SPI 913: Don’t Give Up Yet

SPI 913: Don’t Give Up Yet

Pat Flynn: There are two things I want to talk about today. One of which will be directly relevant to those of you who are doing short form videos right now. Very proud of the work that many of you are doing in the 30 day short form video challenge. I’m seeing it every single day on Instagram. I’m publishing with you and I’m seeing the comments.

I’m seeing a lot of people tell me that they are getting their stride for the first time, people thanking me for the challenge, but I mean, I appreciate the thank you, but you are the one who’s taking action. And I think again, this just leads us to just the definition of what’s working today. Not necessarily short form, although of course I do believe that that is what’s working today, but more so the idea of what people need to get success.

It’s not just information. I’ve spoken about this. I’ve wrote about it. You need action. You need accountability. You need implementation. So just think about that when it comes to your coaching, your offers, whatever it might be. Just selling information or even on the public side, sharing information. It needs to be positioned differently.

It needs to come with some action, and of course, accountability to go with it, and results, because that’s what people want. And it’s interesting, I’m noticing the same comments every day of people who are building that momentum, people who are discovering that they have this thing in themselves that they didn’t have before, getting out of their own way, editing finally become easier around the day, 11, 12, 13 mark, and feeling proud of themselves, and you just needed somebody to create a time and space for you to do these things. So remember that with whatever it is that you’re hoping to achieve or do, putting it in a little challenge and doing it with other people is great, but mentally it’s just about you. You versus yourself more than anybody else.

Last week or a couple of weeks ago, you heard Brock Johnson here on the podcast. That was an amazing interview. If you’re looking for tips, not just for short form on Instagram with Reels, but just in general, what’s working today and what’s not. And I want to recall the first part of that interview where I had asked Brock, what is the number one thing people are doing that would sabotage themselves right from the start?

And he mentioned right away, and I knew he was going to pull out this answer. It’s comparison. Comparing yourself to other creators who have gone down a different path, who are doing a lot of the similar kinds of things you are. But then you believing that because you’re doing the same things, you should get the same results at the same time.

You are on your own path, and that is what’s important. You need to find what works for you, and that’s gonna be different than what works for others. Now, Brock does clarify that it’s important to get inspiration and pull sources of motivation from others. However, it’s important for you to define that line between motivation, inspiration, and deflation.

The slowing down of momentum because you believe that you should have already at this point found results or not. And the 30 day challenge isn’t even over yet. It’s still going on as we speak. You can check it out on my Instagram, @PatFlynn. Every day I’ve been posting, offering some tips, offering some inspiration, and you can see the people commenting.

Day 10, done below. Day 11, done below. Every single post, people are making progress, and it’s just so inspiring to see. But remember, my Should I Open It or Should I Keep It Sealed series, it didn’t pop off until after Day 35 of that series, and preceding that, leading up to the Should I Open It or Should I Keep It Sealed series, the SIOIOSIKIS series, were several days of experimentation, figuring things out, finding my voice, learning how to edit, those kinds of things do not come right away and I always will use the analogy of fishing, you put the perfect bait out there and it still might not hit.

If you cast a few casts, what do you do? You cast more until you get that big one. And when you get that big one, oftentimes, especially if you’re fishing for a largemouth bass, they come in schools, you keep casting in the same area because where there was one, there was maybe several, and you’ve sort of agitated that first bass and have caught it, and it agitates the other bass around that area, and it can agitate the algorithm in the same kind of way.

So just keep going. That’s sort of the first message here, and I’ll come back to the 30 day challenge and some of the things I’m seeing, some of the negative comments that I’m getting, and they’re not directed toward me, they’re mostly directed toward one’s self. Like, this isn’t working for me, I’m losing faith, those kinds of things.

I do want to address that. But I do want to talk about that second thing that may or may not be relevant to you in terms of who this is about, but it is important to share because it is just, how do I say this? It’s a perfect example of the power of a community. And In many ways, the word family comes into this as well, and it comes into this because my immediate family is involved, but also the family of podcasters that I’ve gotten to know over the years and how supportive and generous they have been, and I want to give a shout out to Nick P. over at PodFest. This is an annual event that happens in Florida, PodFest, and it’s one that I attended back in 2019, had a great Great time at, and then COVID hit. And then I just haven’t gone to podcasting events since, but I was invited back. I was invited back to speak here in the beginning of 2026. And I was all set to go.

It was a deal that was made between myself and Nick and the crew over there because they had pushed out and helped promote my book, Lean Learning. And so I was like, you know what, in exchange for that, I’m going to come out there. I’m going to do a keynote. I’m going to do some panels and I’m going to sign autographs.

And, Lo and behold, my wife, April, gets very sick. In fact, at the time that I’m recording this, she is still kind of recovering. And it was sort of a version of this superflu that’s going around, but she had this really, really, really bad experience with it this time around. Coughing incessantly, unable to get out of bed, this kind of thing.

It was pretty rough. And she’s a trooper, she’s hanging in there, and she’s slowly on her road to recovery. And I appreciate all the thoughts and prayers, and I’ve seen them in the DMs, but I was very worried, not just for my wife, but for my responsibility to come to this event, and the commitment that I made to it, and to Nick, and to PodFest, and the attendees that were gonna show up there.

But I had to do what I had to do, you know, family first, always, and knowing this crowd was very family centric. I knew that the reply was going to be what it was, but I was still scared. And we spoke with Nick, and he said, Pat, you’ve got to take care of your family. Don’t even worry about coming to PodFest, even though it is a week away, and we’ve planned everything around it.

We want you to be safe and take care of the family in the way you know you need to. And I almost broke down in tears when I heard that response because, of course, that’s the response I wanted to hear. It came without any sort of negative, shame on you, how could you, this is gonna be hard for me, there was none of that.

None. And I know I made things a little difficult because we had to plan around certain things, we had to come up with a plan, cause I still wanted to show up, and I was still able to show up virtually, but that required talks with their tech team, and I mean, there was such a headache, I imagine, that I was able to produce for them.

They made me feel so good about that decision, which again, I knew it was the right decision, but being a people pleaser, maybe, by nature, somebody who wants to make everybody happy, somebody who hates to go back on a word, somebody who hates to not fulfill their promises, I was very worried. But Nick and Chris over there and the entire crew at PodFest, all the attendees, thank you so, so much.

For your generous response and for still allowing me to make an impact, I was able to perform a 45 minute keynote through Zoom. It was the opening keynote and it was done on Zoom and thankfully I have a lot of experience going live and I was able to make it entertaining and use multiple camera angles and hopefully make it still feel like I was actually in the room with them.

The most difficult part about that was I was able to see the audience but there was a little bit of a delay and so I had to turn the volume down on their end. So I had zero, zero audience feedback during that talk. If they were moving around, I didn’t know if it was in response to something I said, or maybe something I shouldn’t have said, or like there was no response.

And as a keynote speaker, I know how important it is to have that energy coming back to you on stage from the audience. And I was not able to get that yet. I still was able to power through. I still told the jokes, hoping people would laugh and all those kinds of things. And immediately after the talk, I saw an applause, I got several text messages from people who were there who said it was amazing.

In fact, one of the best virtual keynotes and sort of Zoom related things they’ve ever seen. And so I’m quite happy with how that went down. I still feel bad that I wasn’t able to make it, but I am where I need to be. And I’m very, very grateful for the crew at PodFest. So thank you. And I would recommend all of you check out PodFest for 2027 because knock on wood, should everybody be healthy, I am planning to attend and offer another keynote and be a part of the event even more than I was planning to, so PodFest, P O D F E S T, check it out, I will be there 2027, or at least that is the plan, so hope to see you there. And these events are incredible, especially now, with how little connection we get online anymore, because we don’t even know what’s real.

I’m not going to dive into AI and AI videos and those kinds of things right now. We will save that for another conversation. But it has become very apparent that the in person stuff is going to be more important than ever. The live experiences. If you’re not able to set up a live experience, then doing it virtually will be the next best thing.

And with Deep Pocket Monster, I do plan to double down on the live streams that we’ve been doing on that channel. We’re seeing upwards of 7,000 to 8,000 people watching concurrently. Not to mention the tens of thousands of people who re watch those after the fact, but we are getting hordes of people, hordes of fans, hordes of families watching, and it’s become a routine every single Monday.

4:30pm Pacific, 7:30pm Eastern, I’m live on Deep Pocket Monster, it’s become a part of a person’s week. It’s the new Saturday morning cartoons, except it’s Monday night card toons, pun intended. I’ll have to use that, card toons, although it’s hard to pronounce because people will think it’s cartoons. Anyway, maybe I’ll One day create an anime or some sort of animated version of our live show, but we’ll see.

All that to say the live experiences are trending upward, are trending into something that people are craving, looking to do. There’s a reason why concerts feel like signing up for classes. Has anybody else experienced this? Maybe it’s just me because I’m close to some very popular bands and my family wants to go to concerts from very popular, very mainstream K pop groups, where signing up and getting a seat is like signing up for classes in college, or at least how it used to be for me. We used to have a thing at UC Berkeley called TeleBears, and you’d have to phone in your request. Could you imagine that? Phoning in, like calling, dial up your request for the classes that you wanted, and if it was busy, you had to call again.

And then it shifted onto online, Telebears, and we suffered the same fate of not getting into the classes we wanted to, or getting put on the waitlists, and all this stuff. It’s the same thing with concerts these days. I mean, it’s insane just how hard it is to get the seats that you wanted, or sometimes any seats in general.

I’m not going to dive into the expense required with that, because that has also become a trend that is not great.

So, I mean, there’s a lot to this, obviously, and this is why I think the live stream component of what we’re doing is great. If you’ve built any sort of following on Instagram, or TikTok, or Facebook, I would highly recommend experimenting every once in a while with going live on those platforms. Short Form, Vertical Video Platforms, with live streaming capabilities are an easy way to start to build true connections with your audience through that mode of content creation.

It’s live, it’s real, it is genuine, it is something that can connect with people. And no, you’re not going to get the same amount of views with a live video as you would with potentially a short form video that’s pre recorded or a long form video. That’s not to say you can’t outdo that, but the connection that can happen live, the real conversations, just seeing a human being on the other end somehow feels almost nostalgic today.

And that is a weird thing to say. That is a weird thing to say. Getting to go to coffee with somebody feels nostalgic. Playing a video game with somebody who’s literally sitting next to you in the same room feels nostalgic. Everything is so disconnected. Even though we are more connected than ever, we have instant access to everything and everybody, there’s this disconnection that comes with it.

And there is something about the proximity to other humans that I think is really important. So this was a sort of tangent that we’ve gone down.

I wanted to go back to the 30 day challenge and what I’m seeing from some audience members who are participating. Now, like I said before, there are many, many people who are seeing results that they’ve never seen before. And you just needed that time and space and in many ways, permission to just do the thing that you’ve wanted to do.

Such a huge lesson in psychology and taking action and getting out of your own way. However, there are a lot of people who are commenting, and I see this every day from different people, that they are losing faith, that they are losing momentum, that they don’t think this is going to work. And I came out with a video on day 8, or maybe it was day 7 of this challenge that basically said if you are publishing and you’ve published every day, you are winning, it is working, you are doing exactly what you need to do.

The views might not be there, the likes might not be there, the engagement might not be there, but you are doing what needed to happen in order for any of that to even be possible. You are showing up. And by showing up and showing up consistently you will learn faster, you will have more opportunities and chances, just like throwing bait out there in the water.

Every day is a new cast, and lo and behold, some people who were complaining early on have now started to find success. However, we are pretty deep into this challenge now, and there are still people who have yet to see any results, and I have the same answer for you. You are publishing, therefore, you are winning.

Because you are doing the one thing that you can control over everything else. www. SmartPassiveIncome. com You are hitting record, and you are hitting publish. Count uploads, not views. It’s a quote from Alex Ketchum, a good friend of mine in the Pokemon space. And you will see over time that that volume of viewership will go up almost proportionally to the volume of videos you’re making.

And this is the beauty of short form, is it can be raw, it can be easy, it can be templated, my should I open it or should I keep it sealed series is the same every day. It’s a different pack, it’s a different result, it’s different stuff happening, but it’s the same formula. And that is what is contributing to, number one, in and of itself, the success, it’s because it’s the same formula and I’m tweaking it. I’m doing micro experiments. I am fine tuning as I go. But it’s also easy for me to go into content creation, because I don’t have to think about what am I going to film today. I might have to think about what pack I’m going to open, what pack of Pokemon I’m going to open, or pack of whatever.

But I don’t have to think about the format. The format’s already done. The formula is already there. The sound effects and the text on the screen is already in a master template that I can just copy and paste from. We are now 548 days straight into that, and it just keeps getting easier, and easier, and easier.

And the second part of this equation is, as a formula enters its way into the short form video sequences, that’s a weird way to say it. What I mean is, when people catch your formula, when they see this structure to your video, and they enjoy it, they want more, they want the next day, they want the, what happens after this?

Or where do you go from here? This is why the Day 1 of Learning How to Play the Piano Challenge, for example, I know there’s a few people doing something with musical instruments in this challenge. There’s some people who are just sharing bits and pieces of their work, they’re using this challenge as a way to share what’s happening behind the scenes.

What it’s really like to be a science engineer, day one, and they just go through their day, and they’re kind of documenting it, and I’m seeing almost a first person POV, point of view, from their eyes, and I get to live in their shoes as a scientist for a day, and that’s really interesting, and they’re just turning the camera on for stuff they’re already doing.

Obviously, you don’t want to film where you’re not allowed to, but it might be easier than you think. A lot of the people who have been complaining in the comments section of the 30 day video challenge, I have inspected their videos as well, and the number one thing I can say is hooks. Hooks, hooks, hooks, hooks.

Brock was talking about that. I’ve spoken about that before. We’ve had complete podcast episodes talking about hooks. The hook is the most important thing, and it’s not just say what you’re gonna say right at the top, very quickly. Right? It’s, say it in a way that’s easily digestible. There was one video I saw today from somebody who said he was losing hope, and I watched his latest shorts, and there was just this wall of text, and it was like, this is what happens when this, this, and this happens, and this happens, and then he’s like reenacting it, but it was just way too long.

And you’re forcing the audience member, who is literally scrolling with their thumbs, Just one. Next video. Boom. Next video. Until something catches their interest. And if you are forcing people to read before they have to understand, then it’s not going to work. How can you visually capture people’s attention without thought in the first moment?

And then how can you, in a way, almost trap them there until they have to figure out the answer? And I know that sounds bad. It’s almost like, bait and switch. You’re not switching. You are utilizing Human psychology and experimenting with different hooks to be able to grab hold of a person’s attention, which is what you need to tell a story, to reveal something, to share a funny quote, or whatever it might be.

So hooks, hooks, hooks. Make it easy for the person who finds you for the first time to go, Oh, what’s about to happen? Instead of, what does that even mean? I feel like a superpower that I’ve always had has been putting myself in the shoes of a follower or a fan or a viewer or a subscriber and almost understanding how they would react before I hit publish so that I can make changes and what I’m seeing in my sort of gut reaction with a lot of these shorts and these Instagram reels that I’m going to and reviewing and analyzing is two things.

Number one, there’s just no energy, right? It almost feels like homework to you, to some of you. Like you’re just going through the motions. I want you to have fun with this. If you’re having fun with it and you’re energized, it doesn’t mean you need to be loud or over energetic in your personality, but you can kind of hear it in the tone of a person’s voice.

Hey, today, I’m going to show you how to crochet this pattern that I found online, and we’ll see how it turns out. Decent hook, you found a pattern, there’s a reason for me to stick around to the end to see what it looks like. Great, you’re doing the homework, but how can you bring your work, your energy, your style, your personality into it?

Maybe if you were more of a dry humor kind of person, you might say, look at this pattern, who would crochet this? Well, me, because I literally have nothing else to do. So let’s see how this looks like. I, it’s probably going to turn out like crap and then boom, this was better than I thought. Or maybe if you are an energetic person, right?

It might sound like, finally, I found the pattern I was looking for. Now the question is, is it going to look like this after I crochet it? Well, we’ll find out. And then now you can crochet and talk and you know, again, bring your personality into it. I think that’s what’s important. The second thing I want to call out, other than a lack of your energy into your material, is just, you’re just doing the same stuff everybody else is doing.

And I know there’s a lot of people in the Pokemon space who follow me, and many of them are participating in this challenge. And more often than not, when I go to these channels who seem to be complaining, or losing faith, or losing momentum, you go to their channel, they’re just literally opening a pack, there’s nothing that would say this is different than the other hundreds if not thousands of people who are doing the same thing.

If you were one of the first to open a pack of Pokemon, great. I was not the first, but I was the first to put it into more of a show like format with a jingle and really leaning into the retention component of that, which is should I open it or should I keep it sealed, and we’ll find out the answer at the end.

There’s a lot of people out there doing the same thing as you.

And if it’s not clear why this is different, whether in the words that you say clearly that make it different, or just your personality coming through, or the format and framework of it, then it’s just going to blend in, and there’s going to be no reason for people to engage, to follow, to watch. And if people aren’t engaging, if they’re not retaining in that video, then that platform, any platform, insert platform name here, will not push it out for you. Hooks, hooks, hooks. Practice. Try new things every day. The thing that might be silly and weird or uncomfortable for you may be the thing that separates you. On the long form side of things, I remember clearly I did something that was different and I was like, I have no idea how this is gonna be taken, but I’m gonna do it anyway because I want to see what happens.

And I was doing Pokemon opening videos with buying things on eBay, these mystery box videos. I was buying things on Etsy and sharing those things. And then one day I had this idea to do a little challenge video with my son throwing energy cards into a card holder on the opposite side of the screen.

Very much inspired by Dude Perfect. And there are trick shot challenges and stuff, and there was literally zero mention of any other cards other than the basic free energy cards that you get in every pack. But we built a story around it and a challenge, and that video took off. It was an experiment, and if it failed, I would’ve been like, oh yeah, of course that failed, but it didn’t.

It skyrocketed. It saw a million views. It was the first video on our channel to see a million views. And then I combined the idea of a challenge and something with stakes involved with some of the other previous videos that were doing really well, like our binder collection purchase videos. And I said, what if I combine a challenge with a binder?

And I challenged myself to complete a binder or a set of Pokemon within a certain period of time. Boom. Now we are in our bread and butter of our channel. Our channel is now known for these challenges that happen. Tens of millions, actually no, hundreds of millions of views. And of course, the things that come along with that, the subscribership, the revenue, the awareness, the brand deals, the advertising.

All because I experimented. And I let taking action, I let hitting publish determine what my next steps were and tell me the answer, versus getting in my own head and ultimately getting in my own way. So hopefully this is a lesson for all of you, no matter if you are involved in the 30 Day Short Form Video Challenge or not.

Let publishing and the data that comes from that become your guide. And of course, the more you do that, The more data you’ll get, the more understanding you’ll have, the faster and quicker and more efficient you will become, and, as Brock Johnson says, the more views you will get as well, just as a byproduct of that.

Maybe not on the next video, or the next 10 videos, or even the next 50 videos, but it could just take that one to change everything. It’s a very common story I hear in the Instagram world. When I talk to people and I go, like, what was the defining moment for you, and they’re like, oh, it was this one video I created.

There was a fisherman that I followed who shared his story the other day of how his channel blew up. It was like the three year anniversary of a single video that he created in a cheap kayak where he caught this giant bass. To go back to the fishing analogy, this is an actual fishing story. And it was kind of chaotic because he was in this Small, tiny, cheap kayak.

And this bass was a big sort of 10, 11 pound bass, which is quite big for a large mouth bass. And it was chaotic. We weren’t sure if he was gonna land it or not, and he did. And that video launched his entire channel after having already published several dozen. It was that one. And he had the camera on with something he was already doing anyway.

So a lot of lessons there as well. So I want to wish you all the best. Thank you so much. We have some great interviews with some creators coming up where I dig deep into how did they get their start? What worked? What was that video that changed everything? So make sure you hit subscribe because we’ve got a lot of that kind of content coming your way.

In the meantime, keep hitting record, keep hitting publish, and keep going. Cheers.