 You don't need a million TikTok followers or a hundred thousand Instagram followers. What you really need are your 1000 true fans. Actually, you probably can't even handle that much business as a solopreneur, most of you are. You probably can't even handle, you know, 10 inquiries in a single day would probably already kind of stress you out, right? So this is really important to understand about marketing, especially authentic marketing. There's that old saying that no publicity is bad publicity. Well I disagree, not just because we don't want people talking bad about us, but we don't just want any random people coming to our website or becoming followers or, you know, signing up to our email list. Why? Why don't I want more traffic? Because two reasons. One is because when you get more and more followers, random followers, especially if you use Instagram Reels or TikTok, if things go viral and you start getting a hundred thousand views or whatever it is or tens of thousands of views, you start getting a bunch of random followers and maybe some of them will even message you and pick your brain and expect you to answer things for free, things like this that use up your time and your energy. But more importantly, when you, next time you promote your service or your product or program, those random followers are not going to sign up. And not only that, they're not going to engage with your post, which then buries your post in the social media algorithms so that even the real people who want and need what you offer can't see the post. So this is why I am grateful about the audience size that I have. As of this recording, I have, you know, eight thousand or so Facebook fans and seven thousand Instagram followers. And honestly, that is, that's enough. Gratitude, my business is doing really well. Doing better than it's ever done in, you know, in 13 years. And I have a very peaceful life. I have a, you know, I'm able to manage everything without the kind of stress that I see others have who have a much bigger audience and, you know, staff to take care of, et cetera, et cetera. So let me share with you this idea that inspired me years ago. And you may have heard of it. It's called 1000 True Fans. And I'm going to read you a quote from, from that article. And the quote is from the article by Kevin Kelly. It's very famous. It's called 1000 True Fans. And it goes like this. It has never been easier to gather 1000 true fans around a creator and never easier to keep them near. Instead of trying to reach the narrow and unlikely peaks of platinum bestseller hits, blockbuster celebrity status, you can aim instead for a direct connection with a thousand true fans on your way. No matter how many fans actually you actually succeed in gaining, you'll not be surrounded. You'll be surrounded not by fattish infatuation, but by genuine and true appreciation. It's a much saner destiny to hope for. And you are much more likely to actually arrive there. Let's run the numbers a little bit. Okay. If you had a thousand true fans and each of them spent $100 with you a year, a year. That's, you know, less than $10 a month with you. Guess what? You have $100,000 a year, six figure income. Now, chances are most of you watching this have a product or service that costs more than $100 a year. You may be looking for clients and your clients may be paying you $300 a month. Right. So if you have clients paying you $300 a month, that's about $4,000 a year. You only need what, 25, right? 25 people to reach, am I doing the numbers right? Yeah, 25, 25 clients, right? To reach $100,000 income. And how many, how many fans do you need for 25 clients? Right. True fans, especially. 100 true fans probably will get you 25 clients or, okay, fine. Let's, let's put it out to 300 true fans will get you the 25 clients. You see what I mean? It doesn't require a lot. So let's stop like scrambling for more fame and traffic and using Instagram reels get a lot more views and all that's all that hashtags ridiculous stuff. Now I'm not saying hashtags are ridiculous. But anyway, when I have tried using them, it's either gotten me more bots and spam. Or it just hasn't gotten me the right kind of followers and fans. So let me, let me explain that where, where does true fans reside in, in this sort of universe of followers that you have? So let's, let's start with, I imagine concentric circles. So imagine this with me at the center is your authenticity, your energy and expressiveness, your creativity and talents is at the center, which then, you know, vibrates the content and the offerings that you have. So you, your authenticity is at the center right outside of you is the circle of your true fans. Again, we're just aiming for 100 people. Okay, maybe 300 people, maybe 500, maybe even a thousand is a lot. Right. It's a lot of people to, to, to, to manage. So let's just say we're aiming for the, for the 100 true fans right, right around us. If you, instead of one on one clients pay you three to $500 a month, maybe you have a group program where you charge $100, $100 a month. So that's about $1,000 a year, 1200 a year. And with the 100 true fans, again, that's six figure income, right? 100, 120 thousand dollars. So you, your authenticities at the center right outside are your true fans. Okay, maybe 100 true fans, what, what you're aiming for. Outside of those 100 true fans are what I call your followers. You know, you might have 300 Instagram followers. You might have, you know, 500 Facebook fans or, or whatever. You might have a thousand person email list. I don't know what the size of your follower list is, but it's greater than your, your true fans. You know, so, so your followers are the people who consistently see your content. Now they might not always engage, but they engage on a semi-regular basis, but they're pretty consistent in seeing it. You're able to reach them that these are the reach numbers that we go for on when we are looking at social media analytics. And these followers, some of them occasionally buy your service or product. So if you had like, you know, 300 followers, right? You know, they occasionally, you know, on average, maybe once a year, twice a year, maybe they'll buy one of your courses or get one of your sessions or something like that. All right, something like that. So you've got maybe 100, you know, you're aiming for 100 true fans. And you're aiming for 500 followers, 500. Okay. And then you've got outside of that circle are your potential followers. The potential followers, who are they? They're the people who when your followers and your true fans share your content, right? Occasionally when they share your content, those people, the friends and the colleagues of your followers or your potential followers, they occasionally hear about you by seeing the content that one of your followers has shared. And your potential follower base is, you know, possibly much bigger because depending on how much of your content is being shared could be in the thousands, okay? And then outside your potential followers is the rest of the world, is everyone else. And we're not trying to reach, again, we don't, honestly, if you had a million TikTok followers or 100,000 Instagram followers, you would be so much busier just in terms of like responding to people. You would probably lose the gratitude for the engagement that you're getting now and it becomes kind of honestly stale, et cetera. It, you know, and I have some experience of that myself, but so be grateful for the true fans, the few true fans you have right now who engage with just about everything that you do and they buy much of what you create and put out there, your clients right now, for example. Be so grateful for them because if you serve them well and if you understand them well and therefore create the content that really delights them and serves them and really makes a deep fulfilling impact on them, guess what? Those true fans will ignite the passion in the rest of your follower base, right? So at the center, again, of the circle is your authenticity and your authenticity, your passion for your message and your mission ignites your true fans. And the true fans delight in your content offers, your presence and their being served by these things ignites their gratitude and their passion and helps the followers, some of the followers become your true fans and your followers occasionally share your stuff and then you gain more. So in other words, instead of thinking about getting lots of traffic and just got to get tons and tons of people to my website or to my social media, care more for your true fans. Care to understand them, to serve them, to love them well and if you are truly able to serve them through your business, your services and programs are making a deep impact on them, then guess what? And your content as well. Then they're much more likely to help you expand that way. So let me let me share with you what a true why what. OK, so I've described these numbers and the true fan stuff, but but what about on the more mindset level? OK, what why are true fans so important to focus on? And the one, remember, I said your authenticity is at the center. You can be really yourself with your true fans. You don't have to ever feel like you have to dance. If you don't want to dance, if you want to dance, wonderful, then please dance. Don't judge. You don't judge yourself because your true fans also are looking positively on your dancing or your non-dancing. In my case, it's non-dancing. But for some of you, it's dancing, right? You can be really yourself with your quirks, with your mistakes, with your faults, quote unquote, because your true fans easily overlook that. Typos, right, grammatical errors. Um, in your video, I don't edit my videos. Now you know why I don't edit my videos because I'm not talking to everybody. I don't care about getting hundreds of thousands of YouTube views. No, I just want to get a couple dozen of YouTube views. The right couple dozen, the right couple hundred of YouTube views or Facebook views or Instagram views or whatever. That's all that's all I want. I don't need to be entertaining. I don't need to try to be entertaining because me and you, your authentic energy signature is entertaining enough to your true fans. OK, so the more you can dive into your authentic expression and mission of service through your business, the more you can be lit up about that. The more you are lighting up the life of your true fans. OK, so you could be fully yourself with your true fans and you don't ever have to pretend or worry about the mistakes that you make. Don't ever worry about making a bad first impression or whatever. OK, now, second point, really important. Your services are magically effective for your true fans. I don't know if you've ever experienced this. I have many, many times. You provide the same service to two people. And one person gets so much out of the service you provide. Whereas the other person, meh, they don't, you know, it didn't really affect them that much, or they might even not like it. This is the difference between a true fan and a everybody else. So you just you showing up as you are with whatever service or product you provide. Your true fan, you could, you know, who your true fans are by the people who were like, oh, my God, this seems so great. Oh, wow, your your service is life changing for me. So notice those people who benefit the most from your services. Those are your true fans. And if you get to know them better, you will naturally. So here's the magic of it all. The more you get to know your true fans individually, right? You get to know them and know their mindset and their heart set and what they need, want, are seeking, what really lights them up and what struggles they have. The more you get to know them, the more you're naturally going to create content for them. It's just a natural thing. You don't even have to do anything different other than getting to know them well from your heart, from your mind, really immersing yourself in what they're needing, what they're seeking, what lights them up, right, what keeps them up at night, so-called. What are their frustrations? What are the delights, what's their personality type? All the more you get to know them, the more you'll naturally create content and offers that align with them magically. So this is why we need to care, care, care so much for the true fans. And another signal of who your true fans are is you enjoy them. The people that, of all the clients you work with, right? The clients that light you up that you most are most excited to see or to work with or the customers that buy that that you're really, really looking forward to seeing how they use the product. Those, that's a signal that that's your true fan. So it's a really wonderful kind of two-way street. You enjoy them naturally and they enjoy you naturally. Why wouldn't we all focus on true fans? Why are we all focused on traffic and followers, right? And just come on, let's stop the madness there and let's dive into our heart and say, let's just let's let's get to know our true fans. If I have one person right now, if I have one follower, maybe that follower is a true fan, maybe let me get to know that one follower. Yeah, you contact the one follower. You have one fan right now. You have one follower, one person who actually likes your Facebook page, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, media, whatever. Get to know that person. There's an interest. Why? I mean, unless they're a spammer or a bot or something like that. If that's a real person, get to know them. That's that's the one you are working with right now. Now, if you have a hundred, then you need to look to see who comments more often or likes more often or buys and study that, right? So when you have enough true fans, you know, which is which is the aim now that I'm going to I hope that you will take this aim on instead of, OK, I've got to get a hundred thousand, whatever, followers or fans or 10,000 person email list. No, no, no, I've got to find my 100 true fans, my 300 true fans, my 500, depending on your business model. If it's one to one, you probably just need 100 to 250 true fans. If it's one to many, like a group program or online courses, you probably need more like 500 to 1,000 true fans. But if you aim for the true fans, to start with I start with 10 and then go to 50 and then go to 100. Right? If you just care about them, that that tends to grow. If you if you get the true fans, then all you have to do is whisper your offerings. You don't have to shout, be persuasive, use conversion tactics and persuasion psychology. No, no, no, you just whisper to say, oh, here's my new offering. Here's my new product. I'm really excited about this. And I I put this together because of my care for people like you, because I have gotten to know your needs over time and what you what what you've tried before that hasn't worked for you. And I I put this together and I I look forward to your feedback, right? So. I think this is a much just like what Kevin Kelly wrote in the original article, 1000 True Fans, which you can find by going to Google and Google 1000 True Fans, Kevin Kelly. This is a much senior approach to marketing, isn't it? A much more. Well, I always say, authentic way of expressing yourself in the world. And it's I think it's genuinely worthwhile as an effort for life to instead of seeing marketing as a means to an end. Oh, I got to do the marketing so then I could be real with my clients. Come on. The marketing itself is a. Practice of diving more into how you really express your potential. And if you see that marketing is the practice of learning how to express your potential, you know, through words, voice, art or whatever it is you put out into the world. If that's what marketing is, that is what's what authentic marketing is. It's the practice of learning to express your potential in the most authentic way possible. What's you and you're always learning about yourself. And as you more did you do that more and more, your true fans will naturally find you and get attracted to you. And as you study them and and you'll naturally do more of your content offers to meet their delight and to meet their needs. And then your fans naturally grow. I hope this is encouraging. I hope this is a shift of perspective that allows you to, dare I say, love marketing. I hope so, because then you'll do it consistently. And of course, then you'll you'll be on well on your way to getting as many true fans as you need. Thank you for joining me and I'll see you in the next video.