Achieve YouTube Success With Pat Flynn

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCASTPractice a “serve first” mentality. Serve first and you will be rewarded. Aim to help people. This should be first and foremost in your mind always.Pick the platform you’re most comfortable with FIRST. Work your way up and don’t start with everything all at once.If you’re going to post videos on YouTube, start by answering your audience’s questions. They are looking for answers!To make video and YouTube work for you, you must be consistent.YouTube’s algorithm makes consistency critical to your success. Over time, the platform will tell you what works and what doesn’t. Follow their lead.Create themes in your videos and give viewers the option to subscribe or watch another video. Only publish one video a month that involves a lead magnet or upsell for growing your email list instead of trying to do this with every video. This balance will ensure you’ll succeed and gain new leads.Plan ahead and batch process your videos. This is the key to staying on top of things on YouTube.You don’t want to be just like everyone else. Add your own style and stay true to yourself. Your vibe attracts your tribe. You can use influencers as inspiration, but don’t copy.Check and watch your analytics. Don’t compare yourself to others. Instead, compare yourself to your earlier self. Are you improving and growing?Don’t focus on being an overnight success. Social media and YouTube take time and hard work. Focus and keep going! It will pay off.
THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…Hit “record” and go. Forget all of the excuses you use to keep yourself from publishing. You must go through the bad to get to the good. Even if your first videos are terrible, they will still resonate with someone. Don’t focus on the failure; instead, focus on making it fun. Everything else will follow.HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN'T MISSPat Flynn’s jumpstart into entrepreneurship – 07:00A game-changing platform – 17:54Does Pat have a miracle morning? – 22:57All about YouTube success – 28:54Don’t worry about the numbers – 47:42One tip to rule them all – 49:00
LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY'S EPISODEPat Flynn’s Smart Passive Income websiteSmart Passive Income PodcastAsk Pat PodcastPat’s YouTube ChannelAnswer the Public WebsiteMiracle Morning by Hal ElrodFacebookInstagram
Transcript below

Hello, and a really warm welcome to episode 28 of the Social Media Marketing Made Simple Podcast, and I am your host Teresa Heath-Wareing. I am so excited for today I can't tell you. I've been waiting some quite time to finally get around to interviewing people, which was intentional, because I wanted to work on the podcast on my own and know that I knew what I was doing, and that I got all the systems in place, and everything was working well before I went out to the world to ask people to come onto the podcast.

And today is my first interview and it's so good, I mean, so good. I'm not saying that I'm a really good interviewer, by the way, this isn't some uber confidence thing, but the person who I've interviewed is such a good guest on the podcast that I...

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCASTPractice a “serve first” mentality. Serve first and you will be rewarded. Aim to help people. This should be first and foremost in your mind always.Pick the platform you’re most comfortable with FIRST. Work your way up and don’t start with everything all at once.If you’re going to post videos on YouTube, start by answering your audience’s questions. They are looking for answers!To make video and YouTube work for you, you must be consistent.YouTube’s algorithm makes consistency critical to your success. Over time, the platform will tell you what works and what doesn’t. Follow their lead.Create themes in your videos and give viewers the option to subscribe or watch another video. Only publish one video a month that involves a lead magnet or upsell for growing your email list instead of trying to do this with every video. This balance will ensure you’ll succeed and gain new leads.Plan ahead and batch process your videos. This is the key to staying on top of things on YouTube.You don’t want to be just like everyone else. Add your own style and stay true to yourself. Your vibe attracts your tribe. You can use influencers as inspiration, but don’t copy.Check and watch your analytics. Don’t compare yourself to others. Instead, compare yourself to your earlier self. Are you improving and growing?Don’t focus on being an overnight success. Social media and YouTube take time and hard work. Focus and keep going! It will pay off.
THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…Hit “record” and go. Forget all of the excuses you use to keep yourself from publishing. You must go through the bad to get to the good. Even if your first videos are terrible, they will still resonate with someone. Don’t focus on the failure; instead, focus on making it fun. Everything else will follow.HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN'T MISSPat Flynn’s jumpstart into entrepreneurship – 07:00A game-changing platform – 17:54Does Pat have a miracle morning? – 22:57All about YouTube success – 28:54Don’t worry about the numbers – 47:42One tip to rule them all – 49:00
LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY'S EPISODEPat Flynn’s Smart Passive Income websiteSmart Passive Income PodcastAsk Pat PodcastPat’s YouTube ChannelAnswer the Public WebsiteMiracle Morning by Hal ElrodFacebookInstagram
Transcript below

Hello, and a really warm welcome to episode 28 of the Social Media Marketing Made Simple Podcast, and I am your host Teresa Heath-Wareing. I am so excited for today I can't tell you. I've been waiting some quite time to finally get around to interviewing people, which was intentional, because I wanted to work on the podcast on my own and know that I knew what I was doing, and that I got all the systems in place, and everything was working well before I went out to the world to ask people to come onto the podcast.

And today is my first interview and it's so good, I mean, so good. I'm not saying that I'm a really good interviewer, by the way, this isn't some uber confidence thing, but the person who I've interviewed is such a good guest on the podcast that I am over the moon. The guy that I have interviewed for today's first ever interview podcast is normally at the top of people's interview lists, so this guy, you don't normally start with him, he's normally what you work up to.

So today's episode I am interviewing the amazing Pat Flynn, I feel like there should be some kind of like, woo, applause, clap, clap, clap. I should get some sound effects in for future ones. I first met Pat back in Converted 16, which is a conference in Minneapolis, and I have to say at that point I didn't know a lot about Pat. I vaguely knew that he was this guy that helped people with online businesses, but I haven't seen him talk before, and I went a long to this conference in Minneapolis, and Pat was a keynote speaker, and he is so good at speaking, he makes you an instant fan, and immediately fall in love with his style and how he does things, and makes you want to follow him and consume as much of his content as you possibly can.

Pat is a father, husband, and entrepreneur, who lives and works in very beautiful San Diego, for some reason lots of people in my industry all live in San Diego, which is crazy but that's just the way it is, so let me share a little bit about Pat with you, he is a keynote speaker and speaks all over the world, including during the closing keynote of Social Media Marketing World 2018, which I can only imagine that for people in my industry that has gotta be top of the bucket list type thing.

He is the owner of two podcasts, in fact, he's had more than two, but two main podcasts, Smart Passive Income, and Ask Pat. I'm gonna link up to all these things in the show notes, which now have over 50 million downloads. As a fledgling podcaster I can only imagine the day when I can say I've had a million downloads, let alone 50 million downloads.

He is a Wall Street Journal best selling author and has two books, Will It Fly?, and Let It Go. Will It Fly is a book I've read, it's really good if you have an idea and you want to see if it's going to succeed when you put it out into the marketplace, and his current focus is not on YouTube although he still does the other podcast as well, where he currently has over a 130,000 subscribers, and to top it off he is one of the nicest men you will ever met. In our industry he really is probably the nicest person of social media. He is a devoted husband and father, and often shares personal posts on his social media with him and his two delightful children.

This year, at Podcast Movement Conference he even invited his son to come onstage with him and speak, that's right, I mean I couldn't imagine bringing my daughter onstage with me and hoping she says the right things, but his son came onstage and spoke with him, because they now have a podcast together. Now, all these things could be the reason why Pat has one of the loyalist followings ever. He has notes all the time from people who say thank you to him for sharing some of his knowledge, and for helping them with their business. People love Pat Flynn, and in this podcast he shares with us how he got to be the successful entrepreneur that he is, and what has made the biggest difference to him and his business.

And then, on top of all that he gives his top tips on how you can kill it on YouTube, which I have to say I sat there with complete fascination, because YouTube is something that I am thinking about working on, so I was kinda taking in every single word he said, anyway, I feel like I have wound you up enough, so without further ado I would love to welcome you to the amazing Pat Flynn.

Hey Pat.

Hi, how are you?

I am really good, thank you, and you?

Great. Congratulations on your new show and you know I'm happy, and honoured, to be episode number one, and fun fact, I don't know if you know this, but for another very famous podcast called Entrepreneurs On Fire, I was also John Lee Dumas' first episode.

That's amazing.

So you know, this is the start of a good thing.

Yeah, well if I can follow in his footsteps, then absolutely, so as I've said before I've never interviewed anybody before, you're my first, and I said in the intro that we sat down in San Diego a few months back, back in June, and I talked to you about how I wanted to get people on the podcast, and that I wanted to interview, and you very kindly said that you would be happy to be a guest, and how fitting it was that you would be my first guest.

I'm happy to be here.

I am so over the moon and for my listeners out there that are listening, if you don't know Pat, I am about introduce you into someone who is phenomenal, and I'm telling you now, you need to follow him. I know I've mentioned you so many times before, and I've talked about you all the time, so I know that they would've perhaps heard a bit about you, but they probably don't know your story, and your story's fascinating because you have this great saying that getting laid off was the best thing that ever happened to you, and really, that was kinda the start of your journey, so I would love it if you could just spend a minute or two kinda taking us through how you kinda got from there to here? That would be awesome.

Yeah, I mean, getting laid off was great but I didn't know it at the time, at the time it felt like the worst thing to ever happen, this was back in June of 2008 I was told I was gonna be let go from my dream job, and I had my dream job for a number of years as an architect, or aspiring architect, I was quickly climbing the corporate ladder only to be thrown out with a lot of other people who were losing their job too around the same time. 2008 was a tough year for a lot of people, and to make this even worse I had just recently proposed to my girlfriend. We were planning a wedding and she's Filipino, I'm half Filipino, and so if you know any Filipinos you know that you need to invited the entire Filipino nation to your wedding.

And so, we're like, what are we gonna do? So my fiance moved back with her parents to save money. I moved back with my parents to save money and I was just trying to figure out, okay, what am I gonna do next? And luckily, I discovered this thing called podcast, because I had some extra time and I listened to a podcast called Internet Business Mastery, and there was one particular episode, and I don't know, divine intervention, right? Like things just kinda happen for a reason sometimes.

I had randomly stumbled upon this podcast, and within this podcast archive, I randomly stumbled upon ... it wasn't even their latest episode it was from a while back, but it was an interview with a guy named Cornelius who was making six figures a year by helping people pass the Project Management Exam, or the PM exam, and that's my first big light bulb moment in my online business career, because I had taken a number of exams to lead up to where I was, and where I was going, as an architect, and I was like, maybe there's someway that I can take this information that I know about one of these exams I took, and I choose one in particular that was extremely difficult that I had recently passed, it was called The LEED Exam, L-E-E-D, which is a worldwide sorta standardisation of green buildings, and environmentally friendly architecture, and that sort of thing.

Very niched exam but it was on my mind so I was like, okay, how can I take this information I know? So I had created a website and I actually had some information already up that was mainly created just to help my co-workers, and me pass this exam, so to kind of rewind a little bit, in 2007 I had studied for this exam which is very difficult, and to help me and a couple co-workers study I created a blog to essentially just keep track of our notes so we could always go back to it, it was always like a good repository for that information, and then after we passed the exam, we literally just let it sit there, because there was no more reason to go back to it.

So when I went back to it several months later and I put a tool on the website to check the traffic, which was like I had no idea what I was doing I signed on the next day and I noticed that thousands of people were already visiting this website from like 30 different countries around the world, and it kinda scared me, I was like, I have no idea how this is happening, where these people are coming from, but I basically found out that they were coming from two places, number one, Google, Google loved what I was posting, or what we had posted on that website, and so they started to rank me really high for a lot of those keywords, but I was also being found in a lot of forums, because people who found me through Google were like, oh my gosh, this resource is exactly what I needed, you guys have to check this out.

I was getting kinda ... people didn't even know who was behind the website but I was famous in this little niche of this exam, and so when I discovered that I was like okay, I gotta show that I'm a real person on the other end, so I opened up the comments, I put my face on the blog, I started saying, hey, my name is Pat, I took this exam too, I'm here to help you, and that's when I started to become seen as like an expert in this space, and people started to call me ... oh, go to Pat's website, because he's an expert on this exam.

It kinda made me laugh at first, because I was like I'm not an expert, I mean, I've taken this exam and I barely passed it, but I started to becoming known as one, because I was the one who was posting information and really just helping people for free, until October when I published a study guide. I'm taking a lot of the same information that I had published for free, and packaging it into a $19.95 eBook, and in that month when I launched that eBook I had made $7,908 dollars and 55 cents.

Oh my God.

From launching that, and it kinda just, I mean, my first reaction was, what is happening? This is crazy, this can't be true, I must be doing something illegal, like, this can't work, I don't even know if this is right, like, I thought that at any moment like the FBI was gonna come and knock on my door, because obviously it just was so new to me, but the coolest part about this was not the money that was coming, the fact that I was able to kinda save myself from this layoff, but the fact that I was also getting these amazing thank you letters, both emails and hand-written letters from people who had passed the exam that I was helping them study for, and a few of those people were like, Pat, I'm a huge fan now. I'm a fan of what you do. I'm gonna share you with the world.

Like, I told my entire office about you and we all bought your programme and I was like this is amazing, and that's when I started smartpassiveincome.com, which is where most people know me from now, where I just decided to share every little bit of this story and everything that I had done, and things that I am doing, things that I'm doing right, things that I'm doing wrong, how much money I was making, where it was all coming from, different strategies I was using, because when I was trying to learn all this stuff nobody was sharing anything, everybody was like okay I would love to teach you internet business stuff but you have to pay thousands of dollars to get access to it, and I was like, that's not right, like, I'm just gonna share everything and see what happens, because that's what I did in the first go around, and now, I'm known as a top leader in the space, and an amazing podcast, with ... we just past 55 million downloads which is kinda insane, and speaking around the world, Wall Street Journal best selling book.

The beauty of this is not just the fact that there's this incredible support that I have from an amazing fan base, and audience, but the fact that I can also structure my time and my life in a way that allows me to spend more time with my kids, my wife and I, we walk to school with our kids every day, we bring them back from school together every day, and we're like the only set of parents who do that. We can go to Target which is a place here in the US that you can buy things at, like, at two in the afternoon when nobody else is there, so little things like that mean so much because now it's like I'm in control as opposed to when I was working in architecture, it's like I was always under somebody else's direction, I was always under ... you know, even the layoff, like that was out of control, now my business is fully under my control and I can decide when I want to do things, how I want to do things, and even decide like how big I want to go, and how much more money I want to make.

It's just so incredible I'm just so thankful and blessed, and this is why I love coming on shows like that and even being episode number one, and just wanting to help as many people as I can.

And the thing, A, that shows in everything I've ever seen you ... it comes from a deep desire of wanting to help people which is such a great lovely way of doing business because it's not like you said, hey, I'll tell you all my secrets, but you've gotta pay all this money, and sometimes that can feel a bit of a con, you know, the reason they made money is because they're selling this to so many people, whereas your isn't like that at all, you're very much this is what I've done.

There's a couple of things that I want to just pick up on, one, I love the fact of your work life ethic, because I think so many people come into their own businesses, especially if they've been in the corporate world, I was from a corporate world myself, and you come into this business thinking great, now I get to control my time, and I think very few people do, I think you'll find yourself working harder and longer, and thinking oh my gosh, I'm working all these hours for what? Probably less than I was earning in corporate world, so the fact that you kinda went, no, I'm not gonna do that, you know, I'm gonna run my business but make suer I have that time for my children and my wife, and I'm present for them.

And then, the other thing that I love, and I was looking at again today, is the fact that you publish your income records, which one, I think is such a brave move because that is the most transparent thing I've ever seen, but the other thing I loved about it was I could look at your income records starting from as way back as you started to post them, and you can start to see your journey, and for someone like me where I feel I'm at sorta the tip of my journey where I'm really gonna start, it's so good to see how your income increased month, from month, from month, and I was wondering as I was looking through what must it felt like, that first month you did a 100 [inaudible 00:15:42] in the door.

Oh, gosh.

I bet it was so exciting.

It was mind blowing and kind of unreal it seems, because you hear about these people who do these big launches or make that much money, and it's just like, that can't be me, and to actually work hard and put in the effort to get to that point, which didn't happen right away, and I tell this story about even how I earned my first 8,000 dollars in that month of October of 2008, I mean, there was so much work that went into that, I mean, I don't want to lie and say that, yeah, this is easy, I'm on a laptop on a beach sipping pina coladas, it's nothing like that, like, I work my butt off, and I still continue to do it, but I am now in control of when I want to work my butt off, and when I want to relax, you know, work hard, play hard, on my own time, not somebody else's time.

And now, I think the best part about this is I'm building my own dream and I'm building my own legacy versus working hard and waking up everyday to build somebody else's dream, right? Like,...