I was standing in a grocery line behind a guy who was going off on the cashier. The store didn’t carry his beer in bottles. That was the whole crime. He was rude about it. She was clearly upset. She rushed him through and got him out of there as fast as she could.
Then it was my turn.
My friend Rita is one of the kindest people I’ve ever met. She and her husband, Mr. Potter, feel more like family than friends at this point. Rita does something I had never paid attention to before. She asks the grocery store clerk how their day is going, and she means it. She looks them in the eye and waits for the real answer.
So I copied her.
I said, “Hi, how’s your day? I hope it’s going well.”
That cashier stopped and looked at me like I had said something strange. Then she told me about her day. We talked for a minute. She helped me bag my groceries, and we both walked off smiling.
Same store same line, same exact task. That guy left mad and I left happy.
Twenty something years into this business, that checkout line is the closest thing I have to a strategy.
An Audience Watches You. A Community Talks Back.
Some people have an audience. A big group who know them from the other side of a screen. They like the photo, drop a couple of fire emojis, and keep scrolling. There’s no real connection there and everybody involved knows it.
Some people have a community. Usually a smaller group. They like the post, then they send it to five of their friends. They leave a comment you actually want to read. Then they show up in your DMs asking your advice, because they know you care about the answer.
The difference isn’t the size of the group. It’s whether anybody answers back.
One of those groups is a number. The other one is why you still have a business next year.
For years I chased the wrong one. Growing meant MORE to me. More seats filled, more people following the page, more eyeballs on whatever I posted.
What actually built this thing was much smaller. The women who show up to my tables again and again aren’t there because I put on a good show. They come back because we know each other now.
Your members and your regulars aren’t a random crowd. They’re your friends. And they just happen to be the people paying for your groceries and your gas and your kid’s braces.
These are the four things that turned a pile of onlookers into a COMMUNITY.
1. Learn Her Name. Write It Down. Use It Next Time.
This is the least glamorous advice in the world and it’s worth more than any marketing you’ll ever do.
Most hosts learn names during the party and forget them by Thursday. I did it for years.
What to actually do:
Greet every single person at the door by asking her name, and then say it back to her out loud. “Hi Karen, how are you?” Saying it back is what makes it stick.
Use names during the party. Not “does everybody have their blue,” but “Karen, you want a little more blue in that sky.”
Keep a list. A note in your phone works fine. A cheap spreadsheet works fine. Whatever you’ll actually open.
Write down three things per person. Her name, how she got there, and one detail she told you. That’s it. Three fields.
“Karen. Came with her sister Deb. Just retired from teaching and planning a big trip in the fall.”
Do it in the car before you drive home. Ten minutes, tops, while it’s fresh. If you wait until the next morning it’s gone.
When Karen walks into your next party and you say “Karen! How is retirement treating you?” she’s going to feel like a regular somewhere for the first time in years.
That feeling is the whole product. The painting is the excuse.
2. Really Ask, And Then Be Quiet Long Enough To Hear The Answer
The women at your table have been talked AT all week. By a boss, their kids, even an app on their phone.
You get to be the one who asks.
Skip the questions that have no answer. “Everybody having fun?” gets you a polite nod and nothing else.
Ask questions with a story attached:
“What made you sign up tonight?”
“Who talked you into coming?”
“Have you painted since you were a kid?”
Then close your mouth.
This part is harder than it sounds because silence feels like a mistake when you’re the one running the room. It isn’t. Give her four or five seconds. Some of the answers will surprise you.
She hasn’t painted since she was nine and her mom still has that one on the fridge. Her book club voted to try something that wasn’t a book. She lost a bet. Somebody at work said it was fun and she’s been curious ever since. Every now and then one of them is a little heavier, and she tells you anyway, because you asked.
Whatever she hands you, match it and keep moving. Laugh about the bet. If it’s one of the heavier ones, one warm sentence does the job. “That sounds like a lot. I’m really glad you came out tonight.”
That’s enough. That’s more than most people get all month.
One thing worth knowing about the payoff. When I’m at a party helping other people, my brain has nowhere to put my own problems. I’ve taught parties during some genuinely awful seasons of my life, including heart tests and a surgery, and every one of them was a little mental vacation.
Paying attention to other people is the cheapest medicine there is. A word on how much of your own life to bring into the room, because I’ve gotten this wrong in both directions. Too little and you’re a robot at the front with a paintbrush. Nobody connects to a robot. Too much and the party becomes about you, and twelve women who paid for a fun night are now managing your feelings.
The line I use is one sentence. If something big is going on, I say it in one sentence and then I move us back to the painting. “Y’all, my week has been rough, so I’m extra glad to be here with you tonight.”
That’s enough for people to feel let in. It doesn’t turn your party into a therapy session.
3. Don’t Be Perfect Online
A page that looks like a magazine gets admired. It doesn’t get messaged.
Think about the accounts you scroll past. The perfect ones are pretty and you feel exactly nothing about them. You would never in a million years send that woman a question, because she looks like she’s never had a question in her life.
Now think about the ones you actually talk to. Something about them made you feel like you could.
So be that one. Post the flop. The painting that came out muddy. The canvas you knocked off the easel. The night you showed up at the church and they had you in the wrong room and you set up twice. Say the honest thing out loud. “I’ve taught this one four times and I still can’t get that sky right.”
Every one of those makes you reachable. A woman who is nervous about painting isn’t going to message somebody flawless. She will message somebody who dropped a canvas last week.
This is where a lot of advice gets twisted, so let me be clear about it. Unfiltered doesn’t mean sloppy. Your video should still look decent and your sound should still work. Real and unscripted is the goal, not lazy.
Now for the part that makes all of that worth anything. None of it matters if she messages you and hears nothing back.
That message took her more effort than you think. She typed it, deleted it, typed it again, and hit send while telling herself it was probably dumb.
So answer the same day.
Not at eleven at night when you finally sit down. Late night replies feel a little off to people, and they train them to expect you at all hours. Not next week either. By then she’s moved on, found somebody else, or decided you were too busy for her. Sometime during the day, in daylight, like a human being with a business.
Use her name in the reply. Answer the actual thing she asked instead of pasting your pricing at her. And never leave a first time messager on read. That one stings worse than a no.
Answering within the day isn’t customer service. It’s telling somebody she is worth your afternoon.
4. Talk To Them, Not At Them
Broadcasting is easy. You post, you close the app, you feel like you did something.
Nobody builds a community that way. Broadcasting builds an audience, and an audience is a bunch of people who quietly watch you and never say a word.
What talking to them actually looks like:
Answer every comment. Every one, even if it’s only an emoji.
Ask them what they want. Post two paintings and ask which one they want to do next month. Then actually do the one they picked, and say so. “Y’all picked this one, so here we go.”
Show up live and use it as a conversation. When I first started going live on Facebook, I was terrible at it and there were nights I was talking to one person. That one person got my full attention, and going live over and over is what made me better at it. Not talent.
The Part That Took Me Twenty Years To Get
Every person in your room is the leading role in their own life.
They have full lives you know nothing about, and for two hours on a Tuesday they decided to spend part of theirs with you.
That isn’t a small thing and it shouldn’t be treated like one.
PPHQ, my membership, is now 8 years old and we have over 3,000 members. None of that came from being watched.
It came from a lot of small conversations. Hundreds of DMs that I personally respond to every week. A genuine curiosity about how a person is doing. And a notes app filled to the brim with names and facts about those people.
The number is nice, but the number doesn’t hug you in the parking lot.
You are not a spectacle up there. You’re a person who happens to be standing at the front of the room, and the standing at the front part is the least interesting thing about you.
Be interested in them, and they will be loyal to you. That’s the entire secret.
