SPI 840: The Abundance Mindset is Vital for Success Online

SPI 840:The Abundance Mindset is Vital for Success Online

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, Pat Flynn.

Pat Flynn: This past week, I had the pleasure of speaking with Alan Dibb, who is the author of The One Page Marketing Plan, very, very famous book from 2016, and then his newer book, Lean Marketing. And highly recommend you listen to that episode that was 839, the one right before this one. Bye! I wanted to talk about this idea of abundance because Alan’s book is called Lean Marketing.

My book that’s coming out in June 2025 is called Lean Learning. And his book just recently came out. It came out while I was working on mine. And I actually had a discussion with him about this in Tennessee recently. We were at an author’s retreat, and first of all, Alan came up to me, he was like, Dude, Pat, I’m a huge fan.

And I was like, Bro, your book, One Page Marketing Plan, changed the game, and we became good friends. And when he told me that his new book, Lean Marketing, was just about to come out, I had told him that. Well, this was interesting because my book is called Lean Learning and A part of me was wondering how Alan would reply to that if he would go the route of wait That’s very similar to the name of my book.

What are you doing? But he in fact did the exact opposite He said Pat that’s amazing. Tell me more about it And we started to discuss it and he got so interested in the book and was like, dude, I’m going to support it when it comes out for you. And I was so grateful for that because there was a moment in time and I wanted to kind of set up this story Where I had released a product it was a podcasting product I’m, not going to mention any specific names here but I think this is an important story because I think This will be relatable.

I think this is something that a lot of you may think about, especially if you’ve never sold anything before. So to back this up a little bit, for the longest time at SPI, I generated my revenue through affiliate marketing. And it was great because I didn’t have to sell any of my own products. I could just recommend And point people toward other products, software, other people’s courses, programs, services, and I would get paid a commission.

And I was generating, I mean, north of six figures a month for a while on that model. That model has since gone down because we’ve promoted less things. We’ve had more of our own things to promote. And that takes me to one of the first products I ever created, which was a podcasting course. This was back in 2017.

And I actually have a number of people to thank for creating this course. This course is generated over seven figures and has become something that is Become credit for a lot of people’s lives being changed. I mean, people email me every week saying that this course has changed their lives because they’re podcasters.

Now, the connections they’ve made, the revenue that they’ve made, it’s, it’s been amazing. And I think back to when I first launched it because I almost didn’t launch it. And when I did launch it, I almost pulled it back. So when I launched this thing, I have to credit two people. Number one, I have to credit all of you, the audience who was following me at the time, because for the longest time, I was sending people to another podcasting course that existed, and it was a great course.

In fact, it helped a lot of people too, but there were more and more. There were a growing number of people from the SPI audience, people who had been following me, people who have, I’ve been building trust with and who had been reading or listening to my podcast for years who wanted to start a podcast of their own and said, Pat, I don’t want that other person’s stuff.

I want yours. And I kept saying, no, like, I promise you it’ll help you. It’s great. And they’re like, no, we don’t want to learn from anybody else but you. And this was hundreds of people. And that encouraged me to at least entertain the idea of creating my own course. Right. And I should have done it sooner.

I pushed back kind of more mentally because a, I was afraid of creating my own course. And, and B, there was this competing course that I was already pushing people to. And so I was worried about what that person would feel if I were to actually create my own course. And I’ll get to that reaction in just a moment.

But the other person I have to thank is Chalene Johnson. Because if it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t have actually done the work to do it. Because she said, Pat, I’d love to have you on my stage in front of a thousand people. And I said, sure, I’d love to do that. And she said, but you have to sell something.

And I told her, I don’t have anything to sell. I have a beginner’s business course called Smart from Scratch, but that is beyond your audience already. And she’s like, you know what my audience needs? They need to know how to podcast like you do. And I said, well, why don’t you promote this other course that’s there and invite that person and she Got very aggressive with me, and I’m grateful for that.

She said, Pat, are you listening to me? People want to hear from you. They want your way of doing it. And she was like, I need you to do this. I want you to represent the podcasting part in this brand, and I want them to learn from you. And so she helped me, and she even coached me through the process of how to sell something like, The podcasting course, which was not even created yet.

I prelaunched it on her stage live, which I was so afraid of doing. I was like feeling really icky about it all because I’d just been so conditioned from other people who have sold on stage these programs that just weren’t great or just were slimy and I didn’t want to join that crew. But when she taught me that you could sell and serve at the same time and that if you have something.

That will help people. It would be a disservice not to share it with them in your way. I got the courage and I got the momentum to go up there on stage. And when I announced that there was this course, 175 people got up and went to the back of the room. And before I even mentioned the price, they were already putting their name in the hat to purchase it because they needed it.

And I didn’t know how much they needed it, but Chalene did. And she knew that I was the right person for this. Anyway, some of those people have gone on to. I mean, very specific names. Shannon Irvine was one of those people. Dr. B was one of those people. Robin Carrie Stewart from Disney travel secrets, whose business grew 380 percent as a result of the podcast that they created because of my help, it was, it was amazing.

So anyway, this was the first launch and it was a beta group. And so I dripped out that content to them as I was creating it and it was massively successful. And then we had the launch, the public launch for my audience and it was even more successful. But then I heard from two people, each who had their own version of a podcasting course.

One of them was the one that I pointed people to. And that person, actually I’m going to tell you who this was because this reaction was similar to Alan’s reaction with lean marketing and lean, my lean learning. By the way, nobody owns lean, that word lean startup was kind of the first book to run with that name.

Eric Reese from the Lean Startup, an amazing book, highly recommend. With titles of books, you can’t trademark a title of a book. You could trademark a thing that then becomes the title, but that’s how I was able to Right? Will It Fly? There was another Will It Fly that existed. That’s why there’s ten books called Launch.

Michael Stelzner has one. Jeff Walker has one. And again, it’s just, it’s just in the author space, in the book space, that’s, that’s how it is. But, the podcasting space, I was coming in with a brand new course. It was going far and wide. And this person whose course that I was initially promoting, I was helping this person generate revenue.

This was John Lee Dumas. From entrepreneurs on fire, and we had built a relationship with each other over time. I was his first guest on his podcast a long, long time ago, and we were always in support of each other. And obviously I was supporting him by selling his course, but I had reached out to him right before this was going to launch.

And I said, bro, the people have asked me, my audience has asked me for my own version of this course. I’m going to be promoting my own version. And not yours anymore. I hope that’s okay. I hope we can still be friends because I know that I was generating some revenue for you. And he was like, dude, I cannot believe it took you this long to finally create your own version of a course.

I always knew this was going to happen. And I’m, I was just here to support you until that did. And John is the man for that. I mean, he made me feel so good about that decision, and that decision has helped make millions of dollars for many more people. And he has since gone on to do amazing things, too. I mean, he survived, no problem, and in fact, he was able to grow and grow as he does in his own way.

And to get that support, because he was like, dude, there’s room for all of us. People want to hear from me. And only me and people want to hear from you and only you. And that felt so good to get that. He didn’t give me quote unquote permission. He didn’t need to. That wasn’t his job. But he kind of did. He made me feel really, really good about that.

So John, thank you so much. And then there was another person who had a podcasting course at the time who took the opposite approach. This person became very defensive. They made me feel bad for doing it. They even claimed that this would take, even though I wasn’t an affiliate for this person’s stuff, I was of course joining the market of podcasting courses and material and he told me that I was taking food away from his family and I just shut down and cried because this person meant a lot to me, they were a friend and I was very upset about it.

Number one, I just felt. Like a gut punch because I didn’t get the support. But the second part of this is interesting. This person eventually, after everything happened, I still promoted it. I still went forward with it. This person went on to become incredibly successful in such a different kind of way.

They actually stepped into a space that was their zone of genius. And has since become so much more than just somebody who created a podcasting course. Who was worried about me joining that space. And it took a while and I forgive this person and I’m so grateful for this person’s friendship still today.

But there’s going to be people in this world who don’t believe everybody can win. There are people in this world who believe that we’re at a poker table and when one person wins, that means another person loses. That means if somebody else wins, your chips are getting taken away. And I don’t believe that.

I never have. That’s why I don’t really even see there is competition out there. There’s no competition for me out there. I don’t say that because nobody’s better than me. But I say that because we’re all helping the same group of people. And if you win, that means I can win too. And if you’re starting your business and you see somebody else has already done what you’re thinking about doing, that’s actually a good thing.

It validates that that market exists, but it also shows that there’s room for more in a different way. And when you consider that question, well, is this space saturated already? There’s a lot of people doing this already. I want to quote Roberto Blake, who’s come on the show and who has addressed this better than anybody.

He said, Addressed that idea of saturation, because we were talking about YouTube and YouTube can feel very saturated. But when I proposed to Roberto Blake, who was a guest on the show a number of years back, the idea of saturation in the market, he said, Well, let me ask you a question, Pat. Is it saturated with great quality content?

Is it saturated with personalities people can really connect with? and relationships that you can build honestly and authentically. There was just no better reply than that. Because the truth is no. These validated markets that might seem saturated are not saturated with quality content. And there’s always room for unique perspective, unique ideas, unique takes.

And nobody is more unique than you. Nobody can compete with you and your experiences, your education, what you have learned, and how you do what you do. And so long as per what I talked about in the last episode, you keep in mind that the number one thing you need to do is obsess over who it is that you’re serving and what they need help with and how to talk to them, how to communicate, what are their problems, what are their dreams, what are their ambitions, what are their obstacles.

When you obsess over that and you get into a market that may feel crowded. You will be ahead of 99 percent of the people who are serving spaces like that. Because if it’s saturated, it’s definitely not saturated with good quality content. And you actually have a benefit of coming in later. You can see things from an outside perspective.

There’s likely breadcrumbs and trails. That have been left by others who didn’t serve their audience in the way that they should. There’s endless amounts of reviews for products, reviews for books, reviews for podcasts in that topic for those people who are already there that become data and research for you to understand how to better serve this audience.

So anyway, full circle, I want to thank Alan Dibb for just being who he is. I want to thank John Lee Dumas for being who he is. And the many successful entrepreneurs I know, they feel this world is abundant. There is enough, plenty, for all of us. And when you combine that with the idea that you don’t need to serve literally everybody in this world, I used to think that when I started business.

I was like, I need to develop the next eBay or software that will be on everybody’s device. The next uber that’s not the way to win the way to win is to pick a little pocket in this world and serve them better than anybody else can understand them better than anybody else can create for them better than anybody else can because those people need help and if you think about Kevin Kelly’s 1000 true fans, this idea that you only need 1000 people in this world to live an incredibly fulfilling and free life.

Because if you have a thousand people who love your art, your music, your business, your service, your work, who support you, and they’re, let’s say, for example, paying you one hundred dollars a year, which is on the low end of things that people are fans of, right? Trust me, I know. One thousand times a hundred is a hundred thousand.

There’s your six figure business right there. So just focus on finding those thousand true fans. Focus on understanding who it is that you’re serving. And realize that There are plenty of opportunities and there’s enough room, even if you’re serving the same kind of people, even if you are serving them with similar kinds of things, obviously do not rip off.

Always put your own flavor and your own unique things into it. Just like with our podcasting course, we were like, okay, well, other people teach podcasting, but ours is going to get you listeners on day one, the SPI podcasting course, which is called podcasting. Power up podcasting is going to help you not just build your show, but actually build your audience.

It’s going to help you grow your email list and we’re going to share it with that in mind. It stood the test of time and it’s on its third iteration right now. It’s inside of the community. Anybody who has access to our community has access to that course and I invite you to check it out.

Smartpassiveincome. com slash community and definitely check out lean learning or excuse me, that’s my pitch this coming summer. Lean marketing by Alan Dib. Or if you haven’t yet gone on the one page marketing plan. I mean, what I love about Alan’s stuff and the stuff we talked about, it is, it’s very much just like.

What’s the necessary stuff that we need? What’s the minimum viable research learning that we need to do to market our stuff? And that’s exactly what lean learning is about. What’s the minimum viable amount of information you need to move on to the next step so that you can learn from the action, not just from learning everything and then getting overwhelmed and then giving up.

I appreciate you for listening in today. Thank you so much. Let’s have a great end of the year here. Happy Thanksgiving to those of you who celebrate and wishing you and your family all the best. Stay safe, stay well, and I’ll see you in the community. Smartpassiveincome. com slash community.

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!