MM 001: Is the SPI Community Worth It? (Welcome to Monday Members!)

MM 001: Is the SPI Community Worth It? (Welcome to Monday Members!)

Liz Wilcox: What’s up? Liz Wilcox here, and this is a new type of episode that I actually am super stoked about, and this was something that Pat and I talked about before I even purchased SmartPassiveIncome.com and this podcast, which still feels incredibly strange to say. Like, it, it feels weird on my tongue. But this, this episode is all about you, all about the community.

And not just our paid SPI Community, but, you know, you listening, you on the email list, uh, you just finding us for the first time. I really want to feature you, feature what you think, what your ideas are on how we can grow SPI, what you’re doing in and outside of the community to grow your business, and even your struggles.

And this first episode is gonna be really, really interesting. I just got off the horn. Can we say that? Do we say that? I just got off the phone. I just got off the Ecamm call With a guy named Ryan, and Ryan has been in our SPI community for a long time, and he emailed me or DM’d me inside our Circle community and said, “You know what, Liz? My membership is coming up on renewal. But the thing that has always kept me in this membership are the masterminds. You know, you used to group people together. I’ve been in my group for years, and you know, I don’t know if you’re gonna keep the masterminds. I don’t know what the incentive is here to stay inside SPI community. My business is not where it’s at, and I’m looking to save a little money. What do you think?” And I thought, “Ryan, I have no idea. I have no idea. But let’s get on a call. Let’s talk about it,” because like I’ve been saying for the past, what, month since we’ve announced myself as the new owner of SPI, I need help.

I cannot keep Pat’s legacy alive, keep the mission, the vision, the values going of SPI, keep all of that going without you, without you, the listener, without you, the email subscriber, without you, the paid community member, and I want to hear what it is that has kept you around for so long and, you know, we’ll see where we can go from there.

So this is a conversation with Ryan, and it… We talk about the masterminds, and we talk about how to group them, what the benefit has been for him over the years. But we also really go into this direction of why we need community in the first place, especially in this age of AI. We kind of talk about, like, AI versus community and, and why we need each other as these digital entrepreneurs more than ever.

And then we end the conversation in the most beautiful way of talking about how to get out of your own way, talking about how not to be afraid of failure and to just kind of create this muscle within you to keep going and to do it anyway. Do it anyway. Do it aside from the fears that you have, et cetera.

So super excited about this conversation. It’s a little longer because It was a great conversation, and I’m so excited for you to follow along. But before we get into it, I want you to know that just like Ryan, I am listening. You can always email, leave a review of this podcast, DM me, whatever. I really, really mean it.

I am trying so hard to move us into our wins, to move us into what’s important now. But I can’t know what’s important for you if I don’t know you. So please don’t hesitate to reach out. I am so excited getting to know each and every one of you so that we can usher in this new era of digital marketing, this new era of SPI, and grow it into something that we’ve never seen before.

All right, let’s get into it

I’m so fascinated and I’m so excited to chat with you. You brought up the masterminds and that was, you know, a big sort of selling or sticking point for you with the SPI community. So I agree. Like, I always thought that was, like, such a cool thing that Pat was able to offer.

And in my own membership, I had tried to do… Not, not a mastermind, but even like accountability groups, and I had spent so much time with my sister who works for me grouping these people. I mean, we had like a thousand people that wanted to be in these groups, and we spent so much time grouping people, and literally out of, I think it was like seventy-something groups, only one remained within weeks.

And so- Okay. Yeah. So, so it’s– I find it super fascinating and also like just, oh, so curious of maybe you can give me like a little bit of history and what has kept yours alive for so long, if that makes any sense.

Ryan: Yeah, of course. I was just looking back at our tracking sheet because we’ve had a spreadsheet going since we first spun up that mastermind group, and it goes back to June 2021.

Liz Wilcox: Wow, okay. And right now it’s September 2026.

Ryan: Exactly.

Liz Wilcox: That’s a long time.

Ryan: Yes. And so I think it’s probably worth saying that we– I think we all come to Smart Passive Income through one or other of Pat’s courses back in the day. So he’d originally offered individual courses like Power Up Podcasting and the Affiliate 123 or whatever.

And then he offered like, um, all-access thing, and then the pandemic happened and he started, I forget exactly the chronology, but there were in-person meetups and then the pandemic happened. I think that’s the way it worked. And so he organized or put this offer together around a community, the Thrive Community online.

And I don’t remember exactly how the masterminds came about, but it was part of the, part of the proposition if you went for the, I suppose the annual plan or whatever, that you would get put together in mastermind groups. And these mastermind groups were themed, if I remember So our group was originally for people who were interested in spinning up online courses or memberships.

I think that’s where it, uh, originated. And so we… Some of the history is a bit vague, but we were matched together as a group of people with a shared interest and put into this group, and there’ve been maybe fifteen or twenty of us who’ve come into and passed through the group over time, but there’s a core handful who’ve kept going, and we are still…

I mean, I can check the sheet, but I don’t know the numbers off the top of my head, but we, we still in 2026 have three, four, five, six, seven, eight, eight or nine people who are more or less actively involved with the group. So like you, you said with, with your sister building accountability groups in, you know, in your own business, I was part of another program with Todd Herman.

I’m sure you might have heard of him, um, The Alter Ego Effect author and sports coach and such. And, um, I did his ninety-day year program back in the day, and he also put people together in accountability groups, and I still talk to the person I was matched up with then, and that’s probably similarly as long that we’ve been talking to each other, may- maybe five, six years.

We s- you know, we don’t talk as regularly, but we spoke ten days ago on the phone. Like, he lives in Switzerland, I live in the UK, and we still talk. It comes down to the people that you have in the group. It comes down to the, the desire, I think, to make it work. Excuse me, I’m just gonna shut the window.

There’s some… I’m by the seaside, and there’s, um… Sorry.

Liz Wilcox: Oh my goodness, that’s hysterical. You got that on camera? We’ll put that in the bloopers. Put that in the bloopers.

Ryan: Yeah, exactly.

Liz Wilcox: He says, “I’m by the seaside.” At this point- Whoa.

Ryan: He’s in the waves, so I’m by the seaside, and I’m on a wooden chair. Uh, sorry, I’m on a chair and a, on rollers on a wooden floor, and it just scooted all the way back-

Liz Wilcox: It said goodbye.

Ryan: To the other side of the room when I went to sit on it.

Liz Wilcox: It’s…

Ryan: Yeah, so-

Liz Wilcox: So it comes down to the people- It, it comes down- … is what you’re saying …

Ryan: to the people that are in the group. Yes, it really does, and I don’t know. I don’t think we’ve ever really looked around at other groups and gone, “Oh, how are we doing?”

And, “Are we the only w- only people left standing?” But for all of us, with almost no exception, we are still in SPI because of this mastermind group

Liz Wilcox: Yeah. Well, this is the question. I mean, just from an out- like, I own SPI now, so I have an interest in keeping you in SPI. But just from an outside perspective, like, what keeps you from not just setting up your own Zoom call and, like, creating your own, like, Facebook group to keep it going, you know?

Ryan: Candidly now? Nothing.

Liz Wilcox: Yeah. Right. I totally understand that.

Ryan: I think we’re just all wired in a way that’s, hopefully you get this by seeing the whites of my eyes, we’re all ethical. We’re trying to do the right thing in business. But we have had a conversation in the group recently, which was, look, do we…

Nobody else is doing masterminds. Do we really owe it to SPI to stay within SPI to do this? We could just meet anyway.

Liz Wilcox: Right.

Ryan: So, you know, we have had that conversation because we’re all grown-ups.

Liz Wilcox: Amen. Yeah.

Ryan: There’s a degree of y- you know, we’ve been on the journey to one degree or another with Pat through the evolution of Smart Passive Income.

I first came to– across Pat when I was listening to John Lee Dumas on EOFire way back when. Um- Mm-hmm … you know, twenty fourteen, fifteen, I was listening to that podcast, and then I came across Pat Flynn shortly afterwards. So, uh, look, I think we’ll see where the conversation goes, but at the end of the day, I’m not sitting here running a very successful business right now and weighing up whether or not I should stay in SPI.

I’m thinking about cash flow because my business isn’t going as well as I would hope it would be at this stage. And so I’m looking at, well, where are my outgoings and is this really, is this really valuable to me anymore? And, you know, that’s why I wanted to reach out first to Dave. Uh, I spoke to David a couple of weeks ago, and then with the news and your, you know, taking over of SPI, and congratulations, by the way.

I’m very happy for you, and I think it’s an, it’s an awesome step to have taken. I’m the kind of person who genuinely is grateful for the opportunity just to chat it through and see where it ends up. But, you know, you don’t– nothing ventured, nothing gained. If we don’t have the conversation, neither of us will know afterwards whether we could have done something differently.

Liz Wilcox: A thousand percent. And for me, you know, coming in, I stand by your thinking and your group’s thinking of “Well, Pat’s gone.” You know, maybe you guys came in, and this has been a journey with SPI, and speci- more specifically Pat Flynn. So I understand the, the thought of, “Well, let’s just meet on our own.” But the thing for me is, like, I get upset, and not in a bad way, like in a fired-up way, when I hear you’ve been in SPI and your business is not where you want it to be yet, even though you have this mastermind.

‘Cause from my experience, being in a mastermind has always accelerated my growth. Yes, of course, there’s been downs, and, you know, buying SPI, I’m like, “Holy crap, I am in debt, and this is incredibly scary. And I’m working around the clock, and right now I’m in a, I’m in a deep, deep valley, and I, you know, I can’t even see the peak of the mountain,” it feels like.

So I’d love to hear, you know, what is it about the business that you think is like… Well, maybe what do you think your next right step is to kinda get out of that valley for yourself, or are you just still unsure of that?

Ryan: So you can probably tell by the accent, obviously I’m in the UK. But I’ve built up a 28-year career in the corporate space.

So I started working in, um, in Paris in 1996 out of university, and I’ve been working every day pretty much since as an employee on somebody’s payroll. And about, like I mentioned, 2014, 2015, I started to get this entrepreneurial bug and started really dialing into EOFire originally, and then people like Pat, John Lee Dumas, Todd Herman, many others along the way.

Surrounding myself with mentors, taking their programs, Ryan Levesque, people like that. Investing in myself, learning all these digital marketing and online business skills, putting them to use in helping my wife, who runs a Pilates studio, which she started in 2013. So doing all the digital marketing, strategy, operations, kind of talking to her about how these things could work and guiding her, all the while holding down corporate career at PwC, Virgin, Zendesk, you know, BT, British Telecom over here in the UK.

Big businesses. Working throughout Europe, Middle East, Africa, traveling around the world doing different roles. I said earlier, I lived in New York in 2004 for about four months. It’s all part of the corporate career. So, you know, I’m one of those people, early 50s, who has gotten to the point where when the university gave me a kick up the bum last year in 2025 I just looked at my wife and I said, “You know, I’m done. I’m done with this organization, but I’m also done with corporate.” Now is my time to have a go at building my own business, helping small business owners, because I believe, my intuition tells me, and my life experience tells me there’s lots of people grappling really hard to grow businesses, small to medium businesses, you know, the bedrock foundation of our economies, both over there and in the UK, who would probably bite my hand off if they knew I existed, who could, like tap into nearly three decades in the corporate space and a passion for entrepreneurship.

And, like those skills are valuable, so I wanna have a go at bringing that to market. So until the beginning of twenty twenty-five, my involvement in SPI, and indeed the mastermind, was more a case of hanging out with like-minded people. And, you know, playing around the edges of building something online because I didn’t really know exactly what I wanted to do.

And if the business isn’t in a better place now, it’s because, as I put out on Substack this morning, I haven’t really found the right way to name this thing in a way that my target customer goes, “I need one of those,” or, “You’ve absolutely understood me.”

Most of what I’ve seen and consumed over the years starts from the point that you already have a very clear idea what you do, for whom, and you can name it, and you name it in a way that they get it. That is not as obvious as you think for a lot of people.

And a lot of what I’ve seen in the environment like SPI over the years, and I haven’t spent a huge amount of time going down into the weeds, but lots of people with what you might call, you know, solopreneur businesses, they manufacture something, and they sell it.

They have an Etsy store, or they are building a personal brand with something relatively small, or they may… It, it seems like lots of solopreneurs that I’ve come across. And I love working with solopreneurs, but they don’t have budget to spend on the kind of experience that I’m talking about offering.

When you are growing a business and you want to get through the blockages and have somebody in your corner that you can just talk to, who’ll hold the space for you, challenge your thinking, give you a sounding board, a safe space where you can just, like talk, make sense of your ideas, sometimes ramble and somebody on the other side can just go, “So what I think you’re saying is this,” just be that person for you.

That’s a competence of a superpower that I have that is very difficult to kind of go, “Well, I’m one of those,” because I’m– I know I’m on a bit of a ramble here, so hopefully I’ll make it coherent. But I don’t want to be calling myself a coach. Haven’t done the coaching qualifications. I use coaching questions and coaching conversations where it’s appropriate, but I meet my client where they’re at, and it’s a balance of coaching and consultancy style discussions to help them think through strategy, business direction, and the way to use things like technology to help them.

And then if need to be, roll the sleeves up and help show them how to do something, or in some cases do it for them. That generalist kind of skill doesn’t have an easy… that I found, doesn’t have a, you know, an easy box that you can just put it in, go, “Oh, that’s one of those.” So I have struggled to give it the right name so that it actually gets noticed, cuts through, lands, that I get more bites on the line, that sort of thing.

Liz Wilcox: Yeah. So are you– And this is aside from SPI, ’cause now I’m just totally interested. ‘Cause, um- Thank you … I mean, I agree with you. There are some people out there like you, just with a depth of knowledge. You can help the right person. But yeah, talking about it, it takes practice. It, it takes practice, and I, I don’t know if I would call you a generalist, though.

I mean, maybe you can talk on a plethora of topics, but I, I don’t like that word from you. I mean, just from the interactions of the- Thank you … like DM’ing you, I was like, “This guy is incredibly intelligent,” you know? “He’s gonna make it if he can pinpoint it,” you know? So I don’t know if generalist would describe you, but I think if you really– You mentioned, like, the word client.

You mentioned what you could do. But it– Like, who are– who would you work with?

Ryan: So thank you. I appreciate the, the challenge. So rather than generalist, let’s call me a Swiss Army knife. Yeah? A multi-tooled kind of person that you can work with, who’s gonna deploy the right tool for, for the- Mm-hmm … the job at hand.

Yeah? Mm-hmm. So that’s what I mean by generalist, is that I’m not the email strategy guy. I’m not the TikTok, social media- Right … you know, build a megabucks business on one channel kind of person. I’m the person who’s strategic, who looks at your business outcomes and thinks, “How do we get more growth?” So the th- the common thread that runs through my career has been customer experience.

Liz Wilcox: Mm.

Ryan: So everything that you do to and for your customers, the way that you keep your customers, and the way that you unlock more revenue from existing customers, has been the way that I have tried to, you know, set out my stall over the last year or so. What I found is, lots of people buy what they understand.

They understand sales training. They understand marketing. Well, they think they understand marketing. But they, they buy marketing because they think, “Oh, I need some marketing.” Yes.

Liz Wilcox: Uh, uh, uh.

Ryan: And, and what I, what I’ve said to people in these networking events I’ve been going to is, “Look, think about it this way. You use marketing to attract them, you use sales to convert them, and I help you with the relationships that keep them

Liz Wilcox: Well, you’ve got it down. You said you didn’t know how to talk about it, but this is, this is, like, getting me fired up. I love that so much, and customer experience is so important. And even when I first took over SPI, I told the, I told the team, I said, “Look, I only care about two things.”

I said, “First and foremost is the customer experience. Nothing ever trumps that. The second thing, of course, is sales, but we will never sacrifice the experience for the sale.” So I think you’re sitting on a gold mine if you can just-

Ryan: Well- …

Liz Wilcox: you know- I’m

Ryan: in the wrong continent- … buckle down and figure that out.

Liz. I think I’m on the wrong continent.

Liz Wilcox: Oh, no.

Ryan: Okay. Because… Well, no, but that’s, that’s part of the attraction of being in this particular mastermind is that, um, [redacted], who’s, you know, the or- the OG founder of the group who, you know, used to go to Pat’s calls all the time, she and I have been in the group since the beginning.

And, you know, she’s in the US. Half the group’s in the US, half the group’s in the UK, I think now, and that’s probably the magic chemistry that we have in our group as well, ’cause you have a bit of, bit of the two kind of cultures coming together. There’s a couple of wildly successful people in the group now.

So [redacted] , who’s in our group, he’s based in New York And he is a FP&A former, I think, Procter & Gamble guy who now has a partnership with Wharton Business School, and he trains– he has a program around FP&A. He’s going great guns with his business. We have two musicians, [redacted], who, um, is Piano With Nate is his channel on YouTube going great guns.

And [redacted] who’s a guitarist, his channel’s going great guns too. So we have some people in the group who are doing really well, and we have others in the group who, well, candidly, you might say we’re kinda hanging on a bit. But I think we bring our own individual experience to the group, and when I’ve asked whether or not I should drop out, I’ve been encouraged to stay because I think what I bring is that different experience from the corporate world, which is actually pretty handy to have in the room.

And the thing that’s frustrating me, Liz, I think, is that in the UK, we have… in our culture, we don’t have the American dream thing going on, which I really admire and respect. We, we seem to look down on people and belittle people for having a go. And, you know, fail forward is a thing you guys live by. Not over here.

You fail, you failed. Do you know what I mean? It’s, it’s a different attitude to entrepreneurship and small business. What I am observing, though, is a lot of folks coming out of the corporate space, like me, early to mid-fifties, we don’t have children, but a lot of folks do, and the kids grow up, and they move away from home, and then the parents are going, “What do I do now?”

And you know, “What is my identity?” And actually, I don’t wanna be a– I don’t wanna do this anymore, just show up and go to work nine till five and go home. And okay, I can switch off at the end of the day, but I’m just so unfulfilled and unrewarded. And so final, final sort of thought piece here is whilst the corporate experience and what I’ve talked about makes a lot of sense when I play it, you know, when you play it back to me, there is another element to me which is not fulfilled, which is why I left the corporate space, which is helping other people.

I really enjoy helping other people, and I think it’s in my DNA. It’s in my family. I can see it in my grandmother and my dad, and it, it flows through that line of the family. And I’ve always liked to help people, to help people navigate complex stuff like technology and demystify it and teach people. I get it.

So if I get it, I can explain it to people in a way that makes them feel at ease. Mm. And so there’s this other part of me I’m trying to figure out the way to nurture, which is showing up or holding the space for like-minded people who want to and are open to getting outside assistance and support. So whether I, I’m working one-to-one right now with people on a high-ticket basis, over time I expect to spot the patterns and be able to build something more scalable so that I can get more towards the SPI style of business.

Liz Wilcox: Yeah. Well, I think, Ryan, you just nailed it. There, there are two sort of, I don’t know if we call them phases of entrepreneurship or, you know, especially for building online of, okay, I’m gonna go kind of the one-on-one service provider high-ticket route, which I totally recommend for people, especially people that need money.

I t- I tell people all the time, “I’m trying to put the I back in SPI.” Okay? Yeah. And so most of us- Yeah. Appreciate that too. Yeah … most of us need to start out because we need money faster, we need to start out as service providers, right? That’s why- Mm-hmm … in SPI, and granted it’s a, it’s a pretty, I’ll say, elementary maybe like 1.0, 1.5 course, but we launched the 4 Higher course, Pat and me, right, in the SPI community.

Ryan: I just watched it. Great. I watched it.

Liz Wilcox: So- yeah …

I recommend that for most people that are like, “Hey, Liz, I’ve got, I’ve gotta make some money. I’ve gotta figure this out.” Like, okay, well, let’s stop meeting and creating content. Let’s just go out, “This is my service. Let me go aggre- I mean aggressively find tho- a, a few people,” right?

And then I think the s- the second phase, and probably what you said, uh, you know, you got a piano guy, you got a guitar guy, that’s probably what they’re doing is what I call like the second phase for the, for the rest of us who had to do the first phase first- Yeah, the scalable bit … because we needed money.

That scalable, like personal brand, I’m gonna work on YouTube, I’m gonna grow my email list, you know, I’m gonna set up automations, whatever, whatever. And I think what I’m trying to do in the SPI Community, I’d love to bring back the mastermind. So Ryan and I we’re ta- we’re talking because it’s like are, are we gonna keep the masterminds?

‘Cause they kind of fizzled out over the last 6 to 12 months. I would love to keep those, and I love what you said, the first thing I wrote down, “A shared interest is how they’re grouped.” You just solved my whole problem. I guess I never asked that question of how they were grouped. I have so many questions to ask, y’all.

So many questions to ask, but I love the idea of bringing that back because there are those two phases. Like, okay, if we are service providers, we’re trying to master our offer, how we talk about it, who we’re going after, that’s a totally different mastermind or, like, line of thinking roadmap than I’m just trying to make it on YouTube or whatever, right?

That’s so, so different.

Ryan: Yes. It’s, it’s important as well, though, and I don’t know the answer to this one, but I think it’s key not to make… How do I put this? The word that’s coming up for me is belittle, but it’s not necessarily meant the way it might come across. Being careful not to upset people who have ambition.

So when I joined the SPI community and was looking for this mastermind group to belong to, et cetera, there were some people in the group who were quite a bit further ahead of me, but we also gelled okay in that it wasn’t just, “Okay, well, you’re tier o- y- This is only for tier ones on, on the superfan structure,” or whatever might, might-

Liz Wilcox: Mm-hmm

Ryan: Not be the right way to do it. I think looking at organizations, high-performing teams have people that bring different experiences To the table, different levels of experience, different appetites. I, I get it if you’ve got a bunch of people who are really blowing the doors off, then it’s not appropriate to put somebody like me in that group necessarily.

But for others who are maybe getting there but not yet there, having a mix, having a hybrid of people in the group might be a good idea because a rising tide raises all ships, but you also don’t wanna drag the, the people down who are really excelling. Do you know what I mean? It’s like trying to find the balance.

Liz Wilcox: Yes. That’s an everlasting question, ’cause even for me, I’ve, I’ve been in many masterminds, right, and many groups, and I always try to live under the philosophy of, you know, I wanna be the lowest person in the group, right? So that what you just said is true, like I rise to a new level. Yeah, if you’re the smartest…

Ryan: Flip that around, if you’re, if you, if you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room. That’s the other way-

Liz Wilcox: Right …

Ryan: of looking at it as well.

Liz Wilcox: I, yeah, I always… Like I’m in New York City right now, and I was talking to a friend, and I was very excited. I said, “I’m, I’m the poorest person in this room right now.”

And they were like, “What?” Like, th- it was so, such a weird thing for them to hear. And they were like, “What?” I said, “This is great. This is a great opportunity for me to… I can’t believe I’m in this room, like this is phenomenal.” I get that. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, no, I get it. And so I’m… You know, it also reminds me of like I remember being in middle school, and I was always a really just bright kid, I guess you could say, and I remember being in certain classes and just knowing like, oh, I’m in this class as a model, you know, like they’re, they’re putting me in here as a model.

Like, you know, to kind of lift folks up. But yeah, I agree with you. It’s, uh, really important to find that right mix to motivate people, but also if you are, you know, maybe a, a couple of steps ahead, that can also be really encouraging to know you’re on the right path. You know, you don’t always wanna be the poorest person in the room, you know?

Then, then you might get discouraged, right? So I totally agree with you. I, I love this idea. I, I really do wanna bring the masterminds back, and something that, you know, I ca- I can’t say like, “Oh, definitely stay in the group because it’s gonna be happen in the next 60 days.” I mean, we’ve got so much- Mm-hmm

going on, but I love this- Yeah … conversation because it… I mean, personally it’s f- it’s firing me up because I do believe in community so, so much, and that was one of the reasons I wanted to get into SPI and, you know, I, I, I was a member of SPI as well. I purchased, I don’t know, 2023, and I was in there for a year with the Experts in Residence and, you know, I, I’ve met a lot of people in the group and, you know, I got what I needed and I moved on.

And, you know, that’s what, that is my hope for every person that joins the membership, you know? I, I don’t want you to stay in forever. I want you to graduate, you know, and move to the next level. You know, maybe your money would be spent better on a coach or in a mastermind where you know you’re gonna be pushed.

But for me, inside the SPI Community, what I’m really trying to do, you know, I joke, “Oh, I’m putting the I back in SPI,” but, like, truly I do want people in the mastermind using the super system, our Superfans System, however, you know, our curriculum goes, to be taking action, to n-never feel stuck for too long of like, “Oh, I’ve been spinning my wheels for months on this.”

And that’s what I’m trying to do, adding into the Superfans System more content that helps you get unstuck, helps you map out, you know, XYZ things that we’ve already talked about, and helps you take those next steps. That’s where I see the future going, where we’ve already kind of, you know, started the foundation.

We’re not quite there yet. Um, but I just so appreciate all of this feedback ’cause it, it, it’s helping me, like, plug some holes, if that makes sense.

Ryan: Yeah, absolutely. And it’s very rewarding for me to have the chance to talk to you, and just, you know, if there’s something that I say along the way that is helpful, then, you know, that’s great.

I’m very, very glad about that. The, the other thing that we were talking about in our group, or maybe when I spoke to David actually, was I think whether we call them masterminds or, you know, whatever, something else-

Liz Wilcox: Right …

Ryan: what matters in this in, in this time, in this era, is human connection. We had it in the pandemic because everybody was working at home, and it changed the way that people work.

And now, wouldn’t you know it, a lot of businesses are swinging back full, full pelt the other way, and everybody must be in the office five days a week. So I can’t be doing with that. I don’t want that ever again in my life. And so I’m not saying never work in an office. I’m saying not five days a week with a four-hour e- you know, two hours each way commute.

I don’t want that again. Point I was trying to make is AI is everywhere. It’s gonna take all our jobs. It’s changing a lot of the way that people work. There’s so much uncertainty, fear, doubt out there at the moment that one of the value propositions I think is that community aspect of SPI, um, community/masterminds.

I think- I felt that I, I wasn’t seeing people like me in the, in the community, and I wasn’t seeing as much engagement in the community and as much conversation. I am reliably informed that perhaps I just wasn’t looking hard enough, and that it was going on, I was missing it, or I wasn’t spending enough time in the groups.

But my read of the situation was, “Hmm, what’s going on with SPI? It’s just not, it’s not as alive as it used to be,” and the superfans shakeup seemed to throw a few things off for me, and I felt like, “Okay, maybe this isn’t, this isn’t where I wanna be anymore.” But the mastermind environment kind of keeps me hooked, and then talking to David, it’s like, let’s just remind ourselves that in the next little while, there’s gonna be a lot of, lot of loneliness out there as people go like, “I’m getting these signals from left, right, and center.

I should be doing this with AI,” or, “How do I use AI?” Or, “Is AI gonna make my r- my work completely irrelevant now?” Having a supportive environment of people who get it, who can help one another, I think is important, uh, to mankind. And I think it’s part of the value proposition of SPI is a community. That the communi– I, I don’t know.

I’ve thought about building a community-based business myself. It takes a lot of work to, to shift or, or encourage a community to engage, right? And usually, I think it’s down to the figurehead. It’s down to the, the, the people who are leading the environment. So Pat had this. You obviously have this. I just am not as familiar with yourself, Liz, ’cause I haven’t been in your world.

I’m aware of you, but I haven’t been in your world. So it’s like the person at the top of the business is gonna set the tone. You always do, and people will follow that example. And if community and/or masterminds is part of the mix because of this is how we make ourselves a bit different Then I think that that’s important.

That’s why I was asking David if there was a plan to keep or bring back the masterminds, because I think it will be ever more important over the next six to 12 months as people kind of go, “What do I– How do I navigate this era?”

Liz Wilcox: Yes, I agree with you 1,000%, and that was something, speaking of like plugging and poking holes, when Pat and I were in negotiations talking about, you know, is this a viable thing to sell a personal brand, et cetera.

You know, we were both very candid that, you know, Pat’s time was so spread thin given that he’s building this gigantic, unfathomable community over in the Pokémon space, right? Like, my sister just went to his Card Party. She said it was, you know, basically sold out at ten thousand people. You know, that’s a huge thing.

So what you just said about, you know, Pat does have that kind of it factor, so to speak.

Ryan: Yeah.

Liz Wilcox: But in those negotiations, I had him come into my community as like a guest speaker and, you know, it was like a Friday afternoon, and there were almost 200 people there live, and, you know, the chat was going crazy.

And he, he texts me after and he said, “Liz, that’s the most engaged community I’ve ever seen on the internet.” Like, given your numbers, you know, it’s Friday at 4:00 PM Eastern, you know? Like, who’s coming to a call like that? He said, “I, I know you’re, I know you’re the right person for this community.” And, you know, that’s something that I don’t say with anything but except pride.

I’m, I’m proud of that fact. Yeah. And, you know, hearing- You should own that. Yeah. I mean, that is amazing. Hearing what you say, you know, given from a guy who literally, you know, has 10,000 people, for him to say, “This is the most engaged,” right? And I serve the same people over in my email marketing space as, you know, we’re doing over here with SPI, and I’m, I’m so excited about what you said.

Like, I mention that because it’s, it’s so exciting to me to sort of turn that tide back to that level of engagement. And something that we’ve done in the last few months, you know, is add co-working. Just that, that loneliness epidemic that is happening, it, it is, it is real. It… There is a reason why BetterHelp is the number one podcasting, uh, advertiser in the entire world, right?

Because people are listening to podcasts alone, and they need help, right? And I agree, and I have doubled down on community, where a lot of people, including Pat, on his podcast has says, “I don’t know. I think community is dying.” And I said, “Pat, are you out of your mind? Give that over to me.” Like, it’s not dying.

You’re just stretched too thin, buddy. Like, I’ll take over. So I’ve doubled down in adding accountability calls on Mondays, right? For anybody in the, in the, in the membership. You don’t have to have … be in a mastermind to come to this call. Share what you’re working on, get accountability. We’re following up with you on Fridays.

We have co-working three times a week. Because yeah, it’s so… You, you’re in a silo, right? Like, nobody- Yeah … you turn off your computer. Y’all, I started my business in an RV, like in a caravan, 200 square feet, with my then husband. We’re not married anymore. I call him my wasband. He still doesn’t know what I do.

Was… He was my husband, now he’s not. My wasband And he still doesn’t quite understand what I do, and he was there while I was building it. You know what I mean? Like, in 200 square feet- Yeah … there was no escaping my work, right? And so especially in this, you know, solopreneurs, online service provider, you know, universe that we live in, it’s so important to me, yes, to connect people.

And something else we’re gonna start implementing are, like, networking nights, where we just come, we hang out, get to know each other. Because like you said, you know, it’s… I don’t wanna group people so much that you’re only talking to the people, you know, in, in your herd, so to speak. You know? Like, that’s- Yeah

I, I want a, you know, not super homogenized group, right? I want us to all mingle and learn from each other and, you know, you’ve got this corporate background. I personally have never had a job in my life , you know? Like, I, I, we have a lot to learn from each other, right? So-

Ryan: Yeah …

Liz Wilcox: yeah, I don’t, I don’t know what the future of SPI looks like as far as details goes, but the vision I have, I think, is very similar to what you just said of each other.

We need each other now more than ever. We’ve got to lean on the community in this time of uncertainty. I am not an AI girly. I actually told the team, I said, “Please stop accept… We no longer accept sponsorships from anything AI-powered,” because I think it’s a crazy disservice to our community to tell them to use AI, especially if they’re not at the six-figure level, because they, they need to put in the work.

You know, they need to understand the results. So, so that’s not something we’ll be integrating into the community anytime soon. It’s just more of, you know, what we needed in the pandemic, we s- we needed before the pandemic, we need it now. Maybe it was just a little more obvious because we didn’t have an office to go to.

We need each other, and I’m just so excited for the people that do stay on, you know, in the community, on the email list, listening to the podcast. I don’t mean just customers, because gosh, I, I need you bad. And when Ryan was like, “Hey, I don’t know, can we talk?” I was like, “Can we please get on a call?” I would absolutely love that because, you know, I need this community just as I think the community needs each other, for sure.

Ryan: Is there anything that’s come up for you today where you think actually it’d be really great to, you know, use or leverage some of Ryan’s experience down the track?

Liz Wilcox: Oh, I love this question. This is how I know you’re gonna make it. This, this is great. Yeah, I think even just what you said about how to curate the masterminds, I think is probably- … you know, a skill that you could use or n- that we could use, you know, to help us because you, you of all people, and maybe the eight other people in your group, you know, you have the most experience with the mastermind.

You know, you know, people have come and they’ve gone, and so you, you know, maybe there’s a-

Ryan: How we’ve navigated that and, you know, how we’ve kept the group going for so long, that sort of thing.

Liz Wilcox: Yeah, I would love to get your help or y’all’s help with bringing back the masterminds or some iteration, you know, whatever we call it, right?

‘Cause I had David fly to my house within the first three weeks of purchasing the business because he kn- like similar to you and your group, you know, David’s in it, and, you know, I, you know, I can have my ideas, but it, it never has to be my idea. It just has to be the best idea. So you guys probably have so much more better ideas and implementation strategies that we could, that we could deploy.

So yeah, I’d be interested in a further conversation. So here’s the,

Ryan: here’s the woo-woo thing. Mm-hmm. Here’s the woo-woo thing then. Have you ever come across Vedic astrology?

Liz Wilcox: I don’t think so.

Ryan: Oh, okay. I thought maybe when you were in the trailer, it might have, might have come across the people that were a little bit more eccentric in some cases, but-

Liz Wilcox: That’s true.

I- Um- That’s true. I did.

Ryan: Look, I, I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna preach about Vedic astrology or anything. I’m just gonna say that my wife introduced me to somebody that she met when she was traveling the world, and this lady is Amer- she’s American, and she’s a Vedic astrologer now, and she’s, you know, tack sharp, lovely person.

And basically, they take your date and time of birth, and they map what the sky was doing at the time, and then they read your chart based on where you’re at in your life and what’s going on for you. Now, if I believe in, and I do, with what she has sort of read into my chart, then the greatest work of my life is just around the corner for me, and I mean within the next twelve to eighteen months I will be doing it, and it will be for the next eighteen to twenty years or so of my life.

It’s a kind of a– It’s a big phase of my life that’s about to kick off. And I don’t know exactly what, you know, that looks like right now, and that’s somewhat scary not knowing. It’s also somewhat scary looking at the bank balance each month going, “Hmm, this runway’s running out.”

Liz Wilcox: Yes.

Ryan: And so I obviously, I, I do need to manifest some business, and I do need to get out and talk to audiences about the experiences that I have.

But a lot of the time when you’re in corporate, you just feel like you, you’re doing what you’re told to do. You don’t really have that much agency over it anymore because you’re there to do a job according to a job description, you know? And if you’re not doing that, then people kind of like kick you back into your lane.

Whereas in this era, I get to do what I want with who I want, when I want, where I want. M- The world is my oyster. The chances are there for me to kind of reach out to new, new people and make new connections and see what comes of it. I think the timing of this is really great because this week is very much about me taking a few days away from home and just sitting with my Higher self and just trying to see what comes through.

And hopefully from this I’ll get some clarity, and it will help me answer the questions about is Liz’s community the right place for me to continue hanging out? I love what you’ve said here today. I like your energy, Liz, a lot. I can see that… I can see why Pat had the confidence to sell the business to you, and I wish you every possible success, and I genuinely mean it when I say if there’s anything that I can do to help you along the way, then I’m…

You know, that’s the kind of guy I am. I do want to genuinely help people, and I believe that if I pay it forward somehow, that it’ll come back to me the way it’s meant to, you know? So that’s… If that sounds a bit woo-woo, I apologize, but I’m, I’m a British guy and I just I said woo-woo. You know I believe in that stuff, so- Uh,

Liz Wilcox: You did. Yes, you do. And so thank you so much.

Ryan: It’s energy work.

Liz Wilcox: Yeah, I don’t mi- I don’t mind a little woo. I wouldn’t say I’m, you know, in the forest touching grass. No, no. But there’s definitely- I’m not either.

Ryan: I’m grounded.

Liz Wilcox: Right. There’s definitely energy in the world, and I do believe, you know, what you put out, you get back.

And as far as, I don’t know, what I’m feeling called to say to you in that regard of figuring out your thing, listening to intuition, something that I wrote down that you said was fail forward. And you mentioned, you know, in Britain, like, that’s, that’s not a thing. You just fail. And so coupled with the customer experience that you said, like, yep, I’m really good at that.

I’m good at, you know, helping once you get all these foundational things, like making sure the customer experience is, is great. I think there, there’s something between those two of maybe, you know, helping people, helping people who look at failure one way. Like maybe you help people change their mind about failure or help executives change their mind about failure, help British executives change their mind about what failure is, you know, so, so that they can I don’t know.

It’s just, that was just something that really stood out to me of how you’ve been able to change your mind around that, you know, given your culture and your experiences and yeah, I think there, I think there could be something to that. And maybe there’s something even in what I’m trying to do with the curriculum inside SPI Community is change their minds, like help people get out of their own way.

I feel like that is a- Hmm … big problem in our community, and that’s in, in my community, bringing, bringing from, or, you know, coming from my email marketing membership. I’ve got about 4,000 people over there, and I think what I’m really good at and why I am able to get people to take action and why we’re trying to go from Team Flynn to Team WIN, WIN stands for What’s Important Now, is helping people get out of their own way.

But if you, you know, wanted to come, you know, talk about having to change your mind about failure, ’cause a lot of people, I think, in the SPI Community are stalled out. I, I just got an email from one of our most engaged community members today and he said, “Liz, are you inside my mind? Did you read my mind? I am constantly stalling out. I start something and I think it’s a great idea, and three weeks later, poof, it’s the, it’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever done. I’m afraid of failing, and I’m at… and I s- try something else.” And You know, the– I think that’s a really common problem in people starting to try this entrepreneur thing, try this online business thing, try to build something that is scalable is, “Oh, I’ve got an idea. I, you know, I, I jumpstart it, and then I promptly feel, ‘Uh, this isn’t working. I’m a failure. Let me try something else.'” So maybe there’s- That’s pretty interesting … you know, just a cas– uh, maybe there’s just a casual conversation you could come in and talk to folks about the bravery of follow-through, the, the getting rid of the, “Oh, I’m going to fail, so I’m, I’m just gonna stop.”

That mindset is running rampant, I think, in a lot of people’s hearts and minds, whether they’re a paying customer or not. That’s just what I’ve seen over the last decade of being in peer groups.

Ryan: That’s fascinating, and I love that you, that you brought that to the table because– And I do like the Team Flynn to Team WIN.

I picked up on that on the, on the, the episode, uh, that you did together announcing the takeover. That’s really cool. But getting out of your own way is one of those things that I have talked about with quite a few people around me, especially when it comes to getting on camera or, you know, this sort of stuff.

I, I love to do like make a rod for my own back and do an impromptu live on YouTube or something like that, or I did a few over the years and not a lot. I’ve done a few. But I used to go into– A little anecdote, and I’ll maybe finish with that ’cause of the time. But when I was listening to EOFire back in the day and to, to Pat talking on podcasts on Smart Passive Income, I used to go into a park on the way into the office in London near the Thames.

I would grab a little tripod that I bought on YouTube and my lavalier mic with, um, like a, I don’t know a 30-foot cable or something. I’d plug it into my phone, just stood on, uh, the top of a rock block in the park or something, stand a little bit back, and I would just go live on Facebook in the morning, and I would just talk about what was on my mind.

I had done very little prep. I’d maybe thought about it a bit as the month went on, and I got a little bit better at thinking about what are my talking points for this. But I’d just go live every morning and talk to whether there was one person there or nobody or 20 people about what was on my mind that morning.

And that– doing that for 30 days just got me to the point where- It’s like this doesn’t phase me anymore. Just put the camera on and talk or, you know, whatever. I don’t, I don’t overthink it. I prep a lot better now. I did a live masterclass the other week, and the tech failed me. So I was using Ecamm, going to LinkedIn Live, and I put Restream in the middle because I wanted my comments coming through from LinkedIn.

Except Restream dropped the connection halfway through because I was on a Wi-Fi connection rather than a LAN connection. And so it cut me off on LinkedIn after twenty minutes or so. But because I was using Ecamm, it’s recorded, so I edited it, and I put it onto Substack to start my Substack over there to try and reach a different audience.

The point being that every time that I’ve talked to people at networking events about doing video for themselves, for their small business or whatever, ’cause it’s one of the best ways that people can see whether they like your vibe, whether they– the know, like, and trust factor gets built so much faster with a video call or that sort of thing.

So I’ve tried to encourage people to do it, and of course, they’re often very anxious about getting on camera. It’s like, you’ve just got to get out your own way ’cause frankly, it’s a disservice to the rest of the world if you’re not putting your value out there. They don’t care about you. They don’t care what you look like.

They don’t even care how you– They might care subconsciously what you look like and how you sound, but frankly, they’re not spending any energy on that. They’re listening to, “Can this person help me with my issue?”

Liz Wilcox: I love this. So I– You know, if you are open, and this doesn’t have to be anything formal, I think a broader conversation around this and getting out of your own way and that story of being in the park and just hitting go, I think would be incredibly, incredibly helpful for our community.

You know, whether you decide to stay in as a paid customer or not, I w– I think that would be just so valuable for our folks if, if you would be open to it because, yeah, I really am trying to get people to move and, you know, I can only tell my story so many times. Uh, so- Yeah … I, I’d love for you to come in and share that.

I think that would be absolutely remarkable.

Ryan: Thank you. I will take you up on that opportunity if it’s, if it’s there because like you said earlier, don’t call myself a generalist. I said Swiss Army knife, but I also talk about myself as a catalyst, a catalyst for change. Yeah. So I like to try and help people think of ways to move forward.

And I’ve learned from lots of people along the way, and I don’t have all the answers, but I’m ins- I’m passionate about helping other people do just that. So yeah, bring it on.

Liz Wilcox: I love that so much. We did an episode of the podcast. It actually premiered today. Gosh, what w- it was like, uh, what Pat Flynn taught me before I bought SPI or something like that.

And but there’s a, there’s a guest on-

Ryan: You’re doing a revisited about what you learned afterwards as well. Yeah, right.

Liz Wilcox: Right, right. Find a track. But there’s a, there’s a guest named Desmond, he’s another SPI community member that has joined in 2026, and he said, you know, one of the things he learned from Pat, and I think a lesson you’ve probably learned, is there’s incredible value in being the initiator, being the catalyst, right?

And those are the kinds of people that I’m trying to get inside SPI Community, trying to attract to the email list who, you know, the, who’s listening to the podcast, are those people that understand that and understand that their story, their actions, you know, what they decide to do online can be a catalyst for someone, whether they’re a crochet blogger, you know, an executive coach, uh, you know, just somebody who, you know, bought a business from somebody.

You know, like, there is incredible value in being that catalyst, and you must, must, must get out of your way to do that, to be that person for others. And I love what you said. Y- you know, you’re doing not just yourself a disservice, but those people that need that special uniqueness that you have. So wow, I feel so fired up.

Thank you so, so much. I really appreciate all your insight into what the mastermind has been for you, how we could continue it on, and how to group people, even just emphasizing the importance of community and being a catalyst. And wow, we went all over the place. I love this so much. Thank you so much, Ryan.

Ryan: You’re very welcome. Well, I, I, I hope I can find a way to stay involved because I think it would be, it would be very interesting to see how the next 12 months evolve and, um, you know, it’s, um-

Liz Wilcox: You ain’t lying.

Ryan: I’m just gonna have, I’m gonna have to sleep on it and, uh, and think about it, but, um, you know, let’s, let’s see what we can do.

But thank you, Liz, for your time today, and I hope, hope Manhattan treats you well.

Liz Wilcox: Yes, sir. I’m sure it will. Thank you. I al- also have today to just sit and think and, you know, so this, this was very much kismet. I, I’m very happy to meet with you today. Thank you.

Ryan: Awesome. All right. You take care. I’ll hear from you soon.

Bye for now.

Liz Wilcox: Okay. Bye, friend.