Pat Flynn asks "How Do You Sell A Personal Brand"

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2:49Right? And hopefully this being an example of having it done the right way or the best way possible. Running a business means solving problems. I tell you how the smartest entrepreneurs do it. Hi, I'm Jason Pfeiffer, editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur Magazine, and this is Problem Solvers.

3:11Everyone says build a personal brand, right? Build a personal brand. You got to build a personal brand. Everyone's sick of hearing that. But there's something really interesting underneath the personal brand, which is it can be an asset that you can use to build another business. If you are building a business, you put yourself out there. And then the attention that you draw just humanizes and personalizes the business that you're building. But there's another way to do this, which is that sometimes you build yourself as an asset. People create this relationship with you. And then you can turn that into a business by itself.

3:46And there's an interesting limitation to that business, which is, well, how do you exit a business that is just based on you? How do you navigate that? Well, today, we're going to break a little news and also hear from two people who have both done this and have come together in a really unique way. And I'm going to start with a name that longtime listeners of Problem Solvers are going to be familiar with because it is my friend Pat Flynn. Pat Flynn, best known in the business world for a brand called Smart Passive Income. He's written many books. He's been on the show to talk about them and has become known as this build in public, figure out lines of revenue, solve your tricky small business problems kind of guy.

4:34And also he has a world in which he is a star in the Pokemon world known as Deep Pocket Monster. that is very relevant to my 10-year-old, but to you, probably, Smart Passive Income. Pat, you are here today because you have built this incredible personal brand, and something's going to happen with that personal brand, isn't it? First of all, Pat, welcome to the show. Yeah, thank you for having me back and excited to break the news here. I think people, maybe based on that intro, have an idea of what I'm about to say, but I'm moving forward from SPI. I've recently sold the business, which whenever I talk to people about this who don't know the full story, they're like, how did you do that?

5:13Because you are your business, right? Just like you were saying. So I think there's a lot to uncover here for sure. But, yes, this is the, you know, we're making the announcements now. We're making the rounds now. And I have the person who I sold the business to here with us who we'll get to in just a moment. But I'm so excited because I didn't think that I would ever do this. I mean, if you asked me even three years ago, would you ever consider selling the business? I would have said, no way. hey, this is what I'm going to do for life. But I've found a new calling. I've had a lot of opportunities in front of me.

5:42And it almost feels like when I got laid off from architecture back in 2008. That's when I got started in the online space, right? I got laid off from my architecture job. And for a while, I was sort of climbing two ladders. I was trying to get back into architecture because that's what I knew. But I was also experimenting and exploring entrepreneurship. And if you're trying to physically climb two ladders at the same time, it's not the most efficient way to do it. You have to let go of one in order to grow and the other and climb as high as you can. All right. So let me just contextualize a little bit for anyone who feels somewhat left behind, and then we will get into who that person is.

6:14And then let's talk about this nature of turning yourself into a brand that's large enough and doesn't feel like it's just about you, that it can be transferable and what that looks like and feels like and all that. So, okay. So Pat, you know your story better than me, but I'll just very quickly summarize, which is that you had started a blog that was called Smart Passive income, right? And then that blog evolved into courses and other offerings. And then this community that you built with our mutual friend, Matt Gartland. And that community is this really thriving center of people who are building small businesses or building their own personal brands looking for ways to understand how to make money through their own knowledge.

6:55And I have been a part of Smart Passive Income in various ways over the years. And so, okay, so you had built this, and it was working, and you have all these people who are very attached to you, and yet it is time to grow, and you have other callings, and you're not going to run this for the rest of your life. And so that leads us to this moment where you said, I have found the right person. I'm going to let you introduce that person. Yes. So this person actually has been once a guest on the SPI podcast before. So we had sort of a professional relationship. But what was really interesting is with the Pokemon side of things, you know, I've done a lot there.

7:35I have a couple YouTube channels, each over 2 million subscribers. I host a live event called Card Party. We have 8 to 10 ,000 people attend those events. And in order to run an event like that, I need some help. And a person that came on board to help was a woman named Patricia, whose sister is Liz Wilcox, this person who's been a guest on the podcast before. It's a very small world when we learned that this was all happening. And I'm sure Liz will dive into this story as well, but Liz had come on to offer some workshops for the SPI community, was very loved in the community. And Patricia came to me one day during an event because I think she saw just how busy I was trying to juggle a whole bunch of things.

8:13And she said, I think she brought home to Liz the idea of Liz taking over SPI, just kind of as a half joke. But then it turned into a conversation which led to more and more conversations and then Mac getting involved, of course, and us eventually realizing that this was actually a perfect opportunity for me to pass the baton to somebody who had the same excitement that I had when I first started the blog back in 2008. And that is Liz Wilcox. And Liz is here with us today. Liz, thank you again for everything. And I know just how stoked you are about all that's coming for the SPI community. And just I'm so grateful for you.

8:52Yeah, I, what's up friends? I'm so excited. I'm so excited. And Pat telling that story of, yeah, it was my sister who was working with Pat on the Pokemon side. And just that retelling of it, I was like, wow, Pokemon brought Pat Flynn and Liz Wilcox together in a way that we couldn't have even imagined. You know, of course I've been, I started as an RV travel blogger. And when I, when I started about 10 years ago from 2026, Pat was launching a book, I think, Will It Fly? So I had first heard of him through that. And then I started teaching email marketing. And, you know, of course, got on the podcast with Pat, but I never would have thought like Pokemon would bring us as close as we are today.

9:40You know, I thought maybe our mutual love of entrepreneurship, but really it was, you know, Pokemon that brought us together. So shout out Pikachu and the gang for sure. Yeah. By the way, if you didn't know this about Liz, if that name maybe sounds familiar to you, Liz is a former contestant of the reality show Survivor. What? I didn't know that. Yes. Yes. Also, was that Liz? 46. So yeah, Pat and I, we we live many different lives. We have that in common. We're always, you know, side shooting. Oh, let me try this. Let me that. And yeah, I was also on that show. Thanks for bringing that up. Yeah, sorry.

10:17I had to just in case. All right, Liz, back up a little bit because interestingly, you have now purchased a brand that started as a personal brand of Pat's and you have previously built and sold a personal brand that was based off of you. Give us a little bit of that background and maybe how that experience helped inform your ability to recognize an opportunity here with buying SPI? Oh, it absolutely did. So I started as an RV travel blogger. And after about 18 months, I realized this was not my forever home. This was my starter business. This was me learning the ropes. And it started as lizwillcox.com because what are you going to name your business when you don't know what your business is?

11:01You're going to name it after yourself, right? And so after about 18 months, I realized, oh, this isn't going to be forever. I need to change the domain. So I changed the domain to the virtual campground and I started making it less about me. Of course, I'm a personality. You don't get on reality TV without having some sort of it factor. But I started highlighting my community. This is a virtual campground, right? I named it that on purpose. And over time, you know, I built up some products, some things, you know, to make it sellable, to make it attractive to a buyer. And that was the first thing when I started launching this sale, the actual buyer.

11:40He said, but Liz, you're Liz Wilcox. Like, I'm not. How can I buy this from you and have it live on? And I said, oh, well, actually, you know, I've been removing myself for years. You know, if you look at the blog posts, if you look at the content, it's all interviews. It's all other people posting. You know, it really is a virtual campground. And they bought that in 2020. this is 2026 at the time of this recording, they've owned it longer than I did, right? And so when I was talking with Patricia and, you know, asking her about the events, she said, oh, the events are great, but man, Pat looks really tired.

12:17You know, I saw him having to do like some SPI stuff while he was at this Pokemon thing. I said, oh my gosh, yeah, wow. And I thought, you know, it was a light bulb moment. And I said to her, I wonder if Pat would sell SPI to me. And she paused. We were on the phone. She said, yeah, probably. Most of our conversations had nothing to do with like the sale numbers or anything like that. It was all the values and the mission and like, is there alignment here? And to answer that question that Liz just proposed, like in an ideal state, what would it be like? It would be people coming to me years later saying selling this to Liz was the best thing you could have ever done.

12:54I've gotten even more value from this new person than I got with you. And that's what I was hoping for. And I knew that, you know, that was in a way unbelievable, but it was actual, you know, it actually happened. And even and there's a there's a choreography here with the release of this announcement. And when she bought SPI, this was back in April. April 1st was the sale date, in fact. So it's been several months. The reason why, Jason, I didn't just say, hey, everybody sold the business to somebody like, trust me, bro. oh, it's going to be great, is because people would have already started making up stories about what this would have done to the community and how it would have been perhaps even broken.

13:34But since Liz came on, we brought her on as community director at first. So she's very front facing, very much involved in the community, getting to know people, even showing up more than I was. She's already been able to double the size of the membership and increase the activity inside of the community like 400 percent. And that to me was just like, oh, this is going to be so easy to announce because when people go, well, what's going to happen in the community? I'll say, well, look at the last six months and how awesome it's been and how much livelier it is. It sounds, guys, like both of your stories and decision-making here about building and selling a business like this is rooted in the same thing that made those businesses successful in the first place, which is being incredibly mindful of the relationships that are the foundation of what you might just call the consumer, right?

14:25If you're selling a pair of socks, then you have consumers. And the thing that you need to deliver is the socks. And private equity can pretty well understand the sock and how to sell the sock or how to pick that thing apart. But when you're building a personal brand and people are either following the travel blog or they're connecting with Patents for Passive Income, these are individual relationships and they get fostered on an individual basis. And I saw that inside of SPI when I would host a session or something. I mean, these are individual people and they're coming in and they know each other and they feel like they know Pat.

15:06And so you wanted to, I think, not just honor that, which is great, but also that's just, these kinds of businesses, I say this really as something for either of you to pick up on. At CLA, we're in your corner and on it. We coach tax strategies and Little League First Base. We help you adopt AI data tools, and we adopt rescues named Buddy. We walk your factory floor and jog the local 5K, though sometimes we walk that too. Wherever you're coming from, we're right there with you. Wherever you're going, we'll get you there. CLA, CPAs, consultants, and advisors. Learn more at claconnect.com slash with you.

15:47These kinds of businesses that are based on a personal connection have to be fostered at almost the individual level, don't they? And if you haven't trained yourself to be thinking relationship first, then this kind of stuff is never going to grow in the first place, is it? No, I mean, this is, and I've said this many times before in the past, it's a person-to-person thing. It's not a B2B or a B2C thing. It's a P2P thing. It's a person-to-person thing. There's a mutual respect that is sort of table stakes. And I think that for something like this, you know, the big worry with me was disappointing this audience who has helped bring me here.

16:24Right. They've helped support this business and they've changed my life. And I've I've hopefully changed theirs along the way. And I in my head, you know, I always think initially like worst case scenario, this sort of like mob of people saying that I've abandoned them, that that was like what I wanted to avoid. And this is why this story that I'm trying to tell myself is, no, I've left you in better hands, right? SPI turned 18 this year in July. In fact, like almost to the date.

16:57And like my baby is now an adult. It's going off to college now. And I have two young, not so young anymore kids. My son is 16. My daughter is 13. You know, they're going to be at this point where I'm going to have to let them go as well and see them out in the world. And I'm just so grateful that, again, with SPI being 18 now, it's going to be left in amazing hands. And, you know, Liz has already proven herself and has so many new ideas and has come up with a multi-year plan with where things are going. And all of that is rooted in the experience and the community. There are big plans, Jason, with where I want to go with this.

17:35everything from writing movies i mean this i i i invested in a physical building in san diego to to house a new film studio that i'm going to be investing time and money and team into to pushing live streaming to uh advancement that nobody's ever seen before with new technology and other other things like that um to not wanting to be the new mr beast but rather the new mr rogers family programming consistent schedule teaching life lessons while also talking about Pokemon right that's the kind of feel we're literally building a set that looks like a card shop and we're going to start the live streams with me walking in the card shop and I'm not going to take off a cardigan or my shoes but there's going to be notes of Mr.

18:29Rogers who was really inspirational to me when I grew up and the world doesn't have that right now. And I'm being called to that. So again, I can't thank Liz enough for helping me move forward from SPI, not abandon it, not dismiss it, but rather take care of it for me, right? Oh man, it just, I just, sorry. It's crazy. He's getting emotional. It's 18 years, right? And hopefully this being an example of having it done the right way or the best way possible. Pat mentioned like notes of Mr. Rogers and his new content. And that's pretty much how I've been trying to, you know, build the relationships that Jason mentioned earlier.

19:13You know, it's people to people. It's that individual, right? And I mean, Pat literally wrote the book Superfans. Obviously, this is an email list, a community, a following of superfans. And so for me, it was coming to those relationships of like how can I have notes of Pat, right? I'm not Pat Flynn. I don't look like him. I don't sound like him. You know, I have different perspectives, but how can I have those notes? And I think that's what Pat and I talked about a lot in the acquisition of like, okay, well, what are the core values? And me coming in, I was like, okay, I need to do that face-to-face.

19:54So I've been, for the last six months in the inbox asking for replies in the newsletters. I mean, I've talked to hundreds and hundreds of people, probably thousands at this point, you know, that were super fans of Pat's that are slowly, you know, coming to the Liz side of things, right? Doing videos for people. Anytime I reply, I make a video, you know, and that's something Pat talks about in his super fans book, right? Like surprise and delight people. And we're even just in a couple of weeks, October 1st, we're doing an in-person event for SPI. It's the first one since FlynnCon, right? So it's been a while and that's something for the future that I really want.

20:38Jason nailed it, right? It's about those relationships and how can I get in front of as many people as possible, not to try to convince you that I am Pat, but to show you that, you know, Pat and I, at our core, care about you in the same way. Pat said a little bit ago that you've already driven some significant growth at this business. And I'm curious, when you started looking at this business, how you started to identify opportunity for growth? Yeah, well, Pat said it best at the beginning, that monthly recurring revenue. That's MRR, right? That was extremely appealing to me. I, on my personal brand side, I have a membership.

21:20And in five years, I was able to build it to 5 ,000 people with no advertising. So I thought, well, Pat has an email list way bigger than mine. Surely I can, you know, input a little bit of magic over there and increase the memberships. I know, again, Pat, his time is divided. You can't climb two ladders at once. So it wasn't that his membership wasn't selling. it was there just wasn't enough time and attention to sales. There was a lot of that relationship building. Pat is so good at that, right? That's why he's been able to explode over on Pokemon. It's not his camera, guys. I'm telling you.

21:57It's not the mic. It's not the camera. It's who Pat is, right? But I, who I am, is an email marketer. Gosh, I geek out over electronic mail. So I was able to look, you know, at that email list, at what is being done, what wasn't. And I know that, I knew that I could, you know, supercharge the email list. I knew with just a little bit of time and attention to that, we could get things going. And from the moment I signed that paperwork, we certainly did. We launched, you know, we launched the all new super fan system. That was Pat Flynn's genius that he and the team have been working on for, you know, the entire time Pat and I were in negotiations with Matt.

22:41And we were able to launch that with great success. I think we made something like, I don't know, it was a couple hundred sales or something like that just in a few days. And the whole team was like, whoa. And the community was like, whoa, you know, there was so much energy. And it really was just looking at email marketing. That's my expertise. I always tell people, you know, I'm only pretending to be a content creator. I'm really just an emailer. And that I attribute most of our success to on top of what I'm doing behind the scenes, getting to know the people that are replying, getting to know the community.

23:20I'm in there every day. I'm doing office hours just like Pat. If people need to get on a call, get on a call. Just those real grassroots efforts, I think, on top of my email marketing skills have really relaunched this thing with great success. Liz, do you want to just geek out for a second on one or two email marketing levers that you pulled? I mean, you described recognizing an opportunity to do better on the email side with SBI, and then you described the results of that. And what was skipped over there was maybe just a couple of the things that you did that others might want to think about.

23:58And so I'd love to hear you talk about that. Yeah. So number one, we just did a five-day launch and we sent more than one email in a day. I think in five days, honestly, I probably had the team send like 13 to 15 emails. I can't remember the exact number. And we did get some backlash. You know, hey, this is atypical. And I would say, I know, isn't it exciting? You know, we've launched this whole new thing. and again I would send email I would send those videos back I know this is really overwhelming but this is why we're excited we wouldn't send this many emails if it was garbage Pat has been working you know he came up with this system in the middle of the night at a team retreat you know check it out right so just building that excitement and then within like newsletters, it's normally, or Pat used to say, oh, it was Team Flynn, right?

24:57And we're taking it now to Team Wynn. And Wynn stands for what's important now. And so we've been implementing that into newsletters and telling people, you know, based on what Pat is saying, you know, here's what's important now. Here's your next action item. And again, encouraging replies or We're encouraging people to go to the community and tell us, yes, I got this done or here's where I'm stopped. Here's where I'm stuck. And we're giving personal advice. And that's been an amazing driver to increase those open rates, increase click rates, and also, again, create those relationships, which is especially important for me right now as I'm the new kid on the block.

25:41I can add to that as well from my perspective and a little bit of worry that the team had for so many emails that were being sent because for years we had this cadence, right? No more, like we even had like a rule, no more than one email per day. And it was just something that was baked into the team. But of course you can't read the label when you're inside the box. I didn't know that rule, guys. I didn't know that rule. No, that's okay. Because what you've brought in works. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser. But Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks.

26:21Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required. Compatibility and availability varies 18+. And it's just we were stuck in our old ways, right? And I love the spin on that of just like, no, we wouldn't send you this many if it wasn't this exciting. and it was new, it was different for the team, but also those who were receiving the emails. And to see like the growth happen almost overnight as a result of that was huge. I think, again, you can't read the label when you're inside the bottle. Liz also did a few things early on, even before the acquisition was finalized.