SPI 550: It’s Okay to Not Know

SPI 550: It’s Okay to Not Know

Speaker 1: Welcome to the Smart Passive Income Podcast, where it’s all about working hard now so you can sit back and reap the benefits later. And now, your host. Since the Chargers left San Diego, fantasy football’s the only reason he cares about the NFL now, Pat Flynn.

Pat Flynn: This past episode we interviewed Eric Wooten from altaredmarriage.com. Eric is literally right in the middle of building his business, that was the special part about that episode. Eric hasn’t quite yet figured it all out, he’s figuring it out. I think that episode’s going to provide a lot of relief for a lot of people because you can still make progress, yet still not even know exactly where things are headed. As you might have heard in that episode, there were a lot of questions I asked where Eric was like, “Well, I’m not exactly sure,” or, “I’m still trying to figure it out.”

Pat Flynn: I’m just here to give you permission and tell you that it’s okay. It’s okay if you don’t know exactly where you’re going. It’s okay if you haven’t figured it all out yet. It’s okay if you don’t even know necessarily what your voice is or what the plan is yet. What’s not okay is thinking that because you don’t know those things, you don’t take any action. I think Eric’s a perfect example of somebody who just went with it. Even in his relationship, he’s still trying to figure it out in terms of how to balance his marriage and having his wife come on to the business and all this kind of stuff, even though she doesn’t want to necessarily be seen or show up, up front. It’s just a really interesting dynamic that I think provides a lot of truth and reality to a lot of our situations, which is it’s going to be messy and that’s okay. That is okay.

Pat Flynn: I don’t know of any business owner or entrepreneur who’s had a non-messy journey on his or her way to success. I mean, I’ve had a very messy start. There were a number of moments where I almost gave up because of what other people said. There were a number of moments where I started to slow down because I didn’t think I was good enough. I had put a halt in my content because I had such high standards for it. I didn’t know how to manage my business well, I have made some not so great decisions financially. I have distracted myself with side projects that were actually just an excuse because the thing that I was supposed to be working on was hard and challenging. The list goes on and on.

Pat Flynn: And guess what? It’s okay. I think it’s important to give yourself a little bit of grace. Maybe this is the episode you need to hear right now, even though it might be a shorter episode than normal, but maybe you need to hear those words right now. You need to give yourself grace. You need to give yourself some permission to get messy and to fail. I’m not just speaking to the perfectionists that are out there, i.e., my younger self, who was so worried about having everything perfect because a 90% on a math test wasn’t good enough and that was ingrained in me ever since I was a kid, and the perfectionist who wanted to make sure every word, every paragraph, every title, every image was perfectly placed and correct or else, the or else being the grammar police or anything.

Pat Flynn: I mean, I’ve even made bigger mistakes. I had a VA on a website once, I allowed them to be in charge of selecting images without very many rules. They chose a Google image to put on a website and then I got flagged for it. In fact, I was getting sued for five figures as a result of that. Thankfully, my lawyer was able to work out a deal, but still had to pay quite a significant amount of money because of that mistake.

Pat Flynn: And guess what? It’s okay. It’s not the end of the world. It’s easy to say that in retrospect, obviously. If you’re going through some stuff right now, or you’ve recently made some mistakes, or there might be some things that you’re going through that you’re just having a really hard time I’m with, you might roll your eyes, hearing somebody on the internet say, “Oh, it’s okay. It’s going to work out just fine.” I mean, I rolled my eyes too. But that’s usually the case, which is very helpful because when I consider when I fall into these deep dark holes or these traps of wondering whether or not I’m good enough or this thing that I’m creating is actually going to do well, I go, “Well, you know what? It’ll work itself out. If it doesn’t do well, it’ll work itself out. I’ll learn from it.” As James Wedmore once said, you either get the result you wanted or the lesson you needed. That, to me, gives me so much encouragement. You either get the result you wanted or the lesson you needed.

Pat Flynn: That is huge, because that means as long as you’re doing, you’re not failing. You might not be hitting the mark, you might not be reaching your goals or hitting those numbers, but you’re at least learning and earning that lesson, or you earn the results. The cool thing is, these lessons stack up on each other so the next time you do the thing it’s going to work out much better, no matter what. You’ll have at least that much more information the next time around and you can eventually pinpoint to success, but you’ve got to keep going. I know it’s hard.

Pat Flynn: Now, one thing that I love to do, especially when things are difficult, is to connect with other people who have gone through this before me. I do this all the time. In fact, twice a week I get on a call with two amazing groups of people who I’ve been with for over a decade now, or one nearly a decade, to talk about the things that are going well, yes, of course, to talk about and encourage the other members of the group, but in most cases it’s needing help. It’s me not sure exactly what the direction I should be going and I get these amazing people to ask questions and to poke holes and have conversations, which force me to start thinking out loud.

Pat Flynn: Because the truth is, if you just keep it all to yourself, if you’re just having conversations with yourself, you’re only going to get a one-sided look and a one-sided view at things. You’re only going to see things from your own perspective, and so many other people with their eyes and their ears and their voices and their questions and their poking, they can provide so much value to you, even though it’s uncomfortable. The nice thing is, when you are around safe people and people who you know are brutally honest because they care and you know that you’re going to do the same thing for them, I mean, it’s an awesome, beautiful thing.

Pat Flynn: I would encourage you to, if you haven’t done so already at this point in the year, to see which groups that you might be a part of that could add value to your life, where you could give and also get back. That could be a mastermind group, you might connect with people at an event that you are going to or have recently gone to. If you’ve recently gone to an event and haven’t connected with anybody and haven’t reconnected, I would highly recommend you do that for sure. Go and do that right now. Every minute going by is a minute wasted for an opportunity, for a relationship that could have been had, so make sure you do that.

Pat Flynn: But if you have an event coming up or you’re thinking about different groups, free Facebook groups and LinkedIn groups, perhaps there’s some people in there who have stepped up and you’ve noticed that they’ve provided a lot of value, you really jive with them and they’re asking questions that relate to things that you’re doing, I mean, connect with them on Twitter and on LinkedIn, send direct messages. These are magical places where things can happen.

Pat Flynn: As you’ll hear next week, one of my favorite things, a little teaser for next week is this person who I have on the show who is absolutely amazing, we talk a lot about the mindset and we talk a lot about the stories that we’re telling ourselves and how we, as children, have sucked up these things in the world to shape who we are. In many cases, that’s not who we want to be, so how do we rewrite those stories? I highly recommend you subscribe if you haven’t already, because that episode is golden. It could be one of the most important episodes anybody ever listens to, to be honest. I look forward to the feedback in the future that I’m going to get from that episode. That’s 551 coming up, this is episode 550.

Pat Flynn: But let’s keep going here, let’s keep talking about putting yourself around people. In many cases, if want to filter and find the right people the fastest, you might need to pay to get access, but not pay because it costs anything, pay because it’s an investment. That cost, you need to rewrite that as an investment because you can get so much in return if you utilize that. If you consider it an investment, you’re going to be more like to consider the work that’s needed to be done in order for that investment to pay off, versus oftentimes we get sold these magical buttons that if we pay, we’re going to get riches or get this result and we don’t have to do anything, and in most cases that’s never going to happen.

Pat Flynn: Perhaps you might want to invest in something like SPI Pro, which is our premium community. You can apply at smartpassiveincome.com/pro. We always have enrollment periods happening every quarter. You can come in with a cohort of students and already feel like you’re a part of the community right from day one, because other people are coming in like freshmen to a college, all together. You befriend each other and you join groups and you become a part of masterminds that we place you in and join the events and come to my AMA and all these other things. It’s so much fun.

Pat Flynn: Maybe there’s other groups. I mean, SPI Pro is not the only one. There’s Youpreneur with Chris Ducker, another one that comes to mind that was around much longer than mine and has had an amazing community and events to go along with it. We would love to create events for SPI Pro, it’s just kind of impossible with the current state of the world right now, but we are creating events virtually. Things like Audience Driven, which brings in more people publicly, and then our private groups and sessions and co-working moments and masterminds and ask the experts and all this kind of stuff that we do inside of SPI Pro, plus all the other things we have planned. I mean, Jillian, who’s doing an amazing job as director in there, is just crushing it. We have so many things planned that I hope that you can be a part of. If you are in SPI Pro, just thank you.

Pat Flynn: Eric, who was on the episode this past Wednesday, is a member of SPI Pro. He’s in a mastermind group and he’s getting a lot of value. If you didn’t hear that, he was the winner of our challenge at the end of 2021, which is what earned him the spot on the show, but I’m really thankful he was on the show because he really brought some truth to the matter. This takes us back to this episode, which is it’s okay if you don’t know. It is almost impossible to know everything you have to do and it’s impossible to know exactly that exactly what you’re doing is exactly what you need to do. It’s okay, but you need to keep going. Give yourself some permission to explore, give yourself some grace, give yourself some forgiveness. If you don’t love yourself and forgive yourself, how are you going to get other people to forgive you? In a way, we need to also love ourself too.

Pat Flynn: In preparation for next week’s episode, maybe this is a clue for who is this guest, but you also need to lie to yourself. There’s a good way to do that and a not so great way to do that. It’s not a fake it til you make it kind of thing, but it’s a believe it til you achieve it kind of thing. Make sure you subscribe, because that episode is going to be amazing.

Pat Flynn: Anyway, give yourself some grace today. I appreciate you. Thank for listening to our Follow Up Friday episode here. I look forward to serving you in episode 551 next Wednesday. Cheers, peace out, and as always, Team Flynn for the win.

Pat Flynn: Thanks for listening to the Smart Passive Income Podcast at smartpassiveincome.com. I’m your host, Pat Flynn. Our senior producer is Sara Jane Hess, our series producer is David Grabowski, and our executive producer is Matt Gartland. Sound editing by Duncan Brown. The Smart Passive Income Podcast is a production of SPI Media. We’ll catch you in the next session.