SPI 656: Tomorrow I Fly.

SPI 656: Tomorrow I Fly.

Announcer: Welcome to the Smart Passive Income Podcast, where it’s all about working hard now, so you can sit back and reap the benefits later. And now your host, he believes Home Alone is the greatest Christmas movie of all time, Pat Flynn.

Pat Flynn: Hey, it’s Pat here, and the timing of this recording is interesting because it is a few days after the New Year.

So the time you’re listening to this is maybe a month or two or maybe more after that. But I wanted to give you an update because as many of you know, and if you don’t, I’ll tell you the quick story, in 2020, I started a brand new YouTube channel about something I knew hardly anything. But I use the YouTube channel to publicly learn about this and share stories and hopefully help entertain and encourage people along the way.

What niche is this in? This is in the realm of Pokemon. Yes. The cute characters featuring Ash Catchum, Pikachu, Charmander, and the other 800, 900 plus Pokemon that exists in that world. And my kids got me into it. Then I kind of went really deep with it. You can find this channel at Deep Pocket Monster. We hit 460,000 subscribers by the end of the year.

By the end of 2022. That is less than two years that that channel has been up and nearly a half million subscribers, which is incredible. But what’s more incredible is that tomorrow, at the time of this recording, I get on a plane, and I fly to Hawaii, yes, I get to go to Hawaii to start the new year, and I get to be a part of a pop culture convention.

The Hawaii Pop Con is what it’s called, and I’m not invited to this event as Pat Flynn from SPI, which is every single event that I’ve been to in the past has been related to Smart Passive Income. This is the very first. I’ve been invited as technically it’s a second in the Pokemon space, but this is the first one where I’m like a headliner, if you will, a, an attraction or a celebrity to come to this convention, to open some Pokemon cards and to hang out with the fans and to sign autographs.

This is wild. This is absolutely wild. Less than two years, and I’m going to events like this. And I, and I don’t share this because I’m like, look at me. This is cool. And you know me. If you’re new here, I don’t want you to take it that way. And if it doesn, I’m, I apologize. There’s always lessons with these things, right?

And trust me, it’s not always unicorns and rainbows and Pikachu and Charizards. In this case, it’s just such a huge blessing. But it was always a result of the learnings that I’ve taught you. Everything that I’ve written in the book, Superfans I’ve been doing here on this brand new channel from learning the language of the audience to offering small quick wins to featuring other members of the community to now putting on my own event.

Yes. In June of this year, June 9-11 in Anaheim, California, we’re putting on an event. We started selling this tickets to it in November of 2020. And just less than two months later, we were, we’re already 400 to 500 tickets sold. Again, how? Community. That’s the pitch of the event, come together to meet some of the other Pokemon YouTubers and meet each other as fans.

Again, everything I talk about in Superfans, I’m implementing right in front of everybody. And so if you haven’t caught on to this yet, I, I do implore you to read that book if you haven’t already. And notice what I’m doing. This is stuff that I did with Smart Passive Income and I’m doing it again from scratch in a topic I knew nothing about two years ago.

And it’s working and it’s amazing because yes, there is revenue coming into the business now and with a smaller team, it’s in fact more profitable than Smart Passive Income at this point. More profitable, not as much revenue coming in, but definitely more profitable, that’s for sure. So this event that I’m going to is, first of all, just again, just absolutely honored to be even invited.

But when I asked the person who asked me, why are you inviting me? Like, what made you think of me? Guess what they said? The community. The community spoke up and said, who do you wanna see there? We wanna see Pat Flynn from Deep Pocket Monster. This is the benefit of building for community, for building, for the experiences that you create for your people, because there might come a time in the future when your people are asked by others.

Who do you want to see? Who do you vote for? Who should we pay attention to? Who should we come speak at our event? They’re gonna say you, because you make them feel a certain way. It’s not even about the information, right? I’ve talked about this before. In the, in the realm of Pokemon, I can’t compete on information.

I’m, I’m still learning the names of all the Pokemon, right. I open Japanese packs where I cannot translate, and I have the audience help me, which makes them also feel like they’re a part of the process of what this channel’s becoming, which is another chapter inside of Superfans. I can’t compete on knowledge, but I can share what I’m learning and have my own spin and take on it.

I can’t compete on collection. I’m building my collection. I can’t show off these cards that are worth tens of thousands of dollars that people picked up in the nineties and early two thousands that have been held in pristine condition to a point where they’re now worth that much money. Cuz I don’t have those.

I could go buy, but I don’t have that kind of money on this side of the hobby to to buy those things. So I have to go a little bit deeper with the cards that I can get access to, but where I know I can compete and my absolute unfair advantage in this space right now is the community. Making people who are in this space feel like they’re a part of something much bigger than me, much bigger than them.

And it’s amazing because even in the online, live streams that I do, the language is starting to be used by more people, right? We, we have different things that we talk about that are specific to the brand that I’ve built that are now being used elsewhere. Like, do you like Mill Tank or Bad Binder behavior?

Those are terms that were coined by videos that I’ve come out with, that I use over and over again that now get used by the community, makes them feel like they’re a part of. Our most recent video that came out four days ago, which already has over a quarter million views featured a subscriber, his name is Nick, a k a Skipper, and me and another Pokemon YouTuber collaborated.

We went to this place called Franken Son Collectible Show, which is a giant warehouse full of collectibles that are sold by different vendors that rent out space in that, in that area, and myself and Sean, another Pokemon YouTuber over at Poke Vault. We both competed to create a Pokemon binder from scratch, buying single cards out of this area with a budget and a time.

And then Nick, our selected subscriber from Deep Pocket Monster, was gonna select the winning binder and he gets to keep the winning binder. He then sees the loser give the losers binder to the winner, and that winner can then give it away on their channel. This is a video idea that came about as a result of watching something similar on another channel, right?

This is another lesson here. I’m picking up cues from other successful channels and going, well, how are they doing it? And what, what’s interesting? What, what is making people like millions of people watch these videos? And how can I incorporate that kind of feeling, that emotion, interest and curiosity.

Not like copying the thing exactly, but how can I adopt the same idea into the world of Pokemon? And that’s what I’ve done with this particular video and it’s done very well. And I’m gonna be going to Hawaii tomorrow, and on Friday I will be filming a part two of that because every time you come out with a piece of content, I don’t care where it’s published.

If it seems to do well, you do another. Do another version of it, a second, take part two, whatever it might be, and that’s something that’s been really big to grow the channel. We have, I think, six videos now of me buying weird things on Etsy because YouTube and the audience just seem to really love those videos and the quirkiness of my reactions to them.

And so let’s just keep doing them. Our collection buying videos have been very popular. And then more recently, in addition to the speed binder challenge, which we’ve coin. And I’ve learned that from Seth Godin too. It’s like, you gotta make a name for these things. Right? The Speed Binder Challenge. We actually spent 10 to 15 minutes on my team just coming up with a, a nice, catchy name for that Speed Binder Challenge because once it takes a name, it has like a life and it has a, a feel to it.

And now we can do it again. And it becomes a part of a series and technically becomes a playlist on YouTube and they all can feed into each other. What I was saying is this another series of videos that we’ve done that was, again, purely experimental and then took off and we’ve just done several, are set completion videos.

So trying to complete a set within 24 hours or within a certain parameter by the end of the day, or with a certain budget or trade only. Like there’s always variables, but the idea is the same, and this has just worked really, really well. So anyway, just thoughts off the top of my head based on, you know, this, it’s on the top of my head right now, going to Hawaii tomorrow and being a part of this event and just the amazing opportunities that are happening.

And it’s interesting because I remember when I was growing Smart Passive Income and these sorts of things started to happen there. This was in 2010, 2011, 2012, and right around that time I remember getting a lot of opportunities for things that weren’t necessarily in in alignment, but did have a lot of dollar values connected to them.

And thankfully I was smart enough back then to know when to say no or not just get persuaded by the income that could come from saying yes to certain deals and partnerships. But the same thing is happening here too, a warning for you. If you are on your way up, that will happen and you gotta keep your head on straight.

And if you know that you sometimes might get off the right path , you gotta have systems in place, a k a people, mentors, a loved one, colleagues a mastermind group there to just be brutally honest with you. And I’ve already had a lot of those things happen in the Pokemon space because this is a new space to me.

So when a, a company reaches out, for example, offers a lot of money, sounds good on paper, I have people to go to to say, Hey, is this legit? Tell me. And they go, no, no, no. Don’t ever get involved with them. I was involved with them. It was not good. Saves, saves me basically. So I was gonna say, saves money, saves time, but just saves me, right?

So get involved in mastermind groups, connect with other people. If you need a place to connect with other people as an entrepreneur, check out SmartPassiveIncome.com/allaccess. You can get access to all of our courses and information, but most of all the right pathways through them for you and the other people, the community who are going through those things with you and access to our team as well to help you and guide you through that.

So anyway, thank you all so much for the support, especially with this case study of Deep Pocket Monster. It’s become a big thing and, and I’m just so grateful and I’m having a lot of fun. I’m gonna continue to share more about it as it grows and bobs and weaves and goes up and goes down. It’s just super fun and I’m just thankful I have this platform to, to share that journey with you.

I appreciate you. Take care and as always, Team Flynn for the win.

Thanks for listening to the Smart Passive Income Podcast at SmartPassiveIncome.com. I’m your host, Pat Flynn. Our senior producer is David Grabowski. Our series producer is Paul Grigoras, and our executive producer is Matt Gartland. Sound editing by Duncan Brown. The Smart Passive Income Podcast is a production of SPI Media. We’ll catch you in the next session.