45. PAT FLYNN: Opting Out of Learning Overload

Episode Transcript

Note: Transcript is AI-generated and may contain errors. Please refer to the episode audio or video for exact quotes.

[00:00:00] Pat: There’s a reason why we call it shower thoughts because when you’re in the shower, there’s nothing else to do other than think. So how might you give yourself more time to think and absorb and you know, digest the things you’ve already thought about?

[00:00:14] Michael: Hi, I am Michael Hyatt.

[00:00:15] Megan: And I’m Megan Hyatt Miller.

[00:00:17] Michael: And you’re listening to the Double Win Show.

[00:00:19] Megan: We are so excited to share this recent conversation that we had with Pat Flynn on a very unconventional topic that he calls Lean Learning how to achieve more by learning less, which I just feel like you have to say with like your head kind of cocked to one side ’cause it sounds so counterintuitive.

[00:00:38] Michael: Well, Pat’s been a dear friend of mine for more than a decade now. I asked him to speak at the very first platform conference and he hit it outta the park, and I knew he had Total Values alignment. But he’s the founder of Smart Passive Income, a platform that empowers ethical entrepreneurs. He’s the host of the Smart Passive Income Podcast with over 80 million downloads.

[00:01:01] He’s written a couple of different books. Will It Fly And Superfan? And as Megan said, his newest book, lean Learning. But the interesting thing is he’s now on a, I think his third or fourth career. But he founded of all things this uber popular Pokemon YouTube channel. In fact, it’s the most popular Pokemon YouTube channel out there with over, I think he said he is getting like 10 million views across all social media channels per day.

[00:01:32] So he’s gonna talk about that in this interview that we had with him. And how does that, what does that mean for life balance? What does that mean for optimizing for peace and optimizing for joy? So without further ado, here’s our conversation with Pat.

[00:01:51] Pat: Pat, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me, Mike. Good to see you. And Megan, good to see you as well. So

[00:01:55] Megan: glad you’re here.

[00:01:56] Michael: We are so excited to have this conversation. I just feel like you’re one of those people that would be a very close friend if we had greater proximity. But we don’t. So we have to settle for the occasional fishing trip.

[00:02:08] Pat: Yes. However, when we do get together, it is like we can just pick up where we left off. And a hundred percent we talk life, we talk business, we talk fishing, and uh, I, this is gonna be such an amazing fun time today. Thank you again for having me.

[00:02:21] Michael: We’re excited. We do wanna talk about your book a bit, but we also wanna just talk about life and what you’re learning.

[00:02:28] But one of the things that you talk about in the book is this idea of describing yourself as an over learner. Mm-hmm. So what is that and why is it bad, and how did you discover that about yourself?

[00:02:43] Pat: Yeah. You think learning is only a good thing, right? Because learning is great. We’re taught, the more you know, the better off you’ll be.

[00:02:50] But in fact, that’s no longer true. And I discovered this when I started to get. Kind of overwhelmed with everything that was going on, and all the information that was coming in was leading to more ideas, more curiosity. And what ended up happening was I just started to spread myself a little bit thin.

[00:03:06] And thankfully I caught myself and I was able to kind of redirect that energy back to the important projects. However, I think we all feel this, we all, in a way, not just our overlearning, but we’re getting over, almost over inspired. We’re so connected with so many amazing people out there who teach us this and push us over here, and then we’re pulled over this way.

[00:03:24] And again, we’re spread so thin it’s we’re we’re not seeing any results in our own life. And it is when you can commit to a few things and do them well, that I found things happen much faster. And I feel much more fulfillment and joy. But it’s hard because we have this fomo, this fear of missing out.

[00:03:39] Because of just how connected we are. We can’t help but see all of these things coming across our plate. So, you know, I know there’s been a lot of books and other material about the idea of distraction, right? Indestructible and all these other amazing books, Cal Newport and, and, and several others.

[00:03:53] However, I just wanted to take an approach with lean learning that felt more relatable. That felt like just you and I having a conversation about what is really important here. It’s about prioritization it. And it’s hard because, at least for those of us who are not, you know, gen Z or Gen Alpha, you know, we grew up with the idea and being conditioned to just learn as much as we could.

[00:04:14] And I remember when I was a kid, I remember some of my friends had, uh, encyclopedia Britannicas in their home, and I would always just go, oh my gosh, you’re so smart. I mean, I don’t know if they read them or not, but they had that availability to that information. Therefore, I thought they were smart. Now we all have access to all the same kind of information, but we’re still treating it as if it’s scarce.

[00:04:34] It used to be almost like a scarce food source. You’d come across a piece of information just like how, you know, back in the cave man and cave woman days, you’d come across a food source. You’d hoard it because you might not come across that. Again, it’s, it’s a survival skill to hoard all of that nutrients.

[00:04:49] And the same thing went with our information. However, we now live in a buffet line of information, and not only are we because of who we are, and we’re not quite evolved to absorb all of this because we’re stuffing our plates full. Not only are we getting bloated and and and slowed down, but we’re also getting force fed on these platforms.

[00:05:07] Like once you look up something on YouTube, for example, you’re gonna get 20 other videos the next time you log in and they’re gonna be really intriguing videos with amazing titles and thumbnails. And unless you can control that, just like a diet, you’re gonna be stuffed and you’re going to be, have a lack of energy.

[00:05:23] I mean, there’s a lot of. Analogies between eating food and absorbing information. That’s why we consume information like we consume food, we have to digest information, but we’re not even giving ourselves time to do that. We’re just stuffing ourselves full, going nowhere, feeling behind and lethargic, and in a way kind of obese with information.

[00:05:41] Right now,

[00:05:41] Megan: I love this perspective, not the idea of being obese with information. That sounds terrible and I can relate to that feeling, but I love the idea that there’s a way to think about this because I’m just thinking about my own. Home right now. And I’m thinking of in our house, we read a lot of things analog digitally as well.

[00:06:00] But you know, we have journals that we subscribe to and magazines and things like that. And on my coffee table is a stack of those things that have come in the mail in the last month or so. And I, like, every time I go to have my morning coffee, I kind of feel guilty because I have not consumed what’s in those and I know the next one is coming, you know, and they’re all really valuable.

[00:06:18] And I think that has amplified a hundred x online and other, through other digital media because it’s just, there’s really no limit to it. But yeah, this really resonates. You know, you say that action without information is chaos, but information without action is a waste. So how do we know that we have learned enough to, to take action?

[00:06:41] Like what’s the kind of discernment in there that enables you to know.

[00:06:46] Pat: Yeah, this is, this is the difference between just in case learning, which is what we’ve all been doing, and just in time learning. Learning what you need to know to just take that next step because truly the action of taking that next step and the results of that one way or another, whether there are good results, are bad results can teach you so much more than just absorbing this information and never taking any action at all.

[00:07:08] You learn so much by doing, and it’s like if you think about how we consume content, you might, I don’t know if you’ve practiced this or still do this, I used to do it forever. When I’m in the car, I either have to have an audio book playing or a podcast episode playing. If I don’t, it feels like a waste of time.

[00:07:25] Yet what actually happens, you are absorbing and learning, but then how much of that absorption are you actually putting into action? Probably very little, and yes, if you get one nugget here or there, then that’s great, but here’s what I’ve been doing recently. That’s been kind of interesting, and a lot of people call it weird.

[00:07:42] I am in the car driving to wherever and it’s. Completely silent. I mean, I can hear the noises of the car for the first time. I, I don’t have the radio on. I don’t have a podcast or an audiobook on. I’m in silence. And what that does, it allows me to be with myself and to digest the things that I’ve already learned, to think about my priorities and the things I’ve already committed to.

[00:08:04] It allows me to make creative connections between things that have already picked up instead of just getting more puzzle pieces to try to figure out where they go. And that’s been really, really big. And I encourage people to try that. There’s a reason why we call it shower thoughts because when you’re in the shower, there’s nothing else to do other than think.

[00:08:23] So how might you give yourself more time to think and absorb and you know, digest the things you’ve already thought about? And I said another word there that’s really important is prioritization. A lot of us struggle with what to learn and what to take action on because there’s so many things we could do that to.

[00:08:39] But if you know exactly what you need to do next, learn only what you need to know to take that next step. Trust that when you reach the next level or that next step, that there will be information ready for you. It’s there, but you might not need it right now, and by the time you need it, it might be better and more relevant by the time you get to it.

[00:08:57] Versus, you know, reading the whole textbook and then taking a test, right? Rather, let’s find out what I need. Let me take action and let me experience the, the joy of learning through doing that to me is human is learning through doing by experience.

[00:09:13] Michael: I feel like I’m about to get a big breakthrough here.

[00:09:15] So I used to be a voracious reader and I’ve always bought more books that I could consume. So guilty is charged there, but I’ve noticed that over the last probably 15 years, my reading consumption has gone down significantly over time. And I realized, in fact, as I was preparing for this interview, I thought, oh, I’m a just in time learner.

[00:09:40] Because what I do now is I only wanna consume information to solve the problem I’m currently working on. So I will try to find a podcast, or I’ll try to find a YouTube video, or I’ll try to find something, but only something that solves the current problem I’m working at. And I feel like I’ve been more productive than ever, but, and Path, this is where I’m hoping you can help me.

[00:10:01] I feel this lingering guilt, like I oughta just be reading, you know, I oughta be still storing up for winter. I don’t know what it, what it is, but have you found that? True of your life as well.

[00:10:14] Pat: I mean, yes. I mean I was always taught that again, the more you know the more successful you’ll be and there’s always seemingly opportunities to inject more of that learning and it, it has this sort of fake productivity that goes along with it because it is only truly productive in my opinion, when you actually put into action those things that you do read or listen to or watch.

[00:10:36] And so it is really just a practice of discipline to unlearn that in a way. And a part of it is fomo, right? We fear missing out on this. Other people are reading these books so I should read it to you. Other people are doing this thing so I need to do it too. And there was once a strategy to combat that called jomo, right?

[00:10:52] Joy of Missing Out. But I don’t like Joy of Missing Out because I feel like that’s just pretending you’re just fake in pretending that you don’t wanna do something when you kind of actually wanna do. So I’ve come up with a strategy to help with this, and that is JOOO, the joy of opting,

[00:11:09] Megan: oh,

[00:11:09] Pat: I’m going to opt out.

[00:11:12] Of reading these books, knowing that I do wanna read them, but you know what? I am so disciplined enough to say no, so that I can recommit to the things I’ve already committed to. Because Mike, this is one thing I learned from you back in 2013 at the platform conference. When you say yes to something, you’re also saying no to something else.

[00:11:31] Hmm. And that has always been with me, and I appreciate you for that. And this is now me sending it back to you in regards to these things that you feel compelled to learn or the guilt that you feel with it. How might you flip that guilt to opting out and feeling proud of that decision, and what does that recommit you to?

[00:11:53] And imagine what that could do for you.

[00:11:54] Michael: That is

[00:11:54] so great.

[00:11:55] I feel so much better about myself. Thank you.

[00:11:58] Yeah. Well, yeah, let go. We’ll, ven know you for the

[00:12:00] Megan: therapy session later.

[00:12:03] Michael: No, this is, this is a free, uh, free consult.

[00:12:05] Megan: Great.

[00:12:06] Michael: Megan, forgive me, I’m gonna jump in here with one, just one more question related to this, and that is there’s never been less friction in getting more information.

[00:12:15] Pat: Never.

[00:12:15] Michael: So talk about just in time pitching, you know, in my news feed for Facebook or whatever, it’s amazing now they’ve got me so dialed in that they serve up knowledge that they think I’ll want to consume.

[00:12:32] Megan: Mm-hmm.

[00:12:32] Michael: And so the other day, true story, I’m scrolling through my Facebook feed and there’s this, um, advertisement for this software that helps you create children’s books and it’s AI generated art, the stories, the whole thing.

[00:12:47] And it looked freaking amazing. And I thought, oh my gosh. I gotta have that. And of course there’s an offer that’s only good that if I buy it now, you know it’s not gonna be available later. So what did I do? I bought it and I justified, I thought, well, I can create some amazing gift books for the children, for the grandkids, for this Christmas.

[00:13:08] And alas, it’s still sitting there on my hard drive. So I bought it. I haven’t used it yet. Hopefully I’ll still use it. But the, the lack of friction makes those of us with Im impulse control issues go crazy.

[00:13:22] Pat: Oh yeah. The, these are what I call junk sparks in the book. They are from a spark of interest somewhere.

[00:13:28] It might be really good copy and an amazing product, or just because we feel like we inherently need more. But in reality, these things are just kind of distractions to the commitments we’ve already made. And. There is some discipline required, but there’s also an opportunity to, every once in a while, just kind of take an audit.

[00:13:45] I do this thing and, and, and practice this with a lot of my students. It’s, it’s called the inspiration matrix. And it’s kind of a way for you to kind of take an audit of all the things that you’re putting your time into right now and all the sort of open loops that you’ve opened up and be able to decide, okay, well these are actually junk sparks.

[00:13:59] Things that once held my attention for a moment, but then aren’t really that important. Let me get rid of them. Let me move those away. Let me close those loops. Here are some things that, okay, yes, they’re prioritization. We have to have them, even though I don’t like them. Here are the recreational things that are important to have.

[00:14:15] I’m gonna have one or two of those, but then here are my passion pursuits that I want, and that’s what I’m gonna focus on. And this way you can once a quarter go in and take what I like to call a y focused introspection or a wifi for short, because if you don’t have wifi, you’re lagging. I’m sorry, that’s just my dad jokes coming in, but now you won’t forget it.

[00:14:34] This is really important. That’s just a classic example, Mike, of, of just. We have to be online, so we’re going to get fed these things. But if you know what your prioritizations are, then you can see that and go, Nope, Mike, I know not to do this. I’m going to recommit to the things I’ve already said yes to.

[00:14:50] And I’m gonna put this aside ’cause I know enough not to need it right now. And that’s very hard to do. But with practice it does come. But you’re right, it’s just the, the impulse buys. Because to go back to the food analogy, this information is a grocery store aisle and the bag of chips are right there.

[00:15:08] Yeah. All the time. And they look good. In fact, they’re delicious, but we’re not gonna feel good the next day after we consume it. And the same goes with our information. So true.

[00:15:18] Megan: I do this a lot with solving problems that I buy something on Amazon to fix. So, for example, I have a, mm-hmm A nice handbag like leather handbag that I use for my laptop and whatever.

[00:15:31] It has these little brass feet on the bottom. Well, one of the brass feet fell off. And so I was like, surely there’s gotta be a way to like replace, I don’t have to replace the whole bag. Like I can just replace a little foot. And sure enough you can, of course, ’cause literally everything, everything exists on Amazon, you know?

[00:15:45] But then now it’s been sitting on my counter and I have to figure out how does one pull a apart a bag in order to put this little foot thing back in there? And I probably have five things like that, that I bought in the last month that are a solution to a problem that now I have to make time. To learn how to do and actually go execute.

[00:16:04] And instead of it being a relief, like, oh, I’ve solved that problem, it’s actually a burden to me. And I feel like that’s sometimes about, you know, yeah. Or it creates more problems. Creates more problems. You know, now

[00:16:12] I gotta learn how to do something with leather. Like I dunno anything about that. I could have just taken it to somebody to do it.

[00:16:17] You know?

[00:16:18] Pat: That’s the end. That’s for many people. Sometimes we don’t wanna hear this. But that is in many ways the answer. There are people out there who are literally experts at that, who can do it in a minute. And the question is, well, how valuable do you believe your time is? Yeah. Not everybody’s in a position to always hand off things like that, but a lot of times that’s time that we can get back as an investment to have something just done so we can continue to do the things we need.

[00:16:43] Another thing I talk about in the book that kind of relates to this is called time blocking. Mm-hmm. Right? Or uh, and we’ve heard of time blocking before, right? But it, I kind of think about it differently. Time blocking as we all have grown up with, is putting blocks of time in your calendar to do things.

[00:16:56] But I take it one step further and I say, you wanna actually. Treat it like a block around you, like a shield. You are shielding your time. During that moment, you are blocking anything else from coming into those moments. So this is why the calendar is really key for me as a productivity tool because I can then put in my calendar this is the priority and these other things are not during this time.

[00:17:19] And I don’t just put work related things into the calendar as well. Mike, I learned this from you as well, from Best Year Ever back when you had it as a course that I took every year because it was life changing. I prioritized family time in there ’cause I have a holistic life, not just a business life.

[00:17:33] And so I was able to kind of also use the calendar. I am still doing this to say this is the time that I need to be focused on family and I need to shield everything else around this away. So the calendar is probably if people ask me like, pat, what’s your favorite productivity tool? It’s the calendar literally.

[00:17:49] ’cause that’s where my priorities go. And if you wanna know what a person’s real priorities are. In many ways, you can just look at their calendar and see.

[00:17:57] Megan: It’s a good reminder.

[00:17:58] Michael: That’s a

[00:17:59] really great nuance to the word blocking.

[00:18:02] Megan: Yeah, I like that.

[00:18:03] Michael: I love that.

[00:18:11] In lean learning, you talk about a methodology that’s built around four steps. Could you walk us through that framework?

[00:18:19] Pat: Yeah. I mean, it’s not even that difficult. It’s to go back to this idea of, well, what? What is the next step? Identify that next step in whatever it is that you’re trying to do, and then it’s find a resource, one single resource to help you on that.

[00:18:33] This is again, where we need discipline, because there are many resources. In fact, there are probably many great resources that could help you, but when you pick that one. Resource from that one person or that one product, then you can stay focused and see that through. You implement it, you take action, and then you review.

[00:18:49] You see what happens, and you’ve given yourself time to actually have a fighting chance with this next step. And if you fail, that’s okay. That’s great. You’ve gotten to the point at which you now know what went wrong and you can find somebody or something to help you through that to then get to the next step.

[00:19:05] And that’s really just the cycle. That’s the learning cycle. Now, there are methods that I talk about in the book to speed that up and to learn even faster from voluntary force functions, right? Putting yourself in a situation to learn faster because there’s something at stake, that’s, that’s something that’s been really, really helpful.

[00:19:21] This is, I mean, if you talk to anybody who, for example, learns languages, a lot of people learn languages now with these apps. And these apps are great. Duolingo, Rosetta Stone, et cetera. But the ones who truly learn the fastest are the ones who go to that country. Are forced to have to figure it out in a way for survival reasons.

[00:19:42] You will quickly learn the words you need to know in context of you needing to know these words versus again, the hard discipline of, you know, keeping that streak on Duolingo going, which again, can help as a baseline. But I mean, I’ve learned Japanese just simply from going to Japan the last three years more than in any app that I could learn because I’m in those moments learning and I fail and I go, oh, okay, I shouldn’t have said that.

[00:20:05] I should have said this. I’ll never forget that anymore because it’s in real life context. Now, of course, like I said, not everybody has the luxury of going to Japan to learn Japanese, which is why I’m getting excited from, I don’t know the name of the company, but there’s a company out there that helps you learn languages by actually putting you on a voice call or a Zoom call or some video call with a person who literally is just speaking with you in that language.

[00:20:30] And they’re not like a teacher, they’re literally just a person who speaks that language, who. It’s just there to make you fail until you figure it out. And I love that. That’s how you can speed these things up. I learned how to speak on stage by saying yes to getting on stages. Yes, and having been forced to go up on stage and figure things out, versus I could have read every single book in the world about it and still not be as great as after that first time I did it, even though I didn’t do it perfectly.

[00:20:54] So again, identifying that next step is probably the next biggest thing that you can do to then identify then what actions to take and then what to review. That’s when you start to really, almost like a laser, really focus in all that energy on that small thing. So then again, get to that next step. And again, just all you need to know is enough to take that next step.

[00:21:13] You can learn a million things about the subject, but what do you need to know just about that next step? I’ll tell you a quick story. This is actually something I experienced before I actually extrapolated all this and put it into the book. That was the fun part about reading this book. It was like, I know I have these certain ways of approaching things.

[00:21:29] I’ve just never laid it out before. So in a way, the book itself is a lean learning function. Function because one thing I talk about in the book as well is a great way to learn is to teach. And by teaching you were forced to break things down and create frameworks which then help yourself. So back in 2008, I was laid off from my architecture job.

[00:21:49] This is how I got started in online business. I learned about online business from another podcast and learned that I could take information I had in my brain and put it online, and that’s what I did. But then. I went into a mastermind group in San Diego and they said, pat, you need to publish an ebook to your audience.

[00:22:05] You built this audience of architects. Now you should actually sell them something. And I said, that’s a great idea, but I don’t know how to do that. And I started researching. I went back to my old ways of researching all there would be needing to know to do that. And I started to get very overwhelmed. I have to, number one, write the book.

[00:22:21] How do I write this book? I need to format it. I need to then create a cover for it. Then I need to market it somehow, and then I need to somehow deliver this ebook, which I’ve never done before. Ah, I’m never gonna get started. But I had something at stake. I had gotten laid off. I needed this to work. So I said, you know what?

[00:22:36] I’m just gonna start with the thing I know I need before anything else can happen. I need to write this book. I’ll worry about the marketing and all those other things later. ’cause none of that matters until I have this book. So what I did was I just asked the number one question that you can ask yourself when you’re trying something new, which is, if this were easy, what would it look like?

[00:22:54] That’s sort of the keystone question in the book. And in that, at that time it was, I’m just gonna open up Microsoft Word and just type things out. It’s not gonna look good, but it’s gonna be at least there on paper.

[00:23:05] Megan: Mm-hmm.

[00:23:05] Pat: And two weeks later, I had about 74 pages of notes that were in this essay format That didn’t look great, but it was there and it was much further than I would’ve gone if I just kind of kept getting overwhelmed with the entire process.

[00:23:18] And then I said, okay, now I need to take all this information and format it. That was now my next step. Thankfully there were some resources to do that on YouTube. I just looked up a video and in 10 minutes I had the exact way that I needed to do this, and by the week end, I was able to have it formatted the way I wanted to.

[00:23:34] Amazing. Perfect. Okay. Now how do I take this and sell it? I don’t know. I’ve never done that before. Oh, just create a PDF file and then put it on a website like E Junkie. I don’t dunno, if you remember E Junkie, do I do com From back in the day

[00:23:47] Michael: I was back,

[00:23:48] Pat: but you could upload a digital product and get a button back to put on your website, and that literally took 10 minutes after, and I was so excited to do it because I already had the book available as a PDF.

[00:23:59] It’s like, okay, now I’m driven. Now the momentum’s building, the snowball is rolling. Then I needed to know how to write a sales page, which again, I went back to old habits. How do I become a copywriter? I have to go to copywriting school. I have to pay tens of thousands of dollars to do this. If this were easy, what would it look like?

[00:24:15] And I asked a friend. Who gave me some incredible advice. He said, pat, there was a book called Moonlighting on the Internet by Yanik Silver, and it’s this like 300 page book with all different kinds of ways to make money online. He’s like, you don’t even need the book. Just read the appendix in the back because in the appendix there is a Mad Libs style sales page.

[00:24:36] Just plug your product in, plug your features and benefits and just use that word for word. And I was like, really? It could be that easy. He’s like, yeah, the framework’s already there. So I copy that and that is still the sales page I use today. 17 years later, that’s ’cause that website’s still up. I’ve generated two and a half million dollars.

[00:24:55] Megan: Amazing. From

[00:24:56] Pat: a single ebook.

[00:24:57] Megan: Wow.

[00:24:57] Pat: Not by learning everything upfront, but by figuring out what my next step was and then finding a resource to help me on the next step, and then finding another resource to help me on the next step. And then it happened and none of it would’ve if I’d just gotten overwhelmed, like we often do.

[00:25:11] Megan: That’s such a great story. It’s so relatable because I think, you know, we’ve all, or at least we wish we would’ve been in your

[00:25:17] story instead of the version where we did get stuck trying to figure it all out ahead of time. So I love that. From an inspirational standpoint, pat, one of the things that you talk about is the idea of optimization and you know how that could be such a trap.

[00:25:32] And I think as people who you know, in our community for sure, and I think we ourselves, we care about our reaching our potential. We we’re just like natural optimizers, you know, and there is just no bottom to optimization. Like you can literally just go forever. Talk about some of the traps that are a part of that, and also how we can break the habit of optimization in a like pathological sense, which is where I think it ends up for a lot of us.

[00:26:00] Yeah.

[00:26:01] Pat: This is really hard for us, overachiever. Mm-hmm. Because A, we feel like we could do it all. And b, in general, in many times we can, but should we is the big question. Mm-hmm. And again, it’s a matter of where do, where do you believe your time is best well spent? I learned this from our mutual friend, Chris Ducker.

[00:26:19] Mm-hmm. He said, do what you do best, delegate the rest. And that has been so life changing. Even though I could do those things myself by having other people do them, I’m able to then get time back. Because something that I think, and, and Mike, when we were in Nashville recently with, uh, Donald Miller at our authors retreat, a theme across most of the people there were not optimizing for revenue, not optimizing for scale.

[00:26:42] It was optimizing for peace. Yes. And that was huge to think about. It’s so different than how it used to be. We used to all talk about scale, money driving sales, et cetera. And now it’s like. I kind of wanna move to a farm, you know? Yeah. And all these other things. There’s like, what? What would make life peaceful again?

[00:27:01] And in many ways it is not optimizing everything there is about your business. It is being okay with the fact that maybe you are leaving sales on the table, but in exchange for leaving sales on the table, you are more at peace. I think that’s valuable and that is worth it.

[00:27:17] Michael: Oh, actually, that mastermind, I think I was the first one to introduce it in the very introductory thing where we went around and told it was you.

[00:27:23] Yeah. Gave our names. But to give credit where credits to it was Megan’s idea. And I think one of the things we’ve seen over the last several years is we’ve been optimizing for scale. Mm-hmm. You know, how can we build it big and how can we build it fast? And we literally, Megan, you can speak for yourself.

[00:27:42] I don’t even care about that anymore. You know, my company’s as big as I want it. I’d like to be a little more profitable, but it’s as big as I want it. There’s no value in making it any bigger. Particularly my age, you know, I wanna optimize for peace and for joy, you know, to be able to have more time. Yeah.

[00:28:01] With my family and my grandkids and all the rest,

[00:28:04] Pat: which has a trickle down effect to also your health. Yes. Right. How many of us know people who are so burned out because they’re over optimizers because they’re going too big, too fast?

[00:28:17] Megan: Yeah.

[00:28:17] Pat: As hard and terrible as COVID was, it was such a huge reset for me and my family.

[00:28:23] ’cause I was going too fast. I was saying yes to every speaking opportunity. I was taking every opportunity for every partnership and saying yes to everything. And not only was I burning out, my audience was burning out in my team. So I feel, I feel like, again, this sort of slowing down and stepping out of, out of the moment to ask yourself, what is really important here?

[00:28:45] Where should I be spending my time? What is working and what is not? And is it okay if it’s not?

[00:28:51] Megan: What

[00:28:51] Pat: is actually the thing that matters most? And I, I feel like, I mean, we hear the time, we, we, we hear it all the time. People who are much, much older, who reflect back on their life and they say, man, I wish I didn’t work as hard.

[00:29:05] I wish I spent more time with my family. I wish I spent more time having fun. And that’s something that I’m grateful to have been planted into my brain early on or earlier on in life because that’s what I’ve been doing now. And it’s been great. I even, before we hit record, I was talking about my son.

[00:29:20] He’s 16 almost. And you know, he’ll be outta the house soon. And we’re trying to enjoy as much time as we can. And yes, I could probably scale the business even bigger, but, and sacrifice the time with my kids. No way. No way.

[00:29:32] Megan: Mm-hmm.

[00:29:33] Pat: So I appreciate this conversation. A lot of times, maybe the listeners might need a little kick in the pants every once in a while ’cause it’s very easy.

[00:29:40] I mean, we get so bogged down by hustle culture, comparison culture. You know, we see everybody’s highlight reels on Instagram and Facebook, but. Knowing what you are doing and why you’re doing it is gonna be absolutely key to everything.

[00:29:55] Megan: Yeah. And I think that sometimes we optimize for the sake of optimization.

[00:29:59] You know, there’s just this desire to keep figuring out how to do that thing better. You know, like recently I’ve started, um, taking sauna and doing cold plunge, not because that just. Is the trendy thing to do. I actually sort of roll my eyes at the whole thing, to be honest. Um, however, for my health, I have some heart issues and you know, because I care about my family and I wanna be around a long time and have a big family and all the rest, that’s something that I’ve chosen to prioritize.

[00:30:28] And it was funny, we have a family text thread and the other day one of my sisters was like, Hey, if you’re, if you’re taking sauna, like here’s a bunch of stuff that you need to make sure you’re doing at the same time. And it was like, take this supplement, make sure you do this before that. And it was like 20 things.

[00:30:41] And I was like, at the point when I have to do those 20 things on top of already finding time to do this thing, which I do feel like is a good trade off, given my risk factors. Like I’m just out, you know, like, like that becomes, it takes on a life of its own. And I’m sure there’s scientific validity to some of those recommendations, but I just thought, man.

[00:31:02] This can become a part-time job. And the point is not to fill my life with sauna and cold plunge and red light and whatever else. The point is, I wanna be healthy enough to spend time with the people I love. That’s what matters to me, right? That’s what I’m actually optimizing for. And this is totally means to an end.

[00:31:20] And it’s not my hobby. It’s, it’s not my, you know, where I get my joy or my peace from, like that’s from the rest of my life and especially the people that I love the most. And so I think part of what I’m trying to ask myself in this stage in the season of life is, what is the point of the optimization?

[00:31:40] Is it just because you know that 10% more is possible? And what will that actually get you compared with what you’ll have to pay literally or figuratively to get it? Because usually there is a trade off there that is kind of invisible and we don’t really realize till we find ourselves overwhelmed later on.

[00:31:54] Pat: It reminds me of, um. Fable or some, it’s a fishing story of the, the busy person who takes a break and goes on vacation, goes fishing and finds that this fleet of, of boats, that’s like two boats big, has an opportunity to grow into a fleet of a hundred. And they take this idea of the, um, of, of, of building a business around it.

[00:32:15] They move to Mexico and do this whole thing so that one day he could have a vacation and go fishing. Uh, you know, that kind of story. So it’s like, you know, you might already have the things you need, and so why Yeah. Do you need more? I think also, uh, for me, a part of the drive initially in my early days as an entrepreneur was always feeling like the things that I created were going to eventually die or fail.

[00:32:39] Mm. It was like, I need more just in case. Like things go under. Yes. That was my excuse. And, and, and maybe there was some validity to that, but I also know I sacrificed a lot to stay afloat, if you wanna call it that. But now I’m at this point where like, if everything goes under for whatever reason, I know I can get back up and get, get it going again.

[00:32:59] Like I am that confident. Mm-hmm. And sure of myself now, and it takes time to get there, but I was creating, and, you know, doing things for the wrong reasons, you know, more, more in the sense of fear versus in a sense of confidence. And I, and I think when you create from a place of confidence, more opportunities happen, more opportunities come out, and then it’s a matter of, no, I don’t need that anymore because I got what I need already.

[00:33:23] Like, how much is enough? Mm-hmm. How much is enough? What is that number for people? I think a lot of people don’t even know what their number is, if there is a number for some, or what does life look like In a perfect world, if you could snap your fingers, what if you’re there already and maybe you can put away some things that you’ve been working on to put more time into what really matters.

[00:33:40] Um, kids, family health, a lot of people sacrifice their health. We know people who have gone and become hospitalized because of how much work they’ve done. And it’s crazy because they’ve become an entrepreneur to create the life that they want, only to get into a point where they’re doing the things they don’t wanna do anymore.

[00:33:57] Megan: Yeah.

[00:33:58] Michael: You know, I asked one of my private coaching clients the other day, I said, who are you without your business? Because her identity was so wrapped up with their business.

[00:34:07] Megan: Hmm.

[00:34:08] Michael: And she immediately started crying. She said, I honestly don’t know. Wow. And you know, we’ve all met people like that and I’ve probably been close to that myself.

[00:34:20] But man, I do not wanna be in that situation where my identity is so bound up with my work that I don’t have an identity based on anything else. Mm-hmm. And to me, work is important. There’s no question about it, but it’s not the only thing and it’s gotta, you know, talk about time blocking. It needs to be constrained because it can definitely take over everything in your life.

[00:34:44] Megan: Yeah, absolutely. Okay. This is like a lighter question. That was very,

[00:34:49] Pat: yeah, we got pretty handy. It was very, yeah, I got that. That

[00:34:51] Megan: was very deep. People. Um, this is like an inquiring minds want to know question pat, which is what do your daily. Learning consumption habits look like now? Like do you watch the news?

[00:35:04] Do you read books? Do you listen to audio books? Like you said, you don’t listen when you’re in the car, for example, but like what do those habits look like now and how does that compare with what they look like before?

[00:35:16] Pat: So my goal is to consume more conversation with my kids than it is to consume from anybody else.

[00:35:22] That’s what I’m optimizing for. Ooh,

[00:35:24] Megan: I like that.

[00:35:25] Pat: I don’t listen to the news or audio books unless for audio books and podcasts, unless, like we talked about earlier, there’s something I’m trying to figure out. Like recently I just launched a merch line for my Pokemon YouTube channel and I wanted to learn about how to roll that out and what tools to use.

[00:35:41] Great. I’m gonna learn about that. And I give myself a container of time again to time blocking. I give myself a container of time to learn about that. And it’s almost like once that time is over, once those blocks are done. Then I can, I’m gonna take action some way, shape or form. I’ve only given myself that much time to learn because Parkinson’s law comes into play here.

[00:36:02] If I give myself five months to learn, I’m gonna take five months to learn it. If I give myself five hours to learn, I’m gonna take five hours to learn it. So I almost use time as a tool to help me get to the point of action and then understanding sooner. Um, but no, I’m, my, my consumption is from doing, there is so much more value from the act of creating and, and seeing what happens versus consumption and wondering what happens.

[00:36:28] And so I try to get to the point of action as, as, as soon as I can. So, no, I, the only times I am consuming anything that is similar to news is in a 30 hour block of time I have every day to just flick through TikTok or. X or Instagram or wherever. And typically the big news things that need to be seen are going to be seen when I show up there.

[00:36:53] Either that or my wife or somebody will just be like, Hey, did you hear about, you know, recently there was a, a typhoon in the Philippines, which was terrible, and I have family members there. So that, you know, led its way to me. And then we did what we could to support. Uh, but no actively seeking out information that I know is just either going to get in the way and or make me upset.

[00:37:14] Like, why would I allow that to happen? Versus, like I said, I wanna collect conversations, I wanna build memories like a, a memory bank with the kids. That’s what’s important to me right now.

[00:37:23] Michael: I used to be a news junkie, true confession. Then I woke up one day and realized it’s pretty much the same every day.

[00:37:31] Yeah. And when you realize they’re basically op, optimizing for eyeballs and clicks, so it all gets sensationalized. But now I’ve just decided to, I, I do watch the evening news, but that’s it. Mm-hmm. And once you skip through, uh, the commercials, you can actually watch it pretty fast. But that’s it. I’ve gotta watch myself too.

[00:37:52] I mean, there’s just so much information that that doesn’t serve what we’re trying to do either emotionally or spiritually or physically or whatever. I salute you for that.

[00:38:09] So you started out as an architect? Yes. Then you founded a company called Smart Passive Income. Hugely successful podcast. And you BA basically taught people how to create passive ish income, vibrant community, and all the rest. And then somehow you stumbled into Pokemon and have built a business around that.

[00:38:31] So I wanna take everything we’ve set up until this point. How has that informed the building of this new business, which from the outside looking in, has been wildly successful, maybe even more successful than anything you’ve ever done?

[00:38:44] Pat: Where do I start with this? It’s, it’s an interesting story. So actually, lemme take you back to 2017.

[00:38:49] So the Pokemon Channel started in 2020, but in 2017 I started to get a creative itch. I always have a creative itch, and for a while it was always kind of haphazard and kind of all over the place. And then I started to implement lean learning principles to just focus on kind of the things that matter.

[00:39:05] However, we’ve all also always heard this strategy of just focus on one thing at a time, right? Jay Papasan and, and Gary Keller. I, I, you know, one thing that’s, that’s their book. Even Alex her right now is very, very loud about just one thing. Do it well. Nothing else matters. Just grind on that one thing and you’ll get good at it.

[00:39:25] I tried that and I didn’t like it because I am just too much of a curious and creative person to just stay in one lane. So I would say problem, yeah, many people are that way. And so we’re fighting against who we are when we’re just focused on one thing. So what do we do? We try everything. And that’s not good either because we spread ourselves too thin.

[00:39:45] So I’ve developed this rule called the 20% Itch Rule, and that is, out of all the things you do, 80% of your time is dedicated to the things you’ve already committed to, the things that, the responsibilities you have, the things that you’ve already said, yes to 20% of time. Allocate that for curiosity, for play, for experimentation.

[00:40:04] And this 80 20 thing is seen in many different places. Google uses this with their employees 80% of their time or four days a week are used to do whatever is their job description is. And then 20% of the time they can create, they can use whatever Google resources they have to create and develop new things.

[00:40:19] Gmail was one of those things that was created in a 20% of time kind of thing. I know a good friend of ours, Ramit Setti, who created an incredible business. He uses Fridays 20% of his time to experiment with new copy and new marketing related things. Everything else is related to creation, but marketing happens on Friday for him.

[00:40:37] So for me, in 2017, I got a niche. I went to a video conference and I noticed that everybody was using this tool called a Gorilla Pod to hold out their cameras further from their face. And it was just really odd ’cause that’s not what it was meant for. And so my videographer and I said, there must be a better way.

[00:40:53] And we had a niche to create an invent. A new tripod, and this was a tripod that went through a number of iterations and different prototypes. We had never invented a real life physical product before, but we were curious about it and I said, you know what? I’m going to do this. That’s going to represent the 20% of my time, my experimentation in play, everything else, smart passive income, and my other work is gonna be still done.

[00:41:15] So even if this were to fail, that’s okay. I’ll still have the 80% lifting the load. But imagine what would happen if it did work, or even if it failed. Imagine what I could learn from this and what I can then implement and bring back to the other thing. So 2017 rolls around. We develop some prototypes. We go to different YouTuber events, talk to a lot of people about what this thing should look like and how it should behave in general.

[00:41:36] If you imagine a tripod, a handheld tripod, the legs can fold into each other to create a handle and they can fold out to create the tripod. It’s called a switch pod. It was really fun and I learned so much about e-commerce and inventing and patenting and creating molds and manufacturing the whole thing.

[00:41:52] And it launched in February of 2019. It generated $418,000 in 60 days from a 60 day Kickstarter campaign.

[00:42:00] Megan: Mm-hmm.

[00:42:00] Pat: And it’s still for sale today on Amazon. We’ve sold over a million dollars worth of product since then. And, you know, speaking of optimizing for life, my partner, uh, had twins. I had other things going on.

[00:42:10] So we’ve just automated the business. We chose not to scale it and it’s done very well for us. So we stepped back, we were successful with the launch and said, cool, let’s just automate it. And here we go. So that’s been running. So now I had time for a new thing, and in 2020 when the pandemic came around, my kids got me into Pokemon.

[00:42:28] They were collecting these cards and I started to dive in. And anything the kids do, we kind of wanna try to do with them. We try to learn the language that they’re speaking. And we did this with Fortnite when the kids were playing video games and into Fortnite, I learned Fortnite. How did I learn? I hired a kid on Fiverr to teach me.

[00:42:45] 14-year-old kid and it was awesome.

[00:42:47] Megan: That’s amazing. Two 30 minute sessions for

[00:42:49] Pat: $50 each. Like he probably made out like a bandit, like a 14-year-old kid with a hundred bucks. And I was able to hang with the kids in this virtual world playing Fortnite with them. And it’s created so many amazing memories that that’s just, again, a quick way to learn things.

[00:43:02] But anyway, they were into Pokemon. I couldn’t hire anybody for Pokemon, so I dove into the world of YouTube to learn about Pokemon and who was there and what parts of this world exist. And I started to really fall in love with the community, became a moderator for certain channels and just really started to understand what was going on here.

[00:43:17] Started to collect cards myself. And then in 2021, I decided to create a YouTube channel. Taking all the years of YouTube that I know and apply it here. The years of storytelling, the years of. Titles and thumbnails and all these things, and people seem to really enjoy the kinds of videos we created in a very lean learning kind of style.

[00:43:34] We experimented with different kinds of videos until we landed on a couple frameworks that people tend to enjoy, which are the challenge videos that we do. Pokemon comes out with a various sets, uh, few times a year, and these sets have a couple hundred cards in them. And so I’ve created a video series where I try to complete the set in 24 hours or 48 hours or in two hours, whatever the case may be.

[00:43:55] And these videos have seen tens of millions of views and just from the ad revenue alone on the long form channel. We’re seeing anywhere between 80 to a hundred thousand dollars a month in just ad revenue alone from just YouTube, not to mention the brand sponsorship deals that can happen on there. From working with companies like eBay and others to who spend a lot of money on advertising, we’ve built partnerships with them.

[00:44:19] I now have, uh, official partnership with Pokemon. They know who I am. They’ve invited me out to Japan to kind of go and participate and do certain things now, like celebrities and their families watch the channel. It’s just absolutely wild. Um, and then in 2024, last year, I started a separate channel in the Pokemon space, a shorts channel.

[00:44:39] So I was always curious about TikTok and reels. I was always very adamant about long form, only long form is the way to build relationships. I had this. Deep Pocket Monster Channel, uh, is the name of it’s ca, uh, that it’s called in the long form space. It’s 2 million subscribers. Uh, about, and I wanted to try something in short form though, so I started a channel completely from scratch, did not link to it from anything.

[00:45:01] Did not show my face on on it. I open a pack of cards every day, and it’s a series called Should I Open It or Should I Keep It Sealed? ’cause then in the beginning I ask that question at the end, I open the pack. Many times I should probably have kept it sealed because I lost value because there was nothing inside.

[00:45:17] It’s a fun show that is now a worldwide phenomenon. I remember this was one of those experiments, another example of an experiment. I said, you know what? I’m gonna try this for 60 days. I’m gonna go daily on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube shorts, and we’re gonna see how this goes. This will be a win for me if I just get to day 60.

[00:45:35] I don’t care about the views as my friend Alex says, count uploads, not likes. ’cause that’s what you can control. You can’t always control the views or how people will respond, but you can control hitting record and hitting publish. So here’s how this went down. It took me about 45 minutes to an hour to record these videos every day.

[00:45:51] A lot of time. But that’s all the time I had now. In fact, even just after 30 days, that editing time went from one hour to 12 minutes because. I just had repetition. I did it every day. I got to learn the shortcuts. I used the same jingle, I used the same audio files, and I used the same font and all this stuff.

[00:46:09] It’s all in a template that I learned how to do only after doing it so often for 30 days. I also had 30 points of data after 30 days. If you imagine somebody going once a week on something, you only have 52 opportunities to learn in a year. I had 30 opportunities in one month, and I started to learn what worked and what didn’t.

[00:46:27] Megan: Mm-hmm.

[00:46:27] Pat: Day 35, 1 of those daily videos that were averaging about one to 2000 views a day, which wasn’t super great. Hit 750,000 views. It just wow, exploded. Gosh exploded. And the whole channel grew as a result. Because I gave it time and because I didn’t care about the views, I cared about just showing up every day and learning every day, not by reading about it and eventually not doing anything.

[00:46:51] So now this channel, which now has the separate channel now has 2.3 million subscribers on YouTube, 2 million subscribers on TikTok, 1.3 million Instagram followers, Facebook across the board, we’re seeing 10 million views a day per day across all of those platforms, and in and of itself,

[00:47:10] Megan: that’s crazy.

[00:47:10] Pat: The shorts alone, the shorts channel, the short form videos are generating anywhere between 15 to 20 K per month on just ad revenue alone.

[00:47:18] There. 12 minutes a day. Wow. And because I’m batch processing these, it’s about an hour per week I’m putting into this and I’m getting these more brand deals. I got invited by the Detroit Lions to open Pokemon at their, uh, at Ford Field player from the Los Angeles Dodgers, who recently won the World Series.

[00:47:34] Reached out to me the other day and was like, yo, I love your stuff. I’m a big fan. Would love to chat more with you. All these crazy things are happening only because I took action. And again, I didn’t know anything about Pokemon five years ago. And now we have the number one channel because I just took action.

[00:47:47] Megan: Wow. Such

[00:47:49] Michael: a fun story. How did you keep, or how did you exercise constraint in that? Because it would’ve been really easy to just go all in to the detriment of everything else in your life. What kept you from doing that?

[00:48:02] Pat: Kept me from going all in on the Pokemon thing and,

[00:48:06] Michael: yeah. ’cause I’m sure it would’ve been based on lean learning and based on your commitment to your family and everything, it would’ve been easy.

[00:48:13] To really just get sucked into that opportunity and told yourself the story that like, this is a once in a lifetime thing and if I just get it to a certain level, you know, I, I’ll never have to think about income or anything else. It’ll be great for my family. You know, all the lies that we tell ourselves.

[00:48:27] How did you keep that from happening?

[00:48:28] Pat: I just said, you know what? I just want to keep having fun. I’m optimizing for fun. Everything else is a byproduct of that. And I feel like with the videos both on the entrepreneurial channel and on the Pokemon Channel, the more fun I have creating these things, the more fun it is for the audience to watch them.

[00:48:45] Yeah. Which increases the watch time, which gets them excited about being a part of the brand. I now have a live event that goes with this Pokemon brand. We just hosted our fourth event in Seattle last October, and we had 8,000 people at this event. That’s exactly what I talk about in my book, superfans, right?

[00:49:04] Bringing your community together. I’m just doing it in a completely different world now. And all the things still remain true about what it means to build a brand and build community as long as I am doing things and optimizing for fun. And the other cool part about this is the family’s involved, right?

[00:49:19] They’re in the videos. The kids are actually employees of the company. So they’re getting a salary now. I’m taking advantage of that tax opportunity. They’re getting to learn how to use money and what it’s like to actually run a business. ’cause it’s not all fun and games all the time. And it’s bringing us some bonding time together too.

[00:49:36] So all these great things are happening as a result of just allowing myself to experiment. But even if the Pokemon thing failed, that was 20% of my time, I would’ve still continued to do it anyway because it was fun. And I still had SPI and the podcast and the newsletter and the systems built there to keep things up and afloat.

[00:49:53] Megan: Okay, so Pat, we have three questions that we always ask our guests at the end of each episode. The first one is, what currently is your biggest obstacle in getting the double win and the double win means to win at work and succeed at the rest of your life?

[00:50:10] Pat: I’m still battling with how curious I am. I recently got into fishing again.

[00:50:16] I used to fish a lot when I was a kid. Mike knows this. We’ve gone on fishing trips together and it is so hard for me not to create a YouTube channel about fishing because I know I could do it. It would be fun, it would work, but I want to protect that part of my life from anything that would feel like.

[00:50:37] I have to do this and I need to get, kind of, get back on that hamster wheel. Fishing, to me is the escape from all of that. It’s not that I hate all that. I’m, I love what I’m doing, but it’s important to have breathing space in some recreational format. And that has been life changing for me. So I have to protect that.

[00:50:53] And I have my wife and many other people to hold me accountable to protect it, because I have brought the camera out on the boat before and I say, oh my gosh, this would be such a fun story to tell, but I have to keep that from you. So that, that’s probably the biggest thing that’s happening that I have to struggle with is, is just that urge.

[00:51:11] And again, I always go back to that, you know, if I were to say yes to this, then what? What would I be saying no to? Uh, yeah. And thankfully that keeps me in check. I love that.

[00:51:19] Michael: That’s a, that’d be a good word for me too. I know I’m getting the double win when there’s room in my life for fishing. Oh, amen.

[00:51:25] Pat: Yes.

[00:51:25] That’s

[00:51:25] Michael: it. Okay. Period. How do you personally know when you’ve got the double win other than you’re out on a boat or standing in a river?

[00:51:33] Pat: I mean, those are definitely indicators for sure, being on a boat or standing on a river. But I think another indicator is having the opportunity to just be, to just be and smile in the moment, right?

[00:51:46] It’s coming back in from the grocery store and seeing the kids playing video games and knowing that a lot of this was created as a result of the decision to focus on what I decided to focus on. It’s the trips that we go on and not having to worry about what next email I need to send, um, or just like scoring myself on how productive I was today, but I just being satisfied and in fact, it’s the gratefulness.

[00:52:12] If I can continue practicing gratitude, which is another thing I’ve learned for you, from you, Mike, is to think about the gratitude and, and you know, if you can express gratitude, then there is nothing, even though there might be things that are not going exactly the way you want it to. As long as you consider that there are things that you can be thankful for, then you’ve done it.

[00:52:31] And for me, when I can go through a day and be just be grateful for, for just being with people, then I know that I would’ve experienced the, the double win for sure.

[00:52:41] Megan: Okay. Lastly, what is one ritual or routine that you rely on to do what you do? Do?

[00:52:47] Pat: There’s, there’s a lot of rituals and routines that I practice.

[00:52:51] It’s interesting and I, you know, I remember one time, Mike, I heard a story about you before you go on a webinar. For example, you have this trampoline, I don’t know, do you still do the trampoline thing? I don’t. You don’t. That’s okay. But I just remember that and I was going, wow, what an amazing way to just get your blood going and to get your body moving before you need to show up.

[00:53:13] And I thought that was really, really important. So I don’t do a trampoline. But I do pushups and this is a routine. Whenever before I go on camera, before I hit record, before I go live, I just try to get 50 pushups in, not often in a row, maybe two groups of 25 or five groups of 10. Sometimes if, if I’m not feeling good that day or whatever and it just gets me going.

[00:53:34] Just a little movement of the body goes a very, very long way. So that’s, that’s something you taught me. That’s

[00:53:40] Megan: so fun.

[00:53:40] Pat: Yeah.

[00:53:41] Michael: So just some pushups. I learned it from Tony Robbins and I think he still does it. I wouldn’t be surprised. Yes.

[00:53:47] He goes out there, as you know, on stage for 12 hours, 14 hours at a time.

[00:53:52] And is the Energizer Bunny amazing? Yeah. Well, pat, thank you so much. Whenever I’m with you like this or like we were in July at our Mastermind, I just think, man, I just wish we had more time together. But Dito, we’ll just keep loving the time we have together and take advantage of it when we do, and I hope.

[00:54:12] You get to go fishing with us this year? I hope

[00:54:14] Pat: so. I hope so. Megan, it was great to finally chat with you for more than just a few moments here. I love the show. And likewise, thank you so much for the support and the great questions and the fun conversation. And thank you to those of you listening as well.

[00:54:35] Michael: So Megan, I know you haven’t had the opportunity to spend as much time with Pat as I have over the years, but uh, what are your thoughts?

[00:54:42] Megan: Yeah, well, my gosh, he is simultaneously a prolific entrepreneur and creator. And also I think really doing some hard work around reckoning with limitations and how to think about that in a way that, um, is a counterbalance, as he said to that kind of insatiable curiosity that he has.

[00:55:01] So I appreciated that. Appreciated how he shared that. That’s still a challenge for him. I think a lot of us can relate, you know, to that. And yet the need for. Not having those things be unbridled because man, if they are, it’s a runaway train.

[00:55:15] Michael: Well, I think my biggest takeaway was I felt like I got permission to not constantly be consuming information.

[00:55:22] Yeah. Because every time I read a book or I watch a YouTube video, there’s like 10 to do items that flow out of that.

[00:55:31] Megan: Yep.

[00:55:32] Michael: And my life is pretty full. And so to think about adding more to that, I think I just need to stay focused and not add more information. You know? And the, the real challenge is when you network with people and get relationships, people will say to you, oh, you’ve got to read this book.

[00:55:48] Pat: Mm-hmm.

[00:55:50] Michael: And I think, wow, that sounds amazing. And there’s just not enough time in the in the day. And I like the just in time learning.

[00:55:59] Megan: Yeah. That’s a neat concept

[00:56:00] Michael: where there’s a lot of things that I still am trying to learn and trying to get better at. And if I can consume based on that. Rather than the other way around, which is basically to consume and then let the task flow from that.

[00:56:14] No, I’d like the learning to sort of fuel the tasks.

[00:56:18] Pat: Mm-hmm.

[00:56:18] Michael: But relevant in that way. And if it’s not relevant, don’t worry about it.

[00:56:24] Megan: You know, I wrote in a newsletter recently, just this. The kind of reckoning that we have to have with ultimately our mortality. Such a sexy topic. But you know, the, the reality that we’re just not going to accomplish as much in this life as we would like to.

[00:56:40] And I think, you know, you and I are coming from a Christian worldview and from that perspective, like we also get eternity, which is really cool. You know, like it doesn’t just end here. And I think that’s a great comfort. But I think just realizing like our time is so finite, and for most of us, if not literally all of us, most of that time is spoken for already, you know?

[00:57:00] And so when we try to do something like read 50 books in a year, or 25 books in a year, and we think how great that’s gonna be, you know, the reality is we don’t have. I hope of a chance of implementing that many ideas in our life. Like there’s no way. And, and if you think back on your life, the information that you have consumed that has really changed your life, you know, you can maybe think of one or two or maybe three books that, for example, if you’re thinking about books that have really changed your life, and how much better would it to be to read a couple books a year or even a few books a year and go deep on those and read them slowly and really be with them rather than like, what’s the value of volume?

[00:57:41] Like, I don’t, there’s, there’s some kind of like manic scarcity thing that happens where we’ve just gotta get as much as we can. We, and I don’t think there’s actually any value in that.

[00:57:51] Michael: Well, and especially when you look at how many new books are written each year.

[00:57:55] Megan: Yeah.

[00:57:56] Michael: You literally can’t make a dent. No.

[00:57:58] You can’t make even a pockmark in the universe. Mm-hmm. If, if you’re trying to consume all the information or even enough of it. I’ve got an entire library of physical books in the house, most of which I haven’t read. Yeah. I’ve got Kindle books that I’ve bought and I haven’t read, but at this point in my life, I don’t feel a lot of motivation to do that.

[00:58:20] Yeah. You know, I do wanna read, but I feel more motivation to read fiction. You know, not consuming for information, but just

[00:58:27] Megan: for joy.

[00:58:28] Michael: I love stories.

[00:58:29] Megan: Yeah. I think it, it’s just a good reminder of what’s the point of the activity? Like why are we doing this thing? And I feel like Pat did a great job of giving permission to kind of roll the, roll the train back a little bit and say, wait, why are we doing what we’re doing here?

[00:58:44] Because learning in and of itself is no longer scarce. You know, that that is so abundant and I, I loved that point that he made. And just how that’s changed in my lifetime. In your lifetime. Dramatically.

[00:58:56] Michael: Well, guys, the book is Lean Learning how to Achieve More by Learning Less. That’s such a counterintuitive counter-cultural idea, but I love it.

[00:59:08] Lean learning how to achieve more by learning less. You can buy it wherever better books are sold. And as we part company for this week, we just want to ask you if you would to take time to rate this podcast and if you’re so inclined, and you can use AI to do this, just dump it at your best thinking, couple senses of what you like about the podcast and let it help you write a review.

[00:59:29] But that would mean the world to us because it makes the podcast more visible so that more people can discover it and listen to it as we’re on this quest together in pursuit of human flourishing and the double win. So until next time, have a great week.