SPI 937: Why Personal Brands Are Winning in 2026 with Chandler Bolt

SPI 937: Why Personal Brands Are Winning in 2026 with Chandler Bolt

Chandler Bolt: That’s the first test, is can I scale it beyond just me helping the person in a one-on-one setting to a group setting? And then I think the next test is, well, can I scale it beyond me helping them to someone I’ve trained helping a group of people? That’s the difference that made the difference for me. And so we’ve done probably eighty million or so in the last decade, and that’s why. And so for me, it comes down to good people and good process.

But then I think something clicked about a year or so ago, and I realized that there were all these people in the internet marketing world that had significantly less business acumen than I did, but they were the ones that were getting all the opportunities, because the person who’s most visible gets the most opportunities.

I was the anti-personal-brand guy. I started my first Instagram like nine months ago. That’s how anti-personal-brand I was. I mean, I just had a Facebook and a LinkedIn, and that was it. But now we’re investing a lot more in that, building the Chandler Bolt brand all around scaling to eight figures. And then on the SelfPublishing.com side of things as well.

Pat Flynn: Yo, we have an amazing storyline today. Somebody who had built a business to eight figures and coming back and going, “You know what? I should finally start my Instagram.” And he started his Instagram nine months ago and is now leaning into personal brand. Why? First of all, how did you get to eight figures?

What were the tactics you used, and what did you regret? And how and why are you going into personal brand now? A lot of interesting questions come up, I’m sure, when you hear that story. But we’re gonna get all the answers today from Chandler Bolt, author extraordinaire, also helper of authors. He’s helped over seven thousand people tell their story, self-publish their own books at SelfPublishing.com.

First of all, what a domain. But it was formerly known as Self-Publishing School, and today we’re gonna dive in, and it’s not just me today. Both Liz and I, our community director extraordinaire Liz and I, are both interviewing Chandler. We’re gonna tackle it from kind of different perspectives, from a marketing perspective, from a why perspective, and then diving into personal brand.

And I also finish off the episode by asking about books today. Is it still worth the time and effort to publish a book, whether you’re going traditional or self-publish? Does it even matter now? What do you do with that? Is it just AI slop now? What is it? We’re gonna dive into that and more. Here he is, Chandler Bolt.

Chandler, welcome to the SPI Podcast. Thanks for being here, man.

Chandler Bolt: Pat, it’s a dream come true. Glad to be here.

Pat Flynn: And this time you got both Liz and I here to dissect all the amazing things you’re doing. Liz, how are you doing?

Liz Wilcox: I’m doing so good, and I’m really excited to dive into Chandler and how he’s built his personal brand because, y’all, fun fact, I actually met Chandler back in like, I don’t know, it was like 2017, 2018, when he was at a conference sponsoring it, which I’m sure we’ll talk about, and I just remember him and his shirts, right?

Like … you guys can’t see him, but he’s got this awesome shirt on right now, and I just remember him for his smile and his shirts, and the fact that he didn’t have a personal brand, and now he does, I think is so awesome because he’s gonna knock it out of the park just from the shirts alone, guys. Like, this is so exciting.

Yes. He’s clearly a person who’s gonna have a strong personal brand, and I can’t wait to dig in.

Pat Flynn: You know what, Liz, it’s interesting you mention that. I never noticed the shirts, but you are absolutely right. The Hawaiian bright colored shirts, just like Chandler’s personality. And Chandler, I remember you from a long time ago.

You’ve, you’ve been at this for a very long time, and my recollection of how you got started was just you got so interested in what everybody else was doing. You came at it in the right angle. You just continued to be a part of the community, the blogosphere, then the podcast sphere, and now helping authors, of course.

And, and you scaled up big in a way that many others have not. We’re talking about here today, you scaled to eight figures without even a personal brand, and that is insane, man. But now you’re going into personal branding. So we wanna, we wanna ask you why and all those things, but maybe for those who don’t know your origin story, tell us a little bit about how you got into, you know, Self-publishing School and, and into the world of online business.

Chandler Bolt: Yeah, I’m an unlikely author. I mean, I’m a college dropout, C-level English student with ADHD, but I like teaching what I’ve done. I think that’s probably a common thread with the three of us is do the thing, and then if it goes well, teach the thing. And so when I was dropping out of school, I published a couple books.

Those books started doing well. Then people started asking, “How are you doing that?” And then that led to, inspired by people like you guys, led to starting to teach it, and then that led to Self-Publishing School, which ultimately became SelfPublishing.com. And then now we’ve published about seven thousand books over the last decade, and we publish two to five books a day.

So we just publish books all day, every day. And it’s funny, the thread way back, I think Azul Terrones, who, who you’ve done a bunch of work with, he was probably in that first cohort, the very first cohort of people that we helped publish a book. I think there was forty-four people, and sixty percent of them published a book in six months.

And so then that was kind of the proof of concept to say, “Hey, we’ve got something here.” And then ever since, we’ve just been trying to tweak, refine, and improve the process.

Pat Flynn: Wow, that is crazy. And, and I do wanna dive into a little bit later in this conversation about the world of authorship today and the world of AI and all that stuff, and how do we compete?

Is it still worth doing? I’m, I’m very curious your thoughts about that. I, I am curious about your first book, though. What inspired you to write that, and what was that book?

Chandler Bolt: Yeah. So the very first book is called Breaking Out of a Broken System. I wrote it with my brother, and it was this… You know, my brother’s a Grammy-nominated rock and roll musician.

I was the business guy kind of having a l- little bit of early success in business in high school and college, and we came from the middle of nowhere where no one does this stuff. And so we kind of looked up. I remember being on the phone with him. He’s on tour, I’m in college, and we’re talking about going off to school, and I’m like, “Man, I thought everybody knew the stuff that our parents taught us,” but then I got here and realized no one learned this stuff.

And he said, “Oh yeah, I had that same experience.” And then we said, “What if we write a book about this?” And it’s kind of these 15 things that our parents taught us, and it’s his perspective. He’s the musician at the time. My perspective is a business guy, and so we did that, and I did another book almost kind of simultaneously, and one was a project for charity, and that one was a project for charity.

The other one was just kind of a fun thing, and they just, they just started stacking and, uh, paid the bills when I dropped out of school.

Pat Flynn: Yeah. Why books? Why not an online course or a blog or something like that? What, what made you choose books specifically?

Chandler Bolt: Yeah. It’s weird. I, I don’t know that I chose books as much as books chose me.

‘Cause, I mean, I would have never… I was the guy that I hated reading. I hated writing. I would… You know, and growing up, I would be in some of the gifted and talented classes, but none of the gifted English classes because I sucked at it, and I didn’t wanna read and write, and that was really, you know, you get in those higher level English classes, that’s all it is, and I hated that.

Yeah. But I don’t know. I just, I, I felt like, “Hey, I’ve got these things to share. Let’s maybe make a PDF or let’s put it in writing.” ‘Cause I think even at that time, I mean, the internet marketing world wasn’t, you know, it wasn’t so in your face like it is today and, and courses and coaching and all that wasn’t really a thing either.

So we just said, “Hey, what if we put this in a PDF?” And then that evolved into, “What if we put this on Amazon?” And then we just kinda used some of the guerrilla marketing tactics that I learned kind of doing blue collar businesses and just parlayed that over into the book stuff, and the book started catching fire.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, that’s crazy. I, there’s so many questions. Liz, I’m sure you wanna start somewhere with, like, the, the marketing of this and scaling up something like this, a small group effort to help authors write books into something that’s a multimillion-dollar business. But where is your curiosity at, Liz, on this?

Liz Wilcox: Yeah. So y’all, I’m a marketer through and through. I geek out on that stuff, and Chandler just said guerrilla marketing tactics, so I wanna hear more about that, right? So clearly you had some experience, right? So maybe give us an overview of what you were doing beforehand and how you used that to sell your book with your brother and maybe even, you know, launch and start self-publishing.

Chandler Bolt: Yeah, it’s funny when you’re, when you’re starting out, you just do the things that don’t scale. And people tell you, “Don’t do that. That doesn’t scale,” but that’s the reason it works. And so-

Pat Flynn: Mm-hmm …

Chandler Bolt: early on it was, I ran a house painting company in college, and that was my first business that hit six figures, and I did that in, in the sum- in my freshman summer, and it wasn’t sexy.

It wasn’t a sexy business. It wasn’t sexy marketing. It was knocking on doors. It was putting flyers on mailboxes, and then it was PR, which that was the real big breakthrough. It was when I realized I’m knocking on doors. I mean, this is in the South. I’m getting cussed out. I’m getting people threatening to pull guns on me.

I mean, this is, you know, not exactly a walk in the park, but one day I walked by this mailbox and realized, what if I could just get in those mailboxes? There’s tens of thousands of those mailboxes in this county. How would I do that? Oh, well, I just gotta make one sale, and that’s the person who can put me in the newspaper.

And so then I kind of pivoted my approach a little bit and I said, “I’m gonna take an hour every week to just try to get in the newspaper.” And then a few weeks later, I got in the newspaper, and then boom, all of these leads started flowing in. We would knock on someone’s door, except this time we say, “Oh, you may have seen us in the paper. Anyway, let’s talk about painting your house,” right? So now we have social proof. And so it just started with all these things. And so that was the funny thing is when I started Self-Publishing School, now SelfPublishing.com, I just applied the same thing, which was partnerships. And I said, “Well, who’s already got these big audiences?”

‘Cause I’m nobody. I got no audience. And if I can just get them to put me in front of their people, well, then, then I can get in front of thousands, tens of thousands people, maybe a lot more than that. And so partnerships were the, the kind of how we went from zero to a million in the first year, and it was just a few trusted people that were willing to put me in front of their audience, which I’m forever grateful for.

Liz Wilcox: Wow. The way you just dropped that, zero to a million in the first year. Like, no big deal, but that’s awesome. And yeah, I mean, I shared that I met Chandler way back in the day, and it was through a guy named Jeff Goins, who I know his email list- Mm … at the time was probably about 150,000- Yeah … people. So it makes sense if you can get into, you know, a few people like Jeff, you know, you can scale pretty quickly.

Pat Flynn: I love that so much. Yeah, virtual mailboxes now in the internet world versus- Yeah … you know, the, the actual mailboxes. But it, it, it’s true. And, and, you know, email marketing and all that kind of stuff playing a role in this too. That’s Liz’s expertise, of course, and now she’s brought that over to the SPI community.

But, you know, I’m curious on, on, on the, the why. You know, there’s a lot of people who I know help authors in different kinds of ways, and a lot of them have their sort of small, tight group of, of authors that they help one at a time, or two at a time, five at a time, and they’re doing really well. But I mean, these numbers that you’re talking about are, are explosive.

I mean, they’re, they’re, they’re huge. What is the difference? How are you, or what did you do to scale a business like this? What are the scalable things within a business like this that you were able to kind of take and multiply?

Chandler Bolt: I think in the beginning it’s one-to-one, as you mentioned. It’s how can I help one person, or in a small group setting, can I replicate the results that I had in a small group?

Which I think for most people watching or listening, really smart first step. So I’m gonna go from one-to-one to one-to-many, and maybe I’ve got a group coaching program or, or a course or a membership or whatever. And okay, now, but from there, can I scale it? So that’s the first test is can I scale it beyond just me helping the person in a one-on-one setting to a group setting?

And then I think the next test is, well, can I scale it beyond me helping them to someone I’ve trained helping a group of people? And, and so I think that is– that’s the difference that made the difference for me. And so we’ve done probably eighty million or so in the last decade, and that’s why. Is well, you, first off, you gotta have scalable customer acquisition channels.

So you gotta be able to acquire those customers at scale. But then obviously, you gotta have a great product and deliver great results, and you’ve gotta be able to do that at scale and replicate yourself. And so when I think about that, we call it a profit bridge, is there’s kind of those core fundamentals there.

So you gotta get paying customers, that’s first. Then you gotta have product market fit, which is kind of the difference between, you know, just getting a little bit of customers or getting customers at scale. Then you gotta move from that to being profitable . Maybe you wanna, you know, run a, a profitable business.

There’s a lot, you know, three Ps. These, these are all Ps. But so then you got… You’re profitable. Then you’ve got people. So you’ve gotta be able to… I mean, that’s probably our biggest thing that we’re really good at is just really great people, and then you’ve got process to kind of accelerate that. So, so I know it’s kind of a long answer and a little bit dense, but like-

Pat Flynn: No, no, you’re good

Chandler Bolt: Those are the, kind of the, the core building blocks that, of how I think about it to just You know, not just have a six or seven-figure business, which is a great business, by the way, and but how do you do it at scale?

Pat Flynn: Yeah. I mean, beyond the person who’s starting the company is really the magic sauce, right?

Like an agency model type of thing, and I’ve seen a lot of people go down that route, hiring people to teach the thing that they wanna teach, but they run into problems sometimes. They don’t teach it the right way or the same kinda way. People want the initial person, not somebody who they hired. How do you get around those kinds of things?

How do you make sure that when you hire people to teach what you have initially taught to do, not just one to many, but from many to many, how do you ensure the quality is still there? What, what kinda training happens in order for you to do something like that?

Chandler Bolt: That’s a great question. It’s so funny. When you’re, when you’re just starting out, you think, “I’m so special. There’s no possible way that I could create a system around this, much less train somebody else to do what I do.” And then you get to doing it for a while, and then you realize, “Oh, the people on my team are actually way more qualified than even I am at this point.” And so I think for me, it comes down to good people and good process.

So do you have great people? And which for us, kind of the hard line is have you done the thing? Uh, ’cause that’s just, that’s the part that really pisses me off. I mean, that’s why I dropped out of college ’cause I got tired of learning how to run a business from professors who have never ran businesses.

So I’m not gonna put coaches, for example, I mean, that’s a big part of what we do is we’ve got coaches that work with authors one on one. Well, I’m not gonna put a coach in there that hasn’t published a book. That would be the antithesis of everything I believe in, so I wanna make sure that my coaches have done it, and then I wanna have a proven process that we coach to so that we can predictably create a great result.

So it’s the same way… It’s almost like the franchise method. It’s the same way that, you know, a Chick-fil-A or a Target or whatever else, you can have a repeatable customer experience is because they’ve got great process, and they’ve got great people. And so I think from the beginning, we kind of designed that to where…

And uh, it, it, it’s difficult ’cause even still, people say, “Oh, yeah, but uh, Chandler, I want you as my coach.” I’m like, “Absolutely not. It’s not happening.” But I’ve got great coaches that are way better than me, and they’re in the trenches. I’m so far removed from this that the best person is actually the person who’s a few steps ahead of you, and we have a proven process that they’re gonna coach to.

And so that’s kinda how we, I don’t know if I would say get around, but, like, just basically deflect that objection and, and show the person that this is the best way that we can serve them.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, almost spin that objection and be like, “No, this is a– You don’t actually wanna work with me. You wanna work with- Exactly this person.” Yeah, I love that.

Liz Wilcox: So Chandler, you keep mentioning, you know, good people, good processes. I wanna take you back to, you know, those, that first year, you know, getting in front of people maybe like Pat or Jeff Goins, and now you have coaches that do this for you. What are some of those personality traits that you would attribute to your coaches or even yourself that allow you to get in front of those bigger names so that they can help you scale?

‘Cause I’m all about, I say I’m down with OPP, other people’s platforms. It sounds like Chandler is the same, right? So what are some of those personality traits or those things that you coach your coaches on to put their best foot forward so you guys can continue to, you know, partner with the right people?

Chandler Bolt: Hmm. I like that. I like that OPP, uh, framework I think there’s probably three traits that stand out. I mean, first off, you gotta be a go-giver, so not looking to take, but looking to give. Um, I, I, I think you should be interested, not interesting, and then you should just dig your well before you’re thirsty. I mean, so those are kind of the three big things that I think back for me.

I mean, Pat, you’re probably a testament to this. I mean, maybe a decade ago, one of the first years I got in business, I, I took on this challenge where I wrote a thank you card every single day for a year, and it just forced me to do two things. One, it forced me to constantly be looking for people and things that I’m thankful for because I’m like, “I gotta write a card today, so I gotta find somebody.”

Mm-hmm. And which was just, like, a really fun shift, but it also was one of the best ways to dig my well before I’m thirsty. And so I think, Pat, you’re probably on the receiving end of one of those and a bunch of other people- Yep, absolutely … where I’d be listening to their podcast and, or I would just l- be inspired by them, and I would just write them something.

Or I think I’ve– I think back in the day I went on this big gift-giving spree too. So I think, Pat, I shipped you stuff, shipped your kids stuff or something. And so I was just… You know, if I was inspired by people, if I was thankful for them, I would just send them stuff. And what ended up happening is the first people that put me on their platform were the random people that I sent the gift to.

And so I think it’s a good reminder for me to just zig when everyone else is zagging. In a world where the lowest common denominator is AI slop, is an automated email, is whatever else, I would reach out to people and say, “Hey, what’s your snail mail address?” And it just… That’s the part that doesn’t get filtered by the assistant, or that’s the part that people keep.

I mean, that– it leaves a real human connection. And so then… And it wasn’t transactional in any way, but it wasn’t like, “Oh, I’m gonna do that,” and then I’m– three weeks later I’m gonna say, “Hey, by the way, you know, can you promote my stuff?” It was just very organic. And then all these things started popping up, and those first people that– the OPP, the other people’s platforms that I got on, were those people.

Were the… I remember it was, it was Jamie Tardy, it was James Schramko, it was a couple others. And I remember Jamie said, “Yeah, my kids know you as the guy that sends us gifts.” And it was just– Because I would try to send stuff for the family or for the spouse or for whatever ’cause I’m like, “Hey, I wanna send something of utility, but I also wanna send something to where if it’s in your home, well, then you’re using it.”

And every time you see that, it’s like, “Oh yeah, Chandler sent us that.” And so just little things like that that I think helped me get my start. But then obviously I look for that in my coaches ’cause I wanna make sure they’re interested, not interesting, that they’re go-givers, that they’re digging their well before they’re thirsty.

Like, they’re looking to add value in any way they can.

Pat Flynn: That’s really cool. Yeah, the gift-giving is, is key, and to do it because you actually care about building a relationship, not because necessarily you want something back. I think I first heard that from Jordan Harbinger when he was on the podcast. He had mentioned that very similar thing.

If you the, the sort of opposite point to that is if you’re digging your well and you’re thirsty, it’s too late. Like, don’t just start reaching out to people the moment you need something. Like, build relationships. I think Hal Elrod sent, and, and we use it every day, we have a knife set from Costco ’cause his origin story involves Costco.

He sent us a knife set and we still use it, and I’m so and forever grateful for, for Hal. In fact, there was a, a book called Giftology by, uh- Yeah … the late John Ruhlin, who rest in peace, tragically passed away in the past couple of years. But he had really tried hard to let people know about the power of gift-giving and the humanness of that, and I know that that is something that will live on beyond him.

And I appreciate you bringing that up, and trying to see that in your, in your coaches is really key, especially if they are the ones actually working with your customers and your students. Like, that’s exactly what you wanna see. Now, transitioning a little bit here, you know, SelfPublishing.com forever had been, you know, a company.

A company that helps people write books and, and come up with those ideas and publish them and get them on Amazon, become bestsellers. We’ve seen it. And not a lot of people or not everybody who goes through that system kind of really directly connected it to you. They eventually find you, and they see you there as the founder, but now you are leaning into that more.

You’re leaning into the personal brand of SelfPublishing.com a little bit more, and I’m curious why you’re doing that now. What is it that’s happening that has made you and your team go, “You know what? I need to show up more here, not just as founder, but as Chandler and who I am and bring personality into that.”

Why, why is it happening now, and how are you doing that?

Chandler Bolt: It’s so funny. I’m– I was the anti-personal brand guy, and I- Right … you know, we got to eight figures without the brand, and I’ll, I’ll never forget watching people like Ryan Deiss and Michael Hyatt kind of teach on this. Like, “Hey, huge mistake. We made this ‘The Ryan Deiss Show,’ or we made this ‘The Michael Hyatt Show,’ and so now we’re actually changing everything.”

And so I remember when Ryan Deiss was pulling his face out and putting DigitalMarketer to the forefront. Same with Michael Hyatt with Full Focus and all that. And so I, I watched that, you know, and I’m, I’m not that smart, but I’m not that dumb either. And so I just watched from, from afar, and I said, “Oh, I should do that.”

And if you wanna create a business that can scale without you, that, you know, all these things. Um, so I’m like, “Okay, cool.” So it was a lot of Chandler. I said, “All right, shoo. Let’s just pull Chandler into the background, and let’s push SelfPublishing.com to the forefront.” And so it was all the company, the company.

Now, I was a part of that, obviously. But then I think something clicked about a year or so ago, and I realized that there were all these people in the internet marketing world that statistically speaking, were significantly less… had significantly less business acumen than I did, but they were the ones that were getting all the opportunities, or they were the ones that were, you know, on these massive stages and all this stuff, and it just really pissed me off.

But then I had to look myself in the mirror and say, “This is your fault.” There’s this James Demoulin, he, he, uh, he references this quote, the School of Hard Knocks guy, “The world is overly cruel to the shy man and overly generous to the charismatic or the one who just is, is more vocal,” because the person who’s most visible gets the most opportunities.

And so I just watched that all around, and then I saw some friends of ours, Dean Martell and a few others, just go all in on that, and I saw how it popped off in their business, and I just realized that I was being really dumb, really selfish and leaving a lot of money on the table. And I looked at that and I said, “Oh, well, I’ve got all those skill sets. If I just decided to go pro in this area, it could be the best thing that I could do to grow this business.” But not only that, to– Beyond that, to any business that I do in the future, it’s a massive asset. And so I think that simultaneously with, like, AI coming in and eating our search engine results, which has just been printing millions of dollars a year for us, and that they started eroding that.

And so kind of born out of necessity as well, just seeing some of the tea leaves i-in, in how you acquire customers and just the cost of acquisition going up and saying, “All right, well, social media’s really expensive until it isn’t.” Like, it’s not a really good channel at low volume, but if you can break through that ceiling, it’s an exponential zero CAC channel.

And so we just started putting more and more chips into, into the table. And so now we’re really building a seven-figure media company inside of an eight-figure company and just investing a lot in that. And for, for the Bolt Media, which will be obviously the Chandler Bolt personal brand, but then also the SelfPublishing.com content.

Liz Wilcox: Yeah. So talk to us about what that is. So we’ve got SelfPublishing.com. You know, you have coaches to help people self-publish, right? But now we’ve got Chandler Bolt. Who is he? What is he doing online nowadays, and how is that mixing with SelfPublishing.com, if at all?

Chandler Bolt: Yeah, it’s probably a dumb strategy, I’m not gonna lie, ’cause the Chandler Bolt stuff is just-

Liz Wilcox: You’re selling it, Chandler

Chandler Bolt: scaling eight figures. You’re selling it. It’s just so compelling. I don’t know. I, I’m a big fan of just Do and then be smarter, right? Like, I’m not like this- Yeah, for sure … m- massive strategic guy.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, ready, fire, aim.

Chandler Bolt: Yeah, exactly. So it’s just like get so many shots on goal that you learn what is working versus spend five months in a cabin pontificating about this master plan that you’re not actually doing stuff about.

So I would say our, our, our current strategy is really dumb. I mean, what it is is basically building, uh, the Chandler Bolt brand all around scaling to eight figures. There’s nothing to sell over there. The best customers will come over to SelfPublishing.com naturally, but it’s just teaching around scaling a business.

I started my first Instagram like nine months ago, and we’ve got the YouTube channel and all that.

Pat Flynn: Wait, wait, wait, nine months ago you started your first Instagram?

Chandler Bolt: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that’s how- That’s crazy … non-personal brand I am. ‘

Pat Flynn: Cause you had self-publishing as, as Instagram, right? But, like, for your personal name, you just set up your Instagram for the first time?

Chandler Bolt: Yep.

Pat Flynn: That’s wild.

Chandler Bolt: And I mean, it took- That’s wild … I had to scrap and claw to even get my personal name. I mean, there were scammers on there. There were… There… I, people kept saying that th- that, “Hey, somebody’s hitting me up about this scam on Instagram,” but then we couldn’t get them removed because, you know, when you go to say, “Who are they impersonating?”

It’s like, well, his, his account doesn’t exist. It’s like they’re impersonating a guy that’s not even on Instagram. Yeah, yeah. So, so the Instagram’s like- So then you’re impersonating … yeah, okay. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So finally it was almost like just out of that necessity we said, “All right, we gotta create an Instagram ’cause we got these, these scammers trying to scam people over here.”

But I mean, that’s how anti-personal brand I was. I mean, I just had a Facebook and a LinkedIn, and that was it. And s- but now we’re investing a lot more obviously in that, and then on the SelfPublishing.com side of things as well.

Pat Flynn: You know what? You say it’s not a smart idea, but I think it’s one of the smartest ideas you could have today in the world where the content itself could be replicated and shared and found on AI or ChatGPT or wherever, but people wanna connect with other people.

They wanna h- have personalities that they can relate to. And so I feel like especially as Google is changing, as search is going more AI versus traditional, a lot of those things we can shield ourselves against those changes by being ourselves, showing up because Chandler, you are the only Chandler Bolt that exists in this world, and Liz is the only Liz, and I am the only Pat.

And if we don’t lean into that a little bit… You know, you don’t have to go all in on it. You don’t have to vlog every day. You don’t have to tell us what you had for breakfast, but who are you and what do you do and why can I trust you? And I think that trust and that relationship building and relatability is gonna go a very long way.

And what I also love about this too is it could potentially open up the avenues for you, Chandler, to, as you build new relationships, as you get more ideas, you could branch off from Chandler Bolt in any which way, right? I’ve branched off into Pokémon from who I am, right? I still have SPI right now, but I have Pokémon and I have other things that I have that are, that are me.

‘Cause I’m not just SPI. I have all these other things going on too. And Liz coming into SPI now expanding outside of the world of email and, and, you know, Liz has been probably one of my favorite examples of a personal brand because you go to her website at LizWilcox.com and it’s like she’s there. Her colors are there. You can feel her personality, and you already can start- Big time … to build trust with her before you even speak to her ’cause she’s speaking through the brand that she- that, that, Liz, that you’ve built. Um, Liz, I’m curious your thoughts ’cause you’ve always been so pro personal brand. What are your thoughts in the world today of, of, of bigger media companies coming into the world of personal brand and trying to put a personality behind their stuff?

Liz Wilcox: Yeah. So I’m reminded of an email I got a few days ago from one of my members in my membership and saying, “You know, Liz, I’m trying to create a faceless brand. You know, I, I have a blog that’s anonymous.”

Pat Flynn: Mm-hmm.

Liz Wilcox: And I said, “You know, you can do that. You know, it’s not impossible. Don’t let anyone tell you no, but dot, dot, dot, you know, in this age of AI, people are really looking to connect.

And those types of brands where you do inject the person into the personal brand are doing really well, right?” And, you know, Chandler mentioned it. Pat mentioned it. You know it listening. AI is everywhere, and it all sounds the same. It’s trained on the same systems. Even if you say, “I’m Liz Wilcox, email marketer at dot, dot, dot, dot, dot,” it’s still gonna have a certain cadence to it, right?

Where if I wrote the email or, you know, made the script for my next YouTube video, it’s going to be different because it is human, right? So I really, really believe in the power of a personal brand I believe in the power of your personality. You don’t have to be Pat Flynn or a Chandler Bolt to have a personal brand, to have a personality.

The word person is in it, right? You have a personality. And so I love that Chandler is bringing this into his, you know, into his empire. I love this. So Chandler, I’m the director of community over at SPI, and we have a lot of listeners that, you know, they aspire to scale one day, but they still might be in the trenches of the, you know, zero to five years.

And so they’re into the personal brand thing as well, and I’m sure they would love to know, what are you doing on Instagram now, now that you have it? You know, what parts of Chandler are you bringing to the surface over on Instagram? What kind of content are you bringing to share that? You know, what’s the why behind that?

Why pick those parts of your personality?

Chandler Bolt: Yeah. That’s, that’s a great question. It’s so funny you mention that, Liz, ’cause as you were saying that I was thinking, “Oh my gosh.” I wasn’t even following my own advice because p- it’s kinda like the faceless brand. People would ask us about a pen name with their book, and we would say, “Yeah, I mean, you can.

Don’t let anybody tell you you can’t do it.” That’s so funny. “But it’s not a great idea because you’re basically taking this massive asset that you have and just throwing it out the window and, you know, just using this pen name instead.” So but what are we doing on Instagram? I mean, I wouldn’t say we’re exactly a model of what’s working per se, but we’re getting a lot of reps in.

And so, I mean, our current strategy is kind of 60/30/10. So w- with 60% of our content is more viral for views, like with that intent. Then 30 is kind of that more middle funnel educational, and then 10 is conversion content. And so that’s kind of the general framework that we’re thinking through and using. I learned that from a buddy of mine.

And so that’s what we’re doing. Now we’re noticing that we do a lot of long form stuff on YouTube. The polished camera stuff and the clipping that up absolutely bombs on Instagram. The face to cam, the green screen, the, you know, it’s like all about formats, and it’s always changing, right? But face to cam, the yap videos, right?

That’s all the rage these days. The, yeah, green screen stuff. Some of the carousels are popping off. A lot of that stuff is doing pretty well, but we’re just iterating a lot. I would say an interesting thing which– that’s happened over the last few months, totally good problem to have, but a problem nonetheless, is that our revenue is growing a lot faster than our followers.

And so, you know, kind of the content creator in you is, is looking at those views and looking at those followers and just getting pissed ’cause you just look around and you’re thinking, “Everybody else is growing way faster than us, and- Mm-hmm … we’re putting all these resources into this. Why isn’t this growing faster?”

But, I mean, at the end of the day, the goal is for revenue, and so try not to lose sight of that. And so that, that’s started to go really well. And the way I looked at it, and, you know, this, this might be not relatable at all, but, I mean, I just k- finally looked up and said, “All right, w- there’s all these things that I’m spending money on.”

We’re spending fifty grand a month on sponsorships or partnerships. We’re spending fifty grand a month on ads, and those are one-time hamster wheel revenue hits for the business. Whereas a personal brand is a thing that you have and can build forever. So then I said, “Well, what’s the amount that I’d be willing to spend over the next year if it just, if it just broke even or maybe didn’t even break even?”

And I said, “Well, you know, probably about a half a million dollars.” Okay. Well then what is that backed into the monthly? And that was about 40-something grand a month And it was almost like this, this just mind-bending moment where I’m, you know, I’m kind of a frugal blue-collar guy. It physically pains me to spend that much money investing into the personal brand.

But when I looked up and said, “Oh, well, what would be a reasonable outcome over the next year?” That’s kind of what I came to. And so our goal is, hey, we’ll spend, you know, probably half a million. We’ll do a million in revenue by the end of the year. That’s, you know, basically break even when you factor in all the other costs of, of, uh, the business and all that stuff.

But, but what that won’t account for is probably the hundreds of thousands of dollars kind of dark social that will- Mm-hmm … lead into all the other channels that will perform better, but then also the stacking momentum that’ll be on the other end of that. And the best part is it’s not just hamster wheel revenue.

You’re building a real asset, so that’s kind of how I’m- Right … I’m thinking about it.

Liz Wilcox: Yeah, I love Chandler. Throughout the last thirty minutes, if you guys haven’t picked up on listening, our… Chandler’s very intentional, right? He’s making intentional decisions, right? I’m gonna do this on purpose. I, I can see a long-term vision, and that’s the second thing I want to point out.

Chandler’s always had that long-term vision, right? Why am I going to college if these guys haven’t even had businesses? You know, I want a real business. I better go out and just do that, right? That’s a long-term vision for his life. You know, saying, and you might be listening to this, half a million dollars, and start sweating, right?

But of course, we already talked about Chandler scaling to eight figures over at SelfPublishing.com, right? So, you know, again, it’s having that long-term vision that I think is important for every entrepreneur, no matter what stage you’re at, no matter how much you’re making, and then being incredibly intentional.

I wrote that down within seconds of him talking, you know, half an hour ago. He begins with the end in mind. He’s intentional. So around here, we’re Team Win, what’s important now, and I think when you know the end, you can decide what’s important now very, very easily. And, you know, Chandler, he’s, he’s a little dismissive of himself like, “Oh, that’s kind of silly.

Oh, it’s not really strategic.” It’s very strategic, you guys. Don’t let him fool you. That’s just that Tex- That’s that Texas humility, okay, coming out. That’s that Texas humility coming out. It’s very, very strategic because he knows where he’s going, he has that vision, and he’s, he’s taking those intentional steps.

So I just wanna give you your roses there, Mr. Bolt.

Chandler Bolt: Thank you. Thank you.

Pat Flynn: I would agree with that. Chandler, before we move into a quick discussion about authorship today, speaking of personal brand stuff, where, where is that at for you? Where should people go to check you out and, and see how and where this goes?

Chandler Bolt: Yeah, I mean, if you wanna be there, one of the earlier followers on the Instagram, you can check out @ChandlerBolt Instagram or SelfPublishing.com Instagram, and then the long form stuff, I mean, that’s really the main focus, so that’s on SelfPublishing.com’s YouTube and Chandler Bolt. We drop videos every week on both those platforms.

Chandler Bolt’s all about scaling a business. SelfPublishing.com stuff is all about publishing books that grow your business.

Pat Flynn: Nice. And, and that’s a great segue into publishing books today in 2026 leading into 2027. The landscape of publishing books has changed. I’m personally one year since my New York Times bestselling traditional published book that I look back and I go, “Why did I care about that so much?”

‘Cause nothing really changed other than my byline for intros is one line bigger, and that’s it. Uh, you know, the- Uh, so I’m, I’m definitely in favor of self-publishing over traditional at this moment in time after that. And I finally was able to kind of go through that process for real for the first time and, and really understand that ’cause I– that’s how you learn.

I, I learned. But today, books are being read less it seems. I’m in conversations with a number of authors who have seen their numbers go down. Even Tim Ferriss came out with an article about books. Now, he’s di- he didn’t say we should stop writing books, but he did say the reason to write books is different now.

I’m curious your thoughts in the world today, high level. Obviously, books are still working for many people, especially niche audiences, but how do you wrap your head around today’s authorship space and, and why might a person still consider writing a book? And we can go from there.

Chandler Bolt: Books have been dead for so long.

It’s so funny. I mean, when the Kindle came out, books were dead. Physical books are dead. You know, I mean, there’s so many times where people have said, “Hey, books are dead,” and I, I think it’s, as you mentioned, it’s still one of, if not the most powerful ways to grow authority and to grow a business. I mean, shoot, the root word of authority is author.

You can’t spell the word authority without it. And if you’ve got a business and you’re willing to write a niche book, which I, I love that. I love that piece of what you said, the riches are in the niches, right? We all know that, but somehow it feels weird, especially when you’re writing a book. It’s like, “Well, hold up though.

I wanna make sure I’m, y- you know, appe- appealing to everyone,” and you end up appealing to no one. And even if your book doesn’t get read- By the in-person, it’s one of the biggest ways that you can grow your authority in the space that you’re in. I mean, so that’s what we’re seeing is that it is what’s old becomes new again.

I mean, if you look at the biggest media personalities in the space. It’s funny, I was speaking at an event the other day called New Media Summit, and I just made the joke when I come on stage, I’m like, “Hey, I’m talking about books.” It’s the oldest media or medium that really that exists, but it’s, it’s become new again.

And if you see the Cody Sanchezes of the world, the Alex Hormozis of the world, the Dan Martells, the… All of them, they, they realize, “Oh, I’ve got a surface level audience here on social. Now I wanna get them to take a small step forward in the direction of working further with me.” Well, that’s a book. We know people who pay, pay attention, so when they buy the book, now they’re paying attention, and now they’re in my ecosystem, and that’s where it’s…

I mean, it’s growing businesses like crazy, including ours.

Liz Wilcox: Yeah. I wanna s- share. So Chandler just said, like, even if people don’t read the book, y’all, I mentioned I met Chandler back in like 2018 or something. I still have a book that he personally handed me that I have never read. But I was talking with some team members at SPI, and I said, “Oh, do you guys know Chandler Bolt, SelfPublishing.com?”

And they said, “Who?” I said, “Chandler Bolt, just look him up. He’s super famous.” And they said, “He doesn’t even have an Instagram.” This was a while back. And I was like, “What? There’s no way. This guy is huge.” And it’s because I’ve been staring at this man’s book for nearly a decade now, y’all. So what he is saying is true. Write the book.

Chandler Bolt: That’s great. Th- that’s proof, right? I… That’s the funny thing is I stopped– I’ve pretty much never had a business card. But we as a company stopped handing them out so long ago, and we just hand out books.

If you think about it, business cards may be 50 cents, a book’s five bucks. Sure, it’s more expensive, but you give that book to someone, they keep it, as you did, Liz, for years, a decade, right? You give them a business card, they throw that sucker away within 24 hours. And so if you wanna be in the hearts, minds, living room, office, whatever, of your, the people that you meet, I mean, a book is the best business card that exists in my opinion.

Pat Flynn: Yeah. I think you wrote a quick note in the one that you gave me, and it’s like, I’m never gonna throw that away, right? ‘Cause it’s personalized, and it just takes a second to do. So I, I, I really love that as, as a tool. And I think that the, the why behind writing a book is no longer the, well, I wanna be a bestseller or, you know, any of that kind of stuff.

It’s a tool, a utility for, A, getting on stages and building authority really fast, but also, B, like you said, bringing people that matter, your ideal customer, into your ecosystem, and it’s an amazing lead magnet. It’s … There’s so many ways to use and utilize a book. We just have to approach it differently ’cause I think the, the, the landscape has changed, but the books have not gone away.

They’re just being used smartly by some smart people. And, and so if a person wants to get started, you know, it’s not, “Let me write the next, you know, bestseller book that’s gonna be at Barnes & Noble.” It’s, “What does my customer need to hear from me, and how do we get them in the door?” And that’s where Will It Fly came from, and Superfans went a little bit wider, and then Lean Learning went even wider, and honestly, my still most useful book that we’ve had in the business that has helped the most people is Will It Fly.

Because it was really tailored. It was niched down to, how do you find your business idea? Like, that’s all it answers, and that has done its job, and it’s done its job for 11 years now. So, um- That’s crazy … the books are still, they still matter. And, and so I’m glad that there’s companies like yours helping people get that out there.

And if, Chandler, people wanted to get started in that process, and they love what they’ve heard from you today, and they wanna go deeper into your ecosystem, where would you recommend they go?

Chandler Bolt: Yeah. We’ll make a link for you guys, so SelfPublishing.com/spi. Um, you can go there, and you can book a call with my team.

We’d be happy to chat with you about your goals with your book, your challenges with your book, kinda customize a plan. And whether w- you work with us or not, we’ll kinda map out what that plan looks like. We’ll see how we can help. We’ve got this thing called the One-Page Book Launch Plan that we walk people through.

It’s kinda fun. It’s exactly what you were just talking about, Pat, which is beginning with the end in mind and kinda putting the plan in a page, and so people can go there, book a call with the team, and, uh, we’ll see if we can help them.

Pat Flynn: Nice. H- how long ago did you get the domain SelfPublishing.com? ‘Cause, uh, forever I always knew it as selfpublishingschool.com.

When was that?

Chandler Bolt: Yeah. It’s so funny. That’s, that’s almost a funny story in itself. I bought the domain, I wanna say in 2021, and we did this massive rebrand, and everyone still calls it Self-Publishing School. And it’s so funny ’cause we’re thinking, “Yeah, we wanna own the self-publishing space. We got the domain. Boom. Now we’re SelfPublishing.com” and literally years later, people still call it Self-Publishing School.

Pat Flynn: I mean, that’s how I introduced you today, wasn’t it? Like, literally. That is so funny,

Chandler Bolt: but- I don’t know, maybe the brand is just worse

Liz Wilcox: That’s the power of branding. Yeah, honestly. That’s the power of branding, guys.

You know, it takes a while.

Chandler Bolt: Apparently we gotta do a better job of branding SelfPublishing.com.

Liz Wilcox: It’s, it takes a while. It takes a while, and I love that, you know, Pat mentioned his Will It Fly, and this is just such a testament to, yes, you know, write the book, what do your customers need? Because I was just talking to a friend and they said, “Oh, you know, I heard that you were, you know, working over at SPI now.”

And I said, “Yeah, it’s been great. You know, I met Pat a couple years ago,” blah, blah, blah. And they turned around and they picked up Will It Fly, and they said, “My… I never heard of Pat Flynn until a couple weeks ago. Somebody recommended this book,” right? Mm. And so it all starts with what Chandler is saying, that one-page plan, and you never know where it’s gonna take you.

Ooh, I’m starting to get excited for folks because a book really is where it’s at, so that’s so cool.

Pat Flynn: SelfPublishing.com/spi. Go there now. Yes, sir. And Chandler, thank you so much for your time today. Appreciate you so, so much, and, uh, on behalf of everybody here, just thank you.

Amazing. I hope you enjoyed that interview with Liz and I both interviewing Chandler Bolt, and you can find him and his resources over at SelfPublishing.com/spi.

Again, SelfPublishing.com/spi. You heard it here, why books still matter and how you can write one for yourself too. So go ahead and check it out. SmartPassiveIncome.com/session937 for the show notes, but SelfPublishing.com/spi for Chandler’s stuff. Thanks, Chandler, appreciate you, and thank you all for listening.

Liz and I will be back next week for another episode where we’re gonna tackle some big topics and help you out in your journey. No matter where you’re at, even if you’ve been starting this business just recently or you’ve been doing this for a while, we got stuff that’s gonna be helpful coming your way. We got you.