Brad Johnson: Welcome back to another episode of Do Business, Do Life. We have Pat Flynn here with us today. Welcome to the show, Pat.
Pat Flynn: Brad, glad to be here. Thank you so much.
Brad Johnson: Dude, this is fun. I remember when I first launched my podcast back in 2015, my first podcast, I should say, and I thought I was kind of an OG podcaster, but then you’re like, “Well, my first one was 2010,” but what’s wild is I do actually remember listening to your podcast when I launched mine because you were one of the biggest shows in the early days. Obviously, still have a massive platform, but let’s talk about that. Kind of lost your job and then you’re like, “Let’s start a podcast.” How did this whole thing begin?
Pat Flynn: Yeah, I mean, before the podcast and before the brand to teach people stuff, I was actually trying to figure things out after getting laid off and build my own thing. And for a while, I was trying to scramble to figure out what that was until I took some knowledge I had in the architecture space and packaged it onto a website online to help people pass a very, very niche exam called the LEED exam, which stands for Leadership and Energy and Environmental Design. And this was this new exam about green buildings and sustainable design that was coming out around the time. And I just passed it right before I got laid off. So, I said, “Okay, I can take this knowledge I have, package it on a website, and we’ll just see what happens from there.”
And the reason I did that was because of a podcast. There was a podcast called Internet Business Mastery, and this was back in ‘08, so a long time ago. And that podcast changed my life. I heard a story on that podcast from a guy making six figures a year, helping people pass the project management exam. And that was my sort of aha light bulb moment to try it myself. And I did. And I joined their community and learned how to start things and was figuring it out as I was going along.
But eventually, lo and behold, Google started to surface my architecture material up to people who were looking for it. People who found it enjoyed it and wanted to share it. So, I started to see my website being sprinkled across different architecture forums, and at the end of the year, I launched an e-book. I just basically took all those notes and some more study guide, tips, and stuff, put them in a PDF file and put a PayPal button on my website to see what would happen. And in that first month I launched, it was $7,908.55 was made. And it completely changed my– that was two and a half more times than I was making as an architect.
Brad Johnson: That’s wild.
Pat Flynn: It didn’t feel real, it didn’t feel– like I almost thought like the FBI was going to swat, show up because it just was like, “You’re not supposed to do this. You didn’t go to school for this. You’re not allowed to make this kind of money doing something else.” Yet, here I was and that’s when I started to teach people what I was doing. And again, I wasn’t an expert, but I knew more than others. So, I just started to share that. And that turned into a blog at first. It was called Smart Passive Income, still around. And then it turned into a podcast in 2010, started a YouTube channel, and started writing books, started speaking about this. And now, nearly 1,000 episodes of that podcast later, it had grown to one of the biggest shows at the time, especially since it was kind of early on. And I have been influential enough to even help people like Tim Ferriss start his podcast. I know I have a little bit of a…
Brad Johnson: Did you really?
Pat Flynn: Yeah, I did. And there’s even a video of me beardless Pat on his YouTube channel teaching people how to start a podcast on Garageband because a lot of people were asking him how to do it. He’s just like, “Pat, why don’t you just teach people?” So, it was really cool to know I have a little bit of just a history in a lot of people’s podcasts is really neat. And the fact that you found it even earlier on too is really cool, Brad.
Brad Johnson: Well, it’s the butterfly effect is what I’m hearing. I didn’t know that part that you had helped Tim kind of get his off the ground. That was the very first podcast I started religiously listening to was The Tim Ferris Show. And do you remember what year he started it?
Pat Flynn: I think it was…
Brad Johnson: ‘12, ‘13, ‘14, somewhere in there?
Pat Flynn: Yeah. Around that time, it was just starting to pick up mainstream. A lot of really smart content creators were starting to jump onto the podcasting sort of bandwagon, if you will. And of course, he has this approach to everything where it’s just like, okay, if this were easy, what would it look like? And he just found somebody who had done it before to teach him and kind of get it launched. And then of course, he’s run with it and done really well. But that was also right after he started, we started to see podcasting go even more mainstream because of his influence. And then we started to see like parody skits on SNL about podcasting. I think there was Serial, the podcast came out around that time too.
And podcasting is still around and still doing a lot of things, although the environment has changed a little bit, Brad, from back in the day before there were like a million podcasts. Now, there’s a few million, but still, comparatively you compare that to 50 million YouTube active channels to hundreds of millions of blogs, I mean, they’re still, as far as active podcasts, relatively a small amount. So, there’s still opportunity there, but I think people expect good quality and good storytelling. It’s not just the same old stuff anymore that’s possible to rank high.
Brad Johnson: Well, you’re queuing up my next question, Pat, so this is perfect. So…
Pat Flynn: Oh, perfect.
Brad Johnson: As I was researching for the show, so you covered your early history, content creation, sounds like really course creation out of the gates, which then podcast, obviously, that can fuel courses and speaking and all of that. And so, 2010 was first podcast. When was first– what year was first YouTube channel?
Pat Flynn: First YouTube channel was right around the same time.
Brad Johnson: Right around 2010? Okay.
Pat Flynn: Yeah, came first. However, I did not treat it the way I did the podcast. Part of that was because I was just too afraid to put my face on camera. So, I was just like, I was battling all those inner demons about getting my face on YouTube and comments and stuff. The podcast was a nice little compromise because I could show up and I didn’t have to put my face on camera. It was easier to edit and get it out there and it was kind of siloed. I didn’t receive negative feedback. It’s harder to offer negative feedback. So, it was a nice transition for me to then eventually start getting comfortable with how I communicate, how I show up, and then eventually, do what I did on the podcast, eventually on YouTube. And then the YouTube channel started to take off in 2017. This is the Pat Flynn YouTube channel. And it’s funny, when you take something seriously and you commit to it and you show up, things start to work, and that’s what eventually happen on YouTube too.
Brad Johnson: Well, we were talking about this before we hit record, but it’s funny because Tim Ferriss, he’s a prime example. He was very audio only and almost like proud about it. Like, hey, I just want to do the recordings. I don’t need to be on video. Joe Rogan, obviously, took a different track where he’s audio, and then YouTube really blew up, I think, his podcast because everybody was watching it on there.
Pat Flynn: For sure.
Brad Johnson: So, from a straight-up content creation standpoint, we’ve got audio, we’ve got video, the 800-pound gorilla is obviously YouTube, the algorithm that’s feeding your channel once, obviously, you get that going. If you were going to coach a financial advisor that’s like, “Hey, I think I might want to start creating content that can help people. Should I do a podcast? Should I do a YouTube channel? Should I do both?” What advice would you give them?
Pat Flynn: Yeah, the answer and the best practice today is to do both so that you can kind of take advantage of both platforms. I mean, platform of audio is Apple Podcast, Spotify, and all those directories, and of course, YouTube for video. The nice thing about audio podcasts is that if you imagine a person consuming those, they’re consuming them in a part of their life where they normally can’t consume content and watch, right? They’re at the gym, on a walk, in a car, on a plane, wherever it might be. And the average amount of time people listen to an audio podcast versus watch a video podcast is night and day. I mean, people are listening to podcasts for 30 minutes, an hour, sometimes two hours at a time, and that’s so much time as a content creator and especially, a personal brand, a financial advisor talking about something so personal and so important. The more that you can build trust and build that reputation with somebody, the more likely they’re going to be a client. And the audio podcast is a great job of that.
So, when I teach students and talk to people about podcasting, sometimes it’s a one and then the other. Other people are pretty adamant about kind of putting everything out there at once, which can be useful but dangerous and spread yourself too thin. But the audio podcast is great because again, you don’t need a million subscribers or listeners to have an incredible deep impact on your business because a person’s hearing you. They’re hearing what it’s like to even kind of work with you. It’s not edited in a way where it’s fast cuts and all these things that the algorithm favors currently or I mean, that’s not always true.
But on a podcast, you can go deep. You could tell stories. One of my favorite suggestions for an audio podcast and video is to bring one of your clients on and in any way that you can, talk about their story, talk about their transformation, their before and after picture. Even do some “live coaching or recorded coaching” on your show, this just gives people a taste of what it would be like to work with you. They’re going to say, oh, that was amazing. The transformation is incredible. Like, I want to hire this person to do that for me now too. And the audio is great for that.
Now, YouTube is wonderful because it has, like you said, the opportunity to be found in front of more people, not just through search, but through what we call suggested videos or browse traffic. This is when a person goes to their homepage on YouTube and they see a whole bunch of videos of creators they didn’t subscribe to, but YouTube knows better than most what a person may want to watch. And if you nail the title and nail the thumbnail, you can get in front of a lot of people.
Now, there is also a compromise here. There’s a lot of people who do the audio first because they want that deep relationship. They don’t need a million clients to do very well. They just need a few higher end, higher profile clients to do really well. Great. But you can take clips from any videos that you record. And maybe you don’t publish the full thing on YouTube, but you put some 60-second videos up for YouTube Shorts or 90-second videos that are just like key moments in those episodes that you want to pull out, and thus, get in front of people who might not even be the people who would watch a full podcast.
But now, at least you’re injecting yourself into their doomscrolling nature in bed before they go to sleep. And then you can start to maybe gather some attention, build brand awareness from there. And if you’re consistent and you show up in a way kind of entertaining as well, you can get people to pay you and show up as clients from even short-form content too. So, there is a sort of balance, and I think a lot of it beyond just like what it can do for you, it’s what are you excited about? How are you going to show up? If video is really something you’re deathly afraid of, then that might not be the right one to start with, just like my path.
However, if you are maybe a little bit more charismatic, you have some experience on video already, you could start there and then just rip out the audio. And last thing I’ll say, Brad, is the worry with doing it that way, starting video first, which makes sense from sort of a production standpoint, you do the video, you record that whole thing, you can rip clips off of that and take the audio out and put it into audio format, 50% of the time I see my students do this. They are letting the audio listeners feel left out a little bit because they might say stuff that’s kind of more visual. Like, if you take a look at this chart here, but a person doesn’t see any chart, then you’re already kind of letting people feel like, okay, well, I’m not the most important sort of audience member here and I’m not getting what I need. So, just some high-level thoughts about…
Brad Johnson: That’s an interesting point because what I’ve seen happen a lot in our industry, I accidentally started a YouTube channel. I was doing these interviews on Zoom since I’ve gone to Riverside, better audio and video quality. But I did the video so I could actually see the human I was talking with, inflections, pauses, and do a better interview, and then I was like, well, I have the video anyway, might as well throw it on YouTube. And accidentally, it was a couple thousand subscribers. Nothing big, but this was the early days, 2015, 2016. But one of the things I’ve noticed, if I look at the videos I put up back then, that was essentially an audio podcast that I just threw the video out, same long-form content, no editing, really. Those actually worked pretty well back in 2017, 2018. Hundreds of thousands of views.
And now, what I’ve noticed, the YouTube game has changed and evolved and kind of MrBeastified, some people call it, with the cuts. It’s almost like it’s created for somebody with ADD. And so, I’m curious, like, if you’re looking at back to the core problem you’re trying to solve, hey, let’s say I’m working with retirees. They need help. They’re approaching retirement. They’ve got a million-dollar nest egg. They’re not sure what to do. Obviously, you can have conversations, audio format, talk through some concepts. You can do the same on video, but from a straight up, can you have the conversation once? And then here’s what would go on audio, here’s what would be edited to go on YouTube. Or if you truly want them, do them both at elite levels, do they need to be two different products you’re producing?
Pat Flynn: There’s an argument here for both sides, right? I think it makes sense to create content that’s just for video only and you can do that in the best way possible and just give it the best chance and then do an audio version of that separately as well. But that just doesn’t make sense from a production standpoint. Am I going to do two interviews with somebody, for example? If you’re doing a solo episode, then maybe that’s a little bit more possible, where it’s just you and your building authority with just yourself. But in most cases, you’re going to want to try to find, again, a happy medium between the two.
There’s only a couple people who I know do this very well, where it’s– first of all, it can be difficult if you don’t have a studio to have a really high quality video podcast, right? We’re seeing podcasts like Diary of a CEO and of course, Joe Rogan. They’re in these places with these people that you– it doesn’t even matter what they’re talking about, you’re going to watch them anyway. They have that luxury.
There’s only a few creators who I know who are doing this really well and I think we can all pull from this, is if you do a video, no matter what it is, even if it is a long-form interview, you have to nail the hook in the beginning. Even if you don’t have a studio, the studio’s great, you can have some amazing-looking videos, but there’s a creator, his name is Ramit Sethi. He’s semi in the personal finance space, I guess you could say. He has probably the best remotely recorded video podcast on YouTube because he doesn’t just like go right into it, like, hey guys, I’m here with so and so, let’s talk about this. He sets it up and that is the whole point here. You need to hook people in the beginning.
So, he’ll talk about and he interviews couples about their money problems, essentially. And so, of course, he’ll start like it’s a movie with the most heightened climactic point and leave people hanging. And then he’ll come in and in a separate video, set it up with himself on camera talking about what you’re about to experience, and then the interview happens, right, versus just dropping right into it. It’s similar to just like a podcast intro with the host talking about who they’re speaking with first, but it does take a little bit more time and nuance to do it that way. But like you said, the YouTube algorithms have changed. Things have been Beastified and I think that’s more of a result of just our shorter attention spans and sort of just like how much noise there is out there. So, we need to be a little bit more prominent, a lot of bit more prominent about why a person should stick around.
So, for the financial advisors out there, especially for those who are a little bit older, I think even beyond just like screen cuts and explosions and other things like that, I actually wouldn’t do that for that particular audience. What I would do is pull the most emotional part of an interview ouch and stick that right in the beginning, because you want to hit people who might not have all the time in the world with something so deep that they’re going to spend the little time they have to spend the time to watch this thing because it cuts deep, right? And that’s where I would go with that.
So, telling a story of somebody who maybe, and it doesn’t have to be very long. Let’s say for the first 10 seconds, it’s somebody who, because they had all their investments in the wrong investments, they lost half of their retirement account overnight. So, pull that at the beginning. That’s interesting. And then we want to know, okay, how do we react to this? I don’t want that to happen to me. Or maybe it did happen to me. Now I need to stick around and find out. But you’re positioning the most important and most interesting things up front to open that, what they call curiosity gap, because we humans don’t like to leave things hanging, we don’t like blanks on our paper. We need to fill them out. And you can, as a podcast creator, create those blanks, use that to hold people and retain those listeners or viewers.
Brad Johnson: It’s almost like a trailer, a great trailer for a movie. Like, if it’s a great trailer, it makes you want to watch the movie. You’re like, hey, put that trailer that kind of sucks them in to the rest of the episode on the front, whether it’s an emotional connection, some sort of a story that leaves them hanging. Are there different frameworks you’ve personally used? Obviously, emotion. I just heard that one, but are there certain opens that you’ve just found to work over and over?
Pat Flynn: Yeah, if you can get specific with something, but then leave the end off, for example, here are the three investments you need if you are over 60 years old. Cut. It’s like, oh, okay, I’m going to stick around and watch that.
Brad Johnson: What are they?
Pat Flynn: Yes, exactly. So, that’s not even emotion. That’s like, logic not fully pushed through that, again, your job then is to make sure you deliver on that and you close the loop. The worst thing you can do is open those loops and then leave them hanging. That’s like basically click bait or intro bait, if you want to call it that. Don’t do that. You need to close those gaps, and it just takes practice, right? It’s going to work sometimes, it’s not going to work others. You’ll find out which hooks work best for your particular audience in your style. So, although there are a lot of frameworks out there, and I would definitely recommend watching really good podcasts on YouTube or listening to them and just seeing what they’re doing different. I remember when I first started the audio podcast, I could talk for five minutes about just my day. You can’t do that anymore. You can bring that into perhaps the beginning or after a really good hook, but just kind of dilly dallying is not going to do the job anymore.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. Modern Wisdom is another one I’ve seen that’s just absolutely blown up lately from a straight-up video podcast that also…
Pat Flynn: Modern Wisdom, Chris Williamson, right?
Brad Johnson: Yeah, Chris Williamson, I think.
Pat Flynn: He’s great. Plus, I mean, if you could put on an English accent, I think that’s going to get you 50% of the way.
Brad Johnson: Makes you sound smarter just out of the gates.
Pat Flynn: Of course.
Brad Johnson: Maybe I should just start a podcast over in Europe and my accent will sound like I’m smart.
Pat Flynn: What I love about Chris, like, I don’t know if you were following him when he entered that virtual studio that he built. What he did was like he made a studio that was basically like a giant green screen behind him so he could place himself and the interviewer in any environment. I think when Tim Ferris was on his show, they were in like a jungle or something, because they just wanted it to feel like natural and open. It didn’t quite work the way he thought. But what I love about that is he was trying and he was experimenting with what gave him joy and where he wanted to take the show. And sometimes, it takes trying to realize that, okay, that’s not the right way to do it. Let me try something else. Chris is a great example.
Diary of a CEO, if you watch just the first 60 seconds, you’ll see that Netflix-style trailer. It’s almost too much in a way with the movie trailer soundtrack behind it. But it’s working and it’s worth experimenting with on your end as well. However, some people are going to be less that style and more just like, get into the emotional moments right up front that can even do better than loud noises and quick cuts.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. I think what’s cool about both of those examples, Modern Wisdom, Diary of a CEO, they take the video aspect very seriously and they also take their interviews very seriously. The content is gold, right? So, with all this amazing video production, but horrible content, it doesn’t matter anyway. And they’re just pro interviewers at the end of the day and they’re trying to get better. Okay, I want to– our time is short, so sorry, I’m moving us along here. So, you accidentally, not accidentally, but you have another channel, Deep Pocket Monster, which is all around Pokemon, which most people would be like, “What? What’s this all about? That doesn’t sound like. Pat.” But what’s cool is you took a lot of these same principles.
I think, your kids kind of sucked you in, just like my kids did. We were joking. I had now owned a card store. I didn’t mean to do that. You now have a YouTube channel with over a million subscribers that’s about Pokemon. But if we dissect it from building a channel from scratch and what you learn and apply to a completely different domain, you started with the longer-form videos, then you actually also grew a Shorts channel around Pokemon to a million-plus subscribers at rapid, like crazy pace, like quicker than most people do it. What was the same that you applied over there and what was different and, sorry, really long question here.
Pat Flynn: No, that’s alright.
Brad Johnson: If we look at it from a marketing funnel to build a business, how do you see it? So, how did you build it? And then how is it serving your business?
Pat Flynn: Sure. So, this is a completely “separate” business by the way. And I started it not to try to make a lot of money, but because, like you said, my kids and it was a way for us to connect on something, whatever they get into, I get into myself because it gives us a common language and something to share. Before the Pokemon thing, it was Fortnite. And I don’t tell a lot of people, or I didn’t use to tell a lot of people this, but I’ve shared it in a few interviews. But when the kids were into Fortnite, I hired a coach, a 14-year-old kid off Fiverr to teach me how to do Fortnite.
Brad Johnson: That’s cool.
Pat Flynn: And I mean, I just go right to the source, like, who’s really good? Okay, let me go hire them and have them teach me. And then my kids and I would play for days and hours at a time. And we have memories from that, which is cool. And then they outgrew that. They got into Pokemon. Of course, I did the same thing. Now, there wasn’t anybody to hire to teach me. The way I learned was from being a part of the community and collecting and just dabbling in it for a little bit. And I started to fall in love with it. I actually became a moderator for some channels. This is all before I even had the idea of starting my own channel by the way. I learned about who was here. And I think that’s a really important lesson for a lot of business owners is, who are these people and why are they here? Not just demographics, like, are they men, women? What age are they at? But rather, what are they here for? What are their goals? What are their likes and dislikes?
And I started to find out that a lot of people who were in the space were actually of a similar age to me, not just my kids. But these were people who back in 1999, when Base Set Pokemon came out, we used our allowance to buy that and then ran out of it. Now, these people have more money to spend. And of course, during COVID times, people were just looking for an escape. And a lot of the card collectible-related things came back and came back big, and there were some sort of more influential people who got into the space as well to amplify it more too.
But when I got involved, I got invested in helping the community. And when I got invested in helping the community and the people who were there, I started to put my entrepreneurial brain on and go, how can I show up here best in my own format? And what could I offer that others cannot? I couldn’t compete on collection because I didn’t really have one. So, I couldn’t compete with people like PokeRev and a few others who had collections worth millions of dollars and start talking about them. I had nothing, I couldn’t compete on history and knowledge of these cards because I was just a newbie, right?
But I could compete on two things. Number one, the cinematography of what I was doing as a person who was on YouTube for a long time and who had studied great video and great lighting and quality. I could bring that in. Whereas a lot of the other people were just kind of on a webcam at home. And secondly, I could tell better stories. There were no stories being told here. And so, it took a few videos. It took six months in fact, until we found a format that worked really well where I started completing sets of Pokemon, which have hundreds of cards in them, within a certain time period.
There was a set called Brilliant Stars that I finished in 24 hours. And that video, the retention graph was flat. Like people, once they got into it, stuck around to the end. And so, that’s been one bucket of ours.
Brad Johnson: How long was that video, out of curiosity?
Pat Flynn: That video is like 24 minutes or 19 minutes.
Brad Johnson: That’s wild.
Pat Flynn: But today, we’ve extrapolated those stories even more and have gotten deeper with bigger challenges. Not necessarily more expensive, just kind of harder. We’ve had some challenges recently that have been an hour and a half, two-hour videos, and people are watching 75% to 80% of them. And we eventually found out that most of these people are watching with their families at home on a couch with popcorn, because it’s like a movie to them which is amazing.
So, business-wise, what this did for me was it allowed me to stand out much quicker by first investigating who is here already. I call it creating your market map. You kind of find the places where people exist in the space that you’re in. You then find the people who are there, who have already earned that trust and connect with them, serve their audiences and join those communities, and then find out the products that they’re buying. And these three Ps allow you to create what’s called your market map because if you’re going into a space, you want to learn about it first, so you can see the lay of the land and find out, well, here’s an empty plot of land that I could put myself in, and then start to contribute to that community and grow my own crops, if you will.
And so, I started doing that and the videos started to get a lot of momentum. I started out as an affiliate first. I didn’t really sell anything. The only thing I honestly sell now is just merchandise. There’s no courses or not consulting or anything like that, although there are actually Pokemon collector consultants which I do not want to get into that space. But the ad revenue from YouTube, because it’s more entertainment based because we are reaching way more people than I am as an entrepreneur, the revenue, I mean, we’re talking high five to sometimes six figures a month on Pokemon cards.
Like, I’m a 42-year-old man playing with cardboard with cartoons on them and having the time of my life, being like a kid again, bringing a community on. So much so, in fact that we now run a live event. This is maybe our biggest business play right now coming off of the YouTube channels. We have a live event I talk about in a lot of books and presentations where when you build a community you want to find moments where you can bring that community together. Doing that online is great because people find each other and they stick around when they find people like themselves because we as humans just want to feel like we belong to something.
But then more so, in person, and the in-person stuff, of course, after COVID is much easier than during COVID. So, once I had the opportunity, I created a live event called Card Party. And Card Party started in 2023 in Anaheim. We had 1,500 people show up. We broke a world record together as a community. Most packs open simultaneously. We had an adjudicator from Guinness there. It was a fun experience to do together.
The next year, we were in Orlando, this is 20 24. 2,500 people showed up this year in Tampa, at the end of June, we are going to have likely 6,000 people. And it just keeps growing a bunch of nerds from all walks of life showing up to nerd out together because we were the ones who were always bullied and ostracized. But I can create as a creator, the space for all of us to feel welcome and enjoy each other’s company. And that’s kind of what I’m doing there.
I think a lot of businesses could benefit from finding moments to bring those communities together. And that’s really turning into something amazing. The Shorts channel, which you mentioned was purely experimental. I didn’t mention it or link to it from any other thing that I had. I just wanted to see, can I crack the algorithm and get views? So, I told myself, this is what I teach, when anybody’s learning anything, you want to give yourself a certain period of time and dedicate and commit to that and show up, right? And if you get to the end of that time and you’ve done what you said you were going to do, no matter the results of those things, you’ve won because you’ve given yourself a shot. And this helps silo us from, I’m going to try this for a few days. That’s not working. I’m going to try this for a few days.
So, I give it 60 days to do a daily pack opening. I open a pack and then I reveal the card at the end. I created a fun little jingle in the beginning. It says, should I open it or should I keep it sealed? And I hired somebody to create that little jingle. And at the end, there’s a separate jingle depending on what card I get, if it’s good or bad. And for the first 30 days, I was getting maybe a couple hundred views per video and that’s not a ton in the grand scheme of things. And normally, I would say, oh, I’ve been doing this for a whole month and nothing’s happening. I’m going to move on to something else. But I said, no, that’s not the point here.
The point is to do this for 60 days, and even by day 30, stuff has already happened. Not necessarily views, but what happened. My 45-minute edit time in the beginning came all the way down to 15 minutes. So, I’ve gotten more efficient, I’ve gotten better. I started to collect a little bit more data. There were a few videos that were hitting maybe a couple thousand views, which again, wasn’t astronomical, but I started to pay attention. Why did those videos get more views than the ones that didn’t? Oh, I was actually like out in the wild at some card shop versus just like opening a pack at home. Okay, cool. Let me try more of that.
Day 35 comes around one of those videos that incorporated a lot of those things that I learned from those older ones, hit 750,000 views. In fact, I remember the very specific strategy that I used in that video. A card shop, and the pack that I bought had a sticker on it. I feel like that made a huge difference, something so small.
Brad Johnson: Like a price sticker?
Pat Flynn: Like a price sticker, correct. So, then when people saw the pack, it was different. There was a thing on it and it had a price, which kind of put a foundation of like, here’s how much this costs without even having to say it. And then, am I going to get the value out of it at the end? I completely didn’t, by the way. But this video blew up, all my other videos blew up. And now, we are cross platform because we can repurpose these videos on TikTok and also Instagram shorts or Instagram reels. We’re about to cross two and a half billion views in less than 300 days.
The ad revenue on TikTok is about 10k per month with these views. You have to have a video over 60 seconds on TikTok to monetize. On YouTube, I mean, we’re talking 20k a month on ad revenue, just from shorts which is difficult to do. You need a lot of volume, but by showing up every day, having a series, this is the big unlock with shorts is there’s a series. People know, every day they’re going to get a video like this.
Brad Johnson: Is it like day one, day two, day three? Is it like on the top of the video? Or how do you create?
Pat Flynn: It’s episodic, yeah. I mean, in the description, it’s episode 288, came out yesterday, for example. So, that again, seeds that this is coming daily. You can look forward to this when it shows up. It’s very similar to, there was a golfer named Brian, he did pretty well in the Masters, actually. He was in the final two. I can’t remember his last name, de la Champagne or something like that. I totally butchered that.
Anyway, he created a video series that blew up where he was hitting a golf ball over his house to try to hit a hole in one in his backyard. Every day. And whatever day it was, was how many golf balls he had to do that. So, day one, he only had one chance. Day two, two chances. And people were like looking forward to this every day because again, it was a series. You knew what was coming, but you didn’t know what the result was going to be. And you were kind of, there was this anxiety about when is he going to hit it? Is it going to be today, right?
Very similar, another guy named Tim Naki who used to bet on blackjack online, not great financial advice by the way, I’m sure most of you know that. But he would bet 10 cents for every follower he had. And eventually, he got up to a million followers and he was betting tens of thousands of dollars, which was just like, I mean, he had to see what would happen and then sometimes he would lose. But he also had these great reactions when he would hit a blackjack or something like that.
The series is an important part. So, it’s not just like a random every day. It’s not just tips people can get anywhere else. And so, you have to kind of bring something else into it. The first two seconds of your video are so important on shorts because remember, people are doomscrolling with their thumbs. And then, finally, a big unlock for me was the voiceover. So, instead of just filming to camera and talking and leaving a tip or explaining something, I’m doing the thing and my voiceover, which is recorded after, is telling the story, setting it up, is using the– it’s after, it’s not in real time, so I can actually nuance what I’m saying and create a better hook. The voiceover is a great strategy because then when you’re filming the thing, whatever it is you’re doing, you don’t even need to worry about that. Just capture that and then create the story or the hook and the voiceover and then you can put those videos in. So, I know that was a lot to dump on everybody right there, but I just wanted to share because I’ve learned so much in such a short period of time by just showing up and doing it. And I think that’s a big lesson for a lot of people.
Brad Johnson: Well, to circle back, thanks for– I wanted to just let you roll, Pat, because there’s so much you’ve learned, and what I’ve learned is just in the short amount of time we’ve been talking, your curiosity, your ability to learn and just put stuff out there, see if it works, it’s like learning through failures or learning through iteration, I love that. And that’s the beauty of a podcast, the YouTube channel is, you go by, if you’re on a TV show, if you’re on a radio station, you’ve got time blocks that you’ve got to fit in. When you’re on the internet producing your own content, do whatever you want. And that beauty of experimentation and adaptation is just a beautiful thing that I think a lot of people don’t use as well as they should.
Let’s circle back to the long-form videos. And I mean, do you just consider long-form videos, anything longer than a short? Like, if you just say, here’s my definition of long form, here’s my definition of a short, I know it’s different on platforms. Let’s maybe stick on YouTube. How do you define the two different categories?
Pat Flynn: I mean, there’s a couple clear ways that they’re defined. The short form is vertical and the long form is horizontal, so that’s number one. But in general, I would say, over a minute or two, I mean there’s no specific number, but I would say long form means I’m going to go deeper and it’s going to take more time to unravel the story I’m telling versus a short, which is literally a short video, which again, under 60 seconds. And YouTube now has shorts or vertical videos under three minutes. So, again, there’s a little gray area because you could hypothetically create a minute and one second video that’s long. So, yeah, those are just like gray definitions, but…
Brad Johnson: On your shorts channel, are you always trying to go like pretty close to 60 seconds? Is that kind of your magic formula?
Pat Flynn: Yes. So, 60 seconds, essentially 59 and a half seconds because I have it under 60 seconds for YouTube. And there’s a little bit of na additional bonus that I get with my videos because I’ve connected with a company where I can add music. And if that music is in the video, I’ll also get paid on that as well.
Brad Johnson: Interesting.
Pat Flynn: It’s very little, but it’s like a bonus and it’s the same song every day, but I still get a little extra. And for that reason, I have them under 60 because if it’s longer, it doesn’t count. So, 59 and a half seconds for YouTube. I then export a second file, the same video where the ending is just stretched out a half a second longer to be over a minute for TikTok so I can unlock monetization there. And I put either of those videos on Instagram because Instagram really doesn’t care and I make $0 on Instagram. Instagram’s the worst as far as like creators-generating revenue in the traditional way that you might on YouTube. You have to have been grandfathered into that program on Instagram because now, you can’t monetize that way. It’s just really weird.
Brad Johnson: I feel like IG is more sell your products, like…
Pat Flynn: Sell your products again gets no people the DMs using– there’s a lot of great tools out there that a lot of Instagrammers are using, like Manychat, where you can say, “Hey, if you are looking and interested in these five tips that I have for you about your portfolio” or “if you want the spreadsheet that I’m talking about here delivered to your inbox so you could run a personal finance audit yourself, comment audit in the comments below or reply with comments, and then I’ll send you a DM and get your information that way.” And you can set this up to be completely automated. In fact, you’re taking the landing page off of a website and then putting it into your DMs. This is like huge. So, the tool is called Manychat, and you can find a number of different people who are teaching that online too.
Brad Johnson: M-A-N-Y, many?
Pat Flynn: Yes. M-A-N-Y-C-H-A-T. And when you’ve probably seen a lot of people do that, like comment this in the comment section. And then on the back end, there’s a tool that it will automatically send an email, and what you can do is say, “Hey, if you want this, shoot me your email down below.” And if they just type in their email, you can set up automations. Again, we’re getting a little advanced here, but you can actually take those people now that they’ve engaged with you on DMs. They can actually then be put into your email list from there. And then you can have a nurture sequence or you can sell your product from there or you can tell people about a webinar that’s coming up so you can build a deeper relationship with them in a shorter period of time to then bring them into your program. All those kinds of things can happen on Instagram and yeah, I agree with you. I think Instagram is really, really big with, especially more professionals like selling their thing.
Although these other platforms work as well for different reasons. TikTok is big for a lot of businesses too. Much easier if there’s like a physical product. That’s why TikTok shop is huge. Or if you have like a lawn mowing company, there’s some lawn mowing TikTokers that are just blowing up because they go around and just mow lawns and of course, what’s the story there? The before and after. Here’s this nasty looking lawn and let me mow it for free because it’s just an eyesore in the neighborhood. And hey, if you want me to mow your lawn too, cool, check me out. And some of these guys are blowing up because of that bug infestation. And I came across like yellow jacket and wasp removal TikTok.
Brad Johnson: Nice. That’s got to be interesting.
Pat Flynn: Oh, it’s so great. It’s gross, right? They remove a panel from your ceiling and there’s like a nest in there and they have this specialized vacuum. And of course, if you now have a problem and you live in that area, you know who you’re calling because they’re popular because of TikTok. It’s just a crazy interesting world. I think the biggest thing is, you could be everywhere all at the same time. Don’t start there though. Start with one, master it, unlock more time back from, like I said, with my shorts, it used to take 45 minutes, now it’s 15. I can use that extra time to do other things now or expand on other platforms.
Like, a lot of this is just the way we approach things. I think a lot of us want to know all the things first before diving in, in which case, you’re never going to do it or get overwhelmed or confused. Or you’re just worried about being perfect, in which case, you’re not going to get to the best way to learn, which is by making mistakes and figuring things out. Stay safe and don’t play dangerously, but you got to get outside of our normal comfort zones to find that expansion and growth.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. As our mutual friend Michael told me, fail when nobody’s watching or listening. That’s the beautiful thing is when you start a channel, typically, nobody is. So, that’s your time for experimentation and to find your voice. Okay, so…
Pat Flynn: My phrase is you got to be cringe before they binge.
Brad Johnson: Nice. Well, I definitely had a few rounds of that. That’s for sure. Cool. So, as I look, kind of what’s the same, what’s different on just the YouTube, the longer form versus the shorts, common theme I’m hearing is create curiosity that almost pulls them in. And then I kind of went to like the Ryan Trahan challenge with what you’re doing on turn the penny into a house sort of stuff. Sounds like you’re creating some really cool content on Pokemon that’s like a narrative that’s kind of holding them the whole way on the longer form stuff.
On the shorter form stuff, it sounds like you’re focusing more on a daily ritual, a challenge they can plug in that they’re like, when’s he going to hit the big card? So, I’m just thinking like there’s some really cool frameworks you could apply to finance, like, hey, how do I get $250,000 in my 401(k)? Or like some challenges that you check in each day that’s a horrible one. But you could create some financial challenges. I know you’re very much in the creator network. Have you seen some people in finance with some cool rituals or challenges that they’ve created that have kind of pulled people into their content?
Pat Flynn: Nothing that stands out, which means there’s definitely an opportunity there. I love where your head is at Brad with that. If I was in the personal finance space and for example, trying to get a person out of debt, I would say, I would start a video like, meet Joe. He’s completely in debt and as a result, he can’t even buy a house or get a car, or maybe it’s even more extreme, like, he lives out of his car, whatever it might be that just capture people’s attention.
And for the next 30 days, my name is Pat, I’m going to work with Joe or whatever name I said, I’m bad at this in real time, but I’m going to work with him to get him out of debt, and the goal is to cut his debt in half in 30 days. And then, day one is, okay, and here’s my process for this. First, we figure out where they’re at, where their bad spending habits are. So, in this video, we’re going to find one spending habit to remove, and then we’ll follow up tomorrow with the next spending habits. And then maybe just get right into it from there.
So, again, now there’s even– and the reason I set it up that way is now, it’s not even about me and just telling people what to do. I’m showing people how I work with somebody, so that when they get out of debt or clearly moving in the right direction, I can go, hey, and if you want to work with me specifically about your situation, this was Joe’s situation, I want to help you with yours. Hit me up in the DMs. We’ll talk and see if it’s the right fit. Boom. I mean, like one of those videos could be literally the lead gen tool for you, like literally one video, which is why doing it daily for 30 days, you have now 30 chances for that to happen.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. You know where my head goes, Pat, because a lot of advisors would be like, well, that’s great, but I don’t want to work with people that don’t have money. But you can actually apply that same concept to the other side. The millionaire that’s scared to spend and there’s a lot of those out there. They’re literally penny pinching and they’re not enjoying life because they don’t have a plan in place where they know they have enough. So, it’d be like the, I can spend my money challenge. And a lot of retirees actually need that because they don’t have a plan in place to actually feel confident that they have enough.
And disclaimer, because Shannon, Compliance and Suitability, is going to listen to this. Obviously, you have to have the proper disclosures, all of that, if it’s an existing client. But you’ve really got my wheels turning on what sort of challenges, what kind of financial challenges could be created by an advisor in finance that would suck people in and be like, it’s a case study, is really what it is. It’s like, oh, he can do that for them, he can do that for me.
Pat Flynn: Correct. It’s a case study which provides information in context, in a relatable manner, which gets people to connect with the person who’s talking about this. And let’s say it’s not even a client. I mean, I know a lot of lawyers, for example, like a very boring industry or one that you wouldn’t think is “entertaining,” they do often the ones that are doing it well are what I call culture surfing. And what I mean by that is take something that’s happening in the culture of the world or in pop culture or whatever, something that’s popular now and bring it into your space.
So, what they’ll do, like, I remember a few of them, Emily is a good friend of mine. She has a channel where she was investigating or she was leaving commentary, even in live streams about the Johnny Depp case that was happening a few years back. And that’s what blew her stuff up, right? It’s similar to like a musician who first does covers. They’re taking something that people are familiar with to bring them into their world. And now, it’s like this song that was once pop rock and fast that’s now slow and almost kind of like emotional because that’s their style or something like that, right? So, that’s the beauty of showing up, is people start to get to feel how you do it, even though it might be stuff other people are doing too.
So, you could perhaps, let’s say, take an athlete and it’s like, hey, if my client were this new, like the NFL draft just happened, right? And you can go into the numbers there as well. And it’s like, okay, this person who went to the number one draft pick, he’s getting paid this much. If I were this person’s financial advisor, this is what I would say to him, right? And this is how we would allocate this so they don’t fall into the traps that these first-round draft pickers made who bought Lamborghinis and mansions and now they’re broke. So, that could be a fun way to kind of culture surf as well.
Brad Johnson: I’ve heard that referred to as newsjacking. You’re kind of taking the headlines and creating content around them because to your point, it’s right there at the top of everybody’s feed, which is going to pull people right in. Okay, we have not touched the topic of AI. I’m sure that has massively impacted and I know you have an upcoming book that we’re going to get into a little bit, so it’s dropping as we record, May 7th, less than a month from now, June 3rd, Lean Learning. And I think what’s really cool, those that have been listening and watching to this point, Pat is a living example of lean learning. It’s like, how did he take this concept, apply it to a brand-new channel? Pokemon blew up. Now, it’s, what, five, six figures you said on some months of income for you.
So, obviously, you’re taking the learnings from different domains, applying them to new domains. I know there’s a big piece of AI and how that impacts learning as well. Let’s talk about it. How’s AI impacting what you’re doing now? And then what are you talking about in the book that others could learn from?
Pat Flynn: Yeah, I mean, let’s talk about it first from a creator’s perspective. I know there’s a lot of creators and business owners here. As a creator, AI has actually helped speed up a lot of things that normally took a lot of time, and specifically in the domain of brainstorming and coming up with ideas. I use AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude to almost be like a creative partner as I’m trying to come up with ideas. Now, I’m not ever suggesting and nor do I ever just take the output of AI and then paste it in front of my audience, but I use it more for brainstorming.
So, if I’m like, okay, I have an idea for a video. ChatGPT, come up with 10 different hooks that would grab a viewer’s attention. The viewer is a personal finance. They have interest in personal finance. They might be a little bit older. What are 10 different hooks that I could use for this concept that I have in my mind? So, you kind of seed it ideas and it will give you back other things, just like a partner, creative partner in the room with you. That’s where it really excels in my opinion because then you always still are putting yourself into it. You’re just kind of using it to speed up the process of ideation, right? So, that’s really cool.
It might even come up with different challenges that like, look, we could probably go in there right now if we have time and say, “Hey, ChatGPT, please come up with 20 different challenge ideas for 30 days that I could do on short-form video for my personal finance audience or for clients who are over a million dollars, but not necessarily sure what to do with that money.” You can come up with ideas there. Now, you’re not starting from scratch anymore. That’s where I think as a creator, it’s really helpful.
We have to recognize, however, that as a consumer, AI is making information, just everybody is on the same playing field, we all have access to now the same information, whereas back in the day, information was valuable. Being able to relay that information made you more valuable as a creator, as an advisor, just as a person. We rewarded those who knew more. And now, knowing more actually makes us, in a way, kind of dumber because we are getting pulled in every which way and we’re not actually doing things anymore.
And where, again, going back to the creator we can stand out is because that information is level now and everybody has free access to all of it, essentially, it’s how you wrap that information, how you put a packaging around it on your YouTube videos or in your podcast, how you actually bring personality into it, how you bring relatability into it. That’s the stuff that AI will never be able to compete with, is the human part of it, right? This is why, again, the in-person stuff that you can do, maybe you take some of your clients out to a dinner, to have them all meet each other, and that provides value to them and that human connection that, again, AI will never be able to replicate in my opinion.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. So, I heard this the other day, when ChatGPT and other large language models first came out, it was a Stanford professor that’s taught a course the last couple years on it, and he’s sitting there in the sandbox learning with his students. That’s what’s fun because it’s evolving every day and today’s the worst that AI will ever be, right? It’s going to be better tomorrow and the day after. And he said, the students that unlocked the maximum value out of AI, they used AI differently. He said most people when they start using AI, they used it like Excel or they used it like Riverside, like we’re recording right now as a tool. He said those that Excel, you said it like a partner, he’s like, instead of tool, think teammate.
So, here’s an idea, buddy, that can brainstorm back and forth with me and I’m talking to it just like a human. And he said those that used it like a teammate, like just another team member, give it feedback when its results aren’t good, hey, appreciate that. But I actually was looking for this, just like you would a human that you were working beside, and that really unlocked something for me where I’m like, I’m using this not to its full capability.
And I love the idea of brainstorming. I just typed it in as you were here. There’s literally 22 different ideas. One of them actually talks about exactly what we were talking about. And it said, facing financial anxiety and retirement strategies to regain control and confidence, and also, there was another one, sorry I’m missing it here, but it was talking about how to spend with confidence in retirement. You could do a spend with confidence challenge in retirement and just literally drop a daily and here’s the 10 things we do with our clients to enable that.
Pat Flynn: Yeah, I love that.
Brad Johnson: Now, I have 22 ideas. I didn’t have to create from scratch just by– that was a five-second process right there.
Pat Flynn: Right. And now, you have the one and now you go back to your teammate and say, “Okay, if this is the one we’re focusing on, what are 10 different ways I could start this thing to really hook my audience?” Oh, and it might spit out one that’s like, I’m a millionaire and I’m miserable. Oh, okay, let’s start the video with that now, right? You see how it’s like working with you as a creative partner versus like you said, just like a– write this email for me. Thanks. And then you copy and paste it and you’re done. That works, but everybody’s doing that now. And thus, it’ll all feel the same, it’ll feel lifeless, right?
Brad Johnson: Yeah.
Pat Flynn: So, yeah, there’s big lessons there. And the whole point of lean learning is to understand that as consumers now, we have to find the resources that make sense for where we want to go. Instead of just in case learning, which is what we’re all doing, right, trying to learn everything just in case we need it, we have to trust that that information will be available when we need it. We don’t need it right now, so it’s okay to put it aside, right? Not yet, so that we can focus on the next thing, and then learning everything we can about just that and just that alone. So, if you are going to deep dive into shorts, for example, cool. Don’t even worry about the longs. Don’t even worry about titles and thumbnails, which are important just for lungs.
How do you master your two-second hook in your YouTube shorts? That’s going to get you way further in the game. And again, 60 days, show up; 90 days, however long you want to give yourself, you’re going to get incrementally better and that will exponentially grow just like a portfolio over time.
Brad Johnson: Love that. Before we get off the YouTube train here, obviously, it’s easy to see you’re a great resource to learn this from because you’ve done it. What other resources? Are there books you’ve read? Are there courses you’ve taken around YouTube content creation that you could recommend to the listeners?
Pat Flynn: I could. And there’s a lot of great ones. I will share them just so I’m not leaving y’all hanging. But I will say it’s very common, and I appreciate this question, Brad, because this is what we often feel like we need to master something. Name all the courses, like give me a hundred courses and a hundred people who I should follow if I’m learning about this thing, right? And this is why listening to a podcast like this where you have some guidance, finding your one or two mentors to help you through something, whether it’s a virtual mentor who’s just where you want to be and you’re learning from them or a personal mentor who can coach you. The one book I would recommend is YouTube Formula, and that’s from Derral Eves.
Brad Johnson: So, one I’m reading right now.
Pat Flynn: Oh, is it real? Oh, yeah, Derral is great. So, that’s great. You’re on the right path. And then, selfish plug is my own course, YouTube from scratch, which is in our SPI community. We have a community of incredible members, over a thousand of entrepreneurs who are at different levels but are there together to support one another and hold each other accountable as we go.
And one of our courses that is available is a YouTube course. And we just try to get it to a thousand subs. And again, it’s not everything you need to know, it’s just what you need to know to do that, which will get you started. So, this is again lean learning in real time and in action and having the community behind it is really the key to unlocking good education we feel online today. So, that’s why we built it in. Yeah.
Brad Johnson: Well, back to Lean Learning, your book that’s coming up, I know there’s a big piece of it that discusses AI and how to incorporate that into your learning. But if there was an idea or concept you wanted to leave the viewers and listeners with that’s like, hey, this is a core belief out of lean learning that I think you could start to think about to formulate how you can replicate a lot of the lean learning you’ve done, what would that be?
Pat Flynn: Yes. Thank you for that. There’s a number of principles, but the one that stands out that has given me the most sort of access to quicker learning, quicker skill acquisition, quicker results, is something I call voluntary force functions. And when I got laid off, that was an involuntary force function. I was forced because of external factors to leave my job and figure it out. But because I was starting a family, I had moved back in with my parents, like I had all these factors that were pushing me to– in fact take action that I wouldn’t have otherwise. If I didn’t get laid off, I promise you, I would still be in architecture. I wouldn’t be as happy as I am today. I wouldn’t have the flexibility and time and freedom, that’s for sure.
So, putting ourselves in situations like that, I’m not saying like you should quit your job, but there is something to be said for putting yourself into a little moment of a little higher anxiety or a little bit of pressure to actually, putting yourself where there’s a little bit at stake to get yourself off your butt or finally start taking action on the thing where you don’t talk yourself out of it anymore because you can’t, right? The first time I spoke on stage, which I was definitely afraid of, I was speaking at a friend’s event and I purposefully said yes to it even though I didn’t want to, knowing that I was going to do the work to not show up and embarrass myself. So, I did the work.
And I found the one resource, Stand and Deliver by Dale Carnegie, which was a resource that other people recommended that I read to get started. So, I didn’t find all the resources. I didn’t have time. I just found the best ones to get me started, and started rehearsing and practicing, again, showing up daily to get better before that event because I had that going on. Just like if you’re going to learn a language, what’s probably the best way to learn? It’s not by– yes, Duolingo is great and kind of going to classes and stuff, but if you knew that, for example, you were going to be in that country in two months and you wanted, you needed to like at least get by, well, then book a trip and know that you’re going to have to figure out these words that you’re going to use in context of what it is that you’re actually doing. Not just learning in a textbook and taking a test, but learning what you need to survive the thing that you’re doing next and survive, I don’t want to, again, put you in danger or anything like that, but just as a term for, you’re going to do stuff that you wouldn’t normally do and show up.
And that has been huge. It’s like launching a podcast with our students. We teach them podcasting, but they could launch at any moment and put it aside. That’s why we say, one of the first steps is pick a launch date. That’s going to be your voluntary force function that you then back into everything else that you do from this point forward up to that launch date. And that works so well, and people get it done on time, 80% of our students, like when they put a date, they will do it. And that’s huge.
Brad Johnson: That, hey, we all need deadlines. Procrastination, we can all be guilty of it. Well, I know we’re at our time here. I have one final question for you.
Pat Flynn: Sure.
Brad Johnson: What’s cool is your story is an example. So, one of the reasons Triad exists, we wanted to help our members build businesses that bless their life, that don’t become their life, that our acronym, DBDL, Do Business, Do Life, the integration of that, you’ve shared how you’ve done it, which is really cool, which was involuntary at first, but then you just jumped right in and ran. I would love to hear Pat’s definition of what does Do Business, Do Life mean to you?
Pat Flynn: Yeah, to me, it’s having the freedom of time to be able to do what I want to do when I want to do it, with who I want to do it with. And that’s really what it is to me. Life is better, does not necessarily mean more money. I know some people who are rich, as rich can be, who are miserable. And I remember, we had built a couple schools in Ghana through an organization called Pencils of Promise. And I had the honor of going to some of the schools that we had built and meeting the students and teachers. And I remember, in the middle of seemingly nowhere, these buildings that we were able to build and help finance, like these kids had nothing. They didn’t even have shoes and they were some of the happiest people because they had access to something that was so important and they took that, like we take those things for granted, right?
Like, they were playing with sticks and stones and just in the playground during recess, and it was like a joy that I haven’t seen from anybody in so long.
And then, on the way there, I was complaining about the Wi-Fi on the plane. You know what I’m saying? It’s like, man, it really puts things into perspective. So, I’m really grateful for those experiences to kind of ground me again, but man, to me it’s being able to help others because as Zig Ziglar says, and this is my favorite quote, “You can have anything in life you want so long as you help other people get what they want.”
Brad Johnson: I love that, man. Well, what a great way to end an awesome episode. So, thanks for carving out the time, and look forward to the day that someday our paths cross in person. But in the meantime, this was awesome. Thanks for sharing the wisdom with our audience.
Pat Flynn: Thanks, Brad. I’m sure that’ll happen. Can’t wait for it. But in the meantime, thank you so much again for let me share my story and of course, the book and what you’re doing to help get it out there. And thank you to everybody watching or listening.
Brad Johnson: Absolutely. Till next time, we’ll see you.
