The School of Greatness
How To Make Your Dream Life Your Reality: The #1 Skill That Will Turn Your Passion Into Profit
Wed, 28 May 2025
Leave an Amazon Rating or Review for my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy!Automation and optimization can steal the soul from your business, leaving you trapped in a cycle of going through the motions. Pat Flynn, founder of Smart Passive Income, discovered this harsh truth when his once-thriving business started feeling like just another job - even while generating $35-40,000 per month. His solution wasn't to work harder or optimize more, but to rediscover fun and embrace what he calls the "20% Itch Rule." Pat's journey from laid-off architect to multi-millionaire entrepreneur who now commands 1.7 billion views opening Pokemon cards reveals how protecting time for experimentation and joy isn't just good for your soul - it's essential for sustainable success and attracting unexpected opportunities that can transform your entire trajectory.Pre-order Pat’s newest book Lean Learning: How to Achieve More by Learning LessPat’s book Superfans: The Easy Way to Stand Out, Grow Your Tribe, and Build a Successful BusinessPat’s book Will It Fly?: How to Test Your Next Business Idea So You Don't Waste Your Time and MoneyIn this episode you will learn:How to implement the "20% Itch Rule" to prevent entrepreneurial burnout while maintaining business growthWhy "count uploads not likes" revolutionizes how you measure progress and protects your mental health from external validationThe "1-1-1 Strategy" for overcoming imposter syndrome: find one person with one problem and get one resultHow embracing your weird attracts your tribe and creates communities of millions around shared passionsWhy "just in time" learning beats "just in case" information hoarding for faster skill acquisition and executionFor more information go to https://www.lewishowes.com/1777For more Greatness text PODCAST to +1 (614) 350-3960More SOG episodes we think you’ll love:Imane “Pokimane” Anys – greatness.lnk.to/1443SCCodie Sanchez – greatness.lnk.to/1701SCMark Manson – greatness.lnk.to/1750SC Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy!Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX
Chapter 1: What is the #1 skill to turn your passion into profit?
storytelling is going to be the most powerful number one skill in the world that you can learn right now learning how to tell a story make a connection and emotionally have somebody hang on to your words and listen to you that's how you make movements that's how you make change pat flynn the founder of spi he helps people build passive income driven online businesses has created this empire that makes over seven figures a year how
Chapter 2: How can the 20% Itch Rule prevent burnout?
Matt Flynn is back onto the show here. So I've developed a framework called the 20% Itch Rule, where 80% of your time is dedicated to the things that you are committed to, but you reserve and even protect 20% of your time for experimentation, for fun, for something new. If that were to fail, that's okay because you still have the 80% that you're taking care of.
You're still taking care of business. Tim Ferriss taught me a question. That is, if this were easy, what would it look like? Because I, and I know many of us, tend to overcomplicate or believe things are more complicated than they actually are.
If someone is going through a period of just maybe they're just not 100% sure of themselves or sure of the direction they're going, what would you say to that person here tonight on what they could start to do to unlock more opportunity for them to feel better and create what they want as well? OK.
Do you remember a time, you know, maybe 10 years in with smart passive income where it started to not be fun anymore?
In business, it's often the best practice to optimize, to automate, right? The problem is when you automate too much of what you have going on, you start to remove maybe some of the parts that were actually fun for you. in the beginning. And we hear it all the time, you gotta automate, you gotta, you know, get rid of yourself, take yourself out of it.
But if you totally take yourself out of this thing, it's a soulless thing now. And for a while I was starting to feel like it was just, I was just going through the motions. It was publishing a podcast episode and immediately dreading the next week that I had to then create another podcast episode, the content hamster wheel. as they call it.
And that's a hard trap to be in because you have these handcuffs. And if you slow down, then you start losing followers or starting to lose momentum. And it just felt like a job. And I was like, I'm in this space, so I don't have to do the job, but now I'm just my own boss of my own job. And I feel like even less fulfilled as a result of that.
So I've always found, and thankfully I wasn't in that position for a long time, but I did discover it and it felt, and it led to procrastination. It led to just not great content. It was just, I had to get the schedule out. So I put something out. And I found that what really helped me was just finding the fun again. Finding the fun again.
And now I'm a 42 year old man playing with cardboard with cartoons on it. And I'm having the time of my life. And as a content creator, especially when you are having fun with whatever it is that you're doing, your passion comes through that screen, comes through that audio file, comes through in those words and those emails, your audience can feel that too.
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Chapter 3: What is the importance of storytelling in business?
I had taken an exam that was very difficult in the architecture space and I passed and I started to share that information online. And no way did I feel like an expert. But because I was the one to step forward and say, hey, I just did this and you can do it, too. I started to be seen and positioned as the expert. And that was so weird to me. It was so new to me.
And I remember in October of 2008, I launched a study guide. It was a PDF file of my notes. And I sold it for $19.99. And I was deathly afraid. I had no idea what I was doing. And I was like, this has to work. And I remember I launched it at like 12 a.m., so like midnight, and it was on my website that I had.
And I had some traffic coming to the website, so I was hopeful, I was crossing my fingers. I wake up at 6 a.m. and I go to check my email, no sales. And I'm like, okay, well, I'm gonna start looking for architecture jobs. And that's exactly what I did. I worked on my resume and I was just like, well, tried it, didn't work. I'm looking for proof that I was not meant to do this, right?
That confirmation bias. A few hours later, I checked my email, nothing. Reconfirming that I was not meant to do this. Sent more emails out to architects and engineers. Later that afternoon, I got an email. PayPal. Come on. Notification of payment received. $18.38 because of PayPal fees. And I was like, where did this, I made money. That was the first money I had ever made online.
And immediately, not two minutes later, I thought something was gonna go wrong. I thought the FBI was gonna show up, you know? I could go through hours with you talking about all the times I didn't believe that I was supposed to do what I was supposed to do. Even when I was making 35 to $40,000 a month. You talk about rich, but with scarcity. That's the mindset I had.
I was still looking for architecture jobs, even though I was generating revenue. And it wasn't until I let go of who I thought I was supposed to be, that sunk cost and literal cost that I put into college, into architecture, not wanting to disappoint my parents, all those things played a role in me believing that I was supposed to still be an architect.
Yet there was this new world, the business world. And essentially I was climbing two ladders at the same time. How can you climb two ladders safely at the same time? That's tricky. But that's literally what it was like. So eventually I had to let go of one ladder, which was scary and dangerous. But this new ladder had endless height to it. It had opportunity. It had more freedom.
Freedom was way up there. Didn't know how I was gonna get there, but I knew that there were other people who had stepped on those rungs before me. And so I trusted myself. I had to let go to grow.
But after four, five, six, seven years of kind of reaching the top and then maybe the growth not accelerating as much, you started to fall back into a sense of this isn't as exciting anymore or what happened then?
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Chapter 4: How can I overcome imposter syndrome?
Wow. Incredible. You know, when did you launch this? This new hobby?
So here's the story with Pokemon. I know people with Pokemon. Like Pikachu? Like those things? Yes.
Does anyone know what Pokemon is? Pokemon fans? Nice. Not many, though.
Has anybody ever heard the channel Should I Open It or Should I Keep It Sealed? That's me. I have. That's me. Anyway, it's just me opening packs, and you see my weird-looking thumbs and all that stuff. That's the Shorts channel. But before that, the Pokemon channel actually started during... during the pandemic, because my kids got into Pokemon.
So my kids were younger, they got into Pokemon, they started collecting and anything the kids get into, I wanna get into as well. I researched those things. For example, Fortnite, back before Pokemon, it was Fortnite. My kids were playing Fortnite and I was like, what are you doing? And they're like, we're playing Fortnite dad, don't talk to me. So what do I do?
I hire a 15 year old from Fiverr to teach me how to play Fortnite. No, I swear to God, wow. Like mentorship, I'm telling you. He's 15 and he was really good. And I was like, okay, I was starting to get it and going through reps with him. And after three weeks, I was able to hang with my kids And then actually we were starting to play together.
And it became such a fun bonding experience during the pandemic to do that. And then like kids do, they moved on from that and they moved into another hobby and this was Pokemon. So I said, okay, Pokemon. I just know about a few things, but I grew up playing Magic the Gathering, not Pokemon.
Now, why didn't you go into Fortnite videos or like, let me start a business on Fortnite because my kids are into this right now.
I didn't see any opportunities there that really piqued my interest. I guess if I look back, I probably could have found something, but I like things to come to me. And in the Pokemon space they did, because when I started to research a lot of YouTubers who were doing Pokemon, I also noticed that they were all doing the kind of same things. And nobody was really telling good stories.
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Chapter 5: What is the 1-1-1 strategy for success?
Right. I once heard, I think it was our good friend, Chris Ducker, who said, do what you do best, delegate the rest. And that's what I've learned to do. Now, that's not easy to do when you're just starting out because you have to wear all the hats. But eventually, with SPI, my entrepreneurial brand, I'm just on the podcast and I'm writing email newsletters, which I love to do.
I'm no longer hitting publish in WordPress anymore. And that's allowing me to have more energy for the things I love to do. And I found people who love hitting publish in WordPress. There are those weird people out there, right? And it's been really cool to see, even in parallel, your evolution as well, and the new phases of your life, and you're newly married, and now your new book.
It's just, I'm so proud of you, Lewis. I know that we both have gone through some rough patches and hard times over the years, and I'm proud of you.
Thanks, man. I appreciate it. Proud of you too, man.
Appreciate it.
It's been a fun journey. For someone in the audience here right now, whether it's Alex, who's at 65% peace, whether it's the four bros over here who are trying to become multimillionaires and open their heart at the same time, or anyone else here, if someone is going through... a period of just maybe they're just not 100% sure of themselves or sure of the direction they're going.
Maybe there's a little bit of self-doubt. Maybe they don't even talk about it to anyone. But inside, they're like, hmm, something's not working in my life, my career, my business. It's not coming effortlessly to me. What would you say to that person here tonight on what they could start to do to unlock more opportunity for them to feel better and create what they want as well?
My mind goes to a lot of creators who I work with who struggle because they're doing the work and they're not seeing the results. They're creating the videos and they're not seeing the views. They're publishing on TikTok and they're not seeing the likes. And a good friend of mine, Alex, a different Alex, once said, count uploads, not likes. And I was like, man, that is so powerful.
When you have, for example, let's say you're gonna try to build an audience on TikTok, for example, instead of like, I'm gonna try to get this many views, or I'm gonna just try to get this many likes, what if you just went daily for 60 days? And that was your goal. Daily for 60 days.
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Chapter 6: Why should I count uploads instead of likes?
Chapter 7: How can I find joy and opportunity in my work?
Chapter 8: What does it mean to embrace your weird?
When the external doesn't grow at the level of your excitement and your joy and your internal abundance, how do you prepare for that to not let it rob you of your joy?
If I believe that that's going to happen, it's going to happen. Whether you think you can or you can't, you're right, Henry Ford. And so I don't believe that's gonna happen. Because if I did, it would affect my content and the quality of it already. I would reach too far. I would maybe try to add too many explosions in the videos, like a Mr. Beast video. Now it's just like ridiculous, right?
Let's give 50 million away and 100 million.
It's like, yeah.
Oh my gosh, he's playing games, that's for sure. Squid games. He's a master at it, by the way. Oh, completely. Yeah. If that starts to happen, I will find the fun. That's it.
How many of these 20% itches that you've created have actually launched into a successful business or something over a million dollars in profit over time?
So I started my podcast in 2010. And at one point, we started inserting questions from the audience at the end of those episodes. And they were really great. We even used a tool called Speakpipe to collect those voicemail questions so people could hear other people like them at the end of the show. It was really fun.
The problem was it was just random questions that had nothing to do with the podcast. So I wanted to start a second show to house all those questions and just have a show of me answering and essentially coaching people. And that was called Ask Pat. Yeah, that became Ask Pat. Although I said, well, it takes me forever to create one episode a week. How am I going to do five a week now?
I need to go to somebody who does... like a daily show. And we know a guy named Johnny Dumas who has a daily show. And I literally took him out to coffee and I said, John, coffee's on me. Tell me how you go daily. And he literally told me he recorded them all in one day. Tuesday, I think he records an entire week's worth of episodes. So he batch processes.
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