SPI 568: Why Do We Like What We Like?

SPI 568: Why Do We Like What We Like?

Announcer: 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. His son becomes a teenager this year. Good luck. Pat Flynn.

Pat Flynn: This past week, I interviewed Samir from Colin and Samir. That’s a podcast duo, which you can find on YouTube. They also have an audio podcast as well, but their YouTube videos are really where they shine. I spoke with Samir about the origin story of how he and Colin got together and how they started this lacrosse channel on YouTube. But then this migrated into helping other brands, including Dude Perfect, and other really big brands. And then how they’ve now turned into a duo that has created one of the most engaging podcasts that I personally have ever listened to and have seen. Highly recommend you check out their podcast. Again, Colin and Samir. That’s S-A-M-I-R. If you haven’t heard yet, go listen to episode 567, maybe right after this, because it’s a truly amazing story.

Pat Flynn: I just love the approach that Colin and Samir both take with their podcast, and really, what their goals are. Their goal and their mission is to try to help other creators by interviewing other creators. That sounds very simple. It sounds very similar to what we do here. I interview other entrepreneurs to help you as an entrepreneur too. It’s worked, right? Except, I want to think a little bit more deeply about why I like … No, why I love the Colin and Samir podcast. I’m just going to talk kind of just organically about this, because I think it’s really important to do this exercise with things that you enjoy.

Pat Flynn: I mean, I can even ask you right now, what do you actually enjoy about the Smart Passive Income Podcast? Why have you subscribed to it? Why have you listened to it for maybe a short period of time? I know some of you have listened for over a decade now. Again, asking why is really important, because then you can begin to understand kind of the categories and the patterns and the buckets of things in your own life, and what falls into them and what falls out. But not just that, when new things come about, you can begin to understand, “Well, what buckets or categories should they go into?” Or even if they should even get into those buckets in the first place, right?

Pat Flynn: This is the really amazing thing about understanding ourselves and by being conscious of the decisions that we make. And yes, most of what we do is on autopilot. Of course, we breathe on autopilot. We sneeze on autopilot. We wheeze on autopilot. We sleep on autopilot. But there are some things that we can be conscious about that we’re normally on autopilot with, to have a better understanding about, so that we can make more informed decisions in the future. So it might be a good exercise for you to do this with things that you enjoy, but I’m just going to do this right now. And no, Colin and Samir didn’t pay me to just do an entire episode about what I love about their podcast and their videos so much, but I’m going to do it anyway because I just really enjoy them.

Pat Flynn: This is the power of what happens when you enjoy something, right? When you enjoy something, you talk about it. And when you are online, other people talk about it. And things can just continue to spread. But what I really love about Colin and Samir, first of all, they understand who their audience is. Their audience really wants to know what is working, and they want to get to the meat of the how-to behind it. They also want to get inspired. In every single instance of every single story that they tell, of every single interview that they do, they don’t just ask those surface level questions.

Pat Flynn: I think that’s the first lesson there, especially for you podcasters and interviewers out there. They don’t just ask questions and then move on to the next, they go deeper. And not only do they go deeper just to kind of follow up, they go deeper with a purpose. Their purpose is to, again, uncover exactly what the story that they’re trying to uncover or the motivation, what this can do for us, the listener. They always have the listener in mind. I always feel like I’m in the room with them. That’s the general feeling I get. And that’s what I want to have happen when you listen to this show too. Hopefully it feels like that. But, again, I feel like I’m in the room with them. It helps that it is on video because I literally see them and I see the camera movements. They’re basically looking at things that I would look at if I was in the room too. It just feels like I’m at the table with them, which is really interesting.

Pat Flynn: They always seem to ask the questions that I want to ask myself. I love that. That means they know who I am, their audience, very, very well. That’s something that you’d want to do if you are a creator of any kind. Whether you do interviews or not, you want to get into the heads of who it is that your target audience is, your target market, your niche, so that when you present content, so that when you present products, so that when you interview somebody you can match perfectly, exactly what’s going through a person’s head. When you do that, people are more engaged. They’re more on the edge of their seats. They’re more able to listen. And most of all, they’re also able to then recollect it and share it with others too.

Pat Flynn: I find I do that all the time with especially other creator friends of mine. I listen to an episode of Colin and Samir, and then I have to get on a phone call or a Zoom call with somebody and go, “Hey, did you hear that episode about selling Mr. Beast’s channel?” I can just kind of relay that to my friend or to whoever. It becomes a really interesting conversation because something hit the mark, right? Something hit the mark. That’s the other thing. It’s not just the questions and the individual strategies, it’s just the topics in general. It seems as if every episode is just perfectly tailored. They do a great job of just utilizing YouTube as well.

Pat Flynn: I mean, I think a part of the reason why I love them so much is because they really understand YouTube and that’s exciting to me. It’s motivating to me. It’s inspirational to me because I am trying to learn the algorithm of YouTube and how that platform works. It seems to be working in many cases, both on my Pat Flynn channel, especially on my Deep Pocket Monster channel, which by the time this episode airs, we’re at 135,000 subscribers. I’m going to continue to keep you updated as we go along. It’s kind of a nice little record in history on this audio podcast. There’s a timestamp for where that channel is at. In fact, we just crossed $8,700 in revenue, in ad revenue, just in the past 28 days, which is insane. It’s bonkers. We’ve come to a …

Pat Flynn: Here’s another thing that I actually learned from Colin and Samir, is they create certain types of videos. When you land on a certain type of piece of content, whether it’s a video, audio, or a blog post, when something hits, you do it again. You try to understand, why do people love it, and you lean into that. On the Deep Pocket Monster channel, I know I talked about that a week ago or two weeks ago when I was giving you another update, but just recently, even since recording that, we published a video called I Bought Weird Pokemon Cards on Etsy. The thumbnail, of course, highlights that and supports that. You go into the video and I literally purchase something. It arrives on my desk right away. I open it and I react to it. And I do that four or five times in the video. It just, for whatever reason, seemed to hit a mark.

Pat Flynn: Currently, the first one we did has over 400,000 views in about 29 days. In about 30 days, in a month. We just published a second one, and it seems to be on an even higher track to do even better. Because we not only just were like, “Hey, that one worked, let’s do it again.” We tried to understand why that one worked. When we asked people what they loved about it, they said, “It was different. It was fun.” It was exciting to see something that they hadn’t seen before. That’s the cool thing about Etsy is you can find a lot of random things that you’ve never seen before. When we ask, “Well, why does that matter to you?” Again, in our follow-up conversations, in our chat messages, in our DMs, they go, “Well, everybody else is just opening packs, but you seem to be offering something different, and that’s really exciting.”

Pat Flynn: So that when we go into these video creations, now it’s like, “Hey, that one worked, let’s do it again. Let’s lean into the fact that these are different.” We understood, “Okay, which part of the videos seem to retain people more?” We didn’t just ask them that, we looked in the retention chart. When you speak to Colin or Samir and you understand them and talk about it on their channel, you can gauge that they are doing the exact same thing with understanding who their audience is and what YouTube is presenting as far as analytics, and how to react and respond to that. So that’s really cool. Sorry. I went off on a little tangent there.

Pat Flynn: But again, that’s the kind of thing. They sort of inspired and excited that. They kindled that in me, and now I’m getting excited implementing and using a lot of those strategies as well. It is working, which is really, really cool. The cool thing is it’s not even just them understanding it, it’s them having these conversations with big creators, like MKBHD, who we’ve had here on the show before, Mr. Beast, and several others. The lessons that they can learn from them, they implement themselves, and then I can pull in inspiration and implement them too. So anyway, that helps.

Pat Flynn: Next. Another thing I love about their podcast is their pacing and the back and forth. What I love about duo podcasts, when you have two personalities, is if they nail it right, it just becomes so much more engaging than a solo episode with one person could ever be, in my opinion. I’m remembering what the very first podcast I listened to is like. It was the Internet Business Mastery Podcast with Jeremy and Jason. Sterling was his stage name. Sterling and Jay. They both had very different personalities, but it played very, very well. Jason was very logical, analytical. Not really a storyteller, he just kind of like told you the strategies. But then Sterling, or Jeremy, would go in and then tell the story to support that. Or he’d start the story, then Jason would finish it off with the analytical sort of lesson or the idea behind it. It was just like a perfect thing. No, Colin and Samir aren’t Jeremy and Jason, but they have a similar back and forth, and similar personalities. It even comes out in their video as well.

Pat Flynn: I remember a video where they were touring MKBHD’s new studio. It was funny because Samir was there and he was sort of leading the conversation. And then Colin was always making these little remarks or in the background just playing with something. Samir would have to catch him a little bit and bring him back to the foreground. It was like, really cool. It’s not done in a slapstick kind of way. It’s just very genuine. It’s because they are who they are. They are showing up as who they are, and we can connect with that. The way that … Again, even on that tour, it was not at a table the whole time, they were walking around. Again, the camera work and all that kind of stuff made me feel like I was there.

Pat Flynn: But even when they are just talking at a desk, and whether you need to see them or not, it doesn’t matter. Their pacing is really, really great. Their editing. They just kind of go from point to point. There’s never really a dull moment. I am very impressed how literally every line it feels is very purposeful. But then I get into, “Wow, okay, they are putting a lot of production into this.” You saw notes of this inside of that podcast that we did together, how there’s a team and they’re scripting it and all this stuff. I admire that, but at the same time, I’m not exactly sure that I want to do it quite to that level. But then I’m inspired to potentially try because the production is definitely something that comes through. It’s why on YouTube, there are hundreds of thousands of views for every single podcast episode. They’re just having a conversation, but the pacing of it, the storytelling is really good. And the lessons learned from it all sort of add up to this banger episode that has every creator out there really loving it. It’s just awesome.

Pat Flynn: So I highly, again, recommend you check them out. Just even go watch one episode to take in their pacing, their storytelling, how do they hook you in? And then how do their personalities come in? I often find that at the end of the videos … I mean, I’m watching till the end, because at the end they usually have some sort of … not summary. It’s not a summary. I mean, on YouTube, especially, you don’t want to just be like, “Okay, guys. This is the end. How do we conclude this?” You don’t actually want to give notes to your audience that you’re about to finish because you want them to retain all the way to the end as much as possible, but their personality comes out and they always have something going on that they’re kind of like weaving throughout the whole video. And then it kind of concludes or climaxes at the end. It’s just really, really well done.

Pat Flynn: It’s kind of even hard to put into words. I mean, I knew I was going to talk about how much I love them and why I love the show so much, but it’s even hard to explain. You just kind of have to watch or listen to it. So Colin and Samir, check them out on YouTube. Very highly engaging podcast, and their story to how they got there. Because it was definitely not an overnight success. They gave up a whole bunch of things. Wow. Just so proud of them and so stoked to have had a conversation with Samir. Hopefully we can get Colin on next time because the duo is really amazing. It would’ve been nice to have Colin on, but we only had Samir on the last time. I think he was busy.

Pat Flynn: Anyway. Thank you so much. I hope you enjoy this follow-up Friday episode. After you go and watch an episode of Colin and Samir, let me know on Twitter @PatFlynn. You can also @ColinandSamir as well. Just let us know which episode you saw and what you enjoyed. Let me know if I was right. I think it’s a great show. I think you’d love it too. And I hope you enjoy the rest of this podcast because we got a lot of great stuff coming up. In fact, if you haven’t subscribed yet, make sure you do that. Don’t miss out on this upcoming Wednesday’s episode. Which, I’m looking at the lineup right now, you are not going to want to miss. Thank you so much. I appreciate you. Take care. 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.