SPI 829: The Truth About Stealing like an Artist with Todd Herman

SPI 829: The Truth About Stealing like an Artist with Todd Herman

Todd Herman: The alter ego becomes a great tool for us to bring inside our minds to give us a model of something that we’re trying to move towards because we go, “Todd has a hard time getting on calls and trying to book workshops and presentations for himself. But if he was Superman, like Superman wouldn’t have any resistance or worries about rejection, would he?” So the alter ego becomes a method and a tool to help us activate a part of our identity that we really like to bring out into the world.

Pat Flynn: Our featured guest today has become known as somebody who is synonymous with the word alter ego, especially the idea of the alter ego effect, which a lot of high performers use across all industries to perform at their best peak performance with the alter ego. This is Todd Herman, the author of The Alter Ego Effect.

However, we’re not going to talk too much about what that means. We do unpack it a little bit, and we do get into a lot of how to be a high performer and those sorts of things. But what was really interesting was that Todd and I had the chance to hang out a bit. We were together in Nashville for the author retreat that I was at, and he and I were having a discussion, and this idea and this book came up, Steel Like an Artist, and we just had a really interesting conversation. Around that. And what I love about the people in that group was, you know, you have these conversations that you don’t normally get to have elsewhere, and I was talking to Todd about this book and what it means, and he has very strong feelings, as do I, about the idea of this Steel Like an Artist and whether or not it’s okay to take somebody else’s idea.

Obviously, it’s not okay, to take credit for somebody else’s idea. But where does the line exist? And you know, it’s very blurred, especially in this world that we live in today. And what if you didn’t know you stole an idea or a framework from somebody else? Or if you subconsciously did and you know, these kinds of things happen.

So we kind of put pause on that conversation so we could pick it up again today with A button that says record so that you can listen in on that. Cause I think it’s definitely a really important conversation, especially in today’s creator economy. And Todd is very much known for protection of IP. So he has a position on it and we just discuss it.

It’s one of those things that you could be a fly on the wall and we don’t expect you to agree or even disagree, or, you know, we, we hope you have an opinion on it, but we just wanted to start this conversation so you could continue it and have your own thoughts about it too. And we’d love to hear your thoughts on it.

So. Here he is, Todd Herman. Let’s chat.

Announcer: You’re listening to the Smart Passive Income Podcast, a proud member of the Entrepreneur Podcast Network, a show that’s all about working hard now, so you can sit back and reap the benefits later. And now your host, one of his biggest pet peeves, his fingerprints on stainless steel refrigerators, Pat Flynn.

Pat Flynn: Todd, welcome to SPI. Thanks for being here, man.

Todd Herman: Mr. Flynn. Long time coming. Happy to be here.

Pat Flynn: Yeah. So we had the pleasure of actually seeing each other and meeting each other and hanging out a bit over at Don Miller’s estate for the little author mastermind, which was super fun. And you know, there was a conversation that you and I had together there that I was like, we got to stop talking so we can hit record and then bring this on the show because it was so important. Before we get to that topic, however, for my audience who doesn’t know Todd Herman and how great you are and the legend that you are and the people that you’ve helped, like, how did you get here? How would you even describe what it is you do exactly? Cause it’s so profound.

Todd Herman: Well, thank you. I call myself more of an accidental entrepreneur.

I’m not the person who like went out there and with the intention of building something. But in 1987, I sort of fell into this world of mental game and peak performance. I was a college athlete and my inner game was maybe one of my strengths. I think it was mostly because I had two older brothers who could beat the snot out of me.

And I grew up on a farm and ranch and developed some hard working skills. I had this kind of these different frameworks that I had built for myself, and I’m not physically gifted and anything like that. So I use these to get college scholarships. And then I was volunteering at a high school, spending some time with some high school football kids.

And I would spend more time talking to them about like their inner game and preparation. And they started to get great results actually in the classroom as well. And a mom one day just asked if I could mentor her son. And I said, yeah, sure. I’d love to. And then she’s like, Okay. Todd, how much do you want to charge?

And I said, Oh, how about $75 for a package of three sessions, which was my price for about three years. And then, so I started building this mental game and performance company. So that’s kind of been my world now for 30 years, I’ve built up multiple training and coaching companies. One, I scaled to be one of the largest in the world and I sold it to Real Madrid along the way.

I worked with Kobe Bryant became known as a guy who built up the alter egos and secret identities. And I wrote a yellow book that’s behind me called The Alter Ego Effect on that topic. And I discovered how really the best of the best athletes were using identity as a real mechanism to help them perform at the highest level and not just habits and, you know, working hard, but they, they really thought about, well, what’s the persona, what’s the character, what’s the identity that I need to go out there and win with.

I was just curious. I was like, wait, that’s amazing. I did the same thing. Yeah. And, you know, like any of us who loves kind of what our subject matter is, I just dove more into the subject matter and I became kind of known as the guy who builds out the alter egos of, you know, professional athletes that evolved into entertainers and professionals around the world.

So I’ve been operating in this world of kind of building training and writing books and intellectual property for almost 30 years now, and I’m very much a product of mentorship along the way. I’m a big believer in apprenticing. I’m a big believer in mentoring, and I’m a big believer in honoring those that came before you and kind of pointing back in their direction to show where kind of the source of some of your inspiration came from, because I stand on the shoulders of many giants who came before me.

Pat Flynn: Like who?

Todd Herman: Well, Jim Rohn was my first real big mentor. I, you know, and he’s Forbes magazine named him one of the top three greatest business philosophers of the 20th century. I accidentally met him. I went to an award ceremony with my uncle and sat next to Jim, didn’t know who he was. He was asking me all these questions about what is the vision you have for your life.

I was a young guy, just things that no one else asked me. Then he went up and delivered 55 minutes of the best thing my ears had ever heard. You know, he’s such a unique speaker and a storyteller. And he sat back down and I’m like, I would love to be able to do that someday. He gave me a few things to go and do next.

And that was on a Saturday. And on a Monday at 1:30, I called him back and said, I’ve done those three things. Left him a voicemail because he wasn’t home yet from his travels. And then he called me back the next day and said, you’re officially the only person who’s ever called me back. Wow. And so it just sort of established this, it wasn’t like a real mentorship. Like it wasn’t, we did a coaching call every, you know, Monday or something like that, we just stayed in dialogue with each other. He would ask me to send him video of my speeches and he would critique me and give me some tips. And then my next big mentor was Harvey Dorfman, who is the giant of the mental game industry.

He, I explicitly went after and cause his books really resonated with me. And I offered to come and kind of be his assistant. And he called me back and we, he agreed. So I went down to North Carolina and spent $28.50 a night at a motel six and maxed out my credit card so I could just be around Harvey.

Pat Flynn: Why do you think most people don’t call back when somebody like a Jim Rohn comes and gives them some advice?

What made you call back and why don’t others do it?

Todd Herman: It’s a great question. And this is, I think, a great lesson in real great mentorship. He gave me three very specific things to do. All within my capability. I was very new. I was young, but the three things he told me to go do was one, when you go home, register a business name for yourself, because I had just got done telling him kind of some things that I wanted to do.

So register a business name, go take that and go start a bank account with this or go to the bank. And, and then third was make two phone calls to people that would book you to come in and do a workshop on this topic. He didn’t say, make a list of 20 people. He said, go and call two people. It was just two.

He didn’t say three. He said two. And then even in the moment, he’s like, do you know who, do you know two people who would? And I said, yeah, and I named Eric and this other guy. And so I did all three of those things by 1:30. That’s why it was very easy dominoes for me to drop. Why don’t people end up calling back?

I think that for some people, they don’t want to bother someone else. Like they, they don’t have enough, I don’t know if it’s belief in their own ability or belief in their own capacity to add value to someone else who they perceive as being way further ahead. I think I was benefiting from ignorance like he just delivered an incredible talk to me, but I didn’t already have a big story in my head about who Jim Rohn yet, someone who might be a really huge follower of yours, Pat, if they meet you at an event and then you give them three things to go and do.

They might go do those three things, but they might not call you back because they’re like, oh, he was just being nice to me. Like he wasn’t like, and I know that to be true because some people have said that to me when I meet them like five years later after I gave them three things to go and do. And I’m like, well, why didn’t you email me?

I told you to email me. I gave you my email, or I told you to. I didn’t wanna bother you. Yeah. I didn’t wanna bother you.

Pat Flynn: You’re so busy.

Todd Herman: Yeah. And so what I know to be true, and it’s a great example from the the mastermind that you and I are both in together with the other authors.

Everyone’s very generous. They’re very kind with their sharing. And again, we all have demands on our schedule, but when you and I put together trainings for other people, there are so few that actually go and implement and then loop back and tell us that they went and implemented that when people do go and do those things, we’re like, Oh, Hey team, like, can we get this person on a call?

Can we like record the case study, the testimonial, the whatever the case is like, it’s such an easy win for other people to get into, let’s say our orbits by just simply going implementing and then letting us know that, you know, cause we want to hear that we made an impact. That’s why we do the things that we’re doing, like that someone actually took the thing.

So those are a couple of reasons why I think it worked and then why some people don’t go and, you know, loopback.

Pat Flynn: Thank you for that. With your title, Alter Ego, I know it’s been shared around quite a bit. It’s taken on a life of its own in a way, and it’s incredible what you’ve built around it. What, for those who don’t understand what that means, does that actually mean?

Is it, I can imagine a first impression might be, do you mean just fake it until you become it? Or what is it exactly?

Todd Herman: Sure. It can be that. It can be that. The alter ego in its root form, the person who coined the term was Cicero back in 44 BC and the alter ego when he was explaining it in a letter to a friend and Cicero is one of the greatest Roman statesmen and philosophers.

The alter ego means the other eye or trusted friend within. And, beautiful term. So the alter ego in the context of the way that I delivered in the book is we all know the importance of having mentors around us, friends, peers that support us, but we live 24/7 between the six inches of our ears and the alter ego becomes a great tool for us to bring inside of our minds to give us a model of something that we’re trying to move towards that might be unshackled from our own insecurities of what we think we can and cannot do because we go, Oh, well, Todd has a hard time getting on calls and trying to book workshops and presentations for himself.

But if he was Superman, like Superman wouldn’t have any resistance or worries about rejection, would he? And, and I say that because he was a part of one of my alter egos that I use to be a better promoter of my business. It was Benjamin Franklin, Superman and Joseph Campbell, the composite of those three people and their character traits that I wanted to leverage so that I could get on a phone call and actually book out workshops.

Cause I was very good at coaching, but I was terrible at marketing my business. And so Super Richard would be the ones who would get on that call. So the alter ego becomes a method and a tool to help us activate a part of our identity that we really like to bring out into the world. And people have already used this for their youth.

We do it as kids very naturally when we pretend to be our favorite superhero or our favorite athlete, when we’re out there, you know, on the front driveway competing against a brother or a friend or a sister or whatever the case is, we already play with this stuff because at our core, one of our greatest gifts, and you know, this and you talk about this all the time in your world is our creative imagination.

And so the alter ego is just a method, a tool, a concept that we can leverage to help get past our own insecurities. And there’s many other reasons why the alter ego works, but that’s one of the big things is it helps us to create a model in our own mind of what we’d like to move towards.

Pat Flynn: Yeah. Even that baseball analogy of you’re on the home plate, you point to the fences, you’re Babe Ruth.

You’re going to swing a little bit harder. You’re going to act a little bit different in that moment.

Todd Herman: Or the, the big thing is to Pat, what I remind people of. Is playfulness is the final key that unlocks peak performance. Like I’ve been teaching and coaching on getting into flow for 30 years now. And that final golden key that unlocks it is an attitude of playfulness.

There’s just nothing else that I found that can beat it. because it removes ego from the equation in that process. You’re not thinking so much about me. So when you’re pointing to the fence as Babe Ruth, if you’re doing it right, like it should loosen you up a little bit. And we need that elasticity, that adaptability, that agility in order to snap the crack of the bat against that ball in order for it to sail over the fence anyway.

Pat Flynn: I know for a fact, we as adults lose that playfulness as we grow for whatever reason, how do we get it back?

Todd Herman: Well, recognizing, I think one thing is to recognize that it is a core part of what makes us as a being on this planet, as an animal on this planet, different from the other animals, our ability to shape shift is one of our great gifts that we have to kind of reconcile that and make it a little bit more tangible for people.

If you think about it, like, how you show up when you’re around your parents and how you’re going to show up around your friends, probably two slight variations of this person that’s going to show up. And then when you think about how you show up when you’re in your business or when you’re on a podcast or when you’re on a stage or like insert the many roles that we ended up playing in business or as a creative, that makes sense too.

So just recognizing that there’s many sides of us. And as a human being, we’re naturally very creative, or we have this imagination that other things just don’t have. Will help to grease the slide towards being more playful. So it’s appreciating, like, if you really ingrain that, it’s like, now our creative imagination is the thing that makes us, there’s science to things.

And I built my business off of science, but there’s a lot of other things around the human performance and our experience. That’s very much art. Like there’s a way that, you know, you go about life that it’s artful in the way that you do it. So I think that’s one thing is to just to appreciate that. And, and then when you think about when you most come alive, or when time passes most freely for you in your week, it’s probably when you’re being very playful. Whether it’s gameplay with your kids, gameplay with a friend, like, so playfulness keeps on showing up as a theme.

And if that’s the case, then how can we activate that more in our life? And just asking ourselves that question, how can I end up being more playful in the most important activities in my day, my week, my month?

Pat Flynn: I saw a fascinating interview yesterday, and it was somebody who was teaching the other person how to play D&D, you know, Dungeons and Dragons.

Yeah. This person who was so, not against it, but just like, I don’t know, it’s just a game and it’s like, you know, you’re like a creature and you’re going around fighting these other creatures. Yeah. Yeah. And then the woman was just like, let’s just play. And he’s like, okay, when do you want to play? Right now.

And so she created this scenario. And all of a sudden Shane, or I call him Shane because he was an actor on Walking Dead. He just sat up in his chair and started to play along and just all these new things and stories. And you could tell he was getting into it and they were getting into a flow state on what was happening.

And he was just like, wait, this, this is it. Like we’re playing right now. And she’s like, yeah, it was just such a cool thing to see happen in real time because he was prompted to just go with it. To just. that have no rules. And it was kind of inspiring.

Todd Herman: Why do you think that worked so well specifically for Shane?

Pat Flynn: Because the, what is this? Why, what do I do here? We’re put aside for the specific next task in the story, which was, okay, this owl bear was coming at you. What do you do? He was like put into the moment and he had no time to think about like, this is weird or, you know, am I, am I not going to be good at this anymore?

She just gave him permission to just go with the story and you know, all those rules kind of went out the window.

Todd Herman: Yeah. I think another thing that goes along with it too is he comes from a world of acting where when you’re going through any sort of acting school, you’re always going to be prompted to just play the part, play the role, to be playful. And so she was leveraging an already existing mental model that he was already very, very accustomed with as well.

Pat Flynn: Yes, I’ll have to search for those actors names because I want to make sure I give them credit. Speaking of giving credit, let’s actually shift to this part of the story here or their interview.

The topic that came up at this event that we were at, and then when we were poolside afterwards was this book that was written by Austin Kleon. Very famous book. A lot of us know it just by name, Steal Like An Artist, and this idea of there’s nothing new that exists and everything is taken from something else.

So, like, how do we manage as creators to create when everything is in a way already been created. And I think a lot of people, and this is where you and I sort of started talking, it’s like, okay, we, we read the title of this book and it’s like Steal Like An Artist. Okay. Therefore it kind of is okay to do that.

Like you’re going to take from somebody else and you kind of just put your personality on top of it. Where’s the line. It gets blurred. And I know you have a lot of strong opinions about this. I’d love to know your take on this idea of Steal Like An Artist is. And what that means and what is okay and what is not.

This is a big struggle. I know a lot of my students and listeners have because we often feel like we don’t have anything new to offer. Therefore, we don’t take action even.

Todd Herman: Sure. So the title itself is the thing that is misleading to people. So, cause they take it so literally, right. They don’t read the book.

They read the title. Yeah. Which can be the case today. Well, let’s go back to like how people can reconcile this in their own creative mode is you will never ever go wrong if you attribute back to other people. By the way, if you want to know how to like build relationships with people who might be further along than you then say their names. People that know me and my world know how I am an absolute hawk on intellectual property protection. Why? Well, one, it’s because that’s a part of the business model that I have. It’s one of the three most important activities in a thought leader business model. I need to protect my intellectual property and these frameworks and models that I’ve built out over now three decades of hard work that I did at, A, working with people one on one.

So the idea that someone can just come in and, and take that thing and try to put a new name on it when it’s literally protected, you’ll hear from my lawyers because there’s a very robust system that my, my team has in place. And people have been poked at the sharp end of that stick. And there’s no apologies from me on that.

Like, I mean, I’m not going to go steal from someone else. And I love attributing and honoring other people who have created something. And you know, if there was an idea that I had where I wanted to really expand on something or take, maybe a little bit more than just the picture that Pat created and I wanted to use more of his content.

I would 100 percent go back to you and say, hey Pat, we’re thinking about expanding this or sharing this part inside of a book. Would you be okay with that? Or what would be the conditions that you would place around that, if any? And wait for you to get back so that we can do it properly because I know how much work went into like when I find amazing IP models, whatever frameworks I’m I appreciate the amount of hard thinking work that went into creating that.

So the idea that the creator economy has, sort of, I think inadvertently created is that everything on the internet is a free for all for you to just go grab, you know, put your name on it, crop it so that you can’t see Todd’s name or Pat’s name anymore, and then go and reshare it because it’s about speed of creation is just patently false.

It’s, it’s not the way that it works. And then you’re going to end up bumping up against someone like me who fights for their stuff. And then you’re in trouble. So I think in the creator economy world, it’s the pace that people think that they need to be pumping things out without honoring or attributing back to the original person that gets some people in trouble.

Pat Flynn: Credit is really important. First of all, Debra Ann Wohl and John Bernthal are the two actors that I want to make sure I give credit to for that conversation earlier as we’re talking about this fascinating video and podcast, you know, Real Ones is the name of the podcast, where you can check that out. But where this becomes tough is As a creator on this side, it’s like, how do I know that I’m not infringing on somebody else’s stuff if there’s stuff that’s already been done and it’s out there, like I almost am afraid of sharing a framework that I come up with because I don’t know if somebody has already come up with it and I’m just putting a different name on it because even if I create, and there’s also the whole subconscious, like maybe I actually did here from somebody else, and I just didn’t know like a joke that a comedian will tell because they heard a joke similar, but they just didn’t register that, you know, they thought they came up with it, but it was subconsciously something that they heard somewhere else. It’s it gets really blurry and almost scary for creators, and I do agree important to protect your stuff, and it’s always important to credit those who you know that you got it from somewhere else.

But is there any wiggle room even?

Todd Herman: Absolutely. There’s wiggle room in that right from the get go, having the attitude that if I do publish something and someone does reach out to me and says, Hey, by the way, that was originally so and so’s stuff. And I go, Oh, I had no idea. I am happy to place an attribution on that person.

Thank you so much for letting me know. Properly, you know, attributing to others is, is important to me. Knowing that that’s going to be a response that you have back. This is actually a part of kind of like the mental toughness world that I’ve been helping people with for a long time, where some people build up anxiety and worry and stress.

Not because of the success that they hope that they have, but because of what they don’t know is coming towards them by pursuing whatever it is. But if you know that no matter what, you’re going to be honoring a certain set of values at all times, I’m humble enough to know that, or there’s a humility in knowing that I love attributing back to my mentors because I just don’t think that I alone created whatever success I’ve had.

Like the idea that I throw punches at self made person, self made man, self made woman all the time. None of us are self made. We’re community made, we’re country made. Like there’s so many other factors that go into our successes. But I think if you prepare yourself ahead of time with Oh, like if I ever do share something and I think that I did make it and then Someone says no that was actually someone else’s then you’re prepared for the response back to that is that in and of itself is helpful for many people.

Pat Flynn: And just owning up some mistakes as a part of this as well.

I think a lot of people get very defensive and doing the research I think is important to on the front end of this.

Todd Herman: There’s also different ways of being a creator to Pat. Like there’s someone who is an amplifier of existing ideas, right? Where it’s like, in fact, a client of mine I won’t say their name, but they own arguably one of the biggest leadership companies in America.

But I think they’re north of nine figures now a year. They didn’t create one framework in their leadership company. What they do is they go out and they curate the best leadership content from some of the best leadership books out there. They then ping, insert the name of whoever that is, Patrick Lencioni or, you know, from five functions of a team and et cetera, and they sometimes allow their license the material or they just have permission to be able to use certain parts of that framework, and then they build workshops and trainings for corporate environments.

And they scaled that on the back of the leader of that company, never inventing any content. They are amplifiers of it because in his view, there’s just so much great stuff that’s already out there. I don’t need to go and create something that’s new. I’m going to amplify it. And so there’s, it could be a Twitter account.

It could be a YouTube channel. Someone saying, Hey, I read The Alter Ego Effect book and Todd Herman wrote it and I just want to give you a taste of what’s in it. If you went and you republished all of my book, well, Harper Collins is going to also reach out to you as well, the publisher, but those are amplifiers and I think that’s actually one of the fastest ways for someone to flex their creative muscle is learning how to amplify existing ideas and attributing back as well.

There’s this, I don’t know, Pat, there’s just this huge race that happens nowadays to be super, super unique right from the get go when you have very little, if no experience underneath your belt with a certain topic category.

Pat Flynn: I love this curation and amplification mode because it makes it a win for everybody.

I mean, it’s not like Patrick Lencioni is not benefiting from somebody else than amplifying the brand and you know, the licensing deals that happen there. It’s, it can be a win for everybody. And that’s the kind of marketing that I love to do. And there’s also the idea of going into different verticals.

We talked about this a little bit at that mastermind event, right? If you have a particular method or framework, then like go and find somebody who can teach that same thing. If that is yours to a particular group of people, Hal Elrod’s Miracle Morning for real estate, right? And those kinds of things. So you could become that person who helps amplify in a particular vertical because that person’s already so busy and spread more thin.

You can laser focus that and not even have to create anything new. You’re just fine tune and tailoring it, yeah, to a certain group of people. So I completely agree with you in terms of as a creator, you are creating momentum, not necessarily new stuff. And I love that. But on the other side of this, I also know that there are many people listening who need to call something their own and would not want to go down that amplification route because it would be just more of what somebody else has done.

And for some people, that’s not enough. They need their own thing. And there’s two sides of that. There’s taking stuff that exists, remolding it and reshaping it to then call their own. And then there’s also the idea of like, okay, I’m going to, I’m going to be in a black box and not have anything interfere with my wavelengths so that whatever it is that I do create and write or publish or record is in fact coming from an absolute source of just me, and that’s tough, but that can be done as well.

Todd Herman: Can it though? Can it though? Because when we say the absolute source of me, you are a mixture of all the things that have happened before you. And yeah, and so there’s sources of inspiration that came to you, points along whatever your pathway is.

That’s why I say, like, there’s no such thing as self made.

Pat Flynn: Sure. How does I, just as to play devil’s advocate, I come out with an email marketing course. And I go, okay, everybody, this is Pat Flynn’s email marketing course, which I have one, you know, by the way, before you watch any of this, I want to make sure I give credit to where credit is due, I need to give credit to the person I learned email from.

Who’s this person I need to give credit to people who taught them. I also need to credit. Just email in general. And the person who invented the internet and all these people who, if they didn’t exist, I wouldn’t be here teaching this to you today. That’s kind of ridiculous. And obviously I don’t do that.

Yeah. So where is the line in that? And, you know, cause it could get really mushy.

Todd Herman: But just semantically delivering it that way wouldn’t make sense. I had a friend who saw some videos that I put out in the mid 2010s about attribution and, and calling people out for not giving credit where credit is due.

And so they happened to see me speak at an event and they were, they, they said, I was actually coming there too. When I saw you on the speaker dock and I was coming there to kind of catch you in your own thing. And they said, I counted you drop 23 different names. of people, whether it’s in quotes or whether it’s in who you’re inspired by or mentored by and stuff.

And I just hadn’t seen someone, and this isn’t about pumping me up. And, and I was like, yeah, it’s one of my favorite things to do is to honor people who came before me, but it’s not, at the very least, I don’t, I don’t say, Hey, this speech was brought to you by Jim Rohn and Harvey Dorfman and, you know Clayton Christensen and all that it’s sort of sprinkled in throughout.

So let’s say in this email marketing course that you do have and you say, so one of the strategies that you can use in your email marketing is something that I saw Andre Chaperon teach, which is something called the soap opera sequence. And it’s, brilliant. He’s such an amazing storyteller. And the way that you structure your emails is you leave it like a soap opera does, where you create an open loop at the bottom of your email, which then draws people into and naturally wanting to click to the next email.

Ergo, that great book that you read fiction wise. It could be, you know, the Jack Reacher series when you’re like, okay, I’m only going to read one more chapter. And then you’re like, well, I just got done this one and I’ve got to go read the next chapter. But you simply sharing that you were inspired from Andre Chaperon and his concept of soap opera sequence, which I’m giving the opportunity for that person to go, because if they’re diving deep on email marketing, the chances of them only staying inside of Pat Flynn’s email marketing course, very slim, not in today’s day and age.

They’re also me big and they’re like, great. And then someone goes and buys Andre Chaperone’s and I hope Andre gets the message from the saying, Oh, I heard Pat Flynn message you. I started reading your stuff and it’s brilliant and your concepts on world building are amazing. Because he does, Andre talks about world building and he does such a great job of talking.

That’s what I would do.

Pat Flynn: I like that example. How do you help a person mentally through the idea of, okay, well, if I were to mention this person in my course, you know, I think maybe the answer is okay. First ask permission to share that strategy. Maybe just to make sure you get sign off. So a little story.

I’m not gonna mention any names. But when I created my podcasting course, you know, I wasn’t the first person to create a podcasting course. There were a number of other podcasting course. In fact, that I drove people to and I was an affiliate for several. However, I had many, many people ask me, Pat, I need you.

I need, I want to learn from you. I like your style. I trust you. I don’t really trust those other people. Not that I don’t trust them. I just don’t know them. I know you. I want to hear from you. So it’s okay. So I created my podcasting course and I reach out to a couple people who I know who also had podcasting courses.

Person one was living in the world of abundance. This is great, Pat. Finally, like I knew you were eventually going to do it one day and people want to hear from you. They were super supportive. So they were cool with it. The other person thought I was taking food off of their family’s plate and it crushed me, absolutely crushed me.

And I felt guilty about it.

Todd Herman: I think I actually know who that was too.

Pat Flynn: I was feeling like I did the wrong thing, even though I know I was doing it for the right reasons. I felt like I turned my back on this person because they were definitely somebody who had helped influence me as well. And I felt like I was taking it to another level and taking it in a different path for my own audience.

That’s right. How do you read that situation?

Todd Herman: I don’t see that as conflict. Like podcast is such a broad category. So, well, just to answer that, I just don’t, I don’t see that as, is the question, how does the person that’s listening right now, when they come to that point, reconcile that choice. If you were to go out and create a podcasting course, that is a direct rip off module and lesson wise as someone else, well, then I think it’s pretty obvious, but you, you had been podcasting for such a long time.

You’d built up an audience and you’d built up that trust. So it’s, it’s kind of natural that when you have success in a category or an area, there is a desire for other people to want to figure out why, how did you do it? How would you, like, how would you go and create that?

Pat Flynn: I mean, I put my own methods in it and everything, you know, so yeah, maybe I’m just wrongfully asking you to help me feel better about the situation.

Todd Herman: Yeah. I mean, I bought your podcasting course way back in the day too. So, well, thank you. And I’ve owned many podcasting courses that I’ve purchased for our team to like, Hey, because all I need, you know, when you get to certain levels of leverage, let’s say not even just success, but leverage, like I’m buying things for the team all the time because all I need is just one good idea that’s gonna, you know, create an efficiency or be more effective for us or something. But. I would say just to answer it in a broad term, that’s a natural part of the evolution for most of us in our domains is that there’s going to be a demand from your audience at some point in time to ask you to do it.

Now you need to figure out, is that actually even a smart product or business move for my, for my business? Because people ask me to make stuff all the time and I’m like, I’m not going to touch that.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, right.

Todd Herman: Not because I don’t like the category or the like the topic. It’s just that it would be massively distracting for me and the team to go and do that.

Pat Flynn: I think it’s also healthy to happen because it just ultimately things get better because they continue to differentiate and offer more value to the end user and so therefore the products are just getting better you know and it almost forces a person to think, okay, well, this is the case. How can I make sure mine stands out and is different?

You know, in the end, we’re all friends now and you know, everybody’s happy. And in fact, it turned out to be an amazing thing. Everybody’s successful now as a result of this. So this is great.

Todd Herman: One of the things that you and I had talked about and you had, it was actually when you jumped in and said, okay, like let’s do a podcast on this thing was to going back to devil’s advocate and whatnot.

When you become known for a concept, like I’m universally known for alter egos, like That book wasn’t written yet. And so that’s why the idea that there are no new ideas. no one else had to that point discovered that this is a method that some of the top performing people out there are using.

There have been stories about whether it’s, you know, David Bowie and Ziggy Stardust and, you know, lots of other people that have used alter egos, but no one had put it together that this is an actual device that’s built into the human psyche and that there is actually a method that you can follow for this and I’m the one who put that together.

And the reason is because of the amount of one on one coaching hours that I was doing across many different sports. So that was why I kind of stayed hidden. Was you kind of needed to be operating at a certain level in sport and across many sports in order to find it. If I just stayed in hockey or I just stayed in tennis, I wouldn’t have discovered that there is this thread that’s there.

You know, it’s great to be known and having a brand then being Mr. Alter Ego or, or whatever. So you and I were talking, I said that there’s a very famous creator that’s on Twitter and LinkedIn and he did a Twitter thread and he simply changed alter ego to character. And now I actually own trademarks around character building and stuff as well, because that was one of its original names back in the mid 2000s.

But the source of the Twitter thread was all content pulled straight from the book with no attribution back to me. Now you can have all the Twitter followers and LinkedIn followers you want, but I also have a lot of relationships. Cause I’ve built them up over the course of 30 years. The first comments in that thread were, I liked this the first time when I read it in Todd Herman’s book, The Alter Ego Effect, or how could you not tag Todd Herman in this?

And the person, you know, played ignorant on it and that only caused more issues for them. So that’s the area of the creator world that I have real issues with. Is that people who think they can get away with it, and they actually don’t go and eat food off of my plate because I can handle myself. I’m okay. That it’s when they’re going after the smaller creator or the smaller thought leader who doesn’t have the leverage that I would have that I get upset for. So it’s, I’m, I’m not necessarily fighting for Todd. I can handle myself just fine. It’s those other people. And then to your point about the creators that are in your world, that’s actually one of the bigger sources of consternation or pain or frustration for them is people taking their stuff that are bigger than them, and they have no source of recourse because if they go and complain, people do this line, which I think is categorically toxic that people only punch up.

They don’t punch down.

Pat Flynn: Expand on that for me a little bit.

Todd Herman: Well, the idea there is that the only people that are complaining about others are the ones who are quote more successful than them because people who are at the top, they don’t ever worry about punching down at other people. Yeah, they do. How they punch down at other people is they step on their heads.

They take their stuff and they redeploy it as their own. And because I’ve got a bigger audience or because I’ve got a bigger economy of my own or more money or whatever, no one’s going to challenge me on it because I’ve got that veneer of larger success. Plus I have the paradigm of, Oh, they’re only punching at me because I’m above them.

And that is such a lack of integrity way of looking at life. I’ll punch at anything. I don’t care about up down or whatever. If there’s a bad paradigm, a bad idea, it’s my responsibility as a leader of thought to point out the misconception or the mistruth or whatever it is.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, it’s fascinating. A lot of people do swing those big numbers around and leverage that and get away with a lot.

Todd Herman: They do. They do. Even in my world, like we have a lot of very similar friends and I’m okay with, you know, being known as someone who might be challenging or difficult, but I’m not unkind to people. I’m not a jerk for the sake of being a jerk, but I will call out a hypocrisy if I see it. I don’t care who’s saying it.

And then I won’t allow someone else to say, Oh, the reason you’re calling out the hypocrisy is because that person has more followers than you. It’s like, you think that’s why you think that’s why I’m calling it? Oh, is because that person has more followers than me that I don’t know if they were purchased or not.

Pat Flynn: It’s, it’s clear that you have values and you act upon them. And it’s not just for show. It’s not just words on the wall. Like you actually will act on that. And I think that’s important. I think more people need to actually demonstrate what they believe in. So anyway, I think this is a, I mean, we could go on and it’s not even a debate if you want to call it that it’s, it’s a conversation so we can better understand the world we’re living in today because things like you said are coming out so quickly and everybody’s going to be a creator.

I think I had heard this one investor say that they were going to, they believe that in 50 years everybody will be working for themselves. You know, everybody will be a micro entrepreneur and I, and I, I can see that for sure, or at least things headed toward that way. And this stuff is just going to be amplified even more.

Todd Herman: Yeah. It’s a super nuanced conversation. And I, I think just as a takeaway from my own experience and then mentoring many other like thought leaders or creators, influencers, whatever on the subject is just know who you are, know how you want to operate and that it’s never cost me a thing to with honor point to someone else and say like, man, Harvey Dorfman, I mean, I built up a far larger business than my mentor did, but I still think he’s the giant of the mental game industry.

And, you know, people ask me who was on the Mount Rushmore? I never put my face on that Mount Rushmore. It would just be egotistical of me to say it anyway, but it’s like, you know, Harvey’s up there, Sir John Robinson, there’s, there’s many other people that are there. And it’s, I love pointing back at them.

Pat Flynn: I think it’s a good reminder for everybody to, I think a lot of us might not even consider how we got here because we’re just so in the moment and trying to build the next thing. And a lot of people know, I try to do my part in giving credit to where credit is due as well. I can’t stop talking about how internet Business Mastering a podcast from back in the day, Jason and Jeremy, the host of those shows who don’t even do that anymore, like how vital that was for me in that moment in time, and I’ve heard and still continue to hear many people credit me for, for their starter story or their podcast.

It’s just incredible. Like, it feels great. And I, I want to do better at that. And I think this is a great reminder.

Todd Herman: Pat, I think, and I think one of the things for you just, sorry, I know we’re going to wrap up, but one of the, one of the best things that you brought into the digital marketing space was a new avatar for the way that you can show up in the digital marketing space without being a A loud mouth marketer, let’s say, or someone who is very over the top or gregarious or extroverted.

It’s like you brought a certain energy to it, which invited, I think it opened up the market and brought in more people to say, Oh, there’s a different type of archetype that you can be successful with online. And it’s not only this type of person that can go and be successful. There’s, there’s other ways that you can go about that.

And maybe they just didn’t see the other people that were out there, but that was one of the great gifts I think that you gave to the market and the industry was just bringing your way to, to the market.

Pat Flynn: Thank you, Todd. That, that means a lot, you know, it’s been 15 years now for me, 16, actually, and my son who was born kind of right around the time I started is in high school now, he’ll be, you know, graduating in a few years and it’s just, I have so much to thank for, for the business that I have online. To be able to spend more time with them to know that I’ve been a good example, especially for a lot of other families to be able to spend more time with each other is just so meaningful. I think, you know, I often look at the next part of the adventure before I start to celebrate kind of the one that I just went on.

So I appreciate that because I move pretty fast and I yeah, forget that sometimes. So yeah, I’m honored.

Todd Herman: That, that narrative isn’t just my own. It’s many other people have said the same thing about you, and I know there’s a lot of people that are in my world, in my community that, you know, have extreme reverence for you.

So I think that’s an incredible contribution that you made.

Pat Flynn: Thank you, Todd. And I know that you’d call me out on my BS too if it, if, if it were to ever show up.

Todd Herman: I just haven’t found any man. I just, so I can’t.

Pat Flynn: But if it does happen, I fully expect a bashing, and I have given that permission to my audience as well, so I’m grateful to have stayed within the boundary so far, and I plan to continue to do that.

Well, appreciate it todd. Where can people go to learn more from you? Obviously, Alter Ego Effect, your keystone book that people should pick up if they haven’t already, or listen to it on Audible. But Where can people go to find out more about what you got going on? Or what are some of the projects we can look forward to coming from you?

Todd Herman: So ToddHerman.me is my home base on the internet, which, you know, directs people off to the different worlds that I operate inside of. @Todd_Herman is, you know, where I’m at on Twitter and Instagram. And I mean, I, I always appreciate it when someone, whether they screenshot the Spotify or whatever app you’re listening to this on or watching this on, and you share whether it’s a favorite takeaway and tag or what you disagree with, because that’s fine to 100 percent or even if you don’t share it, just DM me. And I, I love getting those messages of, you know, feedback or, you know, thanks for saying this, or I don’t agree with you. And then the other big project that I’m working on is UpCoach.com. I love the coaching industry.

I’ve been in it for a really long time. And so we’re, we’re, we’ve been building out a platform now for four years to help coaches deliver more powerful programs for people that are in this space because the delivery side has been, is always the more challenging part of the business model than the front end marketing.

So that’s been a really fun way to give back to the world in which I’ve come up in.

Pat Flynn: That’s awesome, man. We’ll have all the links at the show notes page. Thank you, Todd. This has been an absolute pleasure and honor, and I look forward to to seeing you again soon. I hope.

Todd Herman: Absolutely. Cheers, buddy. Cheers.

Pat Flynn: I absolutely love that discussion with Todd.

In fact, after we hit end on that recording, we just talked about how fun it was to talk about such a narrow topic that often doesn’t get discussed or discussed openly or as deeply. And I want to do more of that here on the show, but I’m so grateful that you were able to make it here to the end. And I’m so grateful for Todd and his time today, and would love to hear your thoughts on this topic.

Whether it’s It’s on social or or elsewhere a DM would love to hear your thoughts because it’s something that I’m still always continuing to learn from and I’m just so grateful for the opportunity in the platform to be able to have these discussions which are very very important. So thank you. Definitely check out Todd’s stuff and if you haven’t already check out his book Alter Ego Effect and download that listen to it and absorb it.

I love it. I love Todd’s stuff so much, and I need to talk about it more on the show because he’s definitely a wealth of knowledge and a great inspiration to many. Thank you so much for listening in. I appreciate you. Head on over to SmartPassiveIncome.com/session829. Again, SmartPassiveIncome.com/session829 for more links, resources. And look out for more episodes coming soon. Make sure you subscribe, look forward to serving you next week. Cheers.

Thank you so much for listening to the Smart Passive Income podcast at smartpassiveincome. com. I’m your host, Pat Flynn, sound editing by Duncan Brown, and our executive producer is Matt Gartland. The Smart Passive Income podcast is a production of SPI Media and a proud member of the Entrepreneur Podcast Network.

Catch you next week.

Transcribed by https: otter. ai