About Pat
Pat Flynn is a beloved thought leader in the areas of online entrepreneurship, digital marketing, and lifestyle businesses. He is routinely celebrated for his transparent leadership style and authentic principles. Pat overcame career adversity at an early age by finding his own path and true passion. Despite his success in business, Pat’s greatest joys are spending time with his family and friends as well as helping inspire and educate others on how to succeed with their own entrepreneurial careers
via PatFlynn.me
His journey is fascinating. I recommend that you read The History of My First Online Business for an overview of his story. I also recommend that you read If I Had to Start Over…This is What I’d Do Differently. You can learn so much from his transparency.
Smart Passive Income
Podcasts
The Smart Passive Income Podcast
In this podcast, Pat reveals all of hisonline business and blogging strategies, income sources, and effective marketing tips and tricks.
Since 2010, the podcast has been featured in The New York Times, and has generated a total of over 60,000,000 downloads.
Ask Pat
In early 2014, he announced a new feature titled ‘Ask Pat’. He said:
Before the idea for AskPat, I used to answer voicemail questions from the audience at the end of The SPI Podcast, which isn’t going away and will continue to run weekly. But, I felt like the questions changed the feel of the episodes that were often about something else. So, I decided to dedicate an entire show to answering your questions instead!
You can check out the archive here.
Relevant Posts
- ASK PAT is Coming Soon! Here’s What It’s All About!
- 200 Episodes of #AskPat Later: Revenue and My Top 5 All-Time Favorites!
Website Redesigns
In late 2013, he did a major redesign of his blog. I recommend that you read The Mega-Details Behind the New Design of The Smart Passive Income Blog to learn more about the process. You can learn a lot from how he fixed the mistakes he’d made.
The History of Themes for The Smart Passive Income Blog (The Good, The Bad and The Ugly!) also has a lot of useful insights.
2016 Redesign
Website Redesign—One Year Later (Critical Lessons Learned)
SPI Podcast Session #208 – SPI Gets a Makeover! Why I Redesigned a Website that Wasn’t Broken
Current Projects
Switchpod
In 2017, Pat and Caleb Wojcik came up with the idea for a brand new tripod for Vloggers. 2 years later, the SwitchPod launched on Kickstarter and raised over $415,000 from over 4,000 backers.
Caleb has shared a lot about the experience:
- Launching the SwitchPod Handheld Tripod to $400k+ on Kickstarter
- 17 Lessons I Learned from Inventing & Launching SwitchPod
- Every SwitchPod Prototype
- Pat Flynn Talking SwitchPod — Caleb Wojcik Show #71
Pat also shared the behind-the-scenes details at his blog.
Meet the SwitchPod: My First Physical Product (Costs, Manufacturing, and More)
Check out the SwitchPod website or buy from Amazon.
FlynnCON
In 2019, Pat held the first Flynn Con. He described it as ‘a conference that is small, intimate, family-friendly, focused on the SPI community, with just the right combination of inspiration, information, conversation, and action.
You can learn more at the FlynnCON website.
He wrote a couple of posts about the conference:
- The Origin of FlynnCON1 and What I’ve Learned So Far Creating My First Conference
- SPI 391: FlynnCon1 – The Unexpected Story – A Behind the Scenes Interview with Pat Flynn
Fusebox
In 2015, Pat and his team created a podcast player called The Smart Podcast Player to encourage binge listening and subscriptions on websites.
He shared more about the journey at:
- The Smart Podcast Player Is Back! And My Top 7 Lessons from Building a Software Product
- My June 2016 Monthly Income Report
In February, 2020, Pat relaunched the brand as FuseBox.fm, a suite of tools to help podcasters grow their business and connect with their listenership on their websites. You can check out the launch post at Product Hunt.
Products
Superfans
In 2019, Pat released Superfans to help help other entrepreneurs learn how a smaller, more loyal audience is better than a larger, disengaged one. He shared more about the release in AP 1074: What Is Superfans About and Who Is It For?
Will It Fly?
In 2016, Pat self-published a book to help readers validate their business idea. Will It Fly? combines action-based exercises, small-scale ‘litmus tests’, and real-world case studies with anecdotes from the author s personal experience of making money online, hosting successful podcasts, testing niche sites, and launching several online businesses.
He wrote about the experience extensively on his blog:
- SPI 197: Behind the Scenes of Writing Will It Fly?
- Will It Fly from Start to Finish—How I Wrote a Wall Street Journal Bestseller – Part 1
- Will It Fly from Start to Finish—How I Wrote a Wall Street Journal Bestseller – Part 2 (Marketing and distribution)
- Behind the Scenes of the Will It Fly? Social Media Strategy
- SPI 198: Building a Book Launch “Street Team”
- SPI 199: The Marketing Effort Behind Will It Fly?
- Lessons Learned from a Best-Selling Self-Published Author – SPI TV Ep. 55 Pat shares all those surprising moments, unexpected challenges, successes, and lessons learned from writing Will It Fly?
Let Go
Let Go is Pats story about overcoming adversity through a commitment to pursuing his own path. This book has evolved over time, beginning as a blog post in 2012 and expanding into a Kindle book in 2013. He wrote about the experience at SPI 060: Behind the Scenes of My New Publication, Let Go
In 2017, he published an updated version with a lot more stories and lessons learned
In 2019, he ran a kickstarter for the 10-year anniversary edition.
Courses
Smart From Scratch
Smart From Scratch is a hands-on, comprehensive course that enables you to develop a business idea, validate it, and determine if that idea is viable to pursue. Learn how to test whether or not there’s an audience for your business idea.
Relevant Posts
- My June 2017 Monthly Income Report Behind the scenes of the email strategy Pat used for his launch
- SPI 254: Lessons Learned While Testing and Launching My First Online Course: In this episode, Pat shares what he fixed about my launching strategy. You’ll hear what he’s learned about validating product ideas, pricing a course, building community, and creating a product he can stand behind. He shares more in 7 Lessons I Learned While Testing & Launching My First Online Course.
- My February 2017 Monthly Income Report Smart From Scratch Re-opening, including many launch emails
Power-Up Podcasting
In 2017, Pat took his podcasting course out of beta and launched it publicly for the first time. He went through the details in his July 2017 income report.
My July 2017 Monthly Income Report
Past Projects
Physical Product Experiment
In 2017, Pat decided to create a physical productivity calender that can help for planning in shorter, extreme bursts. He wrote about his early concept explorations at Physical Product Experiment [PPE #1] — Let’s Start Something New.
He followed up with four more posts:
- Physical Product Experiment [PPE #2] – Validation and Feedback
- Physical Product Experiment [PPE #3] —The section on how they were managing their community of beta testers was really interesting.
- Physical Product Experiment [PPE #4]
- Physical Product Experiment [PPE #5] – Product Testing
Business Strategy
Blog Strategy
- SPI 215: How to Keep Up With Your Editorial Calendar (and How to Get Ahead)
- A Deep Look Into the Top 5 Posts on SPI, and Why They Were So Popular
- The Content Pyramid: Healthy Portions of Posts for Your Blog
Podcasting
- How to Start a Podcast – Pat’s Complete Step-By-Step Podcasting Tutorial
- How Pat Flynn Uses Podcasting to Build His Business
- Podcasting and the Stats that Really Matter
Email Marketing Strategy
- Email Segmentation: Inside One of My Autoresponder Emails – SPI TV, Ep. 31
- Why I Switched from AWeber to Infusionsoft to Convertkit
- Need help getting started with your email list? Check out Pat’s 72-hour 100 Email Challenge
- The Road to 50,000 Subscribers
Video Strategy
My May 2017 Monthly Income Report,
Pat revealed he’d leased new office space that could primarily be used as a video studio. One of the main motivations was that it would be easier to leverage live video streaming.
How to Get Started with Live Streaming Video Production – SPI TV Ep. 48
SPI TV’s very own producer, Caleb Wojcik, talks about all things live streaming video: where it’s headed, how Pat uses it, and how you can start using it in your own online business.
SPI 154: Behind the Scenes of SPI TV with Caleb Wojcik—Gear, Numbers, and Production Tips
My April 2017 Monthly Income Report Scroll down to where he talks about Ask Pat Live.
Public Speaking
SPI 230: From Deathly Afraid to Cool and Confident: My 5-Year Public Speaking Journey
Pat shares the store of his first public speaking gig at the 2011 FinCon. He shares everything he got wrong in that first presentation, and everything he’s done since to become a cooler and more confident public speaker.
Why I Almost Left the Room While Speaking at Blog World Expo
Creating A Team
- 5 Reasons Why It Took 5 Years to Build My Team
- SPI 115: 9000 Unread Emails to Inbox Zero: My Executive Assistant Shares How We Did It (and How You Can Too!)
Affiliate Marketing
Creating Courses
- Open Cart or Closed Cart? That Is the Question. Selling and promoting a product or course? Ask yourself: open cart or closed cart? The pros and cons of an open cart, closed cart, and more!
- Strategies for Getting Course Customers to Take Action Pat highlights ten specific strategies to help your course customers follow through and take action on what you’re teaching.
- SPI 136: How to Build an Online Course That Sells with David Siteman Garland David Siteman Garland from The Rise to the Top tells us exactly—step by step—how to create online courses that sell.
- The Year of Online Courses (The Results. The Good. The Not so Good.) One of my 2017 goals was to create and launch powerful online courses. Learn what went well, what could be improved, and what my plans are for 2018.
- The Ultimate Guide to Adding Bonuses to Your Products (That Help You Convert More Customers)
Other changes and improvements
- SPI 261: SEO Self-Audit Checklist – An Interview with My Recent SEO Hire
- So THIS Is What Happens When Your Server Goes Down for a Week
- My Getting Started Page: Success or Failure?
Elsewhere
Interviews + Features
- Smart Passive Income Gets Critiqued: Conversion Strategies with Derek Halpern
- How To Crush A $300,000 Launch With Pat Flynn Of Smart Passive Income [AMP074]