Pat Flynn 0:02
A lot of us feel that entrepreneurship, when we start out is like, imagine you’re at a poker table, right? It’s like if that person’s winning, that must mean I’m losing. That’s not how it is. You can win, he can win, she can win, they could win, we can all win together and all get poker chips, and we can all just serve that audience. And I think that’s a really important thing to understand. It’s a very tough thing, because it’s different than how we grew up, especially for those of us at this stage, but everybody can win. And that’s the kind of marketing I like.
Intro 0:29
t minus 10 seconds. Welcome to the journey to launch podcast with your host jameelah. So frogs as a money expert who walks her talk, she helps brave juniors like you get out of debt, save, invest and build real wealth. Join her on the journey to launch to financial freedom in three to one.
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Intro 1:46
If you want the episode show notes for this episode, go to journey to launch.com or click the description of wherever you’re listening to this episode. In the show notes. You’ll get the transcribed version of the conversation, the links that we mentioned and so much more. Also, whether you are an OG journeyer, or brand new to the podcast, I’ve created a free jumpstart guide to help you on your financial freedom journey. It includes the top episodes to listen to stages to go through to reach financial freedom, resources and so much more. You can go to journey to launch.com/jumpstart to get your guide right now. Okay, let’s hop into the episode.
Jamila Souffrant 2:29
Hey, hey, hey, Jaron yours. Welcome to another episode of the journey to launch podcast. This week, I have a two for one special I have to what I believe to be amazing guests you may have heard of our first gets Pat Flynn, who is a father, husband, entrepreneur, and is behind the very successful online businesses, Smart Passive Income and the Smart Passive Income podcast and the ask Pat podcast. And you have a combined total of over 80 million downloads Pat, this is that’s incredible. And so I’m really looking forward to dive deeper into your background and talk about entrepreneurship. And Matt, Matt garlin is our second guest, Matt is a five time startup founder, co founder with three meaningful exits. He also serves as a CEO of SBI media. So he works with Pat Flynn, you guys are good friends, but are finding a way to make business work together, which I also find very intriguing. And would love to learn more. And we are going to be talking about all things entrepreneurship. And as you listeners know, this has been my pathway to achieving financial freedom is quitting my corporate job and growing journey to launch a platform from a podcast to a business. And we’re gonna have Pat now and Matt, introduce themselves and talk a little bit about the importance of using entrepreneurship and building a community to help us reach our goals. So Pat, I’d love you to go first and explain a little bit more about your background.
Pat Flynn 3:52
Thank you, Jamila, I appreciate you know, your story about quitting is so amazing, because you took it upon yourself to go no, I don’t want this, I want that. And you went out and got it right for me. I went to school, to be an architect, I became an architect. I wanted to be an architect for the rest of my life. And I got kicked out of that space. And this is Oh, way back in the Great Recession. So I really didn’t even have a plan B. I didn’t know entrepreneurship was in the cards for me until I had to make it work. I had just gotten engaged and I moved back in with my parents to save money and I was like, I can’t get a job right now. I need to take things under my own control. And I ended up starting a online business to help people who are still in the architecture world pass a particular exam. This is called the LEED exam. It’s like a niche in a niche in a niche kind of exam, very specialized. And so I didn’t have a huge audience. There weren’t even that many people who ended up taking this exam but as a result of stepping forward, becoming an expert and showing how one can pass this exam, I became seen as an expert. And so this business ended up taking off quite quickly. And even though like I said, it’s a small segment of the audience. I was able to do that full time. And I ended up generating over $200,000, in the first year after starting that business, which was absolutely life changing. And that was more than twice what I was making as an architect. And then everybody started asking me, how did how did you do that? And I said, I don’t know, I just kind of figured it out. And they’re like, can you just show me how you figured it out? And I said, Okay, so I created smart, passive income.com, which is where most people know me from now. And for a very long time, it was me showing up and just leading by example, about, well, here’s how I did it. And here are the mistakes I made. And here’s what I would do differently and just learn from my journey. And I’ve built several businesses publicly in that way on that website. And eventually, the business grew and grew and grew. And it got so big that I needed to bring on some team members. And this is where Matt came in. And Matt, for a very long time was like, if I’m the newscaster on the screen for everybody. He was the guy in the back of the room who’s really directing the show, like in my ear, right, and really, the one who is putting things together. And then lately, he came on as CEO of SBI media, and he’s now becoming more in the spotlight. And he’s got so much value to share. And he’s got an amazing origin story to them. Let him talk about real quick.
Jamila Souffrant 6:09
Yeah, Matt, go ahead.
Matt Gartland 6:11
In a similar timeframe, sort of in maybe the other side of the universe, I chose to leave corporate America, so I wasn’t pushed out like that. So in 2011, I left a really nice corporate America job, I was on a fast track leadership wise in it in the healthcare sector. But I always had that itch, right. And that burning desire to like, do my own thing, I was that kid selling baseball cards, and having lemonade stands, right, you know, sort of that that entrepreneurial instinct was always there. And with just how, you know, the Internet was evolving in that era, you know, 2008 through 2012, is maybe a little golden period of the rise of the blogosphere. And then podcasting got big impact on in on that super early. So there’s so much technology there, which was obviously a big part of my profession, in my career and my passion within content, which I loved also, so I started to dabble on my own, and then eventually pulled the trigger. And it was hard to walk away from something that was like, quote, unquote, stable, right. And I know probably a lot of listeners out there kind of have that feeling a bit. But it was the opportunity to do that right to pursue something that could potentially have more freedom of choice to pursue a career and make an impact. And working with partners and friends and fans, you know, where I can be more expressive, and build something because I’m definitely big builder, heart, new builder of teams, voter of companies. And that’s kind of like a patch point about being like in the newsroom, building that stuff. That’s a little bit off camera, but it’s really meaningful. So, yeah, my journey has taken me through a couple of different startups of different types. But the most important and most special thing to me has always been just the work of this pie and pan, we became really close friends. And then you know, now business partners together. And you know, we’re pursuing some cool new stuff at SPI it’s changed a lot over the years. But you know, we’re doing it together now. So it’s, it’s a thrill.
Jamila Souffrant 7:52
I mean, I love the partnership, because as a solopreneur, myself, I don’t have full time employees, I have contractors who are pretty, you know, as dedicated as they can be, well, you know, they have they work for other people. And this may not always be their main thing that they’re helping me with. But I I’m at the point, and I’m, and I’m hoping other listeners can relate to this. Because what happens is, it seems like my pathway compared to yours, Pat, I’m very early on, like in my stage of compared to where you are. And it’s at what stage did you know that you wanted SBIR to be bigger, a bigger brand that you could support full time employees or hire a CEO? Because it’s one thing to like, kind of walk down that path, because you have no choice or you know, you’re following your passion. But at some point, it’s like, when you decide to scale that passion and turn it into a business that is now not just feeding yourself but other families and making such the impact that it is?
Pat Flynn 8:47
Yeah, I mean, this is a great question, because I could have just kind of rested on my laurels and coasted, right, I could have, I could have had enough money to support my family and you know, be good with it. And I didn’t have to have this larger team, I didn’t have to worry so much about you know, growing and scaling. There’s a great book out there actually, that speaks to this by a guy named Paul Jarvis called company of one, I think it’s okay to to do that. It’s okay to coast and support yourself and have a little business and that’s okay, too. But there were several moments in my history where I just saw the direct impact that the business that I had was helping others. In fact, there was there was some very specific moments where people came to me and shared how their lives were literally changing that now they’re able to spend more time with their family and spend more time with their husband or wife as a result of the work that they put together things to me and it’s just like, wow, and sometimes I forget that because I’m alone in my office here recording a podcast or recording videos, and I don’t get to necessarily see or feel the impact. But it really started coming when I started to attend events and people started to come up to me and it was just, wow, I had no idea it had this kind of impact. I need to help more. Right. I have this blessing of what I once thought was a bad thing getting laid off now. It’s a blessing because now Now I can go out there. And I feel like it’s almost my calling to do that. And when you have that calling, when you want to grow bigger, you can either do it all yourself and eventually get to the point where you’ve either maxed out your reach, or you’ve maxed out your health, right? Because our physical mental state is really important. And, like so many people burn out when you try to do things on your own, or the quality of what you create suffers. And I didn’t want that to happen, I have a very high standard of like what I publish out there. So the other part of this is I had to hire people who were good, who believed in what I was doing, and who had shared the same values. And Matt, and his team, actually, I first hired Matt and his team, he had an agency called Winning edits, he was helping with a lot of the publishing and the putting together of the projects that I was working on. And eventually I was just like, Matt, I think I’m your biggest client, we do a lot of work together, why don’t why don’t we just like, why don’t you just come over to my side, and I’ll take the whole team. And we’ll just kind of focus on SPI, because I really want to help as many people as possible. And, and so far, it’s worked out incredibly well. But yeah, I didn’t want to burn out. I didn’t want to suffer in quality. So so I knew I had to bring a team on to invest in that team to be able to scale and grow bigger.
Jamila Souffrant 11:10
Right. And so Matt, from your perspective, so it sounds like you had a consulting agency or your own business separately from what Pat was doing.
Matt Gartland 11:17
I did. It was a creative agency that was really concentrated on what we now call creators. That term didn’t really exist back then in that way. But we were working with published authors, best selling authors, typically nonfiction, business authors, like, but then also doing all the way from strategy down through production on the podcast, on blogs, on ebooks, guides, web copy, kind of that whole, that whole thing, right, that we now attribute certainly to like building a really healthy, greater business. It was really rewarding. Pat’s right that, you know, he was certainly our most beloved client, he was always one of the biggest. And it got to the point where Yeah, it’s like, this is the way that we can have together I think, to Pat’s point, most expanded valuable impact possible on the people that we really mutually care about, and which are other people like us, other entrepreneurs, that one support their families that want to support others, with this beautiful phrase that Pat coin called surfers sort of mentality, right. So so we we could do that in a bigger way together, because the whole is always greater than sum of its parts. Right? So yeah, that’s why it made sense to do that.
Pat Flynn 12:22
But we did go on dates first, right? We did. Because like this partnership, partnerships are marriages. Like literally, it’s like another marriage, right. And so too many people get into partnerships really quickly to Mila, and they don’t yet really know each other. But Matt, and I had these years of experience working together, where it just was like, hey, like, I got down on one knee. And I was like, Man, can we combine businesses? And I didn’t actually go down on one knee, but it just made sense. It just made sense.
Jamila Souffrant 12:49
Well, I mean, you you kind of spoke to somebody, Matt, about the combining of forces, like doing it together is better than doing it alone. And, you know, I would say sometimes, maybe it’s like, if you had your own business that had its own business, there’s some of like, who wants to be the forefront of the business, right? Like you started your business for a reason. Some people want to be the face, and not like behind the scenes. And so giving that up, or maybe even giving giving up the autonomy or the fact that even if he was your biggest client, least you knew you had other clients. But how scary was that to go all in. And then from a perspective of having your own like being your own boss, having all the freedom you want to kind of now like, Wait, now I have a partnership. Now I’m actually not in the forefront. And I’m supporting, even though it’s not your dream, it was originally Pat’s vision.
Matt Gartland 13:35
Yeah, there’s, there’s a lot there. It’s always scary to make a big leap, right, or kind of try to go from one wave and catch the next wave. And that’s a lot of how I thought about it and talked with the team about it to get obviously them excited and motivated as well. In thinking about what that then meant, for me, I guess, like on the other side, in terms of you being the frontman or whatever, that was pretty minimal, as I think Pat could attest to, I don’t need some of the things that are necessary and that truly are necessary for a business like ours to work in terms of the larger kind of public presence or something pad is phenomenal at that, right. He is a creator, He’s one of the best out there, for sure. I am really good at business and leading business and I am fine to be more of like the secret weapon behind the scenes. That’s always been true for me, even when I was running my own thing. So there hasn’t been conflict there. I like showing up on podcast because I want to help now and be a little more forward. But it’s typically like with Pat like we are today or we’re in a couple other capacities where we can really play into our collective strengths here now but these days, Pat can be as close to like full time Creator as ever, and that’s his real zone of genius and where he can really have expansive value. And it gives me the opportunity to support that and obviously our team and ultimately everyone that we have the privilege of supporting and teaching our students, our community members, etc. Because I can now be like increasingly 100% focus or as much as possible just on running the company.
Jamila Souffrant 15:00
Alright, so how do I, how do the Pats of the world find the bat to the world like so how do I Jamila find someone like Matt? Like? Where do you start looking for people who there’s not conflicting, you know, personalities and or ambitions for what the business is because I know a lot of creators, like we started this because we have so much creative ideas. But then we are doing more than just the creativity side of things. And so that dwindles a bit. So we don’t have as much time to be creative. And we’re all saying, if we can just find someone who wants to, like take the behind the scenes and run and but where do we find that person? How do we do that?
Pat Flynn 15:35
There’s actually a great book that I would recommend, it’s called rocket fuel. And it speaks to this relationship between. And this is, these are the terms he uses the visionary, right, which is like the entrepreneur of big ideas, but not really wanting to go into the weeds of things and the creation of it, the back end parts of it. So the visionary and then the integrator, and the integrator role is really what we’re looking for in this space. It’s also known as the OBM. Sometimes it’s called the online business manager is more maybe more formal way to do it. But this book, rocket fuel is great, because it really it even goes into where to find them more in more detail. I just happen to have hired Matt’s company and then Matt and I gelled and then so obviously, we found each other kind of through happenstance in that regard. But OBM, Online Business Manager, they exist, there are groups of them, you can find them, you can search for them and whatnot. But when it comes through, like relationships that you’ve already had, that’s where like, I think it can really shine because you already can have some somebody vouch for it, who perhaps has worked through or worked with that person before. I will say like, partnerships, like entrepreneur to entrepreneur, creator to creator are still very important. Definitely important, overall important to me, I still work with a lot of other creators. And, you know, we come up with partnerships, JV opportunities, affiliate kind of deals and whatnot, which is great. But to have like, an integral person, an integrator, an online business manager there so that I can focus on the things I need to focus on, so that I can do the things that light me up, like I would never dream of waking up in the morning and getting into a spreadsheet. I’m sorry, Matt, I just That’s my nightmare. Okay. But he lives for that stuff. And there are maps that exists out there, I didn’t think that was a thing, because I would never touch a spreadsheet the way he does. But when you can find them, I mean, it’s, it’s worth it. Right? It’s absolutely worth it. Because I can now fully focus on my audience and getting creative. And if I were to focus on all those other things, I wouldn’t have time for that, like you said,
Jamila Souffrant 17:31
so you’ve spoken with coached interviewed 1000s of entrepreneurs. And so you’ve seen, you know, trends, or you’ve been able to probably to deduce trends, like what makes someone successful. And I have a lot of hopeful entrepreneurs, people who are starting out and they want to know, like, what are the things I should be focusing on? So I can have longevity in this space and to grow and to reach financial freedom?
Pat Flynn 17:55
Yeah, I mean, I think Matt and I could jam on this for for days. Actually, Matt, do you want to kick off first with a few traits and characteristics that would make an entrepreneur successful, and then I’ll follow up?
Unknown Speaker 18:05
I will, I wish I had like a prebuilt list in my mind here, but I’ll see what I can do. So one, I would say, is understanding that your role is going to change over time, especially as you grow. So when you are in that company, at one stage, you are responsible for everything, right? All the way from the visionary elements that Pat was talking about all probably all the way through to the system stuff. And the things that would potentially be you know, kind of categorized into that integrator notion, right. But then over time, this gets a little bit academic, forgive me. But when you think about the lifecycle of a company, like a person, like infancy to toddler right to adolescence, your role will change, be excited for that, you’re ready to let go of certain responsibilities so that someone else can pick that up, right. And everything can work more fluidly and more beautifully, if you can begin to get ahead of those transformational moments for yourself. Because it’s not just you, it’s the company. It’s the brands, the people that you serve. So that’s all kind of number one. Number two, I would say it’s like just continue to invest in your own learning, right, as an entrepreneur, especially if you don’t have like a traditional business background or an actual MBA or any of that stuff. Be excited to learn about business. It is fun, and as much as I might geek out and I do and pass 100% Right, about spreadsheets and things like there’s so many other things that even I’m still really excited to learn and invest in invest my own professional networking just with other CEOs and business drivers, right around thinking about what’s happening in our industry and trying to stay on top of what’s happening industry so that we don’t get stale and get kind of like left behind. So you always want to stay sharp. So always stay number two here, like invested in interested in your own education. And number three is I would say absolutely care about this marvel notion of like an Avengers team. If you can, if that’s consistent with your vision, I guess not to say like you have to do that. But if you have an inkling that like okay, this could be something bigger than myself and Jamila, I think it’s wonderful that even you’re already starting to dabble with this a little bit with some like freelancers and contractors. I would even say like as a teachable point very truthfully start, don’t make this massive jump unless I know you hit the lottery somehow. And like start hiring full time employees start to like, take measured, you could call them risks or bets or whatever. But they started moving in that direction, the way that Pat and I again kind of came together, one could call that a happy accident. But like if you start to put yourself in the position where happy accidents could happen, because you are starting to look for people are starting to have conversations starting to ask other people questions about who could I work with? Who could I hire for just even like this little thing? You know, you start to build those relationships. Right. And that could produce really fantastic results later.
Pat Flynn 20:47
Camila, May I follow up with a few?
Jamila Souffrant 20:49
Yeah, sure.
Pat Flynn 20:50
Being overly curious about everything. Curious about what does your audience actually need help with? Or how might I be able to help? What are they already getting or buying to try to solve those problems? And why isn’t it working? Always asking that question why so you can get down to the root. And when you do that, when it comes to serving your audience, you begin to start removing the guesswork, right. Being an entrepreneur who’s just guessing all the time is a recipe for overspending over exertion, and just being overly upset about the results. And so when you are genuinely curious, you’re going to ask better podcast interview questions. When you are genuinely curious, you’re gonna find out why that campaign that you did did not work. To me, Curiosity is one of the best traits that any entrepreneur can have. And it’s something that I’m always trying to work on myself. I don’t always just want to go, Okay, well, that’s the way it is. Well, why is that the way it is? And let’s go and see if we could change it or move it around a little bit. Right. So curiosity is something that’s really really important. Being okay with failure, this was a hard one for me. But feelings are learning the stakes, I think it was John Lee Dumas who said, there was like an acronym for fail, it was like, first attempt in learning fail. And I love that because it’s like, that’s so true. And that’s something that I’m trying to teach my kids. And they’ve embodied that. And they understand now that if they try something, and they make a mistake, or they fail, that’s okay, because it’s going to get better the next time. And then better the next time, I grew up in a house where when I come home with a 97% of my math test, it wasn’t about, Hey, good job on that 97 It was, what happened to the other 3%. And then I’d spend the next two hours with my dad, like crying because I had to figure out how to get it right. And so I grew up in a world where I had to be perfect. And when you are an entrepreneur, if that’s how you’re approaching it, you’re never going to launch anything, and you’re never gonna learn anything. And so you have to be okay with failure. In fact, they, they call it fail faster, right? Because each failure point is a learning moment. And then number three, it’s just this idea of understanding that even beyond like the team, you can’t do this alone, you got to join a community, you got to be putting yourself in a situation where you can not be the smartest person in the room where you can connect with other people who a speak the same language, because entrepreneurship definitely is lonely, right? Some some people in our lives are gonna think we’re crazy for doing this. So go get a regular job, why don’t you go get a real job, I heard that so many times. But when you find yourself in a room with other people like you who speak the same language, who have experiences that you have yet to experience yourself, these are people that you can pull inspiration from, who can hold you accountable, who you might be able to ask questions to, and this is why communities are really key for us and inside of SPI. And when I started my journey, there was one community that no longer exists, but it was called the internet business mastery. Ensure I learned like the right information there. But it was the people I connected with that pushed me forward that helped me understand what hurdles to look out for that made those blows that were coming my way just a little bit softer, and gave me a shoulder to stand on. And sometimes a shoulder to cry on as well. Very, very important for entrepreneurs to understand that you know, and even if you were to do that with competitors, for me, there’s no such thing as competitors, really, because it’s not a zero sum game, right? A lot of us feel that entrepreneurship, when we start out is like, imagine you’re at a poker table, right? It’s like if that person’s winning, that must mean I’m losing. That’s not how it is. You can win, he can win, she can win, they could win, we can all win together, and all get poker chips, and we can all just serve that audience. And I think that’s a really important thing to understand. It’s a very tough thing, because it’s different than how we grew up, especially for those of us at this stage, but everybody can win. And that’s the kind of marketing I like.
Jamila Souffrant 24:36
Yeah, and if you think about just your real world, like how many places Sell Burgers, right, there are million or different 1000s of types of places that sell the same thing. But it’s just a different spin. It’s a different environment or different culture. And it’s not that you just buy that one burger from the one place all the time like you still go out and buy it from other places.
Pat Flynn 24:54
So it’s a good point.
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Jamila Souffrant 26:11
Now I know the one thing that you know it matters to people is making money, and how do they make something successful? And I know there’s no one way to do it, which I think it’s really great about the community aspect because I think what happens is when you join communities, you get to you get ideas, you get examples of what works, even if it doesn’t work for someone else, it’s just sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know. And so it’s almost like this idea of wow, if I if I’m now networking or creating friendships with people who are building their business this way, wow, I didn’t know that could even be done and it makes you then explore what could be done for you. So using SPI as a case study. I know you said sold a product first. But then you started the podcast and like to me that was like like a media company. But like how did you branch out to what it seems like to me now is like media company, but you sell your own products. And if someone is saying to themselves, well, I have an idea or message to spread, but I’m also talented in this thing? Do they choose one way to grow first and then branch out and sell other things next, like how did you grow and scale? From you selling one thing to a media company to being able to do it? What it seems like do it all?
Pat Flynn 27:19
Yeah, it definitely didn’t happen overnight. That’s that’s number one. Right? A lot of people see the whole catalogue of things we offer right from, yes, the media stuff, the podcast, the YouTube channel, the blog, the newsletter, they get stuck newsletter, then we have our catalog of courses, right over 10 courses to help you across different facets of online business. And now we have our community communities for people who have businesses, a community separate for those who are just starting their business. But it didn’t all happen at once. They happen one after another right even even in the content side of things. 2008 was the blog 2009 was YouTube 2010 was the podcast 2012 was books 2013 was speaking like it only got to the next one, when I figured out the first one. Right? That’s that’s the key thing to understand here. But when it came to products, I mean, I’d love Matt to speak on this because we definitely had an evolution of the things that we sold. But we like to answer. Jimmy was question for the listener like, you have an idea. Where do you even like, start to understand how you’re going to make money from that.
Matt Gartland 28:19
Yeah, to pick up from maybe one of the past points, but kind of thinking about where you are in your life cycle, right as as an entrepreneur and what the vision of you’re trying to build toward based on where you are today, right? It’s about the journey. So with SPI two paths, points, like the journey started in one place, it Abdun flowed division had to change the limit over time in terms of like how we deliver value in different ways. And today, speaking about community, we are a community company. That’s the way we think about it. It’s not how we thought about it previously. But the essence was always there, right in terms of bringing people together, creating safe spaces, teaching and training. No other would be entrepreneurs or current entrepreneurs or elevating entrepreneurs in different ways. Like that’s always been the DNA there. And it just now that, you know, technology, and different things have gotten better over the last decade, Pat and I have been working together for a decade now to actually be able to harness that in a way that now we can actually really genuinely say like, Hey, we have a community product we have we have a community with like paid memberships. That is our main thing. That’s our core business model. And yes, we still offer one, like one time purchase courses, you know, to Pat’s point around our catalog, actually, I wanted to we have had you include our workshops, we have upwards of like 16. We have our Flagship courses, and we have our workshops. We do a lot with really fantastic technology companies, which was one of the very first kind of business model elements APAC created, which was just affiliate income still very effective. If you can do that. Well. So that’s still like a part of our business model. Right. But to come back to like the current state and trying to think about, you know how, how this is useful to someone maybe earlier on in their journey thinking about this. generating money is like put something out there. That’s really I will continue to earn your key. And I think that the the aspect of community is so great for this because we have to earn that keep everyday we got to show up, we have to keep an enriching those conversations, we need to create programming, we need to respond to people, we need to help them in moments of need when they when they show up in that safe space that we’ve created. So that’s how we think about like creating value first, and then you can harness value, or capture that value in terms of like the revenue, so long as you create it, and you keep earning.
Pat Flynn 30:28
Yeah, it kind of shows and demonstrates that expertise, it proves that you know what you’re talking about, and people will pay to get access to you if you want to start like a coaching or consulting business, for example. Or they’ll pay for access to the information that you have based on the experiences that you’ve had to overcome in the same challenges that your target audience has. When I have that question proposed to me like, how do I get started? How might I make money the quickest right? To me, I always flip that and say, how can you help people the fastest? Because that’s really what it’s all about? How can you serve an audience? And so to bring it even, even even into more approachable manners? How might you find one person who has a problem or challenge that you can solve? help them solve that, you don’t need an online course yet, you don’t even need a website, find one person out there in the world, maybe it’s within a community that you have, or the audience that you’ve built on social media, whatever, find one person, just one, help them achieve some sort of transformation that they want. And then see how that felt. And oftentimes, what happens is when you go to that one person, and you help them AEV helps you find out how to talk to them and find them. So you’re learning as you’re going B helps you understand how you might like to serve this audience? Do you prefer the one to one kind of calls like zoom calls? Or do you prefer to send emails every day or every week for a certain number of weeks? Or do you prefer something else, maybe video lessons, whatever. And then at the end, when you achieve this result for this one person, not only do they get that result, and that always feels good, not only will you now have like a real life testimonial from a person, but you will unlock in your brain that you can do this. And that is amazing. Because when you realize that you have for a metaphor for a purpose of a metaphor, you have the cure to somebody else’s disease, for example, as a metaphor, you are going to do everything in your power. Now, to help cure even more people, it would actually be a disservice now to just keep that in knowing that you can help people and I think too many people know that they can help but don’t even believe it themselves yet. Which is why when you help that one person, it unlocks that thing. And now you must feel an obligation to go out there. And in your sales marketing copy and your conversations, no longer is it going to feel sleazy or slimy, like we often do, because we’re just not sure, we don’t want to fall into that trap that we are often on the receiving end sometimes. But now we can genuinely say, I know this will help you. And here’s somebody that I’ve helped before who was just like where you were. And that’s how I love to do marketing. And if you’re just starting out, that might be an easy way to begin. And then you could scale up into the things that Matt and I were just talking about earlier to help you scale that asynchronously help people in courses or in a group fashion or beyond.
Jamila Souffrant 33:16
Yeah, that’s great advice. And you know, we’re talking about revenue and a business. But I do I have to ask this because you know, this is a Personal Finance, Financial Independence based podcast. And I want to know, for you personally, whether your idea of work has changed since you’ve scaled like and potentially are making a lot more than when you first started, Pat, and even Matt, you had this idea of a vision. And now perhaps you’re at a place where you’re earning good money, and you’re you’re turning the money that you’re earning into personal wealth for yourself and your family. And at what point for you outside of serving others? Do you say that’s enough? And or you look into creating more time freedom, or, you know, you take more time off? Or like what is that balance look like for you in terms of creating wealth and space for yourself?
Matt Gartland 34:03
Yeah, it’s a remarkable question. And I think that it’s never too early for an entrepreneur to start thinking about wealth different than just like, income coming into my bank account today or tomorrow sort of thing. Right? So from my side, and I say differently, I definitely think about the time equation, right. So in the company, we have adopted a four day workweek, for example. This is one of these big conversation points that’s happening just as a part of the future of work, you know, certainly during the pandemic, and now, hopefully more towards the latter phases of that, like what is happening in the world, right? And how are people motivated, show up and do their best work, right. So anyway, we have adopted that. So we have allowed ourselves to reclaim that time packets. Some of that time back. I get some of that time back. Our team definitely gets that time back. But we didn’t change their pit. We didn’t change our pay. Right. So that speaks I think, specifically number one to that notion of like how much I’m making for how much time am I putting in, right? That’s kind of number one. Number two is very proud to say that patent i Because of the success of SPI and the relationships that we have, and how we’re supporting creators, entrepreneurs in different facets, we’ve been invited to become advisors to particularly a couple of really successful technology companies that are doing the good work also that we use ourselves that we’re able to then help and give feedback on. And it’s another way that at least we have been able to not just be scaling like dollars in, but it’s an opportunity to support to serve to add value in a different way. And then there are some potential long range like wealth opportunity there for us, because we’re advising and there’s, you know, some compensation kind of tied into that, but it’s a wholly different thing that I didn’t set out to do that I don’t think that necessarily did. But when you just keep showing up and you add value and help people like, again, some of these happy accidents can happen. So that’s another really exciting kind of piece of the puzzle that we’re concentrating on. Right, it’s a part of our, our kind of portfolio.
Pat Flynn 35:57
For me, entrepreneurship has become a tool that is accelerated the investment into wealth building opportunities, you know, ever since I was working as an architect, I was always investing into Roth IRAs. And you know, the more traditional means of building wealth, the more long term things, but entrepreneurship has definitely helped scale and accelerate that to be able to graduate from Roth IRA, because I am overqualified for that now to my own SEP IRAs and solo 401, K’s that sort of thing. But even beyond that, now, investing into other companies as an angel investor, and investing in other companies, per what Matt said earlier as an advisor, investing in more aggressive sort of wealth building opportunities, perhaps I’m not into crypto, but I know some people who are in that kind of thing, but I’m kind of staying away from that. But I’d rather invest my time and money and effort into things that I know and believe in as well. I just haven’t educated myself on crypto, no offense, anybody who is investing in that. But like, when I think about my journey, I remember when I got laid off. My goal was just survival, right? I just need to survive, what can I do survive, and I built this business. And I’m very grateful that it not only helped me survive, but begin to start to thrive. And that’s where the wealth building into these other kinds of funds started to come into play. And then after that, it was Wow, okay. The business is going beyond what I thought here, I’m I am building wealth, but I have some more what can I do? So I started to do a lot of philanthropic work, I built schools all around the world through Pencils of Promise and invested in other organizations and help donate and fundraise for them. And then now it’s at a point now where I can scale that skill that both Matt and I have learned into other companies and have even further reach and have a longer period of time before that income comes back. But there’s no need for it to come right now. Right? So there’s a there’s a much bigger opportunity, but it’s it’s delayed, as a result of helping to grow and scale these companies, not all of them are going to grow and scale to a point where they exit and we get a big payout. But you know, some will hopefully and that’ll be an amazing time. And you know, Matt and I are both approaching our 40th Birthdays this year, we actually were born on the same day.
Jamila Souffrant 38:08
What it was meant to be Yeah.
Pat Flynn 38:12
in the same year. Yeah, it’s crazy, right? It was meant to be Matt took all the height and strength. I don’t know why I didn’t get any of that. But I’m just grateful to be partnered with Matt and to be able to work together with him in all different kinds of ways. And our families are close. And we you know, hanging out every once in a while when we can. But it’s entrepreneurship has been an incredible journey and continues to teach me and it continues to be a vehicle that I use to accelerate that wealth building and use that not just to help me and my family, but to hopefully help a lot of other families too.
Jamila Souffrant 38:43
Oh my gosh, so inspiring. So I want to be respectful of your time. I know you guys need to go. But you also, I know have amazing community that you want to talk more about. So please share that with my audience.
Pat Flynn 38:53
Thank you, Matt. Why don’t you take some? Yeah. Again, we’re
Matt Gartland 38:56
a community company. That’s what we do. And the most, I think, special way that we have manifest that are our community memberships. Beginning with SPI Pro, we’ve been doing SPI Pro for over two and a half years, we were actually working on it before we launched it even before the pandemic happened. And then we launched it in the summer of 2020 We now have a learner community for real beginners because we want to help it that part of the journey. We even have a community that is really focused on business stuff that I operate, called the MBA community, but everyone or rather all three tiers you can learn about that at Smart Passive income.com forward slash community. You can check out do some stories, you know from some of our members, you can check out some of our of our team that is 100% devoted to nurturing you know our communities on our community team. So smartpassiveincome.com forward slash community and learn everything.
Jamila Souffrant 39:52
And I will add all that to the episode show notes and just really quickly Pat, you will not remember this because it was so long ago but I met you for the first time at podcast, my very first podcast movement in 2017. My podcast barely got three episodes out, back in a day, and you were so encouraging and nice. And I feel like you know, I was an avid listener of your podcast to beginning and it was one of the examples of what could be. And I always love that you lead with authenticity and your heart. And so I just want to say, it’s an honor to have you on and Matt, it’s so great to meet you. And I think hopefully, this will encourage a lot of entrepreneurs and people who you know, want to show and give their gifts to the world. So I just want to thank you again.
Pat Flynn 40:37
Thank you so much to me that that means so much to me, and congratulations to you and your success and the growth of your show. And I’m excited to have you on the SBI podcast. So you know everybody listening, you know, you’re going to likely hear stories you’ve heard before, but we’re gonna we’re gonna make sure Jamila gets some love over there. So make sure to subscribe to our podcast you
Intro 40:53
love it. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you.
Outro 40:59
Don’t forget, you can get the episode show notes for this episode by going to journey to launch.com. Or click the description of wherever you’re listening to this. And you can still grab your jumpstart guide for free to help you on your journey to financial freedom by going to journey to launch.com/jumpstart.
Outro 41:34
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