A small, quick win. It’s one of the most powerful things you can offer somebody who’s coming across your brand for the first time. It’s something I talk a lot about in my book Superfans. It even takes up an entire chapter in Charles Duhigg’s book The Power of Habit.
On Wednesday I spoke with Jaspreet from Minority Mindset, one of my favorite YouTube channels. I stumbled onto the channel via a YouTube recommendation, watched the video, and got a quick win from some of Jaspreet’s helpful mortgage refinancing formulas.
That quick win was so helpful that I dove right into everything else the channel had to offer.
That’s the power of the small, quick win—it can help quickly lock attention to your brand. It can take someone from, “I don’t know who this person is,” to, “Oh my gosh, I need to binge-watch or listen or read everything here because it matches what I need perfectly.”
SPI 566: The Most Underrated Way to LOCK ATTENTION to Your Brand
Announcer: 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, if he could go back to the past, he’d become an actor in Back to the Future, Pat Flynn.
Pat Flynn: A small, quick win. It’s one of the most powerful things that you could offer somebody who’s come across your brand for the first time. And it’s something that I talk about quite deeply inside of Superfans. It is an entire chapter in Charles Duhigg’s book The Power of Habit. And again, we’re talking about the power of the small, quick win. I’m going to tell you a story that I tell inside of Superfans, and I tell this on stage as well, but I wanted to share it here with you because we just spoke with Jaspreet from Minority Mindset. One of my favorite YouTube channels, and I’m remembering exactly how I caught onto this channel. It was recommended to me by YouTube. So thank you, YouTube. Watched a video, it was very much related to what I was going through in terms of investments that I wanted to make and the housing market and all this stuff.
Pat Flynn: And I found Jaspreet and I watched the video and he gave me a quick win. He actually gave me some formulas and things that I could use to determine … I’m not going to get into the super details right now, but it had to do with my mortgage and refinancing and all this stuff. And it was so helpful that I just dove right into everything else that they had to offer. And I’m a fan, I’m a fan of Jaspreet and Minority Mindset and that brand and I look to him for inspiration, especially when it comes to YouTube and building a brand related to money-related topics. Right. And I do the same thing at the Pat Flynn channel on YouTube, mostly around entrepreneurship, not necessarily just money, and it’s a challenge to build a brand in that space. So I look to Jaspreet, but the power of the small, quick win, it can take you from, “I don’t know who this person is.” To, “Oh my gosh, I just need to binge watch or binge listen or binge read every single thing here, because it just matches exactly what I need perfectly.”
Pat Flynn: And it could also change your mind about somebody too. When I was in architecture, this was before I got laid off in 2008, before I ever knew I was going to be an entrepreneur. I actually was a big personal finance, super nerd. And by that, I mean, I subscribed back when RSS feeders were like a thing, I subscribed to over 40 different personal finance websites. Like I wanted all of them, because there could have been one golden nugget in one of them, I could have enjoyed. From Simple Dollar to J.D. Roth’s Get Rich Slowly, to mymoneyblog.com, which that one in particular was very interesting because, they would openly share their investments like down to the ticker and down to the penny.
Pat Flynn: And they didn’t reveal who they were, but that inspired my income reports that I started running in October 2008 on Smart Passive Income, once I had gotten laid off and built my own business and brand. So, big shout out to mymoneyblog.com and whoever’s behind that, then there was Mr. Money Mustache and all these other bloggers that came. But I was subscribed to all of them, except for one, there was one in particular that I was not a fan of. And it was this little website called iwillteachyoutoberich.com. And it was ran by this aggressive, seemingly arrogant guy named Ramit Sethi, who by the way has been on the show before, but I’ll get there. So I wasn’t a fan. His work was very aggressive. It was very different than the others. It was very much against the grain and it didn’t sit with me very well.
Pat Flynn: So I didn’t subscribe. But one day there was this blog carnival, which I don’t know if you’ll remember what blog carnivals were, but it was where different bloggers would get together and share links with each other and share articles and would kind of cross promote and link like this big, giant web. It’s kind of hard to explain, but I remember there were several articles I read during one blog carnival, that all mentioned Ramit’s website and in particular, a specific post. And this post was one that was titled something like, Save 15% on your Cable Bill in 15 minutes. So it was very much like a GEICO commercials, but I mean, there’s a reason why that caught my attention. It was like, “Oh, 15 minutes, that’s it?” I mean, this is probably why GEICO uses this as their tagline, because, “Oh, it just takes 15 minutes.” That’s a quick win. Right? Anyway, I’m intrigued because some of my favorite bloggers are actually referencing this article and saying they tried what Ramit said to do and it worked and I just couldn’t believe it.
Pat Flynn: So I said, “You know what? I got 15 minutes, during lunch. I’m going to do what he says.” And in this article, he said to call the cable company, your phone company, or even your video cable company, your TV company, and you follow the script that he lays out for you. And this script goes through the process of pretending to cancel or wanting to cancel, or actually asking for a reduction in the price point. And it actually working. Right. You can’t just ask for it upfront. There’s a specific sequence that he takes you through. And it worked. I was able to save over 15%, actually, I think it was over 20% in like a 20 minute conversation.
Pat Flynn: And I couldn’t believe it, like, “Oh, it was that simple. I could have just done this the whole time.” And I was blown away. And of course my personal finance brain was like, “Okay, he just saved me hundreds of dollars a year in extrapolating that over like my lifetime, that was tens of thousands of dollars, that Ramit saved me in literally 15 minutes.” That’s how I was thinking about it, which is kind of true when you think about it. Right? So I was hooked. I mean, I opened myself to … like, my body was ready for all things on Ramit’s blog. That’s a weird thing to say. Because when you think about it, 15 minutes, he was able to save me, what in my head was hundreds, if not thousands of dollars over a period of time. Compare that to everybody else who was telling me to put away $20 to $25 in my nest egg account for 40 years, until I retired, to tell me to stop having my Frappuccinos and put that money aside in a little bank account or inside of mutual funds that could increase over time.
Pat Flynn: And at least be a little bit above inflation or better than what you might get at the bank with a CD, certificate of deposit. Who’s more attractive in this situation, the 40 years until you can see the results, or the person who helped me save literally hundreds of dollars in the next year, or multiple dozens of dollars in just the next month? Ramit, for sure. So he and I have since connected, because we’re both entrepreneurs and I got connected with him at an event called FinCon and I saw him speak and thankfully I was prepared for what was coming, because I knew his style and I dove into his stuff. And I don’t think the audience was prepared, because Ramit definitely drew a line in the sand and said, “Hey, for all you people who are just frugal and you’re coupon cutting and all this stuff, you’re just doing it wrong.
Pat Flynn: He created this, some of you may have even been there, but let me paint a picture for you. 400, 500 people in the audience, Ramit is giving the keynote and everybody in the audience is a financial blogger. Like the ones I used to follow, who are all about retiring and IRAs and 401(k)s and SEPs and Roths and all that kind of stuff. Right? And he goes up on stage and basically bashes everybody without calling any names in particular, not even mentioning any brands, but he created this parody video to talk about how just ridiculous some of their frugalness is. And it definitely wasn’t like my style, but I couldn’t help but laugh a little bit with just how upfront he was about what he thought was true in that space and what he knows is true. And what I know to be true as well, which is, you want to go for the big wins, big wins are worth way more than the little tiny savings that you have here and there.
Pat Flynn: And he did, it was like a, “Hey, why use toilet paper? Just grab the leaves off a tree. And now you have free toilet paper for life. And the tree regrows, its leaves every single year.” It was just like kind of ridiculous. And it was really offensive to a lot of people. And I even was like, “Wow, okay, wooh, this is going to be responded to well.” But I still have remembrance of that moment and just how clear Ramit was with who he knew he was, but also what he knew to be true in the space.
Pat Flynn: Anyway, that’s why I think a lot of people, including myself were just not okay with the brand, up front. And it was a small, quick win that got me through to him. And then since then we connected at that event because we were both keynotes and then we stayed in connection with each other through mutual friends and just online in general. And you know, we are really good friends now. He’s been on the podcast. I did a walk-about podcast with him in New York in the freezing weather. Caleb was around following us with microphones and we were just walking around the streets of New York together in the frigid cold. I’ve been an affiliate for his stuff and he’s talked about my stuff before and we trade DMs and Instagrams and text messages every once in a while. He’s just a great guy.
Pat Flynn: I mean, he really, really cares about his audience and understanding that you got to not worry about saving money on the cappuccinos, but worry about the big wins. The big wins are starting a business. The big wins are getting a raise at your job or getting a promotion, right. And then living your version of your rich life. That’s also something I resonate with as well. Anyway, you see how long I’ve been talking about Ramit. It was the small, quick win that got me to get to this point. So, I want to ask you, what small, quick wins are you offering your audience right now? And as I say in the book Superfans, and as I say on stage, if you’ve heard me talk about this before, if you want to change somebody’s life, start by changing their day first, right? If you want to change somebody’s life, start by changing their day first.
Pat Flynn: And I hope this episode has proven to be a small, quick win for you so that you can take whatever it is that your audience needs, find what step one might be, or even step zero, what would be something that would then qualify them to then get into your stuff and give them a small, quick win. Give that thing away for free, make it easy. Something that could be done in a day, 15 minutes, make it as easy as possible. And then from there you can take them on that journey to bigger transactions, to bigger wins and to bigger acts of service. So anyway, thank you so much for listening in. I appreciate you and a big shout out and thank you to Jaspreet from Minority Mindset. Definitely check them out on YouTube. Minority Mindset is the name of the YouTube channel.
Pat Flynn: And you can also listen to the episode, episode 565, a really, really great origin story with Jaspreet and how he’s built his empire that is more than just a YouTube channel today, but a newsletter and services and potentially an app. Really, really amazing things and I hope you check it out. So, that’s episode 565, one right before this one. And again, I can’t wait to see you in the next episode and thank you for listening to little old me on these Fridays. It’s just you and me here and I look forward because we have a number of Teaching Fridays coming up. We have a number of people who are members of the community who have stepped up to create episodes that will live here on the SPI Podcast to teach their expertise to you, because this community is just so great. There’s way more than just me here. There is this amazing team at SPI, but more than that, there’s this community of incredible entrepreneurs, each with their own stories and experiences to share.
Pat Flynn: And we talk about these things all the time in SPI Pro. So I recommend you check out SPI Pro because we’re coming up to the point at which we’re going to be opening up the floodgates, once again, for another enrollment period. We enroll people once per quarter and this will be the last time that you’re going to see it at this lowest price, because we’re raising the price the next time. So definitely go to SPIPro.com and apply there. Thank you so much. I appreciate you and look forward to serving you in the next episode of the Smart Passive Income Podcast. Cheers.
Pat Flynn: 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.
