Pat Flynn - Smart Passive Income Founder | How Lean Learning Created a Million-Dollar Empire

In that moment, after getting laid off from my architecture job, I didn't know what to do. I was desperate. I had discovered some good parts of the internet and making money online, and I was able to build a business to get out of that. It was only by action that I get to where I am today. What if losing your job became the best thing that ever happened to you? In 2008, Pat Flynn was laid off from his architecture job and used that moment to launch smart passive income. Now one of the most trusted platforms for online entrepreneurship. Information was once valuable because when you had it and others didn't, you were seen as smarter. Today, we all have access to the same information. The more quickly you can learn and acquire new skills and knowledge to then apply. That's going to be the skill that matters. When I first started, I didn't take action right away. I need to do what I did when I became an architect. I eventually found podcast I connected with. It was believing now what was possible. That was the first step. I eventually learned this question that I didn't know on this question is if this were easy, what would it look like? From a niche blog to a podcast with over 80 million downloads, Pat built his brand on transparency, value, and service. He's the author of Willit Fly in Superfans, co-founder of SwitchPod, and a mentor to thousands learning to build businesses online. Proving that adversity can be the perfect launchpad. A lot of times we just overcomplicate so much every second you waste thinking about a hater or a troll the second you're taken away from those you would benefit from your work. You can have anything in life you want so long as you help other people get what they want. Pat, I'm excited to do this. One of my favorite ideas from the book is this. So you write information that failed me. I grew up believing that information by itself was valuable. My entire high school and college experience was predicated on the idea that the more you knew about more things, the more successful you'd become, but in 2008, the few years after graduating architecture school, I was laid off from my dream job. There I was 25 years old, staring at the ceiling of my childhood bedroom, crying at a frustration. I feel like what you went through is what a lot of people experience when the quote unquote traditional system that they thought was going to set them up for success lets them down. So tell me what you were thinking in that moment when information failed you. Yeah, for some context and again, thank you for letting me share this story. It was a rollercoaster for sure to get from there to here, but in that moment after getting laid off from my architecture job, having dedicated my basically entire life to higher education and learning as much as possible, to then have to move back in with my parents after having gotten engaged and feeling like I was moving backwards in life. I didn't know what to do. I was desperate. In fact, some of my first moves were to, I mean, I got invited to, I didn't know this, but I got invited to like a co-knife presentation, and then I ended up in some room with a bunch of amway people. In the desperation comes in when you're just trying to survive, and thankfully I had discovered some good parts of the internet and making money online, and I was able to build a business to get out of that. But in that moment, I was lost. You feel like everything you had done and put time into was a was a waste. There's one thing to be said to say, I wouldn't change anything because I am happy with where I am now, but I mean, honest to God, if I could go back, I would have done more things, taken more action, not learned as much as I did, because it was only by action did I get to where I am today. I can only imagine how much further ahead I'd be if I knew what I knew now. You said something very interesting. I wouldn't have learned as much as I did. So this is sort of the whole thesis behind lean learning. This is like the MVP of cognitive advancement, right? You just learn enough to get the next thing done. Why do we have such an overemphasis on knowledge accumulation? I think because we treat knowledge like food, meaning you come across it, like imagine, we just aren't evolved to consume the amount of information that we now have access to. Just like in caveman days, if you will, if you come across a fruit tree or a bush, you gather all of it because you might not come across another one. This is like literal survival. Right? And then it's valuable to have that because then you can give it to others. Information was once valuable because when you had it and others didn't, you were seen as smarter. You were seen as higher class, even if you had an encyclopedia Britannica in your home, you were considered smarter because you literally could afford it when other people could not. Yet today, we all have access to the same information, but we're treating information in the same way. I ran a survey once when I was at a conference and 90% of the audience, like 80 to 90% of the audience were subscribed to more than 10 podcasts, subscribed to more than 10 YouTube channels, and felt compelled to make sure they consume all of it when how much of that are they actually putting into use? Think about your experience reading a book, even a self-help book or an entrepreneurial book. You read all of it and then maybe implement one or two things. And I feel like we need to change the way that we consume, but also more what we allow ourselves to consume. We're at a buffet line of information now. And not only are we because we're programmed to fill our plates as high as possible, we are also getting force fed information from algorithms and we're getting information that we didn't even know we needed, which we're not set up for success today. I mean, that's really the point here. Success comes with taking action with staying and maintaining focus, getting support on that thing that you're saying yes to, however, because we're so integrated into this world with a so much info, but also too much inspiration. And that's that's kind of an act like a weird thing to say too, right? Can you be overly inspired? Absolutely. Because when you're following anybody on Instagram, you're getting inspired by this person in their strategy and then this person and what they're doing with their life and all the sudden, you're getting pulled in all which ways and even more confused than you were going in. So the whole thing here is just to kind of differentiate the idea between just in case learning, which is what we've all been doing and just in time learning still having a why in a North star to point to, but only allowing yourself to learn about the next step on that thing that you're doing. Trusting that the information will be there for the next step after and not only will it be there, it'll be even better and more updated by the time you need it. So let's say no to it now so we can say yes to the things we've committed to and that's pretty much the thesis of this entire thing based on a lot of my own upbringing and stories since having gotten laid off and trying to discover how to make it in this world. You know, you bring up something that I've never even thought about, but traditional education. Most entrepreneurs going to rip on traditional education all day long and they're going to say, well, you know, I didn't use my MBA when I built my business or, you know, a lot of this stuff that I learned wasn't useful and maybe if you go to an Ivy League school, you're going to get some networking advantages, but outside of that, what are you really doing, spending 100 grand on your undergraduate degree or whatever you spent on it? But you're bringing up something that is like a little bit more nefarious and slightly scary, which is traditional education and the way that our parents operated and our grandparents operated, it's training you to need as much information as possible. It's training you to just accumulate and accumulate and accumulate this just in case information. So if you go through this traditional education system, which many people still do, nothing, whatever, I don't know if you have opinions on that. I can have opinions on it. Well, I have several, for sure. I mean, but you see what I'm saying? It's like it's teaching. It's screwing you. It's not helping you, but it's also screwing you up at the same time. Correct. And it's not teaching us the way we should learn. How do we learn? We read a textbook that might not even have any context to anything we care about and then take a test on it. And if we fail it, it means we're bad, right? The whole, the whole like, you know, you got to get A's in order to progress in this world. No, you have to make mistakes so that you can figure out who you are, what you like and what direction to go. This is this is the whole thing. And, you know, education is great. I love the schools that I went to now. So lucky to have great teachers. I mean, the teachers deserve more pay. We need higher level and higher class teachers too. However, I will say that we are not set up to really find success in the education system we have now. There's a story in the book in the beginning that you might remember about my kids preschool class and some different ways they're approaching things in a real life. How they were able to kind of solve a real life problem right then and there. And how much that might change a person's life to consider that, right? And I want to teach my kids. I have two kids, 15 and 12. I don't necessarily want them to become entrepreneurs. They can, if they want to be. I want to give them options, but I want them to think like an entrepreneur to understand that life and progress in life is about problem solving and helping others that oftentimes, you cannot do it alone. You need to collab with other people who have skill sets that complement yours. You need to learn how to communicate and present your ideas. Even if you're an employee, you still need to know how to do that, as well as the importance of personal branding and understanding your missions and values and who you are. We don't learn any of this stuff in school, right? Let alone financial related things, which are also important that they don't teach in school, learning how to be empathetic, learning interpersonal skills and communication. I mean, that should be what they do in the beginning. And then you kind of find your way into the thing. I mean, think about how people were educated back before the education system was the way it was today. It was more of an apprentice model. You find somebody who's doing some cool stuff and you work with them to learn from them. And you, you know, you might, you know, burn your hand a little bit on that blacksmith thing. I don't know the terminology of blacksmith thing. And then you go, okay, I'm not going to do that again. And then the person who's guiding you, who mentor, who's mentoring, you kind of shows you how to do it better. And then you become a master of it, because that's who you are. And then you can then pass that on to somebody else and teach others. And that makes your experience with it more fulfilling. We lost that. And I think there's a reason to get back into that and, you know, mold what we have today with what was once successful before. And, you know, there are bigger levels and higher goals with this book. But I really just wanted to be a conversation starter for the public and the world in general. But even for the individual listening to this and reading this book, to slow down and consider, okay, what am I doing? And is it aligned with where I want to go? And am I giving myself the best chance? Am I placing the best bet forward to actually make this work? Because we're working against the way the world is today. And we have to kind of unlock our, like unplug from the matrix, if you will. A thousand percent. I think that a lot of people are, like both you and me, we live in this world where we assume that, you know, self education and taking action and execution and breaking shit and figuring it out and failing. We assume that these things are common ideas, but they're not. They're very, very much not. Like most of our friends are living the same lives as us. But the majority of people, they just assume that, you know, we'll do what my parents did. And then on top of that, they find out that if they do what their parents did, this is a waking up moment that I had early in my life. If I replicate the exact steps that my parents took, my life would be worse than theirs. Because now cost of living has gone up. I can't buy it attached home when I'm 20 years old. Like the salaries are not keeping up with what it costs to live in the city that I was in. So I'm like, okay, so I got to figure out another way. That was my wake up call. I don't know if everybody has this wake up call. I think the people, I think if you look at this as a total aside, but people are having families later, people are not buying homes, people are renting as opposed to owning, anxiety, depression, like all of it is, it's just bad. It's bad across the board because people are not thinking differently. And this is sort of the wake up call to think differently, in my opinion, at least. And good for you to think ahead about that. And you're like, is this where I want my life to go? For me, I was just an automation mode, right? I had gotten good grades. I went to a good college, went and got a great job and was planning my 401k, like my whole life was planned ahead. And I didn't really stop to think about it. Is this really what I want to do? Because I was set in motion from my past and my parents and society. And yeah, like honest to God, if I didn't get laid off, I would probably still be doing architecture. And you know, I would hope to be happy still, but I would definitely not have the time freedom and the ability to do what I want, when I want with who I want. And that to me is the ultimate freedom that I have today because I've been able to build these businesses and learn quickly. That is, that is the skill that I feel like is going to be most valuable in the future because things change so fast. The more quickly you can learn and acquire new skills and knowledge to then apply, not just for the sake of learning, not just for trivia night at the bar, but because you want to actually do something, that's going to be the skill that matters because AI is coming in here. It's it's leveling the playing field for everybody and just like information and that kind of knowledge. So it is the knowledge put to use as well as the humanness of all of this that is going to help us stand out and find that joy and and provide more value in the world as things become more automated and machine-like. How did you when you first switched from, you know, in the matrix, working the nine to five, you were laid off, you had this massive, you know, disruption in your life, now you're back at your parents place. How did you switch or maybe you didn't even right away the way that you approached learning so that you could be a successful entrepreneur because I think that the McKinsey consultant has a very hard time becoming an entrepreneur because they've been trained to accumulate as much information as possible and you were somebody who accumulated as much information as possible and that's how I was going to succeed in my career and now I'm going to try and go build my thing and we both know that lean learning is the way to entrepreneurship, but you didn't jump into entrepreneurship thinking I'm going to learn my minimum viable product of whatever I'm launching at the time and that's how I'm going to proceed. You were probably in your head, you were probably accumulating as much information as possible, you're probably scared to take action. All these ideas were probably very true for you at the time. So how did you, how did you, how did you, you know, fix yourself? How did you, how did you escape the matrix? How did you, maybe it was at a necessity? What was it? I mean, it was definitely a survival thing. It was like, I couldn't help but take this action that I wouldn't have taken otherwise because I was starting a family wanted to get out of the house and and there was something at stake, right? And this is where in the book, I talk about the importance of putting yourself in a little bit of heightened position outside of your comfort zone, a little bit of heightened pressure. I call that a voluntary force function. There's many other cases where I've purposefully put myself in a situation to learn and to do and not give myself time to outthink or overwhelm myself, but I just had to take the action like when I learned how to speak on stage or when I learned how to fish with a jig versus all these other, like there's so many different examples, but going back to when I first started, I mean, you're right, I didn't take action right away because I was like, okay, I need to do what I did when I became an architect. I need to school myself and learn everything I can about this thing called entrepreneurship before I take any action. So I bought all the books, I went to Barnes & Noble, I read everything, I started consuming podcasts that were out there. And again, doing what exactly I'm saying, not to do now, but I eventually found a podcast, a one that I connected with, I connected with the host. In fact, it was, it was believing now what was possible. That was the first step, believing that it was possible. And it was through another example I listened to a podcast called Internet Business Mastery. And it was the only one I could find that seemed sort of trustworthy around that age. And there was an episode with a guy named Cornelius Fitchner, who was a project manager. And he was teaching people how to be a project manager. And he was making six figures here, helping people pass the PMP exam, the project manager exam. And that was the, oh my gosh, this is actually possible. Like someone like me who's taken several tests as an architect, I could maybe take some information I have and put it online. And that was sort of the first moment of inspiration that was like, that became a passion of mine to try to figure out how to take this knowledge I had and put it online. So again, I fell into the same traps. Let me learn how to build a website from scratch. Let me learn JavaScript and CSS. Let me learn marketing. Let me learn all these things, SEO, blah, blah, blah. And I eventually ended up investing in a program that those guys had. And that helped me cut out all the noise. I eventually learned this question that I didn't know I was practicing back then. But these guys were sort of embodying it. And this is a question I later received from Tim Ferris, who helped me in a decision moment of my life. And this question is, if this were easy, what would it look like? And that, oh my gosh, has changed my life because I and many other people who probably listened to the show who are high level achievers often will want to over complicate things and make things harder than they actually need to be. So this program I got was like, hey, here are the minimum tools that you need to build a website, get it up there and have basic search engine optimization to get your stuff out there. So that's what I did. And I put my knowledge online and lo and behold, I started to get traffic. And I was like, okay, this was cool. Now I want to make some money. How do I do this? Well, I could start, you know, I could I could go to school to learn how to do consulting and all this kind of stuff. Or I could at the time, the easiest thing to do was to sell an ebook with this information. So it's like, okay, that sounds like a good idea, but I don't even know what an ebook was at the time. This is again, 2008. So again, I took a lean learning approach, which is what is the next step only and only learned about that and then figure out the rest later because those resources were available. The first thing I knew was I needed to take this information and put it into a book of sorts. If this were easy, what would it look like? I would just have it in word already. So that's what I did. I didn't worry about formatting it. How to sell it or anything. I just knew that I needed the book or else nothing else would happen. So I just put it in word. Cool. After that was done, I was so motivated to figure the next step because I was making progress. I was finally seeing something happen, which is oftentimes we don't even get to that point. And then I figured out how to format it. I found the right resources, the right tools to format that book, which I only needed right then and there. And after it was formatted and ready to go, I was like, okay, I need to sell this thing. What do I do? I went to my mentors and the guys who were in that program and said, they said, okay, here's how you can get a PayPal button on your website. Cool. I did that. Now I need a sales page. How do I build a sales page? I've never done that before. And then I found a resource from again, somebody who had gone down this path before they said, Pat, go check out this book. You can actually check it out at the library if you want or buy it. It's called Moonlighting on the Internet by Janik Silver. And in the back of the book, there is a mad lib style sales page. Don't even read the rest of the book, even though I was compelled to read all of it because it was exciting and new. Just the last chapter is a mad lib style sales page. You can plug in your product there. Use that on your website. So that's exactly what I did. Probably the most valuable book I had ever purchased. It was like a $35 book because it turned into hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales after that. And a lot of times we just again overcomplicate so much stuff. That book and that website still continued today. Now 17 years later, I get income coming in without even having to touch it anymore every single month from that website. From some additional work that I did in a high pressure situation to try and survive in the beginning, that has now continued to reap benefits from me over time. And I've continued to build several businesses like that over time across many different industries. I love it. This is the perfect example of just in time information. Like that you lived it. And that's such a powerful idea. I feel like I haven't been the perfect proponent of this my entire career, my entire entrepreneurial journey. But I can tell you that when I when I sort of have realized that everything I want is on the other side of action, I spend way less time learning and way more time doing. And I've actually even listened. There's nothing wrong with podcasts. I can never tell you not to listen to podcasts. I'd be shooting myself in the foot. But there's a point where you have to stop listening to podcasts and you have to start doing shit. Tim Verris is so good. I love that. If this were easy, what would it look like? Another thing that I think entrepreneurs get in their head about is or the reason why they accumulate so much knowledge is because they're scared of taking action or they're scared of a negative result. Tim Verris has another idea that actually fixes that it's fear setting. It's understanding what's the worst possible outcome that could ever happen. And actually understanding is it likely that it's going to take place. And more often than not, the answer is no. Like you go to the extreme, right? I'm sure you know this concept, but it's like, okay, if the business doesn't work out, and I can't afford rent, you know, the worst, worst, worst is I'm homeless. My wife leaves me. That's never going to happen. And then when you start to realize that the worst case scenario is never really going to happen, then it's a lot easier to take action, which is really what you have to do. We sort of spoken about how just in time information is very different from the way most of us were taught to learn. But if you were going to look back and see how you made the transition from just just in case information, the just in time information, if you're going to give the most useful idea, so somebody can start to shift the way that they think and the way that they learn and the way that they do. What would that idea be for somebody that is right now stuck in this knowledge hoarding mode of their life? And again, I mentioned before who listen to this show, it's people that are in businesses, are building their first business or their executives, but a lot of executives that listen to this show, they would love to start their thing, but they're scared, shitless to do it for a variety of reasons like we just discussed. So how do you switch your thinking? I think thinking about the why behind the draw to learn so much for everybody, it's different, but in general, it typically comes down to FOMO. We don't want to miss out on that next thing that everybody's talking about. And so we get drawn to it. And now we have squirrel syndrome and we're kind of running all over the place, right? We have this fear that if by saying no to that thing that's coming across our plate, even though we might not either right now, that we're going to miss out on something. And just we as humans, we don't want to miss out. We don't want to be left behind or or not be a part of the crowd. It's just it's just human nature, whether you know you're doing it or not. So there was a strategy that was put into place a while back called JOMO that there was even a book I think called JOMO, which is joy of missing out. But I don't like that. Like that's just kidding ourselves. You don't feel joy because you're missing out on stuff. You're just kind of pretending. So I have a different strategy. And that is the joy of opting out by you saying I see that there. I recognize it. But I'm going to say no, not yet. I'll get to that later because this thing I've already said yes to or this project that I'm working on is the thing that I'm focusing on right now. That is what's important to me. It almost reops the energy to the thing you've already said yes to. And one strategy is to get around that because you'll still have FOMO create your own digital shoebox for those things or maybe an actual shoebox, meaning if you come across something that's not relevant to what it is you're learning next, put it in a notion folder, put it in every note, put it in a note pad, whatever it might be. Now it's out of your brain, but you still know you could go back to it if you wanted to. 98% of the time you will never ever ever go back to that thing. It's simply a strategy for you to finally move forward into that into that thing that you're doing. The second component of making progress is giving yourself time to do this. And there's a strategy in the book I call time blocking. You may have heard of time blocking before it's where you literally put a block of time in your calendar and you say what you're going to do there. And that's fine. But I want to use time blocking as like a shield. Like you're literally blocking out other things that could happen during that time and doing everything in your power to within that time. Just focus on that thing to get into that flow state where you're starting to challenge yourself a little bit more and get a little bit deeper into that thing because you are literally shielding everything else from around that time. And for different people that means different things that might mean asking your secretary or assistant to say like, Hey, for the next two hours, like no calls, like I have to be in here by myself for the next two hours to learn this thing. It might mean asking your spouse or people around the house to just kind of understand that during this time you're going to be all in on the thing you're going all in. And however you want to balance that with time that you are all in with your family as well. That's one important thing I've learned as a parent and husband as an entrepreneur is like I used to blur those lines between personal and business all the time and it was not fair to either of those parts of my life. And so to compartmentalize and go all in on my family as much as I'm compartmentalizing and going all into my businesses is really key. And to just see those things on the calendar month by month, I can make sure that I'm balancing it as well as I can. One strategy I have for a lot of high performers that if they want to fit in something but they're also so busy is similar to how when you receive a paycheck, you pay yourself first, right? You grow your nest egg, you pay yourself first before you pay anybody else or any bills. You take a little chunk out of that paycheck and put it into something that grows and grows and grows over time. You could do the same thing with your time on these separate projects or inspirations you have. So perhaps it might mean for a period of time waking up a little bit earlier. I did that when I was writing the book because I knew that I would not have any distractions before the kids got up and I could just wake up for me before I wake up for somebody else or some other things and tasks that I have to do. And that's really important as well. I mean I could go on and on and on. It's got about different strategies. I mean, there's the idea of giving yourself an allocated amount of time to have that focus on one specific thing, right? You might give yourself if you're going to experiment with going on YouTube and doing shorts or reels or tiktoks and you're like, okay, I wanted to give this a shot. Instead of just going like, okay, I'm going to try it for a couple days and see what happens if nothing happens and then I guess I'm not good. You need to give it a shot. So what I did recently, this was 300 days ago, about 300 days ago. I said, I'm going to experiment on YouTube shorts. I have a Pokemon YouTube channel that's at one and a half million subs. It's killing it, dude. I saw that. That's incredible. Thank you. It's a separate story, but I decided to start a shorts channel separate from that. Still Pokemon, I open a pack every day and it's either a good hit or a bad hit and I just wanted to see if I could get some momentum on the algorithm there. I didn't link to it or mention it at all. And I said, I'm going to do this for 60 days. And if I get to the end of 60 days, I go daily for 60 days, then I've won. It doesn't matter what the results are. I've given it a shot. And I'm going to base my win and my happiness, my joy about this on the fact that I showed up every day for 60 days. And that's going to be the win not if I get a lot of use or not because you can't always control that, but you can control you showing up every day. And so what happened in the beginning, went live daily on TikTok and I also repurposed it for shorts and reels. And it would take me like 45 minutes, but I found the time I woke up a little bit earlier or stayed up a little bit later, started to batch process some of them to do multiple of them in one time or in one sitting. And after 30 days, I only had about 200 or 300 views per video. And old me would have said, by then, man, it's been a month, like I'm not seeing any momentum here, like I'm a failure. I'm bad at this, but I was only halfway through the experiment. 60 days no matter what was going to be the win for me. But not only that, I did see improvement in my editing by putting the reps in. I went from 45 minutes per video to 10. And so even if I moved on to something else, I will have gained some skills and have acquired some ways to get better at other things that would have involved my business and other things that I have going on. Now day 35 comes around. One of those videos hits 750,000 views. And I'm like, oh my gosh, and all the videos start to surge up. And today, that channel that was started just about 300 days ago that I didn't link to from any of my other properties has now just recently crossed cumulatively to billion views were at 1.6 million subscribers. It is a five figure income on its own from ads and all those kinds of things. It's allowed for opportunities like the Detroit Lions football team invited me to come and open a pack on their field because they open a pack their social media guy opens a pack before every game for good luck. He reached out to me and we connected and I was able to fly out to Detroit and open a pack of Pokemon and get to know people who work for the Detroit Lions and build a relationship with them. And that's just one of many things and people that I've connected with just as a result of showing up getting the reps in knowing that it wasn't going to be forever because there was a stopping point. And that's important too. Like nothing else mattered during those 60 days other than the work I was already committed to. I wasn't allowing new projects to insert themselves. This was a this was like a Petri dish that I was able to focus on. And it worked. Lingoda is a partner of success story. Look I'll be real with you. My French used to be solid. I learned it in school. I even had decent pronunciation. But when I booked trip to France last year it was a total blank. I could barely order a croissant without sounding like a tourist. So I jumped into the Lingoda sprint challenge and man it changed everything. I'd take live classes late at night after podcasting, only five students max, real teachers, real conversations, and then just two months I went from a bonjour to holding full conversations at a Paris cafe. Confidence unlocked. Now here's the play. 30 or 60 classes in 60 days. And if you finish them all you get 50% cash back. That's basically four euros or five dollars per class. 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How do you know what time frame you should give this mini project because this is such a powerful idea but to your point and everybody listening can apply this idea to the next idea they have or the business they want to build or the side hustle they want to start but you made a good point if you would given up after 30 days you know you wouldn't have seen any traction day 35 I think you said is when you got that 700,000 plus so what's the and but if you'd done it for six months and there was no traction that would have limited your bandwidth for other opportunities. So what's the perfect balance what's the way to figure out how long should I give this idea and give it my all and learn the small top we're going to talk about micro tasks in a second but learn the things that will actually get me to where I'm competent enough at it so that I can give it a good enough shot like how can somebody think through this exercise and apply it to their own thing they want to test out. So number one you don't know what you don't know so it's important to find others who have been successful doing the thing that you're trying to do I'll again apprentice kind of stuff mentorship or even just somebody who's gone down that path before who on a podcast is sharing that story or on a in a book or whatever it is again the next thing you're working on there are resources about that there are people who've gone down that path before in their own way and you can avoid those mistakes you can learn from them as you go and you can even ask like how long did it take you until you started to see traction and you can kind of make a a guest of it on how maybe more forward that could be for you because you're not going to make those same mistakes or just on average what you're seeing a lot of people when I started blogging you know it became known in the space because we all talked to each other that it took about six months to gain traction if you were going to gain traction in that space with search engine optimization and the relationships that you were building for some people happen faster for some people it took a little bit longer but in general six months the the most famous story was Darren Rouse who had the blog pro blogger.net his wife gave him the ultimatum the deadline it was like you have six months to turn this into a business or else you're going to stop and that was her putting that on him and of course he did the work and I think it's I think it's Parkinson's law or or some sort of law where like whatever the amount of time you give yourself you actually put the time and effort into filling that to at least give it a shot and and so there's there's no perfect answer to this I think a lot of it is based on what others have done but also how much time can you dedicate to it to get to a point where you are comfortable with a decision as to whether persisting with it or pivoting from it into something else so yeah there's no perfect formula but I think it's going to be just based on experience and I was like I'm only going to give it 60 days because I don't think I could do it for more than that and and not see results so I can't do it in 60 days and I'll move on to something else and I know I'm okay with that that's a rule that I set for myself in the beginning no I think that's a very valid answer I think you look for again people that have done it before smart look for just make a smart educated guess and then you take the action one other idea that's very important that ties into lean learning and you touch on it but I just want to I want to expand a little bit is creating voluntary force functions how do you create voluntary force functions in a way that they're healthy and not so stressful or so potentially life-roaning that they're not conducive to you know what I'm saying like voluntary force functions could be quit your job and figure it out bro and then all of a sudden you have no money in the mortgage and so that's an extreme but how do you how do you properly set up a voluntary force function that sort of stretches your comfort zone but doesn't obliterate your life right and that's the point is to stretch yourself just a little bit right you are in your comfort zone one wrong outside of that is where progress can begin to happen five to six wrongs out of that is danger zone right and so there's there's a and that's different for every task and for every person and for every person situation and scenario so I think it's important to just think about in brainstorm even use chat gbt or clot or something to brainstorm what are what are 20 higher pressure situations I could put myself in as a entrepreneur looking to get better at speaking um one example of that would be to set a date where you're going to go live and just just talk to your audience live and that's a higher pressure situation that's it's you know what's the worst that can happen you might funnel your words and maybe embarrass yourself a little bit but you're not going to lose your entire business because of one live um it might be one wrong outside of that it might be actually getting a date on the calendar where you're going to speak on a stage and now you're going to have to figure out what you're going to say and how to do it and find the right resources and this is how I got comfortable speaking on stage my buddy was putting on an event in 2011 called fincon Philip Taylor's his name and it was his first year so I wanted to help him out and I wanted to speak even though I always said no because I was definitely afraid so I said okay I'm going to say yes this is what's going to get me to take the right action and of course right after I wiped the sweat off my head after I said yes I said oh my gosh I need to find the right resources so I didn't go again to old pad traditional learning and read every single book on public speaking and there are plenty I asked around again to some people who I knew were speakers so connections relationships important and I said what's one resource that you would offer the one and only resource that you would offer to to somebody who's brand new to speaking and like four of them mentioned a book called stand and deliver by Dale Carnegie so I was like boom now I have some traction I'm going to consume that one book and one one book alone and that one book and one book alone had taught me just the base foundational items that I needed to at least get comfortable and not you know embarrass myself cool I got that information did the rehearsals did the work understood who was in the audience I said to myself okay if this were easy what would it look like I would share information on stage that people wanted okay who's in the audience and what do they want great they're all bloggers they want to stand out great I know how to talk about that that like backdoored my way into just at least talking about the things that they wanted to learn about so that that helped and again fast forward to today I've spoken in front of 350 different stages and have earned over a million dollars from my speaking fees over the years which again I would have never done if I didn't do that so to your point I think laying out different options seeing what feels just the right comfort zone for you outside that you know would be hard and if you start to feel a little nervous about some of those things that's a good sign if you start to go oh hell no that's like that's idiotic then okay you can put those aside and then even sharing those with other people because especially again if you have a mentor guide or a spouse or somebody who knows what you're trying to do and wants to get behind you they might be able to encourage you to do something that might be little uncomfortable and help comfort you with whatever dangers might arise but in general I mean now if I'm doing stuff if I'm not feeling a little bit uncomfortable that's when I'm most nervous that means I'm in comfort zone that means I'm complacent and not testing myself where there is no growth and so that I actually look to get a little nervous now and I put myself in these situations the book itself and the deadline to get the manuscript to the publisher was it was a big one and there's other like lesser danger zone ones like it like I talked about fishing earlier I'm a big fisherman and I've always wanted to learn how to fish with a jig because you get the best and biggest bass when you fish with a jig but it's difficult and every time I go fishing I'd tie a jig on I try it I take a couple casts and just be like this is foreign to me and I'm going to move on and back to the baits that I'm used to and so I wasn't doing myself any favors so one day I took a boat out and I only brought a jig with me I didn't bring any of those other baits so I was literally forced to even though I wanted to I could I could only fish with a jig what was I going to do go back home no I want to be out in the water no matter what so I'm just going to do it got out in the morning 8 a.m. practicing with it trying different retrieves nothing's happening two o'clock p.m. I finally get a like a bite I didn't land the fish but I got a bite and oh my gosh just that bite gave me some inspiration I like I felt it like there was an energy to it now and I ended up fishing to the rest of the evening and I caught two bass and now I use my this month of my first go-to pick now I've gotten comfortable with it I've unlocked that because I forced myself to do nothing but the thing that I really wanted to learn that was hard so that's another example that may be relevant to some of you depending on what you're trying to do a thousand percent before we before we move and speak about microscopes tell me the story about your kids and why we can learn so much from kids and why we think we're much smarter than we are yeah miss vassilus she's amazing and she it was my preschool teacher for my son and and this was you know years ago but the story was they were eating lunch in the classroom this is a brand new school by the way and all of a sudden there was an infestation in the middle of the classroom by the way they didn't know that they had basically San Diego's a giant anvil just just FYI so the answer to the classroom they had to eat outside and it was hot and it was uncomfortable and they weren't going to be able to eat inside ever again so they took the afternoon curriculum and scrapped it for problem solving this together with a bunch of preschoolers so this teacher she had some business experience which was great and she was able to kind of do a brainstorming session like us entrepreneurs would took out post a post a stack of post notes and asked everybody in the classroom who had an idea on ways that we could solve this problem and some ideas were were not great like hey let's just eat Chick-fil-A every day like no and one kid was like hey we should just eat the ants like that's that's not going to be there's not enough nutrition but eventually they narrowed it down to one idea which was to build a sunshade out of blankets that they that like that could get donated by the parents and I tuned into this with an email that came from miss vassilus that evening that said if hey parents if you have any blankets like can you donate them and so we didn't then we dropped or dropped off the kids next day and when we picked them up kind of early afternoon we noticed that there were these structures in the courtyard in the on the concrete that were next to their dining tables and these were these sunshades that they had built kind of L-shaped sunshades at a PVC pipe that the kids built on their own and they were so happy we were all taking pictures in front of them that that day almost like they were like celebrities in front of one of those stepping repeat patterns at the Oscars but these were just little kids and that might not seem like a huge deal but if you think about it four and five year olds they experience a problem in real life they all collaboratively brainstorm and narrowed down to one solution and then they build that solution and then they experience the results of that like immediately in a day without having to learn how to be an engineer without learning all there is to know about how to build structures out of PVC pipe they just got their hands dirty and did it this was a safe experiment that they could do I mean what a life changing thing for a kid to learn an experience to be able to be able to do that and the all the entrepreneurial type of things that are in and around that and how proud they were to do that and now they're able to through those kinds of experiences tackle anything and realize that if they're bad at something it doesn't mean they're terrible and they should walk away from it means hey let's get some help let's work through this together let's find somebody who's done this before who could guide us through this let's solve our problems and I think that's just the best way to approach life is when you come across something that you need help with to figure it out and work together to do so and that's that story really inspired this entire book and always gave me the idea that I wanted to write something about this and and change the way that we educate again to our point earlier like what good is a textbook yes textbooks are great and it's good to understand stuff and history is important all the baseline foundational educational items should still be there but there comes a point where you need to figure out who you are and what you like and get your hands dirty and and learn from somebody and and figure out who you are through doing not just like learning I mean how many times do people go to college and choose a major without even really knowing what they want to do in their life they're just like my self-included yeah absolutely and and and like there's all these stories now and there you know of course it's in the news and it's political as well with the having to pay back these student loans that that were for you know kind of on pause for a while and how upset many people are because of that and you know I'm not going to argue for one way or another but rather just the the the the surprise to me that so many people are in majors that they didn't even choose themselves like they were just kind of random um because anyway we could go deep on that but I'm not but uh yeah there's a lot here for sure this isn't just an entrepreneurial book it's it's a it's an education book it's a call for change in in in this world that we now live in which is so overwhelming with information so not in our favor for making progress and moving faster than ever I mean the information is not slowing down it's just actually speeding up you speak about micro skills and when you walk through sort of your entry into entrepreneurship you walk through sort of the micro skills that you learned that made you successful um first of all help somebody understand what a micro skill is outside of like the obvious just definition but help somebody understand what a micro skill is and also I think the more important idea is how do you identify which micro skills are actually useful versus which ones are wasting your time because if you're going to apply this lean learning methodology the whole goal is not to waste time not to overthink not to learn things that are not serving you right so micro skills i i talk about it in the book as as micro mastery right you become the master of the thing that you're doing by actually focusing on the micro so a lot of athletes do this musicians do this instead of trying to get better at a piece by just playing the piece over and over and over and over and over again until it gets better they take a part of it and they piece they break it down and then they focus on that right a conductor who does this with with their band they say okay class uh let me just hear the trombones in this section at bar 20 cool okay uh just that one bar alone let's try that again and again again okay let's master that there's a triplet there that you're all missing let's focus on that okay Joey you play okay you got it janna you play like they break it down and athletes do this when it comes like I know a lot of runners who are ultra marathon runners and they don't just go okay i'm just gonna run every day and get better they focus on things so they might focus for a period of time like an entire month on just their breathing how they're breathing in through their nose only while they're running to increase their endurance and in their lungs or running stride you know if you were to focus on trying to get better at all of those things at the same time none of them would get better so you take a moment of time and save for this period alone however many days it might be or you give yourself i'm going to focus on this and i'm going to find the resources about this and i'm going to talk to other people about this and this alone i going back to my speaking i did the same thing once i learned i wanted to be a master at this and do this i started to go into presentations with okay what's the one thing i want to focus on on this next talk i want to focus on my storytelling in this one like yes it's gonna have slides i'm gonna be talking about this information but i want to tell some good stories within it so who's telling good stories let me watch Ted talks and just consider those stories and take notes on them let me talk to somebody who is a great storyteller and ask them for tips right this is where i came across Nancy Dorte's book resonate which is about the sort of push and pull in a story the ups and downs and the roller coaster that brings emotion and connection into it and these things you learn only because you're focused on those things at a period of time and then once you learn them you've become somebody who then now embodies that and now it's stacking on to the next thing that you learned so in another talk i went in and just was like okay i have no idea what to do with my hands i'm just gonna learn about hands and what do i do and how do i use my hands to emphasize the things that i'm saying or to and i've learned that you know the bigger the audience the bigger and more grandiose your hands have to be because for the people in the back it's gonna feel silly but it's gonna look great and professional when you express these things or when you kind of close in your hands and kind of bring them tighter to your body this might be a more vulnerable time in your talk that you're telling a story and you can use your hands again to emphasize and amplify the things you're talking about again i only learn these things by hyper focusing on that and learning about it from people who knew what they were doing one thing at a time same thing happens in our marketing right when we when we hyper focus on certain parts in micro master or marketing it's like okay i have a sales funnel i just want to have a better sales funnel so i guess i just i'm just gonna keep doing it and try to get better every time that that's no way to approach something to get better break it down this is how we begin to prioritize by way we break down the whole process so sales funnel okay people need to come to the website then they need to subscribe to the email list they need to then open those emails then they need to click on the links in those emails then they go to the sales page then they have to click the link on those sales page to then go to the checkout process and then buy and then they get that email there's like eight steps in that process cool well let's micro master that what is a high leverage point this is the question to ask yourself for priority what is a high leverage point if i were to change or improve just one of these things which one would be like the first domino that kind of knocks down the rest oh okay well i'm gonna work on email subject lines and just mastering that like down to that level because if more people open my emails more people will see those links more people will go to the sales page more people will click i'll get more customers and for a month i'm going to deep dive and go literally i'm going to allow myself to rabbit hole myself into a world of subject lines and that might sound boring but i also know it's only for a month and i also know it's for good reason so let me do that and now i'm looking at subject lines when they come in my inbox i'm talking to people who are experts in email about subject lines i am learning about i'm reading blog posts i'm listening to podcast episodes not all the podcast episodes just those episodes alone that are about that and now i apply it i experiment i give myself reps i give myself a month i have two emails going out every week okay cool i'm gonna look at the data and see if the stuff actually works great it's working now it's implemented in a part of our business now let's pick the next thing to micro master and of course with numbers and sales funnels if you can you know double the amount of people opening your emails you're literally doubling the amount of sales but you can expand and exponentially grow that by doubling not only the number of people who open don'ts emails but the number of people who now click on the link in those emails cool so now i need to focus on copywriting and call to actions cool let me focus on that so the the process goes on and on and then where you can really scale is you're like hey employee you're our marketing director you focus on this have your team focus on some of the other components so we can all grow these things kind of at the same time how do you balance this idea for somebody that's very interested in mastery i think most people who are listening to this podcast are they are interested in mastery in all these separate skill sets but then they read Malcolm Gladwell and they figure they got a pretend thousand hours into something to figure out how it works best so you know what i'm going with but how do you balance these two ideas right so so is it uh is it an MVP mindset that you apply to everything a lean mindset that you apply to everything or are there some things that you should put 10,000 hours in before you really will see the rewards of the return on that thing is a great question first of all i would question why are you reading Malcolm Gladwell not because i don't like him i actually love his books they're super inspiring but that's a problem when you have a focus and things you want to do are you listening to podcasts in the car because you feel like you just have to fill in time that's actually negatively affecting you because now you're getting all these new ideas and and and thoughts whereas you could just take action so that's number one but let's say you do know about the 10,000 hour thing and i do agree with that it takes 10,000 hours to master things sure but that doesn't mean stuff can't happen in hour one in hour two in hour 12 in hour 469 right those moments of learning help you and you can see results from them it's not like you have to wait 10,000 hours and then like a microwave being it's done and you can finally start enjoying the thing you get there and it's a part of the journey as well right and it can happen probably much faster with more focus you have maybe the 10,000 hours comes as a result of just we have so many other things that we're trying to fit into this life and some of those things should stay in our important our relationships and and whatnot of course but putting aside or saying no not yet to a few things to go deeper into something means maybe you just only need to spend a hundred hours and not everything needs it and maybe doesn't even necessarily need or want 10,000 hours but again to to my point earlier how can you make hour one valuable and and create a result for you how can you have hour five do that etc i think that's i agree with you i also think that one one idea that frustrates me is people focus on people focus on milestones and it's so cliche right like enjoy the journey or the the destination is a journey but it is so true for example I've been doing so there's about 900 and some episodes of this podcast up I don't like I've done 10,000 hours but it's definitely changed my life already now at the at the 10,000 hour marker 10,000 episode mark I don't even know if Joe Rogan as Joe Rogan is about 10,000 episodes or or JLD doesn't have 10,000 episodes it's very true but at that point yes you are in the point 001 percent but you don't need to live in the point 001 percent to have a to have the thing that you're working on radically impact your life like you have to think about what are we doing this for like for me this is sort of checking a whole bunch of boxes I would prefer not to work a nine to five anymore this gives me access to incredible people I mean you do this as well it's a great networking opportunity you know if you do it for long enough it'll afford you a great income a great lifestyle it's very comfortable like I said I walked five minutes for my house to my studio where I record so I'm not 10,000 hours in and my life is you know significantly better than before I started and maybe it'll be even but that's the thing like you don't you don't have to you don't have to be a Joe Rogan to enjoy podcasting you don't have to have a hundred million dollar company to enjoy entrepreneurship and I also wish that we would don't set our own more people should set their own personal north stars as opposed to just benchmarking against somebody who you know built the next unicorn don't give me started with that the first question I asked new students when I coach them is like what's your number like a million I want to be I want to have a seven figure business that's always the default answer and then I go why like well that means I'll be successful I'll have enough money and I'm like okay so what do you want to do with this money that you're talking about you're a seven figure entrepreneur what do you what is that money now give you and lo and behold by the end when we calculate everything they don't need a million dollars they don't need a seven figure business and so then I asked like what was it about the seven figure business that was so compelling to you now that you know that you only need a hundred and sixty five thousand dollars a year to do what you need to do which is a very different business model by the way you know building a seven figure business versus a hundred sixty five thousand dollar business I mean that's yeah anyway and the answer usually is like I don't know I just felt like that's what success look like and then we dive into well what does success look like to it's more time with the family all these other things I'm like okay we now have a plan and we now unplugged you from that matrix again of what everybody else said I mean to to the point of even just education earlier it's like what do you want and where do you want to go having a base level of foundation or knowledge is important however there comes a point where you need to start having agency for your own life and what you want to do and where you want to go and that means having control over what enters your brain space and what doesn't there's so much to be said about that phrase as well and in terms of what happens when there are negative people and who come across your life especially as a creator people who try to tear you down and you know I once learned that you know hurt people hurt people and so I've learned to just have empathy and move on you know every second you waste thinking about a hater or a troll the second you're taken away from those who would benefit from your work or who do who do care about you and I've gotten some major funks before because of what one person once said we're we have that weird entrepreneur math where one negative common is greater than a thousand positive comments and you know we have to learn our way out of that as well and and hopefully your audience is already learning to do that because that's a big one too a big thank you to indeed for supporting success story because hiring people is one of the hardest things you're ever going to have to do as an entrepreneur as a founder as somebody who's trying to build a business it's important to hire well and find the right person but it takes so much time and it's so labor intensive because like most entrepreneurs you have a thousand things going on and there's a good chance that you just realized your business need to hire somebody yesterday so how can you find that great amazing right fit candidate fast it's easy just use indeed because you don't have to waste time struggling to get your job post scene on all these other job sites if you're using indeed you can just use their sponsored jobs to help 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speaking of opportunities they put together the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning at net suite dot com slash scott clary this is the playbook for understanding how to use AI for your business the guide is free that is net suite dot com slash scott clary it's tough i don't think i know i'll say with a hundred cents certainty the entire audience is not learned how to not deal with negativity i think it's a constant it's a it's a constant problem that people have to overcome i've worked with a lot of people that are very tenured very successful executives and you know because of what i do for living they ask how do i start a podcast you know how do i build a personal brand what what content should i post and they they do know what they got to do already but the second they do it and they could have the most successful career they could have the the best record they've had success in the past everybody looks up to them and they post content on social and they're just horrified that they're going to be judged that they're going to be ripped down um a good friend uh she just started a podcast and first episode did incredible like one bad email she got back from this podcast and it was actually because it wasn't because of the podcast it was because we launched it on a youtube channel that had a video uh that she put up 12 years ago which was also a great video but it was just when she was earlier on in her career and she wasn't as tenured or experienced and somebody just went into her ripping a 12 year old video because she wasn't like there was nothing negative that she put in the video is just she wasn't as experienced as what they expected so they're like well you kind of sounded stupid in that video that was sort of the negative comment and that's the only thing that came up on the call after reviewed the podcast launch that was the one thing that was ingrained in her head and listen it's it's it's creators get exposure to this more but for people that are you know entrepreneurial starting their own thing starting their first thing we can talk about all the lean learning we can talk about all the all the micro skills we can talk about all the execution but part of it is mindset mindset to execute but also mindset to deal with pressure mindset that you are responsible for your own outcomes good and bad and I think that that's a very important thing to just understand before you break out of the matrix so to speak because when you break out of the matrix nobody's protecting you anymore and that's a good thing and a scary thing and just navigating that just expect it I don't know how to say it that's that's all I have on I know kung fu yeah one last thought on on mastery what when somebody's learning this micro skill what is the one thing that they do wrong when they're learning these skills that will eventually help them with lean learning and execution entrepreneurship what's the one thing they do wrong what's the one misconception that you just need them to stop doing it is again I mean there's a few things we've touched on already but even even when you get to the micro level there's a few bad habits that can come back into play number one it's trying to find literally every resource about that thing again and and then over overloading yourself I mean it's very similar to a couple guys I talk about in the book that you might remember Terry and George my two golf friends from architecture Terry's the guy who had all the golf magazines he had a subscription to all the golf channels and he had the putter in his office to practice like he was that kind of guy right he wasn't great he wasn't great at golf because I mean how many sources was he getting information from to put you should put this way but then in the next page it was like no you should put this way and so he would just like get confused whereas George found a coach number once we got private coaching but then he would just spend time to do the thing that maybe wasn't the sexiest thing to do but he knew that if he just did that thing and grind it for that thing for a little bit that it would just then be something he could move forward from and it would improve his game and he became a scratch golfer as a result of of doing it that way spending you know a week just on how to read greens and learning just about that from his coach with some guidance right so again that that that's a big one the other thing is again thinking that you have to be perfect so a lot of learning feels like progress it's like a imposter for progress but progress only happens when you take action so having a deadline or a date at least that you will start something this is why I love teaching podcasting because it's so easy to get people to do it and then get the results because you say okay when's your podcast coming out I don't know a few months from now no pick a date pick a date do it and now what's your first step I guess I got to come up with some like a concept for the show all right I'll see the concept tomorrow and then they start taking action and then once they start seeing the concept right they haven't built the show yet but they can start to imagine it at that point right and I do a lot of exercises like visualization and sort of future-tensing things like okay now that your show's available like tell me what a perfect review for your show would be like now they're talking in future tense they're thinking about what we would want an audience member to say after listening to they haven't even recorded an episode yet but now they're thinking about how they want to approach it right so I think a lot of times we can get super bogged down on yes the actions which are important but remembering the why is something we often forget when it comes to going so micro and when you can zoom out again every once in a while and consider your why your why's become your guidelines your guide post your your north star and I think that's always important to keep in mind I have a section in the book where I talk about every month you know putting putting time aside literally blocking time in your calendar to do a why focused introspection just to kind of go it are the things that I'm doing now in alignment with where I want things to go and a lot of times you can catch yourself before it's too late or before you put too much time into something I call that a Wi-Fi because if you don't have good Wi-Fi you're lagging I don't know it's like dumb dad jokes that I put in the book that's good but I do that to make them memorable so now you won't forget anyway that that those were a couple important things with regards to making sure you stick with it but you know seeing the light at the end of the tunnel too one thing that you speak about in the book which I'm a big fan of and I'm fully we're we're very much aligned on a lot of the ideas that you you teach but the idea is teaching teaching as as a tool to help you learn um speak to me about why that's so important but I also just want to give context or advice for people that are earlier on who feel that they can't teach yet and why in my opinion I think they're wrong and I'm sure you would say the same so tell me about teaching why is it important for learning and then also uh if you're early on how do you teach and how do you sort of take advantage of this learning hack for lack of a better term yeah that is a great question teaching is definitely the best way to learn it refines what it is that you're doing it helps you actually create these frameworks and structures that not only help others but internalize it for you this happened when I wrote lean learning I had to extrapolate all these experiences and things I was doing because it was a pattern that I was noticing with the results so I had to dissect that and by dissecting it I am able to now even understand it more myself and learn it and now also teach it and was only through again the force the force function of having to write this book that those things came out so by teaching I mean I had a friend of mine who's a ukulele player he's he's pretty amateur he's just getting started and he's learning from some really really good ukulele players in Hawaii and his his teacher asks him hey are you teaching anybody ukulele like the teacher asked his student like hey are you teaching anybody ukulele and he was so taken aback by that question because he's like I'm who am I to teach others I'm I'm the one learning from you but the ukulele teacher was embracing the same model that I do which is you learn by teaching so he asked his student to teach his kids some of the new chords that he was learning and so he had a couple ukuleles at home a lot of Hawaiian residents have just you know easy access to that and he was able to teach his kids just some of these chords so not only was he reinforcing the card chords he was learning by now shifting to a different part of his brain and internalizing it more as a teacher but he was also now experiencing this joy in these these moments with his kids and now his kids are also seeing that daddy although he's not an expert at this still has value and can teach just like I can when I come home from school and learn something one thing I asked my kids when they get home from school is not how is your day at school today or what did you learn it was what's one thing you got out of class today that you could teach me man their eyes light up I've been doing that ever since preschool and it works and it still works and it positions me as not just a parent but somebody who's also learning from them it positions them as somebody that even though they're not an expert even though they're still in school they can still teach and help others and it helps them refine what they're learning so that when they have to take that test eventually then they're more capable so this that's why I was just going to say I notice I love it I notice all of my outside of helping me understand the frameworks that I've learned in passing them on to someone else to sort of solidify my knowledge when I try and teach something I understand my own gaps better than like you get so crystal clear when you're trying to teach a concept you understand exactly the things that have to be re-informed I tell you you're trying to teach something from stage you know real quick the parts that are not a hundred percent so I'm not saying everybody throws themselves in that position but if you ever want to know if you really understand something well go in front of an audience and teach it to them and you're going to know which parts you need to brush up on I mean that is a high-pressure situation I actually love Q&A's in front of audiences for a few reasons because it can be less performance and more real time and that exudes some amount of energy and authority but like when a person asks you a question if you're on stage and they're asking you a question live and you don't know the answer aid to your point that's like a gap that you can now fill but what do you do you just say you just be honest like actually that's a really good question and to be honest I don't know the answer to that right now but now I'm inclined to research it and the next time I'm on stage in front of you guys I'll be able to share that or find the right resources for you but I apologize I don't know the answer to that right now next question please boom and that's how you handle those situations because again I was always afraid of well on the one on stage I should know everything so I'm not going to put myself in that situation at all versus again through learning through mentorship I hired a speaking coach I learned that you can navigate that and also learn at the same time and again I appreciate you mentioning the sort of final chapters of the book about teaching because it is the best way to not just reinforce your learning but it's how we all together as a community can make the world a better place by experiencing things sharing them and and working together which is a big theme of the book and I'll just I'll just say this like there have been times when I don't know something and somebody does a live Q&A with me you will never get a more loyal fan than if you tell them that you don't know the answer you say you're going to figure it out for them and then you actually follow up with them and given the answer to the question of the problem that they're trying to solve for like it blows their mind because very few people actually do this yet it's so simple right or or the the other people who aren't getting that answered directly say man Scott's so honest and so I know that when he's actually answering a question it is real it is true and authentic because he tells us when he doesn't know the answer but then he'll find the answers and relay them back toward us and and that's really special too because I've been on stages where I've watched people talk and like pretend their way through an answer and it's so obvious bro it's like it's almost embarrassing and maybe it's just because I am a train speaker but I mean people know the authenticity shines one way or another the last thought on on teaching because you mentioned this and I think it's interesting and I've never heard it sort of phrase this way is expertise versus experience teaching so can you explain the difference and when it benefits one person to teach expertise versus experience or how do you leverage I guess the difference between the two would be helpful yeah I mean expertise you've put in a certain amount of time and effort and and are able to sort of create these frameworks from a position of authority right you you've gained some results from the thing that you've done and now you want others to experience the same results in a more heightened way this is where the books come into play courses things like that consultations coaching it's higher level it is is you know you are a little further along than somebody who's still in the weeds if you will but the important part of this is you can still be valuable even if you're in the weeds because you are literally going through it with people for example with my first business teaching people had to pass the lead exam which was the name of that business that I was helping people with I was not an expert at that test in fact I barely passed the exam I needed a 170 out of 200 and I passed with like a 173 or something and it's a very difficult exam and so the apart of me was feeling like an imposter showing up and teaching this stuff who am I to teach this stuff however in conversations with people in answering even just a few questions you could see their their eyes light up and they see you as an expert because you have some experience that is very close to the experience they're about to take in fact in many cases somebody who has just gone through the same process is more valuable than somebody who is a 40-year veteran of the space who's speaking in a podium in a university who's so far removed from what's actually happening out there that yeah they might know a lot of things but I could also look these things up on Google now but this is what's actually happening and let me show you and this is how in 2009 I was so worried because the company that came out with the questions for this exam the United States Green Building Council they came out with their own guide to compete with mine and I thought I was done I was like why would people learn from me somebody who barely passed the exam I'm just like a like a Joe Schmo who created a guide versus like literally the people who create the questions for the exam that was May of 2009 was my most profitable month ever and I was like what the heck is going on here well first of all they blasted out all these emails to people with their guide that was like a hundred and sixty nine dollars so way expensive and then people started doing research to find well what other guides are out there and they found mine and they decided to buy from me and I asked a survey question why did you buy from me and not them I was literally just wanting to know the answer and they said well I felt like I knew you because you just took the exam and you know exactly what it's like from from the same perspective I will have and that taught me so much in the early days and why it's when I show up online despite me having to still learn my way through things I'm still knowing that I can teach these things I don't have to wait till ten thousand hours to then feel qualified to teach I can teach after hour one because somebody is at hour zero I love it and I think that expertise is what most people think they have to have before they teach anything experiences to your point not only permission to teach with the experience that you've just received but also to some people can be more valuable and also you know the people that are at hour zero sometimes you should be to your point seeking out recent experience because that is going to be more contextually relevant to what you're going through right now than somebody who sold a business ten years ago for a hundred million dollars like that's that that somebody who I mean you can talk about a lot of this stuff I'm sure this is a whole other podcast but when you look at mentors right you have people that are your peers people that are just ahead of you and then you can have a couple people that are you know further along in their career in their life but I think that peers to hold you accountable that are literally experiencing the same thing is what you're going through right now and people that are just ahead of you those are the most useful kinds of mentors those are going to be the ones that actually help move the needle and whatever it is you're trying to figure out and you able to help them I mean exactly and be there for each other I mean that's yeah I mean that's not one way teaching is not one way it's it's two way always that's why mastermind groups are important or brain trusts or you know circles of people not where there's one head at the table but where everybody at a moment in time becomes the head when something happens or they need help or they're presenting to others so yeah absolutely a hundred percent I mean you and I are cut from the same cloth a thousand percent yeah what what would be one idea that I didn't ask you about that I should have asked you about that you'd like to leave the audience with from the book yeah so in addition to micro mastery which is getting to the sort of small level to move fast there's other ways to move fast too one of my favorite ways is to do what I like to call power 10 I implement this probably more than anything in my business because it helps me find quick results and it helps me have surges of of of of success if you will now the power 10 comes from the world of rowing so I used to row at the cow in the cow lightweight crew if you're seeing this right now you would know that's obvious because I'm not a heavyweight but in a boat of eight people plus one the cocks and who yields the commands if you're on on the water I mean you could just be coasting but if you're in a race you want to get ahead of other boats so how when you are rowing do you get ahead you actually do what's called a power 10 and a power 10 is when the cocks and kind of counts down to get everybody ready okay power 10 and three stroke two stroke one stroke go and for 10 strokes and 10 strokes only you will give everything you have to give you and the boat just it's like literally a hot knife through butter the boat on the water when you see a power 10 in motion because the boat just like goes and you get that because it's 10 not a thousand where you'd burn out or die and not you're not just coasting the whole time you have a moment of time 10 strokes in the world of rowing but for you as an entrepreneur it might be 10 days or 10 podcast episodes whatever it might be like I teach a lot of podcasters how to podcast a thousands of students one thing we do is as we call like a like a hit week we call it a hit week so yeah you might come out with a podcast every week but at some point in the next three months do a hit week where every day during that week you come out with a podcast episode oh man that's a lot of extra work it takes me forever to yeah it is but it's just for a moment of time you're going to have a podcast episode every day for seven days you're going to create some event around it you're going to build some hype around it and guess what's going to happen you're going to see a surge in your downloads in your call to actions being clicked on in all of the things that you want as a podcaster this moment this power 10 that you're going to implement is going to be great so let's put in the work it's like a hackathon amazing things are built in 24 hours from people who just say okay for 24 hours we're going to build this thing we're going to eat pizza all night until this thing is done great you're not doing a hackathon every night but when you do it things get done and that's the point and so what is your version you the listener of a hackathon or a power 10 that you can implement there's a side story that I talk about in the in another place where I actually ended up getting injured as a rower I was also a soccer player and I injured myself so I wasn't able to row anymore and I eventually became the coxin for the women's rowing team because their coxin had quit and there's some other lessons around that but we ended up winning every race and yes a male can be on the women's rowing team only if they are a coxin and even though I was heavier than all the girls on the boat we still won and man that was for some of the best experiences of my life low and behold the next year I ended up dating one of them and then things went to crap so there's enough of us in there too there's a lot less in there for sure but yes don't do that either um no I think that's great advice would you and by the way I've I've seen this with youtubers and they do vlogmas and they just they pour everything into vlogging like every day around Christmas and yeah and and people tune in just for those a few vlogs around Christmas and that's what people love and they they wait all year for it anyway um very powerful idea would you recommend somebody do that at the beginning to gain momentum or somewhere later down the line in their journey once they've already sort of figured out their craft yes yes space it out implement them when you can of course you have to make time for them and have energy or even gather the resources if you will for those times but the trick is to figure out the balance right because if you do a power ten every week you're gonna kill yourself like imagine a boat with uh eight people who are rowing as hard as I can for the entire way I mean the halfway it's just like sprinting in the beginning of a marathon right so I think it's it's a matter of maybe you do sprint the first part just to get ahead of the pack but then you coast and you pace yourself and then by mile seven you're like okay I'm gonna take this next mile and go a little bit harder on this one but make sure to not again burn myself out and so in a very similar way we've all heard that analogy that business and entrepreneurship in life is like a marathon it's it's not a sprint however you can get ahead by sprinting everyone's in a while and that's the key here so I think it's it's it's important to implement it and and now whatever you're at right now listener consider okay well what's my version of a power ten that I can do the next couple months and then you can plan the next one after that amazing um Pat I appreciate you so much okay so I want to give people the opportunity if they do not know where to find you where to go where I mean the book will be everywhere books are sold Amazon I'm sure but website social all that where should people go and we'll put it in the show notes as well if there's any links that you want to uh let them know about I appreciate you man and like everybody listening for your time I hope this was and not just enjoyable but something that can help you and and if you do pick up the book I do appreciate it we're we're doing our best to make a run for the list this year's my first traditional published books so we'll see what happens no it's gonna do well it's gonna do very well I like I love I love I love helping people escape the matrix this is all good stuff and and because it's not just about listen there's life lessons there's uh there's there's business lessons you're a prolific creator entrepreneur but also it's that's all fun but it's about shifting the mindset around learning about the success about execution about entrepreneurship this is why for this podcast when I first started it just to give you some context I don't have to tell you my whole story but um I started this podcast with very tactical conversations about how to you know how to create an email campaign that gets a high open rate and a high click through how to run a great Facebook ads set that you know gets a great row as but I realize it all the tactical things are very important but if you don't have the right mental models in place it's very hard to succeed at anything and this is this book is full of mental models that are truly like mission critical and tag rule uh some of the most important mental models that any entrepreneur or any sort of person really has to internalize so I think it'll do quite well um thank you man that means a lot so so much I mean find me at pat plan on most social media channels every two channels same name uh as well as um smart passive income dot com which is the business where we teach other entrepreneurs how to achieve their goals and um lean learning book dot com if you're listening to this and happen to get to it before June 3rd there are some bonuses there for early pre-orders but uh either way just whenever you're listening to this I hope this is helpful I hope is valuable and I'm just super stoked for your support sky that truly means the world thank you no my pleasure man um the last idea last question that I like to just ask because you've given over so much and I know uh your your family man um you know you're trying to teach your kids is to navigate life entrepreneurship business as best you can if you add to figure out and distill all the different things that you've learned in your life down to one idea that you want to pass on to your kids and that you can pass on to your audience the most important idea around life business success entrepreneurship doesn't matter what that idea be and why just one just one just one yeah just one and you can't do this alone go out there build relationships meet other people serve others and and it just takes me back to my favorite quote from Sigzigler which is you can have anything in life you want so long as you help other people get what they want