Community and Audience Archives

How to Actually Make Progress and Grow Your Business—A Conversation with James Wedmore

June 19, 2019 Pat Flynn Leave a comment

James Wedmore: Commitment, and people toss this word around, oh, I’m committed Pat, I’ll tell you, I’m committed. Committed is not when I feel like it and when it’s convenient and when it’s not scary. Commitment is whatever it takes. And so when— Pat Flynn: Ooh, such powerful stuff we’re discussing today with my good friend James Wedmore, host of the Mind Your Business Podcast. He says that hustle and hard work are not essential ingredients for success. Success is created by mindset over strategy. And when it comes to who we want to be and how we can get to where we want to go, the biggest thing is the mindset. And how often do we say that we’re going to do something yet we don’t follow through? How often do we throw that word, “commitment,” around, I’m committed to doing this, whether it’s in our business for our […]

How to Start an Online Business

June 17, 2019 Matthew Gartland Leave a comment

Discover how to start an online business, including figuring out your “why,” identifying your target market, and building a brand and website! Matthew Gartland June 17, 2019 How to start an online business: It’s a giant question, one that’s loaded with lots of ins and outs. And it’s one that I (with a little help from someone on my team) will attempt to answer for you in this post! I’m first going to share what I consider the crucial first three steps you must go through (plus a couple more key tips) before building an amazing online business. Then I’ll hand it over to SPI’s “integrator”—Matt Gartland. He’ll introduce some of the things we’ll be talking about on the blog in the near future about the less sexy but still super important parts of creating a business that will stand out and stand the test of time. Step 1: Ask […]

The State of Podcasting in 2019 with Matt and Pat

June 14, 2019 Pat Flynn Leave a comment

Pat Flynn: Hey, you know what I love about the fact that you’re listening to this right now? The fact that you already know what a podcast is. Now, whether you already have a podcast of your own or not doesn’t really matter. But what’s cool is we’re talking about the state of podcasting in 2019 because there’s a lot of changes that are happening, a lot of cool things that are relevant to you whether you have a podcast or not, so make sure you stay around, pay attention, because it’s me and my COO Matt talking podcasting. But first, the intro. 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. He wants to invent a hot sauce called “Pat on the Back,” Pat Flynn. Pat: What’s up, everybody? […]

The Boom (or Bubble) of Podcasting?

June 11, 2019 Pat Flynn Leave a comment

Is this the boom or bubble of podcasting? Is podcasting the new blogging? Explore why podcasts are a big deal, podcast tips, podcast sponsorships, and more! Pat Flynn June 10, 2019 Somebody recently asked me the question, “Pat, do you think podcasting is in a boom . . . or a bubble? . . . One that’s perhaps about to pop?” I’m about to answer that question in this post. Is Podcasting the New Blogging? Kind Of! Now, it’s not like blogging ever popped and dropped off the radar. Blogs are still hugely popular today—but I also think podcasts are having their day now. If you go to Google trends and compare the terms “blogs” and “podcasts,” you’ll notice that in 2017 the two kind of crossed over. That’s right: podcasting is on the up and up. The trend is clear, and there’s definitely still growth and opportunity in podcasting […]

The Psychology of Money and Wealth with Ramit Sethi

June 5, 2019 Pat Flynn Leave a comment

Pat Flynn: So I like to mix things up here on the Smart Passive Income Podcast. This is a very different kind of episode, you’re going to be transported to the city of New York. I actually conducted a walking interview, through the city of New York, with a good friend of mine, Ramit Sethi. I was in New York for some interviews and to meet some people and some retailers, related to the SwitchPod. And I was there with Caleb and he said, why don’t we just try this thing? And so we did it, it’s a learning process. You’ll hear at the beginning of the episode, my mic was a little bit hot because I was holding it close to me. You’ll also probably hear how cold I was. I was losing my breath a little bit, because it was twenty-five degrees Fahrenheit. Which for me, being from […]

$100k in Debt to Facebook Ads Expert—Monica Louie and Her Amazing Journey

May 29, 2019 Pat Flynn Leave a comment

Monica Louie: But we paid off in two years $120,000 on a single middle-class income. So we definitely hustled. Pat Flynn: Wait, how much on— Monica: $120,000. Pat: $120,000. How? Give me the plan. How did you make that happen? On a single income? That doesn’t even seem real in just a couple years. Monica: Yes. In two years . . . Pat: You’re listening to Monica Louie, our featured guest today from MonicaLouie.com. She has an amazing story to tell about how she got out of debt on a single income, $120,000, in two years. Not only does she tell us this story, but she tells how this milestone led into a new blog, which then she sold. And then because so many people were asking her, she then developed her own agency around a special skill that she learned, and now serves the world with this skill. That […]

Why People Really Hate Us Online

May 22, 2019 Pat Flynn Leave a comment

Pat Flynn: Stop talking, because nobody cares. You are a complete idiot— Speaker 2: You are a complete idiot from head to toe. Speaker 3: Go do something that actually matters. Speaker 4: Why were you even born? Pat: . . . I hate you. Speaker 2: I hate you. Pat: These are some powerful words that I’ve read online about myself. Now, nobody has ever said any of these things to me in person, but it doesn’t really matter because when I read these things online, it hurts. I don’t know if you’ve ever been targeted for hate online. Whether it’s a comment on a YouTube video, or your blog, or a reply on social media, or something that you read in a forum somewhere, it doesn’t matter. It never feels good no matter how much people tell you that those are things you should just ignore. I’ve been […]

SwitchPod—The Final Numbers, Churn, Retail, and How Much Are We Taking Home?

May 20, 2019 Pat Flynn Leave a comment

Dive into my latest income report on the SwitchPod Kickstarter, including our final sales and profit numbers, churn, our plan for retail sales, and what’s next on the physical product front. Pat Flynn May 20, 2019 —I’ve been talking about the SwitchPod a lot in the past few months, and I’m excited to finally share this big report with you! To start off, I want to talk about how amazingly thankful I am for everybody’s support for the Kickstarter campaign. It’s been an incredible journey, and I’m really excited for the actual release of the SwitchPod. It wasn’t always smooth, of course. Not all of our marketing efforts panned out, and since it was such new territory, we ran into a lot of things we didn’t know about. In this post, I’ll share some of the numbers from the campaign. I’ll also talk about what worked well, what didn’t, and some […]

Staying Positive and Building a Business That Matters with Marc and Angel Chernoff

May 8, 2019 Pat Flynn Leave a comment

Marc Chernoff: When it comes to growth personally and professionally, discomfort is really the key to the growth that you ultimately want for yourself. So do something every single day that challenges you, or scares you, just a little bit, right? You know, you don’t have to go crazy, but . . . Pat Flynn: You’re listening to Marc Chernoff, who is here with his wife, Angel, and they’re going to be talking about some of the biggest discomforts that they’ve had in their life that have helped push them forward into a very successful business, helping hundreds of thousands of people. You’re going to learn about how they got started in business and kind of accidentally fell into this business, how long it took for them to monetize, what they monetized with, it is actually a lot simpler than you might think. You’re going to discover how they dealt […]

Top 5 Major Business Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make

May 1, 2019 Pat Flynn Leave a comment

Pat Flynn: Look, we all make mistakes, and making mistakes is a part of being an entrepreneur, but the problem is when we make the same mistakes over and over again, and we see other peoples make those mistakes, and we do them anyway. This particular episode, I’m going to teach you five major mistakes that new entrepreneurs make, no guests in this episode, just you and me having a conversation, and listen to the intro, here we go. 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, when he wants to learn something, he hires a mentor to save him time, Pat Flynn. Pat: What’s up and welcome to session 390 . . . no 369 of the Smart Passive Income Podcast. Thank you so much for joining me […]

How to Build a YouTube Brand that Makes an Impact with Tim Schmoyer

April 24, 2019 Pat Flynn Leave a comment

Pat Flynn: By the year 2020, Google says, which is a little bit scary—that’s next year—they say that ninety percent of all content consumption will be through video. That’s a pretty significant percentage. And they have access to data that may actually show that they are right. Obviously, they own YouTube and now Linkedin is on the video train, Facebook, Facebook Watch, Instagram video, IGTV . . . Video is here to stay and whether you believe the ninety percent number is actually going to happen, we can all agree likely that a large amount of the percentage is going to be video consumption. So it’s really important that we understand how to create videos, and not just videos that are often one-off answers to certain questions and things like that, but videos that can actually gain a following, build a community, help us in our business. And today I’m […]

I Wrote a New Book, and It’s Publishing Soon!

April 22, 2019 Pat Flynn Leave a comment

Pat Flynn has written a new book, and it’s publishing in August 2019! It’s called Superfans, and it’s all about creating superfans for your business. Pat Flynn April 22, 2019 I’m incredibly excited about this post, because it’s the first public announcement about a really big milestone coming up this summer! (No, not FlynnCon, although I am definitely excited about that!) Team Flynn, please mark your calendars for August 13, because that’s the day my next book launches. I’m so amped to share more with you, so read on to learn about the process that’s gone into writing and creating the book—and of course, stay tuned for the big reveal: what the book is called and what it’s going to be about. Why I Chose to Self-Publish (Again) This book has been in the works for a while—about five years, in fact. And like my previous books, I’ll be self-publishing […]

Anti-Busy. Pro-Purpose. Talking Work-Life Balance with Chalene Johnson

April 10, 2019 Pat Flynn Leave a comment

Chalene Johnson: We’re so used to being hyperstimulated and go, go, go, go, go, go, go, I’ll say, admittedly, mainly for me because I had such an addiction to work as my default. We had lots of things in . . . Pat Flynn: You’re listening to Chalene Johnson, an amazing friend and mentor of mine and today we’re going to be discussing work-life balance. I don’t know if you’re like me or like Chalene, but oftentimes we default to just continuing to stay busy and how do we know what we should stay busy on when we want to say no to things. What do we prioritize, how do we manage this versus our family, how do we blend them together nicely? I’ve always admired Chalene and how she’s been able to seemingly have everything together and we find out in this episode that it wasn’t always that way. […]

Here’s a Sneak Peek Behind the Curtain of How SPI Operates

April 8, 2019 Matthew Gartland Leave a comment

Take a sneak peek behind the curtains of how SPI operates, from our core values and mission to management to business systems and tools for performance. Matthew Gartland April 8, 2019 Tony Robbins. A primetime news broadcaster. The front-man for a popular band. What do they all have in common? One heck of a team behind the scenes that brings their respective magic to life. Your favorite newscaster, for example, may be a star. But the folks in the control room are the ones running the show. Aaron Sorkin’s show Newsroom puts the chemistry between newsroom team and big personality broadcaster on captivating and insightful display as only Sorkin can. I love it so much not just because the writing is brilliant but more so because of the truths it conveys: big personalities cannot do it alone; uncontrolled ego is a destructive force; mutual deference between authority figures (e.g. between […]

Why Staying Small Is the Next Big Thing with Paul Jarvis

April 3, 2019 Pat Flynn Leave a comment

Paul Jarvis: For me, it’s always, I want a business that supports my life, not a life that supports my business. So I don’t want to Elon Musk things and work eighty hours a week and sleep on a couch in my office. I want to work thirty-ish hours a week and enjoy the rest of my time. As long as I make enough money to cover that, put money into savings and all of that, I feel good. I don’t need to . . . Working awards ten times more than that wouldn’t serve me, wouldn’t serve my life in any way. I don’t think it would serve my customers, even. Pat Flynn: I recently read a really interesting book, it was called Company of One, Why Staying Small Is the Next Big Thing for Business. When I was initially going to read it, I was thinking about the […]

How & When They Grew Their Team

April 1, 2019 Pat Flynn Leave a comment

Take your business to the next level by making your first hire! Learn from 20 entrepreneurs who reveal their first hire story today on the blog! Pat Flynn April 1, 2019 Ah, your first hire. When you’re just starting out, it can be tricky to know when it’s time to start building your team. The key, my friends, is to remember that you can’t do it alone—and that it’s okay to start small. Like many entrepreneurs, I started out working with contractors for things like building iPhone applications, copywriting, and web design. But a couple of years in, as I was building new passive income streams, I realized I could use help with things like building websites and creating backlinks. Even though I enjoyed doing those things, they probably weren’t exactly the best use of my time. So I started using sites like Elance and Odesk to find help for a few […]

Women and Entrepreneurship—with Christy Wright

March 18, 2019 Pat Flynn Leave a comment

Christy Wright: So here’s what’s interesting, and this is research-based, this is not just my experience alone. But I think we can all agree men and women, in general, are wired differently. And women, generally, are very, very relational. So we value ourselves by our relationships, as a mother, as a sister, as a daughter, as a friend, as a wife, and so on. Well this is great in business, because we are amazing at customer service. You don’t have to tell a woman how to take care of people, because that’s what she does, that’s who she is. It’s like telling a fish to swim, like this is who we are. However, being wired relationally tends to pose some challenges when relationships are at play in business. For example, pricing . . . Pat Flynn: You’re listening to Christy Wright, a good friend of mine from Business Boutique. Business […]

10 Podcasters Who Grew Their Business on Top of Their Show

March 11, 2019 Pat Flynn Leave a comment

In this post, ten podcasters who grew their business on top of their show share how they did it, from podcast ROI to podcast Kickstarters and more! Pat Flynn March 11, 2019 Podcasting isn’t just a hobby for people anymore. For many, it’s about business growth and profit. In this post, I’m going to share several examples of how different people have used their new podcast to either grow an existing business or start a brand new one. When I started podcasting in 2010, I wasn’t ready for the kind of positive results it would have for my brand. It didn’t happen overnight, but relatively quickly, my podcast began helping me extend my reach, increase my authority, and grow my income. In a survey I conducted in 2012, for example, I learned that the Smart Passive Income Podcast was the #1 way my audience discovered me, ahead of links on […]

Super Simple Segmentation & Web Personalization for Next Level Marketing—with Brennan Dunn

March 6, 2019 Pat Flynn Leave a comment

Pat Flynn: Hey. If email marketing is important to you, if making more sales is important to you, if providing a better customer experience before they become a customer and after they become a customer is important to you, then I would make sure you really pay attention to this episode. Today, I invited Brennan Dunn from RightMessage.com on the show. And RightMessage is probably one of the most mind-blowing tools that I’ve been able to use in my business over the last year. We’ve been experimenting with it and really playing with it over the past six to eight months. And it is about time to let you know about it, if you don’t know about it already, because it’s a game changer. A game changer. [Full Disclosure: As an affiliate, I receive compensation if you purchase through this link.] So what we’re gonna talk about today, is onsite […]

This Game-Changing Tool Helped Me Earn 6-Figures

February 18, 2019 Pat Flynn Leave a comment

In a new Campaign Income Report, learn how this game-changing tool helped me earn 6-figures: RightMessage, the ultimate tool in audience personalization! Pat Flynn February 18, 2019 Welcome to another campaign-based income report here on Smart Passive Income. This month, we’re going to examine a promotion I ran at the end of last year for Cyber Monday to promote my online courses. I’ve run small promotions during Cyber Monday before, but only for my architectural-related business. Why not anywhere else? Because I had no other products of my own to sell! Up until 2017, affiliate marketing had accounted for about 90 percent of my income, with podcast sponsorships, books, speaking, and niche sites making up the rest. Then, I finally created my own courses to better serve my audience, and have seen a significant increase in income ever since. There were a lot of lessons learned and many things that […]