SPI 532: Leave Your Marina

Speaker 1: Welcome to the Smart Passive Income Podcast where it’s all about working hard now so you can sit back and reap the benefits later. And now your host, he realized during the pandemic that he has everything he needs around him, Pat Flynn.

Pat Flynn: The most recent episode of the podcast, which was 531 featured Eevi Jones. Eevi is an amazing woman who writes children’s books. In fact, she’s written over 40 of them. Some her own, some that she has ghost written for others, and she helps a lot of people write their own children’s books. And I got to tell you, my brain just started going and I’m not going to talk today about my next book, which is a children’s book, because it’s not. And I’m not even going to talk to you today about books. I hope that made sense. I’m not writing a children’s book yet. I am writing a book, but it’s not a children’s book, although in a way it kind of is related to children because it’s about education. Anyway, let me not go there. 531, make sure you listen to it. What’s really interesting about Eevi’s story that stood out to me however, and I’ve gotten to know her really well through SPI Pro and she’s always showing up at the events, and she’s part of the advisory team that we have.
Well, one thing we’ve done within SPI Pro is recruited a number of people who were our early founders and first members to become almost part of a board to be able to help offer feedback and help influence the shape of and where we go with SPI Pro, and Eevi is one of those members. And I couldn’t thank her enough for that and all the great work that her and the other advisors do for SPI Pro. It’s just become the center of our business and something that we really, really love. And it’s the most helpful thing that we’ve created in such a long time. I mean, we’ve created a lot of helpful things from Heroic Online Courses this past year to all of our previous courses and workshops and audience driven. But man SPI Pro is just, the feedback we get from it is just amazing.
And again, thank you Eevi for being a part of that. But the interesting thing about Eevi’s story, which when I think about other people’s success stories, I’ve interviewed a lot of people here on the show of course. Oftentimes we find, and this is my own story too. Oftentimes we find that people are doing not necessarily what they set out to do. And I don’t mean they’re doing poorer than what they hope to do. That’s not what I mean. What I mean is, for example, for me, I set out to be an architect. Am I doing architecture today? No. In fact, one of my coaching students mentioned that she had a retreat recently in McKinney, Texas, and that rang a bell when we were having a conversation today. And I was reminded that I actually have helped design a building, a PF Chang’s in McKinney, Texas, and that just brought back a whole rush of memories.
And the crazy thing is that was in a previous life. That was pre-2008, pre-layoff. And I was all in on architecture then. Of course, I’m not doing that now. And I’ve been very grateful that I’ve gotten laid off. It didn’t feel good at the time, but it’s definitely something that I look back and I go, wow, that’s, what I’m doing now isn’t really what I set out to do and all the events and all the circumstances and things that have happened to help me get here I’m very grateful for. So yes, I’m very grateful for my layoff, the haters and trolls that have showed up and everything that has led me to this point. Yes, of course I wish I could have done things differently and better, but I’m very grateful with where I am, and that’s just something I wanted to say.
But I didn’t set out to become an entrepreneur. It was a number of different things that have happened to help me get here, but it’s not what I set out to do and then it happened. And actually that’s pretty rare. I found at least with the how do we say, the scrappy entrepreneur, right. Oftentimes the scrappy entrepreneur, which I think is a term that I mean that in a more derogatory way. I mean that in a very good way, in a very positive way. You have to be scrappy because if you take the more traditional approach of starting a business, which you might learn in business school, and I’m not trying to knock business school. But a scrappy entrepreneur figures it out as they go. It’s sort of a ready, fire, aim approach, if you will, as I once heard James Altucher say. And that’s always stuck with me because I’ve always felt like I had that approach as well, just like ready, fire, and then, aim and refire. Right?
But many of the stories here from people who were at a 9:00 to 5:00 and were trying to figure something out or just maybe got laid off like I did. And maybe started one thing because they had interested it, but then went over to another. I find that’s pretty common. And I even think about bigger companies, right? And I’m going to go to the world of Facebook for a little bit. And I know a lot of us scoff about that. I’m not going to talk about them very much, but I do want to say that for example, Instagram. Instagram did not start out as Instagram. Instagram started out as a app to take pictures of whiskey, I think. It was an app to document your whiskey journey, if you will.
I don’t remember the name of the app off the top of my head, but I do know that it was not intended for just photos and filters and communities and hashtags and all that sort of stuff. It was meant to do a very specific thing. And of course now it’s totally different. It used the mechanisms that they used to take photos of and add filters to those great pictures of whiskey. I’m a Japanese whiskey fan myself. Hibiki definitely is the one.
I also think about, what was the other one? YouTube. Did you know this? In February of I think 2004 or 2005, YouTube launched on Valentine’s Day as a dating service. People could upload videos. And remember those older videos? And I’m just imagining these old grainy videos that were on VHS with men with mullets and mustaches. And they were talking about their interests and trying to present themselves well and get a woman to call them, right? This is like, okay, now we can do this online, right? We don’t need VHS anymore. We have YouTube. So I’m going to upload my video to YouTube to hopefully get a date. This was Tinder before Tinder, but it was much less technological. It was just a video uploading service. That didn’t work for them, but then they took the technology that they had built and created YouTube.
And YouTube obviously is a part of many people’s everyday lives with billions of hours of video being uploaded every single week, if not, single day. It’s amazing how it’s taken that journey. And I think that with a lot of the things that I’ve done, when I reflect on it, I didn’t set out to do these things. I, number one, took some action, right? That’s for sure. I didn’t know I was going to be teaching podcasting. Leading up to that, taught how I built my business at greenexamacademy.com. Again, thanks to getting laid off, but I didn’t know. I didn’t have a plan per se.
I couldn’t have ever predicted I would get to where I am today. But it is something that wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t at least take a step forward and see what things were like. If I could go back and perfectly track, which I can’t do, because I don’t have that good of a memory. But if I could track every single move that I made from the moment I decided to give entrepreneurship a shot to the moment I am here with you now speaking into this microphone, I guarantee you it would be a bunch of zigzags. It would be so many zigzags, not just up and down, but left and right, and this way and in that way. It was all about adjusting, right?
It’s almost like, well, let’s just say your boat is parked in a harbor. And this world of online business is like this giant ocean. In the ocean, you can go in which direction. Right? But you have to leave the marina first before you can go to your next destination, before you go to the island that you want to go to or the fishing spot. Right? And all along the way, you want to make sure you avoid the crazy weather, so you might have some technology to help you. You might have some people who are in a community of boaters near you to help share information with each other, which I know is very common, and the analogy holds true. Right? You, number one, can’t go to these places you want to go to if you just keep your boat in the harbor. I think there was a quote that was like something about …
I’m not doing good with my memory right now with these significant quotes and whatnot. But there is a quote. Maybe you can help me publish it on Twitter and help me out @patflynn. There’s a quote about the fact that you can’t discover new land until you stop seeing the ocean on the other side. Okay. I have to pause and find this quote because that was so bad. This is real life here, everybody. Let me go grab that quote really quick. Okay, I’m back. We did a little time travel there because now you were listening to me in real time right after I spent six minutes. I timed myself. I finally found it. Right? And I can’t find who I can give credit to for this unfortunately. I think it’s, I’m going to go to the first name that I see. Christopher Columbus maybe said, “You can never cross the ocean until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.” Right?
There we go. That’s the quote I was looking for. There was a whole bunch of other quotes I found too, right? Like, “When you can’t change the direction of the wind, adjust your sails.” H. Jackson brown Jr. I like that one. That’s a good one too. So you got to get out there and lose sight of the shore, but you also got to adjust your sails at the same time. All right. So all this to say, as we approach the end of 2021 here, how are you going to move your boat outside of the marina and finally get in the ocean and lose sight of the shore knowing that there’s something better on the end? I know there’s a version of that for you. I’m not saying that you need to quit your job because some people love their job. You might absolutely love it. You might have an opportunity to do something that maybe is just a little bit scary though. Something that makes you a little bit nervous.
Perhaps it’s creating a new online course, creating a new community, and finding real people in a spot to manage and engage with and befriend. There’s a lot of good things that happen. And I think this is what should motivate you is the reward on the other end, the new land that you can discover. The opportunities that may exist there and the people that you will meet along the way. Now, you have to also remember that on this ocean that you are crossing, there are tools that can help you. Christopher Columbus used the stars and so did Moana. And I think that we have our version of those stars to guide us along the way. Those guys could be us at SPI with our free resources here on the podcast, with our number of different resources on the blog. And of course the YouTube channels that we have.
It could be a mentor that you have, right? Somebody who’s actually like a Maui to Moana. Somebody who’s actually there with you in spirit and helps you along the way and actually teaches you how to do things, right? This is analogy day here at SPI, apparently. But I’m loving it. I’m loving it. I’m crossing my own sea right now to try new things here on the show. Anyway, I’m just really enjoying this conversation because yes, we’re here at the end of the year and we at SPI have so many amazing new oceans to cross, but we’re going to cross one ocean at a time. I mean, think about it. You have one focus. You have one direction. Maybe you get off course a little bit, but you know Siri’s going to bring you back onto the course or into the trade winds that you might need or the channels of flow of water.
The current, that’s what I’m meant to say. The current. Right? To help take you to where you need to go. There are currents out there. There are things that can help you, or you could fight against the current. I’m thinking now of Crush from Finding Nemo. You need to step out of the arena or marina. You need to move forward and you need to go and find that help. And we can be that guide for you. There might be a guide out there. It might be somebody else. You might prefer to learn your courses from amazing people like Amy Porterfield and her Digital Course Academy, DCA. I know there’s a lot of listeners here who are DCA graduates, which is amazing. And we have our own versions, Heroic Online Courses to help you with your online course too. I don’t care who you go with. Go find help, get some guidance, and go make it happen.
2021 was another crazy a year for us. 2020 was obviously the start of all this craziness, but we’re not out of it yet. But there are so many people and as many people say in times of distress, in times of need, look for the helpers. There are always going to be helpers out there, and we’d love to help you too. So going back to Eevi’s story, right? Eevi did not set out to become a writer of children’s books, but because of the inspiration with her son and her encouragement with her family and her clients, it’s just what she’s done. She’s just owned it. And it’s not what she set out to do, but that’s where the current took her. And I love that. But you got to get out there to get in those currents.
I hope this pep talk pepped you up. Maybe made you laugh a little bit. Maybe made you cringe. Because sometimes I can get a little bit cringy here, but in a good way, right? I like to feel like that if I can get a little bit cringy on here, you don’t have as much to worry about because hey, if Pat Flynn can put himself on the airwaves and be weird, then what’s stopping you? I embrace my weird though. You’ve heard me say this before. You got to embrace your weird. Whatever makes you, you, just lean into that. Right? That’s what allows us to stand out.
I remember when I first started leaving the marina, I started to go, hey, how can I do things like everybody else? I’m going to follow the boat right in front of me, or I’m going to use the same exact path. But we all have different paths. And that’s why I say ocean, because there’s a lot of direction that you can go versus a road or a trail. It’s not quite as simple sometimes, but with some guidance, with some help along the way, we can make it happen for you. Anyway, thank you so much for listening in today on this Friday follow-up episode. Just speaking my mind with you today. And I’m excited because we have some fun experimental Friday episodes coming your way with some really amazing stuff that I think you’re going to be very excited about. And we’re going to get your feedback on too, because that’s what it’s about here. Right? Trying new things, experimenting, pushing our sail this way a little bit and seeing how the wind picks it up. And if not, then we’re going to try the other way. So thanks so much again.
I appreciate you. Make sure you hit subscribe if you haven’t already, because we got another great episode coming your way, and I’m just so excited for 2022. I hope you are too. Cheers. Thank you. And thank you for being of part of the community. And if you want to be a part of the SPI Pro community, you can check it out. See if you qualify and apply and get involved with the next cohort that comes in. We allow people to come in once per quarter in groups. So we make it a big deal. We have a welcoming party and all this stuff. Smartpassiveincome.com/pro. Hope to see there. Cheers, peace out. And as always, Team Flynn for the win.
Thanks for listening to the Smart Passive Income Podcast at smartpassiveincome.com. I’m your host, Pat Flynn. Our senior producer is Sara Jane Hess. Our series producer is David Grabowski, and our executive producer is Matt Gartland. Sound editing by Duncan Brown. The Smart Passive Income Podcast is a production of SPI Media. We’ll catch you in the next session.