SPI 919: How to Start New Things Without Quitting the Old Things

SPI 919: How to Start New Things Without Quitting the Old Things

Pat Flynn: If you have any ounce of entrepreneurial energy in you, whether you’ve tried to start something before and it failed, or maybe you are doing something and it’s working for you, either way, this is a struggle that I know many of you have dealt with. And honestly, it’s something that I’ve wrestled with my entire entrepreneurial journey.

So picture this. You’re climbing a ladder. Making steady progress upward, when all of a sudden you see another ladder right next to you. This new ladder looks shinier, maybe it leads somewhere more exciting, and you begin to wonder, should I jump over? What many of us do is we try to straddle both ladders.

And the trouble is, you can’t climb either one effectively, if you have one leg on each. You’re kind of stuck in the middle, and going nowhere, and also putting yourself in danger. It’s not the safest way to climb a ladder, to straddle two, and sometimes three or four. And this is the entrepreneur’s dilemma.

And today, we’re going to solve it together. I’m going to share my framework that I’ve developed over the last 18 years of building businesses from my very first automated website that still earns passive income today, to more recent decisions like moving on from the SwitchPod with my partner Caleb, which we talked about a couple episodes ago in episode 917.

And so by the end of this episode, I hope that you’ll have a clear system for knowing when to let go. Because that’s reallywhat helps us move forward? It’s not just what to say yes to, it’s also what to say no to, when to optimize, when to step back, and also when to double down. So let’s dive in.

And I want to take you back to 2008. A lot of you have heard this story before, but I’m going to share it in kind of a different kind of way. Because back then, I was laid off from my dream job as an architect, you know this, but There’s a part that I never really talk much about, and that is, even after I started making money with my website, Green Exam Academy, I started selling a PDF file that had all the information anybody could need to pass the LEED exam.

LEED again stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. It was helping people pass a very difficult exam, one that I really struggled with myself. I built a website, I created the study guide, and I sold it. And I started generating revenue. This was back in October of 2008. $7,000 in that first month, which was insane.

$9,500 in November, and $12,000 in December. And it kept going up from there for a couple years, and then it kind of steadied out. And then I started SmartPassiveIncome.com, where most people know me from now. However, back then, October, November, and December, with those numbers I just shared, I was still emotionally clinging to my old career.

I remember spending hours updating my architecture portfolio and my resume, and I was even applying for jobs that I didn’t really want, all while my online business was starting to take off. I was literally standing between two ladders. One foot in the traditional career world, right, climbing the corporate ladder, and one foot in entrepreneurship.

You know what happened? I couldn’t climb either one very effectively. And it was funny because when I made the conscious decision to fully commit to entrepreneurship, to fully step onto that ladder to completely let go. Everything changed. I think my revenue doubled that month to $28,000 a month and then it tripled.

But here’s the key thought. I didn’t just abandon architecture. I made a strategic decision based on data, results, and where I wanted my future to go, where my energy was. And I had this thought of, well, I put so many years into architecture. My parents paid my way through college, and I was super grateful for that.

Would this be going against their word and against their support? It felt like that. And those were the stories that I was telling myself. And this taught me my first lesson about letting go. Clarity comes from commitment, not from keeping all your options open. So I want to introduce a framework, or sort of a matrix for you.

A lot of you know that I like my matrices. If you’ve read my book Let Go, you’ll notice that there are some matrices in Will It Fly? Are there matrices in Superfans? I’m not exactly sure. I don’t think so. But there is a pyramid of fandoms. So I do like structure and framework and try to bring in my little architecture notes here and there in my work.

But anyway, this is the Letting Go Matrix. So over the years, this is something that I’ve created. It’s a simple framework, and it helps you decide what to do with any project, business or commitment in your life. And you can use this at any time you can, maybe after you hear this, you can pause and start to think about your own commitments and the things that you’re doing and where your time and action is being spent, but here are the four quadrants, quadrant one, optimize and automate, right?

These are the things that are high impact. You enjoy it, but it’s taking too much of your time. This is where you want to then optimize and automate. Quadrant 2 are for those high impact things that you love that deserve more of your attention, that want more of you, and you want more of it. That’s where you double down.

That’s the quadrant number 2, doubling down. Quadrant 3 Are your strategic exits. You’re having a low impact in that space, but there’s value to be preserved or transferred. And then quadrant four is to just completely let go, right? Low impact, it’s draining your energy. It’s time to move on. It’s not even worth trying to figure out how to move this elsewhere or evolve it. It’s just, let’s just move on. That’s the complete let go.

And the magic isn’t in the quadrants themselves. It’s honestly in assessing where each of your commitments fall and then taking decisive action. So let me go over those quadrants one more time. So optimize and automate. These are the things that are high impact.

You enjoy it, but they’re taking too much of your time. You have other desires. You have other things that you want to do and put your time into. Well, you optimize and automate these things that you want to keep because they’re high impact. Number two, the doubling down. High impact. You love it. And it wants more of your time.

This is where Quadrant 1, when you figure out which those things are, you can gain some time back to put into Quadrant 2, doubling down. Quadrant 3, strategic exit. These are your low impact things that have value, but they’re not really energizing you anymore, so you preserve what it is that you’ve created or you’ve transferred it.

And Quadrant 4 is the complete letting go of things. I’ve done that with a few software ideas where it was low impact, a struggle, draining my energy, and I gave it X number of months to work on. At which point I decided that I didn’t want to do it anymore. It just, I had to let go.

So let me give you a perfect example of quadrant one in action.

So Green Exam Academy, right? My very first online business. It was making great money. I mean, we’re talking six, nearly seven at one point figures annually, but by 2010, I was spending 20 to 30 hours a week. on everything from customer service, updating content and managing the entire like the hardest thing about that one was there was constantly things that needed to be updated because the exam kept being updated and my heart wasn’t in that world anymore.

I was actually with Smart Passive Income at that time after a couple years was about a year and a half into Smart Passive Income and I loved it. Loved, loved, loved teaching what I learned setting up Green Exam Academy. I was getting invited to different places. I was getting onto podcasts. I was starting my own podcast and I wanted more time for that.

So, I had a choice. Keep grinding on Green Exam Academy, something that was working but consuming my life, or find a way to optimize it so I could pursue new opportunities. And I chose optimization. I wanted to lean more into Smart Passive Income. So, here is exactly what I did. I hired a virtual assistant to handle customer service.

So, this was actually a free trial. Overseas customer service, virtual assistant to handle all the emails. I created evergreen content that didn’t need constant updates. I had built automated email sequences to drive people to those things that didn’t need constant updates. And probably the best thing I did was I actually connected with a company that was way more active in updating content and I just became an affiliate for them. So I started linking to that other site knowing that they would stay up to date and I could generate revenue, almost the same amount of revenue for a period of time, rather than selling my own products. Now I sold my own product for another year after this point because the content in that product was still up to date, but as soon as I needed to update it because there was another version of the exam that came out, I converted everything over to affiliate marketing for this other company.

And just continue to generate that amount of revenue. And it’s been that way ever since. And I had just set up systems, everything from as soon as a person gave me their email address, I sent them over to the other website and pointed them in the right direction, showed them which products they should get, no longer my products, but somebody else’s.

And again, 18 years later, this business has now generated passive income every single year, every single month. I haven’t touched it. And it still brings in revenue. And that is the power of strategic optimization, also the power of passive income. But that could not have happened at first. I had to get involved, I had to be active, and the passive part of the income comes as the very last step.

But this, again, is an example of not abandoning something that works, it’s just you make it work without you. And that’s possible sometimes, especially when it comes to this kind of thing, but other times, it’s not.

Now, I’m going to share a more recent example, me and Caleb’s decision to move on from the SwitchPod. If you listened to episode 917 a couple episodes ago with my partner Caleb Wojcik, you heard us talk about this transition. That was actually one of the most fun episodes I’ve had in a while. It was a perfect bookend to our story.

How we started and invented a product in 2017, launched it in 2019, generated a lot of good money and revenue, but also a really great product. People still tell me they are still using their original SwitchPod years later, which is so cool. But over the years, we put it to a more automated thing. We did optimize it as much as we could.

And then we realized that it was either something that was just going to slowly die over time if we didn’t put any more energy, or we could transfer it to somebody else. So, this wasn’t a Quadrant 4 situation where we just kind of walked away from it. We had this asset, we had inventory, we had a product, we were the number one, or not number one for tripod on Amazon, but we were up there.

But of course we had the buyer slot whenever a person typed in SwitchPod on Amazon, and that was worth something, and we had this product, it was selling every day, it’s just we didn’t have our heart and soul into it anymore, Caleb had twins, I had other businesses. Deep Pocket Monster stuff started taking off. And so we asked ourselves, are we the best people to take this to the next level, or would our energy be better spent elsewhere?

And it was very clear to us that we needed to potentially find a person to take this from us and take it to where we believe it could go, just not because of us. We got it to where it was, and it needed somebody else to get it to where it’s going. And sometimes letting go isn’t about failure, right? It’s about recognizing that your season with something has ended, and that’s okay. That’s totally okay. I think it’s great that it made it easier that Caleb and I did that together, you know, you can’t read the label when you’re outside the bottle and we had each other to feed off of in terms of where we wanted to go, how things were, where we wanted to put our energy, and what we would want to do with this thing.

So, of course, as we mentioned in episode 917, we sold it! Ta da! If you didn’t know that, we sold the business. SwitchPod is no longer ours. We transferred it over to somebody for some sum of money, and they are going to take it to the next level. Hopefully. But we’ll still be there as advisors. We worked out a deal where we’re still on as advisors and helping out for a transitional period.

So it’s been really neat to see, and it’s been bittersweet. You know, it is the product that I absolutely loved getting my name behind and getting my hands dirty with. I’m literally looking at a SwitchPod right now in front of me. I still love it. I still use it. I still support it. I still recommend it.

Check out SwitchPod.co if you haven’t already. And I’m just excited to see where it goes. But this was a transfer and it was great and it felt good. And it just opened up so much more time. And even though it didn’t take a lot of time, that’s the other thing about this. Like you might find that there’s a lot of things in your life.

You’re like, Oh, well, it doesn’t take that much time. Sure. But it still takes up brain space. It’s still time being taken. And you have to ask yourself, where might that time, attention, be better spent? Or what would I do if I didn’t have to worry about this at all anymore? We don’t often realize that those small things do add up quite a bit over time.

Now, here is a another framework, if you will. These are five key questions That I want you to ask yourself as you might be thinking about the things that you’re committed to, the work that you’re doing, and the question, I mean, it’s like, how do you actually make these decisions on what to do? So here are five questions that you might want to ask yourself about every major commitment that you have.

These are ones that I ask myself as well. So question number one, what is the opportunity cost? What is the opportunity cost? If you were to spend 10 hours a week on this thing, what are you not spending those 10 hours doing, right? What am I not doing with those 10 hours? This goes along with a phrase that I often say, which is when you say yes to something, you also say no to something, or when you say no to something, you’re recommitting to something.

So if you spend 10 hours on this thing you’re thinking about this week, what are you not spending time on? What’s the opportunity cost? Question number two. Am I the best person to do this? Am I the best person to do this? And just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should keep doing it, and I don’t want you to think like, just because there’s quote unquote better people out there to do it, that you shouldn’t be doing it.

Because being the best to do something might not necessarily mean you know how to do it all yet, but it involves your heart, your soul, your commitment, your time, your desire, your goals on the other end of this. So don’t just think like, okay, I’m not the best person to do this, but this is something that is something you need to ask yourself because there might be somebody else that is on your team, somebody else that you can hire that can take your time away from that and ask yourself, okay, if I were to get some time back, if this thing takes me five hours a week to do, and if I, if I no longer had to do that, but somebody else did it and potentially did it better, what would that open up for me?

This, I found out Incredibly fast. Once I started the Ask Pat podcast, because that came out in 2014. This was six years after the Smart Passive Income podcast, the podcast you’re listening to now. Ask Pat no longer is a show that I published to, although it still exists, there was over 1,200 episodes of that over the years.

It was daily five days a week for several years. Anyway, when I had the desire to create a second podcast, there was literally no time for me to edit and produce my own show a second time. ’cause I was literally doing everything for this show. No longer do I do that, but back then I was, and the thought and idea of creating a second podcast was just so foreign to me until I spoke to John Lee Dumas.

John Lee Dumas, who has Entrepreneurs on Fire still years later now, 15 years later, is doing a daily podcast, which is crazy. Anyway, he and I went to Starbucks. He told me how he created a system and optimizes so that he can create a daily show. And it wasn’t him editing it, it was somebody else. And so that really encouraged me to explore it or at least experiment with somebody else touching my podcast.

But it wasn’t this podcast. It was a new podcast, so I felt a little bit more okay with that, and I found out very fast that not only could other people do these things like editing podcasts faster, they could do them better. And I was like, whoa, can I apply this to Smart Passive Income? And oh, yes, I did.

And I found people to edit and create and produce this podcast much better than I could. And I could spend more of my time building relationships, getting more creative, writing more. This is where some of my books came in because I finally had time to do it. So even though I loved editing my podcast, was I the best person to do it?

Probably not. And then I realized, wow, there’s people out there who can do it faster and better than me. So question number one was what is the opportunity cost? That was question number two. Am I the best person for this job? Question number three, does this align with my current goals and values? So, what excited me five years ago might not be what excites me today, and that’s normal.

Think about all the things that you’re working on these days, the things that are taking up your time, things that you are focused on, and audit yourself with each of them. Are you still as excited about these things since the day you started? And this is great, because if you’re not, you can question it.

It doesn’t mean, again, you let go of it completely. Just make sure that you either find your way back to that thing that’s exciting, or maybe you do find somebody else, or maybe you do let go of it, as we talked about in The Matrix before. Question 4. Can this be systemized or delegated? Before I let go, can I optimize it to run without me?

And question number 5, this is a big one. What would I regret more, letting go too early or holding on too long? Oh, that’s deep. So this one’s about kind of your gut and long term vision more than data and logic, right? What would you regret more? Letting go too early We’re holding on too long. Now you don’t need perfect answers to all five questions.

These are just guiding questions, but if you’re honest with yourself, the pattern will become clear. And remember, there’s no shame in changing direction. The only shame is staying stuck because you’re afraid to make a decision. Here are some common mistakes that people make when we get into these exercises, when you start asking yourself these questions, when you start auditing the things that you’re doing, right? Number one, the sunk cost fallacy. This idea that you’ve invested so much time and money into something that you can’t quit now, because it would be a quote unquote waste. Now look, the time and money are already spent, and trust me, I know what it’s like to feel the sunk cost fallacy, because remember, I put X number of years into schooling for architecture.

I was in the workforce for architecture for so many years. My parents paid me to go to school for architecture, and I feel very blessed about that. So even more, it felt like I was going behind their backs by wanting to become an entrepreneur. ’cause, yeah, I maybe could have become an entrepreneur before I decided to go to college.

But the truth is I wouldn’t have even had that thought because it was college and my experiences and my time at the workforce and the circumstances in 2008 that led me to that. And of course the first business I did was related to the work that I did, that I spent my years in college learning about.

So, the time and money are already spent. The question is, what is the best use of your future time and money that has not already been spent, that is in the bank? Mistake number two, the all or nothing thinking, the sort of binary approach that we as humans, this isn’t just you or me, it’s all of us, all humans think in a very binary kind of way.

Chip and Dan Heath wrote about this in their book Decisive. But the thing is, you don’t have to choose between full commitment and complete abandonment. There is a whole spectrum of involvement levels. And number three, making emotional decisions. I mean, like I said earlier, your gut is important, and having conversations with others is important as well to help you read the label from outside the bottle.

But whether you’re holding on out of fear or letting go out of frustration, emotion driven decisions rarely serve you well. A well rounded decision making progress is important, one that both includes logic and emotion and outside perspective and some time for you to think about. A lot of times we make these decisions on a snap emotional moment and we often regret them or go a little bit too dramatic in the process.

So use the framework, trust the process. So here’s what I want you to do right now. If you wanted to, take out a piece of paper and list your top five current commitments. These are businesses, projects, side hustles, whatever is taking your time and energy. And for each one, ask yourself those five questions that I shared.

And I’m going to share those questions for you one more time. What is the opportunity cost? Am I the best person for this job? Does this align with my current goals and values? Can this be systematized? And what would I regret more? Letting go too early or holding on too long? And be brutally honest. Then place each commitment in one of the four quadrants of the strategic letting go matrix.

Remember that matrix includes optimize and automate, that’s one. Doubling down, that’s two. Strategic exit, preserving and transferring, that’s quadrant 3, and a complete let go, that’s quadrant 4. Now, you might discover that something you thought you needed to abandon just needs to be optimized. It just needs a little bit of love.

Maybe it’s not even loved by you. Or you might realize that something you’ve been forcing yourself to continue is ready for a strategic exit. So remember, the goal isn’t to do everything, it’s to do the right things well, and sometimes the most strategic thing you can do is let go. Sometimes it’s to transfer and preserve.

Sometimes it’s to double down. Sometimes it’s to automate and optimize. So I hope this episode helped you. I wanted to offer you something kind of punchy today. Something to make you think, something to help you clear some time for the things that I know you want to do, or maybe you realize that the things you are doing are amazing, deserve more of your time.

And you can cut out the weeds to focus on the plants that will bear fruit with the soil and the sun that you preserve. I don’t know. I lost the analogy. That probably means that the episode is over. No, thank you so much for listening. I appreciate you. And please, there are some amazing episodes coming up.

The next one is incredible. An interview with a creator who is using social media in a way that you are going to want to understand. And he breaks it down for us, and it’s just incredible. And I found out during that episode that I actually have come across his work before without even knowing it. And maybe you have as well.

So make sure you hit that subscribe button, follow the podcast, thank you so much, and I want to wish you all the best with your recommitment and doubling down or your transition or you’re letting go or wherever you might want to go from here because what got you here won’t get you there.

And I hope you get there. We want to help you get there. Cheers. Take care. Have a good one.