have now become world famous. They're the same as Megan Fox's thumbs. They're like club thumbs. And initially, I was scared of that. Like, people were making fun of my thumbs. They're like, what's wrong with your thumbs? Or like, you know, doing the throw up emoji. And I was like, oh, no. And then I was like, you know what? I'm gonna embrace this. I think it was Sally Hogshead who also did the same thing. People were making fun of her when she was a kid for her last name, Hogshead. And now that's like the center of her brand. There's a logo with a hog's head on it. And it's like, you can't mistake who that person is now. And she's world famous and writes books and is a New York Times bestseller, etc. So I did the same thing. I was like, you know what?

• 46:55Speaker 00

  There's a Pokemon that has like a funny shape called a Diglet. And I'm just gonna call my thumbs Diglet thumbs. So I started to own these things that people were making fun of me for. And now, when I go to events, people take out the Diglet Pokemon card for me to sign. People are even saying like, Pat, you should tattoo Diglets on your thumbs. It's all up to you how you write the story that's happening, right? People will say things on the external, but it's the internal, what you do, how you react, that then guides whether or not it goes this way and becomes something you hate, that you cringe about, or something that you can embrace that makes you unique. And with the Pokemon thing on my long form channel, it's very much me, my face was on it. But I'm still me. If you watch the Pokemon stuff and if you watch my business stuff, I'm talking about different things, but I'm still me. I still show up in the same way with the same amount of passion.

• 47:41Speaker 00

  And it's funny now because I'm actually getting... Parents who followed me from SPI, they'll say things like, "I heard your voice in my son's room, and then I went in and he was watching you on the iPad, but you're doing Pokemon stuff now? What is happening here? How did you get there?" And so, it's just amazing how these worlds, even though they're completely separate, do overlap. And I am now able to introduce a lot of my entrepreneurial brain and entrepreneurial curiosities into the world of Pokemon. It's now a five-figure-per-month business. From how I'm an affiliate, the top affiliate for a binder company now, generating thousands of dollars per month by recommending products, just like I do on the entrepreneurial side of things, but now for a different audience, to, yes, the YouTube ad revenue, but even brand partnerships and collaborations.

• 48:25Speaker 00

  I have had companies pay $25,000 for a 60-second ad on one of my Pokemon videos, just for 60 seconds, 25K. And it's like, those negotiations, I know how to now understand what a company wants and what they're looking for. That all came from just experience that was messy as I was learning in the entrepreneurial space, and now I can come into this new space and provide value in a similar way.

• 48:47Hala Taha?

  I had the opportunity to interview Gary Vee in person, and he was talking about the TikTok-ification of social media. And what you're saying right now really reminds me of what he was trying to share with everyone, that you can't really just focus on one topic. Or the future of creator entrepreneurship is not focusing on one topic alone, because the algorithm's job is to basically share relevant content with people who want to learn about that specific content. And in order to reach as wide as an audience as you want, you've got to have multiple topics. Now, I feel like for people who are just starting, it's best to have one that you focus on and grow an audience, but you've been doing SPI for so many years. You've already acquired a big audience.

• 49:29Hala Taha?

  It only makes sense that now you've got this totally different, new audience that you can monetize, and you're in the audience-based business, and now you've got a business audience and a Pokemon audience. They're two totally different demographics that you can monetize in totally different ways, but in the same ways, in terms of the approach in which you monetize, which is awesome. It's so cool that you were able to basically build two audiences. That's like the peak of creator entrepreneurship.

• 49:57Speaker 00

  I've had a lot of friends ask me how I did this and I've shared it publicly and I have documented it. But because they feel stuck on the one thing that they've been doing forever and they feel like there's maybe a lost energy there. And they can see and feel the excitement of a now 42 year old man playing with cardboard with cartoons on them. I mean, it's at a point now where with the long form videos, I mean, there's a video that has 15 million views that has earned over a hundred thousand dollars, just one video. Every Monday I go live and I just give away cards like as a Mr. Beast kind of style sort of thing. And we have six to 8,000 people watching me concurrently live every single Monday. And I found out that it's not kids, it's kids who are watching because their parents were into Pokemon back in the day.

• 50:39Speaker 00

  And they're now doing this as a shared experience together. They're in fact, watching on a television during dinner or with popcorn on the couch. Yes, it's an audience based business, but all of this really is a tension based business. It's showing up and being relevant and to the point of, yes, sticking with one thing, yes, the niche is Pokemon. But very common on this channel are comments from people who say, I'm not even into Pokemon, but I love these videos. Because of the storytelling that happens within them. Because if you learn storytelling, and this is going to be in addition to learning more quickly and the things I talk about in lean learning as an important skill to have. Storytelling is going to be one of the most important skills to have, especially as AI is again, making just based information completely accessible to everybody.

• 51:23Speaker 00

  It is the stories, how you wrap that information around in a relatable way that evokes some sort of emotion. I think it was Ryan Dice who said, if you can make people laugh, cry, get angry after reading, watching or listening to your content. You're hitting them on another level. That's more than just information. That is internalization of that stuff and that is key. So what I'm finding working on shorts though, because what I love about shorts and TikToks and reels is there's less worry about having to be perfect. It's more raw, it's shorter, so you have more room to experiment and. What I love about it is every day you can create a new experiment and something just might work out, which is really amazing, right? And there's less worry about it being perfect. So you have more opportunities to show up.

• 52:07Speaker 00

  And when you can show up about even a specific topic, but make it culturally relevant, that's where you find you have the widest net, right? For so long, the information-based business was all about the riches are in the niches. And in a way, that's still true, right? If people don't know what you have to offer them and how it's specific to them, why would they purchase or why would they be a customer? Sure. But now with Shorts especially, starting that conversation on a more cultural, wider net relevance, right? And then having a certain percentage of those people understand what you have now to them. Like, there's a lawyer, gosh, I can't remember his name, but he was on a diary of a CEO lately, and he has a lot of these how to communicate with people type of videos.

• 52:51Speaker 00

  He'll be just in his car, and he's like, hey, if somebody ever gets in your face about something, here are three things you can say to deflate the situation and make them feel bad about being aggressive to you. He'll say things like that. He's a lawyer. He wants clients for his firm. That's his niche. But to have cultural relevance and say things that are general and useful for everybody, whether they need a lawyer or not, is how you get attention these days. And that's a little bit about this book. It has notes and flavors of entrepreneurship, but it's self-help and self-development. And this is why it's not just about learning about business. This is about learning about learning, right? And hopefully, as a result of being more culturally relevant, especially today with how noisy things are and how much information there is, it will hit more people and hopefully

• 53:36Speaker 00

  make an impact and hopefully we'll see some nice results from that.

• 53:39Hala Taha?

  So many gems in what you just said. I was just thinking like, oh, I'm just gonna go back and listen to this. I do a lot of webinars, and I was thinking that is gonna be a clip in one of my webinars to teach people about, you know, how to get attention online. One more question about lean learning before we wrap things up. And it's something that you alluded to, and it's a quote from Tim Ferriss. And I believe the quote was, if it was easy, what would it look like? So talk to us about how we can use that quote to be better learners.

• 54:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, this is what I call the keystone question. And whenever attempting to do something initially, back in the day, I would always, again, overlearn and overcomplicate it. But Tim was able to bring me back down to earth. He and I are connected and we help each other. I was able to help him start his podcast and he's been a mentor from afar, if you will. But at one point, I was trying to work on something and he said, "Well, if this were easy, what would it look like?" And that immediately helped me understand what I was supposed to be doing, which was, in his words, "trying to find the minimum viable product," or whatever it is. But in general, we overcomplicate things or think things have to be more intensive than they have to be, or more exhaustive. But the truth is, if you just ask yourself that question as a filter for anything you're doing, "Hey, I'm starting a podcast. Okay, cool. Well, if this were easy, what would it look like?"

• 54:56Speaker 00

  Well, it probably wouldn't be in a multimillion-dollar studio. I probably wouldn't necessarily be able to get access to these A-list celebrities. But I do know some people who would be valuable to have on the show. Might start with them. And, "Okay, cool. Let's narrow it down so that you can just do instead of just outlearn yourself and have zero confidence as you move forward." So, anything you do that you're attempting to do and learn for the first time, ask yourself that question. "If this were easy, what would it look like?" We ask that stuff, our question, so often when building out the SwitchPod, that invention. Because we're like, "Okay, there's so many parts to this. Manufacturing, inventing, patents." Even before we had the idea, we were like, "Okay, what does it take to get a patent?" We're researching that. And there's like patent lawyers and there's all this information. There's courses about patents. And we're like, "Do we even need this right now? Because if this were easy, what would it look like?"

• 55:41Speaker 00

  Well, we would just cut out a shape with cardboard and just hand it to a YouTuber and see if it was the right size. So that's literally what we did. We cut out just shapes with cardboard and just played around with them. And then eventually, we got to a size that made sense. And we're like, "Okay, now we can actually make this thing. Like, let's make a prototype." Okay, well, prototypes, especially with metal, will need like a mold and it's going to be handmade. It's going to cost so much money. But, "Okay, wait, wait, wait. If this were easy, what would it look like?" We eventually asked around somebody who, again, had done this before. "Oh, just 3D print it." "Well, how much is that going to cost? Like, 50 bucks." "Okay, cool." So we hired a person to put it in CAD and get a 3D print of it. And then it actually did the thing that we thought it was going to do, where the legs of the tripod could fold together, become a handle.

• 56:26Speaker 00

  And then we were like, okay, like, how are we going to figure out if actually people would use this thing or not? Well, let's just go to a YouTube event. We went to VidSummit in 2017 and said, okay, well, let's take our prototype and just literally hand it to people and record their thoughts. That way, we know where to go from here. Again, if this were easy, what would it look like? And eventually, like I said, in 2019, we launched it to nearly half a million dollars in 60 days. Because again, if this were easy, what would it look like? We didn't hire a PR firm, which is again, what most people think you need to do with these kinds of things, especially if you're not experienced. We just had YouTubers who loved it when we shared it with them. We just signed them up to an affiliate program to get paid if they were to promote it.

• 57:05Speaker 00

  And we had everybody from Peter McKinnon promoted it for us. He helped us get to our $100,000 funding goal in 11 hours. Because somebody with some influence who already had an audience liked it and shared it.

• 57:21Hala Taha?

  I love that filter. If it was easy, what would it look like? It's like almost every decision in your entrepreneurship journey, you can put through that filter.

• 57:28Speaker 00

  Thousand percent.

• 57:29Hala Taha?

  Okay, one more actionable thing from the book. We were talking about just getting started, getting momentum, especially when things aren't moving as fast as you'd like. You talk about power of 10.

• 57:40Speaker 00

  My favorite chapter are about power 10. So I used to row at Cal when I was there, and a team crew is what they called it. And so I was in a boat with eight people, and there's a ninth person who's usually the smallest person on the team, who yells the commands to the rowers, right? And if you've ever watched one of these races, it's incredible because it's a lot of mind games going on. And you might think it's just like, oh, well, whoever rows the hardest for the longest. And that's actually not the key. Because you need to set a pace and you need to see where the other boats are next to you, right? So when you're in a boat racing, the way to get ahead is to not just tell people on the boat to row harder. You have to contain a heightened amount of pressure and strength for a period of time, and that's called the

• 58:21Speaker 00

  power 10. So a rower, or a coxswain, as they're called, the person running the commands on the boat, will say, okay, you're rowing and you're at pace, you notice the other boats getting ahead of you. You initiate what's called a power 10. They'll say, all right, rowers, here we go. Three stroke, two stroke, one stroke, go, power 10. And for 10 strokes, and 10 strokes alone, every person on that boat gives their best, most powerful strokes, just for 10.

• 58:47Speaker 00

  And you notice those boats just start to fly ahead of the other boats next to them. So even though they're going, you can go faster by doing a power 10. And it's important that it's just 10 because if it was a power 100, you'd exhaust yourself and you'd die if you were rowing. Or the opposite case is if you just went at the pace you were going, you'd be last place and be left behind. So the way you move faster in life, or what it is that you're learning, is to find these moments of time where you can give it a little bit more energy and put more power into it for a contained period of time, not forever, or else you're going to experience burnout like most people do.

• 59:20Hala Taha?

  Give us a business example.

• 59:22Speaker 00

  Like a hackathon, 24 hours, we're going to code something and you're going to stay up with pizza and Red Bull for 24 hours. In these 24 hours, team, we're going to create something amazing. That's an example of a power 10. As a podcaster, I've done this a few times where I'm on my pace, one interview per week for years. But then I decided to insert a power 10 one week where every day for one week was a podcast episode, seven days a week. And I promoted that. It was more energy required, more time and power and team and all this kind of stuff to make it done. But it was only seven days and so it was contained. But what did that do? It gave us a lot more time to promote it and get people excited about this power week that we had or marketing week. It had a lot more downloads during that week than we normally have.

• 1:00:03Speaker 00

  As a result, our podcast started to gain in the rankings because rankings are based on velocity and how much happens in a shorter period of time. So we saw some major results and even more customers as a result of putting in our version of a power 10. This is something that we can all do, no matter what it is that we're doing. A lot of authors do this where you're writing a book, but you're just like, okay, I just need to get an Airbnb for a week and just grind this out. And they'll do that and they'll come back and they'll be that much more ahead because they've had that contained period of time to focus on it. So it is such a powerful thing that I do and everything that I'm trying to master, that it has accounted probably for the biggest jumps in my learnings, for sure.

• 1:00:41Hala Taha?

  While we're sticking on teams, I do the same thing with my team. Let's say we have a webinar and signups are low. I'm like, okay, let's just have a workshop where we're all going to just create content and just bang it out and send a thousand DMs in this hour or whatever it is. Right? So I do stuff like that all the time. So I love that I have a word around it, power 10. But in terms of lean learning, what are some things that, you know, a lot of my listeners have companies, they've got teams. How can they implement this with their teams or what is the best way to get started, you think?

• 1:01:08Speaker 00

  The most powerful thing to do is to brainstorm together and have a power 10 moment to brainstorm. That's where I find a lot of companies who are in motion, kind of in that rhythm or cadence. They're not innovating because they have their task lists and things they're supposed to do. But then eventually you'll get left behind if you don't have room to innovate. Innovation is key, but uncontrolled innovation is what we were worried about in the beginning. Right? Like out of control learning, that's chaos. So what I would recommend for a company, small team or big teams, have the executive team, if it's maybe a bigger team, I know a few companies who I advise who do this too. Every quarter, they'll have a single day reserved for brainstorming, to be able to be curious together,

• 1:01:52Speaker 00

  to expand their thoughts on things that maybe were put aside. Things are still happening, those are contained, but this is a moment in time for us to now power 10 focus on, okay, well, where do we want to go from here? What innovative ideas do we have in this moment? No bad ideas, but we're going to contain it within this six hour period and let's talk less jam. Let's get excited about this, let's make it a day. And I've been in those days for some of these companies and it's just like magic to see. It's almost like a writer's room, right? If you imagine writers for a sitcom, they're in a room and they're just eating off of each other with those ideas that wouldn't happen if they were on their own. And then these become things that now the executive team has to go, okay, out of all these things that we have now on the table, what's the one thing we want to focus on? And let's put a date to it. That's how you can start to see movement on some of these things.

• 1:02:37Speaker 00

  Again, in a controlled way where it's not over learning, but you are finding moments of time to take advantage of those creative efforts from not just yourself and not even just yourself and some of your other executives, but maybe even other team members who don't normally get to speak up. This is sort of town hall in the company that you could use to make people feel like they're a part of the process as well. And so that way, when you actually implement something and say, all right, everybody, here's what we're going to focus on, they're like, yeah, I remember where that idea came from. We came up with that together, right? And so if you can lead in that way, not because you're just saying all the things, but because you're getting everybody involved, it can mean a lot more support for that thing if you go down that direction and even more people to poke holes in it too, to make sure those holes are plugged before things get released or get put out there.

• 1:03:21Speaker 00

  So teams are really key, but learning how to lead those teams again, which there are a lot of great books out there around that. The Seven Dysfunctions of a Team, I think is the one I would recommend with.

• 1:03:32Hala Taha?

  Patrick Lencioni, yep.

• 1:03:33Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:03:33Hala Taha?

  I had him on too, Patrick Lencioni, he's great.

• 1:03:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, he's great. Pick that one book up and then start to live it and learn as you go. Because again, I remember when I was learning how to speak, I wanted to read every book on public speaking because I was so nervous. But if I was reading all of it, I'd never have time to practice and rehearse and get better.

• 1:03:50Hala Taha?

  So if you had to say one sentence into the ear of an overwhelmed creator or entrepreneur, what would it be?

• 1:03:57Speaker 00

  Stop learning. You have everything you need to know for what your next steps are right now. You probably have been learning because you've been scared of that thing that you know you need to do. Do it. That's it.

• 1:04:08Hala Taha?

  Okay, I'm gonna ask you two questions that I end my show with. What is one actionable thing that our young improfitters can do today to become more profitable tomorrow?

• 1:04:17Speaker 00

  If you already have customers, reach out to your existing customers and see what they need help with next. Your best customer is often your existing customer. And if you can create that chain of products from the start to what the next one might be, that's maybe where your focus can be because they will help prove that that is in fact what it is that you need to create next. And you already have customers baked in for that and then be able to get new customers in who might prefer product two over product one and be able to expand that way. So what does that mean? It means really for anybody, whether you already have customers or not, what is the biggest problems that you can solve for your audience right now? Find out what that is. Have a single conversation with one person in your audience and help them get that one result. Especially for those of you who haven't found success yet, that is the key to success.

• 1:05:01Speaker 00

  One person in a community who you want to serve. What is one problem that they have? Get them that one result, 111. Because when you do that, not only will you have experience finding those people, communicating with them, helping them through a process, which is ultimately very valuable to you. Not only will you have that testimonial, you will have now unlocked in your brain that you can actually do this. Because very common is you'll talk yourself out of it by saying, oh, I don't know if this is gonna work, or I don't know if this is gonna work for this person. Who am I? Right? That imposter syndrome. Who am I to serve these people? Well, serve them. Get one person. If you can't find one, then you can't find a thousand. So go find one first and unlock that truth that you can do this so that you'll never doubt yourself ever again.

• 1:05:43Hala Taha?

  And what would you say your secret to profiting in life is? This can go beyond financial.

• 1:05:49Speaker 00

  I would not be where I am today if it wasn't for the amazing people that I've been lucky enough to surround myself with. Some of that has been luck, for sure. Some of that has been purposeful, getting myself into rooms and situations and being able to provide value to different communities, to be in those rooms with people who have important relationships. And you never know, the next person you meet could be absolutely life-changing. I mean, Hala, you and I wouldn't have met if it wasn't through some of our circles and our podcasting friends. And this opportunity to be able to come on and promote my book today and serve your audience at the same time, I'm just so honored about it. And it wouldn't have happened if I didn't get out of my comfort zone, because I am an introvert, to meet people and to try to serve others. Try to see how you can leave the rooms you join better than when you got there. That's how you can have people want

• 1:06:33Speaker 00

  to reach back out to you when you have something. I've had a lot of people who have helped in the past who have heard that I've had this book coming out, who on their own account have reached out and said, hey, Pat, you've helped me out so much. How can I help you with this book launch? And you had done just that as well. Thank you so, so much. And we're here to support each other. And maybe the last thing I'll say is, if you approach this world in the way that most people do, you're going to lose, which is like we're at a poker table. We're Hala. If you win, that means I'm losing. Or if I win, that means you're losing. We treat the world like it's a poker table, and it's not. It's abundant. There are ways for all of us to win together. And if you and everybody else thought that way, imagine how much more beautiful this world would be. And although not everybody's

• 1:07:15Speaker 00

  going to think that way, find your own pocket of people in this world who do believe that, and you can't lose.

• 1:07:20Hala Taha?

  Beautifully said. What a great way to end the show, Pat. You've done an amazing job. I feel like you gave us so much actionable advice, which we love on Young and Profiting Podcast. Where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you do?

• 1:07:32Speaker 00

  Of course, Lean Learning, available on Amazon or wherever books are sold. Lean Learning: How to Achieve More by Learning Less. And of course, @PatFlynn on most social media channels. And if you are curious about Pokémon, check out Deep Pocket Monster on YouTube. You'll see the kinds of stories that we tell and how we're able to get millions of views, even from people who don't even care about Pokémon, and hopefully get some inspiration from that. But don't learn too much.

• 1:07:55Hala Taha?

  Thanks for joining us on the show. I'll make sure all those links are in the show notes.

• 1:07:59Speaker 00

  Thank you. You're amazing.

• 1:08:04Hala Taha?

  What an incredible conversation with Pat Flynn. He completely flipped the script on everything we thought we knew about learning and productivity. If there's one truth to take away from today, it's this: action without information is chaos, but information without action is a waste. The key to unlocking our full potential lies in finding the perfect balance between the two. Too many of us are stuck in a never-ending loop of learning, consuming every course, podcast, masterclass that we can find, thinking that more knowledge will lead to more success. But Pat made it crystal clear: more information isn't the answer. Intentional action is. First, we've got to stop being over learners and start practicing what Pat was calling selective curiosity. You don't need to know everything.

• 1:08:49Hala Taha?

  You just need to know what matters now. Focus on just-in-time learning that serves your immediate goals and forget the rest. The real skill isn't knowing what to absorb, it's knowing what to ignore. Second, lean into Pat's bold mantra, J F G S: just fucking get started. As he said, "The number one thing wasting your time is overthinking, overlearning, and asking too many questions before you actually try." You don't need more prep, you need more action. The learning happens in the doing, not the waiting. And finally, set yourself up with momentum with voluntary force functions, those self-imposed constraints that force you to perform. Use techniques like the Power 10 to create short bursts of focus and energy,

• 1:09:33Hala Taha?

  because sometimes the best way to break through analysis paralysis is to leave yourself no other option but to move. And if you're ever stuck in decision paralysis, Pat shared a powerful question to ask yourself. If this were easy, what would it look like? That's one line that can cut through the clutter, simplify your next step, and bring you back to clarity. If you're ready to stop overthinking and start overachieving, I highly recommend grabbing a copy of Pat's new book, Lean Learning. It's not just a book, it's a call to action. Thanks for listening to this episode of Young and Profiting Podcast. If you listened, learned, and profited from this conversation with the amazing Pat Flynn, then please share this with somebody who's stuck in learning mode and needs that push to take action.

• 1:10:16Hala Taha?

  And if you enjoyed the show and picked up something valuable, I'd be so grateful if you left us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to the show. Your support helps us reach more people. If you want to watch this episode or on YouTube, head to YouTube, subscribe to our channel, Young and Profiting. And you can also find me on Instagram at @yapwithhala or LinkedIn, just search for my name, it's Hala Taha. Of course, I got to thank my incredible production team, I couldn't do this without you. This is your host, Hala Taha, AKA The Podcast Princess, signing off.