Building a Business On Line
Transcription of interview with Pat Flynn interview on December 12, 2011:
Douglas Goldstein, CFPÆ, Financial Planner & Investment Advisor
Pat Flynn is an online entrepreneur who works from his
office in San Diego, California.
He is a trained architect, but this didnít work out when the market crashed.
He was led into an online business, which has since developed into a blog called ìSmart
Passive Income,î where he teaches other people about doing business.
Douglas Goldstein, financial planner & investment advisor, interviewed Flynn on Arutz Sheva
Radio.
Pat Flynn: I went to school for architecture at University of California - Berkeley.
I started playing with Lego, and I thought architecture could be my whole life.
It was for a while, until October 2008, when the economy here in the U.S. tanked and so
did my job along with it.
I was laid off, and I didnít really know what to do.
It was scary because I was about to get married too, and I didnít know how I was going to
support my family.
I did try to look for another job in the architecture industry, but nobody was building anything
so nobody needed any architects.
Even still today, a lot of my co-workers that were laid off with me are still struggling
to find a job, so Iím very fortunate to be where Iím at.
What happened was that while I was working, I had created this website, basically just
a blog to keep track of my notes for an exam that I was taking thatís related to architecture
called the LEED exam, which stands for Leadership, Energy, and Environmental Design.
This is an exam that not all architects take, but many of them do.
I created this blog basically to help keep track my notes because I was better at typing
than I was at writing notes, and it was easier for me to study while I was traveling off
of a computer as opposed to huge books, and I could share my notes with my co-workers
and stuff to help them pass too.
I passed the exam.
I had just left the site, and then I got laid off.
I really got interested in internet business, and Iíd heard a lot of people were having
success with it, so I said ìOkay, I do have this website.
Let me go and check to see if anyone else is using it.î I hadnít really checked the
stats before.
I didnít have comments opened because I had no reason to have comments opened.
I checked the stats and it literally blew my mind that thousands of people every single
day were visiting this website that I created from all around the world.
It actually scared me a little because I didnít know any of this was happening.
I didnít know if my notes were good enough, but once I opened up the comments people had
questions and people said that they really enjoyed the content that I was putting out
there.
Basically, the way I was found was just because I put all the stuff online and Google was
picking up my articles, posts, charts and images and stuff that I was adding to help
myself and my co-workers out and ranking it really high, so thatís how people found me.
From there, I learned a little bit more about internet business and I added whatís called
Google AdSense on the site, which automatically generated advertisements related to the content
that I posted on there.
It basically took a day and immediately I saw $2 or $3 a day coming in just from adding
a little bit of code on my site, and that was my first experience with making money
online.
Although it was only $2 or $3, that was a lot to me because I didnít have any money
coming in.
I knew there was something there, so from there I learned more about internet business
and I decided to rent space on my site to advertisers who wanted some of the traffic
that I had for their own sites and products.
I did that and I was making about $200 or $300 a month renting space on my site, just
basically advertisements on that site, but of course that wasnít enough to make a living.
What really helped me out was joining whatís called a Mastermind Group, a group of people
who also had internet businesses, who knew a lot more than I did but who were very welcoming
and allowed me to learn from them.
The Mastermind Group involves getting together and helping each other out to reach our goals.
Iím not a part of this group anymore because it broke up once people moved away, but I
am in two Mastermind Groups that meet via Skype and via conference call every week,
and theyíve been amazingly helpful.
In this face-to-face one that I was first in, a guy told me to write an eBook for my
site and I said, ìI donít know how to do that.
What if it doesnít sell?î I was scared to do it, but he said, ìJust trust me.
What have you got to lose?
It only takes time to write an eBook.î I did that and I spent about two months writing
an eBook.
The first month I launched the eBook on my site, I had made about $8,000 and it blew
me away.
I had no idea that any of this was possible and it literally scared me again because it
just didnít seem right.
I felt like I didnít deserve it and maybe I was doing something illegal that I shouldnít
be doing, but I was doing everything totally legally.
It was nice, because when we talk about internet marketing and doing business online, a lot
of people would think immediately about scams and get rich quick and do this and do that
type of stuff, but this means building a product that actually helps people to pass the exam.
And in turn they were very happy to purchase the product that helped them and they also
spread the word about.
My site grew even more and the next month, I made $12,000 and $15,000 a month from a
single e-book.
It was ridiculous!
Itís an electronic book, of course, and the nice thing about it was that everything happened
automatically.
The way I set it up was by using the site www.e-junkie.com, which allows you to upload
your book and then it gives you a ëbuy nowí button that you can put on your site.
What happens is that when people come to your site, whether from referrals from other people
or Google, they find the product that they like.
They buy it and it automatically gets emailed to them with the download link.
I donít even have to be there for the transaction to happen.
After I had created this book, I also created an audio guide to go along with it.
I was literally spending about 10-15 hours a month maintaining the site that was making
$20,000 or $30,000 a month.
It just totally changed my life, and this was when I created the Smart Passive Income
Blog, which is where most people know me from online.
There, I talked about what happened on that site and why it was successful.
Iíve been doing a lot of other sites, other experiments, and other ways to genuinely and
honestly make money online without having to hide things up, scam people, and feed off
from peopleís hopes and dreams and stuff like that, which is what normally people think
about when you hear about people doing business online.
Thatís how I got to where Iím at today, and now the blog www.smartpassiveincome.com
has 30,000 followers at Facebook fan page and 50,000 Tweeter followers.
Itís just been an amazing journey, and thatís why Iím always happy to come on shows and
podcasts like this and share my story and inspire people, and really show people that
Iím nobody special.
Iím just a regular guy.
I didnít go to business school or anything like that.
I just learned whatís possible, took action, and really put up my own.
I really had no choice but to succeed.
Douglas Goldstein: Other than this original business, have you started any other businesses?
Pat Flynn: My friend and I heard some success stories about people doing iPhone applications.
There was actually an iPhone app that was made very popular because it showed how much
success it had.
It was a ridiculous application called iFart.
This application basically allows you to program different types of farts and you can set it
like an alarm, so you can keep the tone there and when somebody moves it then it farts.
It was only 99 cents, but it made millions and that was done by Joel Comm.
My friend and I thought that we had to be able to do something thatís better than that.
Thereís something out there as far as these types of applications are concerned, and the
iPhone app market is huge, and as we all know now there are a lot of success stories on
it.
So my friend and I created a few applications, and now we have a total of about 27 applications
on iTunes all making passive income.
We just created the applications.
We didnít even program them.
We donít know how to program.
We outsource that to developers who are much better than us as far as the ability to create
applications.
We put them on iTunes on the app store and for a while, they were making about $8,000
to $12,000 a month in total, but now the market slowed down.
Itís a little bit more competitive, so now weíre making about $5,000 to $8,000 a month
just from those iPhone applications that are in iTunes.
Douglas Goldstein: How do people come up with these ideas that will work?
Pat Flynn: For me and the LEED exam, that was just stuff that came from my own experience,
stuff that people asked me questions about.
My advice would be to look at your life and see what people are asking you about, what
do you have knowledge in and what are you considered to be an expert in?
The whole expert equation, thatís interesting because you donít have to be a complete expert
in order to become successful online.
You just have to know more than other people and other people who are searching for that
information.
If you have the answers, they are depending on what it is that youíre sharing.
They may be willing to pay for it, or if you give it all away, they might be happy to repay
you for all the information that youíve given them.
I actually had a lot of people who purchased my eBook after they passed the test because
they just wanted to thank me for all the free information that they got to pass the exam
before I had that eBook come out, which is pretty interesting.
Douglas Goldstein: How do people differentiate whether they should pay for something online
or they shouldnít?
Pat Flynn: I believe that if you can provide something of complete value that is epic and
will totally help them achieve something, people would be willing to pay for it, and
yes thereís free information out there but itís hard to organize all of the free information.
The nice thing and the very interesting point about the eBook that Iíve created was that
actually 95% of the content in that eBook could be found for free on the website, and
thatís another thing that scared me about creating an e-book in the first place.
I was scared that people are going to ask, ìWhy are you charging me for this when I
can get it for free?î But people were absolutely happy to pay for it because I had already
given them so much free content that they felt that they had to repay me, but secondly
also because the eBook is a lot more organized.
Itís not physical, but itís more tangible than having to go from link to link on the
website.
Itís much more organized and streamlined, and if it has a specific purpose with an endpoint,
for example that one is passing an exam, they can see the steps much easier on an eBook
or in an online course or something like that as opposed to just flipping through pages
on the site.
Another thing thatís interesting is when people pay for stuff they feel like thereís
value in it.
There might be some awesome, amazing, free content out there that can teach you the same
thing, but I believe that when people pay for something, they are more invested in completing
whatever it is that theyíre attempting to do out there.
Itís funny because when I launched the eBook, I didnít want to charge much at all.
I charged $19.95 for it, which is much lower than any other study guides that were out
there from all the big companies.
I actually got an email from one of my customers, who was a business expert and he said, ìYouíre
way underpricing your eBook.
You should raise the price and then come back to me in a month and tell me what happens.î
I did that and I actually sold more eBooks at the higher price because there was more
perceived value in the eyes of the customer.
So I emailed him back and I said, ìThank you so much.
Is there anything I could do for you?î That was life changing.
It was a great advice.
Douglas Goldstein: What would be a good first step for people to get started on their own
online business?
Pat Flynn: The first thing I would do is just do it.
There are a lot of things holding us back like, being scared of failures, or mistakes,
or technology.
Just go out there and find someone who is already doing what you want to do and learn
from them.
Learn as much as possible from them.
A lot of people out there are successful and are willing to help those who want to be successful
too.
Thatís why I have my site, and I know exactly where I came from.
Thatís why I always respond to my email, my tweets, and Facebook comments, because
I was once at that point.
So I would really look for a mentor or a coach or something like that that you can really
learn from and get a little bit of guidance.
For me, it was the Master Mind group, which is great, but a lot of times itís hard to
find those people.
Really just finding a coach or a mentor, someone to look up to who you do not copy, as you
donít want to do that, but use as inspiration or use as a kind of example of where you want
to be and thatís how you get there.
Douglas Goldstein: How can people find out more about what youíre doing?
Pat Flynn: You can go to my website at www.smartpassiveincome.com and Iíd love to say hi to you there.
Douglas Goldstein, CFPÆ, is the director of Profile Investment Services and the host
of the Goldstein on Gelt radio show (Monday nights at 7:00 PM on www.israelnationalradio.com.
He is a licensed financial professional both in the U.S. and Israel.
Securities offered through Portfolio Resources Group, Inc., Member FINRA, SIPC, MSRB, NFA,
SIFMA.
Accounts carried by National Financial Services LLC.
Member NYSE/SIPC, a Fidelity Investments company.
His book Building Wealth in Israel is available in bookstores, on the web, or can be ordered
at: www.profile-financial.com (02) 624-2788 or (03) 524-0942.
Disclaimer: This document is a transcription and/or an educational article.
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The opinions rendered herein are those of the guests, and not necessarily those of Douglas
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