SPI 642: Grateful New Year. Now Stop!

SPI 642: Grateful New Year. Now Stop!

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, in another multiverse he’s the head chef at a fancy restaurant and has his own TV show. Pat Flynn.

Pat Flynn: Wow. So in just a couple days it’ll be 2023. And if you haven’t done so already, this is a great time to obviously look back into the past of this year and just be proud of yourself for the things that you did accomplish.

Yes. It’s easy to look back and say, oh, I wish I did this, or, I’m not where I wanna be, but you did some stuff you, you’ve gotta have done something. Even if it’s a small thing, it’s still something you’ve made some sort of progress. And that’s really important. It’s really, really important to be proud of that and, and to be aware of that and to celebrate that.

So I wanna celebrate with you here at the end of the year. You know, here at SPI, we launched something huge that is the All-Access Pass, which hundreds of people came in during the launch, which is again, I’m just so amazed that you were all aligned with our vision. Now, not everybody got in, obviously, but there’s still, I mean this is always gonna be open now, so SmartPassiveIncome.com/allaccess.

But we didn’t believe the launch was gonna go that well, and that just spoke to us on the team and we celebrated that because we, we got it right. We got the messaging right in terms of what was needed in the space. We stepped forward, we took a sticky sort of approach, a, a spiky point of view in the world of education. Online courses alone aren’t enough.

You need the community and you need, you need the support behind it in order to make it work. And so we’ve stepped up to create that. And the All-Access Pass has been very successful so far. And it, again, I just cannot, I cannot thank the team enough because this is, this is from the community team and all of us, the marketing team, the content team, Matt and I, the operations team, we all put our time and, and love and our passion to serve you into this.

So super proud of the All-Access Pass. On the Pokemon side of things with Deep Pocket Monster, I mean, wow, I don’t know where we’re at at the time that this episode comes out, but we are at the time of this recording in the beginning of December we just crossed 425,000 subscribers, so you can check now if you’d like.

Again, I can’t predict the future that well, but 425,000 subs at the time of this recording, and we could be close to, if not already, over a half a million that would. Definitely our best month, and that would be an amazing thing for sure. But either way, I’m just so grateful for the followers there and the community that we’re building there.

We have our big event that we launched tickets for next year in Anaheim, June 2023. We’ve had hundreds of tickets sold already. And what’s awesome is that many of the tickets, in fact, most of the tickets are an adult pass along with a child and, like, that’s amazing. The family centric channel and the family friendly channels, attracting those kinds of people to this event, which is great cuz we’re gonna have a lot of fun activities for people of all ages and that’s really cool cuz Pokemon is something that is cross-generational, so that is a big win.

You know, the SwitchPod didn’t really make a ton of progress this year. This is my invention that I made with Caleb. We both co-invented this product and it launched in 2019. 2020 was a big year for us. And then 2021 and 2022 have been pretty stagnant. But the beauty of the SwitchPod is, it’s pretty automated.

I mean, Caleb does a lot more work than I do, just want to be honest and upfront about that. And he does great work, especially the one who handles most of the customer service stuff. But there isn’t that much really, and the product still continues to sell. We bought a lot of inventory in 2021, and that lasted through 2022.

And we’ve been experimenting. We’ve been looking to find new means to get it in front of new people. We’ve run some ads here and there this year to experiment, and they didn’t do very well. YouTube ads specifically, but we’re gonna look to in 2023, try some new things, hopefully. We have discussed trying to expand our product line, but there’s also nothing pushing us or forcing us to do that.

With Caleb and his three kids, we had him on the show earlier this year, which was great to get his perspective as a, a father of twins this year, in addition to his daughter. And just how that has been going and just, I, I love him and his family to death. And the SwitchPod doesn’t have to grow. It’s doing well for very little work currently.

And it’s a physical product, which is pretty cool. Physical products definitely are more demanding, but to have it set up in this way is, is really amazing. And we use Shopify. As our storefront. You can check it out switchpod.co. Maybe you’re late to buy a Christmas gift for somebody and you wanna check out a gift for your favorite creator, switchpod.co.

I’m also very proud of my kids and my family. We did a lot more this year as far as trips and such, and obviously the pandemic stopped a lot of that, but we definitely took advantage of the open sort of spaces now to be able to go out and, and travel and we’re looking forward to some bigger travel even next year.

And I’m just proud of the kids for how well they’re doing in the transition to middle school and their grades, their activities. Keoni picked up trumpet and he’s really, really into it. He’s practicing on his own. He wants to take private lessons and I took him to a field show, a marching band field show in the fall, which was kind of interesting and, and amazing to me because that same field show I used to compete in when I was in high school. So to bring my son there and, and then be in the stands, it like a tear came to my eye for sure. Many tears, in fact. But they were good tears, happy tears, and I’m excited to see him on the field at some point in the future if he wants to continue that.

You know, I’m very proud of, for sure, Matt, my, one of my best friends CEO of SPI Media, he had a child this past year as well, and that was, I know something that was very, very much a mix up intern. Wait, that doesn’t sound right. No, it was definitely a child that was welcomed, but it definitely mixed things up as far as his schedule, that’s what I meant to say.

His schedule and just his, his organization and, and, and he’s handled it well. I mean, there were some rough times for sure, lack of sleep and just a lot of things happening all at once. Him and and his wife have just handled things beautifully and I’m just so proud of him and I’m excited to enter the forties with.

We both had a birthday on December 6th, this past year together, and we both turned 40, which was, which was really cool.

And I’m also very proud of the community, you, the listener, and especially those of you who have gotten involved in the community in SPI Pro and the Learner Community, the Accelerator groups that we’ve had, and of course the All-Access Pass.

I mean, to see the progress that y’all have been making and the questions that you’re asking and the help that you’re not just receiving, but the help that you’re also offering to others. It’s, it’s just such a beautiful situation and I just can’t, like, we’re here because of you, and we wouldn’t be here if you weren’t.

Obviously, for many reasons. Not just your investment into our programming and what we have to offer you, but into each other, into stepping forward to offer help when you’ve gone through something that somebody else is just going through for the first time, for example, and your vulnerability and showing up and being honest and talking about the hard times.

I mean, that’s what this is about. It’s about getting through this together. It is so much easier to do that, and so thank you again. I wish I could just start naming off names, but I would be here for hours with all of you who have made progress and have gotten outside of your comfort zone. I mean, from some of you who have launched your first podcast, some of you have been in office hours and I’ve seen the progress of the artwork to your first episode to the descriptions and just like the trial and the error, I’ve seen it to people who have crossed the million subscriber mark in their, their YouTube channel.

It, it’s wild. I mean, the, we just seem to attract the right kind of people, and right now it’s, it’s, it’s because of you, you are attracting the right kind of people too. So, so again, thank you.

Now, one exercise I like to do at this time of year that I’d recommend you do now if you haven’t done already is the Start, Stop, Continue exercise. I’ve talked about this on the show a few times before. I put, I’ve got this from Matt and the team and I have incorporated it into my personal life. And so there are Start, Stop, Continue exercises that you can do for your business. But I wanna have you do it for yourself.

Right. And, and specifically just for the remainder of this episode, cuz I don’t wanna take too much time here at the end of your year. And we got a new year coming just right around the corner. And, and I think that this exercise will help you. And I just wanna focus on the Stop part of that cuz this exercise is like, okay, make a list of things or think about the things that you wanna start doing that you didn’t do, that you know you need to do.

Make a list of the things that you need to stop doing that you were doing. That you’re gonna make sure to not incorporate into the next year, and what are the things that did work that you wanna continue to work on? And these are the kinds of exercises that really helped us in our business. I remember at one point, Matt and the team came down to San Diego and we were all in a hotel room, hotel room, and we had post-it notes and we were just putting them on the window.

Hey team, what are we gonna start doing this year? What are we gonna stop doing? What are we gonna continue? But then again, taking that exercise and bringing it into our personal lives, or at least for myself, has been really great. So the Stop part, I just wanna talk about the stop part, and this isn’t gonna take too long, but on the back end of this TikTok experiment, and realizing just how much of a waste of time it was for me.

And I’m not saying TikTok is a complete waste of time for you, but I learned after my 30 day experiment that it was a complete waste of time for me, and not even from the creator’s point of view, but from a consumer’s point of view, it did not provide any additional value to my life. In fact, it gave me 30 seconds of value and then left me sort of feeling empty afterwards.

Right? And so then I, I kept having this, this subconscious need to reopen the app to get that endorphin, to get that quick hit and then come back again. It, it was almost like a drug. So the one thing I’m gonna stop doing this year is stop wasting my time. Just in general. I want, as I enter my forties, as my kids get older and I only have five summers left with my son and a few more left with my daughter before they’re 18 and they’re out of the house most likely.

Is, I, I need to make every, not every second count. I mean, I don’t, I don’t like saying that because I don’t wanna have to micromanage every second of, of every single day, but I just don’t want to do things that waste my time. That’s all. I wanna stop doing things that waste my time. But I also want to stop thinking that doing nothing is a waste of time.

Nothing is not a waste of time. Nothing is in fact recovery time. Nothing is, in fact, taking a break from the thing that was so exhausting or took a lot of creative energy to refill that tank. Doing nothing is okay, and I’m giving myself permission to sometimes just sit and not worry so much about the next, next thing that’s coming, or the emails that are coming into my inbox or the next task on my list. I’m gonna stop also feeling like I have to fill every additional moment that I get back as a result of building my business in the way that I have with more work. I wanna create space and I wanna wish the same for you. And I hope that next year you will offer a little space to bring SPI into your life in some way, shape, or form. Whether it’s continuing to listen to this podcast. And if you haven’t subscribed yet, hit that subscribe button. Of course. And if you’d like to join us in our community and where we’re putting most of our time and effort, the All-Access Pass would be where I would recommend if you’re not in there already, SmartPassiveIncome.com/allaccess. Instead of paying hundreds of dollars to get access to it, just one course and doing it on your own, good luck, you can pay a small monthly fee to get access to all of our courses and the community and our support and the pathways through them in our workshops that happen. And so much more. And it’s just like going to the gym with a whole bunch of other people who are going through that painful journey with you and we’re all gonna help each other out.

SmartPassiveIncome.com/allaccess, we’d love to be here to start your year and I’m just so grateful for you for being here. Love you. Wanna wish you all the best. And happy new year.

Thanks for listening to the Smart Passive Income Podcast at SmartPassiveIncome.com. I’m your host, Pat Flynn. Our senior producer is David Grabowski. Our series producer is Paul Grigoras, 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.