How Pat Flynn Built Deep Pocket Monster to 850k Subs In A Blink Of An Eye

0:01All right, Marketing School listeners, this is a 20-30-minute segment of a full interview I've done with an amazing founder, entrepreneur, creative, visionary, creative,

0:18visionary. thing you can just search for leveling up with eric sue and without further ado enjoy the episode pat how we doing doing well thanks for having me eric yeah it's been a long time so it's a funny story about this podcast uh you were actually the very first guest 10 years ago no so it's it's that's crazy it's been great but just for everyone um i'm gonna do a quick background so pat has a youtube channel called deep pocket monster and it's growing like a weed I think it's 750k subs now. Almost 800 and it's been about three years. So it's a new-ish venture that has taken off. And a lot of people see it and they're like, wow, this is an overnight thing for you.

1:02And I was like, no, this is like year 12 of you too. And I finally figured out something that's taken off. But not even that. There's podcast offer you've launched. There's physical products you've launched. There's SPI, which is your main thing. We're going to talk about all these things. So basically, Pat, he's a serial entrepreneur and he's one of the OGs, I think, of not even just affiliate marketing, but just marketing in general. So I think it's going to be a great conversation, wide-ranging. Did I miss anything with this intro? Do you want to add anything? No, I mean, you put it kindly.

1:29A lot of people say I'm a serial entrepreneur, but others would say I'm just not focused. So I appreciate that. But as I like to say, you know, pad of all trades, master of fun. So why don't we talk about that first? I mean, no, actually, no, we're going to talk about Deep Pocket Monster first. Okay. So you've done this for three years and there's, I think it's growing faster than your main company, SPI, right? And there's only two employees working on it. Like, can you break down how that all works right now? Yeah, so it's myself. I'm the sort of on-camera talent. I have a producer, and then we have an editing team of one or two people, depending on the size of the video.

2:05And that's it. We have a Discord manager who helps with the community. And on top of this, there is a separate company that puts on an event called Card Party. I partnered with the podcast movement company to create an event for this community. And we had 2 ,500 people in Anaheim last year show up for the first year. And this year we're going to have 5 ,000 in Orlando. Amazing. And it's pretty incredible that this thing that was just a hobby during the pandemic, something I discovered new with my kids, has now become a main thing that is blown up. And it's, you know, actually more profitable than SPI because it's very lean.

2:39And it's, you know, the ceiling for the audience on YouTube for this space, It's more entertainment based and it's cross-generational versus business. The ceiling is only so high. And you talked about this with Noah Kagan, but you shared some numbers around the Deep Pocket Monster channel. So I think it was like 30, 40, 50 grand a month from AdSense. Whatever you're comfortable sharing, I just want people to get a sense for how that business is going in terms of numbers. Yeah, I mean, it's very seasonal, depending on how ads are spending money on YouTube for this audience. But the CPMs are pretty low relative to my other channel, my business channel.

3:14but just the numbers are so much higher. We have videos that are in the 5 to 10 million view range. And in general per month on average, we're getting maybe 35 to 40K. That's not including potential sponsorships. We've had some people come on for 15 to 20K per sponsor spot on an individual video. That's not regular, but that is nice when it happens. But our record month was November of 2022. In that month alone, we had 75K in ad revenue. on YouTube. And just the Pokemon industry goes up and down, you know, and I'm just, I'm just here to ride the waves. Got it. And how about for the events? Cause the events are very difficult.

3:53That's a whole nother type of business, right? So how did you coordinate all, I mean, 2 ,500 people, 5 ,000 people, like, how did you get that going? First of all, it is not profitable yet. But it is something that I wanted to step forward to do to serve this community. You know, it's some stuff that I have experienced in the past. I've put on events in the business space. However, this community is only used to events that are more vendor-like, more swap meet-like, right? Just buy, sell, trade, that sort of thing. A big convention center. And then you're kind of just left on your own to enjoy that experience.

4:24But I noticed that a lot of my audience were families and a lot of people who had kids or people who were reliving their childhood through Pokemon now that they have money and they're adults and it's not just allowance anymore. And there was nowhere where they were bringing people together to just enjoy the hobby and to meet each other, right? And I wrote a book called Superfans that was published in 2019. And I always hypothesize that the way to long-term business success is by bringing the people in that community together. It's not just you talking to them, them talking to you. It's finding a space to create for them to find each other.

4:56And that's exactly what we're doing here. And the event is structured kind of like a VidCon, where it is the celebrities of that space, the other YouTubers who are sort of the headline, right? So we really featured the creators. It's not just me. There's several other creators who've been in the space for much longer than me. And so we were able to create that environment that benefits them because they're able to show up and look like a rock star. Not only are we featuring the sort of A-listers in that space, but I really wanted to focus on the sort of lower level people who have maybe subscriber counts of even a thousand or even just hundreds.

5:31And actually putting their face on the website and saying, hey, no, you are a celebrity here too because of what you create. And they hardly ever get any recognition at all. yet they become the people who promote the event more than anybody else because they are feeling recognized they feel like a sense of belonging which is which is really cool um and so they're able to meet their fans they're able to kind of connect with each other uh not only that the sponsors come on because they're like oh all the creators in this space are here like we should go great we got the sponsors there and now the creators are like great their sponsors are here that we can make deals with so again becoming that person to facilitate those interactions and bringing those people together has been really neat.

6:09And people have been talking about it in terms of like, this is like camp. Like it feels like camp. I'm seeing my friends. It's a place for all these people who normally when we speak about Pokemon to other people or especially at school or at work, it's like, that's weird, man. You're into that. And here you're like, yes, these are my people. These are my people. So it's been great. And to see just the excitement for it this year and people like we've not spent any money on marketing. because we developed the perfect community event. And then we could put all those extra resources into just making a great experience.

6:46And then in the future, more events, maybe bigger. I don't know if I'd ever want to go big. 5 ,000 is a lot. Yeah, 5 ,000 is a lot. I mean, it's definitely a challenge, but it's also really exciting and fun. And I get to do what I do best, which is get on stage and talk to people and entertain. And then it's just like, then I can rest for two weeks and just do nothing because it's a lot. So, okay,$2 ,500, you weren't profitable. $5 ,000, not going to be profitable. How much are you guys charging per ticket on average? Per ticket for the three days,$99. And what's interesting is all these other events that are more swap meet-like, which are great.

7:20There's one that I'm actually headed to in a couple days here in LA called Collecticon, which is fantastic. The ticket price is much cheaper because it doesn't come with all those other experiences. But initially, we got a lot of pushback last year because I was like, Pat, your ticket prices are much higher than this other event that we're used to. A, we're not established like them. so we have to charge a little bit higher, but B, it's a completely different event. So a lot of people didn't really believe in what we were creating, but the people who were there who then went home and were like, this is different.

7:46This is incredible. We're like, this is, you need to charge more for this. And so we got, we had to get those early adopters in and make their experience amazing. And now they're telling everybody else who was on the fence last year to come. And now it's, it's, it's, we're hoping to break even, maybe even profit. A big reason why we didn't last year was because it was in Anaheim and because it was supposedly like those other events, there was no reason to stay at the hotel. And when you run an event at a hotel, you need to sell hotel blocks that you reserve. And if you don't sell those hotel blocks, you owe money on those hotel blocks.

8:19That's where we got screwed. But this year, people are like, oh, there's stuff that happens in the hallways and people are up till 2 a.m. trading and doing big deals. I got to stay at the hotel. The hotel's pretty much sold out already at this point, which is great. So you're going to be good this year. I hope so, yeah. Okay. because 2 ,500 times 99 is about 248 grand or so and then the venue itself and there's also logistics when you have 2 ,500 people it adds up, there's food and everything food and beverage minimums we do get some money through a VIP ticket so the VIP ticket is like$499 they get a lot of perks and access and things like that the sponsorships is where we could really double down and this year we have a couple big sponsors coming in like CGC and even PSAs coming in, which are big names, to be a part of this and offer on-site grading and experiences like that, which is pretty cool.

9:12So anyway, a lot of industry-specific things are happening there, which is great. I want to sit on this one for a little longer too, because even for your first event, you got 2 ,500 people. So how do you get 2 ,500 people to your first event? So again, it was focusing on the creators who are coming. Some of these people in this space watch these people every single day and have become a part of their lives. So the ability to have a chance to meet them is incredible. So it's really influencer marketing. Influencer marketing, yeah. And again, focusing on them. In fact, one thing that I did to make sure these creators knew how great of an opportunity this was, was before the event, I got them all in a room, in a Zoom room.

9:49And I was just like, hey guys, this is what this is going to be like. Here's how it's different than the other events you may have been at. And you are the hero of the story here. Like we want this to be about you. You're going to get time on stage in front of people. You're going to be able to meet your fans. We're going to have meet and greets. And that was another decision we made. It wasn't like a lot of other events where the meet and greets are, you got to pay to get an autograph. It was like these creators actually love this opportunity that they would be willing to do it for free. And some of those creators were so happy to stand in for four hours to just meet all their audience members there in person.

10:24But a lot of influencer marketing, a lot of, you know, there are some strategy you can do with raising prices over time. Anytime we had a price increase coming, we'd make a big deal about it. There's email marketing involved with this as well, but we never required any of our creators to talk about this. We just said, we want you to talk about it because it's worth talking about. And they all did it because the event was worth it. I think what's really smart here too is I think people don't understand that the events that charge a lot of money, they didn't start that way. It might have been a really low price first and just to get the base going, the community going.

11:01And then over time, they can start to increase their price and then it becomes super profitable over time. Like there's an event that Neil and I spoke at last year in Dubai and they're tickets for anywhere from 1500 to 5000. And there's like a couple thousand people there. So it's like, man, I'm making millions of bucks there. But it's like, it takes time to get there. Right. And from my understanding, you're planning to do this for not just a couple of years, but a decade plus. Right. We want it to be the camp that everybody can look forward to every year. Even people talked about how they met new friends and they're coming together and they met each other off, you know, outside of the card party calendar.

11:34We also got inspired by Chris Guillebeau. He used to hold an event in Portland called World Domination Summit. And at that event every year, he would do a world record with his audience. And I was like, that's the coolest thing. Like what an amazing community experience to have together. Can we do something like that at card party? So I did the research And in fact, it's pretty easy to just make up a world record that you could do. Guinness, which, fun fact, is the same company as the beer company. Oh, really? I didn't know that. It is. Huh. Yeah. Guinness World. Yeah, okay. Look it up. Trust me.

12:09Although, maybe I am getting duped. I don't know. But anyway, apparently Guinness, back in the day, used to have trivia nights in their bars. But there would be fights about the right answers. So they created the book that would answer questions about a lot of these things that were in their trivia nights so that they'd sell more beer. Something like that. That's like the whole Michelin thing too. It's like. Exactly. Yeah. That's the same company. Like, right? Yeah. So anyway. So we created a world record. By the way, it's not cheap. It costs$21 ,000 to do this world record. And even if you fail, you still owe.

12:44Oh, you have to pay to get. Oh, wow. That's smart. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's a great business model. Right. and so paid$21 ,000 we were going to set the world record of most people opening a pack of trading cards at the same time which was going to be a great community thing but there was so much logistics the guys had to come in and there was all this like paperwork and it was worth it because people remember that people saved their packs that they opened we handed out a pack to everybody that came in it was numbered we had to do this thing where the adjudicator Michael who is the same guy that you see in the Do Perfect videos, like the same world record guy.

13:20He came to our event and he did a good job like making it dramatic and stuff and getting everybody involved. But we had to open the packs within 30 seconds, hold it up in the air and count till 30. And then there were like these judges around to make sure everybody was doing it right. And then he had to calculate how many we got. And then he made the announcement and we all got the world record. And it was something that we could celebrate together. And I'm grateful because I get to keep the certificate at home. But so many people wanted to take pictures of it. People can go home and say, I am a world record holder at Card Party because it's not Pat Flynn.

13:53It's Card Party. It's a Card Party event, World Record. And we'll be doing another one this year. And we were like, okay, should we do the same one? We know there's going to be more people. We know how this works, but we don't want to just do the same thing. So we're doing something a little bit different. That's kind of a, I can't say it here because it's a surprise for everybody. And then you can just do the same one again, two years later. So yeah, you can repeat it. Well, okay. What's interesting to me, I'm trying to justify this as a marketing cost. So you pay$21 ,000, but how many views do you think that world record got?

14:23It's so funny because my team, my event team was like, that's expensive. If we're going to cut anything to save some money, we should probably cut that because the world record's cool, but what is that going to do? It is one of the number one things that people were able to walk away with and talk about and immediately feel a connection to the event. So as far as how many views, I mean, I did a video on Deep Pocket Monster about it, and it doesn't have that many views compared to some other videos. That's not what it's about. It's about the experience that people have who are there that they can then take home and talk about organically and feel like they're a part of something that they cannot get anywhere else.

14:59And that's worth the cost. I think it was more word of mouth marketing that you can't really measure at the end of the day. People like to call it dark social or whatever. But this is one of those situations where, you know, like, okay, for example, if you set a world record, you're going to go tell all your friends. You're going to go tell your spouse. And so that is the real reach. And you guys are doing it again. So obviously you feel like it's working. Yeah. One thing we did do to help amplify a lot of this was we, it's a card event. These are all collectors. We're all obsessed with like finishing our sets and stuff.

15:30We created a set of cards, nine cards that were designed specifically for this event that you can only get at this event. And the art on the cards were actually created by artists in our community, people that everybody knows or some people know. So it was cool to highlight the art portion of Pokemon, which often gets underserved and unrecognized. But also, it really, I mean, I didn't know it would work this well. People were going crazy trying to find all the cards. And what was really cool is we designed them in a way to force people to go to different parts of the event. our platinum sponsor had a card that was only available at their booth.

16:09So of course, everybody went there and the sponsor was so happy. We had an area where you could throw energy cards, which are like cards that are in every pack, at things to try to earn points. And you get a card if you go there. If you participated in the world record, when you left that room, you got a world record card that said that you were a part of this. And people have it up in frames, in their desks at home and in their office. I see it every once in a while. It's just so amazing. We're trying to create these little touch points. All the things that I talk about in my book, Superfans, I'm just doing that.

16:42I need to write another edition now. This is almost like you're gamifying a lot of things. The world record, you're gamifying it for people. Then this card thing, you're gamifying it for people. By the way, how much did it cost you to do all the cards? $5 ,000. I mean, not much. Got it. Again, it's hard to measure. I think if it's a pure finance person or private equity, cut that immediately. but it's clear that it works. That's cool. I'm just curious. What's the most expensive Pokemon card that you have right now? How valuable is your collection overall? I have some cards that are close to $7 ,000 or$8 ,000.

17:18There's a XY promo from 2016 that crosses over Mario and Pikachu. There was some boxes that were for sale for$25 back then where you can get the Mario and the Luigi. Those individual cards graded at a PSA 10 now are in the$5 ,000 to$6 ,000 range. I have a few copies of those. There's another card that I love from a set called Phantom Forces, which is an all-silver Dialga card. It's a secret rare in that set. It's the only all-silver card in all of Pokemon, which is why I love it. There's only 53 of them in a PSA 10, and I have seven of them. I'm trying to corner the market. I'm not going to sell them.

17:58That's the cool thing about Pokemon. It's so vast. And one thing that I used to teach in business, and I still do, it's this idea of the riches are in the niches, right? You need to find your focus to be able to focus your learnings, to focus your expertise, et cetera, focus your audience. It's the literal same thing in collecting because a lot of new collectors are coming in. There's been a lot of hype, and they want all of it. They want to collect every single set, all the cards, but there's so many that you're just going to be wasting your money. You're going to be unfocused. And so pick a lane, right?

18:26So I encourage people to pick a lane when it comes to collecting, right? And I'm just collecting some specific promos that I just love because I love them. And then Pikachu promos because that's like my niche in the space. But more than the cards I'm collecting, I've become a creator in the space. And I've actually become seen as a person who's really here to serve the audience. In fact, I've had many conversations with some of the creators in the space who've been in here for years. Who are now coming to us and saying like, hey, can you teach me how you tell a story like you do? And we're happy to do that.

18:57In fact, at my event, there is an hour and a half block where my producer and I are teaching YouTube. Because we don't need to keep these things secret. Because if we can get everybody to create better videos, it benefits the entire community. So it's been really neat to be seen as a leader. And of course, I come from a business background, an entrepreneurial background. So a lot of the things that I've included in not just the videos tactfully, but more like business. I'm a top affiliate for a binder company, and I'm an advisor to companies in this space now. It's like the business side of it is injecting itself there.

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21:43Go to shopify.com slash marketing school, shopify.com slash marketing school. So do people, okay, on the streets, I remember sometimes we'll have some YouTube business creators on here and people do recognize them on the street, right? So are you recognized more for now deep pocket monster or the SPI piece? I am getting recognized. And it's so funny because anytime I do now, I have to like kind of gauge like, do you follow SPI or deep pocket monster? 90 % of the time now, it's Deep Pocket Monster. The most common interaction now is I'll be like a Trader Joe's or something, and then I'll hear some kid freak out and go to his mom and be like, Mom, mom, this is you too.

22:25And she's like, that guy? That guy's important? And then I go, hi, your son probably watches my YouTube channel, and then we take a picture, and it's just always so fun. And what I always hear is the parent is like, oh, you're that guy that my son like literally watches every single day they say thank you for being family like thank you for uh being a positive channel that i could share with my kids they'd rather have them watch me because i i do teach life lessons and entrepreneurship in a lot of my videos kind of you know some in a way yeah exactly um but that's the best because they're like oh thank you for for giving me something that's not just like yeah mindless you know insert channel name here yeah uh for their kids.