SPI 943: How to Collab for Major Brand Growth

SPI 943: How to Collab for Major Brand Growth

Pat Flynn: Hey, it’s Pat, and Liz and I are back. How’s it going, Liz?

Liz Wilcox: It is going so great. I am here on the SPI Podcast. What else could I be doing right now? I’m excited.

Pat Flynn: Well, we could be doing collaborations with other people and partnerships with other brands, which is exactly what we’re gonna be talking about today.

That’s a good transition. Thank you for setting me up, Liz.

Liz Wilcox: He’s so good, guys. Five-star review. Pause the podcast. Pull over. Wipe your hands. He, he’s a pro.

Pat Flynn: I, I’m your Uber driver for today, by the way. And we’ll be driving into partnerships and collaborations, and this is, we talked about this a couple weeks ago, the fact that we were in Boise a couple months ago at Craft and Commerce, and we delivered a workshop.

You and I delivered that together, and so we are coming on today to basically share that with you because we don’t think it just deserves to just have a little bit of an audience there like we did in Boise. We wanna have this be a worldwide audience ’cause this stuff is important.

Liz, why are collabs and working with other people, why is that important beyond the obvious?

So like, oh, you can grow your brand with another person or a company. Why else does it matter?

Liz Wilcox: First and foremost, in my mind- The more people that understand my objectives, my goals, my dreams, the more I’m going to actually achieve them. So if I can get not just, like, partners in business, but partners in my goals, right?

Like, I know you’re trying to grow your podcast, I’m trying to grow mine. Like, let’s work together because then maybe we’ll actually do something, :right? Like, I’ve been working in partnership with people since the beginning. I remember I met somebody at an event, and they emailed me after. They said, “Oh, you know, I just, I really liked your energy. You know, do you wanna keep each other accountable?” And that was sort of like my first collaboration. It was just collaborating behind the scenes to get stuff done.

Pat Flynn: Mm-hmm.

Liz Wilcox: And so I think that, aside from what Pat just said of like, yeah, this is gonna grow your brand, it’s gonna keep you moving. And I think especially if you’re listening and you’re still in those first few years of business, and you don’t feel like you can talk to your family.

Like, I’m at my brother’s house right now. He still doesn’t know what I do. I’ve been doing this for a decade. Uh, you know, he-

Pat Flynn: My parents don’t really understand fully what I do either.

Liz Wilcox: Right. He’s like, “I don’t know. She just talks into a mic a lot and seems to be able to, you know, sustain herself that way.”

And so, like, just having people that understand what you’re doing and are moving towards the same goal I think is really important. What do you think, Pat?

Pat Flynn: Yeah, I mean, honestly, I wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for the people that I have connected with one way or another in the online space and in person.

And, like, the one regret I have with how I grew up was I wish that I… Like, if I could do one thing differently, I would have tried to build more relationships. Because I, I didn’t fully understand the importance of working together with others until, you know, I got laid off, and then I started building my business and realizing that, wow, there are other people out there who can help me.

Not because they owe me anything, but because I can help them. There’s a Zig Ziglar quote that I kind of live by, and it’s, “You can have anything in life you want, so long as you help other people get what they want.” And Liz, my kids roll their eyes every time I say that ’cause I’ve said it so much, but I’ve been beating it into them.

Not, like, physically beating them. Wow. But, no, we don’t do that. Uh, but, like, mentally doing it with this quote, and I’m seeing it come true. They are seeing the benefits of serving others first, which is what we teach here, and how it comes back in all kinds of different ways, right? With like, this collaboration discussion isn’t like, “Hey, I’m gonna do this for you, therefore you need to do this for me.”

That’s not what we’re talking about here. It’s, it’s doing it because you know that you have value to provide others. And that when you might need help or when they might see an opportunity to help you, they’ll do that. And it’s, it’s just this beautiful way of approaching the world where when you serve others first, just the law of reciprocity shows up.

It might not be a one for one. It might not be even from that exact person. Just the universe has a way of paying you back for you paying it forward. So, so that’s kind of what we’re talking about today. I made this joke in Boise about the word collaboration and how you could break it up, right? Co, meaning together, right? Co. Lab, because you are experimenting. You’re working together to create something, you know, so a new element if you will. O because, oh my gosh, this stuff works. And then ration, which is you get to benefit from the fruits of your labor. You get to ration it out together with you and your partner or the person that you’re collaborating with, right?

And that was just a silly way of showing that this is a partnership. This isn’t necessarily just a brand deal where a company’s paying you or an affiliate thing where a person’s promoting your stuff, so you will then promote theirs and… or one of you will, will make money. It’s like you’re working together, and that’s sort of where we wanted to start this episode and really differentiate it from just, like, the transactional stuff.

This is people stuff. This is, “Hey, I’ll scratch your back if you one day can maybe scratch mine.”

Liz Wilcox: Yeah, and I think something people have noticed, obviously, you know, I’ve come in as director of community. Now we’re co-hosting. Like, Pat and I have been collabing like crazy in 2026, right? Mm-hmm. And it’s, you know, I’ve had people on my side.

I’m sure Pat has had people, you know, like, “What’s going on there?” And it really is You know, especially now important to be in community with each other and to keep each other going and to, you know, widen the net by, you know, saying, “Here, here’s part of my net. Come hang on to it,” right? And I think we’ve both been able to really benefit more than just growing our audiences.

Like, before we even hit record, you know, we’re telling stories to each other, “Oh, this happened to me. I got this email, and it made me feel this way,” and, “Oh, yeah, that happened to me, too.” And it just makes me personally feel good, like, okay, I’m in good company. I’m spending time with people that understand where I’m coming from.

Yeah. That can help ev- even advise me personally, like, “Oh, I had this problem. Have you been there before?” And so collaborations, yeah, like Pat said, is more than just let’s grow our audience. It’s let’s grow together in many different ways.

Pat Flynn: Right. It’s like a one plus one equals three situation. We’re creating something new together.

And also, like, to go to the same example that you just mentioned, you coming in as community director, you’re literally filling in gaps for us. We had some shortcomings. We had stuff that wasn’t going well, and you’ve come in and plugged in a lot of those holes. I gotta tell you this story, Liz. I’m in a mastermind group with a man named Ray Edwards, copywriting, you know, the grandfather of copywriting and-

Liz Wilcox: Genius.

Pat Flynn: Genius. Genius, yes. Ray is amazing.

Liz Wilcox: I’ll say it.

Pat Flynn: And he came into our community, and he said that as soon as he came back in, because he’s been hearing about all the great things going on in there at the SPI Community, he said that he got an email from you, like welcoming him back. And he was like, “It was so easy and so simple, and I’m surprised that you didn’t do this with everybody before.”

And I was like, “This is Liz’s superpower. Like, she sees people come in and wants them to feel welcome immediately.” And we had done that through our automations. We had done that through, you know, building systems to kind of pull myself out of that process. But you came in, and you were like, “No, like, I’m gonna show up, I’m gonna be here, and I’m gonna, I’m gonna make people feel special the moment they come in.”

So you’ve done that and done it very well, and I just wanted to pass that forward, ’cause it’s already making a difference, Liz. Thank you for that.

Liz Wilcox: Wow. Yeah. Thank you. I, I… Yeah, I remember speaking or, you know, going back and forth with Ray. And I have time, right? We know Pat, he’s growing so much in so many different ways, and this collaboration, it’s like, okay, well, I have time.

This is my superpower, and so let me come in. And of course, yeah, you know, I’m getting a lot out of it, but it’s more than just exposure.

Pat Flynn: Mm-hmm.

Liz Wilcox: It’s more than just, oh, now people know Liz Wilcox’s name because I’m in Pat Flynn’s community. It’s what I just said. Now, you know, I’m getting to meet people like Ray Edwards.

I’m getting to learn from people like him and see what they’re up to, and even being in Pat’s community and learning about you, the listener. Ray isn’t the only one I’m DM’ing or emailing with, right? And really learning more about this new, I don’t know, this new era of marketing and how you need to be served.

This is my job. This is my life. This is my career that I’ve chosen to serve you. And so now I get to talk to all these different kinds of people that I might have never attracted, but, you know, SPI does, and that’s just… It’s been mind-blowing. It’s been on so many levels, this collaboration has helped me tremendously.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, and all the while, the numbers are growing on both sides. Our community has grown ever since you’ve come in and, and has almost even doubled in size thanks to you, and Sandy, of course, credit to her, and Kristen on the team as well, of course. David as well in the community. And then your community has grown.

It’s like indeed a one plus one equals three situation, which I absolutely love. And Liz and I have, over the years, have built a relationship together, only recently really connecting and then meeting each other in person a couple times the past couple years, et cetera. And so I think maybe we could divide the remaining 20 minutes of this episode into 10 minutes, maybe, Liz, you’d like to talk about, well, how do you start these relationships and begin to collaborate with people like this?

If you’re just starting out, where do you even start? And then I can go into how you might do collaborations with brands, ’cause that’s working really well in the Pokémon side, and I wanna make sure I share some of that before people go today.

Liz Wilcox: Okay. So Pat’s gonna have a different approach than me. If you are just getting to know me, something you have to know is when it comes to my dreams, my ambitions, my goals, I am shameless.

I am so focused on my vision of the future, and the things that I want, and the way that I want my life to look, and the people that are in there, and the students that I serve, that I have to do the big, scary things like ask Pat Flynn, “Hey, man, do you need some help over here?” Right? Mm-hmm. Um, and so as far as, like, how I’ve built those relationships, number one, just do the brave thing.

Yeah. Ask the question. Go for it because, like I think we mentioned in a previous episode, ev- everyone has a similar goal, or people have similar goals to you. And so finding those people that have similar goals, similar niches, industries, topics, and linking arms together. You don’t have to be this super formal, “Hey, I found you on Instagram, and, you know, here are 10 reasons why we should collaborate.”

You know, I’ve found the more casual I can keep it, like, “Hey, Pat, I saw X, Y, Z. I can solve X. What do you think?” Right? That really sees a lot of results for me, a lot of ways of connecting. And like Pat, when I was younger, maybe I was a bit of a weirdo. I didn’t really understand relationships very much, and I was very much in my head overthinking it.

But now that I’m a business owner, I realize keeping it incredibly simple, finding people that have similar ambitions as mine, and just saying, you know, “Hey, I’ve got this idea. Can I pitch it to you?” Is really, really good, and that’s another way. Instead of just pitching them, asking for permission, “Hey, I have this idea on how we can collaborate. Do you wanna hear it? Can I pitch you?” That kinda takes the pressure off of like, oh, is this person trying to pitch me?

Pat Flynn: I love that.

Liz Wilcox: This is, like, three… Thanks. This is, like, you know, three paragraphs or whatever. It’s like, “Can I pitch you?” Oh, yeah, I’m into collabs. Totally, pitch me. Then you can go in and say, “Oh, you know, I’ve got a podcast.

You have a podcast. What do you think about swapping as guests?” “Oh, great idea.” And now you’ve put the power into their hands, and that works really, really well.

Pat Flynn: Yes. And are you not pitching, but asking permission? I love that approach. Are you asking permission and building these relationships online? Are you doing it offline?

Where, where is it working for you?

Liz Wilcox: Both. Yes, and, right? Okay. Uh, now we’re in improv class, y’all. But- … I, I know the majority of you listening, you know, we do a lot of this online, and I’ve done 90% of my networking, finding partners, finding people online. And so I’m not like Pat. I could not be the content creator Pat is if you paid me, okay?

And, and you can get paid to be like that. But what I do on social media, instead of posting for my audience, I look for people that have my audience, and I try to build a relationship from there. I’ll follow them, and this is very much someone I would normally follow anyway. I’m not doing this completely just to get X, Y, Z, right?

I follow them. If I like a piece of their content, I’ll tell them, and eventually I’ll DM them, “Hey, I’ve been following you for a while. I love your content because of A, B, C. Can I pitch you an idea?” You know, they get back to me or they don’t. Another thing that’s a really good way to find those people that you can very easily open up a relationship with or more easily than just cold pitching is doing events.

Or if you’ve been on a podcast, and I’ve been on a podcast, you email me, “Hey, Liz, we were both on Smart Passive Income. I imagine you’re looking to grow your email list. Do you wanna do some sort of collab?” Mm. “Can I pitch you an idea I have?” Then we have this mutual thing in common. Also doing, like, virtual summits.

If you’ve ever been a part of a virtual summit or a bundle or a challenge or some kind of larger collaboration that someone else hosted, reaching out to those other speakers. This is the same as in person. Pat and I often go to Craft and Commerce. And if we’re speaking, we go to the speaker dinner. How can we mingle there, right?

This is that online. So there are definitely creative ways, but creative yet simple ways to get these collabs.

Pat Flynn: Yeah. I love that.

Before we move on to brands and companies that you might wanna collaborate with and how you can go fast-forward that relationship, I do wanna ask you, how often do you tap into your current network to grow your network, right? The idea of getting a referral or introduction to somebody. I know that personally, that’s a way that I’ve really gone quickly into a lot of relat- newer relationships, is to u- use my existing relationships.

“Hey, you know this person,” or, “Hey, you were on this person’s podcast. I have this great idea I think that would help them. Do you think you can connect us together?” And it’s easier now more than ever to have a person do that, although there is sort of a, an art to that. And I don’t know if you wanna dive into that a little bit, ’cause I think people might have relationships that can already help them like that.

Liz Wilcox: Listen, if you’re listening to Pat and you’re like, “Oh my gosh, I could never do that,” right? Like, there’s so much fear of asking your buddy for a favor type of thing. That’s pretty much what Pat is saying. Yeah. And same. Same, same, same. I get so flippin’ nervous. I get so scared. I mean, like, even Pat saying it, you can’t see me, but my body language started changing.

Like, oh gosh, it’s so hard for me to ask for the introduction. And so how often do I do it? More often than I want to do it. But I kn- again, I’m shameless about the goal, right? I know I need this to get to the next level, so I’m just gonna cringe and ask, right? You gotta, you gotta be cringey to get- Yeah … to get to the next level.

You really do. But one way I’ve sort of, I don’t know, circumvented this is in my email signature. Now, I know you’re probably driving or doing the dishes, but, like, commit this to memory, okay? In your email signature, what I write, ’cause I like to get on a lot of podcasts. I’ve been on over 400 podcasts, okay?

It’s in my signature, so it’s every time someone emails me and I reply. “PS, I’m looking to get on more podcasts this year. If you know somebody, could you introduce me?” That gets me so many connections because people say, “Oh, well, oh, do you know Pat Flynn? Let me introduce you. Do you know so-and-so? Oh, have you ever heard of this podcast?”

And some people will just introduce me, and some people I have to then prompt, like, “Oh, do you know Pat? Can you do an introduction?” And some people say, “Oh, yeah, totally.” Or they’ll say, “Oh, no, but, you know, here’s the form to fill out,” or, “I’m gonna hit reply to their newsletter and tell them about you.”

Pat Flynn: Mm-hmm.

Liz Wilcox: And so making your goals known in that sort of way, I don’t wanna use the word cowardly, but that’s been my way- … of not having to do the direct thing. Yeah. And so I thought maybe that would be relatable because it, it is scary, right, Pat? How did… I would love to ask you, how did you get good at asking? D- or did you ever feel that fear?

Pat Flynn: Oh, I f- I feel it all the time. Yes. Okay, good. Oh, absolutely. Okay, got it. Complete- completely relatable. I love the sort of passive ask. It’s just in a PS. I love that because some people will be like, “Ooh, I have somebody that’s perfect for you,” especially, and this is where I wanna go, if you have provided value to them first.

Again-

Liz Wilcox: Right …

Pat Flynn: You can have anything in, in life you want so long as you help other people get what they want. So if I know somebody who knows somebody that I want to get to know, this feels like that Friends episode. Anyway, um, with, with Joey. I do whatever I can to help serve them first so that after I can just be like, “Oh, by the way, like, glad to have helped.

If you could do me a quick favor, I’m, I’m trying to find a connection to so-and-so. If you know anybody or if you have one, let me know.”

Liz Wilcox: Yeah, I love that. And our friend Chandler Bolt, who we just interviewed a few episodes back, I saw on Instagram, I started following him after the episode, and he’s making this, like, top 100 wish list of the podcasts or channels that he wants to be connected with.

Mm-hmm. And he’s doing it very publicly, right? He’s saying, “Hey, these… Look at my list. Do you know anyone?” And Smart Passive Income was on that list, right? And we were able to make it happen, and I’m looking. I just, y’all, I just opened up my Gmail account. I’m not kidding. The very first email that’s there is subject line, “Amazing podcast opportunity, Liz Wilcox,” and it’s my buddy Ben, and he says, “Liz, please meet so-and-so.”

So and so, meet Liz. Yvonne was asking for perfect fit guests. I suggested you. She agreed. And so, like, Ben knows. Ben is my buddy. I told him, “Hey, man, I’m looking to get on more podcasts this year. Do you know anybody?” ‘Cause he’s big into the podcasting world, and he’s been sending me people left and right. I think this is the- Hmm, third one in the last, like, 10 days. And Ben is a member of my community. Ben is a friend. You know, Ben is somebody that I met because someone suggested I be on his podcast, and now together we’re providing so much value to each other. I’m happy to suggest Ben for some other things that I know he’s a perfect fit for, right?

And so making those things known to people in those different ways is great. But I, I wanna take just another minute to tell you the other kinds of collabs, ’cause I talked a lot about podcast guesting. Sure. But I, I’m super into, like, what I call the Drake method. Y’all remember Drake the rapper back in, like, 2018.

He was on everything. You know, like, he was selling you Sprite in movie theaters. He- Yeah … you couldn’t turn on the radio, you couldn’t play Spotify without hearing him. You couldn’t turn on the TV without seeing reruns of him in Degrassi, right? Like, he was everywhere, and I’ve always looked at my marketing like that.

Like, he’s been a huge inspiration for what I do. So I do lots of different collaborations. So I’m just gonna sorta share them, and you can decide which one feels good to you. So podcast guesting, of course. Bundles, which is where a bunch of people get together and bundle some products together. Summits, either in person or virtual. Live streaming, right?

Pat and I, maybe we do a live stream and we share each other’s channels, right? List swaps, that’s where I share your freebie, you share mine to your email list. Even workshops, you know, Pat and I, we collabed on a workshop in person. It was great. It was so much easier than doing it myself. Yeah. Amen. Private trainings.

I did this before I became director of community. I think I did two or three private trainings in the SPI community, and even creating products together. The first product I created was actually with eight other bloggers. I created an e-book. Each person wrote a different chapter, and we all got to sell it separately.

And so there’s lots of different ways of collaborating. I’m sure maybe me listing that got you a ton of different ideas as well, so I can’t wait to see what you come up with. But I know, I know, I know you guys are interested in collabs with companies too, and that’s Pat’s thing.

Pat Flynn: Yes.

Liz Wilcox: So what can you tell us about that?

Pat Flynn: Well, a lot of what has already been talked about does overlap, right? The introductions, the building relationships, all the stuff that you just talked about can happen too. I mean, you can even invite on your podcast one of these companies and start a podca- or a relationship from a podcast episode. This is exactly what I did with several brands back in the early days of the podcast.

I would invite these companies. I was using their product, and I would want to, again, deliver value to them first. So I say, “Hey, come on the podcast. I wanna promote you and the product and show off how amazing it is and tell a story about it.” This is where we got a ton of conversions for what was known as ConvertKit before, but now Kit.

I invited Nathan on the show, not to talk about, he was the CEO and still is. But I didn’t invite him on to talk about ConvertKit. I invited him on to talk about his origin story and why ConvertKit even existed, why did he even care enough to, to make it. And through that episode, we got to know the real person who was Nathan and why he started it.

And people fell in love with the company because of the origin story behind it, and that drove in a lot of affiliate sales for me as well. And then that led to a bigger affiliate partnership and then led to, again, me becoming advisor to the company. So that partnership went even further ’cause a lot of these companies that you help out, you have many, many ways that you can help out not just by promoting their product and earn-earning a commission, but you could even have a percentage of the company in exchange for your advice and those kinds of things as an advisor.

And, and, and I’m an advisor now for 12 different companies, in fact. Circle being another one and, and many, many more. So that’s just, like, where this could take you. But to start, I think the most important thing with these companies is to… You need to capture their attention in some way. And there are a few ways to do that.

Of course, if you provide any volume of sales for them, that, that could do really well. I did this with Vault X. Vault X is a binder company that is in the UK. I did a couple videos about collecting and how to properly store your cards and put them into binders, and I featured Vault X as the company. I, I had never reached out to them yet.

I just love their product, so I decided to show it off. And those videos did very well, seeing a couple million views each. And of course, I did put an affiliate link into those videos, and it got their attention. I became their number one affiliate, and they saw the videos, and they were like, “Pat, dude, let’s work together.”

And I was like, “Yes, please, let’s work together.” And that led to them creating some custom binders for me that ended up in some videos which promoted their company even more, which then led to a partnership for some big projects that we have working on that are some of the biggest partnerships and brand deals I’ve ever done.

And it started because I got their attention because I used their product and showed it off for them. And that’s one way to do it, especially with smaller growing companies. And that’s where I would start. If you have companies that you work with that are much smaller, this is where bigger opportunities can come as you can grow together versus, like, you trying to get the attention of, I don’t know, Red Bull or something like that, for example.

It’s a lot harder, right? ‘Cause those are bigger companies with established relationships already. You could become the first brand ambassador for a growing company, for example. So think about that.

Another thing that you could do is really pay attention. If there is a company that you wanna work with, what are their goals?

Again, you can have anything in life so long as you help other people or other companies get what they want. And so there was a company I was working with, an online streaming platform, that had a one clear goal. They just wanted new customers, right? They didn’t want people to come in and spend a lot of money.

They wanted more customers first. That was their number one goal. So I decided to reach out to them and say, “Hey, I have an idea for a live giveaway stream that we could do on your platform, and I’m gonna try to see if we can get five hundred people to show up and be first-time customers.” So the plan was we’ll give away all this stuff, which would attract a lot of people, and have really good deals in the sort of shopping area of, of the platform.

And so I worked hard to get a bunch of people there, and we ended up having twelve hundred first-time customers. So I kind of doubled What was already exciting to them, and of course, that made an impression. And ever since then, we’ve been talking and having conversations, and that led to another six-figure deal that has helped the Pokemon side of things that I do grow even more is because I knew exactly what they wanted.

I, I had literally asked, like, “Hey, in, in a partnership, what are you looking for?” Right? It’s almost like if you’re on a date with somebody, you know, you kinda ask, hopefully ask, like, “Hey, so what are you looking for in a long-term partner?” Right? You might not say it that way. In the business world, yes, maybe you do, but it’s, it’s important to know that, you know, you can do something for this company and help them in, in an exact way that they want that help.

And then finally, to capture attention. There’s a lot of nuances to these deals and, you know, creating the deals on a case-by-case basis. They can turn into affiliate sponsorship type deals or even advisorship type stuff. So we’re not gonna dive deep into, like, the what this becomes because really what is most important here is just capturing attention.

And one way to capture, uh, attention is to cause a problem. What I mean by that is if you can, not in a controversial way to cause controversy, but when you get a lot of people showing up at the doorstep of these companies, for example, they’re gonna pay attention. This happens in a few ways. If you bring to light an issue with the product and you have suggestions or solutions for it in your content and it’s something that people can relate to and they all agree to, it’s like, okay, now you have a foot in the door because online you have a number of people talking about the product.

If you can facilitate a whole bunch of conversation around a product that companies, of course, wanna go to you and, and learn more and, and have you, you know, speak up to that and maybe create a follow-up video, et cetera. So that, that’s, that’s an idea. But I did this in person, actually. I caused a problem, and this happened last year in Anaheim at Pokemon Worlds, which is the Pokemon sort of World Championships.

This happened in Anaheim in 2025. And I wanted to get the attention of Pokemon, like this huge company who knew who I was because, you know, I have a large Pokemon channel, but we hadn’t really formed a partnership yet. So I said, “What, what does Pokemon want?” Again, what, what’s their goal? They want to have families and, and create amazing experiences for their community, of course, and sell more Pokemon, uh, obviously.

So I said, “How could I show them this?” Right? My videos do that, but hey, we’re here at Worlds. Let me, let me cause a little bit of a stir. So this is exactly what I did. I went to Pokemon Worlds, and I found out where the Pokemon offices were in Pokemon Worlds. And no, I didn’t break in. Don’t do that I planted myself pretty close to where if anybody was going in and out of those offices, they’d obviously see me, and I decided to host a little meet and greet there.

Meet and greets happen. They happen officially with partners at Pokémon, but, you know, I get noticed a lot in public, and I said, “You know what? I’m, I’m gonna plant myself here for two hours, and I’m just gonna sign autographs for free. I’m not gonna sell anything. I never sell my autograph, and I’m just gonna be here with the audience and, and give them as much love as I can,” and idea being maybe Pokémon will notice.

Well, it didn’t take more than 15 minutes for a giant line to appear, and then Pokémon came over, and they’re like, “Hey, y- you’re Pat, right? Like, what’s going on here?” I said, “Oh, well, I just… A bunch of people wanted my autograph, and I, I know I’m not an official partner, but I wanted to do what I can to serve everybody here and make sure everybody had a good time, and I’m just here gonna…

I’m gonna sign autographs until the last person’s done.” And they’re like, “Okay, that’s, that’s cool. Thank you for that,” and they left. An hour later, the line was still growing even longer, and they said, “Pat, we’re sorry to have to do this, but we’re gonna have to kick you out Because the fire marshal’s saying that you’re causing a line that’s a little bit in, in, in the way.

Like, can you move this outside? I’m like, “I’d be happy to. I’d be happy to.” And so we moved the line outside. I actually stayed there for four hours straight and signed autographs, and it wasn’t more than a couple weeks after the event that a partnership manager at Pokemon reached out to me and said, “Hey, for Worlds next year, we’re gonna get you in for real. We want you to be an official partner of Pokemon.”

Liz Wilcox: No big deal.

Pat Flynn: That’s how I got the attention of Pokemon, is I showed up, and I didn’t ask for anything. I showed up and gave them what I was hoping is what they would want, which is to give an amazing experience to their, to their customers and their people.

And I like… That’s how I work. I show up, and I try to just lead by example. I’ve always tried to lead by example. And I said, “Hey, Pokemon, if, if I’m the type of person who’s attracting the right kind of crowd for you, and you could see that the content is family-friendly also…” I’m, I’m sure they investigated my brand a little bit before making that decision.

Now, if you go to Pokemon’s website for Worlds this year, I’m actually at the top of the page, and you can sign up for my meet and greet in August in San Francisco now, which is pretty cool, and I’m sure this is just the start of this relationship. But that’s, that’s how I got the attention of Pokemon. You have to be a little creative because guess what?

Every other creator’s reaching out to them and asking for a handout or to wanna do something with them. So that’s the story of Pokemon and how Pokemon and I became a partner, which is pretty cool.

Liz Wilcox: I love this so much, and I, I love that Pat played to his strengths. His strength really is, like, just serving people and knowing what everybody needs.

I don’t know. Pat, are you a middle child?

Pat Flynn: I am an only child.

Liz Wilcox: Only child. Okay. Fascinating. Uh, they say- Which

Pat Flynn: might explain a lot to a lot of people.

Liz Wilcox: Sure. Sure. But, you know, just knowing, okay, well, I know people, if I show up, they’re gonna wanna meet me, so let me do this. I know Pokemon wants to experience or have their people experience something amazing, and I know my goal of wanting Pokemon’s attention.

So being able, you know, that’s like a three-in-one, right? I love that so much. So when you’re thinking about, like, oh, what problem can I create or whatever, like, really thinking through what is everyone’s objective also I think is really, really important and playing to those strengths. In my much smaller example, I recently…

Y’all, I am not a YouTuber. My videos, like, I don’t even have a camera set up properly right now, and somebody paid me, I think it was $2,500, to make a video about an email service provider. And I made the video. They were like, “Oh, wow, we love it.” And to me, it was, like, so rudimentary. It was so… You know, there were no tutorials.

There was no on-screen showing off the tool. And I asked them You know, in retrospect, like, why did you reach out to me, right? Because there are so many more tutorials and things to me that look so much better. And they said, “Liz, we love that you are so honest. We are looking for– We’re not looking for polished anymore.

We’re looking for something that the audience can say, ‘Yes, this was a real honest review.'” ‘Cause there were parts where I was like, “Ugh, it’s not so good at this. So and so is better.” You know, I did like a comparison video, and they said that, “That’s the kind of content our people are looking for, and that’s what we’re looking for now.”

So really understanding that objective and playing to your strengths can really work out in the end, as Pat just exemplified perfectly.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, amen to that. So go out there, reach out, utilize the network you already have, play to your strengths, and to your point earlier, Liz, be brave. You have to be brave to make this happen.

And thank you for being brave enough to be here and listen and subscribe to the podcast. I mean, there’s not a lot of danger here, just a lot of stuff that will help you, and we are looking forward to helping you even more. And if you are excited and wanna go back into the back catalog, there are hundreds of episodes that can help you out, some with Liz and I, some with just me, and of course, the AskLiz episodes that have been coming out recently have been amazing, and, uh, we appreciate you so much.

So thank you for being here.

Liz Wilcox: Thank you so much.