SPI 814: The Brave Change You Need—Roundtable with Todd Henry, Jason Feifer, and Matt Gartland

SPI 814: The Brave Change You Need—Roundtable with Todd Henry, Jason Feifer, and Matt Gartland

Todd Henry: Are you doing brave work every day? Are you doing work that you’re proud of every day? And I realized if I were to start over today, would I be doing things the way I’m doing them? And the uncomfortable answer that I came to when I asked myself that question was, no, I, I wouldn’t, I would be doing things very differently.

And the next logical question then was, well, then why are you doing them that way? And the answer was, well, because It’s convenient because we have an audience because I have a brand and I realized that I can’t be someone challenging people to be a brave, authentic voice in the world if I’m not willing to be a brave, authentic voice doing work that I’m proud of.

Pat Flynn: Every once in a while, we love to host a round table discussion, not just with myself and a guest that we’re sort of interviewing to learn more about their business, but we love to bring experts and industry leaders here on the show to talk shop, to talk about what’s happening now, the changes that are happening in the world and how to react or how to pivot around them or through them sometimes.

And today we have some incredible guests. We have, of course, Matt, who, you know, Matt Gartland here at SPI. So he and I are here, but we have Jason Feifer, our expert in residence inside of SPI Pro. If you don’t know who Jason is, he is the editor in chief at Entrepreneur magazine. He’s also the author of an incredible book called Build For Tomorrow, an action plan for embracing change, adapting fast and future proofing your career.

Which is awesome. And he’s got one of the most active LinkedIn accounts that you could ever follow in the world of business. So definitely check out Jason Feifer on LinkedIn and a special guest today, Todd Henry, Todd is incredible. He’s an author. He, I mean, he’s, where do I even start with Todd? He is an incredible creative.

He in fact wrote a book called The Accidental Creative, how to be brilliant at a moment’s notice. And that is one of his older books. He has a book that really hit home for me called Die Empty, unleash your best work every day. And then his new book, The Brave Habit, he has a number of other books as well, but the brave habit is one of his newer books.

And so I highly recommend you check him out, but we have him on with us today to talk shop. He’s going to be talking a lot about branding and the things that he’s focused on in his business. And together we discuss business and branding and changes that are being made in each of our businesses today to help you.

So just be a fly on a wall. Listen in. I hope you enjoy this conversation. Again, Todd Henry from ToddHenry.com, Jason Feifer from JasonFeifer.com. And then also of course, Matt and I over here at SPI, and I’m going to have Matt lead the conversation for us. So here he is, Matt Gartland and guests.

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, he believes that everyone should find a community online they can call home. Pat Flynn.

Matt Gartland: Hey everyone, it’s Matt. We are back with another special roundtable episode. So as always, Pat is here, Jason Feifer is here, and today I’m thrilled to welcome our special guest, Todd Henry. Thank you so much for being here.

Todd Henry: Oh, it’s so good to be here. It’s, it’s really good to see you again. See you, Pat and Jason.

It’s good to meet you.

Jason Feifer: Likewise. We’ve never connected.

Matt Gartland: It’s good to meet you. It’s deeper into 2024. So, you know, we’re well past happy new year, but yeah, it’s been already a fast start. You have a lot of things in the works, Todd, that I’m excited to kind of weave into the conversation today. But before talking about 2024, you especially have been on the internet.

in the creative space generally, even before the word creator kind of got out there. I want to say from like 2007, you could probably help me with the exact year. When, when exactly did you get your start?

Todd Henry: Yeah. So I started the podcast in 2005. So I was kind of a late comer to the podcasting game. I honestly, truly, honestly, I am not kidding, like I thought I was late to the game because I was like, Oh man, there are like hundreds of podcasts now. Like it’s, it’s too late. Like it’s too saturated, which is just kind of hilarious. But yes, started in 2005. I didn’t know what I was doing, but that was kind of the first foray into, I guess, kind of creator world and, and making things and sharing them.

And then it’s been really fun to see how things have evolved over the last 18 years.

Matt Gartland: And your, your show and then your first book, Accidental Creative was one of the first business podcasts that I ever stumbled across as well back in the day, which was a lot of fun. I’m just even curious, given that time horizon, how much of this kind of creator world have you seen change and evolve in terms of like that?

Some of the most important milestones in your own career and what it’s led to as we talk about some bigger changes ahead for you and probably for all of us, you know, now this year.

Todd Henry: Yeah, yeah. So I would say. Probably the most amazing thing and the most beneficial thing has been the reduction of friction over the years.

Friction in terms of how we deliver ideas to people. When I started the podcast in 2005, first of all, you had to explain to people what a podcast was. I mean, nobody really even knew what it was, even though, you know, iTunes had launched a directory. I mean, there wasn’t really a word that people used. And so I even remember in 2007 interviewing Steven Pressfield about the War of Art for the show. And at the very end, he, after we stopped recording, he said, can I ask you a question? I said, sure. And he said, what’s a podcast? Right? So he had just done this like 30 minute conversation with me having no clue what we were even doing at the time. And so, you know, we were hand coding XML files, uploading them to a server, using things like Transmit to upload files directly to a server to point the XML feed to. So it was definitely a much more sort of like craftsy kind of hand coded world. And then I think as the space became more mature, you know, and people sort of entered the space and started creating tools, it became a lot easier. And then with the advent of the smartphone, I mean, my goodness, like just the fact that somebody could click a button and listen to your show, you know, with this device in their pocket, because we had to tell people in the beginning, like, It’s super easy.

You’re going to drag these files over a firewire cable to your iPod, right? And then you can take them with you anywhere you want to listen. It’s just so easy. I mean, it was like so crazy how we had this sort of overcome that friction. And so the beauty today, and also in some ways, kind of the terror of being a creator today is how frictionless it is to start.

And also how frictionless it is for people to discover things, because that means they’re constantly looking for new things.

Matt Gartland: Yeah, and to maybe throw already a spicy question into the mix, like, is, is that always a good thing, right? Maybe it’s net positive, but net positive might suggest that there’s some, some downsides as well.

Pat, maybe I’ll throw that to you as a starting point. You know, SPI got its start in 2007, 2008, so not that long after Todd got started. Curious on your reflections on some of the, the friction points and kind of where things are today.

Pat Flynn: I mean, you were bringing back bad memories, Todd, when it came to producing podcasts, because I mean, it was a nerdy, hard thing to do.

And, you know, I had to kind of hack my way into figuring out how SPI could get out there in the world. And thankfully by that time smartphones did exist and people were able to discover me, but over time, you know, because of that, how smooth it is and how easy it is to create. Now there’s so much out there.

In fact, we’re all just bloated now from all the information that’s available to us. And we’re being force fed in a way being force fed things that we didn’t even know we want to eat and a lot of things that we probably shouldn’t. So it’s, as a creator become a lot more noisy and yes, the cream does rise to the top.

But dude, there’s a lot of things to get through to get to the top for sure. And, and that’s made it pretty difficult for a lot of people, but also we’ve seen a lot of great success stories from people who would have never had the ability to create before now be able to create and in fact and change the world in such great ways, but then, you know, I don’t want to get political or anything, but we’re, you know, it’s a, it’s an election year.

There’s a lot of, of information that might be misinformation or misguided information out there that’s reaching people. And it’s, it’s influencing them in maybe ways that, you know, are dangerous even. So there’s a lot of, of pros and cons to this for sure. But as a creator, especially, it’s just like, okay, this is great.

There’s a lot more competition, but it’s also forcing me to go, okay, well, what is going to connect with people today? And today in this, especially AI driven world, it seems it’s helped me focus more on relationships, on storytelling on not just like information is valuable, but how the information is delivered being valuable.

Matt Gartland: Jason, I’m curious if you’ve seen any parallel universe kind of conditions here just on the media side. So, so in addition to just the transformations online and online media, you know, with your background from different magazines and print. And obviously, you know, that industry has evolved tremendously, you know, in the same time horizon.

Yeah. Sort of symmetry or not. Have you seen in that same time span?

Jason Feifer: Yeah. Well, the fascinating thing about traditional media is that as it shrinks, so grows all of these new means of distribution for writers and creators and so many people in media have made this transition over to being a solo creator or part of a really small shop and are finding that the economics of it are totally different.

It’s really fascinating to think about how little you have to earn as a solo creator to make a living versus how much money had to come into a traditional media company to make your same job work. So when I’m at a traditional media company, for example, and we’re talking about bringing in a $500,000 deal, a million dollar deal from Amazon, Staples, Walmart, whatever the case is. Those are good deals. We gotta keep that up constantly. Bringing in a million dollar deal when you’re at a traditional media company is just one day’s work, but you better keep that up or else the economics of it fall apart. But when you’re a solo creator, the economics of it are so much simpler.

And all you need to do is make sure you get a thousand true fans who are willing to spend some amount of money on you and you can make it work, which is really fascinating. And I think that that’s been mind blowing to individual creators. It’s also been, I think, scary for traditional media outlets as they see how the economics of this becomes so fragmented that sometimes holding down a old style company no longer makes sense.

As I was listening to Todd and Pat talk, I have a question for you guys. As you were talking about being so early into podcasting, because what it was making me think about was how today the barrier to entry is so low that the barrier to success is so high. And you have to be incredible, not just in the content that you produce, but you have to be incredible at knowing how to distribute that content and how to draw more audience.

I tell people all the time, being good at content is no longer good enough, because if you put 100 percent of your energy into creating something great, no energy is going into figuring out how to get that in front of people and people won’t just find it themselves because there’s too much noise. And so when you look at the people who do it really well at a fame level.

Lewis Howes, and Gary Vaynerchuk, and Sawhill Bloom, those guys don’t come from content. They come from marketing, they come from advertising, they come from venture, and you can see how those skills are enabling their content to get out there. So here’s my question to you. You got into the podcasting game so early that there was tremendous friction, and therefore there wasn’t a lot of competition.

That has worked out really well for you, because it turns out that you picked the right ship. But right now, today’s creators are being presented with lots of other opportunities where there’s a lot of friction and not a lot of competition. You could, for example, have been one of the first people to join blue sky or some of these other, you know, sort of smaller social media networks where you could have established a beachhead or any of these other kind of emerging technologies where you can get your name out there.

The problem is that you don’t know what you’re going to win and what you’re going to be worth your investment because sometimes you can invest a lot of time in being in a platform that just completely collapses and it was worth nothing. How would you advise people to pick which high friction platform or mode of creation is worth it.

Why invest your time in something that’s early if you don’t know if it’s going to pay off?

Todd Henry: What initially attracted me to podcasting was this felt like the confluence of a lot of trends I was seeing, right? Like you saw blogging really take off and that was kind of disrupting traditional media and there were all these platforms like Type Pad and you know, all these other platforms are sort of emerging as tools for bloggers to be able to kind of get their word out in the world, you know, blog spot, whatnot, WordPress was sort of, you know, becoming WordPress at that point. And when Apple made what to me seemed like a sizable investment in podcasting by creating a podcast directory, I realized, okay, this is one of the big players basically saying, we think that there’s a future here.

And so for me, I realized like, okay, this isn’t just going to be me screaming into the wind. There’s a distribution method for me to get this out into the world. And there are enough people interested, obviously, that Apple’s putting significant money behind it to create an infrastructure to support it.

You know, a lot of these kind of, new platforms that are out there, they seem exciting initially. I know a couple of years ago, everybody got really excited about Clubhouse. This is going to be a thing and it’s going to be exciting. And then it kind of like during COVID was great for a while and then sort of came and kind of went a little bit and you didn’t really see that same sort of like, the industry sort of coming around it and saying, this is going to be a thing now, right?

Like live simultaneous audio is going to be a thing that we’re going to do. It didn’t really fit a need that most people feel, but I think a lot of people felt that need of time shifted audio. So I don’t have to listen to the radio all the time, or I can get expertise from someone. And it may be very, I mean, some of the early podcasts were terrible quality, right?

Like I listened back to some of my earliest episodes and I’m like, Oh my gosh, I can’t believe I even put that into the world. But people didn’t really care because at the time it was like ham radio, you know, it’s like, I can’t believe I’m listening to a guy in Russia right now, like over the radio. This is incredible.

That’s kind of what early podcasting felt like. It’s like, I can’t believe I’m listening to some dude in California talk about like what’s going on in Silicon Valley. Anyway, so that’d be my, my advice would be look at like, what are the other trends that are sort of confluent and who’s putting a lot of money behind it.

And that’s always a good way to sort of choose a platform, but it also has to mess with your voice. Like it has to be something that you personally feel like, okay, this is something I could crush. This is something I could do really well. Don’t just jump in because there’s momentum. If you don’t think you can do it well.

Pat Flynn: I love that answer.

Todd, it reminds me of. You know, I’m not into real estate. I have property, but I’m not like all in on it. But I know a lot of people who are and they say, you know what? And this isn’t advice. And this is just what I heard. I’m not a professional. They were like, you know, a great place to invest real estate in is find where the new Starbucks is are going up because those are signals that those are growing communities and they want to be able to serve those growing communities.

And I was like, that’s really smart. I’m not that smart. My thinking was, well, I just want to connect with my audience. That’s always been the basis of like the, the, the, the creation that I do. How can I best connect with my audience? And if my audience happens to be, you know, all flocking over to clubhouse, because that’s what the thing is right now, then I’ll, I’ll go there.

I will follow. However, I know that that might be a short lived thing. So what do I do? This is very tactical. Get them on an email list. I can’t tell you how many times that I got to just knock everybody over the head with that advice, but that’s so important because once technology A drops off and technology B comes, well, then I can just use email to bring people who were with me on A on over to B and then over to C and over to D.

And this is where those true fans come in because the fans don’t care where you’re at. They’re going to follow you wherever you go. And so that’s kind of my thinking around it as well. So I think if you combine those two, it could be something really powerful. And I don’t want to sound like a broken record, but.

Get them on an email list.

Jason Feifer: Yeah. I just need to flex for a second, which is that Todd said ham radio. I have a actual ham radio license KD4DYV. It was a hobby when I was a teenager and I still, I don’t use it anymore, but I still have it. So thank you for shouting out ham radio. Okay. Now I’m done.

Todd Henry: I love that.

Matt Gartland: No, that was totally worth it. As the springboard, think about assets as a business, as a business owner, especially these days with the proliferation of different tech platforms and the increasing fragmentation of those platforms, you know, what, what do you ultimately own and where are you building? Do you own the thing?

Right. So it takes social and the, now all the channels and the fragmentation there, right. You don’t really own your audience. Those things can change. There’s even, you know, new policies being discussed and debated, at least here nationally, like, like, it’s an interesting thing to think about as an asset to your business.

And, you know, is it worth the time and the energy to build that asset? If it could go poof one day, you know, with given technologies and trends and policy, you know, debates that are happening, right? So going back to Pat’s point, like the email list kind of remains at least for online based businesses. One of your kind of just golden assets, you know, that you can build anything that you can invest in, in that way, where you have a stronger chance of actually retaining that asset, then that’s what I would continue to think critically about an index on based on current tech, as well as feature tech that’s coming out.

And then another thing that might overlap with that is, you’re trying to shorten the distance between you and the dollar, you know, your customer, and the more that you can be more direct. And direct revenue with the people that you’re serving the most versus sort of like daisy chains or lagging sort of business models where there’s any mediary, say like with advertising, even for us that are in not even traditional media, Jason, but just like creators, right?

They have sponsorship deals and things that are using third party upon third party, right? And there’s this, like this crazy daisy chain effect to kind of eventually get the cash. The more that you can move, I think, especially these days into a more. value based exchange based relationship, right? Where you’re delivering such value to someone that they are willing to throw money at you, right?

Like that is great. Like if they’re willing to give you dollars right in exchange for the thing that you’re making, whether that’s a premium version of your email and you’re using Substack or Beehive or something like that to do that. Or if you’re using even with podcasting, like Supercast, right? You can create a premium feed there.

So those are things I would think about, you know, critically as well in terms of like where you want to build.

Todd Henry: You said something that really struck me as really interesting that I’d not considered also, Matt, which is when you’re investing in these platforms, you know, so often we’re thinking about driving revenue.

How is this going to help me drive revenue? But you’re, you’re also building assets that can be brand assets. And the beautiful thing about podcasting specifically or creating videos or doing something like kind of in that creator maker space is, you know, nobody has to know how many people are listening to your podcast and yet they can be corroborative brand materials when it goes time to make a sale.

You know, if people are coming to your website and you have really great audio content on your site, they might listen and say, I want to buy from this person. Even if 50 people listen to that podcast episode. It doesn’t matter as long as it’s good content that helps people sort of helps build credibility becomes a brand asset for you.

So that’s something else to think about. Like if you’re investing 30 hours a week into making Instagram stories, are they going to be gone in 24 hours? You know, you have a very short window in which those assets are going to help drive. But if you’re creating longstanding evergreen assets like podcasting, videos, things like that, that can stand forever as a, as a brand asset to help drive your business.

Jason Feifer: And you know what you guys are saying here reminds me of advice that I have been giving people in the media industry for a while now, which is to ask this question, what is content for? I like the question, what is it for, for everything that you do? Everything in your business. What is it for? It should serve some very clear purpose and you should ask it constantly because the purpose may change.

If you asked decades ago, what is content for? Well, the answer, if you were running a magazine, would have been pretty simple. Content is for monetization. There’s two ways to do it. You can sell ads against it. You can sell subscriptions to it. But now, I’ll tell you guys, as someone who runs a traditional media brand, it’s a lot harder to monetize content.

And we, we still do it at Entrepreneur, but it’s not as easy as it was decades ago. There’s fewer advertising dollars around because most of it’s getting gobbled up by the likes of Google and Facebook. And there are fewer people willing to pay to subscribe because there’s so much free content out there.

So if content isn’t for monetization, is it for something else? Is it for anything? I think yes. It’s for relationships. That’s what it’s for. Content is for relationships. Why does Red Bull pour the amount of money that it does into creating content? Is it because they want to be a media company? No. It’s because the media builds relationships.

And then, once people feel really good about Red Bull because of the content, they buy Red Bull. The actual drink, which is where the money comes from. When you build great relationships through content, people are more interested in what you have to offer. They trust you more. They’re more willing to engage with you.

They see how you fit into their world and how you can solve problems beyond just the content. I mean, Pat, tell me if I’m wrong here, but I would say that is the very premise of the business of SPI. The content originally drove relationships, and then you were able to build a great, you and then Matt, were able to build a great business on top of that.

And that idea applies not just to traditional media brands, it applies to individuals too. When you are putting content out in the world, you are not just putting content out in the world, you are creating relationships, you are building trust. And once you have that, that is just the beginning of the relationship.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, Todd said it, you just said it, it’s, it’s this word credibility. The content creates credibility. And where my mind goes with relation to that, you know, the trust building, you know, the, the KLT, no like and trust kind of formula is, well, what is credible? It’s becoming harder and harder to discern what is credible nowadays because of a lot of things we’re seeing, I don’t know if you’ve caught wind, probably did, of OpenAI’s Sora. Now video is not even credible, right? So the question is, how do we, as we continue on as creators, as thought leaders, how do we remain credible? And there’s a number of things around that. For me, it’s just a lot of sharing what is happening in the moment.

That, to me, is a really easy way to share credibility because it’s not stuff that I’m making up. It’s not just a regurgitation of information. It’s new things happening in real time. This is why live streaming is so powerful. And I feel like live streaming is going to be even more powerful because live streaming AI is going to be maybe the last stone on that pillar, but you know, video AI, you could be watching somebody and not even know if they’re real anymore.

So people are going to be losing trust even in video format at this point. This is why I think podcasting still will remain king over time is because it’s the conversation. That is, you know, the human elements that go with it that I don’t think will ever be replicated and become more important for us to build and establish those relationships.

And so sharing things as they’re happening in real time, if possible, and conversations are always going to be sort of key components. And I think should, you know, be double downed on moving forward, at least personally.

Matt Gartland: What I find really interesting as a through line, I see in a lot of this is how do we stay then current with some of these existential forces?

Like the market itself is constantly changing and moving. The technologies are being innovated, consumer interest and consumer demand, especially for online things, post pandemic, right? Have evolved. And we’ve been at this for a long time now, right? So it’s the notion of like, how do we reinvent ourselves either in small ways as almost like a commitment to a discipline of change of continuous improvement, right? But then also in big moments concerning business model concerning what is our brand and brand name, you know, Todd, if I could throw to you, like, again, you’ve been out there since 2005, Accidental Creative has been sort of your flagship, if that’s the right, I guess, contextualization of it.

And you’re in the throes this year of making a really big sort of reinvention of brand and some other things. So I’d love for you to maybe even kind of step into that and lead us in, like, how have you thought about. Trying to stay current with these things, reinvent along the way. And I guess, how does that speak to your vision of the future?

Todd Henry: I could speak for two hours about this, so I’ll try to be very succinct. But I wrote a book last year called The Brave Habit. I’ve been working on it for seven years. And one of the things in the book that I challenge people to consider is, you know, are you doing brave work every day? Are you doing work that you’re proud of?

every day. And I realized what one of the questions I asked was, as I was writing the book, challenged people to ask is if I were to start over today, would I be doing things the way I’m doing them? And the uncomfortable answer that I came to when I asked myself that question was, no, I, I wouldn’t, I would be doing things very differently.

And the next logical question then was, well, then why are you doing them that way? And the answer was, well, because It’s convenient because we have an audience because I have a brand because I have at that point six books that I’ve written under this name and some of them have done very well and I’ve spoken all over the world to like millions of people at this point and you know, so I sort of had this momentum and, and even with the podcast, you know, would you be doing the podcast the way you’re doing it?

The answer was no, but the reason I’m doing it that way is because, you know, we have six figures of advertising revenue that we’d have to forego if we decided to go a different direction. And, and I realized that I can’t be someone challenging people to be a brave, authentic voice in the world if I’m not willing to be a brave, authentic voice doing work that I’m proud of.

We decided to reinvent the show after 18 years, renamed it Daily Creative, which was something I’d been, I’d been doing a show called Daily Creative for a handful of years and then sort of sunset it in 2018. So we kind of revitalized that brand and brought it back with episode one on January 1st of 2024.

So we’re now on episode nine after 18 years of Daily Creative. But the reason was that I realized in some ways the listening audience for what I do has, you know, changed quite a bit and people are looking for something that’s a little bit more story driven, a little bit more narrative driven, a little bit more produced, something that will sort of take them on kind of a, a guided journey.

And so we reinvented the show as kind of a narrative storytelling format where maybe like the last episode was about collaboration and we had Austin Kleon and Kim Scott and Charles Duhigg like we had several voices mixed into this episode interwoven with like some cool stories and other stuff that sort of keeps people’s attention.

It is incredibly time intensive, but it’s something I’m really proud of. And that was really important to me. I wanted to be very proud of the work that we’re doing. So that was kind of the, the impetus for it was just, I think, especially if you’ve been doing something for a while, it’s important to ask yourself, am I just doing this because I’m doing it or am I doing it because it’s really the right thing. Now, quick caveat and other niches and other areas and other types of shows, content, subject matter, I think that what people are looking for is very different, right? So if you’re in that kind of like business building, brand building space, I think interviews are incredibly helpful, incredibly relevant because I think you’re getting expertise subject matter that you wouldn’t get otherwise.

But for what, what we were doing, you know, it just felt like the right move for us.

Matt Gartland: Pat, we’ve been riffing internally, just even maybe very broadly speaking around similar themes. I’m kind of just curious, like how you think about, again, the longevity of at least the show, let alone like our full body of work, right. That the team helps us produce. So like, yeah, I’d, I’d love your opinion on that.

Pat Flynn: I mean, it’s been 15 years now since SPI began and the show has been up and running for 800 ish episodes at this point. It’s man, that question of, and what I doing is like, if I were to start over, would I be doing what I’m doing now? Or am I, or am I just doing it because I’m doing it? I mean, that, that’s going to be eyeopener for a lot of people, Todd, like that is a huge question.

And asking ourselves that every once in a while, perhaps even once a year, is, is probably a smart thing to do. And then combine that with, okay, 10x is easier than 2x, like, okay, maybe I should be doing something much bolder, much bigger, much braver. And I feel like we at SPI have done a really good job of that lately.

We boldly went into community and had community become our focus. When we had been doing online courses for so long, we actually on paper took a hit financially because it was easier to make money by selling one off courses rather than a monthly membership. However, we knew that this was the right thing to do for our audience.

And, you know, over time we’ve seen that it definitely was the right decision and also makes more sense long term financially for us as well. And it makes sense for our audience too. So I feel like that was a big momentous moment. With the podcast, we’re thinking of a rebrand for it as well. Because is it passive income anymore?

We almost don’t even say that word anymore because it has almost a negative connotation. It almost feels unreal. And the reason I chose passive income as a keyword in 2008 was because you wanted to be number one in Google for high ranking search terms. That’s literally why I chose that. I just put the word smart because everybody else using that word was scammy and scummy, and I wanted to show people how to do it the smart way.

Now, when we try to get brand deals, sometimes they’re like passive income. This sounds a little weird. I don’t I don’t know if I want to put my money into this brand. So we have to make some changes potentially to accommodate for the times and changes there. I think the word passive income is not even a real thing in terms of long term, forever passive income.

Everything is going to be active at some point. So anyway, that’s where my mind goes, Matt. It’s just interesting how, how things change and a lot of people resist change, but I’m trying to embrace it. I’m trying to understand that change is good, especially if you have the right intentions behind it.

Matt Gartland: Jason, I think you were going to chime in as well. Would love your opinion on it.

Jason Feifer: Oh, yeah. So first I loved what Pat had to say and the driving force behind it. I also love that you have taken on a different texture for your show at a time in which most people now associate podcasts with interviews. People think that podcasts are interviews, which they’re not.

There are lots of different kinds of shows, but interviews, the reason why most people do them, is just because they’re the most low resource way to make a show. It’s easy to sit down and have a conversation with someone and record it. And you might think, well, but that’s two people, what about one person?

But the thing is that having the skill to monologue into a microphone and to be engaging is harder than it is to have a conversation with somebody. And so I have found, very interestingly, I found it for some of the podcasting that I’ve done, but I’ve also heard it from a number of other podcasters, is that when people experiment with solo episodes, that the solo episodes tend to do better than the interview shows, which makes a lot of sense if you think about it, because number one, It starts to differentiate you in a marketplace full of interviews.

Number two, if somebody’s listening to your show regularly, it’s because, it’s not because of the guests. It’s because they have a relationship with you, the host. And in an interview format, they actually get the least of you, the host. Because you’re mostly letting somebody else talk. So when you step up and do solo, you’re giving them more of the person that they actually have the relationship with, which is you.

And then number three, there’s a higher bar. Because most people can’t do solo well. I mean, frankly, most people can’t do interviews well either, but everyone does interviews anyway. But, you know, like, interviews are a real skill, and not everybody has it, which is fine. Jump into it and see what you can do.

But to be able to monologue? Much harder. And so, you are setting yourself apart. And I think it’s really interesting to see that. And I think where you’re going is probably even the next step beyond, which is how to then be really smart about the production value and the storytelling, because that may be where ears start to really float towards in an ever increasing pool of interviews and rambling solo episodes. Maybe I’m rambling here. But anyway, there’s one other point that I wanted to make, which I’ll throw out of the point. Maybe somebody will want to pick up on, but Todd, the question that you posed there that people should ask, which Pat is totally right, is going to be a real eye opener for people.

And it’s a powerful one to ask, why am I doing this? It is also worth, as you evaluate, and I found this from personal experience, she’ll tell you, it is also worth not just asking, this of you, the person making this stuff, but asking, what does your audience really want? And when’s the last time you checked in with them?

I had a show that I launched in 2015 or something and ran it for a couple of years, podcast, and loved it, poured a lot of energy into it. It was a high production show and it was a history show, really. It was a show about history and technology. And I always assumed that my audience were history nerds and tech nerds.

Then I hired a audience insights researcher, and her name is Rochelle DeVoe, and she systematically reached out to and surveyed a whole bunch of people in my audience and came back to me with this mind blowing report where she told me that your audience, they’re not listening to this show because they’re interested in history or technology.

They’re interested in this show because it helps them feel resilient about the future. Because it was a show about the history of technology and how it drives changes today. And they were listening because it helps them feel resilient about the future. That insight unlocked the next phase of my career.

I said, this doesn’t have to be a history show. This is a show about change. I started making a show about change. Then I wrote a book about change. Then I built a keynote about change. That became my subject because it turns out that that’s the audience I had built all along and I didn’t know because I wasn’t asking them.

So, it’s really valuable, as Todd said, to be asking yourself, why are you doing this? Are you doing it just because you’ve still been doing it? But if you have any kind of audience, make sure that you understand what they want and what they see your value as to them. Because weirdly, it may be different than what you think your value is.

And when you know what has actually drawn people to you, it will unlock what you can do next.

Matt Gartland: I love both those points and I want to say Jason they’re pretty good if not great examples to kind of throw back to friction right like if you choose to involve someone to do that audience research to to open up to that to be receptive to what you might hear and it might be a very different sort of response than what you expect right that that in and of itself can be a form of friction and then your other example there the the monologue episodes to practice that craft to put yourself out there to keep trying that’s just more friction I think that kind of tethers together that just really important piece of advice for all of us as we think about evolving and reinventing the brands and how we deliver value, how we think about the core business model right for the future and be willing, if not excited, right to climb a new mountain and get excited about, you know, what’s next.

So I appreciate both those points. Those are excellent. Todd, to kind of even throw back to your book, like it does also kind of bring back, you know, the habit of bravery, which is, you know, that kind of the core concept of the book, which is fantastic. And thank you. And it took you seven years to get this out here into the world, right?

I think you mentioned. So like, why has that journey taken seven years for you? I’m sure there’s a story there. And how does that even also tie into these themes about, you know, how you see the next phase for you and how you even are through the book in the teachings of habits, which is a very different approach than others in terms of how they’ve approached that same subject, trying to advise us as entrepreneurs and small business owners and creators to really think and even behave differently.

Todd Henry: To your first question, I started working on this book in 2016 in the wake of another book I wrote called Die Empty that came out in 2013, I realized shortly thereafter that there was a key topic that I had overlooked, which was bravery, that I didn’t even address in this book. When I’m talking to people about how to do work that they’re proud of, and I’m like, I didn’t talk about bravery in this book.

And so I realized that, and then the confluence of that with Just some things I was seeing in culture, just some general, what I would consider to be cowardly behavior that I saw happening in culture, both in the business world, the political world and elsewhere really got me on this path of trying to identify, okay, what is it that really separates people who consistently act bravely in the face of uncertainty from those who retreat from the moment.

And so I started working on that book as I was releasing louder than words and I continued working on it as I wrote and released hurting tigers and I continued as I wrote and released the motivation code and as I wrote and released daily creative. So really I had Three books that I wrote and published in the midst of working on this, because I really wanted to get to the heart of it.

I didn’t want to just put something out that, you know, there are a lot of books that are kind of like, Hey, go do brave things. Just don’t think about it. Just go do it. Just jump off the cliff. And I always thought that is really terrible advice for people. There are people who will tell you, just go do something because they want to see what happens.

They don’t care about you. They Want to see what happens, right? Or they know that’s what you want to hear. But what I discovered is that bravery sometimes looks like waiting when everybody else is rushing in. Sometimes that’s the bravest thing you can do is actually put on the brakes and say, I don’t have a clear vision.

I don’t yet have the agency. And so I’m going to wait. Sometimes bravery looks like letting go. It means something’s working really well, but I need to let go of it so I can move on to what’s next, even though it’s not really perfectly clear yet what next might be, but I know this is the right moment or else I’m just going to stagnate.

So I wanted to really get to what felt like a deeper layer of understanding of what bravery is. And the more I did that, I realized, you know, we tend to think there are some people who are brave and some who aren’t, but really bravery is kind of a muscle. It’s a habit that we develop. And as we do that in small ways, it prepares us for those bigger moments.

We tend to look at people like Pat and like Jason and like other entrepreneurs that we know, and you Matt and other entrepreneurs that we know and think, well, they’re just built differently than everybody else. They just have this bravery muscle that nobody else has. And they just take these big wild leaps.

But the reality is. Most people that you see taking leaps have prepared themselves with years and years and years of small leaps that position them to take that leap. And so by that, by the time they came to take that big leak, it was really, it’s more of a calculated risk in that moment. It was, it was more of a habit that they developed.

It doesn’t mean it’s not scary. It just means that they prepared themselves for that moment. They knew what it felt like to be in that uncertainty. And so that’s really what the book is about. And it took me seven years to get it down to 150 pages because it originally was, you know, somewhere in the ballpark of like 300 pages.

And also this is my first non traditionally published book. I self published it. We had handful of publishing offers, but the reason I did that is because I wanted it to be 150 pages so I could get it into the world in a way that people could access it. And also so I could distribute it however I want to, you know, I can give it away.

I can give it away at events when I speak, which with a traditionally published book is a lot more difficult to do. The idea is more important to me than just sort of having an imprint on the side of the book. It’s kind of what I decided. So, yeah, so that’s kind of where it is. And so that’s also part of this reinventing the business thing, right?

Like the traditional model for me was get in advance, write a book, put it out, go out and talk about it. And this is kind of a new way of approaching book writing as well.

Matt Gartland: It’s amazing to see like the symmetry at least say with Pat here where he’s done the opposite, you know, we’ve through SPI gotten several books out there for Pat, but yeah, I guess I’m, I don’t mean to speak out of turn about there should be your story, but you’re working on your first traditionally published deal.

Pat Flynn: I am, I am. And so, I mean, That’s an inspiring story, Todd, and I’m so grateful for just the quick rundown. I want to talk to you for hours about that because I’m in the middle of the process right now, and it’s very different publishing a book traditionally versus self publish. And the main reason why I’m doing it is just to learn about the process.

You know, I did get a nice advance and that was great, but a lot of people had asked here at SPI, like, what’s better, traditional or self publish? And I was like, I don’t know how to answer that because I’ve never done the opposite. So we’re kind of like seeing each other on crossing roads here, but I think To that point, like we are each on our own different roads, and I think it’s important to know where you’re going and why.

For me, I’m trying to expand outside of entrepreneurship and talk a little bit more self development and try to reach a different audience in that way. And I love what you said about being able to do what you want with this book. So I’m curious, like, what are your plans for the book in terms of things that you couldn’t do before or were harder that you can do now?

I know you said give it away for free, but like what other master plans you have with it? I’m curious.

Todd Henry: I’ve been able to. Give away the audio book to people who purchase the actual book. I’m able to do that because I own all the rights to the book. Whereas in the past, Penguin Random House, you know, owned the audio rights or whoever they sold the audio rights to own the audio rights to the book.

So it’s nice to be able to have that flexibility. I spoke to an event in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago and was able to just include copies of the book with my speech because it was, you know, on the topic of bravery. And 210 copies cost me something like 750 to include. If I was doing that with Herding Tigers, that would cost me three or four grand to include that many books, you know, with my speech.

And so just the ability to get copies into the world in different ways is a little bit easier with a self published book. Now, I want to put a strong caveat on that because I’ve had six traditionally published books and have had wonderful experiences. And I think that anybody who has the ability to go through that process should go through that process.

If, if you aspire to be an author, I think it’s really good for you to go through that process and see what good editorial looks like, to see what good design looks like, to understand what sells books, what doesn’t sell books, because what people think sells books doesn’t necessarily move books in the way that they think it does.

And people tend to think like, I’m going to write a book and I’m going to go on the Today Show and I’m going to, you know, do this like media tour and go to all these book bookstores and like do a book tour. I mean, that’s not really the way it works. And so it’s good to get an inside view of the industry and what actually moves books and what a publisher really does.

I feel like I’ve had that now six times. So I felt equipped to kind of move on and try something different. And by the way, even the way I’m approaching this book launch is very, very different from a traditional book launch, which is typically all about the event of the launch window. And then things kind of fade off and I’m doing more of a slow burn thing because I can, because it’s, it’s self published sort of doing a lot of little experiments to see what works and what doesn’t.

Which is another thing that wouldn’t be possible with a traditional publisher because, you know, they’ve got sort of like finite patience, you know, for whether the book’s going to work or whether it’s not, whereas as long as it works at some point for me, that’s fine, right? It could be two years from now, five years from now.

I think I remember talking to Steve Pressfield in 2007, it took like five years for The War of Art to really catch on, you know, to become a thing. So, yeah, so all, all those reasons and more, and Pat, I’d be happy to. To jump on the call and talk through some of those experiences, you know, but I think both are viable paths for different strategic reasons.

Jason Feifer: Hey, Todd, can I ask you a question that the, the purpose is to illustrate a point that I just made a little minute ago, but also to help people think about books for themselves. So. It’s interesting what you said in response to Pat’s question about what else can you do because you’ve self published other versions of giving the book away.

You can give the audiobook away for free, you can bundle it in with the purchase of the physical book, or you can make it easy to bundle in copies of the book with the talk that you’re giving. And it made me think that it would be really helpful for people to hear the answer to this question from you, which is what is your book for?

Because again, like I said, if you ask what is this for of everything that you do, you have to have an answer to that. And, and what I have found is that for many people, myself included, I had a traditionally published book out on Penguin Random House a couple years ago, is that the book is often not for making money because a book often will not make money.

Funny enough, I, I went on Barbara Corcoran from Shark Tank’s podcast to promote my book and we had a great time. And afterwards she sent me a nice email about it that ended with, I hope your book brings you a lot of joy because it will not make you any money. Spoken from experience, Barbara. And that is, that, that was true.

But the, but the book did serve a purpose for me. It served a number of purposes. So as people are thinking about books and thinking about why to write a book, and they’re hearing you talk about what you’re doing with your book, you must have a very clear answer to the question, what is your book for, for you?

Todd Henry: Yeah, a hundred percent. Well, I mean, first and foremost, Writer’s right. And this is an idea that I was very passionate about. And it was something that I wanted to get into the world in a concrete form that would hopefully transform the way people think. And now this sounds like a very sort of Pollyanna answer like, Oh, I just care so much about this idea, but that, that is a hundred percent true.

For those who haven’t written a book, it is incredibly painful to write a book. I mean, it’s not digging ditches, but like, it is incredibly gut wrenching and painful to write a book. And it takes a long time. It’s not just about typing the words. It’s like doing kind of like surgery on yourself in a way writing a book is.

And so I just really cared about this idea, wanted to get it into the world in a way that was transformative in some way, because I feel like this is a real need for culture right now. Now the business answer is I give speeches and I give workshops and I need to stay front of mind. I need to have ideas in front of people that impact them because for me, it’s kind of a top of funnel thing.

Somebody reads my book and they contact me. I just got off a call with someone from London who wants me to come speak to their company about Herding Tigers, right? I have another call later about the same thing. You’re traveling to go speak about another one of my books. The books are kind of the entry point to my business, which is primarily speaking and training and, and being in front of people.

And so it’s important for me to have fresh ideas in front of people consistently that might strike them as something that would be relevant to their business or to their audience in some way. And so that’s the business answer. And so the more books I can get into the world, it’s easier for me to do that if I can get into the world in more ways without worrying about violating my publishing agreement with Penguin Random House, right? If that means giving away portions of the book, if that means creating a podcast where I share excerpts from the book I don’t have to worry about am I violating my audiobook rights by doing this?

They’re just, I can create courses. I created a workbook for this, right? I couldn’t do that with Herding Tigers because I don’t own the publishing rights to a workbook. So I couldn’t do that unless the publisher wanted to do it. And so it just gives me a lot more flexibility in terms of how I do those kinds of things.

There’s a great article. I think it was Todd Satterson, maybe, who wrote an article about, it was called The Magic Number. And he was trying to answer the question, how many books do you need to sell for a book to take off? And the answer he came to was, if you can sell or get, you don’t have to sell them, just get 10,000 copies into the world and have people read 10,000 copies of your book in the first year.

Your chances of getting to 25,000 copies are like 50 50, basically. And if you can get to 25,000, your chances of getting to 50,000 are basically 50 50 and 50, it’s 50 50, right? And so his argument was you need to get copies of your book into hands and get as many people to experience them as possible as quickly as you can.

And by the way, just selling books doesn’t do anything. Like people buy a book and stick it on their shelf. That doesn’t do anything. You won’t get people reading the book, interacting with the book and books that are read books that spread. That’s something I just made up, but it kind of works.

Matt Gartland: It does work.

It does work. I may even dare say, Jason, this is a fair, again, sort of callback and connection point that it’s about relationship building. So like the more books you get in people’s hands, and if they do, in fact, read them, like you’re sparking new relationships and nurturing others, preexisting ones.

Jason Feifer: Yeah, Matt, that’s totally true.

And I’ll just add one interesting thing that I learned as my book came out and I saw what that relationship meant, going to what Todd said about it being a driver of speaking engagements. People had always told me that having a book raises your speaking fees, and I could not figure out why that would be the case.

And now I understand it because I had a book come out and the consistent theme among my best paid speaking gigs is that the person booking me or the person who they are reporting to read my book. That, that’s it. If when I talk to a client and we’re talking about a gig and I say, How did you hear of me?

And their answer is, I read your book or my boss read your book or our board member read your book. The speaking fee is going to be significantly higher. Now, why is that? The answer is because There is a different budget for get that guy and fill that role. So get that guy is somebody likes that guy, Jason, Todd, Pat, Matt, but fill that role is, Hey, we got an hour slot to fill and we want somebody to talk about change, go find somebody that’s a lower budget.

So that’s a way in which putting something out in the world, developing that relationship, having somebody trust and recognize me and my brand name suddenly means that I get paid more. That was fascinating for me to learn.

Pat Flynn: I think What you said was great. Cause I understood exactly where you’re going with that.

So I appreciate that, Jason, but Matt, why don’t you close us off and we’ll finish from here.

Matt Gartland: Yeah, we’re there like it always does. It evaporates Todd. Thanks for being our special guest today. We blew past our kind of little fun, you know, triple one kind of segment at the end. No bother there. Cause I mean, the conversation today was just so fantastic.

So yeah, that’s it folks. Thanks to Pat and Jason, as always, and all of you listening, we’ll have another round table in our partnership with Entrepreneur, a magazine coming at you here again soon. So thanks for listening today.

Pat Flynn: Wonderful. I hope you enjoyed that round table conversation. Big, big, special.

Thank you to Todd. Todd, you can find at toddhenry. com and definitely check out his book. His newer one, the brave habit. You can actually get three free chapters of that book right now, at least. So go there now, if you can, toddhenry. com Jason Feifer as well. Definitely check him out. Jason Feifer, F E I F E R.

So JasonFeifer.com Jason actually brought his son to card party this past July or June, excuse me. And it was just so awesome to see him and understand that he has a kid who’s also into Pokemon too. And then to see Jason getting into it as well was amazing. And of course you can see his work with Entrepreneur Magazine as the editor in chief over there.

And Matt and I both, thank you. And we’d love for you to join. SPI and be a part of our community. If you head on over to SmartPassiveIncome.com/community, you can see what we have available there are all access pass or our higher level entrepreneurial group with the experts in residence, like Jason and others that you can get access to, to get direct help from over at SPIPro.com. And every member of SPI Pro also has access to our courses and everything that’s available inside of our All Access Pass two, so SPIPro.com. Apply there. We’d love to see you in there. And thank you again to Todd, to Jason, Matt, and for you for listening all the way through. I appreciate you. Great episode coming your way next Wednesday, and I look forward to sharing it with you soon.

In the meantime, hit that subscribe button and I’ll catch you in the next one.

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!