SPI 600: Always Keep Casting – Thanks for 600!

SPI 600: Always Keep Casting – Thanks for 600!

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 office is being taken over by his growing Pokemon collection, Pat Flynn.

Pat Flynn: Hey, it’s Pat here and welcome to episode 600. It’s actually quite fitting that episode 600 ended up on a Friday. The Friday after a rather amazing run of SPI Pro audio workshops, audio teachings, our Teaching Fridays, if you will. Just thank you to all the pros who contributed. And if you don’t know what that is, we’ve had this community called SPI Pro, and we love to recruit members of that community to share the mic with. And they’ve done so beautifully over the last few weeks.

But I got the mic today and it’s fitting because we’re at a milestone episode, episode 600.. And I just wanna thank you for listening to this episode. Maybe this is the first episode you’re listening to, in which case you’re like, well, I don’t know what else is here.

Well, you know, you should definitely go back and you don’t have to listen to all podcast episodes. Although I know there are a few of you, in fact, there’s a few who literally go back to episode 001 and listen all the way through. All 500 episodes, 600 plus episodes, 500 plus episodes. They listen to just straight through, which I think is insane.

And first of all, I’m just very grateful for that. But I think if you’re just discovering this podcast, or even if you’ve been listening for a while, go back to some recent episodes and read the titles. And understand whether or not these are worth your time. I try to ensure that in the first minute or two of a podcast episode, you understand what it’s about so that you can discover whether or not it’s the right thing to listen to right now.

And if not move on to the next one, right? I’m I’m not gonna tell you to listen to everything I come out with. I want you to come out and say, you know, what am I gonna find useful here on SPI today? And I want you to find it and hopefully we’re doing a good job of pushing it toward you so that you can make that decision.

So, anyway, just thank you again, because I know that you are busy, you have a lot of things going on and, and even though you might be on a commute right now or at the gym, in, in a spot where you can listen and you’re doing other things, which is awesome, it just means the world to me. So thank you.

Now, I don’t have a big thing to showcase here in episode 600. Sometimes we, for these mile up stones have a huge guess come on. That’s happened before in these milestone episodes. Other times we do recaps where we go back in time and listen to the highlights of the last a hundred episodes and just pull audio out for that and kind of repurpose some stuff. But I don’t wanna do that.

I just wanna tell you a story today. And this is a story about fishing. Now. I used to fish a lot when I was a kid. It’s been a very long time up until this recent April when I picked up a rod again, and I went to a lake and I got hooked, if you will, on it again. I think it brings back a lot of childhood memories, but more than that, I’ve been very conscious of what it’s done for me mentally.

It’s definitely helped me escape. It’s definitely helped me meditate. It’s definitely helped me find my flow state again. In fact, when I’m fishing, what might seem like an hour is, is actually like eight hours going by. Like that’s what happens when you are in the flow state. And I try to get in the flow state with work.

And I am sometimes, especially when I’m podcasting or I’m in a great writing session that time, just it flies by, right? Well, the same thing happens when I’m fishing, because I’m just so focused and I’m doing something and there’s no room for me to think about anything else other than watching the line or thinking about where the next fish might be or, or what have you.

I’ve been really fighting really hard to not share a lot about my fishing adventures, at least not yet. Why? Because it is for me, you know, the first time I fished in a while, back in April, I was at the lake and there was this beautiful sunrise and the lake was just glass. Right. And there was no wind or ripples on the water.

And I pulled out my phone and I was like, I’m gonna take a picture of this. I have to share it with everybody. And I was like, why, why do I have to share this moment? Why can’t I just have it for me? That might sound like it’s selfish. Like I, I would want other people to see and experience the same things that I’m experiencing, but I think it’s also important to, yes, be selfish a little bit, do some stuff for you.

And sometimes that means removing yourself from the things that are making noise in your brain. Right. And for the longest time ever since the beginning of the year, especially ever since the beginning of the pandemic, really, just my mind races all the time. All the time. What’s next. What’s coming? What if this, what if that?

And going to that lake and putting my phone away, deciding to opt out of sharing it was deciding to opt in to my mental health. And I think that’s really important. But beyond that story, which maybe I’ve told that before, I think it’s a really important story and you should do something for you that only is for you and not feel the need to share it.

Or if you do, ask yourself why. I think that’s a really healthy question to ask ourselves is why, why, why am I doing this? Or why does this have to happen or feel like it has to happen. And I started to question that. So I put my phone away, just enjoyed it. And I’ve been enjoying fishing since then. I’ve gone a few dozen times since April, and I’ve been having a lot of fun, you know, sometimes I’m on the water and I’m not catching anything.

And of course they say a terrible day. Fishing is better than a great day at work. That’s only true if you don’t like your work. I love both my work and the work that I do and the fishing when I’m away from my work. So they’re kind of one in the same in that regard, but again, it’s a, it’s good to. Get away for a little bit, get outdoors, especially be in nature and see that.

And I also love the fun challenge of fishing because bass fishing in particular and everything I catch again is sort of catch and release. It is challenging, right? It’s not just put your bait in the water and you catch fish. You have to study the fish. You have to learn about the seasons and pre spawn and spawn and post spawn where they go.

And what happens when the temperature goes up, what happens when the temperature goes down and where on the lake might they be at this time with this temperature, with the air and the wind. And there’s so much, and it’s just so exciting and so fun. So it becomes a reward when you seemingly put things together and then you catch that fish, but there’s gonna be days where, when you’re fishing and this is an analogy to business, so keep that in mind, when you’re fishing or when you are doing business, there’s gonna be days where you do everything correctly. You have the right line, you have the right bait, you have the right location. And you’re doing all the same motions that everybody else is doing. And you’re getting nothing, right?

You’re just getting nothing. And I can’t imagine how many times a fisherman with that drive to catch that fish will, even if they’re not catching fish, they continue to cast it out there. Right? One saying that we have in fishing is, or just one more cast, right? And that one more cast never is just one more cast because we have that drive.

The next thing we put out there might be our personal best. We might catch a monster fish on the next cast, but in business for whatever reason, Sometimes we take one cast and one cast only, and we don’t catch a fish and we’re like, oh, I guess there’s no fish in this lake. You have to keep casting. Right.

And why don’t we have that drive to keep going? I think because it is less, maybe there’s less at stake perhaps, right. With business. It’s like, well, if this doesn’t work, then things might fall apart and I might starve or I’m not gonna have a house. And I think in some cases that could be true. But in most cases, that’s just a story we’re telling ourselves.

And I’ve told myself that story before, if I don’t do well with this launch, everything is gonna be a mess. And it’s, I’m a failure and all this stuff. And I still feel that way many times. During the pandemic, a lot of our course launches absolutely just bombed, but not because it was a poor launch, but I mean, think about the macroeconomics and everything that was happening in the world. Right?

There’s a lot of circumstances and variables that you cannot change similar. even though you might be in the right spot of lake, even though you might be fishing the right bait, even though you might be making the best casts that you can. You’re not able to control whether there’s a fish there or not sometimes.

You’re not able to control whether somebody, the day before caught that same fish. So that fish still has that memory and doesn’t feel like they wanna be aggressive to abate that they may be, have already seen. Right. But we can’t control that. But what we can control is that if things don’t work out the way we want, or if we don’t catch a fish on that cast, we can always keep casting.

I’m gonna make that the name of this episode always keep casting. Now, on the flip side, I saw a fisherman the other day, who, you know, and this is actually illegal, cuz in California you can have a permit or license to fish and you can check a box to fish a second pole at the same time. So a lot of trout fishermen, a lot of cat fishermen… Catfish fishermen, cat fishermen?

Now that would mean they’re like fishing for cats, catfish fishermen. But like the real ones, not like cat fishing on the internet. I’m not talking about that. They’ll fish with two poles in the water because it doubles their chances. Essentially we’ll cast over here. We’ll cast another one over here. One far, one short we’ll cover more ground.

We might be more likely to get a fish. There was a dude on the lake the other day who was fishing with four poles. And I was just like, first of all, that’s not legal. But second of all, how many of us in business are actually fishing with 20 poles? We have. Twitter. We have Instagram, we have LinkedIn, we have our blog, we have our podcast. We have all the things because we want to cast in every single part of that lake, because if we do, then we’re more likely get to get a fish.

Now, the big difference is here with a fishermen is a lot of these kinds of fishermen who have multiple poles, they have bait that they could just leave there.

It’s more passive. You can cast out some power bait in the middle of the lake and just wait till a trout comes by and then you might get a fish. And then you put a little bell on the end of your pole and then, oh, you got a fish and you go get it. But that’s not how it works in business. We can’t just like cast out something and wait in business.

It’s more like a lure that you have to cast out and then retrieve to cover water and to put the right action on. The truth is if you are fishing multiple poles at a time casting, lures that each require some motion and some action and some retrieval, none of those baits are gonna have the right action.

You’re gonna go one at a time, right? I’m gonna reel the one on my left hand. And while that’s happening, the one on my right hand, standing still, and now I’m gonna reel the one in my right hand and then the left hand’s going. If I try to do both the same time, it’s just gonna be funky and weird. I’m gonna be overwhelmed and convoluted and just in a weird position.

That’s how many people who are creating businesses, treat their social media platforms and their energy. And as a result of trying to be everywhere, trying to cover all parts of those lakes, because those things require retrieval in action in motion. Those baits are just sitting there doing nothing, therefore not catching any fish or that energy is just across so many things that none of ’em stand a chance.

So in many cases, especially for a fisherman fishing, one pole and focusing on that is going to be best, especially if you have the right bait, right. You could have the right bait, but if you’re not energy focused onto that bait and not bringing it in the way it should be, you might as well not even be at the lake or in the ocean.

You’re it’s like, you’re not even in the water. In fact, you’re just kind of polluting it. Don’t pollute the water. Well, I hope that analogy fits. I think it does. It does in my head. And to all my fellow fishermen out there, tight lines, tight lines, I’m learning the lingo, right?

This is one of my problems. I’ll get into a space, a hobby because I am enjoying it. And then I literally take my business experience and lay it over the top. And again, I’m trying hard not to just automatically create a YouTube video because if I say yes to that, I’m saying no to other things that I’ve already committed to. But I’m not saying no forever. Wink, wink.

All right. Well, tight lines, everybody. Thank you. I appreciate you for helping me get to episode 600, a big shout out to the team and the production team and everybody on Team SPI who’s helped making this amazing experience. Not just for me, it’s not even about me. It’s about you. The listener, the subscriber, the member of SPI Pro, the member of the email list.

I’ll look forward to the next a hundred and hope you do. Thank you so much. I appreciate you if you haven’t done so already be sure to apply to SPI Pro because at the time of this recording, we are quickly approaching our limit or our cap on that membership. We limit it because we know that if it grows too big, similar to the fishermen, with a million poles in the water, our energy’s gonna be spread too thin and it’s not gonna be a great experience.

So we limit the number of people that are in there we’re slowly and actually quickly approaching that limit. We want you to be a part of it as well, if there is room. So be sure to apply. We’ll see if it’s the right fit head on over to SPIpro.com. It’s just been so much fun. Thank you so much for the last a hundred episodes. And I look forward to the next.

And if this is your first episode that you’ve listened to hit that subscribe button because we got a lot more great episodes coming here in these six hundreds. It’s gonna be awesome. Cheers, peace out, thanks so much. And as always team Flynn for the win.

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.