- Be uniquely weird in yourself.
- [Announcer] VidIQ. - [Woman] VidIQ.
- [Whispering man] VidIQ.com
- Hello everyone, and welcome back to VidCon 2018,
and today I'm joined with
- [Pat] Pat Flynn.
- [Interviewer] And what's your channel
and how many subscribers do you have?
- So we just crossed 120,000 subscribers.
I had about half that less than a year ago,
and there's a lot people who have helped influence that,
but the channel Smart Passive Income,
I teach people how to grow their business,
help them make more money, save more time,
and help more people too.
- We were just talking at Allure,
and you were saying, "Be your best weirdness,"
or something along those lines.
So can you just tell me again
what that is and for the viewers watching.
- So, a lot of people ask me, you know,
"How do I grow my business?
What's the number one magic trick I can use?"
And you know, there's a lot of tools,
and there is no real magic trick.
But I think if I were to give you one
that is so powerful but so simple,
and that is to be uniquely weird in yourself.
And a lot of people, like, what does that mean?
Well, a lot of us try to build a brand
and emulate other successful brands
that are already out there which is great,
it's great to get inspiration from others,
but oftentimes when you do that you forget
about what makes you special and unique,
and I don't know if you've ever seen the show "Shark Tank",
right, but if a person goes in and pitches an idea,
you know, Mr. Wonderful is in there.
He's got his hands going like this,
and he asks this question a lot.
He goes, "Well, what's stopping me
"from doing exactly what you're doing?
"Hiring a team and building exactly what you're doing,
"and why should I work with you?"
If you don't know how to answer that question
in terms of what's your superpower,
what's unique to you, then you're gonna lose.
And I think that more can people benefit from
being more open and authentic and themselves.
One way I do this is on my podcast,
for example, and I do this on video, too.
I share a lot of the things that I enjoy in my life,
like "Back to the Future."
I'm a huge "Back to the Future" fan,
anybody who's come across my stuff knows that,
- [Interviewer] Which is the best one, though?
That's an interesting question.
- [Pat] Number one, number one.
- [Interviewer] I agree. - [Pat] Always the original.
- Number one and number three,
and I used to think that number two was the best
when I was a lot younger
because it was all gadgets and things.
- Yeah, yeah.
- And then when I learned more about storytelling
then it was definitely the first and third one.
- The first and third one are great stories,
the second one is interesting from all the gadgets,
but we can talk about hours for that.
- Sorry, we digressed there.
- But like, I'm weirdly obsessed with "Back to the Future"
for reasons we don't have to get into right now.
I have a huge collection,
and I show off that collection every once in a while
on my channel and on my podcast.
But here's the thing.
You might be wondering,
"What does that have to do with your business?
"Like, you teach business, okay,
"So you like "Back to the Future. How does that help?"
Well business now is not about the B2B or the B2C.
It's about the P2P, the person-to-person relationship,
and the more you can become a human being,
a real person, in the eyes of your audience,
the more likely a person's gonna become a fan of yours,
and follow you, and also share you.
You're becoming a friend to your audience,
something like knowing that Pat likes "Back to the Future"
is something that you would know about a friend of yours.
Not just a person who is a brand
online sharing information, right.
So, what does this look like in real life?
Well, whenever somebody goes to,
like just the other day,
somebody went to Target and they saw a Marty McFly doll.
They took a picture of it and sent me a tweet, going,
"Pat, I found this at Target. I was just thinking of you."
Whenever somebody sees it on TV, they go,
"This is reminding me of Pat Flynn right now."
So now I've like, inceptioned--
- Interesting, yeah.
- The fact that, and, not all of my audience
likes "Back to the Future," but that's not the point.
The point is they know that I love it,
and so when they see it, they're reminded of me,
and now my brand and my message and me
is inserted into people's lives when I don't
even have to do any work anymore,
because that's just who I am.
So what are you into?
What are some things that you might wanna share,
that you've been holding back because you're just afraid
of people judging you because of that thing?
Be fully yourself and you'll be surprised about how
people will be more connected to you as a result.
- So I think what you're saying is,
I should bring my passion of WW Wrestling
onto all my VidIQ videos in some way.
- In some of your videos mention them,
like drop them into some content in a funny way,
and just mention briefly.
You don't have to spend a whole video on it,
but then over time people are gonna be like,
"Dude, he loves WWE. I'm reminded of him,"
and maybe share behind the scenes on Twitter, Instagram,
that you go to these things.
Like now I know something about you, right.
Now I know that when I see WWE I'm gonna be reminded of you.
Like, that's how powerful this is. It's so easy to do, too.
- Awesome.
Was there a light bulb moment for you on YouTube,
where I suddenly get this, something's clicked,
a video has really helped me understand how
to leverage this platform,
or has it been a more organic kind of growth
over these last eight months?
- It's been a lot of trial and error, that's for sure,
but there has been things that I've learned over time
and patterns that I've been working.
I'm beginning to understand the kinds of content
that my audience wants, but not only that,
the kinds of content that YouTube believes
that I can do well at.
We're creating a lot of videos and we're paying attention
to the numbers and the response and the engagement.
There have been some videos that have just shot up
like crazy, unexpectedly,
even though those aren't necessarily the videos
that we thought were gonna do really well.
So it's just really interesting
to start to pay attention to the signals and whatnot,
and so we're kind of trying to work with that wave
instead of kind of force YouTube and others
to go where we thought we wanted to go.
- Brilliant advice.
Double down on your best content,
even if you don't realize it's going to be your best content
when you first push it out.
One more question I'd like to ask you to help our creators
is if you were to give a new YouTuber one piece of advice,
right now, to instantly improve their channel,
what might that be?
- Just hit record. Because--
- Just get in front of camera, do it.
- Right, most people I teach business to,
they want to get into video,
and we go through a whole plan,
and then two weeks later I go,
"So how did they videos go?"
and they go, "I haven't recorded yet."
And we get into the why,
and usually it's because of something up here, right.
You just gotta count down five, four, three, two, one,
record and just go. It's gonna be bad.
You're gonna make mistakes, you're going to fail,
it's going to be terrible.
But you got to get through all that muck
before you get to the good stuff.
If you just don't take any action,
you're gonna stay in muck-land the whole time.
So get through that bad stuff and, you know,
you could potentially improve over time,
and then delete those things.
You're going to improve for sure,
but you could delete those old ones,
but I would actually recommend keeping them there,
it actually inspires your audience to go,
"Wow, these old videos were bad,
"but look at how much this person has improved.
"I'm even more of a fan now."
So just hit record and go,
you'll be surprised at what happens when you just kind of
just commit to it, and like I said,
the more effort and time you put into helping and serving
your audience the better results you're gonna get.
- Thank you very much, Pat,
and we'll see you all again soon.
Bye for now.
(upbeat, happy music)