Cultivating Smart Passive Income

Are you struggling to balance your family life with growing your online business? Pat Flynn & Matt Gartland are the Founder & CEO of Smart Passive Income, a purpose-driven company that provides a trusted learning and development ecosystem for online entrepreneurs. In this episode of the Talent Empowerment Podcast, we explore the world of fatherhood and entrepreneurship and cover other valuable topics like how to build a thriving community, and why discussing failure is essential.

🎙️Talking Points:

(01:51) The purpose-driven component

(12:02) Balancing family and business

(18:11) Creating community-powered courses

(29:04) Finding self-aware and emotionally intelligent entrepreneurs

🔗Connect with Pat:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/patflynn/ 
• X (Twitter): https://twitter.com/patflynn 
• YouTube Channel: @patflynn
• Website: https://patflynn.com/ 
• Smart Passive Income: https://www.smartpassiveincome.com/ 
• SPI Community: https://www.smartpassiveincome.com/all-access/ 

🔗Connect with Matt:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattgartland/ 

🔗Connect with Tom: 

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tomfinnovation/ 
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomfinnovation/ 
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TomFinnovation/ 
• X (Twitter): https://twitter.com/tomfinnovation 
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tomfinnovation 
• Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/TomFinnovation/ 
• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tomfinnovation

Tom Finn:

Hey there and welcome to the Talent Empowerment podcast. We're here to help you love your job. We unpack the tools and tactics of successful humans to guide you towards your own career empowerment. I am your purpose-driven host, Tom Finn. And on the show today, we have legends, Pat Flynn and Matt Gartland. Pat, Matt, welcome to the show.

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Pat Flynn:

Thanks for having us.

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Matt:

It's real to be here, thanks Tom.

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Tom Finn:

Well, let me take a moment if you are the one or two people on the planet that don't know Pat and Matt, uh, and introduce them to you. Pat Flynn is an entrepreneur that owns several successful online businesses and as a professional blogger, keynote speaker, Wall Street Journal, best selling author and host of smart passive income and ask Pat podcasts, which have earned a combined total of over 80 million downloads. Let me say that again, 80 million downloads. That's a lot, uh, multiple awards, uh, he has received for his work. and featured in publications such as the New York Times and Forbes. He's also an advisor to companies like ConvertKit, Circle, and several other companies in the digital marketing arena. And to introduce Matt, he's a five-time startup founder, co-founder with three meaningful exits to date. Today, Matt serves as CEO of SPI Media, a venture he co-founded with his friend Pat, who was just aforementioned. To take SPI business to the next level, his entrepreneurial career spans digital media. e-commerce and the creator economy. Beyond his own ventures, Matt is also an advisor and angel investor in such tech companies as Circle, Carrot, Maven, and Supercast. Fellas, thrilled to have you on the show today. Before we get to all the successful things you've done and how you've helped people and how you've led, just wanna understand what drives both of you. You've had a lot of success. What's that purpose-driven component for each of you? Maybe we'll start with Pat.

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Pat Flynn:

Yeah, I mean for me, and I'm sure we'll get into the story, I had gotten laid off in 08, and that's what really started me down this journey. And I was sort of on an automated path ever since I was a kid. Get good grades, go to a good college, go to school, get a good job, all that kind of stuff. I was doing exactly that, and I still got let go. And although that was tough at the time, it really opened my eyes to all the other options that were out there in the world for me. And it was only after that layoff was I able to discover really, truly who I was. And I've noticed so many other people in the world going down this sort of, again, automated path. And that's scary because that can often lead to unfulfillment or unhappiness or perhaps not even being able to discover what might be their true calling. So I wanna be there and lead by example. And that's what you'll find in the work that I do is it's a lot of story about how I've been able to discover true happiness and business and all the things around it. And to be an example for my kids, number one for sure, I have two kids, 13 and 10, and I don't wanna just tell them things, I wanna show them things and be an example and have them discover that there's so many options for them as they enter the world in adulthood, sooner rather than later it seems. And then an example for my subscribers, my audience, my friends, my colleagues, I just want to be there to show what is possible and that you don't have to be perfect and it's full of. It's a road full of mistakes as you'll probably find out during this interview, but you gotta get through the mess. You gotta be a disaster before you become the master and to help people realize that it's okay to fail, it's okay to make mistakes, but you still gotta drive forward and find yourself is why I'm here.

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Tom Finn:

Thanks, Pat. Do you remember how you felt when you unhooked from the matrix and you went down that path on your own? Did you feel uncomfortable? Did it feel easy? What were those first moments like?

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Pat Flynn:

When I got pushed out of the Matrix, I wanted to get back in, right? So it was very uncomfortable. I called every single architecture and engineering firm that I've ever worked with and just begged and pleaded for a job. And thankfully now looking back, I wasn't let back in, but I was just, I was in that sunk cost fallacy. I've already dedicated my life and my time to architecture. So that's the only thing that's meant for me. And that's all I could sort of be attracted to. And it wasn't until I was forced out of that, that I then discovered everything else, which was hard and difficult. And even as I even started to find success and some income started coming in from the new ventures, I still was driven to go to architecture interviews and just couldn't even believe that this was the new path for me. Because I kept telling myself, well, this isn't what I was meant to do. It's not what I went to school for. I never went to business school. I never, who am I to do this? There was a lot of... a lot of doubt and a lot of self-sabotage. And it wasn't until I got connected with other people who had gone down that path before, who had started their own thing, that I realized what was possible and what was there for me on the other end.

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Tom Finn:

Yeah, beautifully said. You hadn't stepped into your new persona just yet, but you've done it pretty well up to this point.

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Pat Flynn:

Thank you.

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Tom Finn:

Let's take a moment and check in with Matt. So Matt, from your perspective, what's driven you, what has been your purpose as you've gone through your own process?

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Matt:

It's a great opening question because at least for me and through my career, like I've kind of had a different relationship with that notion. Like what has motivated me at different moments? Um, I think the singular thing that's really helped me figure that out and kind of gain a better even language set around it was an experience that Pat and I actually went through together along with our team a couple of years back using the motivation code. There's a good book about it written by Todd Henry. Uh, there's almost like an anti-personality assessment, but it's like an actual sort of, um, You know, curriculum, right? Uh, that you supply inputs to, and then it kind of helps you get an, uh, an idea of your exact motivations. And it, at least for me, helped me kind of, again, with this language set in it. And it described me as being chiefly motivated by two things. One is achievement and, and two is service. And there's an interesting, even relationship between those two ideas, at least for me, as I then. applied that notion and kind of looking backwards through my corporate career right out of undergrad and then very much into the kind of entrepreneurial pursuits that I've had. I still think that rings true today. It's not complemented with being a father of a couple little kids, but it's always around like an idea of climbing a mountain, right, you know, achievement and helping other people get up that mountain too, which is kind of the service side. So whether that's the teams that we have at SPI that we've been investing into and rising them up, investing into their talent development, right. Helping with their careers, certainly the people that we have the pleasure of serving through our memberships, investing in them, you know, we get a great sense of satisfaction by seeing their achievements being intertwined with our own. And as I think itself, you know, in embodiment of the service attitude that, you know, Pat has always embodied that I've always brought to my work as well. and that we now together are trying to really amplify through SPI and even some of our kind of satellite pursuits in terms of co-investing and advising in some really great startups and just the networks that we have in this industry.

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Tom Finn:

So it's not that often that you get three dudes who are dads sitting around talking about business and the first couple of things out of your mouth where I have a lot of purpose. I have a lot of components that I'm thinking about, but what drives me is also my kids. So tell me, were you this way? Were you this driven before you had kids or was that an earmarker for you that changed the way you thought about the world?

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Matt:

I'll swing at that. Pat, I know you have probably a lot of thoughts as well.

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Pat Flynn:

For sure, keep going, man.

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Matt:

I would say I was even overly driven or like too much so, kind of the hustle culture sort of mentality, especially when you're single and you can arguably get away with it, but that's sometimes unhealthy too, right? So I was totally guilty of being. sort of that straight A student, which I was, but again, probably to a fault in terms of then beyond my academic career, getting into business, it's like working 80, 90 hours a week, nonstop on side hustles that became then the beginnings of an entrepreneurial career were amazing, but also unsustainable and healthy. And then having kids, getting married and then having kids was just a wonderful, honestly challenging and difficult, but very necessary like rebalance and reassessment. on how do you stay motivated and driven, but to find closer harmony with other important facets of your life that are really critical, the relationships that matter to you, your own sense of health in many different aspects, physical, mental, and emotional, right? And I think that's, no, I'm a lot older than I was when I started this stuff, getting into the entrepreneurial stuff, but I'd like to think that I'm a little bit wiser at this point.

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Pat Flynn:

Yeah, for me, before kids, it was definitely hustling, grind, for whatever the future might entail. I wanted to give myself as many options as possible and therefore needed to make as much money as possible and I was staying up till 2 a.m. and I was just all in on my business, especially after I had gotten let go. I'd just gotten married. And I remember there were some moments where my wife and I would quarrel sometimes because I was so involved in what I was doing with my business and that's what mattered to me most. that my wife called me out a couple times. In fact, one time we were having a conversation and her mouth was moving, but I wasn't really listening to her because I was thinking about the next email I had to write or the next sale campaign that I had to do. And she called me out on it straight up as she often does with me on those things. And I am so blessed to have her to catch me sometimes. And she said, you're thinking about your business right now, aren't you? As she was telling me a story that I wasn't listening to. And me being me, I was like, no, of course I was listening to you. And she said, well, what did I just say? And I said, well, you just said I'm thinking about my business, right? And that was not the right answer. So I ended up sleeping on the couch that night. But that led to a lot of great conversations about, well, what was really important here? And when we have kids, am I gonna still be doing this? Am I still gonna be thinking about the business and not the kids? So it was very, very important for us to have that sort of conversation. And then now that I have kids, it's definitely motivated me even more. not motivated me even more to work harder, rather work smarter, to prioritize better. Having kids definitely tested my ability to discover, okay, well, what am I doing? And does this actually matter or not? And I found that a lot of things that I was doing wasn't actually matterful. It really helped me discover Pareto's rule and the 20% of things I was doing that gave me 80% of the results. And doing more of that, and getting rid of a lot of the waste. And I almost felt like I was hoarding the ability to do work online so much that I was just saying yes to everything and doing everything I could when rather saying no to most things and only keeping and saying yes to those things that actually drove the needle forward was the right thing. And having kids definitely helped me discover that. Because if I felt like I was wasting time on something, I in my head said, Well, this is actually time that I'm taking away from my kids. And that time is finite. I only have 18 summers left and at this point only five with my son. So every moment matters in my opinion. And what I choose to work on matters because that actually infers how much more time I could spend with my kids or not.

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Tom Finn:

Yeah, we spend a lot of business time talking about working moms, but I think the day has come where working dads are of equal value. You know, we're not in the 1970s anymore. We've got to be present for our families. We've got to be really good dads. We've got to be incredibly involved to make sure that they grew up to be great humans, but we also have to be good business leaders, good thought leaders, um, kind of spilling kindness into the world. When, when you think about that, how do you balance at all because it's not it's not super easy to do. Do you do you keep parameters on your day in terms of when you focus on business and when you focus on family? Or is it some other philosophy that you use?

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Pat Flynn:

It's sort of a mixture. I'll go first and then Matt, I'd love to hear your answer on this as well, especially if now you've had kids more recently than me. So for me, it's two things. Number one, yes on the delineation between the two, for sure, and very, very much honoring the calendar. And if I don't do that, things blend, right? Sometimes the business stuff goes into time when it's supposed to be only family time and that's not good. I used to catch myself on my phone checking emails while at dinner and then that rules. there now where we don't even go on devices anymore so that we can all just be present with each other. The idea that if I'm supposed to be working in writing, then maybe sometimes the family will barge in and that can interrupt me and interrupt my flow state. And in order for me to get through things faster, I have to be in flow state as much as possible. So that delineation is key, but also at the same time, it's the why behind, the reason why I'm behind closed doors in my office at home, right? I enjoy working at home, I love it, but there are definitely challenges. But being open and honest with my kids, especially as they've gotten older and understand, you know, words and, you know, logic, which takes some time, by the way. But, for example, if I'm gonna be in my office writing, I tell my kids that's exactly what I'm gonna be doing. And also, here's the book I'm writing, and here's who I'm writing it for. Oh, here's the story that I wrote yesterday. Let me read it to them and see what they think. So I often will get them involved in what I'm doing so that they know when I'm in my office that I'm doing good work. and that it all matters back to them in the end. When I used to go out and speak at conferences all the time, I remember when my dad, he worked for the government, he would go on business trips often months at a time, and he would just be like, okay, I'm gonna be gone for a month, bye. And then he's gone, and he didn't tell me any reason or rhyme behind it, it was just okay. And then I started to equate, well, work equals time away from me. or time away from your kid. And I want that to be the opposite case for my kids. Work equals something that actually can bring us together and actually have us talk about things and help them discover entrepreneurship or at least get curious about things and then I can guide them. I don't necessarily want them to become entrepreneurs. I would be so happy if they were, but I just wanna show them the options they get to choose their own adventure. But as long as they know that those options are available and... that work is something that can bring us together, then I'm all for it. And it's definitely played a role in who they've become and the characters that they are in this world right now. It's been amazing to see in both my wife and I at home most of the time with them, has definitely been able to, we've been able to see some amazing things happen as a result of that.

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Tom Finn:

Yeah, nice. I like the way you framed all of that. And I love the way you're thinking about your family and your business. Matt, you have a similar view or an alternative perspective?

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Matt:

I’d say similar, but in many very notable regards, a trailing one compared to Pat has his kids are older, as he mentioned, I have an 18 month old and a four and a half year old. So I'm still very much in the thick of it as you know, my wife and I are together with you still not perfect nights and, you know, other say, less ideal less like, hey, you know, in hopefully a few years, it'll be a little bit better. In terms of just like energy management, right? Kind of thinking about how the days are. Oftentimes not in our control. Again, when you have like an 18 month, she kind of runs the house right now, the little one. So, um, which kind of brings me to something that I I'd say I'm still struggling with as an entrepreneur slash husband slash father, um, in no particular order there, you know, which is just balance itself. You know, I, I don't think at least for my life right now with the various commitments that balance is something that is like a permanent state, you know, I'm I feel like I'm constantly like in and out of balance. You know, some days are better than others. So what I'm trying to focus on with my wife and with Pat, my partner, you know, in business, um, you know, are like what habits and routines are we choosing to invest in and try to normalize as sort of the guardrails, you know, when, when balance does get out of whack, when I'm having a bad day or, you know, didn't sleep a lot, you know, in a given night. You know, being maybe honest in upfront with Pat about that, especially if we have, you know, a loaded day together of interviews or some work commitments. Right. So it's, it's me trying to find and invest in those, uh, again, habits and, and mechanics even, uh, within the business with the team, um, so that we can find our recalibration point, uh, when we find ourselves out of balance.

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Tom Finn:

Yeah, beautifully said. I have four kids myself, nine, seven, 18 months, and one fresh out of the oven at four weeks as we record today.

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Matt:

My gosh, well congrats.

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Pat Flynn:

Congratulations.

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Tom Finn:

Yeah, thank you. And I tend to find the same principles effective for our family as I think you guys are talking about. And the first one is really creating some guardrails around the times in which I am available to work and the times in which I shut it down. And when you have... kids and a wife and you want to be present, you have to take time. To take care, take care of business. You have to take time to take care of your family. And I think that delineation is so important, although it's not a perfect science, it does blur at times. We all know that I just try to get us back on the rails as quickly as I can and move through the various tasks, uh, with the kids and, and with the organizations that I run. But I think it's important just to note that there's a lot of guys out there like us that are thinking about this and trying to figure out. How do I manage the expectations of income generation and wealth creation for my family? How do I be a thought leader in business? How do I put some love back into the world and also make sure I don't neglect my family by any means. So I think it's an important discussion, but I wanna turn our attention to what you guys are doing from a business perspective. And I'm really impressed with the work that you've done in terms of building courses and building out your brands, but you're doing something different today. going from courses to communities. Talk to me a little bit about that.

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Pat Flynn:

Yeah, so 2017 we launched our first online course about podcasting and since then we've had about a dozen other courses since then from email marketing to affiliate marketing, YouTube now, online course creation and more. And they've been great, they've been serving thousands of people, we've seen incredible success and people's lives have been changed from those courses. And it's funny, cause that was how many years, that was 12-ish years after the business started. So it took a while for us to get to the point at which I was comfortable even having courses out there. A lot of times it was just free information on the blog and free information on the podcast to help, but people kept asking for a more defined, more sort of handholding process through these things that we were teaching. So courses came out, done very well, they've earned millions of dollars as a byproduct of serving a lot of people, but. In 2019, we did something really special. We brought a lot of those people together in person. And so we had an event in San Diego. 500 entrepreneurs flew into San Diego and we got to hang out for two and a half days. Matt was there, our team was there. It was a beautiful moment. And I remember in our survey after the event, we had a lot of speakers there. There was a lot of events. We had some great sponsors to help the audience while they were there. And the number one most positive thing that people loved and took away from the event was all the stuff in between the scheduled things. meeting people in the hallway, just hanging out at dinner, all these things, I was like, wait, we could have just not scheduled anything and it would have been awesome. Like, what if we could do this again next year and have even more time to just have those hallway hangout times for people to connect and do more things for networking? And then 2020 came and as we all know, 2020 wouldn't allow for an event like that to happen again. So we delayed it to 2021, but we decided, might there be a way to bring those people together more often, maybe even every day in a community online. And so we actually pushed forward an idea that we had on our on our timeline and pipeline for 2023 to 2020. And we built out our very first community called SPI Pro. And this was for people who had established businesses, who already had income generation, who already had an email list. And we brought over 500 people together when we launched it. And the conversations that were happening were exactly what we were hoping for. Connections being made. new partnerships being formed, the ability for us as a team to stay even more connected with who we were serving and for them to stay more connected to us, but most importantly for them to stay connected with each other. And that's where a community starts to really be formed is when not just you're talking to them and they're talking to you, but they're able to talk to each other, right? We have mastermind matching and all this other stuff going on. We have events that go on. It's not even about the content. In fact, when we ran, again, another survey, asking people what they would want to see in a community, more content was... literally last on the list. They didn't want more content. We are now in a world where we're at a content buffet and people are just bloated with content. But what we need is that private room in the back of the buffet where we can bring all the special people to come and hang out and have conversations away from the main dining hall where it's too noisy. And that's what we're trying to create, those special moments, a safe space as we like to call it, for entrepreneurs to come together to be vulnerable, to share stories, to share wins but also share losses so we can all be there to support each other. And so SPI Pro is very successful. We have now just crossed our three year anniversary with that, we had a three year anniversary celebration which was really great. But since then we've developed another program for people to go through our courses in a community like manner. And this is where I'm most excited right now. And credit to where credit is due, our team came up with this from within. What we call now the All Access Pass. So this is a brand new way to serve our community with courses. and it's not about selling the courses one off like we used to. So the All Access Pass, and this is genius, I absolutely love this because it's been a game changer for us, our whole business model now is surrounded around this, we've completely flipped the model. So it is now what we call community powered courses. With our All Access Pass, you get access to all of our courses, right, all of them, not just one, but all of them for a monthly payment, a very low monthly payment in fact. That alone would not do service though, that's overwhelming, right? So there's guidance. pathways through those courses. If you are a beginner, here are the three that you need to take in sequential order. Don't worry about the rest. They're there for when you upgrade to them, but take these right now and this is where you go. If you're a little bit more advanced and you wanna start a podcast, here are the three courses you need to take in sequential order. And so depending on where you're at, there are courses to help you along the way. But even more than that, you get access to the community, the other people taking those courses with you, as well as our team. So you have guidance, you have handholding, you have accountability. in the final asterisk here before I let Matt talk, because I've been talking a lot, is what we call our accelerators. This was sort of experimental. It was a way to bring the cohort-based model, which we used to do for a very high dollar value, where we have a group of students go through, we teach them in a lecture at the beginning of the week, they have to turn in homework at the end of the week, and after eight weeks they have their course and it's done. Same material, but we're teaching in real time. That was great and it worked well, but not everybody could attend those. They were, A, very expensive, and B, you'd have to show up at a certain time or else you don't get the lesson. We wanted to combine our current courses that we had and the cohort model together, and this is what the All Access Passes, accelerators is what we call them. So you sign up at a certain time during the year, you can go through these courses because they're led with an instructor. Yeah, you can go through them any time you want, but at this time, at this time of the year, for example, we just launched our YouTube course through the accelerator this past week. So we have 100 plus students starting the, starting that course together with an instructor so that they can all be asking the same questions right around the same sort of level they're at. They're all going through the lessons, just one or two modules per week for X number of weeks. They have questions, there's a person they're specifically holding their hand along the way, and you can asynchronously absorb those lessons and go through it together with people. And the completion rates went from like 20 to 25%, which is high as far as online courses are concerned, to now like 80%, and that's what matters to us. We are seeing the results. from our students and it is a beautiful thing and I'm so happy because I feel like that's a win for everybody. More access to the team and more just guidance through the course so that you don't feel like you're alone when going through it. So I'm sorry, I've been talking about, as you can see, I get really jazzed about what we've come up with because it's just been a game changer and we're again, hoping to lead by example and we want to teach other entrepreneurs how to teach in this way too because I don't think there's any better way to learn online other than just like meeting people in person and taking a class, so.

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Tom Finn:

Well, congratulations on the success there. A couple of high points. First of all, 20% to 20% or 20% to 25% throughput in terms of course completion is pretty darn high. 80% is astronomical. I mean, that means you're really creating a value proposition that's resonating with people and you're creating a lot of value for their day in and day out work. To get to 80% completion, you've got to do your homework, you've got to drive people, you've got to remind people. Everybody gets busy. Right. So, so well done on this accelerator component. I think, I think that's really fantastic. Matt, what's your take?

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Matt:

To compliment all of that, I'll try to maybe compress it a little bit in addition, because Pat hit a lot of really important stuff there. I would add that the market is a very different place now in 2023 than it was in 2016, 2017, and all the way through the pandemic years. So zooming out from what we have been developing, in my language, a product level. Our product these days is community. very different product than courses. Obviously, to patch description, courses are still in the mix, but how we think about it, how we model it, the business model itself, how we think about our partnerships in the market, right? Everything is different. Truly, we completely inverted or dismantled is maybe even a better description of the business and rebuilt it, which presents a lot of challenges. I'm not saying it was easy, but going back to the broader point, the market being very different. Uh, we know a lot of folks, you know, in this, uh, you know, so-called creator economy space that are still trying to sell, you know, just say like one flagship DIY course, and it's increasingly hard, uh, that sort of a model. There's just increasingly more saturation with other, you know, experts or other creators that have, you know, uh, an established expertise in a given talent set take podcasting, right? Pat mentioned our very first course was in podcasting. We were one of the first, I think out there, uh, with a, a really. well thought out, very well developed and highly reputable product, education product right for podcasting that couldn't be more different today. There's so many options, at least at an individual course level for podcasting. So we have to think about how the market dynamics are changing, how consumers want to be. spending money discretionarily so on education, trying to become entrepreneurs. So we have to match the what we do at the product level with why consumers are coming to us, how are their problems evolving, and moving more into a more private network, private versus public social media, a private ecosystem where it is knowledge, it is the courses, but it's everything else as well. It's the safe space to be vulnerable with, hey, like, I just didn't get this right. Or I've fallen behind on some instruction, right, that we're leading them through. Or they're struggling because they're a first time entrepreneur, or maybe they've been successful with their past venture, but they're starting a new venture. And that second one's not going as well as the first. So we encounter so much in our communities that we wouldn't be able to show up in and serve in that way if we had held true to. what I now call sort of a dying model candidly. And I'm proud that we took on the hardship of pivoting because pivoting is hard. And it's to Pat's point, it's proving to be probably the best thing we've ever done in terms of the completion rates on the courses and everything else that's occurring within our community.

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Tom Finn:

To have this model work, you have to have people that are incredibly self-aware and that can come into a conversation, show up and be vulnerable. How do you find people that are that self-aware, that are that well-developed emotionally that they can say, I'm failing at this or I'm not producing the way that I expected myself to. So that's a big step from the general public to a very narrow cohort of self-awareness. Entrepreneurs that can be vulnerable with each other.

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Pat Flynn:

I think it starts from the top. It's gotta start from the top. If I always pretended everything was perfect, then that's the kind of person that we would probably attract as the person who would hide those kinds of things. Versus, again, leading by example, I've talked about my failures all the time. In fact, people really enjoy the failures more than they enjoy the wins. And it's because it comes with some lessons. It comes as a way to fast forward your success. And in the community, when we create that safe space and even within the community itself, lead by example and admit our mistakes and talk about their failures along the way. And when one person does it, other people are more likely to do it too. And again, it comes from the top. But what we also find is that people are sharing where they might be falling short, but then immediately get some support. And that support, that sense of belonging is something that a lot of us feel like is just missing out there, especially in the world of entrepreneurship. We might try something and fail and then have nobody else to talk to. Like even our... spouses or our friends or family, they don't know necessarily the language or the thing we're trying to do. Oftentimes we get told, we told you so, right, instead. Because they don't know what we're trying to do. Versus, here's a group of people who all speak the same language, we all are trying to do different things but we have similar goals and we're here for the right reasons, we've attracted the right kind of people, so we're all there to support each other. And beyond just being vulnerable and sharing those failures and then getting some support, I love, I get so jazzed when I see somebody share a win and that. win inspires other people who maybe were falling behind or it reinforces something that a person is about to get into and it shows them that this is possible, again, not from the top this time, but from within. And this is why the community is so powerful because it supports itself at this point. At the same time, the community still has great team. Matt has done an incredible job hiring the right people to help manage the communities and direct the communities because without that, and maybe this is our unfair advantage in this space, and why maybe others aren't doing it, is it takes some people power to run the communities. It's definitely not a passive thing at all. And I feel very fortunate that Matt has some amazing hiring techniques and ability for just finding the right people to help with amplifying what it is we're trying to do.

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Tom Finn:

Well, thank you, Pat, for asking the next question of Matt. I appreciate that.

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Pat Flynn:

Hehehe

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Tom Finn:

So Matt, let's follow on what Pat said. You've hired some great people to run the communities. How do you actually build a community, both with technology and with people?

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Matt:

Bit by bit, right? How do you eat an elephant or whatever that cliche is? It's bit by bit. We were not the very first, but I do believe on more of the leading edge into this space going back to again, part of the history that we've shared. We started down the fridge in 2019, which had a lot of wins in that year. And we also hit a lot of headwinds and challenges in that year and that kind of galvanized us coming out of that year too. Again, invest in this really big change of direction. Um, so in terms of like technology and other things, uh, yes, we use circle. It's not, you know, I'd say like the panacea solution is not everything. Uh, we love that platform. Uh, Pat and I are proud to be advisors of, uh, of that company. Um, I was in New York with the founders in February of 2023 weeks before the world shut down with, uh, with the pandemic, uh, cause they were just starting. Um, so we, we got lucky, you know, part of it is, you know, maybe right place, right time. part of it is being able to cast the right vision to first your team on the inside. Like, why are we making this change? Right. And getting them to buy into that pretty radical new vision for, you know, how the company is going to operate, what it means for them, how these opportunities can create career opportunities for themselves, new skill development, right. New kind of upward mobility opportunities, how we're going to, you know, leverage this into, you know, a lot of good for a lot of different people. Right. So that's a big part of the equation as well, is being clear with that and getting the buy-in and working on then your team's motivations to come even super full circle, you know, Tom, to your first question about motivations, you know, and making sure that our internal culture is aligned as much as we can, you know, to that common vision and getting everyone's individual motivations, you know, to kind of line up with that, right? Along the way as well, you know, kind of that build in public attitude. So we tried to showcase as much as we could. Uh, outwardly, right with our audience, uh, with our students, get them excited for, you know, what was coming. It's always a balancing act. I'm not saying we got it all right in every different moment, but I'd say defer to, uh, you know, different levels, uh, and, and ways of, uh, being transparent, right, uh, with your build process, why you're making big decisions, especially if they are in fact big, right? Maybe small ones, you know, matter less, but, you know, again, our pivot was notable. So getting our folks. Uh, pay attention to us that subscribe to the newsletter that listens to the podcast, right? Um, aware of that, uh, listening to them, you know, classic terminology would be like voice of customer, right? VOC, uh, trying to then build in that language to how we are in fact doing that product development, right? And making sure that we're trying to find the fit as best we can. Then you just rinse and repeat that stuff, right? Uh, through like product cycles. Um, a lot of maybe. kind of really time and tested through the SaaS community, software products, but going through iteration loops on your product, which for us now is community. And when you have misses, like again, talk about that internally, diagnose those. You want to diagnose the wins as well. As we've talked about, as Pat was even mentioning, share the losses publicly. What did we learn from that? If you invest in some of those patterns, right, at least to me, that's a decent playbook. Right. Um, won't work for everyone and everyone should kind of add their own flavor to it, but for us, it's done pretty well.

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Tom Finn:

Yeah, well said. I've got a question about topics. How do you manage the topics in a community? Because there's so many different directions you can go. So many things that people are asking about, thinking about, how do you actually manage the themes, the topics to create value without letting it get too scattered?

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Matt:

Yeah, I'll swing first if I can on this one, Pat.

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Pat Flynn:

Go ahead, man.

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Matt:

We'll flip-flop on this one. I'd say you have to plan a flag at the start, right? So take your best, not guess, but an educated calculation on, OK, these are the addressable pain points that my members should be discussing or that I know that they want to discuss, right? And maybe you know that from, again, at least in our model, you've had past students write a different curriculum. So you have a pretty maybe good. pattern of like, okay, we have addressed XYZ problems in different courses. Let's at least start there perhaps with, you know, sort of a categorization of topics related to the problems we've already been solving just in a different way. Uh, and then much like Tom, your fantastic approach to the, to your podcast here, it's like, then listen, okay. Kind of like shush up and listen. Uh, they will tell you, right, whether you're on target or off target. Uh, one, maybe I would say like design element that we have learned is the fewer the channels, the better, at least in the community sense, in the digital community sense. If you have 20 different channels that are overly hyper-specific and it's like small in their scope, right? Then what you risk is having kind of orphan channels where there's not a lot of engagement and participation, it's too narrow. So actually having more kind of creative freedom, more latitude for conversation, questions, follow-ups, those sorts of things where the organic nature of conversation can really thrive. Uh, very much it's, it's cliche about like less is more when it comes to like the architecture of a community blueprint or design, uh, that's maybe one very actionable kind of takeaway. At least that we've learned.

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Pat Flynn:

That's really good. In fact, we've updated our channels inside of Circle several times to continually try to optimize that for the conversations and as much engagement as possible. The other two things I wanna share is number one, with our Accelerator specifically, which is a much bigger program within the All Access Pass where we have an instructor and they're teaching people along the way, we actually ask the community itself. here are the list of topics that we can do an accelerator for, vote. And now we know for sure that's the one people want, right? And nobody can say anything, there's data there to support that, right? And so we do that, and usually we have one or two running at a time, so it's not just like, oh, I didn't get the one I wanted, so I'm gonna leave. Like, people will know the other ones are gonna be coming eventually. So currently we're running, for example, an email marketing accelerator and a YouTube one. The YouTube one is... been run twice now because people have enjoyed it so much and felt like they missed out on the first one. And we weren't planning on doing that one again, but we are because the community asked for it. And the second thing is just more of a, to have an ear on the market. Yes, listening is important and being a part of conversations within your community and outside of your community is important just to kind of see what people are talking about. That can infer a lot of things, like for example, we've done some AI related workshops inside of. our community because it's obviously the topic that most people are talking about right now and wanna know about, chat GPT, those kinds of things, and how to use it in a business context. But even more than that, within an email list, for example, you can have an automated email list in your autoresponder. One of those emails can be one of the most important questions you can ask. So instead of just broadcasting, you're asking. I call it broad asking. And that is, what's the number one challenge or struggle you have right now related to blank? And for us, it's building an online business. And so to have that in an automated sequence, and people replying to this, if you have people subscribing every day, you will eventually get to the point where every day you're getting a reply back. And to have someone go in there and either categorize them or find the patterns, you're going to notice patterns. And yes, you will get 50 different answers, but of those 50, what are the top two or three things that people are all saying? Hmm. Let's talk about those things. Let's make a podcast episode about that. Let's put a course in our community about that. Let's make an entire course around it. Whatever it might be, when you hear it from your people, then there's no guessing. And I like marketing and business and serving people where the guessing is removed and it's just coming directly from them.

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Tom Finn:

So guys, I know we're sort of short on time here. I've got another question that I want to wrap up with, with both of you. And I want to go full circle here, thinking about our families, thinking about the way we have to manage business as dads and leaders in our communities. Do you think there's a place for circles, communities, accelerators to teach kids in this way? Can we do this at an adolescent level, pick an age? put them through some of the program that you're doing, but make it specific for the next generation? Or is that too far-fetched and it wouldn't fit?

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Pat Flynn:

And also first in this one, I definitely think it's applicable. You know, our brand, thankfully, is very family friendly and a lot of parents have, you know, shown their kids a lot of the courses as well. The podcast course might be the one that I would recommend most in fact. And even the way it's structured now would be something that a kid could go through. I mean, we structure our courses to be simple and we remove as much complication as possible. We have a lot of people who are over 60 who have taken the podcasting course, for example, who just don't understand technology, even sometimes as much as a 10-year-old might at this point, right? But either way, yeah, it could absolutely help. And I enjoy the podcasting course as well because there's a little less worry, for example, because there is worry with putting a person out there in the world and then succumbing to the... wrath of YouTube comments and social media. I mean, you gotta draw the line, and that's up to every parent to determine for their child where that line is in discussion with their child perhaps if they're a little older. But the podcast is great, because it's just the voice. There's not even a face there necessarily needed unless you were to go to YouTube and do a video podcast. So a lot of parents have gotten their kids into their podcast or are co-hosting their podcast with their kid. For a while, my son and I had a podcast together. It's actually still out there in the world. It's called All of Your Beeswax. And it was several years ago when he was getting into it and he saw me getting on stage to talk a lot about podcasting, we just decided to do one together and capture a lot of those moments that we were doing at the time. And those are forever now there on the airwaves for both of us to listen to even when we're older. And others, and it actually inspired a lot of other kids to listen and even start podcasts, or at least get behind the microphone and try as well. And again, that's the whole idea here, is just we'll give the tools and we'll be the guides, but it's up to the person, the parent, and or the kid to... put the action in and we're here to support.

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Matt:

Yeah, on my side, even just kind of stepping out of our own work for a second, and I guess flexing into my endless romanticism, if that's the right term, for entrepreneurship, like super kind of big picture with that. I very much want my kids to come into contact with that notion, and what it means to, especially in this current age and technology is not going to slow down. What it could mean to be an entrepreneur, what it will mean in the future as a source of problem solving. And hopefully, even though we're doing important work, there's really important problems in the world that still require entrepreneurs of very different capabilities and pursuits to be solving for society, for not to drop a bomb right here at the end, but there's big stuff out there. So I do want kids to be exposed to entrepreneurship. And I think that what we are... thinking about talking about here in terms of community, don't have that only be digital. How can we find and champion as parents, as folks in local community, in the real world, trying to get some of these conversation points in these skill development opportunities more into classrooms and again. like in the real world community based environments, right? After school programming and all these sorts of things. My wife is a public educator and I'm a huge proponent of public education. So that's a part of, I guess, my point of view. So yes is I guess the short answer, but applying it to like, how can we... you know, increasingly leverage a lot of, at least I am learning, Pat is learning all of us in this space digitally, right? And try to be advocates for it across sector, you know, into other aspects of, you know, raising the next generation of entrepreneurs and leaders, you know, in the world. And that's a big part, yeah, Tom, come in super full circle, a big part of my motivation, you know, as just an individual, as a human being.

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Tom Finn:

Pat, Matt, you guys are doing a great job. Thank you for what you're putting out in the world.

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Pat Flynn:

Thank you, Tom.

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Tom Finn:

Thank you for thinking about this differently, thinking about your business differently, going from courses to community, thinking about the market shifts, understanding where the market is going, not where it is today, and trying to accelerate the growth for all of us in our own learning so that we can be better humans, better leaders, better community citizens, and certainly, uh, for us, three knuckleheads, you know, better dads as well, right?

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Pat Flynn:

For sure.

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Tom Finn:

So thank you guys for coming on the show.

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Pat Flynn:

Thank you, Tom, we appreciate you so much.

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Matt:

Thank you, Tom, this was fantastic. Thank you.

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Tom Finn:

And guys if people wanted to track you down, I know you're world famous I get it But where should they head to find you and track you down if they want to get in touch.

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Pat Flynn:

Yeah, on my end, I mean, I'm at Pat Flynn on most social media platforms, and of course, gotta shout out our website, smartpassiveincome.com, which has all the things we talked about from our podcast to the All Access Pass, SPI Pro, et cetera. And then the final thing I'll say is probably our newsletter. Like, I tell a lot of very vulnerable stories there to help people get unstuck, and that's what it's called. It's the unstuck newsletter at smartpassiveincome.com slash unstuck. And Matt, anything else?

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Matt:

Double down on the site, the newsletter as Pat said, that community offering is at smartpassiveincome.com forward slash all access.

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Tom Finn:

and we will get all of that in the show notes so that you can just click away my friends. Don't write that down if you were driving. We will put it in the show notes for you and be safe. Gentlemen, thank you for coming on the show. It's been an absolute pleasure.

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Matt:

Likewise, thank you, Tom.

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Pat Flynn:

Thanks Tom, appreciate it. Thanks everybody.

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Tom Finn:

And thank you for joining the Talent Empowerment podcast. We hope you've unpacked a few tips and tricks to love your job. And if you don't go to the website and figure out how you can love your job at smart passive income.com. And we'll see you on the next episode when we get into all things, career and happiness. We'll see you then.