SPI 874: A Mic Flip! Pat Flynn Gets Interviewed by Bestselling Author Hal Elrod

SPI 874: A Mic Flip! Pat Flynn Gets Interviewed by Bestselling Author Hal Elrod

Hal Elrod: This is the book that I need right now. I’m dealing with information overload. I’m distracted. My attention’s in 20 different directions. Like I’m literally who you wrote the book for and then I realized I am the common story right now. Like I represent most people. Most of us, we’ve tricked ourselves into thinking that the more I learn, the better I am or, I’m being productive. But just learning for the sake of learning doesn’t add much value to your life. We learn a lot and we don’t do anything with what we learn.

That’s what I got from Lean Learning so far, is it’s how quickly can you learn the minimum amount of information, knowledge, or strategy that is needed for you to do the thing that will generate the result in your life. Like I’ve been feeling overwhelmed for as long as I can remember, and I feel like this book is the answer to not only stop feeling overwhelmed, but to actually make massive progress in the areas of my life that matter most while not feeling overwhelmed, I’m like, this is win, win, win. I, I’m, I’m totally in, so I’m grateful you wrote this book, man.

Pat Flynn: Today we have a very special episode because we are flipping the script. I’m handing over the interviewer microphone to a great friend of mine, Hal Elrod, the bestselling author of Miracle Morning. There’s actually a new and expanded edition. If you haven’t gotten onto the Miracle Morning train yet. It is absolutely changed my life.

I highly recommend you check it out. Hal Elrod, probably one of the most positive people I know. He had actually died for I think seven or eight minutes a long time ago, and he came back to life. This is a true story. And has made it his life’s mission to help people become more productive and live a better, more fulfilled life through a practice that you can all do.

In the morning, hence the Miracle Morning. And so check out the updated and expanded edition. We’ll talk more about that a little bit more toward the end of this episode. But what happened was Hal interviewed me because he’s such a kind person. He said, pat, I wanna promote your book Lean Learning to my podcast and for my audience, he’s writing an email. He’s going so hard with promoting Lean Learning for me that I thought it would be amazing to use the interview that he conducted for me on his show, actually repurpose it here on this podcast so you can hear Hal interview me. It’s a great way to get a little bit even deeper into the Lean Learning experience and the things that I have to share as a guest on my own podcast.

We’ve done this a couple times before. Shane Sams interviewed me once here before I think on episode 700 and it was such a fun experience and I’m just so grateful to have Hal, not just as a great friend and supporter of my work, but to be here to allow me to use the podcast that he did here on this show, so you can hear from his perspective and an outsider’s perspective what Lean Learning is like and how it can help you, and how it actually meshes really perfectly with the Miracle Morning. So, without further ado, here is that podcast episode and I’ll chat with you more toward the end and tell you a little bit more about The Miracle Morning and what it’s done for me.

But here he is, Hal Elrod, bestselling author. 2 million copies of the Miracle Morning have been sold. I mean, this person, Hal, is an inspiration to me in so many ways.

but here he is interviewing me for Lean Learning. Here we go.

Hal Elrod: Patrick Flynn. Good morning buddy.

Pat Flynn: Oh my gosh. Only my parents call me Patrick. That’s funny.

Hal Elrod: No, dude. I just saw, so it’s funny. So Pat Flynn is what it says on the front of the new book.

Pat Flynn: Yep.

Hal Elrod: But when we were texting, I saw it said update your contact record to Patrick Flynn.

So I’m confused. I don’t know what to call you, dude.

Pat Flynn: Oh my gosh. That I have to check on that. It says Patrick Flynn. Oh yeah. It’s, that’s weird, dude. That’s weird. Yeah.

Hal Elrod: I thought you were growing up. You got the beard. You, your Patrick now?

Pat Flynn: Yeah. I’ve matured a little bit since you matured the last time we’ve chatted.

No, I’m just so grateful to be hanging out with you again. I mean, you’ve done so much for me personally. You’ve done so much for my audience and you know, with this new book, I’m here to help you and serve your people too.

Hal Elrod: I’m excited, man. I was texting you, so I got your book in the mail. You overnighted me a copy.

I got it yesterday. I started reading it this morning and I text you. This is the book that I need right now. Literally in my life right now, I’m dealing with information overload. I’m distracted. My attention’s in. 20 different directions. I’ve got Google searches and Chat GPT searches and I’m reading four different book.

Like I’m literally who you wrote the book for and then I realized I am the common story right now. Like I represent most people. I wanna ask you this, Pat, you know, so your first two books, Will it fly? Which is how to test your next business idea so you don’t waste your time and money. Loved that book.

You followed that up with Superfans, the easy way to stand out, grow your tribe, and build a successful business. So both of those are what I would call business books for entrepreneurs. So my question is, what inspired you to write Lean Learning and who is this book for?

Pat Flynn: So Lean Learning is a result of a number of people who’ve reached out to me who have asked, how are you able to do seemingly new things in your life and do them very well. And a lot of people who were asking me these questions weren’t wanting to build a business. They were wanting to just experience new parts of life and try new things, but were always feeling like they were fighting the imposter syndrome in their head, or just too much information or just not even knowing where to start.

And so it really inspired me to think outside the box of entrepreneurship and say, who else can I help and how can I reach and impact more people? And actually your book was really important in that because I started to ask myself, which books have been really inspiring for me, that were not business books, and yours was one of the first that came to mind That and How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. Just life-changing books that were not even about business, but about productivity about where to put your time and attention. I mean, you with your book have helped people silo where they should spend their time with your savers. And to do that in a very systematic way has then opened up so much for so many people, myself included.

And I started to dissect, well, how am I able to learn all these things rather quickly because I’m not, like, I don’t think I’m super smart, you know, like I’m not a genius. I’m not the luckiest person in the world, I don’t think, and it’s not random. There is a system there. So by writing the proposal for this book, it really got me thinking.

What is it exactly and, and why is it working for me and not others when we all have access to the same information? You know, I thought it was just like, oh, we have to go find the right resources. But it’s more than that. It’s more how do you implement and start to take action sooner rather than later?

Having the guidelines be created by the mistakes that you make, not by over preparation and you know, over consumption. And I think what also inspired this, two other things. My kids are getting older now. My son is 15, he’s entering young adulthood very soon.

Hal Elrod: Fifteen! My daughter’s 15. I didn’t know your son was 15 too, man.

Wow.

Pat Flynn: Yeah. Oh man. What a world they’re growing up in and leading themselves into. It’s so confusing, so overwhelming. And yeah, with AI and everything kind of happening so quickly. Certain jobs are just gonna be non-existent anymore. It’s like, how do we stay valuable in this economy? So I wanted to write this for, for him and my 12-year-old daughters to prepare them for the future, to give them options and to help them understand how to navigate things that are moving very quickly around them.

And number two, I remember running a survey, and this was a live survey I did from stage, so I had people raise their hand in the audience. There was about 2,500 people in the audience and I said, how many people here are subscribed to at least one podcast? Basically everybody raised their hand. Yeah, and I said, okay, keep your head up if you are subscribed to more than five podcasts.

No hands went down. Basically everybody’s hands was still up and we got to the point where 25% of that audience, about 500 people, still had their hands up. When I asked how many of you’re subscribed to 25 or more different podcasts, and this was an entrepreneurial group? Yeah. So many of them are, you know, overachiever over learners.

Sure, but also very curious and I think that’s just representative of us as humans. We are over curious and we wanna learn so many things, so then we absorb, we consume so much. But here’s the problem. Hal information is no longer scarce. We feel like it is. Which is why when we come across it, we wanna hoard it.

Right? But. Back in the day when you and I started, information was the valuable thing because people didn’t have it. People didn’t have access to it. Remember Encyclopedia Britannicas? If you had one in your home, you were like smarter because you could afford information that other people couldn’t. Now we all have it on our phones, and not only are we at this buffet line of information now.

We’re getting force fed stuff from algorithms on these platforms that we didn’t even know we needed. However, they’re built specifically to keep us on those platforms and to have us go deeper into these rabbit holes. We are not set up for success in today’s world. So how do we navigate that? That’s what this book is about.

Like here’s Lean Learning. In a nutshell, figure out what you want. Find the next step that’ll help you get there. Learn about that next step and that next step only take action. Repeat the process because this is the difference between just in case learning, which is what we’re all falling into, and just in time learning, and that’s the secret to success.

Finding the thing you need from the right resource and taking action so that you can find out where to go next. And whether to persist or pivot, and this is so needed right now, it’s, it’s the most important topic nobody’s talking about.

Hal Elrod: Can you elaborate on that? The difference between just in time learning versus just in case learning?

Pat Flynn: Yes, just in case learning is you come across an article, a book, a podcast, a YouTube channel, and you feel like you have to consume it because you don’t wanna miss out on it. Yeah. You don’t need that information right now. It’s not even really relevant to the thing that you’re focusing on, however, you consume it because you’re worried that you know, there could be a golden nugget in there or that you might need it later.

And that’s how we’re taught in school, right? You read the whole book and then take a test on it. You read a whole book when you’re reading self-development books, and then you might put one or two of those things in action, right? This is just in case learning, and it’s not only taking up more time, but you are also getting over inspired.

And what I mean by that is it’s taking your energy away from the things that you’ve already committed to and said yes to. And that’s very dangerous because we only have so much time to give to so many things. So by allowing yourself to say, no, not yet, I don’t need that. You know, the joy of opting out is what I call it, right?

Not joy of, of missing out, which is what some people say. I’m not joyful, right? That I’m missing out on something. But I am proud that I can say not yet because. I’m gonna recommit to this thing that I’ve already said yes to. So that’s just in case learning. That’s what we’re trying to battle against just in time learning is similar to how I wrote my first ebook for architects.

This is my first business back in 2008. So I’ll go through this exact case study and you’ll see Lean Learning in motion. And this is how I’ve approached pretty much everything moving forward, including an invention, my new YouTube channel about Pokemon Smart Passive Income, all these things. Yeah. So when I got laid off, I was inspired to start a business to help architects pass an exam.

And by surrounding myself around other entrepreneurs and finding other champions who were doing the same thing, I learned that I should create a study guide to promote to my audience. But I had never done that before. I had never built a business, and so my first inclination, like many of us, was to literally go to business school.

I was looking up business schools. How long would it take? Two years for this program. Okay. $20,000 a semester. Oh my gosh. So much money. Like my mind went to traditional learning styles. Yeah. To learn this thing that I didn’t have time to figure out because I was moving back home with my parents, ’cause I got laid off.

I was getting married. I didn’t want to be in the position I was in. I needed to move fast. So I had reasons to make decisions and I did. I eventually found out that, okay, well, an ebook requires a few things. Number one, I need to write the thing, then I need to format it. Then I need to know how to sell it.

Then I need to know how to write a sales page. And again, just being very overwhelmed by looking at the whole process. So I said, okay, you know what? All I know is none of this is gonna be required unless I write this thing. So let me open up Microsoft Word and just crank this thing out. And in three and a half weeks how I was able to create my study guide, but it was not formatted well, but I had all the information in there that I wanted.

Yeah. So then I went to the next step. Okay, well I need to format this thing. I went to YouTube and found a video about somebody who was sharing how to format a word file into a landscape book with two columns. I didn’t know how to do that before and I thought that was the perfect look for my book. So I did that, and I did that in a single day.

I didn’t need it until right then. Then I needed to know how to sell this thing. By the way, in this process, by actually creating as I was going. I was more motivated than ever to actually go to the next step versus being demotivated upfront by learning about all of it upfront. So at this point, I needed to know how to sell it.

So I went to somebody who had sold digital goods online before and they said, Hey Pat, you should check out this tool called E Junkie. I don’t know if you remember E Junkie, but this was an old school tool that you could use to upload your digital file. And it would give you a button that you can then put on your website and then it would automatically deliver that file to whoever purchased.

And I said, okay. And I did that in a half a day. It was very simple in fact, and I got the button, but I said, okay, well I don’t know what to do with this button. Where do I put it? I eventually learned I needed to create a sales page, and I had never written a sales page before. I said, oh my gosh, there’s so many resources and tools and courses out there about copywriting.

If this were easy, what would it look like? That’s the guiding light question in Lean Learning. If this were easy, what would it look like? And again, by finding somebody who had done this before, they said, pat, check out this book by a guy named Yannick Silver. This book is called Moonlighting on the Internet.

And it’s going to have 30 to 40 different ways to make money online. You don’t need that. Only you need is the appendix in the back that has a mad lib style sales page that you could put your product in and your features and benefits. So I bought the book. I went to Barnes and Noble, got the book, didn’t need 98% of it.

Yeah, I just needed that one template. And after putting that on my website, putting the button I got on this guy that I had just written, I was able to generate within a year over $200,000. From that product, not by going to business school, not by building a business plan and kind of psyching myself out of it.

Yeah. But by taking action and doing it, just like how people who do the saver start to see small results immediately, right. And then it starts to stack over time. And that business has since earned seven figures. So this is Lean Learning in action and finding just-in-time information versus just in case information.

Hal Elrod: That’s incredible. So you earned $200,000 with this online information product in 2008 before you didn’t know how to do it. And by the way, for anybody listening, if you do the math, that’s $400,000 in today’s income with inflation. I believe so, yeah. Just to put that in perspective, but. Pat, this reminds me of, I’m trying to think of what, what is the coin I termed?

It was, it was like being a personal development junkie, meaning that most of us, we, our brain, we’ve tricked ourselves into thinking that the more I learn, the better I am or, or the more successful I am, or I can, I’m being productive. Right? But just learning for the sake of learning doesn’t add much value to your life.

Pat Flynn: No. And it can actually remove value from your life because you’re taking, again, that time and focus away from something. So like you’ve maybe heard this term before Automobile University, and this is where in your car at all times while you’re driving, you should at least be listening to a podcast episode or some audiobook.

And I was that way for years, Hal. Yep. And this was most of us. It was like, you might as well use that time. But I’ve eventually learned that the more information that I put in that time. Number one, again, I’m getting over inspired and getting too much information. Plus, especially when you have conflicting information, it’s like one person says that you should do this way and then you listen to another podcast and you’re like, no, you should do it this way instead.

And now you’re left even more confused. But you know what? I also don’t have time to do. I also no longer had time to just think deeply about things, right? Mm. That this is why shower thoughts are a thing, because the shower is literally the only time where you have no access to anything other than your thoughts in a bar of soap, right?

It’s like, that’s it. Yep. So this is why you come up with good ideas in the shower because you’re allowing yourself time to do that. And the car I found has been the best for that. I don’t even turn the radio on anymore. It’s strange when people come into the car and they just see my habits of just. You know, raw dogging it in the car, as they might say.

But, oh my gosh, like so many new ideas and inspirations come that are from the things I’m already focused on, not new things that are now crowding my thoughts, crowding my brain because no longer is the smartest kid in the class who has straight A’s the successful kid anymore. It is the one in fact who has better communication skills, who has more empathy for people who works really well on a team.

These are the personal skills that are gonna be valuable in the future. The one who tells a great story, these are the things that will matter because AI is making everything just so available for everybody, and those of us who know more can’t possibly retain it as fast or gather it as fast as as AI could, and sadly, it’s here. So we have to figure out what’s valuable. What’s valuable now is how quickly can you learn new things. That’s gonna be the skill of the future, is how quickly can you adapt to the fast changing world around us.

Hal Elrod: And how quickly can you implement, right? That’s what I got from Lean Learning so far, is it’s how quickly can you learn the minimum amount of information, knowledge, or strategy that is needed for you to do the thing that will generate the result in your life.

I always say like, it only takes not just one book to change your life. It takes one page. In one book to change your life.

Pat Flynn: Right. And you know, we hear a lot from other very smart people who say like, oh, you know, you need 10,000 hours to be, you know, an expert at something or master, which may be true, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get value and find joy in literally our number one. It doesn’t mean that you can’t learn something and adjust and discover more about who you are and what lights you up in our number one. And so the learning happens when you start doing. That’s the sort of fun part about this, is you can actually start to see results faster and start to figure out what doesn’t work faster, the sooner you do it. Now, once you get going, there are ways to speed things up and and amplify that process and probably take less than 10,000 hours to master something, which I talk about in the book as well. But in the beginning it’s about A, finding what matters to you and finding that next step.

Finding one resource to help you with that and just leaning into that for a period of time until you can then reassess whether or not you wanna continue or not. That. And, and you may have not gotten to this chapter yet, but I know that you embody this, it’s the importance of having a support system around you.

Yeah. Right. From the emotional support from friends and family and how important that is to the colleagues and peers that you have who are going through the same process with you so that you can share results with each other, so you can inspire each other, so you can learn from each other’s mistakes to the literal mentors in your life who are there to take you under their wing, these three kinds of what I call champions. Again, people who will champion you, people who will be happy that you are successful. We need to find more people like that in our life because a lot of times on the surface, people will almost feel jealous or want to pull you back down because we live in a bucket of crabs.

Meaning there’s this metaphor that we live in this world where the higher you try to climb, the more people will try to tear you down. Because if you have a bucket of crabs. No crabs will leave because as soon as one tries to climb out the others pull ’em back down. Yeah. And that’s unfortunately the world we live in.

So surrounding yourself with the right people who are there to want to see you succeed and for you to want them to succeed as well, is what makes the world go round and what makes it a more joyous place to live.

Hal Elrod: How do you find those people, Pat?

Pat Flynn: So number one, let’s start at the level of emotional support, because again, I say that with regards to whatever it is that you’re interested in, they might not know what you’re interested in or even the language of that, right?

Like when I started my business, a lot of my friends and family were like, what are you doing? I don’t understand this world, but I’m there for you. I’m there to support you. Unfortunately, not everybody has that emotional support from friends or family because you know, they might again, not believe in what, what it is that you’re trying to do or achieve.

Hal Elrod: Or they might be a crab.

Pat Flynn: Right, right, exactly. And in your own family. And so number one, it’s hard. But try not to talk about what it is that you’re doing in front of those people. ’cause all they’re gonna do is tear you down. It’s not you, it’s them. And it’s a reflection of who they are and how maybe insecure they feel about the choices they’ve made in their life.

So that’s really important to understand. But number two, go find people in your community or online, especially in communities like the Miracle Morning community. There are people who will be there to support each other because you’re on this journey. Together and those people who may start out as peers and colleagues that are more surface level can become lifelong friends and deep relationships that, you know, can bring you so much joy and value in life.

And like I said, communities or, or live events, online events, there are people out there and pools of people in these communities in the online world especially where. Like-minded people are trying to achieve something who are there to support one another and go in there and just join the conversations.

You’ll eventually find people who you will vibe with in there, and then from peers and colleagues to virtual mentors or personal mentors, this is where you can kind of get involved in deeper ways. Sometimes it might require you investing in something like a program or something that they might have to, to get some coaching or mentoring from, or it just might require you to ask or participate and be a star student, if you will, and they will recognize you for that. I’ve recognized so many of my own students as far as, wow, this person’s doing incredible work. Let me, let me take them under my wing and see how else I can help them. Just like I know you have done with some of your Miracle Morning students as well.

Yeah, and it’s, it’s something that a lot of us people who are teaching want to see. We wanna see students succeed and we want to amplify that success because it then brings other people into those communities too. So you can find mentors by being a star student. So those are just a few ways that you can find those people, but they’re out there, but they’re not gonna happen if you just kind of wait for them.

And I say that as an introvert as well. It’s a very difficult, but the reward is so great when you find those people, it doesn’t mean you have to find hundreds of people. It could just be one buddy in the process that could change your life because you’re helping each other on that day that you don’t wanna wake up and do your meditation.

They’re gonna text you in the morning to make sure that you’re gonna do it with them. And that’s such a wonderful thing. And I do see a world with now all the tech, all the ai, all the sort of like depersonalization of everything. I think the connection to other real human beings is gonna be even more important in the future, but more than any other time really in the world.

And that’s what’s gonna be the difference between those who, yes, have access to the same information and are unhappy, but access to that same information, but adding that human element. That’s what makes life fulfilling.

Hal Elrod: Yeah. No, I think the pendulum is swinging. Before it was all community. It was just us spending time with people and technology was new and emerging, and it could give us advantages.

And now it’s like there’s more tech than you can consume, than you can utilize, but relationships are more scarce. And I know for me, having, My wife and, and my friends and community like that, that emotional support is crucial. And then with mentoring, I, I’ve always said like, because I know people get intimidated with like, oh, I don’t know where to go for a mentor.

I always say like, get the book to me, every book that I read is a mentor. Right. And, and I know it’s not an interactive mentor where I can’t ask, you know, I’m not asking you questions in the book, but you spent years crafting like the perfect way to explain the information and hold somebody’s hand through it.

So to me it’s like I’m being mentored by Pat Flynn as I’m reading Lean Learning, which I love.

Pat Flynn: Right. And so imagine a book as a mentor, you’re learning from this person in all their years and wisdom, like you said. Yep. And imagine. Having a mentor who teaches you all this stuff, and then you just carry on.

You just do the same things that you normally do. That’s what most of us do when we read books. Yeah, we absorb it, we learn, and it’s a false sense of productivity. It feels good to consume again, because we’re conditioned to believe that the more we have, the better off we’ll be. But the truth is those who are better off are the ones who are taking action and learning and making mistakes, right?

Mistakes aren’t there to derail you. They actually create the guardrails that you can now move forward and in between. So if that’s the case, then why are we sitting with a mentor for however many hours it takes to read a book and then doing one or two things? Like you said, it just takes one or two pages.

And what’s nice about your book especially, and the way that I built Lean Learning as well in that book is you can do it as you read along. You know you’re seeing results as you go. I remember doing my Savers for the first time, how, and like that. Same day on day one, I was already experiencing something that I hadn’t before and then adding on now the community element, other people who were doing it alongside me, kept me going, and then you, the mentor, stepping in and sharing in the community and keeping us, you know, motivated.

It was just a perfect formula and there’s no surprise why the book is done so well, so I’ve modeled a lot of sort of this on you and Miracle Morning ’cause it has changed lives and that’s my goal here with Lean Learning as well.

Hal Elrod: Well I think you nailed it. What I love about it, you know, you mentioned we learn a lot and we don’t do anything with what we learn.

And I think that’s what’s cool about this book is that you’re teaching people, it’s almost like, it reminds me of the whole, the sharpening, the saw analogy, right? Where the, the two, the young guy’s cutting down the tree and he’s chopping, chopping, chopping. He’s going fast, he’s going hard. And then the older man, the wiser man keeps stopping to sharpen his saw.

And the younger man’s looking over going, dude, what are you, I’m, I’m crushing you. What are you doing? And in the end, the older man wins. And to me it’s like, for those of us, if you’re listening and you’re like. I’m not where I wanna be. I read the books. I listen to the podcast. I’m not where I wanna be. To me, it’s like you’re that young man swinging that ax over and over and over and over and over, wondering, why is this thing feel so dull?

Why am I not getting the results? This book is like, No, no. You’re sharpening your saw as you read it and then it, you’re actually going back and chopping the tree as you read it, and then you’re coming back and you’re sharpening the saw and then like it’s happening while you’re reading the book. And I thought about it like this book as a mentor is in so many ways far more effective because the other books you’re teaching you what to do.

This is teaching you how to learn what you need to learn to do, what you need to do, that you then apply to all the other aspects of your life. That’s what came up for me.

Pat Flynn: I love it. Hal, I love it. That’s a perfect analogy.

Hal Elrod: You mentioned mastery a couple of minutes ago and the, the whole 10,000 hour rule, but in this book you talked about a concept called micro mastery. Talk about that.

Pat Flynn: Yeah. So micro mastery is a way to speed run your skill acquisition to become the master faster. So imagine you are a conductor of an orchestra or a band, right?

One way to get better is to just have the band continue to play the same song over and over and over again. Start to finish every single time, and yeah, every time you do it and you get those reps in, it gets better and better. But the way to fast forward that success is to find the parts within that that need a little help hone in on it for a certain period of time.

Like the Violas, they have this run in measure 30 that is very difficult, so, okay. Hey orchestra. Let’s, let’s pause for a moment and let’s focus on the Violas for the next five minutes and let’s just work on this two bar measure to be able to kind of master this little run that is a little difficult. So let’s do that.

Okay. Now let’s do one viola at a time to kind of, you know, hone in on it. This is what you’re learning can be like, I did this when, and I actually got inspired by a runner friend of mine. He’s an ultra marathon runner. You know, he runs like 50 miles a day or something crazy like that. I don’t know how that’s possible, but what he does to get better, ’cause he trains and he wants to be the best is he will hyper focus on one little aspect of running. Yeah, for like a two to four week period every time. So when he was teaching me this, he was like, okay, so for example, for two weeks, what he did was he focused on just how his heel landed on the ground and how he sprung on each step so that he could hyper focus on the best stride that would then be the stride that he would use and then move forward with. And as he learned, like another thing, so he got to the point where he hired a camera crew to slow motion record himself, run so he could see how his foot landed on the ground with different shoes and you know, different actions, different angles of trajectory, whatever. Like it’s, it was beyond my understanding, but he was able to find a stride that worked for him.

And of course, that one little incremental improvement stacked over 50 miles. It’s gonna save him so much. And so then for the next couple weeks, he focused on just his breathing and he actually like used tape to put over his mouth so he could just breathe through his nose and sort of like do what I like to call a force function to force that, to be able to learn it and then embody that.

And then now he’s this like world class runner, which is really cool. I did the same thing when I learned how to speak on stage. Micro mastered my way into public speaking. So number one, there are many things to understand when you’re public speaking, right? The slides the hook in the beginning. How do you close the call to action?

The storytelling, the what do you do with your hands? Where do you stand on stage? The, what’s the tone of your voice? If you were to, again, study all of that upfront. You would be overwhelmed, you’d be absolutely overwhelmed and, and mostly feel like that you would never be good at this. But what if you picked one thing at a time, perhaps maybe the highest leverage thing or the first domino that can knock over the rest in, in the world of public speaking, it’s storytelling.

If you tell a good story, none of that other stuff is really as important. However, if you wanna be a master, you focus on storytelling and what that means is now I’m gonna read about just storytelling. I’m gonna get books on just storytelling. I’m going to tell stories at dinner with these new concepts in mind.

I’m going to watch Ted Talk, but I’m only gonna watch the opening story so I can learn how they kind of hook me in. And I’m gonna master that for four weeks and then, then put that into my next talk. Okay, cool. The next talk after that, I’m going to focus on just what do I do with my hands. So I’m gonna watch a hundred TED Talks, but I’m not gonna watch ’em all the way through.

I’m just gonna watch them and go in the middle and just see what they do with their hands so I can understand like, how are they using their hands to emphasize their points and to make people. Feel like these big points are bigger, or these small points are more vulnerable, these kinds of things that you could pick up.

And all along the way, you are stacking these skills on top of each other to get masterful much faster. Right? And it’s just such a beautiful way to approach things because you do it not forever. You focus and hyperfocus on these small things that then embody you, your now style of doing it, and then you can kind of learn the next component of it, right?

The same thing happens with writing. Same thing happens with skateboarders. Like whatever it might be, right? If I’m a skateboarder and I’m trying to learn how to skateboard, I’m not gonna try to learn all the tricks on day one. Let me learn how to Ollie first, because a lot of other tricks are based on the Ollie.

So let me master this. Let me watch videos on this. Let me maybe hire a coach or a mentor. You know, the, the 16-year-old kid down the block who’s, who’s crushing it with his skateboard. I’m gonna pay him a hundred bucks for two weeks to work with me, to get me to Ollie. And that’s all I’m gonna focus on.

’cause then off the Ollie, I can now do a kick flip. I can now, you know, grind a rail, whatever it might be. Right? So micro master is the way. Mastery in a much, you know, it’s even fun too. It’s just go, okay, for the month of September, yeah, this is the one thing I’m gonna focus on. I’m gonna nail it and then I know I’m gonna nail something else on in October.

Right. It’s so, it’s such a fun way to compartmentalize your learning so it doesn’t, again, feel overwhelming and finding the right resources at the right time for that component is, is is much easier. ’cause guess what? Those resources are there. There is information about literally everything. Yeah. Right now.

And this, this is why you don’t need to worry about, oh, I need to get it now because I might not come across it later. By the time you need it, it will probably be even more updated and better. So focus on the now. Micro mastery. That’s the way.

Hal Elrod: I love Micro Mastery as a concept. I, to your point, it’s, it’s fun.

It, it’s not overwhelming, right? It’s the opposite of overwhelming. Right? It’s, it’s the one you’re choosing. The one thing right now that I’m gonna focus on, but what I love about it is not only is it not overwhelming, it creates confidence and momentum because you focus on that one thing, how do I open a speech, right?

So you just watch the first two minutes of 50 different speeches. You’re like, oh, I like the way they opened that one. Oh, I can borrow that from that one. Okay, here’s a commonality I’m seeing between all of them. And then you go, wow, I feel really competent at opening a speech, which is arguably one of, you know, opening and closing a speech are the two most important parts, right?

So, and then you have confidence that I nailed this, I mastered this one little thing, and then now you have momentum. Cool. Let’s go. What’s next? So I love, it’s one of my favorite concepts from the book, another concept that you just, you mentioned it very subtly again, a couple of minutes ago. Force functions.

You said force functions, but I know in the book you called them voluntary, voluntary force functions. Can you share what that is? If you have a personal example to, to bring it home?

Pat Flynn: I’d love that, for sure. Yeah. So a force function is, is not anything new, but it’s rather a situation that gets you to finally do something right.

It’s forcing you to do it. And for me, the reason I call it in the book a voluntary force function. It’s ’cause you want to purposefully do that now you gotta be sure that you’re not putting yourself in total danger. And I’m not saying like, quit your job if you wanna start a business. Although that is an example of this.

An involuntary one is one I experienced when I got laid off right. I was involuntarily put into a position of heightened pressure to then make decisions that we’re life changing. For me to start a business and to go down that route of entrepreneurship wouldn’t have happened if I had had not gotten laid off, which is really interesting to think about, but a voluntary force function.

There is an example of this and, and in fact, Tim Ferris is a really good example of this. He wrote about a, a, a bit, didn’t call it that, but it was in his book, the Four Hour Work Week. He also had a show on Apple tv, which was essentially him putting himself in situations to learn quickly. So for example, and then I’ll tell you a personal one, Tim, for one episode of this show, and I can’t even remember the name of the show, but I remember specifically one of the episodes because he was trying to learn how to speak Tagalog, which is the Filipino language.

I’m half Filipino myself, so I was very interested in this. My wife and I watched this episode and to help himself, what he did was he booked an interview with a Filipino news station in about a couple months. Nice. Yep. So that’s the voluntary force function. He volunteered to do something that was going to force him to learn how to speak Tagalog.

Now could he learn and be completely fluent? Within two months. No. But he could learn just exactly what he needed to know to hopefully hold himself in a conversation well enough. And that’s exactly what he did. Another thing he did was he moved in with a Filipino family for a couple weeks where they spoke nothing, but tagalog. So he again, put himself in a situation to have to learn. And I remember even when I was trying to learn Japanese, I was trying to learn with Duolingo. I, I very much love Japanese culture. I was visiting Japan more since the Pokemon thing took off, and I wanted to learn how to speak the language.

So I was on Duolingo again, flash carding it. It was not sticking. However, I remember the first day there were certain words that I just learned because I was literally there and I had to absorb these words. Like with Japanese culture, being very, very respectful, being very grateful about things. I learned how to say, finally, certain words that were important in that world, like arigato gozaimasu, which is thank you very much, but in a more polite way.

And I just couldn’t remember it when there was no context, when it was not being actually implemented. But when I was there, I learned all these words and many more in the moment. And that was, again, the voluntary force function for me, going back to speaking, learning how to speak combined with micro mastery.

But the idea that I actually was deathly afraid of speaking before I did my first talk, but it was my buddy Philip Taylor, who runs an event called FinCon who said, pat, I, I really need your help. I would love for you to speak on stage at my first event. And as reluctant as I was, as much as I was deathly afraid of it, I wanted to help a friend.

And I knew that by saying yes, by voluntarily putting myself in this situation, that I would finally get up off my butt and start learning, but not learn everything ’cause I didn’t have the time sure. But learn the right things at the right time that I needed. So when I said yes to that. Number one, after I kind of was done sweating bullets, because again, I was, I was a little bit nervous about it.

I went to some mentors who were speakers and I said, if there was one resource to learn how to speak better more quickly, where would you go? A couple of them said, just watch, you know, TED Talks. Okay, cool Ted Talks. That makes sense. One of them said, go check out a book by Dale Carnegie called Stand and Deliver.

I was like, okay, that’s the one book I’m gonna read. There’s many other books. There’s Nancy Duarte’s Resonate and there’s so many others out there. But I mean, it’s just gonna focus on that one book. I’m gonna absorb it and put it into action. And my first talk was in 2011 and I’ve now since spoken on 350 plus different stages, and I’ve earned over seven figures as a speaker to give you an idea of like, again just getting started and putting yourself in a situation. Two, just get started. If you were trying to be a musician, imagine booking, or maybe even just telling your friends that you’re gonna be playing out in Central Park. If you’re from New York, like, Hey guys, I’m gonna be playing out in Central Park in two months.

Come watch me play. You’ve never picked up a guitar in your life. Yep. You’re gonna figure it out. You’re gonna do it. And what’s the worst that can happen? Well, you might embarrass yourself a little bit, but. What’s the best that can happen? You’re gonna start this new journey in your life that’s going to bring you so much joy and fulfillment.

Hal Elrod: Yeah, I love that. I, you know, committing publicly has been a strategy of mine for, you know, again, never, didn’t call it voluntary force function, but that’s what I’ve done. Like Miracle Morning, I had been working on that book for two and a half years, or two, I guess two years, and. I would’ve worked on it for the next 10 years, and 2012 started and I went, oh, wait a minute.

This year, December 12th, 2012 is going to be 12, 12, 12. You know, I, I think the next time this happens is probably, I don’t know, a hundred years or whatever. So I just, I just decided, even though my book wasn’t even close to halfway finished, I just announced publicly. Hey guys, the Miracle Morning Book will officially be out on December 12th, 2012.

12, 12, 12. Mark your calendar. And then I had to back into it. That was my voluntary force function. I had to figure it out and I was literally, I mean, I was writing it 12 hours a day the last few weeks up until the deadline, like I, but if I hadn’t have committed to that date publicly. I, I wouldn’t have done it, you know?

Same with my ultra marathon dude.

Pat Flynn: And that book has changed so many lives because of that. ’cause you selected that date and selecting a date is an important component of a voluntary force function like that. Yeah. But there’s another side of voluntary force functions, which is only allowing yourself access to the thing that you want to do.

And this isn’t always applicable, but let me give you an example. ’cause this is probably my most recent example. So I’m a big fisherman. I love to go fishing. And I always wanted to, this is freshwater fishing. I’ve always wanted to learn how to fish with a jig. A jig is a larger hook with like a skirt on it.

It’s an artificial lure. And the thing about a jig and why people want to use a jig is because. The bass that you can catch are so much bigger. Oh wow. And the strike, or that’s setting the hook is so much more fun because you have to really set it. Okay. And I’ve always wanted that. And so I would always tie on a jig when I go fishing out in the boat and I’d bring a bunch of other rods with a bunch of other baits and I’d start with a jig ’cause I wanted to learn it.

And after 30 minutes without getting a bite, I would always tell myself, you know what, I guess I’m just not cut out for this. I’m not good at a jig, so let me go back to old reliable. And I would just throw my drop shot rig and I would catch fish. It would almost like. It would almost validate that I was like not good at jigging and I was good at the other thing, so why?

Why continue jigging? But I really wanted to learn how to do it. So one day I went on out on the boat, and this was about a year ago, and I brought nothing but jigs. Nice. I brought two rods, both had jigs tied on, and I brought my tackle box. Only jigs. Literally the only thing I could do was jig fish. And so after 30 minutes, again.

No bites. My mind was like, okay, I’m gonna go back to, oh, wait, I, I can’t, can’t. So I’m just gonna keep casting. Several hours go by, but you know what I’m learning. I’m casting a little bit better. I’m trying different finessing with my rod tip and all these other things, and eventually I got a bite and I was like, oh my gosh, this is incredible.

I didn’t catch my first bite, but it was something that I didn’t think was possible. That is now possible because I forced myself to just stick with the jig. Eventually, at the end of the day, I picked up two bass. I actually landed two bass. Wow. And they were bigger than I normally catch, and that is now my go-to bait, and I’ve now since caught my personal best with a jig recently, a 5.12 pound bass.

Everything’s catch and release. Anyway, but it was so much fun, and again, it wouldn’t have happened. If I allowed myself to fall into older habits because there was literally no choice.

Hal Elrod: Yeah. To me, voluntary force function is like, how do you overcome fear? How do you manufacture courage? That’s what I would call it.

Right? Like you manufacture courage to do the thing you’re afraid of by forcing yourself to do it. Right. Because otherwise you might let the fear win and you might continue to, like you said, repeat those old patterns of, well, in the past, this is what I’ve done, so I’ll just keep doing what I’ve always done versus forcing that.

Obviously a lot of our listeners are Miracle Morning practitioners. I’d say the majority, so I’d love to know how can someone practicing the Miracle Morning apply Lean Learning principles to their morning routine?

Pat Flynn: Yeah. You know what I love about this question? You already tell people how to do this in the book, right?

It’s like if you don’t have a lot of time and you can’t spend 20 to 30 minutes per task, just do one minute. Let’s start small and get it done just to get the motions going. You already in your book teach people how to do this, and so hopefully. People are doing that. But the other thing about this is to find support.

So get that community around you to kind of do it together, whether it’s family, friends, or other people in the online community. Do it together. That’s a very important component of this. And here’s my favorite thing that you can do to embody what it is that you’re learning from Hal. Teach other people about the Miracle Morning, the very last chapter, I know you probably haven’t gotten into it yet, but the very last chapter in the book, Hal, is about learning by leading. And an example of this, I had a friend of mine recently who was learning how to play the ukulele. He lives in Hawaii, so of course that’s like where the birth of the ukulele and there’s all these amazing artists there who, who teach it.

And so he was paying a lot of money to a person who was teaching ukulele. He was learning all the chords. He had done this for a few weeks and was, you know, learning how to strum and do some basic chords. He told me that he was so surprised when the instructor, this world class ukulele instructor, told him to teach ukulele to his son, and his first thought was, wait, I’m the one learning.

You’re teaching me and you’re this master. I like, I only know a few chords, like I’m not ready to teach yet. But the instructor insisted and through teaching his son. He was able to internalize because he had to then understand it enough to then share it, that he started to internalize these chords and it just became second nature to him because he was, again, almost in a way, like a voluntary force function, if you will.

He was forced to figure it out in a way that would be easy for a 8-year-old to understand. And then the joy that the 8-year-old started experiencing when he could strum a few chords. Was then energy brought back to him to then go learn even more from this world class instructor. So what an amazing power move by the instructor to say, Hey, go teach.

That’s how you learn. Yeah. And so for any of the Miracle Mourning practitioners out there, share and maybe even teach others around you, you know, spread the gospel of how amazing the Miracle Morning is and you know, don’t force it. And you know, like some people might not be about it, but. When you teach it to others, you will.

That’s how I, because I have the podcast. The podcast has been an amazing thing for me to absorb from others and then teach totally and therefore absorb it for myself. That’s how I’ve been able to memorize the savers and everything for all these years now, because I was teaching it as well on your behalf and feeding people to the book, which again, I’m just grateful to have been able to be a part of that movement with you. Teach.

That’s the most amazing thing you can do, and here’s the thing most people will say, like the ukulele student. I’m not ready to teach yet. I’m still learning. No, that’s the best time to teach because the truth is you can be even more valuable to somebody having just gone through a process and learning it yourself.

You are more relatable in that way. I would much rather learn from somebody who’s just one or two steps ahead of something versus like the person in the podium at some university who’s 40 years removed from what it’s actually like on the field to do something. Right. So teach it.

Hal Elrod: I learned that once. You’re best qualified to teach the person that you once were. I’m sure you’ve heard that everybody. And so if you’re on step two, you’re now qualified to teach step one, two. Someone that’s on step zero, right? You don’t have to be on step 10 or be the master, and that’s for me. Yeah. The podcast. I, you know, admitting this to the podcast listeners, right?

I’m not a master of everything I teach. I often will learn something and immediately turn around and teach it. I remember going to Brendan Burchard event like. 10 years ago, and I came back from Brendan Burchard’s event, and I immediately taught what I learned from Brendan on my podcast on the next step.

I took my notes, I synthesized them, and I taught it, right? Like I had just learned it days before, but now I’m teaching it. Well, now I understand it even more because a lot of us, like I’m a verbal processor. So as I’m talking through it, other ideas and thoughts, and I’m relating it to stories and personal examples, right?

So I love that concept as well.

Pat Flynn: I’m say this book writing, this book a, a force function ’cause I had a date that a manuscript was due, B teaching this stuff that I had always done, but never, like you said, synthesized or processed in a way that would’ve been easy to understand because I didn’t fully understand it myself.

It was by having this book come out that required me to now put it into frameworks to give things certain names to then understand it. So that I can help others, which has now made me understand it even more and actually define it more in my own life. So a hundred percent, I think that’s great. And you know, there’s a lot of concepts in the book, obviously, for anybody.

Anybody who’s doing Lean Learning wants to be a better person, a better version of themselves. And what this does is it helps you get rid of all the extra noise out there that isn’t going to help you be your best self and sort of lean out that, right? Like a diet, you’re leaning out, but then you lean into the things, you get deeper into the things that matter most.

That’s what this book will do for you. And I think again, it’s a perfect companion guide or book for Miracle Morning.

Hal Elrod: Where can people find the book and where can they connect with you, Pat?

Pat Flynn: You could find it anywhere. Books are sold. I mean, it’s gonna be on Amazon. Of course, Barnes and Noble. My other books were self-published.

This is my first traditionally published book, so it’s like even a bigger force function for me. There’s more at stake, but it’s so exciting and I’m just so grateful for you how it’ll also be on Target and Barnes and Noble and and those kinds of things too, which is just wild to me. But you know, again, Miracle Morning has been so inspirational.

This sort of message that’s kind of. Easy to understand on the surface, but has levels of depth to it that will change people’s lives. The idea of Lean Learning is not complicated. It’s in fact very easy to understand, right? But it is when you go deeper into the things that matter to you most by clearing out all this extra noise that we’re now living with that we’ve never had before.

When you learn how to learn faster, you’ll become more valuable, but you will also just have more fun. Every time I see anything, you’re up to how you’re always having so much fun and you embody really the message of, of Lean Learning in such a a, a grand way as well. So thank you again for allowing me to share it here.

Just anybody who picks up the book, I’m so grateful for you and the movement that we’re trying to create here.

Hal Elrod: I think it’s so important. I think that when I read just the introduction of the book, I mean, I got excited when I started to read, oh, what this book is about sounds perfect for me. But when I read the introduction, I literally, and you’ve been there before, I’m sure listeners, Pat, you read like, and you know, you’re like, oh, this is what I need in my life right now. And for me, I immediately felt a sense of relief. Like I’ve been feeling overwhelmed for as long as I can remember, and I feel like this book is the answer to not only stop feeling overwhelmed, but to actually make massive progress in the areas of my life that matter most while not feeling overwhelmed, I’m like, this is win, win, win. I, I’m, I’m totally in, so I’m grateful you wrote this book, man.

Pat Flynn: Thank you. If I may have a couple more minutes with you. Hmm. What is one inspiration or learning that you’re trying to focus on right now?

Of all the things that, that we’re kind of on your mind, what, what’s maybe one thing that you’re wanting to focus on a little bit more deeply?

Hal Elrod: You know, for me there’s a contradiction between, I’m always like. And you might deal with this at all, but it’s like, dad is my number one priority, so I’m like, and husband.

So I go, I, I need to read the dad book and the husband book, and there’s a book for just being a dad to daughters that I’m reading. And there’s a book for just being a dad to son that I’m reading, right? But then I’m like, I also need to grow the business. So I’ve got this business book, you know? So that for me, that’s a challenge is like trying to divide my time and attention between being the best husband and father that I can be, and then actually scaling my business.

Pat Flynn: There’s a section in the book about where to put your time and how to prioritize that, which we’re not gonna get into now, but like it perfectly speaks to that. So when you get to that part in the book, I think it’s gonna unlock a lot of great things for you. And I think that’s not an uncommon thing to feel as well.

You wanna be an an amazing father and a husband and, and you are, but you wanna get better. And I do too. Imagine. Even just one concept from each of those books being put into action tomorrow, like you could already start to see some results from that. You know, imagine on the opposite side, spending your whole life reading these books and trying to understand more about being an amazing husband and an amazing father, and all of a sudden your kids are leaving the house ’cause they’re going to college.

Hal Elrod: That’s right.

Pat Flynn: You have to make action happen now because we don’t have unlimited amounts of time, we have now unlimited access to information. We have to know how to deal with it.

Hal Elrod: Well said brother. Well, everybody listening, the book is Lean Learning How to Achieve More by Learning Less by my good friend Pat Flynn.

Or if you’re his mom, you can call him Patrick. I love at the top of the book it says, number one, learn everything crossed out. Number two, get overwhelmed, crossed out. Number three. Give up, crossed out. And the subtitle is Your Solution, how To Achieve More By Learning Less. The book is Lean Learning. Get It Where Books Are Sold.

And Pat, I love you. I appreciate you, brother. I’m so grateful for you coming on the podcast today.

Pat Flynn: I love too, Hal. Thank you so much, man.

Hal, thank you so much from the bottom of my heart for allowing me to use that audio file from your show here on this podcast to better portray Lean Learning through an outsider’s perspective.

And I just appreciate you so much and I appreciate you, the listener for listening through as well. And I highly recommend you check out Hal’s podcast as well as his book. The Miracle Morning. There is now an expanded edition with 70 additional pages of new insights some more updated science, brand, new stories of people who have lived the Miracle Morning.

And I have lived it myself. I’ve practiced it for years and it’s absolutely been game changing and I highly recommend you check it out too. Again, you can check that out wherever books are sold. I actually saw it recently today at Barnes and Noble. It’s it’s a beautiful cover and thank you. For checking out Lean Learning as well.

The book at this point in time has now been out for a little over a week. I don’t know at the time of this recording how well it’s done, if it’s made a list or not. Again, that’s not important. Not as important as you taking action and learning as you go. So cheers. Thank you so much and check out Lean Learning and Miracle Morning wherever books are sold.

I appreciate you and once again, Hal, thank you so much from the bottom of my heart. I appreciate you my friend. Thanks everybody.