$500k Revenue From a $9 Membership (Greatest Hits)

25:55It's simple. Let it be a lesson. Maybe you're driving or doing the dishes right now, and you can't write it down, but commit to memory. We overcomplicate things. Like, just keep it simple. So subject line, can I have$9? And I literally wrote something like, hey, I've had this idea to create this membership with weekly newsletter templates. I know the number one problem I see with my clients when they launch and it doesn't do well is they're not sending weekly newsletter templates. Maybe you've had a similar experience. I'm going to send you a newsletter template every single week. It's$9. I know that sounds cheap, but these templates are going to be awesome.

26:36If you've been on my email list for a while, you know my stuff is awesome. So why not join? Can I have$9? And this is the kicker. I told people I want to get 100 people in in the next 30 days. Okay. That was my way of saying, like, I'm serious about this. And then I signed off. Some level of like public accountability. We're going to be transparent with the number of members. Like, hey, you're assigned a member number. Like, I went to REI. That sounds like a prison. Like, hey, you're member number 43 or whatever. Like, oh, cool. You know, I'm a founding member. I was in the first hundred because I went to REI.

27:17This was like in high school. They're like, okay, well, it's your member number. I don't know. Look it up under Loper. And they found me, but they also found my grandpa who had been, you know, and his member number was like in the four digits or something. Like it was like one of these like early, early members. So I imagine there's like a point of pride of like, oh, I was there at the beginning. Like I remember when this thing was just getting started. Okay. So I love that. I'm going to steal that idea for member numbers. I like it now. How long does it take to get to 100 members? It took me 28 days.

27:50We launched February 16th, 2021. And I forgot that February is only 28 days. So I was like, oh my gosh, I've got to get 100 today. Today's the 30th day. And so I was like, push, push, push. I sent like two or three emails, I think that day. We hit the 100 and then I realized I had two more days. And I thought, well, we made it. Nothing wrong with a sprint to the finish. Yes, under the deadline. Yeah, so it felt really good. And I did that, like Nick said, for that public accountability, but also so that I could take myself seriously, right? Like it wasn't this idea and it's like, oh, well, I only made three sales.

28:31And well, you know, Liz, just keep grinding. Just get back to client work. This isn't working. It was like, nope, I'm going to commit. and it helped me, like Nick said, like stay accountable. And then the second reason, and let this just be a little note to you, if you ever launch your own digital product, it's hype, right? Like I'm really good at hyping people up. So it was, oh my gosh, this lady's getting a hundred members. Like this must be a serious thing. I need to take a look. It's the same way when Adidas partners with Beyonce, they're sending clothes to other celebrities to post on their Instagram.

29:10They're hyping it up before the close ever hit stores, right? It's that exact same thing. We're going to get a hundred people in in 30 days. Oh, snap, a hundred people. I want to be, like Nick said, like, I want to be one of those first hundred. That's a big deal. Like, she's doing something over here. Let's get inside. Let's invest. This is exciting. Well, some level of social proof involved. Well, it's like, well, shoot, if 99 other people are doing it, I guess. I'm missing here. I better get on in. More with Liz in just a moment, including how she tapped into her existing member base to drive growth and how she eventually sold$48 ,000 worth of memberships in 48 hours right after this.

29:50We've been getting some work done around the house and that involves calling different companies to get bids and feel them out. And it's wild seeing the spectrum of responses ranging from picking up right away to setting an appointment by text message to just a mystery voicemail box that maybe someone someday is going to check. But here's the thing. I kind of want to tell that last company about our partner, Quo, spelled Q-U-O. It's the business phone system built so you never miss a call. You can even set up an optional AI agent to pick up the phone, answer questions, and book appointments so you never miss a lead, even when you can't directly take that call.

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31:06That's where our partner Gusto comes in. Gusto is online payroll and benefits software built for small businesses. It's all-in-one, remote-friendly, and incredibly easy to use. So you can pay, hire, onboard, and support your team from anywhere. I've been on an automation kick this year. So Gusto's automatic payroll tax filing is right up my alley. Plus, you can set up simple direct deposits, health benefits, 401ks, you name it. Gusto makes it easy and affordable. There's no hidden fees, no surprises, and it's no wonder why half a million small businesses already trust Gusto for their payroll and HR needs.

31:41I want to invite you to try Gusto today at gusto.com slash side hustle and get three months free when you run your first payroll. that's three months of free payroll at gusto.com slash side hustle one more time it's gusto g-u-s-t-o dot com slash side hustle all right so you get your 100 members in 28 days and then what happens after that now you have to play this kind of dual game well i still gotta do my client work now i gotta deliver what i promised to these people and i would really like to make that 200 300 500 members a thousand members and so i gotta continue to kind of add new people into my world at the very top of the funnel.

32:20Let's see what happens next. Yeah. To be honest, I had to deliver on that$20 ,000 of client work. So I was doing that and I was maintaining those hundred people, delivering on that weekly content in order to get that done, what I would do. And this is not for everyone. Again, this is like having to be incredibly disciplined. I actually got up at four in the morning every single day. And I would do a few hours of client work to ensure that I got it done. Because also the membership was exciting. People were wanting to talk to me about it. People were like, oh my gosh, 100 members in 30 days. What is it?

33:02So it was starting to kind of grow in its own like very like super niche, small, tight knit community that I was in. And it did grow, not very rapidly, but I think within the first like three months while I was still working on client work, it like two and a half X'd. It had like 250 members in the first 90 days. Yeah. And so it really was growing. So I did have to be disciplined to finish my work. But once those contracts were done, that's when the magic really happened. I had a few, that's when I started focusing on my VIP days so I could just work one day and get it over with. And I knew I had something with this membership.

33:42I knew that maybe this isn't going to take two years. So I buckled down. I actually opened up affiliates. So this is where somebody sells your thing. You give them a certain percentage. And I said, I'm going to give you 50 % of the sale. I know it's only$9, but this thing is unlike any other offer on the market. And who wouldn't like$4.50 every single month? You sell two people into the membership, you get your membership for free, basically. So I opened up affiliates. And within three months of opening up affiliates, so the membership, we'll say, is about seven months, we had about 700 people in the membership.

34:22So it really started growing. People were very excited to share. And actually very excited about the$4.50. Interesting. So yeah, because it's like, oh, it's low ticket, but it's recurring. And you can see how it starts to stack up. So opening that initially to the existing member base. Hey, can I incentivize you to share with a friend? Like, how do I turn one member into two? I love this. And we had Tiffany Aliche from the Budget Nista on years and years ago. And that was like, you know, she was doing like the 30-day Live Richer Challenge. Day one, find an accountability partner. like boom, you just double their enrollments.

34:58This is cool. So kind of like leveraging the people who already know, like, and trust you to help evangelize, to help go out and spread the word. Now, mechanically, what's the software that's tracking the referrals? I used SamCart and now I use ThriveCart, which is cheaper. Okay. ThriveCart is like one-off fee versus... Yeah. It's a one-time fee. And so after I think about a year of using SamCart, which was$200 a month. My bookkeeper and my assistant finally convinced me to move to Thrivecart. So I'm saving a lot of money. Yeah. Okay. So the affiliates start rocking, still doing the podcast guest circuit.

35:38Anything else on the marketing side? So around Black Friday, the membership was nine months old and I had about 800 members, we'll say. And I decided to do something really wild. I was worried about the next year. You know, I'm going nine months. Can I go? What happens at a year? Like, am I going to give up? Is everybody going to realize I'm an idiot? The imposter syndrome finally caught up to me. Usually, again, that's a recurring thing. It doesn't usually catch up for a while. And I thought also, like, how can I commit to this even more? How can I show people I'm committed? And how can I commit next year so I don't get distracted because I'm a creative person, but I knew this was a goldmine and I needed to stay committed to it.

36:28So again, that public accountability. So I wrote my email list of customers, the people inside the membership. And I said, hey, I'm thinking about doing this thing where you sign up for a year of the membership so you don't have to pay monthly anymore. And when you sign up for a year, you get access to all my other products for free. because at this point I was doing one-off workshops. I was creating other content. $9, that doesn't get you much when you've only got a couple hundred people, right? Okay. So I got a bunch of emails back. Liz, that's crazy. You're not going to make any money next year, dot, dot, dot.

37:06But if you sell it, I'll buy it. And that's when I knew, right? Because you're like pulling forward all this revenue. Like you're going to have a big spike, but then the recurring revenue like dries up. Am I interpreting what your fear is here? Right. Yeah. I was wondering, oh, are people going to start at a year? These founding members, are they going to start dropping off? Am I going to have time next year to promote? Like Nick said at the top of the hour, am I going to have to start from zero again? When is this stack of cards going to fall down? And how can I pull forward that money and that commitment of customers?

37:42So that was my idea. and I thought to myself, well, I'm not actually going to lose money the way these people think because I'm doing what Nick said. I'm on this podcast circuit, right? I'm continuously growing and I've only got 800 people. There's like a billion people on the internet. Surely I can find 800 more next year. For sure. Like surely I can figure it out. On Cyber Saturday, I wrote an email. I said, I'm only selling a hundred of these because I didn't know if people would actually buy. So I was like, oh, I need a little scarcity. And also there was that fear of, oh, what if I do not find anyone next year?

38:23Like, I don't want to sell too many. Maybe they're right. So I said, I'm only selling a hundred. Here's the offer. Get in for the year. I made the hundred sales in two hours. I had to turn the sales page off. That's$12 ,000. The offer was 108 bucks. There was no discount because I was giving away all my other products for free. Nine times 12 is 108. Is it just like other like digital courses or something that you had created? Correct. Like a lot of workshops, little mini courses. And the kicker was anything I created within that year, you would also get for free. Oh, cool. So that was another way to get them excited and keep me accountable for creating content over just chasing clients.

39:09So it worked really well. I opened it up again a few weeks later because people were like, whoa, especially my affiliates. Whoa, oh my gosh, can we share this? What? Like, whoa, this came out of nowhere. And a few weeks later, we sold 225 over five days. My email list was only at about 1 ,200 people at the time. So in those three weeks, we made about$37 ,000 and I waved goodbye to the$20 ,000 contracts and that was December, 2021. And I haven't taken a client since that day. All right. Congrats. It's like a burden off your shoulders. I can feel it. Thank you. Okay. Is there any annual pricing today or is like, just sign up for this recurring charge?

39:52So after that, I did it three times a year in 2022 and 2023, and it got bigger and bigger and bigger. In 2023, we had two separate six-figure launches just from that$108 offer. So over 1 ,000 people in March and November purchased that offer. Okay. And then we did a 48-hour flash sale in July in 2023 that made$1 ,000 an hour. It was 48 hours, and it made over$48 ,000. But I've done something crazy, Nick. I've cut that offer out in 2024, and it's only going to be available on Black Friday this year. So I don't know why I did that. It was a gut feeling. I don't feel bad about it. I mean, I feel slightly nervous, but something in my gut told me, Liz, you've got to offer this just once a year right now.

40:51So what I'm doing in 2024 is restructuring the membership to make it easier to use now that we have a lot of content. I'm focusing in on my, I call them the annual pass holders. Those are the people that are bought in for the year. And I'm actually doing live rounds of the content that they're getting for free. So I'm doing five live rounds of the five most essential things that they have for free. And it's going really well so far. I'm seeing incredible engagement. We did a live welcome sequence workshop with over 3 ,000 people registered. Over 400 people attended live. And over 300 people submitted homework for feedback.

41:35So I'm just finding in 2024, my gut was right. The trend I think right now is real connection. And I'm making real connections with my audience again. And I think that's going to get me to my goal of 10 ,000 members. It's a big goal by the end of the year. By the end of the year, I have about 4 ,500 right now. So it's a long shot, but that's my motto, really. Well, we'll send a few more your way following this episode. I think this is such a crazy story. Like the pricing psychologist in me is saying, oh, it's$9 a month or it's$100 a year. Like there's different, like you could almost kind of persuade people to prepay for six months or two because it's so low ticket, like, or, you know, just prepay for the annual thing.

42:25And that's like, what a SaaS company would do is it's interesting. That's what I was curious about. Like, well, the annual plan is sometimes it's available. Sometimes it's not. And this year it's mostly not. One thing that we have kind of neglected to mention, like my assumption is the target audience is bloggers, content creators, digital course people. Like, is that who you're primarily speaking to? Actually, I talk to a lot of different people. I have a nun in my membership. I have like a real estate agent in my membership. I have SaaS companies in my membership. I don't know what it is about Liz Wilcox that people just want to learn from.

43:01So I don't discriminate. Of course, I personally come from a content creator background. I was a blogger, like Nick mentioned. I think why I can help so many different people is it's the business to consumer. So a lot of the email marketing help out there is very like B2B to B2B to B2B to B2B. Like everyone's talking to business owners who talk to business owners. And my membership is very different than that. It's businesses talking directly to consumers. and like I mentioned within the templates, you get two samples and those samples are written from different business perspectives. So one might be written from a YouTube creator and the next one might be written from a children's author, something like that.

43:47And so you really get a very, I don't know, bird's eye view of what the template is really doing and how it can work for you. So I actually help hundreds of businesses. It's really awesome. Yeah, okay. That's helpful. It's like a little bit broader than I maybe initially imagined. And I imagine if people get into the habit of using this thing, then they're likely to stick around. Can you speak to the churn? What percentage of people drop off every month? Or people are kind of in it for the long haul. Because they're like, well, as long as I want to have this content creator business, or as long as this business needs to send a newsletter, this is super helpful for me.

44:27My churn is much higher than I'd like it to be right now. I just did the math a few days ago, and the churn hovers in and around 10%. So the last few months, either it was like 9 % or 12 % or 8%. And I think 10 % is about normal. But again, I don't really care to be normal. You can Google me. You can see that. If you can convert 55 % of your email list, that's definitely not normal. The first two years of the membership, the churn rate was around 3%. It was incredibly low. It was like Nick said, I'm in it to win it. This is going to help me. This is a great resource. But I found that the bigger I grow, this is an interesting experiment.

45:13I guess I'm living live. The bigger that I grow, the bigger my reputation gets. like, oh, I've heard about Liz Wilcox, the higher the churn rate gets. Because I think my really loyal, those founding members, et cetera, those first thousand, like Nick said, are pretty much still there. And they love the membership and they love Liz Wilcox so much that it's an incredible reputation I've built, which is amazing. But when they get into the membership, it's like, oh, this is it. So I'm actually restructuring the membership right now. In a couple weeks from the time of this recording, I'm launching an entire new membership site.

45:56I've redone the two foundational courses that you get with the membership. I've turned them from one-hour trainings into mini courses. I woke up at 4 o 'clock. I work best in the morning, guys. It's not for everybody. I got of at four o 'clock and I wrote 5 ,000 words before 8 a.m. That's just a help hub to literally answer pretty much any question I've ever gotten in the last three years, whether you're a beginner, you're somewhere in the middle, or you're, hey, Liz, I got email. I just hate coming up with ideas. The membership is about to be totally restructured, and maybe we'll have to do a follow-up episode to see what my churn looks like in six months.

46:36But I've really worked hard. I've hunkered down. This is another reason I was like, I can't focus on these big launches. I need to focus on who's inside my membership right now and help them and worry about the rest later. And so I've worked very hard to decrease that churn and we'll see what happens. Yeah. Cause if you're losing 10 % every month, well, now I got to go find 400. I got to find more than new members to replace them if I want to keep growing this thing. Yeah, we lost close to a thousand people last year. So you think I have 4 ,500 right now? I could have had 5 ,500. That's$9 ,000 a month I'm missing, right?

47:24Like that was my original dream. But I mean, it's a good problem to have. And it's, like I said, it's an interesting kind of experiment I feel like I'm living in of like, the more shows Liz gets on, the bigger her reputation gets, actually the colder the audience, I guess, the more tight the membership has to be, the more, I don't know, like professional it has to be, which if you look at Liz Wilcox, you think, oh, she's only semi-pro. And that's kind of what I've built a brand on is being semi-pro. Like, hey, if I can do it, certainly you can do something else too. Well, it's pro in like your own, like very unique way, like all the website copy, like all of the images in the language, like it stands out as being different.

48:09And if that doesn't appeal to you, then yeah, then this is probably not going to be a fit. But for the people who it does resonate with, they're like, all right, this is, yeah, this makes a lot of sense. What's a day in the life look like today? Today, I tend to only work about five hours a day. I take my daughter to school. I'm a single parent. So, you know, I do all that stuff by myself. And so I turn the computer on around 9 a.m. and I turn it off around 2 p.m. I have a lot of food allergies. So I take a one hour lunch, not because some guy on the internet told me that's important to rest. I actually have to cook all my meals and it normally takes about 30 minutes to cook and 30 minutes to eat.

48:49So I'm really only working about four hours a day. And of course, right now I'm working a lot more because we're restructuring the membership. We're launching a new website on the third birthday of the membership. So we got a lot of going on, but it's really, really fun. At this point in the game, I'm really only doing the things that I want to do. And I'm really just talking to the people I want to talk to and helping them. And that's what feels so good. And that's what makes me so grateful for that Liz Wilcox in the past that said, you know what, this$20 ,000, like, yeah, that feels good in this capacity.

49:27But really, it feels like a lot of responsibility. And I'm so glad I leaned into, yes, go with the monthly recurring revenue, get up a little early so you can do both at the same time. Yes, keep pushing. And I mean, I couldn't do that if I hadn't done that. So it feels really good. That's really cool. It feels it must feel like you just have won the game. to be able to get up and work on the stuff that you want to work on and serve the people that you want to serve and thanking your past self for making those investments in content and community and all the things that led to this. There was a line from Brian Gearan on the show, and I'm probably going to butcher it, but it was like, the entrepreneur's job is to live a year in the future and try and set things up today to get to where you want to go.

50:12And that's something that has stood out to me. A coach of mine recently said, like, if you don't see yourself doing this three years from now, why are you doing it today? It's like, oh, okay. You know, figure out a way to start to peel back those responsibilities. But what's next? We're going to a thousand members. What's the future hold for this membership and for Liz Wilcox? So for the membership, I'm trying to get to 10 ,000 by, you know, Christmas. Sorry, 10 ,000. 10 ,000. 10 ,000. 10 ,000. That feels, I don't know. There's just something about that. That's huge. Yeah. That's almost, now we're starting to get into like, well, shoot, this is like, I mean, Netflix is a huge business, but it's like, okay, low price point, low-ish churn, and can reach a huge segment of the population.

50:53Yeah. I love that Nick just brought up Netflix because that was my inspiration to start. I said, well, Netflix was only like$7 when it started, and it had a lot of overhead costs, and I don't, and I will never need Netflix-type numbers. Maybe I just need 1 ,000. And now the 10 ,000 is about showing people what is possible. It's not about, oh, 10 ,000, I'm awesome, and that's going to get me on this show and that show. It's about who I'm talking to. Again, going back to who you're serving. And to me, showing people that you can have a million-dollar membership without running ads, without any kind of crazy client work on the backside or whatever, is so important to me right now.

51:42I know I'm going to hit that 10 ,000 because I want to show my people that it's possible. And that's what's next for Liz Wilcox and email marketing membership. We're pulling for you. 10 ,000, a million dollar membership. Yeah, we will have to do the follow-up because I think that sounds really cool. LizWilcox.com, that's where you can find her. There's a big pink button to get yourself signed up. Let's wrap this thing up with your number one tip for Sign Hustle Nation. The next time you're feeling really overwhelmed, Just ask yourself two questions. Number one, what would this look like if it was really easy?

52:16And if you're like me and you live in the real world, a lot of things aren't really easy. So give yourself a follow-up question. What would this look like if it was fun? And between the two, I think you'll come up with your next right step. Very good. What would it look like if it were easy? Some inspiration from Tim Ferriss on that one. And what would it look like if it was fun? The last thing we need is a side hustle or a second job that we come to dread doing. It's got to be fun. It's got to be exciting. It's got to be interesting. Whatever sparks your curiosity. A couple notes before we wrap here.

52:45Number one for me was you want recurring revenue. You got to solve a recurring problem. Hey, there's always another Thursday coming around. I got to figure out how to send out this newsletter. That's kind of like my next project after we come up. It's got to send out this newsletter. Got to be consistent with it. And lots of other people in that same boat. Hey, we're already paying for our email software. If you're not using it, you're just making a donation to ActiveCampaign, ConvertKit, whoever it is. so recurring revenue, got to solve a recurring problem. Love the idea of selling your sawdust.

53:12Hey, I am an expert in this. I was doing this for clients. How can I go from one-to-one to one-to-many? Like hopefully that sparks a little bit of creativity or inspiration for you to potentially set up something similar. And then if you're going to convert 55 % of your email list, it's going to have to be a no-brainer offer. Like this one was something that clearly resonated really well. It hit this blue ocean. Hey, nobody else is doing this and we're going to do it. We're going to do it at a low price point and we're going to make it a no-brainer for you where if you're using it correctly you're going to have a tremendous ROI on this because you know every whatever the stat you probably know better than me like whatever every dollar you spend on email generates 50 bucks in return or something so there's a clear ROI for customers here as well.

53:54Let me get the time machine fired up and we'll be right back with Liz for the 2026 where are they now update. All right, Liz, catch us up. It's been two and a half years. What's the current state of the email marketing membership? I think where we left off, you were around 4 ,500 members with the stated goal to get to 10 ,000. What's been going on there? Listen, so for the last two and a half years, I have been stuck at 4 ,500 members inside EMM. No, they've come, They've gone and I've gotten really sick of saying 10 ,000, 10 ,000, 10 ,000. So actually Nick and I in 2026, we were at the same event, Craft and Commerce, sponsored by Kit, right?

54:39And there was somebody on the stage that said, you know, there are two ways to get from A to B. And, you know, you think of a line from A to B on a piece of paper and you can go that way. And that's what I've been doing to try to get to this 10 ,000 for so, so long. I've just been, you know, trudging the line. And then the speaker said, you know, but there's another way. And he folded the piece of paper and he said, now A is touching B. And you've skipped the line completely. And that's what I have done in 2026. We've recently like just announced this. So early 2025, again, I got really sick of trudging that line, going that line.

55:20I want my 10 ,000 members so bad. I've been working at it now for five and a half years. And so I got with the one, the only Pat Flynn, and I offered to buy his business. And from some, I don't know, act of God. That's a bold offer. We pause on that. It's a bold, bold offer. Thank you for mentioning that. Yes. I'm getting heated just thinking about it. And it was a long time ago. And for some reason, we had talks. And for some reason, he said yes. And so now I am the official owner of Smart Passive Income. And part of the really big part of why I purchased SPI was to flip that sheet of paper to get from A to B very, very quickly.

56:07Instead of trying to build my audience organically or even spend money on ads to build the audience, what if I just bought the business that already has the audience? Yeah, the exact people that you're trying to reach. Right, right. So that's what I've been up to at the time in this recording for the last about 10 months, just working on weaseling my way into smartpassesincome.com. Well, congrats. I mean, that's huge. And so Pat is going to be all Pokemon all the time now? Yeah. So if you're not familiar with Pat outside of him teaching entrepreneurship and his podcast, He has a very large YouTube channel, actually two of them, I think combined at the time of this recording, over 5 million subscribers.

56:55And how we got hooked up was, you know, I had been on his podcast, you know, we knew each other in passing. We met at Kits Conference in 2025 officially, but my sister was working for him on the Pokemon side. And that's how I knew, oh, this guy is really struggling, right? This guy is straddling two ladders. This guy has the gigantic YouTube and the gigantic email list over here. And I heard email list and I was sold, right? So yeah, he's all in on the Pokemon stuff. He's really excited about that. And the same way he's excited and feeling this renewed sense of energy, I'm feeling excited and this renewed sense of energy to get going, find those 10 ,000 members, really help people not only with email marketing now, but, you know, real smart, passive income, figuring out how to intentionally be active with your income so that it can be passive one day.

57:56Because that's what I did with my EMM with my membership. And so Pat felt like I was the perfect fit to take over. Yeah, I mean, this is one of the longest running brands in the online business and entrepreneurship space, I think 2008 maybe is when he started. Yeah, 18 years. Yes. Forever. Forever. Yeah. I told, he keeps saying, oh, my baby's going off to college. And I'm like, now I'm the dean of admissions over here. Yeah. Okay. So that's one, on the one hand, it's a way to grow your own membership, but it's also a big, big shoes to fill and kind of to fulfill the, the promise of SPI and continue that legacy.

58:37Yeah, no pressure. And that was something in the talks of, you know, is Liz the one? Should I sell this? And so after a while, it really, you know, became obvious that we did have very similar values. We cared about that early stage entrepreneur that's just trying to make a living, maybe not trying to make a killing, right? Because there's definitely a distinction between who you follow if you're just trying to make it and or if you're trying to like, you know, really scale and build an empire, right? And so it's been so amazing. And 2026, I've spent the entire year just diving really headfirst into Smart Passive Income and into that audience.

59:23I've spent so much time in the inbox answering questions, asking for feedback, running new campaigns to try to get customers into that membership, co-hosting the podcast, which is insane. Yeah, it's interesting. I know it's something that he's said years and years ago. It's such a personally branded project. I don't think it would ever be sellable. But the way that you've done it with the, you know, co-hosting the podcast, kind of this long transition period to warm the audience up to you and kind of have this warm handoff. And it's like not sold to some heartless private equity firm that's trying to mine as much data or mine as much value out of the existing subscriber base as possible.

1:00:06It's like, look, you're going to be in good hands with Liz. Yeah, I hope so. And I've received feedback all over the board. Oh, we love Liz. I love her energy. And oh my gosh, I know Pat didn't write this email. What is going on over here. But of course, I would never write an email and sign it Pat if it wasn't Pat actually writing it. So to those people, I've said, oh, yeah, if you noticed, my name was at the bottom of the email. I like to think of it as a gradient. It was all Pat, then it was Pat and Liz. Now it's all Liz. And maybe we do another episode in a few years to see how it goes. But for the future, I'm really looking forward to, and what I've been doing over the summer is taking it from Team Flynn to Team Wynn.

1:00:53And Wynn stands for what's important now, because I find that a lot of, you know, quote unquote, solopreneurs, they have a hard time deciding what is important now. Oh, I need social media. I want to start a podcast. I need to learn editing. I need to learn social, Pinterest, you know, all these things, right? But when you focus on just what's important now, today, you can find those little steps add up to big progress. Yeah, I think that's an important question to ask yourself probably at the end of every day. You know, did I do work that mattered? And then kind of answer for tomorrow. Okay, what's important now?

1:01:32What am I going to tackle tomorrow? I wanted to get your take on kind of the current state of email and the tools and deliverability. Has anything changed over the last couple of years? And I didn't mean to make light earlier of like, oh, I'm stuck. I'm still stuck at 4 ,500 members. It's like, it's still an amazing recurring revenue business and like thousands of people to serve month after month. So that's obviously still a killer business. But I did want to get your take on just the current state of email marketing as you see it. Yeah. So the current state is, in my opinion, it's easier than ever.

1:02:06And it's because of AI, but not the reason you might think. Not because AI makes it easier to write emails. AI is, Pat actually mentioned, he calls it AI sloptimization. And that's how I feel like the inbox has become, and even social media for that matter, right? Like everyone's using AI to write scripts, to edit, to do this and that, right? And a lot of people are doing that with their email marketing. So it actually becomes easier to stand out. All those things we talked about in 2024 are even easier to do because everyone else is doing something else. Everyone else sounds the same, has the same formula.

1:02:49Even if you train AI to use your voice, it's still using a cadence, a formula to write your emails. And so if you can just be a human in your emails, make mistakes. Listen, I did a wait list over the summer, and my first email to the wait list, the subject line was surprise, but I forgot one of the R's. Oh, dear. And people started emailing me. Liz, there's a typo. There's a typo. And I went to change it. Oh, my gosh. Thanks, Nick, for telling me. And I changed it. But then he came back, and he said, oh, no, Liz, I actually liked it because I realized that you actually wrote this email. I knew it wasn't AI.

1:03:30And I went back and I deleted that R. And I was like, yes, yes. So I'm finding in 2026 and beyond, the more human you can be, the less polished. Not that you shouldn't edit your emails. Of course, I spend more time editing my emails than I do writing them. But the more it's just you and who you are bringing that personality to the forefront, the more you're going to succeed. Right, right. Now, aside from going out and acquiring big businesses, what else is working for your members in terms of growing their lists? Yeah, in terms of growing your list, something that's working really well and is low effort are freebie swaps, right?

1:04:13Nick shares my freebie to his list. I share his freebie to my list. I've done 20 of those in 2026, and I have over 2 ,100 new subscribers from that. And those subscribers are sticking around. They're staying because again, if Nick is sharing me, you have a lot of trust in Nick, that trust transfers. So I'm finding those are really high quality leads without spending a lot of time. And even I've been able to do 20 of them in eight months because I'm not just making one solo email. Sometimes I'm doing a roundup email. I'm sharing Nick's, Chelsea's, Shahara's, Nahaku's, right? And people are picking and choosing and And it's been really fun.

1:04:56Another creative way I've seen people kind of take this freebie swap and run with it is let's say I host a landing page on my website and I put a lot of people's freebies up. I put Nick's, I put Chelsea's, I got Shahara, you know, all those people I just listed. And I'm just putting the freebies up. And all of us are just in our emails in the PS. PS, by the way, I'm a part of XYZ. You should go check it out. You can grab a bunch of goodies for free. You don't have to even pay, right? And people go to that landing page and they sign up. It's like a simpler bundle, right? And I see that working really, really well for people right now.

1:05:35That's an interesting one. We'll have to figure out how to do a collaboration on something like that. Yeah, we should, for sure. Do you have a minute to tell me about your survivor side hustle? Yeah, sure. Yeah, of course. I heard you made the final four. I've never really watched Survivor, but I understand it. It's a big deal. Yeah. So the last time I was on, I was also on a little TV show called Survivor, right? And I ended up getting fourth place. And fourth place, I got to be honest with you, is the worst place you could ever imagine. I would rather be the first person voted out because then at least I got a free vacation.

1:06:15And fourth place means you lasted all but about 18 hours inside the game. It means that you're the last person eliminated. The final three go to the end and they state their case for a million dollars, right? So fourth place is kind of a harsh place to be. But that has turned into its own small side hustle for sure. Like, you know, sometimes brands will pay me to make reels. If you Google me, I had a very, we'll say public meltdown. And it was over Applebee's of all things. It was over that chain restaurant. And so I've worked with Applebee's in a few different capacities. They've paid me some money.

1:07:02It's been really, really great. And then also, if you guys have ever heard of Cameo, It's where D-list celebrities like myself go to make a little extra cash. You can pay me$46 because I was on season 46 to make a video. And I love, I actually love doing those. Connecting with the fans has been amazing. And just this year, it's end of July. Just this year, I've made an additional$5 ,000 making little happy birthday pep talks, breakup messages, stuff like that. It's been awesome. Awesome. How funny. Well, yeah, that's super cool. I know it was airing right around the time of the previous episode, so we didn't get a chance to really talk about it because it hadn't aired yet.

1:07:48So that's awesome. Fourth place. Congrats on that and everything that's come as a result. Yeah. Thank you so much. Yeah. This has been awesome. I really appreciate you taking the time to catch us up and give us kind of the current state of everything that you're working on at lizwillcox.com. And now, smartpassiveincome.com. You can find Liz over there. Big thanks once again to Liz for sharing her insight. Thanks to our sponsors for helping make this content free for everyone. You can hit up sidehustlenation.com slash deals for all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place. Thank you for supporting the advertisers that support the show.

1:08:27Maybe Applebee's will be next. That is it for me. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you're finding value in the show, the greatest compliment is to share with a friend, fire off that text message, let them know to check it out. Until next time, let's go out there and make something happen. And I'll catch you in the next edition of the Side Hustle Show. Hustle on.