by: AskPat 539 Episode Transcript
Pat Flynn: Hey what's up everybody? Pat Flynn here and welcome to Episode 539 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. As always, I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions, five days a week.
Now here's today's question from Matt.
Matt: Hello, Pat. This is Matt from Quickregister.net. You have an excellent blog. I really enjoy it. Well done. Quick question: Which bloggers have been your biggest influences? Who are your influencers? Who are some bloggers who have influenced you and motivated you to come up with your fantastic blog? Thank you so much.
Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up, Matt? Thank you so much for this question. I really appreciate it. And I love when I get asked this question, cause I'm always happy to share who has had major influence on me when getting started and who is having a major influence on me now. And when I created this list of people before I got on the record button, here, or got on the microphone and started recording, it's interesting, because I've gone through a journey of those who have influenced me over time and it all depends on kind of, what I'm working on or what I'm trying to do. So, it's similar to . . . some of you've heard me talk about “just in time” learning before, where you only allow yourself to learn and consume information based on that next task that you're working on. That one thing that's next on your list. For me, looking at this list here right in front of me, I'll read it off in just a second, but these people relate or became influencers related to the things that I was trying to do at that time. And that's what I've been continuing to do.
So when I first got started, by far the top influencers were Jeremy and Jason from Internet Business Mastery. They were the ones who helped me believe that all of this was possible. That online business was a solution. This was after I got laid off. I discovered them back in 2008. And ever since then I've just been huge fans of them over at, again, InternetBusinessMastery.com. You can look up their podcast at iTunes, Internet Business Mastery. And I credit them for a lot of what I've learned, but mostly just the inspiration on making sure that I knew in my head that this is something that is possible through sharing other people's success stories, through teaching me steps on how to do certain things that really gave me the confidence I needed to move forward. So big shout-out. Thank you to Jeremy and Jason from Internet Business Mastery. Again, being a great example and being that really fresh of breath air in the internet marketing space at that time, when everybody else was just talking about getting rich quick and making a ton of money overnight and all this stuff, they weren't playing that game and I really appreciated that. And that's part of the reason why I do the same thing, that I share quite upfront and honestly that this isn't easy, this isn't an overnight thing and that helped put things into perspective for me when I first started. And that's what I'm trying to do for other people, too, who are listening to me, who are following my lead, who are reading my blog.
Another person who was very influential was Darren Rowse, over at ProBlogger.com. He and I have actually connected and became very good friends. I've spoken at his event, and he's been a major influence on me for a long time now. And when I was first starting out, he was the one who I looked to for a lot of the blogging advice. I got to connect with him a couple times on a live stream, which was really cool, back in 2009, 2008. But moreso just through his example of being really, really consistent with his content and always providing great information to help me as a new blogger. So that was really helpful and I want to thank Darren for that too. He was also one of the first ones to interview me and share that with his list, which was huge.
And speaking of that, the actual first person to interview me and share me in front of a large audience was Yaro Starak from Entrepeneur's Journey. You can find him at Entrepreneurs-Journey.com. And that was huge. I actually owe him a big . . . I actually owe him a lot because I actually reached out to interview him for my podcast. And that interview turned into one where he then interviewed me afterwards. And unfortunately, I had lost his interview in a hard drive failure. But he was still willing to publish mine and that was when I talked about Green Exam Academy and the success Ihad with that. And that sort of put me on the map, a little bit, if you will, back in 2009 when I was first blogging with SmartPassiveIncome.com.
So, those three, or four if you count Jeremy and Jason together as four people. But Internet Business Mastery, ProBlogger.net, and Entrepreneur's Journey, the people who man those sites. Those were big influences for me when I was first starting out. And they were really there to help me get started and get the confidence moving forward. Then I looked up to people who had helped me see what else is possible. To grow beyond what I had thought was possible for me and to sort of treat what I was doing as more of a business. Like as if I was a CEO of what I was doing. And I was looking really high. I was looking toward people like Tim Ferriss and Ramit Sethi over at IWillTeachYouToBeRich.com. And also Lewis Howes, who has been doing massive things in the market and being a big inspiration for a lot of people, too. Always going big.
These are big players. They don't play small. And that's something I wanted to do. I wanted to stop playing small, stop being a scrappy entrepreneur, and start actually taking those bold actions that are required to grow big so that I can serve more people. And this is where a lot of the inspiration for what I'm doing now is coming from these people and many others, too. So the book, for example, Will it Fly?, which just came out, you can check it out at WillItFlyBook.com, this is the start of a change that you'll see on SPI. Not a change in terms of being a CEO where you'll never see me again and you'll start to see, sort of a team of writers come on board. That's not gonna happen. I'm still gonna be here for you, still gonna be writing, still gonna be podcasting, that sort of thing. But CEO more in terms of big bold actions like this book that are gonna move the needle. Big bold actions in terms of getting the systems in place. Building the team, and all those sorts of things.
I've been looking up to, again, Tim Ferris, Ramit Sethi, and Lewis Howes, for those kinds of things. And then beyond that, I'm looking a lot toward philanthropic things that I want to do in the future and I'm getting a lot of inspiration from Adam Braun. Episode 106 of the SPI podcast, smartpassiveincome.com/session106, I believe. or it might have been 102. But that was with Adam Braun, and it was then that I realized that there was so much more I could do with this platform that i have, with the money that I'm generating, to help people who really, really need it. Who don't even have opportunities.
And this is where I got involved with Pencils of Promise. And for my birthday in 2014, in December, I decided to, instead of ask for gifts, to ask people to donate to a campaign to build a school in Ghana. I said, “If we raised $25,000 through PencilsofPromise.org to build a school, we will build two schools and I would match so we could build two schools.” And we were able to do that. I actually went to Ghana to visit those schools in June last year, 2015, and it was such an amazing experience. I came back, immediately signed on to become an advisor for the company to get connected with a lot of the other philanthropic people on there, so I could do bigger and better things down the road. You're gonna start to see some other bigger things that I'm doing in terms of the philanthropic stuff that I'm doing to help make change in this world. ‘Cause I feel so blessed to be in the position that I'm at and I know there's a lot of power that comes with it and I want to use that power for good and use that influence to help others who really need it. So again thank you all for your support, who have supported me with Pencils of Promise, and of course all the future stuff that I'll be doing. You'll see more of that stuff coming later.
But anyway, a couple more influencers who are really important to me right now: Elon Musk, who I don't know personally. I'd love to meet him in person at some point, but he and I, I feel like we have a relationship because I know a lot of what he's doing and how he thinks, and I just love how he thinks. I love how he thinks in sort of a limitless capacity, where nothing is impossible. I mean, he wants to colonize Mars, which is insane, but he is doing that to serve humanity. And that's where all the stuff that he's putting into place now, Tesla and Space X and Solar City, and all that stuff. It all has to do with all that, you know, final goal. And that's his version of Gary Ve's similar . . . you know . . . he wants to buy the Jets. Well, Elon Musk wants to colonize Mars. And so, anyway. Just thinking that big is insane, to me. But I know I can think bigger. I know that my brain does not have limits. I just have to take those limits off.
And then also, Peter Diamandis, who wrote Bold. He is another inspiration in a same and similar way to Elon Musk, where he's doing some big things to help humanity and I'd love to be able to pitch in as much as I can too. So, anyway. Matt, those are my influencers and kind of the progression of how all that's happened. And of course, all those people I mentioned are still big influences in my life and I'm happy to pass them on to all of you, if they seem interesting.
So, again, thank you so much for asking that question, Matt. I'm gonna send you an AskPat t-shirt for having your question featured here on the show. I also want to give a big shout-out to everybody else out there who's asked a question. Thank you so much for helping make the show possible. I also want to mention that you could go to AskPat.com and ask a question right there on that page and I will listen to it, or my assistant will listen to it and we'll go in there and we'll pick some questions to answer on future episodes of AskPat and you may get featured and if you do, you'll get a t-shirt of course.
And as always I just want to thank all the sponsors that have been on in the past, I mean, they're here to help keep the team fired up and moving in terms of producing the show and also they help pay for the t-shirts and all that stuff. But anyway, no sponsor here at the end of the show, I just want to thank you so much and ask you for a really quick favor. If you could go to iTunes, if you haven't done so already, find AskPat and leave a review. I know there are thousands of views for all of these episodes, thousands of listens and just a couple hundred reviews right now. So I know that you do have it in your hearts to give a review if you choose to do so. Thank you so much. Just look up AskPat on iTunes and leave a review right there. That's all I ask.
Thank you so much, and here's a quote to finish off the day. This is the final quote of the week and the final quote that I'm gonna be talking about at least, you know, on the set here, that comes from my new book, Will It Fly? which again you can find at WillItFlyBook.com. And that quote is, “A surefire way to predict the future is to take no action at all. When you do nothing, you get nothing.”
Thanks so much. Take care and I'll see you next week in the next episode of AskPat. Bye.
