AP 1234: How Do I Get More Time to Grow and Scale My Business?

AP 1234: How Do I Get More Time to Grow and Scale My Business?

Pat Flynn: What's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here. Welcome to episode 1234. That's right. 1, 2, 3, 4 of AskPat 2.0. You're about to listen to a coaching call between myself and an entrepreneur, just like you. And today we're speaking with Chris Gilmour from Chris Outdoors.

Chris has been a part of the SPI community for a very long time. In fact, he was one of our original students over at Smart From Scratch, which is our beginner entrepreneurs course. And we're gonna see just the journey he's gone through and where he's at now. It's just incredible. And it's so cool because we're talking shop today about some of his upcoming courses.

He's got four courses now he's doing cohort based stuff. He's got live sessions and other things going on. It's so cool because I remember his start right. Where he didn't even know what he wanted to do. So this is gonna be a really fun one and a lot of great advice shared for Chris here that will be relevant to you as well. Especially if you're feeling overwhelmed and you're at a point or juncture in your business where maybe you're feeling like you just don't have time to do the things that you wanna do to grow the business.

That's what we're talking about today with Chris Gilmour, you can check 'em out at ChrisOutdoors.ca. I don't know if I said .com earlier, but it's .ca. He's over up in Canada, ChrisOutdoors.ca and here he is.

Pat Flynn: Chris, welcome to AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. How are you doing?

Chris Gilmour: Oh, Pat, I'm pumped. This is really great. So yeah. Super happy to be here.

Pat Flynn: It's great to connect here. You know, I see you in SPI Pro doing some great work. I know that you took Smart From Scratch back in the day, and we've been working with you there and you've created something awesome. Why don't you tell people. What do you do?

Chris Gilmour: Sure. Well, you know, I kind of break my passions down into two categories and, and I see this more as passion. I really see it as like my vision and purpose in the world, but the one aspect of who I am is helping people connect with the natural world in a really deep way. And all of the benefits that come along with that, you know, from mental health and wellbeing to sustainability for the earth.

And then my other big passion is emergency preparedness and self-reliance, you know, helping people be able to kind of adapt in a quickly changing world and have the confidence to be able to take care of their family and their community, if things go wrong. So when I joined Smart From Scratch years ago, that was really my vision was to take these passions that I was already doing a little bit of teaching with and try and turn it into a full time business.

So I started a project as part of the Smart From Scratch program. And that's actually morphed into something totally different, which is what I'm doing today, which is Chris Outdoors. So I started trying to build a brand in emergency preparedness and partway into COVID. I, I was really just struggling with what that was and realized it really wasn't me.

I was decided, you know what, maybe I should just be me. So I became Chris Outdoors and I still do the emergency preparedness stuff underneath that. But now I have basically four main courses that I run online courses through this brand, Chris Outdoors that I'm doing.

One of them is an emergency preparedness. And the one that I'm really excited to chat with you about today is my mushroom growing and wild mushroom identification course. Cause it's a hugely trending topic right now. And it, it kind of touches both of those places, the self-reliance piece, as well as the connection to nature piece. So it allows me to actually kind of bridge both of my passion. Together.

Pat Flynn: That's so awesome. You know, I've been getting into gardening a little bit myself during the pandemic, but never considered mushrooms. The only experience I have with mushrooms are truffles that were a part of a, a farm tour. And they had these dogs that were searching for them and all that stuff.

So you need a dog for those ones, but I'm sure there's a lot that you can identify. And that's obviously important to know, if you're gonna go out there and forge because some of them might be dangerous. Some of them might be very good for you. So I love that. Tell me, before we get into that particular course, as far as the business overall, like how's it going?

Tell me a little bit about it.

Chris Gilmour: Things are really great. You know, I was almost on the verge of throwing in the towel at the start of the, the pandemic. So back in 2020, I kind of went through about two or three years of like, I went through the Smart From Scratch and I took a couple of the other courses, Email Magic, and the affiliate market.

And was kind of like just getting by with my other brand. It was originally called Changing World. You know, I launched a couple of courses and I had moderate success and it was kind of in this place where I was like, just making enough money each month to, to justify going when the pandemic came for myself, you know, as, as much as it's been tragic for, for many people, and I wanna honor that and be wary of that, you know, it, it actually suddenly created this nature people suddenly were open to online experiences and simultaneously I shifted from this brand where that didn't really feel very authentic to me that I was trying to be. Into being myself and stuff just started kind of like and, and I also feel like it was the compounding of all the work and just staying consistent with it.

All of a sudden, it all just kind of took yeah, took off. And I started having some kind of bigger launches and suddenly got to the place where it's like, oh, wow. I'm like a couple months ahead on finances right now, instead of living month to month. And you know, now I'm getting into that point where yeah, you know, it's, it's my full time job. I still really have a ways to go with it. You know, I've got a list. I think about four or 5,000 people now, right now I'm starting to get launches. You know, where I'm my last launch, my mushroom course, we got, we had a hundred enrollments in that course. So that felt like a huge win.

And I've got a bunch of, I've got two other cohort based courses right now. And both of them had really great launches this year. So we're doing monthly calls with those. I've got, you know, almost every single day, there's new people signing up on the newsletter and I don't even know where they're coming from.

So I feel like it's come a long ways. You know, I feel like I'm not saving for retirement yet with the business, but I'm like, I'm living happily and comfortably right now, which is an amazing milestone. Cuz I work from home, I'm doing what I love and it shows tons of growth potential. So now I'm kind of in this place of like, how do I scale this to the point that this can actually be like the long term job that actually does allow me to retire one day and, and start putting money in the bank. You know? So I, I I'd say all in all though, you know, kind of four or five years in it, it's going really well. I'm, I'm really happy with where I am right now. And big shout to you in the SPI community. Cause I don't think I'd be here. I probably would've given up a long time ago. If it wasn't for the SPI community, just kind of rooting me on and helping me learn and adapt.

Pat Flynn: That's amazing. Well, we're here for you and that's exactly why, because a lot of times we maybe do wanna throw in the towel, but it's that persistence and it's keeping going, it's adjusting and pivoting as you find yourself and circumstances altogether helped you out, which is incredible.

So congrats to you. And I'm so proud of you. Because I remember when we were just starting out working together, it was kind of like a, where do I even begin kind of thing and look at you now and now we can lean into it more. So let's lean into it more. Let's talk about this mushroom course. And what's on your mind related to it.

Chris Gilmour: Yeah. Well, I guess I'm really just trying to think about how to scale things. I mean, there's two challenges that I'm having. I mean, probably multiple challenges, but there's two that I'm thinking about in this moment. One of them is just, you know, this, this challenge of at the moment being kind of the solo entrepreneur and having so many things on my plate.

So I've got three. Well, I have four courses, three of them are kind of active, right? And I am the one that's in the community, connecting with people. I'm the one that's planning, the next launch. I'm the one trying to create the content, trying to promote it, trying to stay on top of my taxes. It's actually amazing to be in a place where I have a little bit of a budget.

So I've been starting to use things like Upwork and actually paying people to do things. And. I finally had a budget to pay somebody to completely overhaul my website and he did a fantastic job. So it's nice to actually be in a place where I have, like, I actually have a budget right now where some of the money is actually being reinvested back into the projects.

So that's an amazing win to be in that place. But I'm still struggling with the fact that I'm trying to manage everything. So that's one challenge. And then the other challenge is like, okay, so I've got this list, you know, of about three, 4,000 people. I think it's closer to four right now. It's growing, you know, a little bit every day or every week.

I just did a launch to them, but I've kind of launched my three main products already to that list. So I need to grow my audience substantially and I need to figure out how to kind of scale this course beyond the a hundred sales. I know mushrooms is a massively trending topic, right? There's huge, I think, potential in it.

There's just so much interest. We run actually live in person mushroom classes, my wife and I. Like identification ones in the forest. And our October classes are already full with a 50 person waiting list on them. So that just tells me how much interest there is in the courses. So I'm, I'm just really trying to think, how do I scale this beyond my list right now?

And I've kind of dabbled in a whole bunch of things. I've had some things kind of work fairly well. I've had other things that have been total flops. So yeah, I guess I'm really in this scaling place. So how do I expand my capacity to stay on top of all the aspect of the business and what, what is the best next step to kind of take this course?

And I figure what I learned, trying to scale this course. I can probably apply to my other ones as well, but I'm really just trying to think how I scale beyond this, these like kind of three, 4,000 people that are already in my audience.

Pat Flynn: For sure. Great problems to have, right. Growing business. So we need to figure out how to optimize you and best optimize and utilize your time. Love that you're already exploring and being open to having other people help you with certain things. I, I definitely wanna dive into that more. And then with a strong foundation for core sales, now we can ramp up and the easiest way to ramp up is to take what's already working and understanding why, and then pushing into that.

And so I'm a little worried because you mentioned earlier, I don't even know where these people are coming from. We need to know where they're coming from. We need to have tracking and some, some sort of ability to understand, oh, YouTube is providing most of the views. And that's where most of the customers came from.

You might be able to reverse engineer a little bit with your current list of mushroom course customers and ask them well, Hey, how did you find out about me real quick? I would love to know, and you know, you can go from there and see if there's a pattern or something, but once you figure out what that is, then that's where you put resources.

That's where you put your time and, and your extra energy that you get that you buy back or get back from optimization. So that's, that would be key, cuz it's great that it's working, but what's working and let's lean into that. How does that sit with you?

Chris Gilmour: Yeah, that, that makes a lot of sense. And you know what I should say, I actually do know where like the bulk of the original people that came up, what I'm not tracking well now is like who's coming in on the little, like trickles from day to day.

Because back at the, when I pivoted, so I had built up a list of over 5,000 with Changing World, that old other project. And then when I pivoted, I kind of just surrendered it and let it go. I did message people to say I was building a new thing and that list took me like four years to build. And then I built a list almost the same size in a couple of months when I went back to the, the drawing board.

Pat Flynn: And how did you do that?

Chris Gilmour: It was through webinars. So I basically started doing in the heart of the pandemic. And I don't know if this strategy still applies as much with like kind of the zoom fatigue, everyone has. But during the, the heart of the pandemic, when everyone was stuck at home during lockdowns and everyone was craving connection, I started this series called Nature Calls and it was a, a weekly free web class, but it was very like community orientated. So each week I brought on somebody I knew that had a little bit of an audience or a following, and we basically just like talked, you know, what's going on out in nature and like ways to connect and, you know, we got into like birding and all these fun kind of things.

And they would promote it to their audience and I would've promote to mine. And we were basically kind of just like cross promoting eachother. I did that for like three months straight during the pandemic. And it's like every single call, I would have 50 new people on my list. And by the end of it, we were having, like, I think our, our highest attendance call, we had 300 people on live for one of the calls.

So that was going back over a year. So that was where the bulk of the people came onto the list. And then I actually did do some surveying them based on stuff I'd learned from the podcast in your work. So I did actually just kind of ask people what their interests were when they came on and how they found us and stuff like that.

And that's where I came up with the idea actually for the mushroom course, I'm like, oh, a bunch of these people, even though they came for nature, a lot of them are actually interested in the self-reliance gardening, growing foods, sustainability. So I started putting together more stuff with that and I've been staying consistent with my newsletter.

And I do have people tell me that like, oh, that was a great newsletter. Like I shared it with three of my friends. The regular webinars, I think were my biggest growth tools so far, but I, I will just share that, you know, it took up a ton of energy and work like it was fairly exhausting. So I got good impact from it but then, yeah, it just, it took up a lot of time and I'm still in the place of how to balance my time. But that's probably been the most successful thing that I've done.

Pat Flynn: You had mentioned earlier, like that you weren't quite sure whether or not they would still work or not. How might you find out the real answer to that?

Chris Gilmour: I mean, one way would be to just do it for another batch. Cause I kind of did it in little blast where I'm like, okay, I'm gonna commit to this for six weeks. And then I did it for six weeks straight, and then I take a break, regroup, book some more people, do it for another stretch.

Pat Flynn: What if you did it just one time, just to kind of see how it would feel? And with no obligation to keep going or the ability to see how it performs and if it does perform well, then you can keep doing it and you can just do the same thing over and over again.

Because you'll want new people to come and watch it. Everybody who has already found you would be in your ecosystem and going through your, your work already. And yes, maybe some of the people who saw like the first training or whatever can come to the second one, but you don't need to reinvent and create new material every time.

It could literally be the same thing. This is exactly how John Lee Dumas got put on the map with his podcasting stuff. He did the same webinar probably 200 times and then, you know, was able to automate it and probably could have automated it earlier. And that's how you could scale later is you can have these free trainings automated in a way.

So first of all, that's like one thing you could do on the more immediate side, just to kind of test the waters and see if that works. Because if we knew that worked before that style of learning worked before to build your list and bring new eyeballs. Again, try it once to see if your hypothesis is true or not, whether or not it would work in today's environment.

And my thought is that it, it would. Because yes, there is zoom fatigue, and that's very, very real, but I know that I, despite having zoom fatigue would watch something that was very interesting to me, no matter what. And if you combine that with the fact that people are wanting and craving this kind of information, then awesome.

The other thing that you could do would be to take maybe the recordings of these live trainings or not even do a live training, but do 'em pre-recorded and pop them onto a platform like YouTube or Instagram reels or, or TikTok or YouTube shorts or something. You can utilize the algorithms that are there to have those algorithms work for you to bring new people in. Do you have a YouTube channel for Chris Outdoors?

Chris Gilmour: I do. Yeah. And that, that is something again, that was something you had recommended to me inside of SPI Pro. And I've been trying to do a better job at putting videos out a little bit more consistently on there.

And all the replays actually are up on that YouTube channel. So I have posted them there. So I'm, I'm getting a little bit better at that. I would love to post a video a week, but again, it's just the, the time piece there. But I've, I've done better, I've been more consistent with my newsletter and my YouTube in this year than I have at other, any other point in the business and I, and I think it's paying off.

Pat Flynn: Yeah. That's great. Whatever platform you use to gain new audience, right? Like that's what you'll have to do. You need to make a decision to pick one platform, whatever it is, to then pop content on rather consistently. It doesn't have to be even every week or it could be every other week or what have you, but just that's where you know that you are creating content for the purpose of bringing new eyeballs in and then understanding where you want them to go from there.

And when you stay consistent with that, you're gonna see those numbers continue to grow. And of course, like I said, those particular platforms have algorithms, unlike a podcast. A podcast could be cool, but a podcast is much more slower growth and however much deeper relationship with people you already have access to. A YouTube channel or something like that, a TikTok channel, which might even be easier because it's much shorter and it's more raw and you can just kind of do it fly by the seat of your pants kind of way, and still make it useful.

You could go out and forge with your phone and talk and teach as you go. And there you have a month's worth of content right there. That is not even having to be very much edited because it's on a platform like TikTok. And then you can kind of become known in, in that particular space.

To make things easy for yourself, pick one and just get consistent with it. And then nothing else matters. Yes. You could do a podcast. Yes. You could do all these other things, but when you pick that one, it just starts to roll. That way also, you're only learning about one particular platform and then focused on it.

I love that you're doing the newsletter. I think that's important because that's what everybody who finds you is going to eventually get. And then when you come out with these launches, these launches happen as far as time, like you mentioned, like, cool, we're talking about all these ideas, but we still need time. I would make a list of all the things you do.

It's gonna be a little overwhelming when you start to write all these things down and see that you're doing like a hundred different things, you're wearing so many different hats and you can begin to start to categorize them. This comes from a book called Virtual Freedom from Chris Ducker, which is a, a recommended read.

He has a exercise in there called the lists of freedom. And what you do is you create three columns. The first column is write down all the things that you just have to do in the business, but absolutely hate doing. And you write all those things down. It might be, you know, doing your taxes or, and things like that. Right. It could be on that list.

Another one on the list is things that you aren't doing yet, but you know, you probably should do in the future or know that you have to have done, but you just aren't able to get to it yet. And then the third list, which is the most important one is what are the things that you are doing that you love to do that you're also good at, but you know, that you probably should hand off.

That's gonna be the hardest one, because those are things that we often have the hardest time letting go of. But often times are the things that do take the most time. And you're at a point now in the business at a crossroads, essentially, where you either continue to do everything yourself, and then you burn out and then that reflects in the quality of your work and the customer service that you offer and whatnot, or you just stay where you're at and you're just happy with the way things are. There's no growth, but you're steady and your things are going and that's okay too. Right. Although I think we do want to grow and scale. Or you start to find ways to do two things. Number one, find other human beings to take care of some of those things like tax stuff.

You know, you pay somebody a few hundred dollars once a year to take care of all that stuff. And boom, it's done. It's just such a huge load off of, of one's shoulders to, for me, like podcast editing, I loved to do that and I was good at it, but I knew that that wasn't the best use of my time. So I was able to realize that, yes, I was going to be paying somebody for something that I could do.

But it was an investment because I would get that time back that I can then use to put into other things that would, you know, generate more income. And that's a hard thing for new entrepreneurs who are at this stage to kind of get over because we're so used to paying for like a result specifically immediately or a solution.

And this is more of a, of a long term investment for not just additional time for you, but also mental bandwidth. And just sanity, because the last thing we want you to do is just overwork yourself and then like wanna quit.

Chris Gilmour: It's funny. I, I already can picture those things in my head as you're talking through those lists, you know. And I think the big one would actually, so YouTube videos are so easy.

I've been teaching for over 20 years and you know, with no prep time, I can just start doing it and to throw on a camera and create content is easy for me, but the editing just takes forever. So, you know, that probably be an, and I actually enjoy the editing, but it, it eats up a lot of time. And then I actually just don't get content out regularly. Because I I've I've, I've got actually stacks of video ready for YouTube, but just not getting to the time to edit them.

Pat Flynn: The question to ask yourself would be, if it were easy to do YouTube, what would it look like for you? Right. And that might mean hiring an editor or finding somebody. And there's a lot of really economical places that you could probably go and find some, or how might you film the videos in a way that reduces the editing workload, right?

And even 80% of the way there, as far as like what ultimately you would want these videos to look like, B roll and the, you know, the lower thirds and all these fancy graphics in music, even 80% is better than nothing.

Chris Gilmour: Meaning like leaving some of that stuff out, the bells and whistles getting content out is probably better than having, not putting it out with, but having the bells and whistles in there.

Pat Flynn: Right there are successful YouTube channels, when you think about it, that have no bells and whistles, but the content is excellent. And there are terrible channels that have all the bells and whistles, but their content is bad. Let's focus on creating good content and over time you can perfect. Over time you can start to add little things here and there and videos just to get it to where it wants to go.

But if this is the hardest for those who are perfectionists, are you perfectionist, Chris?

Chris Gilmour: No, I think I'm getting, I, I mean, I wanna say yes. And I also wanna say that I'm improving in that domain cuz this last couple of years has taught me that I have to. So I I'm definitely getting better at letting go of some of those pieces.

Pat Flynn: Be okay with a good video and it can become great later because no video is bad. If that makes sense.

Chris Gilmour: Yeah. Can I ask two quick questions? So the one of them is around, you just mentioned, you know, TikTok and Instagram and reels and YouTube. And then you said kind of pick one. So if I'm picking YouTube, then I'm not worrying about TikTok and Instagram, right.

Pat Flynn: I wouldn't upfront until you master that process and then you get some additional time back from it that you wanna put into a new platform. Right? So start with one, master it, optimize it. Maybe it's now, you know, instead of taking 10 hours, now, it just takes two. So cool. You have eight additional hours to do something with.

All right. Now let's learn TikTok and explore that. It's gonna be very tempting to want to repurpose. And I think repurposing is okay. If you can still manage everything that you need to manage. What ends up happening usually when people start repurposing things is they spend more time on the repurposing and chopping things up and moving things.

And now they're everywhere, but now they're not even showing up everywhere. They're 10% across 10 platforms versus a hundred percent in one platform, especially when it comes to the interaction with people on that community. Right? If you have a YouTube channel and people comment, you know, especially if you're just starting out, you want to part those comments. You wanna reply to them. You wanna get to know those people a little bit more and serve them more videos as opposed to, well, I don't have time for that because I also have to do a short and a reel and a TikTok. And I think time is wiser spent that way.

Chris Gilmour: Great. I like that answer. The second question was, so I already know if I did a webinar, let's say if I did one once a month, I already know that it would be some. Like it's exciting, I've actually got like the super fans now. Like there's a group of people that buy every single thing I put out and they show up to everything I do. It's an amazing feeling actually. And I actually feel like I know these people, like personally now, you know?

Yeah. Which is really cool. So I know that some people would show up if I did a monthly call, like that nature call series and bringing in the guests. Like, I, I actually, as, as soon as you said that, I'm like, oh yeah, that's so obvious. Like that's, that would probably be what would be growing my list. The one fear I had is like, with my courses, I'm setting all up based on the idea that most of them come with this monthly call.

So if I have a monthly free call and then I'm trying to pitch people on a course that has a monthly paid call. Do you think that's, is it helping? Like, I guess I have this little bit of a fear that like, oh, well, why would I sign up for your paid course when I can just show up to this one, free call once a month.

Pat Flynn: You, you have to answer that question in a way that, you know, there's obvious more value with the one that comes with the paid one.

A person might not ask you directly, but I mean, you're already thinking about it. And so will others. The beauty of this is when you determine what the answer is, you say that. So that it just kind of counters any objection a person might have.

Chris Gilmour: That'd be part of my sales pitch and they'd be like, so if you enjoyed our free call tonight, you know, we do these monthly calls and they're different because of...

Pat Flynn: Because of they're more interactive with the members who are there we go a little bit deeper, you get access to my charts and worksheets or my mushroom flashcards or whatever, you get access to those. And we talk about them and do flashcard work there together.

Chris Gilmour: Yeah. We have communities for all the courses too. And, and we're actually finally getting the point where there's like people posting in them on like a regular basis without me even there.

So that's, that's exciting that the communities kind of have a life of their own now. One other thing I struggle with is like not being in there enough and I always feel like I'm letting my course participants down by not actually showing up in the community enough. So I guess that would be another thing I would love to eventually work towards is like having somebody that I maybe paid to like be a community facilitator or something.

Pat Flynn: It is helpful for sure. I mean, as you know, in SPI Pro we have Jillian and we just hired another person David to be in there and interact just so that no comments are left un-replied and you know, there's activity in there and there's people starting conversations, et cetera. Eventually it'll get to a point where it does have a complete heartbeat and a life of its own, but a little bit of, of views can be required upfront, or at least a human being that is there on the other end.

And, you know, even somebody parttime coming in for 10 hours a week could be, you know, could suffice, for example, a couple hours a day could really kick things off and, and help. The other thing is there could be people in your community who are those super fans you might wanna promote and turn into a moderator or an admin, just somebody who feels like they have a little bit more ownership because of that.

And, and, and as a result, they feel the need to come in and make sure things are taken care of on your behalf without even having to pay them because they're getting recognition and they're getting, maybe they get access to a free something or a, you know, a free course as a part of that deal or something like that.

But all these ideas are, are great. I think it's just a matter of, you know, laying them all out on the table as well as all the things that you're already doing. So you can make decisions on those. The other thing that helps with entrepreneurs that are very overwhelmed, there's a book called Essentialism.

And I wanna borrow some of those things from Essentialism and turn them into how to best understand what to work on. In Essentialism, and this is about like your life, you write down all the things that you're doing and the things that you're participating in and the things that you're involved with.

And then you rank them. You score them from like 0 to 10. 0 meaning why is this even here? I already know, I don't wanna do this anymore. And you could scrap it. 10 being, this is something that has to be a part of my life that I'm gonna be doing forever that I absolutely love. You rank these things, the zeros to sixes you'll wanna get rid of, like, why are we even focusing on those lower things?

And then the nines and tens are okay, these are keepers, right? Actually the zero to fives, you threw out it's a six sevens and eights that are like, where you're gonna get the most benefit from and making decisions on those. Those are the hardest things to let go of, but those are the things that are gonna give you the most time back.

So you might want to A write all those things down and, but then score them in maybe some of obvious that you can hand off to others. Like we've talked about already and other ones that are, you know, things that you do, you can make those tough decisions on for yourself. And, and what that does is it starts to create boundary, right?

It starts to create rules and filters of what to say yes to and wants to say no to. And so in the future, when you are presented with more opportunities or more work, you can go, wait, does this fit into where I want things to go? Or is this just me having squirrel syndrome, right? So hopefully those exercises can help you as you move forward.

Cuz you're, you're definitely at that moment where, you know, those decisions will have to be made or else you either burn or not grow or worse.

Chris Gilmour: You know what I'm really thinking as you're are reflecting as you're talking there, you know, I'm, I'm trying all kinds of different things for promotion and in it, I feel like I'm not doing any of them as, as well as I should be.

Which makes me think I should just make that list for all my promo ideas. And then really just double down on a couple things and let go of the rest, at least for a period of time.

Pat Flynn: Yeah. When you look at other people's promotional strategies, you often find that the Pareto's rule, the 80 20 rule always plays a role, right?

20% of the things are producing 80% of the results. So imagine instead of doing all the things and then seeing what the results are, 80-20. You actually make that decision up front, of all the things I wanna do, these are the couple things I'm I'm gonna do, but I'm gonna do really well cuz they provide the, the most results.

And so very smart of you to think about doing that upfront with promotions among other things. So yeah, I hope this helps Chris.

Chris Gilmour: Yeah, this is great. Yeah. I gotta come back and re-listen to this when it goes live and, and make some notes, but I'm I'm feeling like I actually got some really good gems going on right now.

Pat Flynn: Good, Chris. Well, keep up the good work, man. I love, just from the start, I always could tell that you were going to be somebody who would continue to persist and take action. And you always had that drive. And so keep that drive going through this new phase of entrepreneurship for you, cuz you're definitely past the beginner stage now and you should be super proud of that.

You should also celebrate that if you haven't already, cuz that's something that does take time and it does take persistence and commitment and you've done that so proud of you and looking forward to seeing where you go from here.

Chris Gilmour: Yeah. Thanks so much, Pat. I, I totally did like a dance when we had the mushroom launch, this, that first one there.

Cause it felt like the master's project where like everything I've learned over the last five years, I'm like, I started from scratch, reapplied it all. And then it was like, we did the webinar and like registrations just started coming in and they came in for a week straight and it was like, Oh, my goodness. It's finally working. It's coming together.

Pat Flynn: So good!, Chris, where can people go to follow your adventures?

Chris Gilmour: Yeah. Well, my main website is ChrisOutdoors.ca. So C H R I S. ChrisOutdoors.ca. And if anyone's interested in mushrooms, either growing them at home or learning how to identify them in the wild, which eventually leads to foraging, they can go to TheMushroomCourse.com.

Pat Flynn: The Mushroom Course. Love it. Thank you, buddy. Appreciate you all the best.

Chris Gilmour: Yeah, you too. And again, just so much gratitude to the whole team at SPI. Wouldn't be here without you guys.

Pat Flynn: Thank you!

All right. I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Chris Gilmour. Again, you can find him at ChrisOutdoors.ca. And Chris, thank you so much for being part of SPI Pro. Y'all can check that out at SPIpro.com.

Chris is also a member there for taking action for doing all the things that you needed to do to get to where you're at. And plus for all the things that are about to come, because I know that with these exercises in place, you're gonna make some decisions that are gonna help you not just get more time and not just scale your business, but give you more freedom in your life.

And that's really important. So congrats Chris. Again, ChrisOutdoors.ca and keep up the great work, my friend. And that goes to all of you. Keep up the great work. I hope you're taking action like Chris has. And even if you might be in the beginnings of your business, or you just haven't seen the results yet.

You gotta keep going that persistence and consistency is key and we're here to help you. Thank you so much for listening in to AskPat, make sure you hit subscribe so you don't miss out on the upcoming episodes. Cuz we got some great stuff coming your way and I don't want you to miss it. So hit subscribe.

Thank you so much. And I look forward to seeing you the next one. Cheers, peace out. And as always, Team Flynn for the win. Cheers.

Thanks for listening to AskPat at AskPat.com. I'm your host Pat Flynn. Our senior producer is Sarah Jane Hess. Our series producer is David Grabowski. And our executive producer is Matt Gartland. Sound editing by Duncan Brown. AskPat is a production of SPI Media.

We'll catch you in the next session.