SPI 700: 700 Episodes Later…

SPI 700: 700 Episodes Later…

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. His favorite snacks usually have a chili and lime flavor combination. Pat Flynn.

Pat Flynn: I wanna share something interesting about this episode. It’s episode 700, 700 episodes. This is, what, 2008 is when the show started. This is actually interesting cuz we are one week over the 15th anniversary, 15 year anniversary of this podcast. That is ridonculous, dude. That is absolutely ridonculous. 700 episodes, 15 years.

When I was thinking about what to talk about in this episode, I was like, it’s like it’s just 700. I mean, that’s a, that’s a nice round number, 700, but it’s, it’s not a thousand. It’s, it’s not the 500 mark, which we celebrated a couple hundred episodes ago. It’s, it’s just 700. So why make a big deal about it?

And I think I wanna make a big deal about it because we entrepreneurs don’t make a big deal about enough of the work that we do. Not we at SPI, I’m talking about you for you and and me for me and we for we, right? I think a lot of us, we get to the milestone or we get to a nice round number, or we finish the task and we’re already thinking about the next thing.

We don’t want to give ourselves enough credit for how much work we’ve done and 15 years later, here we are at episode 700 and a few things come to mind. It’s like number one, wow, that is a lot of episodes. Was it worth it? Abso-freaking-lutely. Are all those episodes amazing? No, but they’ve gotten more amazing over time.

I’ve honed in on a lot of skills. I would not be the communicator I am today, I would’ve not been able to go on stage in front of 2000 people just last month and interview people on the spot without even thinking about what questions to ask other than the starting question with the creators and the influencers who were there at this event.

These skills that I’ve learned by just doing the same thing 700 times without even trying, I’ve automatically gotten better. So that’s number one. Number two, the other thing that comes to mind is, oh, well, 700 episodes after 15 years. I mean, John Lee Dumas has four times as many, five times as many episodes in less amount of time.

He must be better than me. He must have better systems in place. He must be more disciplined than I am. He must be more successful than I am. And even though now 15 years later, I’m questioning, why does my brain go there? It did go there. I wouldn’t have said this if it didn’t, but I also know how to control that thought.

And these, these thoughts, this, this imposter syndrome, which is often stemmed from the comparison game that we play out there is is, is a very dangerous game to play. And I catch myself in that now all the time. And I just have to say, why am I thinking that way? I am not John. John is not me. We have different paths.

He has his own and I have mine. So why am I comparing my path to somebody else’s when I should just be comparing myself to myself last week, last month, last year, 15 years ago? And when I think about that journey, oh my gosh, am I a completely different person? I’ve 10 Xed, a hundred Xed my skill level in many, in many regards.

And yet I still know that I have a lot of room to grow and learn. I’ve been reading this book recently 10 X Is Easier Than 2 x. I know Ben Hardy’s an author who has been on the show before. This book was recommended to me by Michael Stelsner from one of my master groups. Mike has been just a tremendous wealth of knowledge and support in that group.

And this book is a top recommendation. Absolutely. And it really goes into this idea that. You know, if you’re just trying to two x something, which we often do, right? We wanna get twice as good at something that forces us to be twice as smart or work twice as hard or do a lot of the same things that we’re already doing, just better.

But when you think about 10 Xing something, and the book starts with Michelangelo, not, you know, the Ninja Turtle, but you know, the artist, the sculptor, the painter. How he leveled up was he took on things that would force him to not just incrementally get better, but completely change his approach and figure things out.

And I’m reminded of a story of when I was in architecture, I was in Florida. I was in Orlando with the regional director of Hilton. We were talking about a new hotel design, and this was circa 2006, 2007 and 3D rendering was just coming out, right? There were computer programs that would allow you to 3D render what a room might look like, what a building might look like, and actually, you know, using ray tracing and different cameras and the system, I mean it like vray and, and it was very slow compared to what’s possible today.

I mean, AI is just blowing things away, but back then this was a huge deal. I didn’t know how to do it. But I remember at one point during this meeting and I was more like the note taker as far as like my level of authority in this space. I was the senior drafter on this particular project, not even a project manager or job captain.

I was a drafter. Yet, when the regional director of Hilton says, does anybody know how to 3D render a hotel room? I’d love to see what that might look like in person before we build it. Nobody raised her hand and I said, I’ll do it. I didn’t lie. I didn’t say I knew how to do it. I just said I’ll do it. And you know what? Forcing myself, putting myself in that pressure situation, 10 Xed my skill level because I had to come up with a completely different set of rules and a completely different set of approaches to just how to deliver that deliverable, right? No longer was I hand drawing things or just using AutoCAD. I had to use 3D Studio, or I, I can’t even remember the name of the program, but I got very familiar with it, so much so that I was able to just in time, because I worked a lot and had long hours at work, I was able to print these 3D renderings of what the hotel rooms look like.

Based on the plans and the sketches and working with the design center at our architecture firm for the different patterns and products, and I literally scanned the different patterns of fabrics for the chairs and the wallpaper into like a scanner, like a flatbed scanner that we had at work. A color scanner, thankfully, that I then brought into the rendering model to then turn into, you know, the pa, put the pattern onto the wall, put the pattern onto the sheets or onto the furniture, and to make it look realistic. And then you could pan and put the camera wherever you want. And this blew my team away. And this blew the regional director away.

Nobody in the firm ever knew that I didn’t know how to do any of that stuff. So in my own little way, I was 10 Xing myself and Michelangelo myself, just in the same way, because I put myself in a situation to have a little bit of pressure. Well, in fact, it was a lot of pressure, but it forced me to figure out new ways to do things.

And that’s how you 10 x. And so this all goes back to, I don’t even know how we got here. We, we started with the podcast. But just continually figuring out how to get better. And yes, over time I incrementally got better. But I remember diving into the world of podcasting, very scared. In fact, it took a year and a half for me to get over the fear.

That was me Michelangeloing I can’t even say it. Michelangeloing, my way into this world of podcasting and now 15 years later. Yeah, I would say that I’ve mastered a lot of it. I’m not the master. I’m not understanding every single part of it, but I’ve mastered it enough for the things that I know I need to do to have the biggest impact on the world.

And I’ve been able to master it in a way where I could package that information and share it with many of you. And now, 15 years later, 5,000 students have taken my Power Up podcasting course. A thousand plus students have taken the 201 level course, Amped Up Podcasting, and have been able to build a life of their own based on the audience that they’ve created and the community that they’ve built off of their podcast.

And I get a lot of credit. I mean, I have so many people still messaging me today who’ve been veteran podcasters who still credit me and SPI for helping them get their start. And it wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t just dive right in and get messy. And that’s the biggest lesson after 700 episodes of this podcast in 15 years, 16, 17, 17 years of being an entrepreneur, is that it’s gonna be a rough start, it’s gonna be messy.

But as my good buddy, John Lee Dumas, who is a friend of mine who recently was on the podcast actually, He said this, and I’ll never forget it. You gotta be a disaster before you become the master. So I’m glad I was a disaster. It was definitely a disaster and I only wish I started sooner. I only wish I had the guts and the support to start sooner, and that support came as a result of other people that I’ve surrounded myself with, which is was hard as well.

You might remember the story that I told in my book, Let Go about going to an in-person mastermind meeting and almost just turning around and going the opposite direction. This was at a Panera in Mira Mesa, which is a suburb in California or in San Diego, California, which is where I was living. And everybody was meeting up at this Panera Bread, and I saw the group Sterling from Internet Business Mastery, was there with a number of other students of his, and I drove in a little bit late and turned around because I was scared.

What was I gonna say? Would I even fit in? Who am I to even think I could even contribute to this group? And, and, and ask for help. But I turned back around, came into this meeting, and this was life changing because I got uncomfortable. I was messy and I was a disaster, but it was thanks to them. Thanks to my now wife for support and just the people I surrounded myself with who helped me push through those disaster messy moments in the beginning to get to where I’m at today.

And again, no, I’m not perfect. Still have a lot to learn, still imperfect in many ways. However, you don’t have to be perfect to be able to serve people. 700 episodes later, baby. We did it. Get messy. Be a disaster cuz the world needs you. I appreciate you for being here and whether this is the first episode you’ve ever listened to or the 700th episode, or maybe you’ve re-listened to a number, actually I know a lot of people who’ve actually listened to over a thousand episodes, just multiple episodes, multiple times.

I appreciate you. Thank you. And on behalf of Team SPI, we’re here for you. And I hope you’ll give us a chance. If you have not subscribed already, hit that subscribe button. If you wanna go a little bit deeper, be sure to check out some of the upcoming webinars. We have an email marketing training coming up soon, as well as a YouTube from Scratch Training coming up soon, both on my YouTube channel, and we’ll have registration pages for you on our website, smartpassiveincome.com.

Would love to help you out and check out the All Access Pass too, like many, several other students have. Or you can get access to Power Up Podcasting, Amped Up podcasting, and the dozen other courses and workshops that we have to help you in your journey. So thank you so much. 700. Wow. I appreciate you.

Cheers everybody.

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. Our senior producer is David Grabowski, 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!