SPI 836: You Can Sell and Serve at the Same Time (Part Two of My Entrepreneurial Journey)

SPI 836: You Can Sell and Serve at the Same Time (Part Two of My Entrepreneurial Journey)

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, if there was one skill he wishes all kids would learn, it’s how to present in front of other people, Pat Flynn.

Pat Flynn: You know, I had a really great time recording last week’s episode. I talked about sort of the first three phases, I guess, of my entrepreneurial journey. I talked about the scrappy start after getting laid off, building Smart Passive Income, being happy with scrappy, right? Or cringe before you binge. And just a lot of the lessons I learned there.

And then the blog or dive phase where I started to really understand the power of case studies through blogging specifically. But it wasn’t long until I entered phase three, which was the podcasting pump phase. So really beginning to understand the power of the voice and the power of this new platform.

And it’s still, in my opinion, it’s still got a lot of upside the podcasting space. I cannot stop saying that because I believe it’s true. I’m not going to get into the details. Why? Because we’ve talked about it before. But the podcasting space completely changed my life and it’s what allowed for most people in the middle 2010s to end up finding me and seeing me as an authority in the entrepreneurial space. Many of those people invited me out to conferences to speak. One opportunity that came from the podcast I got to be an extra in a movie because somebody from Hollywood found me, wanted me to do social media for their show and I said, I’ll do it so long as you put me in the movie.

So they put me in as an extra. I, I leveraged that. I honestly didn’t think they would say yes, but I did. And that connection later turned into a movie that I filmed starrint the DeLorean from Back to the Future. Yes, a couple minutes was filmed at the exact mall, Puente Hills Mall, which was Lone Pine Mall or Twin Pine Mall inside the movie.

And that was the entrance video to a presentation I gave at Blog World Expo, or what later became known as New World Expo or New Media Expo, excuse me, not New World Expo, New Media Expo in 2015, where I brought a DeLorean on stage and none of that would have happened. If it wasn’t for the podcast, I talked about the importance of the podcast for not just discovery and growth, but also just relationships.

Some of my best friends are a result of having conversations first on a podcast. Chalene Johnson was another name that I didn’t drop last week, but I do have to give her credit because that relationship with Chalene Johnson relates to this next phase. The online course boom. Yes. She had a major impact on that, but not immediately.

So we’ll get back to Chalene Johnson in just a moment. My first online course came about in 2016 as a result of writing Will it fly? So although books have been a part of my process since 2013, I have another book coming up in 2025. Wow. So that’s, I’ve been writing books for a long time. I only have, well, I will have four of them in June of next year.

I hope you check it out. Anyway, more on that later. But Will It Fly, which was my second book, published in February of 2015. It became a Wall Street Journal bestseller. And even though it was written so that I could literally just give people the easiest way to get started. Remember the tagline is, so you don’t waste your time and money.

So you can test your next business idea so you don’t waste your time and money. And despite it laying it all out, People still wanted more. They wanted to see how it was done. They wanted a course. So Caleb and I got together. This is near the beginning of me and Caleb’s journey together, hired him for some editing, and then we started working on projects and courses together.

Smart from Scratch was born. This was the name of the course that came off the back end of will it fly and smart from scratch since then has helped about 45,000 people, I think, up to this date, and it will be refilmed next year. That’s part of the newer phase that’s coming, which we’ll talk about more toward the end and likely next week.

This course was very difficult. I had never filmed a course before, so it was sort of like a make it up as you go kind of thing. Remember, be happy with scrappy. It was actually mostly filmed in Minnesota, because I was asked to do a keynote speech at the Leadpages conference back when Leadpages was the premier landing page company, and It was filmed in the hotel of the whatever hotel I was at for that event.

So three, four days, we filmed it. It was all about how to find a business idea, how to test it, how to validate it, how to make sure people, yes, do want the thing that you are creating. And I mean, that’s, that course is now eight years old. So that’s part of the reason why it’s getting refilmed. It’s it’s old, but it just more looks old.

It’s. still very relevant. All the stuff inside of the book is very relevant, but we’re trying to update things. We’re trying to make a better first impression for new members. And that’s a part of our plan moving forward to, we’ve already refilmed Email Marketing Magic, which is going to be the first course that gets relaunched very, very soon.

You might be hearing about it via email soon, but it’s been refilmed completely and trimmed down actually. And what I mean by that is It’s not less valuable, it’s in fact more valuable because we made it a lot easier to go through. We made the actions that you take inside of that course much easier to go through.

Much more clarity, especially now that Kit is now the brand name. So we wanted to update for that reason. But also because The tools and the times have changed. So we wanted to update that for everybody. And again, the principles have always remained the same instead of these courses, but again, we just want to make that great first impression across the board and it starts now.

So email marketing magic will be re released very soon. So look out for that or a webinar. I might teach some stuff for free on YouTube very soon. And then ask you to come and join us inside of the community and join the accelerator group, the first group that’s going to go through the entirely brand new course together.

That was the first course. The interesting thing was that the course was a very, very low end course, very inexpensive. And in fact, for quite a while, we gave it away for free. We gave it away for free during the pandemic, but I’m fast forwarding a little too fast. Now I want to go back to 2017 because after that course launched, so many students said, Oh my gosh, I love your teaching style.

This was so easy to go through, which I was so happy to hear because honestly, I didn’t feel like it would be so well received. I had such huge imposter syndrome. Remember, up until this point, I started generating revenue through affiliate marketing. I didn’t ask my audience for more money for me. I asked my audience what they need help with, and I gave them tools and recommendations.

So they pay those companies and those companies paid me a commission. That’s how affiliate marketing works. And I had been doing that for years. This was the first time, outside of my own book, That I was asking my audience to buy something from me. Now in 2017 smart from scratch came out people wanted more and I said no because I didn’t again that imposter syndrome came into play until late 2017 Chalene Johnson comes in she and I had built a relationship over a couple podcast episodes We shared together.

She had an event called Marketing Impact Academy, MIA. Hosting that event in Anaheim made it very easy for me to go. Except, I didn’t want to. Because she asked me to speak, which I initially said yes to, but then she said, but then you have to sell on stage. And I was like, no way. I don’t do that.

In fact, I hate that. I went to an event in Chicago not too long before that called Internet Profits. Yes, P R O F I T S. So, Internet Profits, but almost like profit like, you know, somebody who could predict the future kind of thing. Anyway, it was full of sales pitches, great presentations with sales pitches at the end, and then people running to the back of the room to pay thousands of dollars for things.

And it just like, I had to take a bath during that. And I actually spoke at that event, but they let me not pitch. And I guess that’s how they make their money is through sharing revenue with the person who sells on stage. I didn’t have anything to sell. I didn’t have anything to sell. Smart from Scratch was it.

And I wasn’t going to sell that on stage. People had already started their businesses at this particular event. So it didn’t make sense for them. So they let me speak for free. And I remember setting it up. I presented like everybody else. And I was leading into something that sounded like a pitch. I did this very last minute too.

And then at the end I said, and guess what? Today and only today, you’re not going to hear a pitch on stage from me. And I thought I had the whole crowd roaring. It was amazing because I guess people were just as tired of it as I was. So when Chalene asked me to come and sell on stage, I said it was easy for me to say no because I was like, Oh, I don’t have anything to sell on stage.

All of your people already started businesses. They don’t need smart from scratch. So I have nothing to sell. And she said, Pat, there’s one thing that I wish you had available that I know you would crush on that my audience needs your help with and it would be such a shame for you to not sell something like this to them because they all need it so bad and you’re the only person I know who could do this the way I would want them to.

And I said, Chalene what are you talking about? She goes, Pat, I want you to create a course about podcasting and I was like Chalene, I’m an affiliate for John Lee Dumas right now Anybody who wants to learn podcasting from me? I sent to John and so I would just recommend, you know, I could send people to John or you can send them to John and she gave it to me straight She said Pat you are not listening to me. People want you to create the course because of the way you teach because of your experiences. And that made sense to me.

And when I thought about it with all the people wanting a course from me, sure, okay, yeah, it made sense. And I said, Chalene I’ll do it if you teach me how. And she said, okay. So she taught me how. She taught me what it was like to actually sell on stage, genuinely. To do it from a place of service. And this was the first time really that I understood that, wow, there are people who can do this well and who can do it genuinely, amongst the sea of people who do it for the wrong reasons, but there is a right way to do it. But I was still scared. I was still worried. I didn’t even have a course yet. So she said, okay, just pre sell it Pre sell it on stage and if nobody gets up to buy it, you don’t have to put it together but I promise you people will want it from you and I said, okay This is what if nobody wants it?

Like how embarrassing is that going to be? You can literally see nobody getting up. That’s going to be the end of me, right? These are the things going through my head. And she goes, Pat, do you believe that you have the right skills and the information that can help people get results? And I was like, yeah, I’ve, I’ve helped people like when they’ve asked me and I’ve helped some of my friends.

And she’s like, then why are you holding it back? You deserve to get paid for this and help people too. You can sell and serve at the same time. I was like, damn, Chalene, you’re so good. Again, that relationship wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for the podcast that we were on together, which is, which is crazy to think about.

Anyway, the day comes, I speak on stage. I have this one hour and 30 minute presentation. That’s all value, right? I’m telling my best stories. I don’t even pitch anything in the first hour and a half. I’m just captivating the audience, but then comes the time to sell, but Chalene taught me how to do it, how to lean into it, I teach a lot of this stuff inside of my webinar course, stuff that I learned from her and many other people after I did this because once I did it, I found out that wow, it is powerful because when I pitched the course before I was even done with the pitch, people started getting up and flying to the back of the room and out of the 900 people that were there that day, 175

people paid about $350 each to learn from me. So I got all their emails, all their names. Chalene gave me a big hug backstage and said, see, I told you. And she really believed in me. She was my mentor at the time. And I have to thank her so, so much for that. Because that again, showed me the power of selling through service because you know, you have something that can help somebody.

So I worked with. The 175 students dripping out content pretty much every week or every other week until the course content was done and the course is great. It’s helped tens of thousands of people since that launch, but man, I, I brought three of those people who went through that beta program with me.

One of them was Dr. B. Who started a podcast about ADHD and living with ADHD, helping people through ADHD. And she’s still podcasting today. Shannon Irvin. Dr. Shannon Irvin was there in that audience that day. Who’s since become a guest on the show and has become a lifelong friend. And her podcast is still up and running today too.

Then there was Rob Stewart, he and his wife Carrie run a Disney travel agency, they started a podcast, and after six months, they had to start turning business away because there were too many people coming their way because of the podcast. I brought them all on the podcast to talk about their story, to share their before and why they were afraid to start a podcast, to share their after and what has happened since.

And without even prompting any of them, they gave credit back to me. And we timed that podcast episode to come out the same week we launched Power Up Podcasting publicly for the first time. And that launch made over $250,000. More than half of it came as a result of that single podcast. I know because we took surveys and everybody, well, sorry, 50 percent of people, more than 50 percent said it was that podcast episode.

Some people even like literally credited Dr. B who was a guest on that podcast for purchasing the course. They’re like, Dr. B convinced me. She said if she could do it, anybody could. And that’s why I’m here, Pat. And she told this great story on the podcast about how she was deathly afraid of technology. So of course, when you have somebody who talks about the same objections and worries that an audience member has and that audience member sees what has happened after they transformed and the results of that they want to go to the same coach.

They want to go to the same guide, they want to take the same course. So Power Up Podcasting still today. We’ve relaunched it three times In fact, it’s at the 3. 0 version now to keep it up to date with a fresh new as of late, video podcasting module in there, which is very relevant today. And a video podcast is a part of our future here as well.

Something to keep in mind and to look forward to on the Pat Flynn YouTube channel. Yes, this is the first time you’re hearing it. So I’m excited about that. It doesn’t mean this is going to be taken away from you. It doesn’t mean it’s going to be any less valuable. We’re just going to add a video component because really there’s a lot of growth opportunity on YouTube, but we want to serve more people and we know how YouTube works.

So that was the podcasting pump leading into the online course boom. But then boom is right because in 2020 there was a major implosion, I guess you could say, because everybody stayed at home. There was the pandemic. I had lost the opportunity to sell online courses because nobody knew what was going to happen.

Courses were still selling, but they were slowing down like crazy. And this was right after an incredible live event held in June of 2019. My book, Superfans came out a month later, but this event, FlynnCon, which happened in San Diego, we had 500 entrepreneurs paying ticket entrepreneurs to come to San Diego, to hang out with me, get to meet my family, get to meet some friends here from people like Chalene Johnson on stage.

And it was an incredible event. And after that event, we ran a survey and we said, Hey, of all the things that happened at this event, all these things that we planned for, what was your favorite part of the whole thing? And you want to know what the number one response was? It was the time in the hallways, in between all the things we planned, where they got to meet other people like them, where they got to have conversations during lunch, and having coffee together, and at dinner at night.

They were there for each other. Just as much, if not more, than they were there for me. And that was a huge learning moment for me. Absolutely huge. And what was incredible was we were like, Okay, we’re gonna do FlynnCon again in 2020. And of course it got delayed. He said, okay, not 2020 because of circumstances.

Let’s do 2021. Boom, delayed again. And then after that year, we said, we can’t keep pushing this back. We were going to owe the hotel tens of thousands of dollars. Let’s just scrap it. So FlynnCon was no more, but you know what? Those moments in the hallway. That’s what we wanted to capture. And this is where communities came into play.

And in 2020, we launched SPI Pro, our first community. And this was an application based community where people had to apply. We wanted to make sure it was a certain type of entrepreneur who had a certain level of success, number of emails, number of dollars coming in so that conversations could be had amongst people who are at the same level and it worked. We had 500 people interestingly enough same number as the number of people who came to flint con no it wasn’t the same people but many of them sure 500 people came in as our founding students and many of those founding students are still with us today. And if that’s one of you, thank you.

You are amazing. You are part of the story that’s developing as we speak. Then a couple of years later, we launched the All Access Pass. We, in fact, hired Ashley on our team, who is a former teacher, curriculum expert, somebody who could help take information that we had and structure it in a way that would get better results.

That’s why we wanted her. And she developed the all access pass, which allowed us to bring all of our online courses. We had eight or nine at the time into one specific area for a community to surround itself with. So it no longer was just a solo course that a person would take, but rather it was a community powered course.

And with our accelerators, this was all Ashley. We could bring people in together at the same time to go through the courses that already exist. They’re there already. You watch these modules on these dates, and by the end, you’ll graduate, because you’re all going through this together. You get access to the team at SPI, you get access to each other, you get access to accountability.

And we saw a three times, nearly three times, it was like 2.8 or something over the next couple of years, 2.8 times, success rate than if a person were to take those courses on their own. And so we leaned into community even more. We changed the website to focus on the community, not even focus on me anymore, but the community, the members, and member success stories were flying in.

And we want to make more, which is why the next phase, the phase that’s coming from this point forward is going to incorporate a couple things. I will be showing up more on the front end of the brand. For a while, we sort of tuned it down when it became about the community and when SPI Media was formed, it was almost thought of as a more of a media company.

And I didn’t want to make it about me. It was about all of us, right? And so where I was maybe before at 10 and like showing up and the connection to the brand and my name being synonymous with Smart Passive Income, we tuned it down to like a one, maybe a little too far. Because people are still joining the community because of me. But then you get in there and you see other people like you and it’s such a special thing.

People are still hearing me here on the podcast. Obviously they’re seeing me on YouTube. So it makes sense to bring me back on the front end of the blog to show up a little bit more, to be somebody who wields this experience that I’ve had this whole time. Not a lot of people have been in this space for 16, 17 years like I have.

There’s a few of us. And that was something that was not even really shared. I mean, there’s a level of authority here through longevity through consistency and I think that’s something that I’ve been holding back. Really just sharing that maybe because I didn’t want to talk about myself so much. Rather, I think that would help build trust with people who are looking for help.

And today, a lot of people need help. We want to make things even more valuable. We want to make things less confusing. We want to have consolidation across the board, which is why you’re going to hear some announcements coming up. If you haven’t heard already, about how we’re restructuring the communities to make it even more convenient for everybody in this SPI community.

And whether you are a member of the community or not, by the way, if you are a member, you’re likely hearing stuff already in the community about news and updates and what this all means for you. But we’ve sat down for several months to plan this out. To get to a point where we can stabilize after this change.

And really go full force in helping you. I cannot wait. This is where we want to go. And with Caleb on board as CEO, somebody who is very front end driven, somebody who’s very understanding of the creator economy as a creator himself, it’s going to be absolutely incredible. So I’m so, so happy that you’re with me on this journey.

I cannot wait to share more. And if you are not on our email list to hear about this news, be sure to go to smartpassiveincome.com join the email list. You’ll hear about this in the community. If you’re a part of the community already and you’re going to see, you’re going to see a different tone. You’re going to see a different vibe coming from us.

It’s going to be the same serve first attitude, but we’re going to take a little bit more ownership in who we are, who we believe we can help the best and how we can serve people better than others. We know that to be true. Our members say it. We just haven’t been as pronounced as probably we should. So look out everybody.

I’m so excited for 2025. I hope you are too. And we have a lot of things kicking off. Like I said, the email marketing magic workshop. We have a webinar coming up about that. Look out for that on YouTube and in your email. And I cannot wait to share more with you later. This is going to be amazing. Oh, I’m so excited.

It’s been so nice to go through this historical run these last two episodes to talk about everything that’s led up to this point, because the truth is what got you here won’t get you there and wherever there is for you, we want to help you get there, so thank you so much. I appreciate you for listening in.

The next phase is coming people. Cheers. I wish you all the best and I look forward to serving you further here in the future. Thank you.

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. The Smart Passive Income Podcast is a production of SPI Media and a proud member of the Entrepreneur Podcast Network. Catch you next week!