AMY PORTERFIELD: Hey there, welcome back to another episode of The Online Marketing Made Easy Podcast. I’m your host, Amy Porterfield. I’m so very, very delighted that you’ve tuned in.
I’m going to start this episode before we bring on my special guest with a quick story. This story is one that I’ve heard Tony Robbins tell from stage many, many times. Although he is a master storyteller, I’m not going to tell it the way he tells it.
I’m going to abbreviate the story but it’s still worth telling so stay with me here. Tony tells this story of two brothers. There was a study done on these two boys because they ended up in foster care. A researcher followed them through foster care over the years.
The story goes that they had a really, really rough upbringing. They had an abusive father, a mother that was never there for them. They grew up really, really poor. They got into a lot of trouble, eventually leading to the father disappearing, the mother disappearing, and now they are in foster care.
The researcher followed them through the years into foster care and into adulthood when they were on their own. When they were around 40 the researcher sat down with each of the brothers individually.
One of the brothers was in and out of jail since foster care. He just could not get his life together. He really didn’t have much money or possessions to show for, he struggled to hold a job, he never got married. He really had a rough life out of foster care.
The other brother actually had an amazing life. He married a wonderful woman. They had two children. They lived in a really nice home in a good neighborhood. He had a solid job. He had money in the bank and things looked really good for him.
When the researcher sat down with each of the boys individually the researcher asked why each thought his life turned out this way. Both brothers gave the same answer. Both brothers said something along the lines of, “How couldn’t my life turn out like this? Look what I went through. Look what I’ve been through in foster care and with my dad and with my mom We lived in poverty. Of course my life would turn out this way.”
The brother who had it really hard and was in and out of jail after foster care felt his life turned out that way because that’s all he knew. He felt he didn’t even have a chance. The other brother didn’t ever want a life like that. He had to turn things around. He saw what it was like to live that way and he went in a different direction.
Both brothers had the same perspective, “How could my life not turn out this way?” Every time Tony told this story from stage it was like, “Oh my gosh, it’s so true.” The way you look at things and the decisions you make in terms of the direction you’re going to go in your life is so incredibly powerful.
Today, with my guest, we’re going to be talking about looking at your life and perspective in terms of what you’re going to do with what you’ve got.
My guest today is Patrick Bet-David. Let me give you a little glimpse into his life and then he is going to actually lay it all out for you in our interview. His family fled war- torn Iran when he was only ten years old. They lived in a refugee camp in Germany for two years before immigrating to the U.S.
His parents got a divorce. His mom returned to Iran. His dad worked in a 99¢ store. He was a welfare kid. He graduated from high school with a 1.8 GPA and to this day hasn’t graduated college. He racked up $50,000 in credit card debt by the time he was 21.
Now, at the age of 37, he is a multimillionaire. That’s pretty impressive. The guy went through a lot and today he’s incredibly successful. Not just in terms of what’s in his bank account, but when you hear from him you will realize he lives a very rich life, a very happy life, and inspiring life.
I wanted to bring Patrick on the show today because at one point or another in your entrepreneurial journey you are going to need a little shot of inspiration. You’re going to need an opportunity to get out of your head and really get yourself in motion.
That usually comes with being inspired. I love to get inspired by other people’s stories, what’s possible, what’s real, and different things they have gone through, struggles they have gone through, and obstacles; then, to see what happened when they came out the other end.
I love those stories and thought you might love them as well. I wanted to bring my guest on. He’s so funny. He’s so much fun to interview. He’s got great stories. Then at the end we’re going to give you little piece of content to help you with your social media marketing.
It’s not all inspiration. We’re actually going to get pretty tactical at the end as well. But I think my favorite part is just hearing his stories and how he shaped the life that he has today based on what he went through when he was young. The kid’s a hustler for sure. I can’t wait for you to hear his stories.
Let’s go ahead and dive in.
Amy: Patrick, thank you so very much for being on the show. I really appreciate it.
Patrick: It’s great to be on with you.
Amy: I absolutely love your story. Although we’re going to make this a mini training and get into all the details to teach something really valuable, before we get there I would love to introduce you to my audience. Will you talk a little bit about your story, where you got started, how you got to where you are today?
Patrick: Absolutely. Most definitely. I was born and raised in Iran in 1978. I’m a revolution baby. I was literally born three months before the revolution happened in Iran in the city of Tehran and on the capitol. Ten years later I was living there six weeks after Khomeini passed away June 3, 1989. We escaped Iran and went to Germany.
I lived at a refugee camp for about a year and a half and from Germany we came to the states. I lived in Glendale, California. I went to school in Glendale, California and had the most incredible GPA of 1.8. I was the typical bad boy troublemaker kid.
Right afterwards, instead of going to college, I went straight to the military. I was in the Army for a few years. I got out and wanted to be the next Middle Eastern Arnold Schwarzenegger. I was going to marry a Kennedy. I was going to be Mr. Olympia. I was going to be in the movies and I was going to be a very wealthy entrepreneur.
That was the plan.
Amy: I like it. You’ve got the voice for it, for sure.
Patrick: Obviously, things changed after coming out of the military. I met a girl who was working at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter and we would always go back and forth. She would always pick me up in these nice cars. I was amazed at the type of cars she had.
I asked her what she did and she told me she worked at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter. I didn’t have a college degree and wanted to get started with Morgan Stanley Dean Witter.
A real quick, funny story on how I got my job there, which is very interesting. My resume, Amy, had the following: Burger King, Bob’s Big Boy, Haagen Dazs, Army, Bally’s, and no four-year or two-year degree. Morgan Stanley’s minimum is a four-year degree.
Amy: Wait a second. How did that get you a job?
Patrick: You got it, you got it. This is fun. This is good stuff here. I knew my resume wouldn’t get me the job so I knew I had to get a little creative. I made a cover letter and took my favorite joke that I had and sent the joke in. At the bottom of the joke on the cover letter I said, “If you’re currently laughing after reading this joke that’s exactly how my clients are going to feel when they do business with me. They are going to fall in love with me.”
I told them if they wanted somebody like me as a part of their team they should hire me. I sent the letter to 100 different places. Back then we used to fax resumes. If you remember, we don’t fax these days.
Amy: Oh yeah, I remember the days.
Patrick: I got 30 call backs. Half of them were simply because they loved the joke. They were not interested in me as the product. The other half offered me interviews: Smith Barney, Morgan Stanley, Merrill, Schwab. It came down to three of them and I took the Morgan Stanley job and my career got started.
From there I went to Transamerica and in October 2009 I decided to start my own insurance agency with 66 agents based out of Northridge, California. Now 6 ½ years later, nearly 7 years later, we went from 66 agents to 2,200 agents in 41 states. We sell more insurance with AIG and Forester’s than any other company in North America and it’s growing pretty rapidly.
It’s an exciting time for us from where I was to where I’m at now.
Amy: Wow! That’s an incredible story. I love when people get jobs in really unconventional ways. I’m so glad you shared that as well. Really, you have a full-time gig. You’ve started this insurance business. It’s doing incredibly well.
But you also kind of have a side hustle. That’s not all you do, right?
Patrick: I don’t. I run the insurance company full-full time. I have a full-time life. I have three kids under the age of five. I have one that’s three months old. I have a two year old and a four year old. You can only imagine, my life is a startup, my company is a startup.
The social media presence and the content we’re creating with half a million entrepreneurs that follow us, whether it’s Facebook or YouTube or email or Twitter or all that, is another whole schedule with a commitment that I have to make to it.
Yes, I do this completely on the side. One of the reasons I do this is because the subject of entrepreneurship, to me, is extremely fascinating. When I was ten years old I was living in Germany. There was a girl at the refugee camp that was Czechoslovakian. Her name was Katarina. Her brother, Jan, became my best friend.
Everybody in this community was broke. No one had money. They were either from Russia, Albania, Poland, all of these places. Everyone was trying to get to the Promised Land, which is America.
Everybody wanted to play the new Super Nintendo game that was coming out with Super Mario Brothers. I’m ten years old. I don’t have any money. My parents got a divorce. My dad is in the U.S. and my mom was there and I had an older sister. I went to the local swimming pool. There was a massive place with four swimming pools and diving boards.
It was an amazing place. In Germany if you were to take German’s blood I bet half of it was going to be beer. I went there and asked the owner how I could make some money because I needed to buy the Super Nintendo. It 249 marks. He said he couldn’t hire anyone my age. I asked him how I could help him.
We agreed. There were beer bottles everywhere. I asked how much he would give me if I brought every one of the beer bottles back to him instead of him having to have a lot of people to clean the place up. I told him I would do it for him.
He said he would give me five finney (five pennies) per beer bottle. I said, “Perfect, I need 5,000 bottles.” It took me 30 days to get the 5,000 beer bottles and I went and bought the Super Mario Brothers. I was a rock star at the refugee camp because everybody wanted to play the Super Nintendo.
From there I realized entrepreneurship is the way to go. I was fascinated by that and now the world has become a very small place where we are more connected together than we were 15 years ago. I have this obsession with studying entrepreneurship. I’ve read 1,100 or 1,200 books on business.
I feel there is a need to share the content and enjoy doing it. Now it’s turned into something bigger than we initially thought it was going to be.
Amy: You definitely have a huge following on social media. You alluded a little bit to your social media fan following. It is so impressive. Tell me a little bit about why you think you’ve exploded in terms of building an audience so fast.
Patrick: That is such a great question. If you watch my first video you wouldn’t even want to associate yourself with me.
Amy: Same with me, I hear you.
Patrick: You know, you watch some of these first things we do and talk about. Initially when I first got started I was a lost soul with what I wanted to really talk about. I was all over the place. Eventually I made a decision to narrow down what I was speaking to subject wise to one specific subject.
It eventually came down to Pat, what do you love to talk about? The best way to gauge this, Amy, if I talk to you for one hour the odds are there is a word or topic or subject that you are going to bring up after an hour. If you talk to 20 different people it’s probably going to come up.
For some people it could be raising their kids and all they are talking about is the fact that their kids are going through XYZ. They love parenting. For some it could be sports. For some it could be books. For me it’s entrepreneurship.
So I just picked that one word and all we are going to talk about is entrepreneurship. We then got very focused in that word and started talking about that. The next thing you know we got better on the delivery and we started realizing what our specific strategy was that we could put together.
We chose one strategy and stuck to it. The results started showing.
Amy: I absolutely love that. I always say that I’m actually an entrepreneur that doesn’t have tons of ideas. Most entrepreneurs have tons of ideas coming to them. The next shiny object that comes, they are ready to go for it. But I tend to focus on just a few things really well. It kind of comes back to you focusing on entrepreneurship knowing it’s something you’re passionate about. You love to talk about it. You know there’s an audience for it.
You’ve done a great job just staying in that lane and I love it. You also make incredible videos. We’re going to get to the topic at hand today. I typically don’t take so long to get to it but you’re such an interesting guy.
These videos you’ve been creating…where did that even start? You said they haven’t always been so polished. They are good. So talk to me about that.
Patrick: Sure. The first one we did was Unlearn. That is the one that no one talks about because it’s not the best one. If you go online and type in Unlearned you will see the first video I did. It’s pretty much my story. It is a 24-minute video of my story. Where I went, how I came about being where I’m at right now.
The whole message was in order for us to get to where we want to get to. We’ve been conditioned with a certain mindset that’s not going to help us get to where we want to get. We need to unlearn it.
That was the first message. It didn’t go viral. It got some views. I don’t know how many views it has right now, maybe 40,000 on YouTube. Next, I saw a lot of motivational videos and every one of them was about how you can do it, go for it, this and that. It was a lot about the locker room motivational videos.
No one was really touching the emotional side of an entrepreneur. Everybody was talking more about the motivational side of being an entrepreneur, not the emotional side where half the time you may be going through a depression or anxiety attack or panic attack and no one knows about it because we have to be so positive on the outside and we have to be so optimistic. We can’t show hurt to our parents or even our spouse sometimes or a girlfriend or boyfriend, brother or sister because we are proving to them we can do it.
It can be a very lonely community. It can be a very lonely place in your mind that you can actually end up driving yourself insane if you think you’re the only person that’s going through this.
We decided to make a video called Life of an Entrepreneur in 90 Seconds. We posted it on YouTube first and I think in the first 24 hours it only got 2,500 views. We decided to put the same video on Facebook and learned something there.
The first title we put on YouTube was The Best Motivational Video For Entrepreneurs. It didn’t do well. But we went on Facebook on Halloween at 3:13 p.m. I uploaded the video directly to Facebook with the title, The Life of an Entrepreneur in 90 seconds.
It ended up getting five million views within 24 hours, zero boosts, zero advertising. I think right now it’s at 28.6 million views and that was the second one. The last one we did was Good Voice, Bad Voice.
Amy: That’s the one I just watched. It’s so hilarious but so true. Guys, I’m going to link to these videos in the show notes so you’ll be able to check them out. But talk a little bit about Good Voice, Bad Voice. This is real stuff. This is happening to all of us.
Patrick: I’m in the car and driving by myself. On one side I’m cursing my self out and on the other side I’m telling myself I can do this. Again, these are conversations that no one ever hears. If anyone heard these conversations they would tell us to go to a mental hospital if people actually heard what we are telling ourselves half the time.
I always feel we have those two voices. I asked the guys if we could really pull it off. Fortunately, with the media team I have full time with us, one of them worked on Wolverine and some of them worked on major, major movie projects in L.A. I gave them the challenge, “Can we do this?”
We had to have the whole team there and wrote out the script. After writing the script we had to get off script a little bit and add some fun factor to it. There is value and entertainment at the same time so it’s Negative Pat talking to Positive Pat trying to feed and see which one is going to actually win.
Adding the Playboy magazine to it with the cigar and the beer and Tony Robbins recording was all of the aspects that made it into what it is. That one ended up getting a million views because it’s a longer movie. It is 6 ½ minutes. It got a million views on Facebook.
We were happy about that one as well.
Amy: It’s really good. Recently, one of my assistants was telling me she heard a quote, “I never thought I was a bully until I listened to how I talk to myself.” I thought that was so good. A lot of entrepreneurs really do beat ourselves up about the whole journey we are on.
I think that video really hits home. I will definitely link to it. It is very entertaining but it is also very, very true. The quality of video is beyond anything I would ever create so I am glad you said you had some big shots working on that because it is pretty impressive.
Patrick: I appreciate that. I’ll make sure they know that when they listen to the podcast, they get the credit as well.
Amy: Definitely. Very cool. We are going to get to it, I promised we would talk about this and, specifically, we’re going to dive into four steps to turning distracted bystanders into raving buyers. This is something you’ve been able to do really well as you’ve grown your social media following.
Before we get into the four steps, talk to me a little bit about why you think this mini training is so valuable, especially right now with how people are behaving on social media.
Patrick: Time magazine came out and did a very, very interesting study. In 2001 our average attention span was 12 seconds. We are willing to give you 12 seconds to sell us before we move on.
Amy: That is so sad.
Patrick: Yeah, it’s absolutely sad. The attention span of a goldfish is nine seconds.
Amy: Oh no.
Patrick: You figure it was 12 seconds and this year is the first time ever in the history where the human attention span is now eight seconds…shorter than a goldfish. If you’ve ever seen the movie where Dory is the one that’s got the short attention span… Finding Dory. We are worse than Dory today. That’s pretty bad.
When you have eight seconds you’re dealing with you’ve got to make your point very, very quickly. If you don’t you’re losing your customer. There is a formula for it but there’s got to be…initial times of the lengthy intro, all that stuff, I feel it is a different time today.
It all depends on your audience. If your audience is the 14, 15, 16, 18, 20, 22, 25 year old, if you’re going after that it’s even shorter than that. If your audience is a millennial, maybe a little bit longer. If your audience is a boomer it is longer. They are more patient. But it also depends a lot on your audience. But it’s important to get to the point pretty quickly nowadays.
Amy: You’re saying that the average attention span is 12 seconds but we only have eight seconds? Where did we lose time there?
Patrick: It is social media. We have so many options now. We have so many choices now. Imagine, Amy, yourself as a woman. You were in high school. You have a boyfriend. The next thing you know 20 guys are asking you to prom. Your attention span is like, “Listen man, you’d better do your, you know, or else. I have options.”
Today I have Facebook. We have Twitter. We have YouTube. We have TV. We have Netflix. We have Apple TV. We have Amazon. We have EBay. We have so many distractions that if we don’t get to the point we are going to lose you on this.
Some people that are forgiving are the people that we’ve already converted. But not if you want new conversions. If your people have already converted then that’s a different story. They already know who you are. They believe in you. They love you. There’s a certain fan loyalty that we have. But if you want new conversions, you want to baptize new followers, then you’ve got to be a lot more quick about it.
Amy: Got ya. Okay. Walk us through the steps. Let’s start at the very top with Step #1.
Patrick: Step #1 would be very simple. It’s something that we do all the time, not knowingly, but you need to be a little bit more intentional about it, creating curiosity. There is nothing about it that’s difficult but curiosity is, I would say, a great salesman, a great speaker, a great communicator, great persuader, somebody that is very, very good at creating curiosity.
I will give you a couple of examples. I don’t know if you remember the movie Forgetting Sarah Marshall.
Amy: I do.
Patrick: My wife and I were in San Francisco. It is one of our favorite cities to go visit. We were in San Francisco and were by the Fisherman’s main spot.
Amy: Fisherman’s Wharf.
Patrick: Fisherman’s Wharf. We were about to go to Alcatraz. I see all of these billboards that said, “I hate Sarah Marshall.” It was in black and white. The billboard said, “I hate Sarah Marshall,” everywhere.
I said, “Oh my gosh. Somebody’s probably running for Mayor or something here and they hate this person.” What’s the first thing I do? The first thing I do is grab my phone, take it out and search, “Who is Sarah Marshall?”
Look how brilliant this marketing is. I typed in “Who is Sarah Marshall” and it comes up with the movie. I said, “Wait a minute, this cannot be a movie,” so then we had to go watch the movie. We watched the movie and it is a hilarious movie when you watch it. But it tells you they did a phenomenal job of marketing by using curiosity.
Another example I’ll give you is the basic no-no when it comes down to setting somebody up for a blind date. What is the worst thing you and I can do when we set up a friend on a blind date?
Amy: I don’t know. It’s been so long for me. What’s the worst part?
Patrick: You don’t want to tell them anything. We mess the whole thing up. Think about it. Let’s just say somebody asks the question and I say, “Amy, you’ve got to meet this guy. He’s somebody you’ve got to meet.” You ask me, “Pat, how tall is he?”
I tell you he’s 5’8” and you tell me he’s too short. Or if I say he’s 6’4” you tell me he’s too tall. I messed it up already for you. That could have been somebody that instead of saying, “Why don’t you just speak with him and see what happens. If you don’t like it hang up the call and move on. But just have a conversation with the guy and tell me if you like him.” Okay, it’s no problem.
I’m going to create curiosity instead of giving all the answers and everything to you. Maybe a little bit of a sneak peek may not be a bad idea but not to the point where I’m losing the sale. A lot of times a sales person who loses the sale gives way too much up front and there is nothing else for me to expect. I already got everything I wanted versus saving a little bit more instead of giving everything to you up front. So #1 would be creating curiosity.
Amy: Okay. I’m with you there, #2?
Patrick: Number 2 is very simple. Deliver on your promise. If you’re going to give me curiosity and tease me and seduce me, I’m totally okay with that. Just make sure you deliver on your promises. If you deliver on your promises I’m going to keep coming back to you.
Amy: This one is a big one for me. A lot of times I do webinars a lot. I’ve been on webinars where people are promising all these great things I’m going to learn and it feels like a big sales pitch. You have lost me at that point. I don’t want to look at anymore of your stuff. You do not have my attention nor will you get it back.
That’s how ruthless I think so many of us have become. Like you said, we’ve got a lot of dates to the prom now. We’ve got a lot of options out there. Even though it’s simple to deliver on your promise I don’t know if everyone is really taking that to heard.
Patrick: No, they’re not. They’re not. Absolutely. By the way, that’s why you’re Amy Porterfield.
Amy: Aww.
Patrick: That’s why you have a loyal following. You and I were talking before we started where Rebecca, our friend, thinks the world of you. Why is that? Because you are delivering on your promises. I call it the be-back customers.
Your best customers are the be-back customers. I think a lot of times we always need to be on the offensive getting new customers. We always need to be in that world because it’s just an evolution. There’s an evolving phase of sales. But there’s nothing more powerful than be-back customers. Nothing more.
Be-back customers typically bring the most referrals to you if you take care of them. If somebody doesn’t do well on their delivery and they don’t deliver on their promises they are going to lose a lot of customers, a lot of customers.
Amy: Right. Definitely.
Patrick: Number three is, again, very simple. I’m a big fan of a step-by-step process, providing a step-by-step instruction so that people can take action on what you present. For instance, I can go out there and motivate you for three hours. Got it. Awesome. Then what?
I remember one time one of my mentors, who ended up being one of the biggest pastors in Southern California, he ran a church of 15,000 members. John Wooden was passing away so I went and visited him at Ronald Reagan Hospital the night when John Wooden passed away. We were downstairs.
There were a bunch of UCL players showing up: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bill Walton and all of these people who looked at him as a father figure. He died at 99 years old. We were sitting there and were talking. He was John Wooden’s last pastor.
He said, “You know, I’m going to tell you a story here about one of the things I learned a long time ago.” I asked him what it was and he said, “I remember I was a kid and I was about to be a pastor.” His father was a pastor and his grandfather was a pastor. All of his brothers are pastors. All of his uncles are pastors. This is a guy from Oklahoma, a good boy that’s done everything right.
He goes to this place in Kansas. It is a church and it was his first one. They brought him out to put him as a senior pastor and he was giving a talk. He had been preparing for it for two months and delivered the speech.
He came off so proud, as if he had delivered the most exciting speech. He said he went to the pastor before him that he was taking over the spot for, the guy that recruited him, and he said, “What do you think? Were you proud of my message.”
He told him it was the worst message of all time.
Amy: What?
Patrick: He asked, “How could you say that?” He said it was terrible and asked what he thought the purpose of talking for 50 minutes. What is the purpose? One he didn’t give any action. He didn’t give any step by step. He didn’t tell anyone to go read a certain thing. He didn’t tell them to do anything. He didn’t baptize anybody and he asked, “What do you think you did?”
It’s as if he talked for 50 minutes with no activity. That’s a terrible speech. You’re not going to build a big church like that. He asked, “What do you think you are doing?”
He said because that person was so tough on him he realized a sermon means nothing without any action items at the end.
Amy: Okay, amen to that. I love this message because you’re right. It’s so simple but it’s so overlooked. A lot of these things you’re sharing with us are very much overlooked. Let’s put it in the context of social media, especially grabbing people’s attention within eight seconds. When you get on Facebook Live, have you been using Facebook Live yet?
Patrick: I do, yes, absolutely.
Amy: You get on Facebook Live and I have been guilty of this so this is a good lesson for me as well. We can get on there and teach something. I love the step by step but if we don’t end it with telling them what to do next, what’s their next step, what’s the call to action, whether it means to check out a book or video or go do this or that, I feel we are really doing a disservice to those that sat there and watched us teach whatever it is we’re teaching.
Patrick: And not only that, the people that follow, the real ones that you really want them to follow you, they don’t end up following you. The format I’ll use on a Facebook Live will be that I typically like to choose a word.
I will choose a word. It could be overthinking; #2 could be a book I’m going to recommend at the end about overthinking; then, #3 could be that I am going to tell them to follow me on Snapchat because Snapchat is where I want them to follow me next and message me to tell me what they got or that they bought the book.
Amy: I like that.
Patrick: Message me and put a picture that you bought the book. There is always a 1, 2, 3; 1,2, 3; 1, 2, 3.
Amy: That’s a great formula. A lot of people, speaking of Facebook Live right now, or even InstaStories are not exactly sure what to do and they feel a little bit scattered. But I like your formula of 1, 2, 3 to really help them focus so that their message is really solid when they get it out there. That’s great.
Patrick: Absolutely.
Amy: I love that. So Step #3 is to provide step-by-step instruction but even more so than that, definitely call to action what they should do next and what their marching orders are. They really appreciate that if they trust and have an affinity with you and are looking to you as an expert. You need to be what they are looking for in terms of sending them on their way with something really good. Okay, #4?
Patrick: Number four, when I talk about this initially sometimes people can’t believe I said it but wonder what I mean by it. So, stay with me before you think something of this. We tend to love our name more than anybody else loves our name. We love our name, right?
I love Patrick Bet-David. People that work with me love their name. We are just very proud of our name and very proud of our heritage. We are very proud of our last name and all those things. When it comes down to marketing, and I’ll get to point #4, there are typically three things with marketing.
People ask me, “What should I do Patrick? Should I do blogs, what should I do?” I ask them if they like to write, speak, or if their face is something that should be on video. Which one do you want to do? Choose the one that you are the most like.
If you don’t like video too much and you don’t like your voice but you love to write then do that. But what do you like to do the most? When it comes down to Hollywood or marketing or any of that it is either your face, your voice, your message, or your last name. For instance, if my last name is Penn I am related to Sean Penn and that may help me out.
If my last name is Coppola or Spielberg I can use my last name to get into a lot of places. The Kennedys use their last name. The Vanderbilts use their last name. That benefits you.
If you look like Brad Pitt or you look like…
Amy: Ryan Gosling.
Patrick: Ryan Gosling. Absolutely. Everyone goes crazy over Ryan Gosling. That’s a good looking guy right there. I think Matthew McConaughey is an extremely good looking guy.
Amy: He’s a good looking dude.
Patrick: We’ve got to put him on that list too, right? If you look like Matthew McConaughey you’ve got to use your looks. You just have to put it to use. But if you’re somebody that’s trying to get your social media going, develop your voice. Truly, develop your voice.
What do I mean by voice? It can be voice/message. With voice/message I’m not talking about let me go take a voice class and go do-re-me-fa-sol. I’m not talking about a voice for singing. I’m talking about what’s your voice online? What is your voice linked to online?
Let me give you an example. If you and I were to say, “Who should I study online if I want to study the subject of leadership?” Somebody may say John Maxwell. Who should I study online if I want to study NLP or motivation? You probably want to study Tony Robbins.
How about social media? Somebody may say Gary Vaynerchuk. How about if I want to study somebody that’s in sales? You may say Grant Cardone or Tom Hopkins. The point is that any word we say typically links to somebody. Well, go choose something and be the voice and message for that specific word.
Spend more time on that and then eventually people will ask what this guy’s name is, “I like this guy. What’s this girl’s name? I like this girl.” The last thing they are paying attention to is your name. They’re not looking at your name.
They want to know if you’ve got value to bring them, if you’re going to provide value, you are going to make them think or make them laugh or entertain them. Are they going to like you? Are we going to get connected? Am I going to connect to you? Are you authentic? Do I feel like you are being yourself or are you trying to be somebody else? Then I’m going to say, “What is his name, let me search him, let me subscribe, let me follow him, let me buy his products, I like him.”
Develop your own voice and your own message and stick to it as much as possible.
Amy: So good. That is such a perfect ending to our four steps. I have one more question for you but to wrap up, we’re talking about how to grab your audience’s attention, especially when that attention span is so very short. We talked about creating curiosity, delivering on your promise (easier said than done sometimes), providing step by step and a call to action, and also developing your voice.
I love finding that one word and working toward you becoming the embodiment of that. People hear that word and they think of you. That’s incredibly powerful. I love that strategy 100%.
One thing that’s so valuable about you is that I feel you have tapped into the psyche of being an entrepreneur, the good, the bad, the ugly, all that good stuff. My audience has a lot of people who are just starting out doing the side hustle, they have full-time jobs, or they have maybe quit that full-time job and now they are out on their own and we know what comes with that.
There is a lot of doubt, a lot of issues with confidence. It’s really scary. At the same time it’s very, very exciting. Knowing all of that about my audience, what are your final words of wisdom? I typically don’t ask people this but I feel like you would have some good nuggets for us.
Patrick: This is as a rookie entrepreneur that’s gone or is potentially thinking about dropping their job and going full-time as an entrepreneur. First of all, you have to keep a couple of things in mind. Sometimes I think the biggest mistake people make when they go from having a job to being an entrepreneur is they become terrible bosses to themselves. They are not really that disciplined and working hard.
You do need to double your efforts as you are an entrepreneur. It’s going to be so exhilarating and so exciting. I can’t see myself doing anything else. The best explanation I’ll give to that is the difference between babysitting somebody else’s baby versus raising your own child. There’s a big difference in the two.
You can babysit someone’s child and then you can raise your own child. There is a different connection to the child that you are going to have than somebody else you babysit.
As far as an entrepreneur goes, look, I’m not somebody that if you go and survey the 200 kids that went to high school with me and asked them, honestly, what did you think Pat was going to be growing up?
The thing they would have told you, you would have said there is no way in the world we’re talking about the same Patrick. We’re talking about the same Patrick. None of them thought Pat was going to be where he is today. My saving grace was never in my life had I ever finished a book.
I have never finished a book in my life until I started reading at 21 years old. I read like a maniac. Back then we didn’t have podcasts so I listened to audio tapes all the time. I never listened to the radio. I always had audio tapes. Nowadays cars are coming out with podcasts so that you can just plug in your favorite podcast of Amy Porterfield and constantly listen to it and constantly feed that to yourself and your mind.
I used to read biographies. I used to love reading biographies like Teddy Roosevelt or Oprah or some of these biographies you can read. I would think, “Oh my gosh. I think I have it rough. I haven’t gone through 1/10th of what this person has gone through.”
They overcame it so I can overcome it. Creating a very, very small community of people you connect with is very, very important. It is important that you talk to other people in a small community.
The last one I will add to and then turn it over to you is to be very careful who you take advice from. I’ll tell you what I mean by be very careful. Before my wife and I got married I asked, before I even proposed. We went on our first date. We went to P.F. Changs on December 29, 2007. The second date in a morning we went to church and went to Santa Monica to do the stairs.
The Santa Monica stairs are a phenomenal place to do the stairs. And then we went to Earth Café, my favorite type of food. Then we went to Borders. I bought her a book on our second date called 101 Questions To Ask Before Getting Engaged.
Amy: Wow!
Patrick: Crazy. I totally get it. It’s crazy.
Amy: That’s a little ballsy.
Patrick: It is really ballsy. That’s just how I am. So the second date I gave her the book. She said, “Oh my gosh. Who is this crazy guy?” I have had a lot of fun in my life. I’ve partied like a rock star from very, very early on and retired early. But when I did I was pretty strong in the partying world, very, very strong in the partying world.
When we were going through this whole process before getting married I was ready to stay single the rest of my life. I was completely fine staying single. I knew how to entertain myself. I’m fine staying single. But if the right person came along with the right temperament and right match maybe I would consider it.
Her and I were talking and it got to a point where it was kind of like, “Okay Pat, what are we doing next?” So I asked her, “Let me ask a question. Let’s say we go through a bunch of fights together, a bunch of problems together. Who are you going to call?”
She asked me what I meant. I told her we would fight a lot. It’s inevitable. We would fight a lot because I know myself. There would be a lot of fights so, “who are you going to call to say you are ticked off with me or pissed off with me? Who are you calling?”
I looked at her and she was really giving me real answers, not B.S. answers. She started giving me the names of people she would call. I asked her if she could tell me about their personal life and relationships and all that stuff. She started telling me.
I told her I had a very big problem with that. I have a very big problem with that. She asked me why and I told her that if she and I got into a fight “these” are the five people I’m calling. Every one of them is probably going to tell me it’s my fault and are going to tell me to come home and make it work.
If I called the other five people they would tell me, “Dude the single life is the best life. All the girls are asking about you, you’ve got to be single again.” That was the thing, who are you going to call?
As an entrepreneur, as you are going through your mess and you’ve got someone you want to call, be careful who you call during those moments. You can call the wrong person and go back to having a job overnight. Or you can call the right person and come back fired up and lit up the next day to go win for yourself and your family. But it’s all about who you call.
Minimize that association, limit the amount of people that have counsel over your mind, and take the right association. Process no matter whatever anybody tells you. Process that information. Use your intuition and make the decision the next day. Eventually, I promise you, as good as you think it’s going to feel when you win, it’s 100 times more exciting than what you think it’s going to be, it’s 100 times more exciting when you win.
Amy: So good. That is a perfect wrap up to this awesome episode. Thank you Pat so very much for sharing all of your wisdom about being an entrepreneur and getting in front of your audience as quickly as humanly possible. I really appreciate you being on the show.
Patrick: Well thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed it.
Amy: So there you have it. I hope that you were entertained and inspired by Patrick just as much as I was. I think he is such a cool guy to just listen to all of his stories and get that shot of inspiration I talked about in the intro because I think that we all can use that when we’re in our heads and things feel frustrating and a struggle.
When you hear someone else’s story you start to think, “Wait a second, this is possible. I can get this done. This is doable.” And it kind of gets you excited to keep moving forward. I hope you got all of that in my interview and found some really great inspiration to keep you moving forward.
Thank you so very much for being here with me today. I can’t wait to connect with you again next week. Bye for now.