#317: Selling Smart Passive Income (And What We Can Learn From It) — Pt. 1 featuring Pat Flynn and Matt Gartland

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