SPI 930: The Evolution of SPI + Meet Our New Community Director

SPI 930: The Evolution of SPI + Meet Our New Community Director

Pat Flynn: Hey, welcome to the SPI podcast. We have a special guest today, Liz Wilcox. This will be the first time we’re announcing here on the show that you are our new community director! Yay! We’re just gonna start with that big announcement. Welcome to the family, the SPI family.

Liz Wilcox: My gosh, I’m so thrilled to be here. I’m so excited.

Pat Flynn: You’ve already brought a ton of energy to the community. I know the SPI community members have already said so. I’ve gotten private messages already from people saying they feel the new energy. In the space, and we’re bringing that energy to the show today, and we’re going to talk today about some of the plans you have for what we’re going to do and how we can better serve people.

We’ve had you on the show recently, and I’ve learned so much more about Liz and her history with Survivor, but I want to dive into a little bit of your history with passive income specifically because I don’t think we really touched on that when you were a guest on the show recently, but like this $9 offer you have, like how far has it taken you over at lizwilcox.com?

Liz Wilcox: It feels like it’s taken me to the moon. Um, it’s taken me to my wildest dreams, honestly. Pat always says, the passive income is the last step. And I feel like for the last couple of years, I really have had that passive income. Of course, I still, you know, open up my computer and I live to serve over there.

But for the majority of things, for my sales for customer retention, all of that does feel passive. It’s all set up. I’ve laid all the bricks and the wall has been built. And it’s, it’s this amazing thing because now, you know, I can fly to San Diego to do something in person with Pat.

That’s super cool. That’s something I never could have done if the income was less than passive, right? I can take summers off with my kids and just hang out. Y’all, I, I am. of the Nordic kind, but I get pretty dark in the summer and that’s never happened before. But it all comes back to, you know, being able to have more time because of the money that is coming in.

And it is, you know, I don’t want to say I don’t ever work. I definitely do. I’m working right now. But it is much more passive. I make sales and I have no idea where they’re coming from anymore.

Pat Flynn: Because you planted those seeds, which we’ve talked about before. And you know, when SPI started, I really feel like a lot of what was at the root level of SPI when it started was these small little projects, affiliate marketing, building these small businesses, and eventually grew bigger and bigger and bigger.

And it became this like bigger empire. And we almost kind of got away from the passive income part of this to build those empires. And I love having you, you and your energy back to kind of bring it back to reality and say, like, you don’t need to build huge empires to really change your life and create freedom with time and money. And of course, it takes action and takes help and community, which we’re going to do and help you with. But it really brings back to light that like we have always had, and we will help you with the opportunities that are in front of you to make more money passively, because it is real.

A lot of people don’t think it’s real, but it’s absolutely real.

Liz Wilcox: it’s 100 percent real, but you have to be 100 percent intentional. I spoke at Craft and Commerce back in 2025 about this. It was, you know, like I’ve, I’ve reached an income where I don’t necessarily need more money, but I want more time. And that I think is the trick to smart passive income, like emphasis on smart, you know, knowing when it, like, what is your enough number, right?

And a lot of us can get caught up in the grind, the hustle, the, you know, Oh, I make sales. I don’t even know where they’re coming from. That can be addictive, right? Like, Oh, let’s get more and more and more, but really coming back. And this is what has always attracted me to SPI. What are the values, right?

Like family, caring about people. I think you use give a hoot, right?,

Pat Flynn: Serve first.

Liz Wilcox: Right. Serve first. And those are things you have to be really intentional about. And that’s what I’ve done. I had to be smart about that to have the passive income because otherwise I would just be grinding saying, Oh yeah, I’ll do that webinar.

Yeah, let’s, let’s try ads. Oh, challenges are hot. Let’s do those. Right. But that’s not smart passive income. That’s very active income that depending on your goals might not be so smart to do.

Pat Flynn: I know one of your goals is to help more people in this space, and that’s why you’ve come over here, because our audiences do overlap quite a bit. We both help sort of beginning entrepreneurs and help them get out of their own way and start to see success. And with that extra time that you’ve had because of your passive income, you’ve decided to spend it here.

So we’re very grateful for you. And again, the whole team is excited to have you on board and the community as well. And the community speaking of has gone through some major changes recently with a lot of your direction and shout out to the team as well. And David and everybody over there who’s been doing great to inject what we’re calling the Superfans System into the SPI community. Because as the community has grown since 2020, it’s become this amazing library of material to help you in all the different kinds of ways that you can need help online. But it’s also become a little overwhelming for people who’ve come in. We’ve, we’ve noticed that. So we’ve built and put in this framework on top of that.

The courses and the workshops are still in there. The community is still in there, but we are now putting those within a framework, a roadmap, if you will, to guide you through that. And this is what we call the Superfans System. I wrote a book called Superfans and I’ve talked about it many times here on the show.

But it helps you build a foundation for who it is that you’re serving. Within that foundation, you then find your casual audience. Those are the people that just discover you for the first time. Then you convert them into an active audience, your subscribers, your followers. And this is where Liz comes in with her expertise because email is your jam.

Liz Wilcox: It is. I love electronic mail. I cannot lie.

Pat Flynn: You do, and that’s great because So many of us have gotten away from that. It’s all social, it’s all building on somebody else’s sandbox. We’ll get a little bit deeper into this, but like, you own your email list. And the way you approach email, how personable it is, how, you know, you want to get things back to text only, because that’s how you write to a friend, like these kinds of things are very important.

And then from the active audience going into connected community, which we specialize in here, and then building your superfans, and you don’t need a lot of superfans to do some amazing things in your business, in your life, for your people, and so these courses are now put into the Superfans System because, for example, if you are trying to be found, take our Short Form Formula course, or go into you know, if you’re building your email list, you can go into Email Marketing Magic and see what’s there, and that’s at another level.

At the bigger level, we have things to help you with the community that you’re building and we have plans for some stuff that are going to be injected in there too, which we’ll reveal as well. But, you know, you’re fairly new to the Superfans System and how we’ve sort of put all these things together.

What’s been your first impression coming in here now that you’re leading this community? Like, feels like you’re excited about it.

Liz Wilcox: Yeah, so my first impression of the Superfans System is, yes, a curriculum, a guide, a framework, a system. That’s what people need. So what a lot of people don’t know about me is I actually have a background in education and a master’s degree in leadership. And so, you know, putting those two things together is, I know how to get people to do the things they want to do to accomplish the goals, right?

And you always need a system in place, right? It’s so hard to go it alone and to just, oh, I think I’ll follow this object and this object. And oh, you know, I just saw a webinar on, we mentioned challenges, right? And okay, I guess I have to do a challenge now, but really, coming back and having a framework or a system like that, I geek out over email and I geek out over systems, right?

Like having the framework, having the curriculum, the programming to do the thing you say you want to do. So our people are coming in and saying, yes, Pat, we want to go from idea to income. And now they have a clear roadmap. Like, oh my gosh, it’s, it’s juicy. I love it.

Pat Flynn: And a shout out to, again, David and yourself and the rest of the crew for helping people find out where in the system they exist, right? There’s a quiz that when you get in there, you take this quiz. It’s pretty short, and it helps us determine where you are and where to go next. And that’s really important too, right?

It’s that guidance. It’s that accountability. It’s, it’s figuring out where to begin based on where you are, not just some general system and everybody goes through it. You know, yes, everybody, we want everybody to go through it, but some of you are already past those beginning parts. We don’t want to waste your time either.

And then, you know, the other thing about the superfan system is that you might be at the point at which you are building your community, you have superfans, but then you want to grow and scale. So you need to kind of go back to some of those basic things to be found again, to get discovered. And maybe that might mean putting short form video into your your arsenal.

It might mean adding a podcast into what you’re doing to, to build those relationships. And so we have that material. But it’s not just thrown at you like it was before, right? What are some other things that you noticed, you know, from your perspective, Liz, coming into the community new, what are some things that you were like, oh, this has to get better, this has to change?

Like, let’s be honest about some of that.

Liz Wilcox: Yeah. Let’s get into it, Pat. Just when we say community, we want community, right? And so some of the things that David has redesigned within the SPI community and the dashboard is the conversations we’re having. No longer are they separated. So I can’t really see what anybody is talking about, right? Like if I come in and I give my introduction, maybe Caleb has been in the community forever.

He’s not clicking on the introductions, right? Because It’s, it’s not applicable to him, but now it’s all in a feed and I’m so excited. Kind of like on, you know, back in the day, Facebook basically invented the feed, right? And so it kind of looks like that where I can scroll, I can see what’s going on in the community.

I can see that it’s interactive. And so I want to be a part of the movement that’s already there. So I, I love this new feature and I’m really excited for people to get in and just get more active.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, and it’s taken us a while to figure this out, but initially we, we had these conversation areas separate, these spaces separate. It’s like, if you need help with email, go to the email conversation area. If you need help with this, and that was, purposeful to try to organize these things so we can all have them in an archive.

And what’s nice is they can still be tagged and they can still be of that subject. The search engine inside of the community and Circle’s great. But like you said, it’s like that cross pollination that like, if, if, if you didn’t need email help, maybe, you know, email stuff to help somebody who’s asking a question, but you wouldn’t be there otherwise.

Like you said, introductions, we’re all in the introduction area and it’s Okay, after you’re done with introductions, you’re never going to go back to it. So how is the community going to support each other and find each other? There might be a person who’s brand new. That would be perfect to even partner with or get on a podcast.

We want as much of those connections to happen. It’s like a mixer. You can’t have a mixer if everything is separate.

Liz Wilcox: Right. Even last night I was looking at the community and I went straight to the feed and I saw somebody was introducing themselves and saying, Hey, you know, I’m I’m a mom of, you know, someone who has autism. I’m looking for other moms and that doesn’t apply to me, but I have a friend who recently started a podcast.

And so I said, Hey, can I introduce you to my friend, Nicole? And she was like, okay, great. And we were DMing, right? I never would’ve seen that if it was, off to the side of introductions, maybe I would have clicked on that, you know, last because it’s the least applicable to me, but I saw it right away and I was able to get that conversation going almost immediately after her joining.

Pat Flynn: Yeah. So that’s just one example of an improvement. I think another thing, and this is something that David wanted to implement as well, which was like publicly sharing our roadmap for things to come, which when I talk about it now, it’s like, well, of course we’d want to do that. That would help people know what’s coming so they could stay in.

But again, we didn’t want to overwhelm, but because things are much more organized now, we have opened up the opportunity to share that, for example, There is a brand and sponsorship course coming that’s going to be put in there, and it’s for those of you who are just starting out, and maybe you haven’t quite yet gotten to the point where you’re selling courses and you’re selling your own products, but you still want to monetize, well, we can connect you or show you how to connect with other brands and sponsors to put that in there.

We have some other things that are coming, like a course or at least some sort of information, maybe it’s a workshop. I mean, it’s not always going to be a course. We want to, you know, Position these things in a way that’s going to help you best and not waste your time again, but get right to it. Something to help you if you are creating some sort of a consultation or you’re doing like coaching or something like that, like a freelancing type of thing. And I know you have experience with that yourself, so you can even add to a lot of the stuff that’s coming too. And we’re going to start to see a lot of Liz and, and sort of like Liz style stuff in there. Not just the energy, but like her vast knowledge of things that, all the way back to your blogging days when you started an RV blog, like you’ve learned so much and did sponsorships back then.

Liz Wilcox: Yeah, so much. And what I love about how it’s organized now in the system is. Y’all, in order to find these superfans and to build a business from the superfans, I once heard you kind of have to be sort of good at everything. And so within the community, having access to Pat’s courses, and now, you know, some of my resources.

You know, we are going to teach you not to be sort of good, but to be exceptional. Like, these courses are tried and true. Between the two of us, we have about 30 years of experience, I think. And so, you’re going to be able to, you know, like, Goodbye, YouTube University. Like, hello, SPI Community, because at every level, you have something to teach you how to get to the next level, how to master this one and move to the next one.

And that’s what I’m so excited about. It’s going to be crystal clear. Again, no more scattered brain. Where do I go? What do I do next? What’s important? We will let you know and also give you options, right? It’s not just one resource for one level. It’s not just one guy telling you what to do, now you have two resources, and, you know, I think of Pat and I as like two sides of the same coin, like we’re different, but very similar in our core, and so now you’re learning from two different people with two different styles about the same topic, and so, again, you’re not gonna be sorta good, like, you’re gonna be exceptional.

I’m, I’m just so pumped.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, and that comes with being exceptional, comes with getting the reps in and feeling like you have a safe space to try and get some help and accountability along the way, whether it’s you working with us or some of our team or finding each other. And again, that’s the whole point of the community is for you to find other people like you.

Our member directory is always improving and allowing you to find your people. And again, Running your own stuff can be very lonely. I mean, that’s how it was for me in the beginning. I felt like, although it was exciting, I felt like I was siloed. I felt like I was by myself. I felt like I had to you know, kind of figure things out on my own.

And although you are figuring things out, you’re not doing it alone. You’re doing it with each other. You’re doing it with us. We have this system for you to go through. So it’s all really exciting. And if you’re not in the community already, we would love for you to be a part of it a nd give it a shot. And we’ll talk more about that later in the kind of things that we have to offer you there. But I want to hear from you, Liz, like, what are your longer term visions for this community in terms of like things that we’re going to be able to do together?

Liz Wilcox: My long term vision is that when we’re not in the room and somebody says, you know, where can I go to learn and be supported? I’m really trying to build an online business. Somebody whips around, Oh my gosh, you need the SPI community. Like, I want everyone to know that This is an inclusive place where we really support each other.

Pat just said, you know, it’s lonely. Oh gosh, that, that hurts my heart to know that there are people out there that think I’m alone in this. No one understands. Cause I, I’ve been there. Y’all, I started my business in an RV and. Everyone, even my family, Liz, what, what are you doing? I don’t know. Maybe, maybe you should just stick to being a mom.

I don’t, maybe you’re getting scammed. Are you getting scammed? You, you seem kind of smart. Maybe, maybe this is not real, but to have a community would have been so awesome. I would have, you know, been so much further ahead if I had people that said, yes, and instead of no, but, right? And so my big vision is for A lot of these entrepreneurs, people who want to build an online business or brand to come together and support each other.

So within the community, things that I’m adding are co working sessions where we just come together and we just work together, right? It does feel lonely. Like if. If you’ve got to record a podcast episode, you know, even just having other people like, yep, I’m going to record a podcast episode in 45 minutes to even get like a DM.

Hey, are you done recording yet? Like, you know, that, that never would have happened for me 10 years ago. Right. I probably would have published so many more podcast episodes if I had people that genuinely cared. So inputting a lot of features like that where we’re hanging out together and then even, I don’t even think I’ve mentioned this to Pat yet, I would love to do more in person events.

I know Kit has their studios. I’d love for us all to like come hang out, use the equipment, like, you know, get to know each other, get to know each other’s goals. I know for me, the one thing that always kept me going was being in peer groups, knowing that there was somebody out there, even if they were in Alaska and I was in Florida, that they, you know, they have the same goal.

And so bringing us together, going to different cities, meeting each other. Pat, you always mentioned that story of, I forget the lady’s name of I’m not here to see you, Pat. Yeah. I want more of those stories. I want that to happen to Pat and me, like. every single time, right? And I want those community moments to start within the SPI Community online and then bring them in real life as much as possible.

Pat Flynn: I love that. And, and, and facilitating those opportunities and making them easier for people. Some people in our community have, on their own, gone out and flown out to see each other and, and meet. And it’s like, if we can come in and make that a little easier for you to do, to find people, to go to places.

If we go to Kit Studios, which they just opened one, I think, in Chicago or New York or something. I mean, they’re opening them everywhere, which is great. It just makes it easier for us to be able to find each other. And I think that the magic of that is that today, people are feeling very disconnected.

There is a lot of AI stuff that we’re just not even sure what’s real anymore, right? So if we can get in real life, I think there’s going to be this huge renaissance of real life stuff happening again. Whether it’s a big event that you could throw on, similar to what I do with Card Party, or smaller coffee shop meetups where we’re just hanging out and talking and remembering, like, what it’s like to connect and see somebody and give them a fist bump because they’re awesome, right?

So I love that idea. And you know, it reminds me of my buddy, Scott Dinsmore, the late Scott Dinsmore, rest in peace, who was still in his twenties when he passed, but he had this amazing community of people all around the world who met at certain times of the year. And they would like live stream together all at the same time.

Live Your Legends was his, was his brand. And he, like, they still meet today because of what, like the movement that he created. And it’s because of people finding each other and not feeling lonely. They felt a sense of belonging there.

Liz Wilcox: I love that. The sense of belonging is so real. When I started, I was an RV travel blogger. We’ve mentioned that. And you would think like, oh, you’re going to all these beautiful places. You know, you’re living the life. But I found that the number one issue that my ideal customer had was loneliness. They were doing it themselves.

They had left their family, left their home. And it’s similar to entrepreneurship because a lot of people don’t understand, you know, you’re holed up maybe in your, your cloffice, right? Your closet office, your cloffice, trying to record because that’s the quietest thing. And, you know, but you can still hear the kids in the background or, you know, your wife or your husband making dinner and you’re just trying to get it done before 10 PM, right?

So I don’t want us to feel lonely anymore. I want us to belong because we belong together. We truly do. I, I don’t like the word solopreneur. You can see it like I’m physically like, no, because there’s no such thing. We have to do this together. There’s no way we can get to the next level without each other.

Right? I mean, the word superfans, right? That’s a group of people all have this.

Pat Flynn: Connective tissue.

Liz Wilcox: Yes, I love that so much. And so I would love to, just like in my travel days, I used to, oh, I’m in Santa Fe. I’m in San Diego. I’m in Miami. Like, come hang out. I want us to do that. I want us to get together, to know, you know, not just read that we’re not alone, but to know it, to feel it, to experience it.

Pat Flynn: I love that.

Liz Wilcox: I’m just stoked.

Pat Flynn: I’m just having visions of people going to a, you know, one of these meetups that we host eventually, or even online, but especially in person. And you know, they’re kind of timid, they’re scared. And then they go and they go, Ryan, is that you? Yeah. Oh my. And then just like the shoulders go down and then they start smiling.

It reminds me of when I went to my first mastermind meeting in 2008. I was so scared. I didn’t feel like I belonged because I didn’t feel like I had value to add. And then I just felt Like this warm hug from everybody. You know, and that’s what we want to give you. So if you want to check out Superfans System inside of the SPI community and how we’ve laid it all out and give it a shot, head on over to superfans.smartpassiveincome.com. And you’ll see both of us there. It is the most active this community has been in years. And that’s largely due to you. Thank you so much, Liz.

Liz Wilcox: Yeah. Thank you for giving me this opportunity. Pat mentioned my why for coming over here, right? Like I’ve, I’ve got a business, I’ve got a community of thousands of people, but I, I just love what Pat is doing. I love the values over here and I do want to amplify that. And I want to make sure that there’s no one out there that’s trying to build a business online that, feels alone, that feels too scattered to go on.

I, gosh, it just, it makes me ill to think about somebody just giving up because they didn’t find the right people to keep pushing them. And, you know, if, if you are looking for somebody and a group of somebodies to get behind you, you know, and cheer you on as you take those steps towards your income online, like, we’re here. I’m jazzed. I’m stoked. I’m so honored to be here. I feel so absolutely blessed to come into this community. It’s actually unbelievable, my life and the fact that I get to do this. And, you know, I want you to feel that same, I can’t believe this is my life. So I would love for you to come into the community.

Pat Flynn: Superfans.SmartPassiveIncome.com. Liz was once a listener of this show. They were listening just like you or watching just like you a while back and took action and wants to give back. And I just, we’re so appreciative of you, Liz. Thank you so much for being here.

Liz Wilcox: Yeah, thank you.