[INTRODUCTION]

Hal Elrod: Hello, friends. Welcome to the Achieve Your Goals podcast. I am your host, Hal Elrod, and today I am joined by a very special human being, a friend of mine for over a decade, Mr. Pat Flynn. You may know Pat Flynn from the Smart Passive Income Podcast. You may know him from the book, Will It Fly, or the book, Superfans. His new book that he is here to talk about today, Lean Learning: How to Achieve More by Learning Less. This book arrived in the mail two days ago. Pat sent me an advanced copy and I cannot tell you, I mean, I guess I can tell you, but I don’t know if words will do justice how excited I am to read this book. It’s literally, I feel like it’s a godsend right now.

It’s the book that I need in my life right now because I don’t know about you, but I am overwhelmed, right? Information overload as Pat talks about why it is the new normal. And think about what that looks like in your life where you learn, learn, learn, you consume, and you may not make the amount of progress that you want, the measurable progress. And what Pat’s new book in today’s episode is going to share with you is what he calls lean learning, which is where you define the difference between just-in-case learning, which is where you’re learning a bunch of information that you don’t need with just-in-time learning, where you’re identifying what’s the minimum amount of knowledge that I need to consume, and then how do I act on it immediately so that I create measurable progress and then create this beautiful flow where that’s how you learn from now on.

You don’t learn everything you need to know. You don’t read necessarily book after book after book. You learn the minimum that you need to know to create a meaningful result in your life, and then you learn a little more, you create another result, you learn a little more, you create another result, because information, as you know, is not power if you just learn a ton. And we’re all guilty of that. I called it… What is it I call it? Personal development junkies. We’ve become these, like I’m just going to learn and grow, and then we trick ourselves into thinking that that’s actually making meaningful progress in our life. But of course, what you learn doesn’t matter as much unless you actually implement it.

He also talks about something today called micro mastery, and this is one of my favorite concepts from the new book, micro mastery. And I’ll let him tell you what that is but essentially where in order to master any new topic or skill, you don’t take the whole topic on at a time. You break it down into one micro, minuscule aspect of that topic. And he gives the example of becoming a speaker, how he mastered one small area such as the first two minutes, how do you open a speech. And when you do this micro mastery strategy, you create confidence and momentum without feeling overwhelmed, and you move on to the next area of micro mastery and so on and so forth.

He also talks about how anyone practicing the Miracle Morning can apply lean learning principles to their morning routine. So, if you are a Miracle Morning practitioner, you’ll want to hear that. Again, Pat’s one of my favorite human beings. He has supported me for the last decade, and I’ve supported him because he’s one of the good guys. Like, he’s someone that truly cares about the value that he adds for his audience, his community, et cetera, et cetera. So, anyway, I love Pat. I’m really enjoying this new book, Lean Learning: How to Achieve More by Learning Less.

I highly recommend you listen to this podcast. I think you’ll get a lot of value because Pat doesn’t just tease the concepts. He really dives in and teaches them in a way where you can walk away, whether you get the book or not. I recommend the book, of course, but the podcast will stand alone today to teach you how to apply lean learning in your life so that you can achieve more by learning less.

All right. Love you so much. Enjoy today’s episode with my good friend, Mr. Pat Flynn.

[INTERVIEW]

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 don’t know what to call you, dude.

Pat Flynn: Oh, my gosh. I have to check on that.

Hal Elrod: It says “Patrick Flynn.”

Pat Flynn: It is. That’s weird, dude. That’s weird.

Hal Elrod: Yeah.

Pat Flynn: Anyway, I’m so grateful to be here.

Hal Elrod: I thought you were growing. You got the beard. You’re Patrick now.

Pat Flynn: Yeah. I’ve matured a little bit since 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 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 texted 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 ChatGPT searches, and I’m reading four different books. I’m literally who you wrote the book for, and then I realized I am the common story right now. I represent most people. I want to ask you this, Pat. 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 Superfan: 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 even not 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 like I don’t think I’m super smart. 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 why is it working for me and not others when we all have access to the same information?” 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 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, and his world…

Hal Elrod: 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 with AI and everything kind of happening so quickly, certain jobs are just not going to be non-existent anymore. It’s like how do we stay valuable in this economy? So, I wanted to write this for him and my 12-year-old daughter is 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?” And basically, everybody raised their hand. 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 were 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 are subscribed to 25 or more different podcasts?” And this was an entrepreneurial group so many of them are overachievers, over learners, but also very curious. And I think that’s just representative of us as humans. We are over-curious and we want to 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 want to 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 Britannica? 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. It’s about finding, 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, and 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 actions that you could find out where to go next and whether to persist or pivot. And this is so needed right now. 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 want to miss out on it. 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 there could be a golden nugget in there or that you might need it later. And that’s how we’re taught in school. 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. This is just-in-case learning, and it’s not only taking up more time but you are also getting over-inspired.

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,” the joy of opting out is what I call it, right? Not joy of missing out, which is what some people say. I’m not joyful that I’m missing out on something but I am proud that I can say not yet because I’m going to 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 e-book 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 Pokémon, smart passive income, all these things. 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 to learn this thing that I didn’t have time to figure out because I was moving back home with my parents because 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 e-book 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 going to 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, Hal, 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.

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 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 are 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 Yanick Silver. His 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. All 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. I just needed that one template. And after putting that on my website, putting the button I got on this guide 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 like building a business plan and kind of psyching myself out of it, but by taking action and doing it, just like how people who do the SAVERS start to see small results immediately. 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, I mean, 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, just to put that in perspective. But, Pat, this reminds me of I think — I’m trying to think of what. What is the coin I termed? 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 the more successful I am, or 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, 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, 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? 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 and a bar of soap, right? It’s like that’s it. 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 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 As 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 going to 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 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 going to 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 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. And it goes back, I always say like it only takes one, not just one book to change your life. It takes one page in one book to change your life.

Pat Flynn: Right. And we hear a lot from other very smart people who say like, “Oh, you need 10,000 hours to be 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 hour 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 hour 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 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 want to continue or not. 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, 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 more 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 them back down. 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 and I’m there to support you.” Unfortunately, not everybody has that emotional support from friends or family because they might, again, not believe in what it is that you’re trying to do or achieve. And that’s tough.

Hal Elrod: Or they might be a crab, right?

Pat Flynn: Right, exactly, 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 because all they’re going to 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 can bring you so much joy and value in life.

And like I said, communities 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. Like, 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 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 take them under my wing and see how else I can help them,” just like I know you’ve done with some of your Miracle Morning students as well. And it’s something that a lot of us people who are teaching want to see. We want to 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 going to happen if you just kind of wait for them.

And I say that as an introvert as well. It’s 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 want to wake up and do your meditation. They’re going to text you in the morning to make sure that you’re going to 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 going to be even more important in the future but more than any other time really in the world.

And that’s what’s going to 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: No, I think the pendulum is swinging, right? Before it was like, 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 I think are more scarce. And I know for me, having my wife and my friends and community like that emotional support is crucial. And then with mentoring, 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 the book to me, every book that I read is a mentor, right?

And I know it’s not an interactive mentor where I can’t ask, I’m not asking you questions in the book, but you spent years crafting 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, like imagine a book as a mentor, you were learning from this person and all their years and wisdom like you said. 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.

Hal Elrod: Same things. Yeah.

Pat Flynn: That’s what most of us do when we read books. 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, and that book is you can do it as you read along. You’re seeing results as you go. I remember doing my SAVERS for the first time, Hal, 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 motivated, it was just a perfect formula and there’s no surprise why the book has done so well.

So, I’ve modeled a lot of sort of this on you and Miracle Morning because 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 mentioned, like, 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 young guy is 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, 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 want to be. I read the books. I listen to the podcast. I’m not where I want to 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? And this book is like, no, no, you’re sharpening your saw as you read it and then 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. So, 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 whole 10,000-hour rule, but in this book, you talked about a concept called micromastery. Talk about that.

Pat Flynn: Yeah. So, micromastery 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 and 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 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, two measures 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 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 ultramarathon runner. He runs like 50 miles a day or something crazy like that. I don’t know how. That’s impossible. But what he does to get better, because he trains and he wants to be the best, is he will hyperfocus on one little aspect of running 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 hyperfocus on the best stride. That would then be the stride that he would use and then move forward with, 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 we could see how his foot landed on the ground with different shoes and different actions, different angles of trajectory, whatever. 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 going to 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. I micromastered 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, what do you do with your hands? Where do you stand on stage? What’s the tone of your voice? If you were to, again, study all of that up front, you would be overwhelmed, you’d be absolutely overwhelmed 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 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 want to be a master, you focus on storytelling and what that means is now I’m going to read about just storytelling. I’m going to 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 Talks, but I’m only going to watch the opening story so I can learn how they kind of hook me in. And I’m going to master that for four weeks and 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 going to watch a hundred TED Talks, but I’m not going to watch them all the way through. I’m just going to 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 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, I’m trying to learn how to skateboard, I’m not going to try to learn all the tricks on day one, right? 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. The 16-year-old kid down the block who’s crushing it with his skateboard, I’m going to pay him $100 for two weeks to work with me, to get me to ollie. And that’s all I’m going to focus on because then off the ollie, I can now do a kick flip. I can now grind a rail, whatever it might be, right?

So, micromaster is the way to mastery in a much– it’s even fun too. It’s just go, okay, for the month of September, this is the one thing I’m going to focus on, I’m going to nail it. And then I know I’m going to nail something else in October, right? 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 much easier because guess what? Those resources are there. There is information about literally everything right now. This is why you don’t need to worry about, well, 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 micromastery. That’s the way.

Hal Elrod: I love micromastery as a concept. To your point, it’s fun. It’s not overwhelming, right? It’s the opposite of overwhelming. It’s the one you’re choosing. The one thing right now that I’m going to 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. Ooh, 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 opening and closing a speech are the two most important parts, right? 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 mentioned it very subtly, again, a couple of minutes ago, force functions. You said force functions, but I know in the book, you call them voluntary force functions. Can you share what that is? If you have a personal example to bring it home, I’d love that.

Pat Flynn: For sure, yeah. So, a force function 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 is because you want to purposefully do that. Now, you got to be sure that you’re not putting yourself in total danger. And I’m not saying like, quit your job if you want to start a business, although that is an example of this. An involuntary one is when I experienced when I got laid off, right? I was involuntarily put into a position of heightened pressure to then make decisions that were life changing for me. To start a business and to go down that route of entrepreneurship wouldn’t have happened if I had not gotten laid off, which is really interesting to think about.

But a voluntary force function, there is an example of this, and in fact, Tim Ferriss is a really good example of this. He wrote about it a bit, didn’t call it that, but it was in his book, The 4-Hour Workweek. 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, 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. 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 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 and I had to, 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, right? And that was a voluntary force function. For me, going back to speaking, learning how to speak combined with micromastery 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 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 because I didn’t have the time, 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 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 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.” And I was like, “Okay, that’s the one book I’m going to read.” There’s many other books. There’s Nancy Duarte’s Resonate and there’s so many others out there. But I mean, I’m just going to focus on that one book. I’m going to 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 to just get started. If you were trying to be a musician, imagine booking or maybe even just telling your friends that you’re going to be playing out in Central Park if you’re from New York. Like, “Hey, guys, I’m going to be playing out in Central Park in two months. Come watch me play.” You’ve never picked up a guitar in your life. I mean, you’re going to figure it out. You’re going to 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 going to start this new journey in your life that’s going to bring you so much joy and fulfillment.

Hal Elrod: Yeah. I love that. Committing publicly has been a strategy of mine for– again, 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, 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 12, 2012 is going to be 12/12/12. I think the next time this happens is probably, I don’t know, 100 years or whatever. So, 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 12, 2012. 12/12/12. Mark your calendar.”

And then I had to back into, 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. But if I hadn’t have committed to that date publicly, I wouldn’t have done it. Same with my ultramarathon, I committed. Anyway, go ahead.

Pat Flynn: Dude, and that book has changed so many lives because of that, because you selected that date. And selecting a date is an important component of voluntary force function like that. But there’s another side of voluntary force function, 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 because this is probably my most recent example. So, I’m a big fisherman. I love to go fishing. 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 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. And the strike or setting the hook is so much more fun because you have to really set it. 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 the jig because 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 validate that I was not good at jigging and I was good at the other thing. So, why continue jigging? But I really wanted to learn how to do it.

So, one day, I went out on the boat, and this was about a year ago, and I brought nothing but jigs. 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 going to go back to– oh, wait, I can’t. So, I’m just going to 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. 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. Well, and 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 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. Like, 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 teach it. 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 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. Like, you’re teaching me and you’re this master. 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 an 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.”

And so, for any of the Miracle Morning practitioners out there, share and maybe even teach others around you, spread the gospel of how amazing the Miracle Morning is. And don’t force it, like some people might not be about it. But when you teach it to others, because I have a podcast, the podcast has been an amazing thing for me to absorb from others and then teach.

Hal Elrod: Totally.

Pat Flynn: 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, “Oh, 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 the person on 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: Yeah. 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 to 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, 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 a Brendon Burchard event like 10 years ago. And I came back from Brendon Burchard’s event, and I immediately taught what I learned from Brendon 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 going to say, this book, writing this book, (a) a force function because 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, 100%, I think that’s great.

And there’s a lot of concepts in the book, obviously, for 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 sort of 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 going to be on Amazon, of course, Barnes & Noble, because it’s my first self-published or self– my other books were self-published. This is my first traditionally published book, so it’s like a bigger force function for me. There’s more at stake, but it’s so exciting and I’m just so grateful for you, Hal. It’ll also be on like Target and Barnes & Noble and these kinds of things too, which is just wild to me.

But 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.

Dude, every time I see anything you’re up to, Hal, you’re always having so much fun and you embody really the message of lean learning in such 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: Yeah. 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, 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’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, what is one inspiration or learning that you’re trying to focus on right now? Of all the things that were kind of on your mind, what’s maybe one thing that you’re wanting to focus on a little bit more deeply?

Hal Elrod: 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, and husband. So, I go, 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 this business book over here or grow the business. So, I’ve got this business book. 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 going to get into now, but like, it perfectly speaks to that. So, when you get to that part in the book, I think it’s going to unlock a lot of great things for you. And I think that’s not an uncommon thing to feel as well. You want to be an amazing father and husband and you are, but you want to 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. And 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 because they’re going to college.

Hal Elrod: That’s right.

Pat Flynn: Like, you have to make action happen now because we don’t have unlimited amounts of time. We have now unlimited access to information, but 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. And I love at the top of the book, it says, number 1, learn everything, crossed out. Number 2, get overwhelmed, crossed out. Number 3, 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 you, too, Hal. Thank you so much, man.

Hal Elrod: All right, goal achievers, I’ll talk to y’all soon. Talk to you next week.

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