There’s a big difference between building an audience and building a community. You see, as creators, we can do a lot more than just share our knowledge. When we leverage the full potential of our platforms, we create a sense of belonging and accountability for our followers.
This is key because, now more than ever, people are starved for connection!
And I’m not just talking the talk. This is the theme of today’s episode because I’ve been walking the walk.
I’m happy to announce that Deep Pocket Monster, my venture into the Pokémon space, has hit another massive milestone. This is a big one because our Discord server now has over 3,600 paying members!
That income alone covers our production costs. More importantly, the community we’ve built there is already changing lives.
Listen in on this session to hear the story that brought this reality home to me in a big way. I also share the famous 3-second rule from Neil Strauss’s foray into pick-up artistry, The Game (Amazon affiliate link), that I’ve adapted to business networking. (You’ll definitely want to tune in for that one.)
And, if you haven’t already, check out the Pokémon live event I’m putting on at CARD.PARTY!
SPI 672: The 3-Second Rule
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, He’s always with an an alarms length from a set of posted notes for brainstorming. Pat Flynn.
Pat Flynn: Two months from the date of this episode coming out, I will have just wrapped a big event that I’m putting on in the Pokemon World. I am hosting an event called CARD.PARTY, and at the time of this recording, which is when? When is this? March 1st? It is March 1st, so we’re a month and a half ahead of the schedule, which is great. I’m starting to freak out a little bit at this point. I remember the same feelings before FlynnCon, which was an event I hosted in San Diego in 2019.
But this one’s gonna have three to four times as many people. At this date and time March 1st, we’ve crossed like 750 tickets sold already, which is amazing. And we’re doing some really amazing things. I’ve talked about it already in several places to almost have this thing market itself, right? It’s really highlighting the creators who are coming big and small, and a lot of them are sharing it.
We’re, we’re making them look like the heroes of the story cuz they are. And as a result of that, they more willing to share their thing. I talk about this exact same thing in my book Superfans, and this is a way for me to add value into this community, to provide a space for these creators to come together, to provide a space for fans to come together and meet each other, and a space for the fans to meet their favorite creators.
And I was just surprised something like this wasn’t done before. I have the resources. I’ve become a little bit known in this space. This is my giving to the space and, and I know it’s gonna come back in some way, shape, or form. One of the chapters in Superfans. Create a gig. A gig, an opportunity for your audience to meet each other, and this is a big gig for sure.
Now I have a Discord community for my members of the Deep Pocket Monster Channel. You can sign up as a member of the channel. Similar to like a Patreon, it’s more of just like a support mechanism with a few perks here and there. Some perks related to what you get access to during live streams. Some member only giveaways, member only streams and and one of those perks is access to a member only Discord.
And I love that Discord is, is a community-based server that’s very popular and gaming and anime and tech related industries versus like a Circle community, which is more, I feel like more for professionals. Like we have our all Access Pass and our SPI Pro communities, right? But anyway, the platform doesn’t matter.
In this Discord, which is for members only, which I love because it’s filtered just for members who are paying. So, you know, there are like zero trolls in there. Everybody’s filtered. It’s everybody’s fantastic. This event is a big deal for a lot of these community members who have never been to one of these kinds of events before.
And when we crossed 500,000 subscribers, I went live in Discord and it was just voice only. Cuz in Discord you get it works kind of like clubhouse. You have like a stage and you can invite people to the stage to talk, but there’s an audience who’s just listening in as well. It’s, it’s really nice. But it was audio only just because we could get more people in there and a person who is a member came up to the stage.
And he said, Pat, congratulations on reaching half a million subscribers on your channel. And I was very grateful for that. And then he ended up telling a story about how deathly afraid he was to come to CARD.PARTY, but he’s coming. And he said he knows that this is gonna be good for him. It’s completely out of his comfort zone.
But he’s, he feels like that with the community that is in the discord and, and myself, that he’s gotten to know on video and, and in the channel. He feels comfortable enough to get uncomfortable and get out, get outta his comfort zone and start meeting people. And he says it’s, it’s, he’s getting kind of a little bit of anxiety about it as well, which I, oh, I was like, oh no.
Like, I don’t want you to feel that, but I understand. So I, I proceeded to tell him my stories of going to events for the first time and being the person who did not want to engage with anybody who did not wanna talk to anybody. This is just how I grew up. I was always very shy and did not want to be called on.
I did not want attention on me, which is, I mean, I even track it back to or, or I’ve made the connection now that I’m an adult, back to when I was a kid, the reason why I joined the marching band, cuz you put on a uniform and you blend in and, and you perform, but nobody’s looking at you, they’re looking at everybody anyway I told the story of how shy I was going to these events, but some things that I did that helped me, number one, getting to know people beforehand, which he’s already doing in the Discord, and he felt very grateful that he could talk to me even in the, in a voice situation like that to feel more comfortable. Number two, I taught him the three second rule, which I’ve shared many, many times on the podcast before. And I didn’t invent this rule. I think I actually heard about it on one of Neil Strauss’s books. The Game, I think it was actually, and it was actually like a strategy for if you’re shy and you wanna like meet a woman, if you’re a man and you wanna meet a beautiful woman, but you’re too shy, you see somebody that you want to reach out and say hello to, don’t give yourself more than three seconds or else you’re gonna psych yourself out.
So I’ve sort of borrowed that rule and brought it to the networking opportunities inside of the blogosphere back in 2010, which is when I first brought myself to an event and then later I, and, and I still continue to use it when I’m in different spaces where I don’t know many people. I will psych myself out if I don’t actually just do it. And I remember I was at a Dave Ramsey event in the green room as a speaker, and Simon Sinek comes in the room and I, I waited too long. I waited four seconds and I psyched myself out. And I, I had a perfect opportunity. That’s exactly where that kind of stuff is supposed to happen. He’s a extremely friendly guy and he, he, he wasn’t intimidating at all other than the fact that I was intimidating myself out of the, outta the equation.
Right. Anyway, I’m telling him this story and he’s feeling a lot more calm. He’s feeling a lot better, and he just like couldn’t stop thanking me for the opportunity to meet other fans, even though he was scared to do so, even though it gave him literal anxiety. He was grateful for the opportunity to do that.
And you know what’s gonna happen? He’s gonna come to the event, he’s gonna meet some really cool people. I’m gonna be able to have a chance to meet with him. He’s gonna take some pictures, he’s gonna have a great time. This is me visualizing what’s gonna happen and me getting out of the anxiety of putting on this event.
This is the kind of experience I want a person to have there and going back home and going, wow, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was gonna be. Right? Not the event, but like, well, maybe. But the idea of meeting people and connecting with people in that way. And providing that opportunity as a creator for the introverts in the audience and extroverts alike to meet each other it’s such a wonderful thing and it is so rewarding, and it hasn’t even happened yet. Right. He was so grateful and it made me realize that we as creators, were doing a lot more than just teaching the thing that we’re teaching. So much more. There are so many people out there who need you for more reasons than what they’ve come to you for initially.
They need a sense of belonging. They need a sense of sometimes accountability. They need to feel like they are with their people because that’s when people now feel comfortable enough to get outta that comfort zone. And that’s again, where all the most awesome things happen outside of our comfort zone.
So you listening to this right now, If you have even a small audience, how are you going to, in some way, shape or form, online or offline, provide an opportunity for those people to find each other? Because if you don’t do that, you are not building a community. You are just building an audience. And there’s a big difference, a huge, massive difference between building an audience and building a community. And most of what’s being taught online is about building an audience. Search engine optimization, email marketing, social media followers, fans, likes, subscribes. No, we want to build community cuz community is business insurance. It’s the ability for you to build super fans in a way who will follow you wherever the tech wants us to go.
These are the people that you should build these experiences for, who will then in turn support you so long as you keep doing what you’re doing. And to only have been in this community for two in two years and three months at this point, this Pokemon community, it just kind of reaffirmed how important it is to do all that and how much, even more now, post pandemic, people crave and are hungry and are starving for belonging.
So what are you gonna do to help people feel like they belong? Because you can only do so much as far as like your one-to-one connections, but when you bring a few people into your community who then welcome more people into the community, who then feel like they’re finding each other, who then bring more people just like them into the community.
That’s when the magic happens. So go make some magic. Thank you so much. I appreciate you and I didn’t wanna mention any names on the podcast, but if you are in the Discord inside of the Deep Pocket Monster, Gem Mint Club is what we’re called. Thank you for your support. I appreciate you. And for those of you who are not in that, just to give you some perspective.
There are 3,600 paying members of this channel now at $2 and 99 cents. That adds up. And we hit a big milestone recently of that income just from the memberships alone paying for the production of the channel, which is fantastic cuz that means everything else we can just continue to pour back into the community and building this event and other fun things that I have planned in the future too.
So, anyway, trying to walk the walk, you know, I don’t just teach this stuff. I’m, I’m doing this stuff and hopefully leading by example. Hopefully inspiring you to make it happen and, and I want you to make it happen as far as getting your community to find each other, these beautiful things happen when you do that.
Honestly, it’s some of the most rewarding, most fulfilling stuff ever and everybody can win. All right, everybody, thank you so much. I appreciate you and I look forward to serving you in the next one. Peace, everybody.
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!
