Pat Flynn’s rule: count uploads, not likes

Day 30 of Pat Flynn’s daily shorts experiment, the videos were getting 200 to 300 views. A 40 year old man opening Pokémon cards on camera for a month, to nobody.

Day 35, one of them hit 750,000 views. Now a new short on that channel averages a million views in about 12 hours, and a few have done 35 million in three days. The channel is less than a year old and has 3 billion views across platforms.

He didn’t quit on day 30 because the scoreboard he was watching wasn’t views. He had promised himself 60 uploads. That was the whole goal.

“If I’ve gone daily 60 days, no matter what the numbers say, I’ve won. Day 30 comes around, the videos were getting 200 to 300 views a day. I would have probably quit if it was old me. No, 60 days was the goal. Day 35, one of those videos hit 750,000 views. That wouldn’t have happened if I gave up because I wasn’t getting that validation early on.”

Count uploads, not likes. That’s the line I took from a 55 minute conversation with a guy I’ve known for over a decade, and I asked for it selfishly.

The question I actually wanted answered

When Pat’s podcast came out it was the number one business podcast. Now he describes that business as coasting. It still does about $2 million a year, with 1,500 paying community members, but the courses era is over and he says so.

My version of that: my book sold well, the YouTube channel worked, and since my daughter was born almost a year ago I’ve pulled back from spending my day trying to get attention from other people. I’ve been sitting with a question I don’t love. If I’m less relevant, am I less worthy? I think the answer is no. It is still nice to get noticed.

So I asked Pat how he processed it, going from the biggest show to a smaller one to a new thing his kids got him into.

“As an Enneagram 3, I thrive when I see that I’m helping others. But the danger side is that your happiness, your worth, your self-worth, is all based on how other people respond to your stuff. And so you lose control if you’re looking at the wrong things for validation.”

“I’ve changed my mind recently about what it means to win. I’m comparing myself to myself last week, to myself last month, to myself last year. This is my timeline and you have your timeline. And I don’t see the world as a poker table, where if you’re winning that means I’m losing. We can all win together.”

The 60 day rule is what that sounds like in practice. Pick a number of reps you control, and judge yourself on that. The views are a byproduct you get to enjoy, not a grade.

Let go day

Pat learned this the expensive way. In 2008 he was the youngest job captain at his architecture firm, doing project manager work as a senior drafter because he wanted to climb fast. Nobody was building buildings, so there was no money. June 17, 2008, they let him go. He calls it let go day.

“I had been for so long on autopilot on this path that I was told was going to be a successful path, from middle school to high school to college to this job. And despite having done everything I was supposed to, getting the rug pulled out from under me was such a shitty feeling. Like getting gut punched and just being left there.”

He called every engineering firm in town and begged. His dad said go get your master’s. His girlfriend April came to his apartment after work, hugged him, and didn’t say a word. He had just proposed and moved back in with his parents. He watched Back to the Future over and over, hoping to invent a time machine. He got talked into a meeting of people who “made a lot of money” and it was an Amway pitch. He went to a Cutco knife thing. Two or three months went by before he got out of bed with a direction.

I got fired from Facebook in my own dramatic way, so this was the part of his story I wanted in detail. The part that matters is what he kept doing during those months. Every day he called architects around town asking to get back in. Every day they said no.

“If it wasn’t for those denials, I wouldn’t have tried these things. I was forced to put myself into a situation to make decisions that I wouldn’t normally have. I’m not saying quit your job today, but put yourself in situations where you’re going to have to show up and do things that you’re either avoiding or procrastinating on.”

His example is speaking. He told a friend he’d speak at his event, and the date on the calendar made him study the stuff he’d avoided for years. He calls it a hackathon for parts of your life. The 60 day shorts commitment is the same trick pointed at YouTube. A date, a number, no exit.

If he hadn’t been laid off, he told me, he’d still be in architecture, working 10 hour days, golfing every weekend to escape.

What the reps are worth

People tell Pat he has a Midas touch. He hates it.

“No, it’s not because I just touched the thing. I work my ass off. But I learn a quick way of acquiring these skills that are required to do well on these platforms.”

The 60 days did more than find the one video that popped. His production time per short went from 45 minutes to 15. He batches a week of them in under two hours. And every upload gave him data on what to make more of. None of that shows up on day 30 if you only count views.

The same approach built the rest of it. Deep Pocket Monster, the main channel, is at 1.6 million subscribers in four years, with one video a month that runs 45 minutes to four hours and does about a million views in a week. He goes live every Monday for 8,000 to 10,000 people. He had a six figure month from AdSense alone last year, and he charges $40,000 to $50,000 for one ad spot in one video. His live event went from 1,500 people in Anaheim in 2023 to an expected 6,000 in Tampa this year, and he built it after I told him years ago that I just made an event I’d want to show up at. CAA signed him because they think the entertainment side is bigger than the business side.

The shorts only show his hands. His thumbs have a weird shape, so people stop him in public and ask to see them.

None of this was built at the same time. Podcast, then YouTube, then books, then Pokémon, in seasons. Which is a nicer way of saying the number one business podcast was one season, and he let it be one.

I spent $222,038 growing my own YouTube channel, and I wish I’d had Pat’s rule from the first upload. Decide the number of reps before you start, and don’t look up until you hit it.

After reading his book I went and muted a bunch of the jargon accounts on Twitter. Then I went back to work. Count uploads, not likes.

From episode 376 of my podcast, Noah Kagan Presents. Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.