[BONUS] The Updated SPI Community Is Here—Behind the Scenes of What’s New with Caleb Wojcik

[BONUS] The Updated SPI Community Is Here—Behind the Scenes of What’s New with Caleb Wojcik

Announcer: You’re listening to the Smart Passive Income Podcast, a proud member of the Entrepreneur Podcast Network, a show that’s all about working hard now, so you can sit back and reap the benefits later. And now your host, he believes everyone in the future will have at least one side hustle. Pat Flynn.

Pat Flynn: Hey, welcome to a bonus episode of SPI. I’m here with a special guest, Caleb, our new CEO. What’s up, Caleb? How are you, man?

Caleb Wojcik: Hey, Pat. Thanks for having me.

Pat Flynn: Tell us why we are recording this episode today on a non normal published day and right in the middle of, you know, our normal schedule. Why is this important?

Caleb Wojcik: Well, we are relaunching the community, the SPI community.

We have two different communities that we have in Circle and we’re merging them into one today and relaunching them with some new tiers and have some new things we’re changing. So I wanted to do a special episode just to talk about that.

Pat Flynn: Yes, and a lot of you who are listening are members of one or the other who are now in the one community that we have, and we’ve spoken to you about what this means, but we thought it would be nice for us to talk about this in a couple ways.

Number one, also just sharing behind the scenes what it’s taken to do this, because, you know, what got you here won’t get you there. And we’ve built this thing over a number of years and it’s become sort of compartmentalized. And eventually you have to make these decisions that are hard, that are technical every once in a while in your business.

And we’ll talk about the sort of what’s going through our heads and how we manage that. But then also just to share, because a lot of you have been curious about the community and communities. And we, as a part of, the reason why we’re doing this, we just wanted to make things clear, so we’re going to use this opportunity to make those things clear.

In case in your upcoming future plans, you want to join the community in one way, shape or form, you’ll understand exactly what it is and reduce any confusion that you might have had from before. So yeah, it’s taken a lot to get here. Caleb, how long have we been kind of working?

Caleb Wojcik: A few months, a few months, you know, I joined the team this summer and one of the main things I saw when I was coming in was the lack of clarity on the two communities and who they’re for and the names of them.

And you don’t get everything as a part of the All Access Pass. And then there’s pro and then there’s two Circle communities. So some of the like you were talking about the pain points internally with the team of having to manage multiple Circle communities and try to keep them both active and keep people happy in both of them.

Yeah. But also from the community perspective of it feeling disjointed where people in Pro also had access to the other community and where I post things and where I find that and just kind of simplifying things. So I’m kind of viewing this as like, you know, usually it’s not fun to have to move like you have to pack up everything you have to, like, decide what you’re going to keep and you have to transport all and unpack it all and reset.

But usually after you’re like, Oh, that was a good idea. I got rid of a bunch of stuff I didn’t need anyways. It’s much better here. And that’s kind of how I’m viewing this transition.

Pat Flynn: Two big lessons coming from even just this thought and idea. Number one, getting a set of fresh eyes on things was really helpful.

So Caleb coming in, seeing things from the outside, as I always say, you can’t read the label when you’re inside the bottle. And we’ve been inside our bottle as we’ve been building the bottle from the inside, essentially. We kind of knew things were disjointed, but we were like, okay, things are okay. And then you came in and you were like, this isn’t really that clear.

And if that’s the case, then. It’s probably not clear to many other people too.

Caleb Wojcik: If it’s not clear internally to the team, it’s probably not clear to a customer potentially that wants to join or someone that wants to be in the community. And part of it too, was just how things came about. So I was going to have you talk a little bit about like the history and the journey of how we got to this point of even having now one community.

But I think that is part of the story too, of like you move fast and break things and you get to a certain point and then you’re like, okay, now we need to consolidate.

Pat Flynn: Right. I mean, Over the past week, I’ve been sharing a lot of the history of SPI on social and I can just recap really quick, you know, I started out as just me on the blog and fast forward to 2017.

I finally start creating my own products. It was all affiliate marketing before that, and there were a lot of cool things that happened, but the biggest and most drastic change then was I created my own products and they were all for sale on Teachable and it was just one off products that people could buy and used to, you know, do things like podcasting and affiliate marketing, email marketing.

They worked really, really well. And then in 2019 we held our first community event. I knew and always knew community was important. I wrote a book about it called Superfans. That’s where I knew I wanted things to go with SPI. So we started that we created a live event. 500 entrepreneurs came down to San Diego.

We ran a survey. The number one thing people said they enjoyed the most was the time in the hallways when they got to connect with other entrepreneurs. And I was just like, we didn’t even have to have any programming. We didn’t have to have these speakers come. We could have just put all these people in a room and it would have been valuable.

So what might that look like if we do it again the next year? Well, then COVID hit and we weren’t able to do that. And so we were like, okay, well, we got to bring these hallway conversations online. So we built SPI Pro. This was our first community. It was an answer to the loneliness that was happening in the world during the pandemic and the connections that needed to happen in order for entrepreneurs to grow.

And it was wildly successful. We, we launched and we started seeing recurring income in our business for the first time. But more than that, the feedback that was coming from people was unmatched to anything we’ve ever done before. It was so positive and, and I was just like, okay, this community thing is working so well, we’re going to lean into this even more.

So fast forward a year and a half later, we came out with our second community, the All Access Pass, because SPI Pro was an application based process to join and make sure that these were established business owners who had revenue coming in, who had some sort of email list and those levels of conversations are different than the ones of people who are just starting out trying to figure out what their niche is.

But those people we knew needed some help and needed a community as well. So we built the All Access Pass. We put all of our courses into that and that was wildly successful too. Brought Ashley on board to help us with curriculum. We created our accelerator programs to cohort based, take people through those courses.

People are three times more likely to succeed going through a course in that style versus on their own. Everything was great until they both started to grow and it was almost like we had two rooms in the same building, but there was a giant wall in between them. There were so many conversations that could have been had, but they just couldn’t hear each other.

And even though we built them for those specific segments of our audience, what makes a community work is the cross pollination between all kinds of people. As long as you can, organize where certain conversations happen. It’s still important to have people to be able to see each other when they’re at the water cooler together to be able to cross paths and share ideas because there’s some people in the advanced group who would get a lot of value from some people who are starting out and learning something new for the first time.

You know, there’s a lot of that that just wasn’t happening. So to take those two communities, merge them into one and still have some level of clarity on who this is for, and here’s how those different groups of people can benefit from these different parts of the community was important. So it’s not just like, okay, everybody, you’re all free on your own.

Now in this one giant room, it’s as if there’s one giant room, but there’s clearly marked areas where certain conversations happen and where certain people should be. There’s different levels of access, which we’ll get into in just a second. We’re no longer using SPI Pro. As a term or as a community name, we’re no longer using the All Access Pass.

I don’t know if you want to introduce kind of the the structure of it now, because it’s just it’s just really exciting. And I’m excited for a couple of reasons. One, it’s just so much easier to say, hey, join the SPI community and the level at which you want to get involved, get involved versus, OK, we have these two, like you were saying earlier.

Caleb Wojcik: Yeah. And I think part of it, too, is like for a while it was community with a lower case C, like you had courses that were available on teachable and you would have a Facebook group or like people would comment on the courses and that’s disjointed. It’s way more one to one and we want more group stuff.

And that’s part of what you know, a platform like Circle helps facilitate. And so we’re just trying to bring that all together with having it all in one Circle log in branded in one way. And like you said, just having additional access for people that are further along that want to pay for. Sure. More feedback or more features or more education or more access those types of things.

So we’ve essentially turned the two tiers into three. So there is a new lowest end tier called the start tier. And this is essentially access to all the education. So all of the courses, all the live sessions that we do, the workshops, we do all the recordings for all those as well. That is in the start tier and you do get access to the conversation.

So essentially we now have a bigger room with more people in it to have those conversations. And then if you do want to do more of the cohort based learning where you’re going through a course week by week with live calls and accountability with a bunch of people at the same time, or you want to help us or have us help you connect to a mastermind group, then you can bump up to the Accelerate tier, and the Accelerate tier is what all Access Pass members that are currently, you know, paying us are being transitioned to.

Pat Flynn: Right, and that’s where office hours with me begin, is again, just a higher level of access in the Accelerate tier, because some people do want to take things on their own, and they were feeling like, okay, well, I don’t necessarily need all of this, I just need the education, and we have that for you now. I mean, I’m thinking of how much this used to cost, like each of those courses were hundreds of dollars individually before, and now it’s, A small quarterly payment.

It’s like a steal. So that’s there, but we’re hoping people want to get more involved and get more access and come to my office hours and the accelerate tier. And then we have our third tier, which is for an application based process for those established business owners. What was once SPI Pro are now in the Thrive tier. So start, accelerate, thrive. And our goal, I mean, you touched on this earlier, it’s like, okay, who are we serving and how do we serve them? Because it’s really based on a re alignment of our purpose and our mission. You know, our purpose here and our really strong belief is that entrepreneurship is the number one way to build financial freedom and have fulfillment in your life, to have more flexibility with your time, et cetera. And I’ve lived that and I have always sort of said that kind of, but never was really like, let me plant this flag with my team in the ground and really proclaim that. And I, and I do. This is maybe the first time I’m generally saying that out loud.

Entrepreneurship is the best way to have financial freedom and fulfillment in your life. I know you believe that. People on my team believe that. I’ve lived it. And that then goes to okay. Well, if that’s our purpose and what we believe, how do we do that? What is our mission? Our mission is to help you go from the start where you don’t know anything about business or entrepreneurship to full time, and being very clear with that, even to a point and I don’t know if you want to discuss this, Caleb, but even to a point where You could graduate from SPI in a way it’s like you’ve got full time income coming in from your work and that is the moment that is the graduation moment that and we may or may not still have things for you after that point but our goal would be to have you go I’m full time entrepreneur now. And we were the guides for you along the way.

Caleb Wojcik: Yeah. And if you think it’s some of the most successful products that are out there, they are transformational. They help you get from one point to another. That’s why people usually go to colleges so they can learn something and get a job. And the degree is part of that.

You see, Any of the before and after pictures of any fitness product or something like that. That’s all they’re selling is the transformation. And yeah, Dave Ramsey, debt free. Yep. You know, getting, getting out of debt and trying to think of, okay, what’s our transformation? Where are we taking people from?

And where are we taking people to? And focusing just on that and not worrying about the entire market. So not focusing up market to people that are further along and, you know, we’re looking to scale or looking to hire employees and, and grow a large company. That’s not necessarily who we are trying to help.

If you are in our community or you follow the brand and that’s what you’re trying to do, there’s still value in what we do. And sometimes it is going back to the basics or learning something new, you know, like maybe you’re adding a podcast or YouTube channel or whatever to an existing business and You want to learn that through the courses inside the community, go for it. But really focusing in on who you’re trying to serve.

Pat Flynn: So from starter to full time, being very clear with that and really trying to own that. There’s a lot of entrepreneurs in my circles who go up market specifically because that’s where the money is. They say I would never dare touch a beginner in my work because they’re the hardest to work with because they have not unlocked those mindset things that are holding them back.

And so I’d much rather work with somebody who already knows that it’s going to take some investment to make this happen. And, you know, I know, for example, Alex Hermosi has said that he’s like, make sure your target audience has money to spend. And in some ways I do agree with that. And interestingly enough, that’s what we teach.

However, for us, we want to step up and step forward and say, okay, well, if nobody’s going to really take care of these people, we are going to do that because we can relate. I was there. I know what it’s like, and that is who we serve. And it’s, in my opinion, the most fulfilling to see somebody transform to, I don’t know if this is possible, I can’t do this, I failed at this before to, Oh my gosh, this is working to look at me now. Right. It’s just so much more fulfilling in my opinion. And sure, we might be not making as much money as we could compared to if we went up market, but you know, I know there’s potential for helping people get to that point where they would then want to invest more because they’ve made more because of us down the road, but our focus is for those who are in that journey, especially those who are just starting out. That’s what my books, I mean, Will It Fly is literally written for people just starting out. Superfans is the next step, scaling up and building a loyal audience. I’m very excited. This is gonna make our messaging more clear.

This is gonna make what we produce here on the podcast more clear. You’re gonna see some changes to the content style and from what we hypothesize, it’s gonna be a lot more valuable for you. We will still have guests on the show, but it won’t be as many. We want to get out of the routine and complacency of what we’ve built over time and mix things up and get back to well, what is the most valuable thing you could learn right now?

So starting in 2025, you’re going to see that here on the podcast in different ways. And we don’t have to get into that right now. But going back to the two communities merging into one, it’s about time. It is feeling like a little bit of a rip the bandaid moment because of the technical challenges that come with that, the money and the investment required to make the change where we could have kept it and kept it more Frankenstein, but we want to build the best.

We want to build the premium space for entrepreneurs in the middle of their journey or just at the start of it to come to learn and find other people like them. The community was such an important component for me in 2008 with the Internet Business Mastery Academy, that community, which no longer exists.

I would not be here today if it wasn’t for that. And there isn’t really a space like that today that I feel is the de facto place for people to come. And we’re building that right now.

Caleb Wojcik: What was it about Internet Business Mastery? And I mean, it was like forums and that sort of thing back then. But what was it about that that really unlocked stuff for you.

Pat Flynn: It was literally, it was just like, Oh, you’re just like me and you’re figuring it out. And as you’re figuring it out, you’re helping people like me figure it out. And as I figure things out, I’m going to help you too. It’s, it’s just like, we’re all in this kind of together, right? That together part. And again, just kind of just speaks to the compartmentalization of the communities we had before.

You can’t spell community without unity. And so here we are unifying. That’s really good. Actually, I’m going to use that one. But it was seeing other people go through the same struggles and realizing I wasn’t alone. It was having some guidance from some leadership. So in addition to the two communities merging together in 2025, you’re going to see more of me on the website, in the brand, being more outspoken on social about certain things and really getting into the point where I’m like, okay, if we, if we want to be leaders in this space, I have to show up more as a leader in the space versus I’ve always been here as a leader, but I’ve been in a way complacent with how things have been.

And I feel like I could do a lot more to step up to serve this audience and also help others realize that this is the place to be. I mean, we have the best educational material we have been able to attract such amazing, kind hearted, value driven people who are here, not just for themselves, and it’s a shame that a lot of people don’t know about it, so our clarity on our end will make it more clear for others, and hopefully you can feel the energy even just from this episode, because we have some things coming up very soon.

I don’t know. Caleb, you want to share kind of Literally what’s happening at this very moment and what people can get involved with now.

Caleb Wojcik: Yeah, I mean, we’re going hard to update the courses as well to make those fully up to date. You’ve completely refilmed the Email Marketing one now that Kit has changed and yeah, now you have a post COVID beard. So we got to make sure any course that there’s no beard, you know, we got to refilm that one.

Pat Flynn: Even though they were helpful, like they were still valuable and we patched them over time to make sure they’re up to date. It’s like, no, if we’re going to do this, let’s do it right.

We’re going to start refilming every single course that we have, eventually starting with the most popular ones. And we have just refilmed and relaunched our Email Marketing one. In fact, we have an accelerator coming up to bring people together through that brand new course. So if you don’t have an email list or you’ve just started one and you just have no idea what you’re doing, this isn’t just about growing your list either.

It’s about how to use it. How to begin to automate using tagging and segmenting and those kinds of things. We have an accelerator that’s actually kicking off this Thursday, which is the 14th of November, I believe. And you can sign up now to be a part of the Accelerate tier and join in with others that are going through that course together.

And then after that, it’s not just like, hey, goodbye. It’s like, okay, where do I go next? Oh, here’s the next group that’s coming up. Or here’s the next course that might make sense for you. Or here are the conversations that are happening. Our goal is to have you realize you wouldn’t have been able to succeed because you didn’t have access to these things before, and it does take people.

It does take education, and we want to give you the best stuff. Hopefully you could join us. So head over to smartpassiveincome.com/community. You’ll see the new sales page with the tiers and the Start, Accelerate, Thrive tiers and broken down into what exactly that gives you. The Thrive tier, we will have an application for that, but either way, just start at the Accelerate tier if you want to get into that email marketing accelerator, and there’s also a Q and A coming up too, right? The day before that.

Caleb Wojcik: Yeah. On Wednesday, November 13th, there will be one at 10 a. m. Pacific. Wednesday, November 13th at 10 a. m. Pacific. And if you’re watching this after the recording will be up as well.

Pat Flynn: Yes. So that’ll be on my YouTube channel. You’ll see it there, Pat Flynn, or so Thursday, the 14th will be when the accelerator begins. Yeah. And the accelerators are great. I mean, people, like I said earlier, are three times more likely to get a result and actually go through it versus just going at it alone. And we have Ashley there and people aren’t a team to help you through that. Office hours is there for the Accelerate tier and the Thrive tier. Those are separated out. Now I’ve done office hours for gosh, eight years now straight for everybody. And now it’s kind of broken up.

Okay. Here are the two this month that are happening for the Accelerate tier, which are more beginner level, like as you go through it, I’m done with you kind of stuff, and then the Thrive tier will have access to me twice a month as well for more advanced conversations and things that probably are too advanced and kind of beyond where a person who’s just starting out is.

So again, we’re just trying to get more clear and it’s taken us a lot to get here. It’s taken a lot of collecting feedback from directly community members. In fact, yesterday we just had kind of a town hall with, with members to share what’s happening and to also open up the field for questions. We got so much great feedback.

A lot of people are excited. A lot of people had questions, but this is what it’s about. It’s not just about. us broadcasting, but it’s also about broad asking, which is what a community is great for. It’s communication.

Caleb Wojcik: Yeah. And I mean, I’m going to bring this into a Pokemon metaphor if that’s okay with you, but like, I feel like this is an evolution of things.

You know, if courses was like the first version, launching these communities was kind of the next one. And we’re We’re trying to get to Charizard level, you know, holograms, you know, to like make it clear to people at as much value as we can.

Pat Flynn: That’s pretty good. Pretty good. I like it. Well, we’ll work on that.

But hey, we’ve been here for 20 minutes. We just wanted to share this fun news with you and get you excited about what’s coming, especially if you’re already a member. Great. You already know what’s happening. If you’re not, you’re not. We invite you to come and check out what we have to offer you to help you, especially as you go into 2025.

You might be in goal setting mode right now. It’s something that we’d love to see you be a part of. So if you head to smartpassiveincome.com/community, again, smartpassiveincome.com/community, you’ll see those tiers there and come check out the Q&A on YouTube on Wednesday, the 13th. And then the 14th is when the accelerator starts.

We’d love to see you there. Caleb, any final words?

Caleb Wojcik: No. Love to see you inside the community. It’s active. There’s a lot of things going on. There’s events each week. There’s courses to take. There’s conversations that you can have. You know, mastermind group is waiting for you. Let’s see you inside there.

Pat Flynn: Let’s see you. smartpassiveincome.com/community. Thanks, Caleb.

Caleb Wojcik: All right. See ya.

Pat Flynn: Thank you so much for listening to the Smart Passive Income podcast at SmartPassiveIncome.com. I’m your host, Pat Flynn. Sound editing by Duncan Brown. The Smart Passive Income Podcast is a production of SPI Media and a proud member of the Entrepreneur Podcast Network. Catch you next week!