SPI 688: It’s the Same Every Time

SPI 688: It’s the Same Every Time

Announcer: You’re listening to the Smart Passive Income Podcast, a proud member of the Entrepreneur Podcast Network, a show that’s all about working hard now, so you can sit back and reap the benefits later. And now your host, whenever he hears someone say pat on the back, he wants to jump on him. Pat Flynn.

Pat Flynn: This episode airs on June 9th and that date, or I guess today, if you will, if you’re listening to this when this comes out, is a historical date in my life, my career, in the world of Pokemon, perhaps, because this is the first day of my event that’s happening in Anaheim, California that I’m hosting.

And right now we’re exactly a month away from that event, so we’re getting a little time lapse or a time jump here. You know, I like time travel. So if you’re listening to this right now, the event will have already started.

And I mean, #CardParty, it could be good, it could be bad. I don’t know. Now I’m gonna do everything in my power to make it great. And I wanted to bring you inside of my brain just for a little bit because I’m going through some stuff. Now, nothing crazy, and I say that because I felt these exact same feelings before.

These are the feelings that once almost stopped me from creating my entire business back in 2008. These were the same feelings that almost stopped me when I started my YouTube channel in 2009. This is the same kind of thing that I’ve been experiencing since I started all this stuff, since I started doing things that were not inside my comfort zone.

But each of these things, the blog I started in 2008 at the YouTube channel in 2009, the podcast, this podcast in 2010, speaking on stage in 2011, writing books in 2013, publishing online courses in 2017, building a Community in 2020. These were all things that made me feel this exact same way. So this is no stranger to me, and I know what these feelings mean.

This feeling of self-doubt. This feeling of being scared and nervous. This feeling of, is everybody gonna laugh in my face about this thing? This feeling of just wanting to crawl into a hole and questioning why I’m even going down this in the first place. And I know from experience that that feeling, this feeling that I’m feeling right now prior to this event happening, which again, is happening at the time that it, this episode, like right now for you, a month away from me that it means there’s a possibility of something absolutely epic, awesome, incredible, valuable, life-changing, tasty. Yes, tasty and worth it. This will be worth it, and I am expecting hiccups. I’m expecting some stones that were not unturned that, I don’t know if that’s the right phrase, but things that perhaps were overlooked and I want people to come back from this event and go, you know, despite those things, if they happen to find them or experience them, it was worth every minute. And if it was worth every minute to be there, then it will be worth the dollar amount that they will have paid to buy a ticket to fly out or drive and stay at the hotel and participate in activities and events. And ultimately to trust me, it’s scary. This is a huge deal at the time of this recording.

We have nearly 1500 tickets sold. That’s right. 1500 tickets sold. People coming from all over the world, some of the largest Pokemon YouTube creators in the room, and I think they’re expecting something big. They’re expecting a good time, but I also know that their expectations are set from the prior experiences that they have had different events that they’ve attended.

I’m talking about the creators and the fans that are gonna be there. And I’m just first of all wanting to thank my team to give you a little insight on who the team is. You know, there’s the team at Deep Pocket Monster. It’s myself, my producer Dan Patrick Norton, and my editor Zach, our Discord community manager Jay, and then we recently hired another editor, Chris to, to do some work for us. So it’s a pretty relatively small team, but this event definitely would not have happened without Dan Franks and, and Chris and Jared over from the Podcast Movement team. Now, what does that have to do with Pokemon? Well, it was interesting.

They reached out to me during the pandemic and said, Pat, are you thinking of doing FlynnCon again? And I said, well, we, we were thinking about it, but it got canceled and we had to reschedule. We had to reschedule again. And all signs point to, to no. And plus, I felt a desire to try something new in the world of, of live events whenever that could happen again.

And that’s when we started to chat about the, you know, Pokemon channel that was growing so quickly. And I found that there was no event, like what we’re putting together. Right. There’s, there’s many other entrepreneurial events and I would like to say that FlynnConn, which happened in 2019 was fairly unique, but, there was nothing that existed for the Pokemon community outside of, you know, trading card game, the, like, the actual game events, but for fans and creators to come together for the collectors who also had kids who wanted to have activities to, to take part in, I wasn’t seeing it. It’s what I wanted and I wasn’t seeing it. So I said, you know what? I’ve run an event before. I have some resources, and wow, this team is offering to help. Let’s make it happen. And now we’re one month out and every day we’re having, you know, two or three calls it seems. People are reaching out with questions and there are unknowns.

And you know, even today, I’m just gonna be honest, not everything is figured out yet. Not everything is figured out. Things are getting figured out. Just the other day I got an email from Guinness, no, not the beer company, the world record company. Guinness World Records because we are gonna be setting a world record to start off the show tomorrow, which will be the 10th, and we’re gonna have the most packs of Pokemon cards or any trading card game opened simultaneously.

And this will be a way to bring the whole community together to start off the show with a bang and to say, Hey, we’re different. And guess what? You’ve already made a mark here. You were a part of the world record and I’m really excited for that. It wasn’t cheap just to get an adjudicator there, but I’m hoping it goes down the way, the way it should and the way that I’m hoping.

So anyway, I’m just kind of unloading here so I can make myself feel better because I do go through daily now, little bit of anxiety, little bit of nervousness, and then I channel that nervous energy into positive energy. And then I, it’s like a rollercoaster. Every day I wonder if something was missed. I wonder if something I’m thinking of doing is gonna get, not really the reaction that I’m hoping for, but at the same time, I think back to all those other things that I mentioned earlier from the podcast, to the blog, to speaking to books, to courses, to whatever, that nervousness always put me in a position to do well because it made me step up to make sure that those things that I was worried about had a, a less likely chance of happening.

And in this case, it’s always about experience. You know, I’ve written about this in Superfans, the, it’s the experiences that you create for people over time. And I’m hoping that this event will run again next year, and of course, we’ll learn from the things that happen. I am excited and also nervous for the content that’s gonna be created after this event is over. I attended another event last year where immediately after there were several, several videos from creators who were at that event and you know, they were honest and some good things to say, some not so good things to say. And I’m hoping that we get the same. I’m hoping that we get the same.

Yes. Good things. And not so good things. Hopefully in a respectful manner, but those not so good things are just as important because it will allow me to better position year two to address those things, to make sure that doesn’t happen, whatever, whatever it might be, or to put something in place so that.

You know, those experiences can be different. It’ll allow me to work with others, and perhaps even that person who has a complaint or a disagreement or a particular experience, I can reach out to them and, and help hopefully make the situation right. Again, I’m speaking as if something’s already happening that’s gonna go wrong, and I, I expect it, but I’m not, I’m gonna do my best to not, you know, let those things happen. So we’re leaving no stone unturned in our planning process, but there still might be some pebbles here and there, and we’ll see everybody.

I don’t know if you could hear it in my voice, but about a month out now. It’s one of those things that I know is gonna come and go really quickly, but I hope that it is an amazing experience for everybody as hopefully it is an amazing experience for me.

And I hope that for you, the listener, you know this, this shows you a couple things. Number one, you know, in my book, Superfans, I talk about the idea of bringing your community together. When you can facilitate those interactions between members of your community who all share a common interest, a common goal, common enemy that can do nothing but heighten your brand and increase your authority in a space as a byproduct, but at the same time, you get a much closer connection to your people and are better able to serve them also. And it’s cool because you couldn’t be somebody who’s, you know, a nobody and become a somebody by bringing those somebody together, right?

There’s so much value in being a connector, and I hope that being a connector in this space and a person who serves this audience just as much as I try to serve you as well, I hope that the, the rewards are there and the rewards to me come in thank yous in handwritten notes, in people sharing it and wanting to come back.

I mean, that’s the ultimate goal, to come back and bring a friend, right? And then we could double, triple, quadruple the size. And you know, I’ve had a lot of people say, Pat, this is just a money grab. And the funny thing is, there’s a very good chance that we’re going to lose money on this cuz of all we’re putting into year one.

And yes, there are sponsors. Yes, we’ve sold a lot of tickets, but this event cost about a half million dollars to put on at least the budget’s telling us that and it could cost more. Hopefully not. And any profits that are made are just gonna go into year two. I don’t need the extra money and we’re just trying to build something amazing here.

But all signs point to this is definitely not a money-making decision. And I’m happy to share that spreadsheet down the road for sure, because I think a lot of people can learn from it and, and hopefully see that, you know, we’re building for experiences and we know that if we do that, good things will come down the road.

So anyway, just a lot of me unloading for you and yeah. I hope it’s going well right now at the time of this recording being published. You know, I’m probably frantically running around somewhere in Anaheim, California or, and probably have one of the biggest smiles I’ve ever had on my face. Cuz when you plan something and it’s executed and people show up, pretty amazing things can happen.

So anyway, I appreciate y’all for listening in. I wanna wish you all the best. Good luck future, Pat. Thanks for listening everybody. Hit that subscribe button if you haven’t already, and I’ll chat with you soon. Bye.

Thank you so much for listening to the Smart Passive Income podcast at SmartPassiveIncome.com. I’m your host, Pat Flynn. Sound editing by Duncan Brown. Our senior producer is David Grabowski, and our executive producer is Matt Gartland. The Smart Passive Income Podcast is a production of SPI Media, and a proud member of the Entrepreneur Podcast Network. Catch you next week!