SPI 702: You NEED a “Label Reader” (Trust Me)

SPI 702: You NEED a “Label Reader” (Trust me)

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, his podcast listening time is only when he is either washing the dishes or while walking the dogs. Pat Flynn.

Pat Flynn: You know, one thing that has helped me more than anything with everything from my book titles to what goes inside of online courses to just the content that you’re listening to right now is literally getting that feedback. Going out and wanting to even obsessing over getting that feedback. That is really, really important.

And everything from YouTube thumbnails and, and you know, when you work on something and you’re like in it, you’re in Photoshop or you’re in Canva and you’re creating the thing and, and you’re doing your best, right. And then you put it out there, you maybe share it on YouTube and it goes nowhere. It’s like one of the most frustrating things in the world.

And then what happens? You find somebody on the outside who sees that thing and goes, oh, well, like it’s obvious why that didn’t work. It’s obvious why that sales page didn’t convert anybody. It’s obvious why that thumbnail didn’t get any clicks. It’s obvious why nobody read that blog post, but it’s not obvious to you because you’re in it.

You can’t read the label when you are inside the bottle. You have to have label readers in your business. And that could be your audience. So many of you have stepped up and, and I’ve asked you and we’ve done surveys and we’ve had private conversations on dms and other media platforms and, and you know, I can’t talk to everybody.

Although if I could, I would because that feedback is incredibly important. So that’s one way to get label readers. That’s what I’m gonna title this episode. You need a label reader. You need a label reader, so go get one. Other members of my mastermind group, I’m in two mastermind groups, two that have been together each over a decade with different people in it.

And we’re all label readers because you can’t read the label when you’re inside the bottle, and we’re all inside our own bottle. For sure, I a hundred percent would not be where I am today, would have a completely different look and feel and style and everything if it wasn’t for those on the outside and especially, and huge credit to the other members of my mastermind groups who have literally been brutally honest with me, who have told me how it is.

And it’s funny when you work on something for so long and you share it with a group. And not just one person says the thing, but then they all agree and they all come up with the same rationale that was staring at you in front of your face the entire time, but you just didn’t see it. You have to get label readers.

You can’t read the label if you’re inside the bottle. Now inside of SPI Pro it’s really important that we share, and this is part of the culture of SPI Pro. This is our higher level mastermind group for people who have established businesses. And one thing that we do inside of SPI Pro that I wanted to test and, and experiment with, with something called Thumbnail Thursdays right now, of course, anybody could share a thumbnail at any time and get feedback on it.

And again, the whole purpose of this is to just get an outside read on it. And it’s, it’s incredible to see. I mean, there’s been people in there who have seen tens of thousands of views on their videos more than they would’ve gotten before. How do I know that? Because they’ve changed their thumbnails and then have gotten tens of thousands of more views when things were plateaued before.

So again, the importance of getting a label, make a label, not a label maker. I knew I was gonna say label maker at some point. Label reader, right? A label reader. But Thumbnail Thursdays contain that and, and sort of like focus that energy to do that to share your thumbnail, but also, you know, provide value and, and, and provide that outside’s perspective.

And, and again, that’s part of the culture of SPI Pro is just there to help each other, which is amazing. And if you haven’t checked out SPI Pro yet, you, you better SPIpro.com is the place to go. But Thumbnail Thursdays have been great and a couple things I’ve learned about that. Number one, it sort of reaffirms and confirms the valuable feedback that can come from others and, and how necessary that is. Like the whole point of this episode was to tell you a hundred thousand times that you need this. You probably knew you needed this already and you have yet to do it. Do you have a system, a, a mechanism in place to literally collect outside feedback or to get a view on that thumbnail or to have somebody listen to your podcast before you actually publish it?

Doubtful. Every person I’ve asked has not done that. One thing that we did inside of my Deep Pocket Monster brand, this is my Pokemon brand and community, also, shout out and thank you to everybody who just continues to, to, I know some of you who are from that brand and channel listen to this podcast.

Many of you have reached out to me. Thank you for the support and it’s cool. I love when the world’s collide in this way. There’s a lot of people who have now recently found me on Deep Pocket Monster who are listening to now Smart Passive Income, and there’s a lot of people on Smart Passive Income who have been curious about Deep Pocket Monster on YouTube and have now been obsessed with the videos there, which is, which is really fun.

Actually, the coolest thing that happened was I had a, a mom at Card Party, which was the event that we held in June of 2023 for my Pokemon community with 2,500 people came to this event. A couple people, one mom in particular, she came up to me and said, pat, I used to follow your podcast and like, she had been listening for years, so when she heard my voice on her son’s iPad, it like freaked her out.

And she looked and she’s like, why is Pat playing with Pokemon cards? And it’s just been, it’s just been a really fun journey. Anyway, one thing that we do as a team, so our creative team, our video team, we shoot our videos, we edit them, we put ’em together, and guess what do we do? Do we publish it? No. We share it with a few fans, a few fans who we reach out to.

We have connections to them. They’re mainly moderators who have not just become fans, but also stepped up to be a part of the brand and such a vital component to the growth of, of what we have. Anyway, shout out to Shawn and shout out to Brittany and Billy and Rubiks, and many of you, you know who you are.

What do we do? We give them early access to the video and we say, Hey, which parts did you like and which parts did you kind of tune out? And it’s interesting, again, when you get a group of people to tell you, oh, that part at the 22 minute mark, I kind of tuned out and you see three different people who weren’t watching together say the same thing.

Wouldn’t you love to know that before you publish? So do it. Share it early, get feedback. Now, there’s some people out there like Mr. Beast, who rightfully so pays a lot of money to have people watch his videos beforehand. Probably sign some NDAs and waivers or something, and also record them. He records them watching the video.

Imagine a person at a computer watching a video, and then a video of that person watching the video to see what their behaviors are while watching the video. What parts are they laughing at and chuckling at? What parts are they getting bored and sort of like tuning out and checking their phone for.

They spend millions of dollars on their videos, so it makes sense for them to do that. But it also makes sense for us to do that too. Not maybe record somebody and kind of creepily, watch what they do while they watch our videos, but at least ask your fans and people out there who do watch your videos, who care about the brand, who want it to do better. I mean, these people go to bat. And when we share these videos, we don’t preface it. We don’t say, okay, this is what this the video was about. This is what we’re trying to accomplish. Keep in mind that this, this, and this, we don’t say anything other than, watch this video and tell us where you get a little bored at.

Because if we set it up with all that stuff before, what would happen, they would already be looking for and expecting those things. But what is a viewer on YouTube, what does a listener of your podcast, what does a reader on your blog know before they click to read or listen or watch? Nothing. So why am I giving that to the test subject or to my fan who is going to tell us it honestly, how they feel about this thing? And this is why the videos, I mean, we had a video go out two weeks ago. It’s just crossed a million video views. We had a video come out nine months ago that’s about to pass 10 million views. It’s because we’ve built this, not just so that we can create content, but so that it can be consumed in the right manner.

And I, and, and we needed that read from outside the bottle, especially on YouTube with editing and going into literally slicing and dicing it up on the insides of that video on a second basis. You must find label readers. That’s it. Thank you so much. Go get ’em. Make it happen. Make it a system in what you do.

If you do multiple things, pick the one thing, the one primary platform that you have, and find a label reader. Or more for that cuz you can’t read the label when you’re inside the bottle. Thank you so much. Appreciate you and I’ll see you in the next one. Cheers.

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. Our senior producer is David Grabowski, and our executive producer is Matt Gartland. The Smart Passive Income Podcast is a production of SPI Media, and a proud member of the Entrepreneur Podcast Network. Catch you next week!