#324: My Honest October Retro: What’s Working and What Isn’t

This is my October retro, recorded from paternity leave a week after our son Louie was born. Every month I share a retro with members of The Lab, and a few times a year I share one here on the podcast feed. October was a month of good signals at the top of the funnel. We had our second-best month of follower growth, our biggest month of podcast listening all year, and a new YouTube-to-email process that brought in 96 new subscribers from a single video. But I'm also questioning one of our bigger decisions this year. Moving The Lab to a monthly open-and-close model took our join rate from 1 in 4 applicants to 1 in 10. In this episode, I talk about: The numbers: $51,000 in revenue, nearly $20,000 in sponsorships booked, and digital products still under $1,000 Why I'm probably going back to rolling invites for The Lab The trap I see creators fall into when their content becomes about "you're awesome" instead of "you're helping me" Why 2027 will be my year of video, and why I'm leaning harder into interviews By the end of this episode, you will have a model for running your own monthly retro, and an honest look at what's working and what isn't inside a creator business. Explore The Lab Traction Plan How Dorie Clark gained 500K+ Instagram followers in 5 months George Blackman's system for writing scripts with AI jay.blog Full transcript and show notes *** TIMESTAMPS (00:00) Baby boy Clouse and the closet project (02:30) October's numbers (07:08) Introducing the Team tier (11:26) Rebuilding our website (14:07) Inside the Lab Concierge (17:23) The Dorie Clark effect (19:41) A repeatable YouTube-to-email process (23:06) Is monthly enrollment working? (26:00) Building Traction Plan (29:22) Building as a distraction (32:24) 2027, the year of video (33:56) Back to my roots (36:04) Why I'm leaning into interviews *** RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODE #322: How Dorie Clark gained 500K+ Instagram followers in 5 months *** ASK CREATOR SCIENCE Submit your question here *** WHEN YOU'RE READY 📬 Creator Science Newsletter 🚀 Get CreatorHQ (creator operating system) 🧪 Join The Lab (private membership community) 🧞‍♂️ Get a Personalized Offer *** CONNECT 🐦 Connect on Twitter 📸 Connect on Instagram 💼 Connect on LinkedIn 📹 Subscribe on YouTube *** SPONSORS 💼 View all sponsors Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My guest is Milly Tamati, the founder of Generalist World, a newsletter, job board, and community for people whose careers don't fit in a box. Milly started Generalist World in 2022 from a Scottish island with a population of about 191 people. Today the newsletter has more than 55,000 subscribers, she's posted on LinkedIn just about every weekday for roughly 1,400 days, and this September, International Generalist Day had more than 100 volunteer-led meetups in 40 countries. She runs it all with one full-timer and a couple of contractors, hired straight out of her own community. The business makes about $400,000 a year, and Milly finishes work most days around 2:30. Her number one KPI is a regulated nervous system. When another podcaster asked about her dream for Generalist World, she told them she's already living it. In this episode, we talk about: Why she will never schedule a LinkedIn post, and the cringe but undeniable power of the selfie The two fill-in-the-blank formats that took the stress out of a twice-weekly newsletter Why X, not LinkedIn, is where she closes sponsorship deals, sometimes within half an hour Why she deleted all of her recurring revenue to make every member a lifetime member, and the year-long beehiiv partnership that brings in recurring revenue instead By the end of this episode, you will have a new way to think about what the right size for your business actually is. Generalist World The Generalist Archetype Quiz Generalist World newsletter Generalist World community Milly on LinkedIn Milly on X beehiiv Milly on Growth In Reverse Full transcript and show notes *** TIMESTAMPS (00:00) Cold open (00:39) Introducing Milly Tamati (09:07) A regulated nervous system as a KPI (13:51) Two fill-in-the-blank newsletter formats (18:12) Milly's immutable laws of LinkedIn (22:38) Why she still bothers with X (24:03) Why she'll never schedule a post (27:15) The undeniable power of the selfie (30:58) Which LinkedIn link gets the clicks? (37:12) The right size of business (40:05) Deleting all recurring revenue (44:46) The beehiiv partnership (50:12) Be more weird *** RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODE #320: Earning $300K+ Per Year Without Social Media | Jessica Lackey's Relationship-First Approach *** ASK CREATOR SCIENCE Submit your question here *** WHEN YOU'RE READY 📬 Creator Science Newsletter 🚀 Get CreatorHQ (creator operating system) 🧪 Join The Lab (private membership community) 🧞 Get a Personalized Offer *** CONNECT 🐦 Connect on Twitter 📸 Connect on Instagram 💼 Connect on LinkedIn 📹 Subscribe on YouTube *** SPONSORS 💼 View all sponsors Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jonny Miller is the creator of Nervous System Mastery. It teaches evidence-backed protocols to cultivate calm, build resilience, and increase aliveness in 45 days. It’s a five-week, cohort-based course that is just wrapping up its sixth cohort in the last three years. In those six cohorts, Jonny has served nearly 1,000 students and earned more than $800,000. Here’s the best part – Jonny doesn’t have a massive audience. When he launched Nervous System Mastery, he had a couple thousand followers on Twitter and a small email list. This is the magic of a well-designed Signature Product – and Jonny is the perfect example. In this episode, we get into the weeds about how he’s grown NSM – what’s worked well, what hasn’t, and how he’s found himself on large podcasts with people like Lenny Rachitsky, Ali Abdaal, Chris Williamson, and more. → ⁠Join Nervous System Mastery⁠ ⁠Full transcript and show notes⁠ Jonny's ⁠Website⁠ / ⁠Twitter⁠ / ⁠Instagram⁠ / ⁠LinkedIn⁠ *** RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODE → ⁠#221: Ryan Hawk – Anatomy of a $12,500 membership earning $400,000+ per year⁠ *** ASK CREATOR SCIENCE → ⁠Submit your question here⁠ *** WHEN YOU'RE READY 📬 ⁠Creator Science Newsletter⁠ 🚀 ⁠Get CreatorHQ⁠ (creator operating system) 🧪 ⁠Join The Lab⁠ (private membership community) 🧞‍♂️ ⁠Get a Personalized Offer⁠ *** CONNECT 🐦 ⁠Connect on Twitter⁠ 📸 ⁠Connect on Instagram⁠ 💼 ⁠Connect on LinkedIn⁠ 📹 ⁠Subscribe on YouTube⁠ *** SPONSORS 💼 ⁠View all sponsors and offers⁠ *** SAY THANKS 💜 ⁠Leave a review on Apple Podcasts⁠ 🟢 ⁠Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My guest is Dorie Clark, a Wall Street Journal bestselling author, 4-time Thinkers50 honoree as one of the world's top business thinkers, and longtime faculty member at Duke and Columbia Business Schools. Dorie is, by her own description, a LinkedIn person. She has close to 500,000 followers there, which puts her in the top half a percent of accounts on the platform. But in January 2026, she decided to learn Instagram. She started with 22,000 followers on an account she'd had since 2015 that was mostly personal photos. For the next 4.5 months, she treated it like a part-time job: 10 to 20 hours a week, 99 Reels. Her net gain was about 350 followers. Thirty-five percent of those videos earned her exactly zero new followers. Then in June, it turned around. She gained more than 146,000 new followers across June and July. By September, she was past 400,000. The reason I was excited to talk to Dorie specifically: she didn't win by buying production value. She films and edits all of her videos herself, all of it self-taught over the past few months. Her approach feels like one we can all actually learn from. In this episode, we talk about: The 4.5-month slog where nothing worked and the single data point that gave her permission to keep going Why celebrity reactions are a growth hack for strangers, and the Dolly Parton video that got her on TV in Chicago Her complete workflow: from raw idea capture to batching, scripting, filming, editing, and posting The 30-page AI context document she built to keep her voice consistent and her hooks sharp Why she outgrew her team's video editing and what taking it back herself unlocked By the end of this episode, you will have a practical, doable framework for building a high-growth Instagram presence without a production team, a big budget, or a hot take machine. Dorie Clark — dorieclark.com @dorieclark on Instagram The Long Game (Dorie's book) Nausheen Chen — Instagram growth story referenced Sandcastles by Kallaway — research tool Dorie uses Recognized Expert — her flagship course and community Full transcript and show notes *** TIMESTAMPS (00:00) Cold open: money is not the variable buying you success (00:27) Introducing Dorie Clark (03:29) Why Instagram after a decade of LinkedIn dominance (05:37) The 4.5-month slog: 99 Reels, 350 followers (07:21) Eating her own dog food: The Long Game in real life (12:30) Cross-posting Reels to LinkedIn and what transfers (21:53) When things turned around — and why (23:24) Celebrity reactions as an entry point for strangers (27:36) Early business results: CNBC, Chicago TV, sponsorships (32:11) The full workflow: idea capture to posting (35:10) The 30-page AI context document and how she built it (39:48) Filming in batches with wardrobe changes in New York (50:59) Dorie's immutable laws of Instagram growth *** RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODE #316: Kallaway’s EXACT System For Going Viral (Almost Every Time) *** ASK CREATOR SCIENCE Submit your question here *** WHEN YOU'RE READY 📬 Creator Science Newsletter 🚀 Get CreatorHQ (creator operating system) 🧪 Join The Lab (private membership community) 🧞 Get a Personalized Offer *** CONNECT 🐦 Connect on Twitter 📸 Connect on Instagram 💼 Connect on LinkedIn 📹 Subscribe on YouTube *** SPONSORS 💼 View all sponsors Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My guest is George Blackman, a YouTube scriptwriter who got his start writing full-time for Ali Abdaal and has since written scripts for creators from 30,000 to over 10 million subscribers. This is George's second time on the show. Three years ago, we talked about scriptwriting fundamentals. Since then, George has started writing his own videos with AI, and he's spent most of this year building PlayWriteAI, an AI scriptwriting app with more than 700 people on the waitlist. Building it taught him something most creators haven't noticed yet: AI will tell you, very confidently, that it did ten things it never actually did. This episode is his full process, from voice memo to a script that's ready to record. In this episode, we talk about: The framework behind every educational hook George writes Why the setups and payoffs inside each segment matter more than the hook The ending George puts on every single video, and a twist I want to try on mine Where a human still has to make the call, and why AI will keep "improving" your script forever if you let it By the end of this episode, you will have a repeatable system for writing scripts with AI, and a clearer sense of which parts of the work you should keep for yourself. Free download: YouTube Script Partner skill + George’s Claude project files PlayWriteAI Claude Scriptwriting Project Setup The Exact Claude Project Setup for YouTube Script Writing Free YouTube Script Template Free Audience Avatar Template The YouTube Scriptwriting Playbook AutoCut by 1of10 George's Website / YouTube / X⁠ / ⁠LinkedIn⁠ / Newsletter / Community Full transcript and show notes *** TIMESTAMPS (00:00) Introduction (02:32) George's process today (05:10) Easy mode vs. advanced mode (09:53) The 3 blocks of a YouTube script (11:04) Target, transformation, stakes (18:06) Why setups matter most (19:52) Inside George's scriptwriting app (22:34) Rethinking the payoff (28:16) How many segments a video needs (33:00) How George ends every video (35:14) Ending on a sales video (38:34) Where humans still matter (43:50) How George really feels about AI *** RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODE 162. George Blackman: How to script your videos like Ali Abdaal and Ed from Film Booth *** ASK CREATOR SCIENCE Submit your question here *** WHEN YOU'RE READY 📬 Creator Science Newsletter 🚀 Get CreatorHQ (creator operating system) 🧪 Join The Lab (private membership community) 🧞‍♂️ Get a Personalized Offer *** CONNECT 🐦 Connect on Twitter 📸 Connect on Instagram 💼 Connect on LinkedIn 📹 Subscribe on YouTube *** SPONSORS 💼 View all sponsors Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My guest is Jessica Lackey, founder of Deeper Foundations and author of Leaving the Casino: Stop Betting on Tactics and Start Building a Business That Works. She helps coaches, consultants, and service providers build expert-led businesses on strong foundations. Jessica tried the social media game. She hired a social media team for two years, ran Ship 30 for 30 on Twitter, tested Instagram. She never cracked 1,700 followers. So she built her business a different way: 50 guest podcast appearances, 50 guest teaching spots in other communities, 20 to 30 programs joined and participated in over four years. Every visibility opportunity landed 10 to 20 new people on her email list. It was slow, linear, and intentional. Today she has 2,000 people on her email list and 200 paying members in her membership. That's a 10% conversion rate on her list, against the creator industry standard of 1 to 3%. Her business has earned over $300,000 for three consecutive years. Almost nothing she sells is one and done. The whole thing is built on renewals and retention, not growth and virality. In this episode, we talk about: How she built from 200 to 2,000 email subscribers through relationships and guest appearances, not social media Her 3-offer stack (1:1 consulting, 6-month cohort, and membership) and how each piece supports the others Why she does a 30-minute welcome call with every new member at $50 per month — and how she thinks about the economics The KPIs she tracks with clients instead of followers and views: outreach count, visibility opportunities, and what she calls seeds, sprouts, and fruits The trade-offs she's made by choosing this model and why she's made peace with them By the end of this episode, you will have a clear picture of how a small, deliberate audience can support a thriving six-figure business — and what it actually costs to build one that way. Deeper Foundations Leaving the Casino Deeper Foundations Membership Aggressively Human Community as a deliberate Business Model “For You” or “By You”: The K-Shaped Content Era The Zone of Enoughness Sacred Sales Hour LinkedIn Full transcript and show notes *** TIMESTAMPS (00:00) Cold open: the trade-off Jessica has chosen (00:19) Introducing Jessica Lackey (02:34) Why the social media game didn't work for her (04:05) The relationship-first growth strategy (06:53) Her offer stack: 1:1, cohort, and membership (09:39) Revenue breakdown and pricing (10:52) How the membership grew from 30 members to 200 (12:52) The 30-minute welcome call that doesn't make economic sense (18:29) Free monthly workshops for 4 years: the Deeper Business Dialogues (20:21) The KPIs that actually matter for an expertise business (22:26) Is there a ceiling on this approach? (26:45) Why Jessica has chosen her ceiling on purpose (43:53) How to follow people around the internet like a puppy, not a stalker *** RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODE #319: How Tamara Grominsky Predictably Grows Her Membership Each Month *** ASK CREATOR SCIENCE Submit your question here *** WHEN YOU'RE READY 📬 Creator Science Newsletter 🚀 Get CreatorHQ (creator operating system) 🧪 Join The Lab (private membership community) 🧞 Get a Personalized Offer *** CONNECT 🐦 Connect on Twitter 📸 Connect on Instagram 💼 Connect on LinkedIn 📹 Subscribe on YouTube *** SPONSORS 💼 View all sponsors Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

David Altizer is the co-creator of Thumbnail Academy and has quickly become one of the most sought-after thumbnail designers around. David’s clients include Kurtis Connor, Jolly, Max Fosh, Hayden Hillier Smith, and now me. David’s thumbnails have earned nearly 350 million views—and in this video, he’ll show you why creating thumbnails is actually easier than you think. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Full transcript and show notes⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠Hire David⁠ ⁠Join Thumbnail Academy⁠ David's ⁠⁠Website⁠⁠ / ⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠ / ⁠Twitter⁠ / ⁠YouTube⁠ *** TIMESTAMPS (00:00) Intro to David Altizer (05:20) Rule of Thirds Explained (06:26) The Key to Composition (11:07) Special Offer on 1of10 (15:02) Different Styles of Thumbnails (19:39) Clickbait is Good, Actually (22:05) The Key to More Clicks (24:27) Thumbnail Text Strategy (29:44) Learning from Far Side Comics (32:57) Mastering Thumbnails and Outliers (35:41) Working With Thumbnail Designers (45:46) AI's Role in Thumbnail *** RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODE → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠#280: How to LEGALLY Protect Your Channel (YouTube Lawyer Tyler Chou Explains)⁠ *** ASK CREATOR SCIENCE → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Submit your question here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ *** WHEN YOU'RE READY 📬 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Creator Science Newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 🚀 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Get CreatorHQ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (creator operating system) 🧪 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Join The Lab⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (private membership community) 🧞‍♂️ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Get a Personalized Offer⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ *** CONNECT 🐦 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Connect on Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 📸 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Connect on Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 💼 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Connect on LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 📹 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Subscribe on YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ *** SPONSORS 💼 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠View all sponsors Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My guest is Tamara Grominsky, founder of PMM Camp — a private, application-only membership for senior product marketing leaders with 280+ members. Tamara spent 15 years in product marketing, eventually landing at Kajabi as VP of Product Marketing. She went there with a specific agenda: study how the best creators build their businesses, then reverse engineer it for herself. She started a newsletter, surveyed her audience, learned the thing they needed most was connection, and launched a membership in March 2023. Six months later, she left Kajabi. Her model isn't always-open or quarterly-launch. It's application-gated, opens for exactly five days on the first of every month, and runs on Kit workflows and Circle. She's been on this monthly cadence for nine months and now forecasts her revenue 12 months in advance. She's hit every number this year. Tamara is also in our Lab mastermind, which means I've watched this system get built in real time. This conversation is nine months of mastermind updates compressed into a podcast episode. In this episode, we talk about: How she went from VP of Product Marketing at Kajabi to building her own membership — and why leaving a job she loved was still the right call The monthly open cart model: application-gated, waitlist-driven, four emails, five days, and why it turned a chaotic launch calendar into a predictable business What a personalized onboarding document looks like, and how she gets 90%+ of new members onto a welcome call Her hypothesis about why her conversion rate is stuck at 30% — and what she's testing next By the end of this episode, you will have a complete model for running a membership like a product — with systems, baselines, and experiments that make revenue forecastable. PMM Camp (Home) PMM Camp Community (Membership + Pricing) PMM Leadership Bootcamp (6-Week Cohort) Newsletter Archive (188 editions, every Sunday) Tamara's LinkedIn Tamara's X Full transcript and show notes *** TIMESTAMPS (00:00) Introduction (01:26) What product marketing actually is (04:43) From Kajabi to PMM Camp (06:49) What she learned studying creators (11:28) The decision to leave (13:23) Finding the founding 25 (16:47) Inside PMM Camp today (18:29) The welcome call and onboarding doc (25:25) Why evergreen broke her business (27:52) The monthly open cart model (33:17) The Kit workflow behind the cart (36:09) The conversion rate problem (44:54) The visibility hypothesis *** RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODE #313: How Tom Ross Doubled His Community Engagement and Retention With Training Pathways #318: The $9/month membership earning more than $500k/year AND buying Smart Passive Income — Pt. 2 featuring Liz Wilcox *** ASK CREATOR SCIENCE Submit your question here *** WHEN YOU'RE READY 📬 Creator Science Newsletter 🚀 Get CreatorHQ (creator operating system) 🧪 Join The Lab (private membership community) 🧞‍♂️ Get a Personalized Offer *** CONNECT 🐦 Connect on Twitter 📸 Connect on Instagram 💼 Connect on LinkedIn 📹 Subscribe on YouTube *** SPONSORS 💼 View all sponsors Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My guest is Liz Wilcox, the creator behind Email Marketing Membership — a $9/month newsletter template subscription she’s kept at the same price for six years, that now generates close to half a million dollars a year. Liz built the whole thing as a single parent with no support system and no reliable internet, working from library parking lots and Lowe’s lots during nap times. She launched in February 2021, kept the price at $9, maintained a 5% churn rate, and grew to over 4,400 paying members. She and her sister run the operation — no upsells, no masterminds, no group coaching. Just the membership. Then in April 2026, she quietly closed a deal to buy Smart Passive Income — the 18-year-old creator education brand Pat Flynn built from scratch. She spent five months operating as SPI’s director of community before anyone outside the deal knew it had happened. This is Part 2 of a two-part conversation. Last week, Pat and Matt told the seller’s story. This week, Liz tells the buyer’s. In this episode, we talk about: Why the $9 price point has worked for six years — and why she’ll never raise it How she grew a half-million-dollar membership without social media, using podcasts and a 50% affiliate program What had to be true before she’d pull the trigger on buying SPI How she’s thinking about merging EMM with the SPI community — and why she doesn’t have the answer yet By the end of this episode, you will understand how a $9 offer can compound into a half-million-dollar business — and what it actually looks like when someone buys a legacy brand and tries to honor it. Liz Wilcox Email Marketing Membership Smart Passive Income Episode 317: Pat Flynn & Matt Gartland — Part 1 Superfans by Pat Flynn Full transcript and show notes *** TIMESTAMPS (00:00) Introduction (01:14) The $9 membership (03:48) The retention rate (07:54) Low stakes for both sides (11:06) The four thousand member math (12:39) AI and the membership (14:55) Who this model isn’t for (16:38) Growing without social media (20:23) Single parent, no backup plan (31:41) Buying Smart Passive Income (34:51) What made the deal happen (43:49) Why she hasn’t cross-promoted yet (48:34) Merging the two memberships *** RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODE #317: Selling Smart Passive Income (And What We Can Learn From It) — Pt. 1 featuring Pat Flynn and Matt Gartland *** ASK CREATOR SCIENCE Submit your question here *** WHEN YOU’RE READY 📬 Creator Science Newsletter 🚀 Get CreatorHQ (creator operating system) 🧪 Join The Lab (private membership community) 🧞‍♂️ Get a Personalized Offer *** CONNECT 🐦 Connect on Twitter 📸 Connect on Instagram 💼 Connect on LinkedIn 📹 Subscribe on YouTube *** SPONSORS 💼 View all sponsors Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week I’m joined by two longtime friends — Pat Flynn and Matt Gartland. Pat is the founder of Smart Passive Income, the creator education brand he started in 2008 and ran for 18 years. Matt came on around 2018 — first as an advisor, then as CEO — and spent years making SPI operationally strong enough to stand without Pat at the center. They spun SPI out into a separate entity called SPI Media, pivoted from courses to community with recurring revenue, and quietly prepared the business for a sale they weren’t sure would ever happen. In September 2026, they announced that SPI had sold. The deal had closed five months earlier. The buyer is Liz Wilcox, an email marketing expert who spent those five months operating publicly as SPI’s “director of community” before anyone knew the deal had closed. The community doubled in size during that window. Part 2 is next week, with Liz. In this episode, we talk about: How Pat and Matt deliberately structured SPI over 8 years so it could be sold — including spinning out a new company, removing Pat’s face from the website, and making the community the hero Why Pat turned down multiple VC and PE offers worth more than the final sale price The deal mechanics: seller financing, no broker, 160 documents of due diligence, and how it closed in 6 months when deals like this typically fall apart What creators who operate entirely under their own name are missing when they eventually want to exit By the end of this episode, you will understand what it actually takes to build a creator business that could outlive you — and what the groundwork for an exit looks like years before anyone is thinking about it. Smart Passive Income Liz Wilcox — the buyer (she’s on next week’s episode) Deep Pocket Monster — Pat’s Pokémon YouTube channel (2.4M subscribers) Built to Sell by John Warrillow — the book that shaped their thinking on making a business sellable Superfans by Pat Flynn — his self-published book, part of the deal’s licensing terms Full transcript and show notes *** TIMESTAMPS (00:00) The news (01:44) The first seeds of the idea (03:10) The VC and PE offers (05:52) Building for optionality (13:20) Running two companies at once (18:11) Why real partnership is the unlock (21:17) Who to hire first (38:16) Why the negotiation wasn’t about money (40:38) What seller financing actually means (41:24) The due diligence process (45:26) The transition strategy (47:37) Part 2 preview: Liz Wilcox next week *** RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODE #122: Pat Flynn and Matt Gartland – Courses, community, and the future of education *** ASK CREATOR SCIENCE Submit your question here *** WHEN YOU’RE READY 📬 Creator Science Newsletter 🚀 Get CreatorHQ (creator operating system) 🧪 Join The Lab (private membership community) 🧞‍♂️ Get a Personalized Offer *** CONNECT 🐦 Connect on Twitter 📸 Connect on Instagram 💼 Connect on LinkedIn 📹 Subscribe on YouTube *** SPONSORS 💼 View all sponsors Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices