Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
We’re Jason and Caroline Zook, a husband and wife team running two businesses together and trying to live out our version of a good life in the process. In this business podcast, we share with you our lessons learned about how to run a calm, sustainable business—one that is predictable, profitable AND peaceful. Join us every Thursday if you’re an online creator who wants to reach your goals without sacrificing your well-being in the process.
[00:00:00] Caroline: Welcome to Growing Steady, the show where we help online creators like you build a calm business, one that's predictable, profitable, and peaceful. We're your hosts, Jason and Caroline Zook, and we run Wandering Aimfully, an unboring business coaching program and Teachery, an online course platform for designers. Join us each week as we help you reach your business goals without sacrificing your well being in the process. Slow and steady is the way we do things around here, baby.
[00:00:29] Jason: All right, cinnamon rollers, that's you. Let's get into the show. There you go. Come on, let's do it. Let's start the podcast.
[00:00:39] Caroline: Cool intro. We are.
[00:00:40] Jason: Podcasts are cool. Dot, dot, dot. Welcome to the show. Hey.
[00:00:44] Caroline: We got some pramble tops.
[00:00:46] Jason: We're in a five week content extravaganza.
[00:00:47] Caroline: Extravaganza.
[00:00:50] Jason: This is kind of like a break week for us a little bit.
[00:00:52] Caroline: What's the Portuguese word for extravaganza?
[00:00:54] Jason: Oh, wow. Okay.
[00:00:55] Caroline: Keep talking while I look it up.
[00:00:56] Jason: You know, so everybody knows we, you know, a couple episodes ago we did the plan, then we did short term video, short torm? Short form video creation. Then we did long form video creation stuff. Now we're talking about articles for Teachery, but we kind of had like a week in between because we were waiting on an SEO strategist to deliver some helpful information.
[00:01:15] Caroline: Yes.
[00:01:16] Jason: Which we will get to on why it was helpful and also not so helpful. But that's okay because lesson to be shared there for you.
[00:01:23] Caroline: Okay. The Portuguese word for extravaganza is extravaganza.
[00:01:28] Jason: Extravaganza.
[00:01:29] Caroline: Okay. So you really gotta put the emphasis on the anzia.
[00:01:33] Jason: Extravaganza.
[00:01:33] Caroline: Because it has a hat and I don't know the name for the accent.
[00:01:35] Jason: Like a farmacia?
[00:01:37] Caroline: Like a farmacia. Sim. Is that the same? It's the hat one. The hat accent.
[00:01:42] Jason: I don't know what they're called. You can keep saying hat a thousand times.
[00:01:44] Caroline: You know which one I'm talking about, though?
[00:01:45] Jason: I do.
[00:01:46] Caroline: What's your favorite Portuguese accent? Mine is the c with the little...
[00:01:49] Jason: Guy.
[00:01:50] Caroline: With the curly cube. Like pras.
[00:01:52] Jason: Yeah.
[00:01:52] Caroline: I love that.
[00:01:53] Jason: Yeah, that's a good one. That's the best one. Everyone agrees. Question mark on the bottom of a c. It's fantastic. That's what they call it, too. You got the hat and then you get the question mark at the bottom of c. And then for some reason in French, I remember the accent ague, which is the one...
[00:02:03] Caroline: That's the name of it?
[00:02:03] Jason: Up and to the right. The accent is called ague and it goes over to the right.
[00:02:03] Caroline: And so you call it accent ague.
[00:02:03] Jason: Exante goo.
[00:02:10] Caroline: Accent agu.
[00:02:12] Jason: I don't know why I remember that. Just stuck in the files.
[00:02:16] Caroline: Ague.
[00:02:16] Jason: Got a little bit of a birthday recap to go over.
[00:02:18] Caroline: Let's do some pramble tops.
[00:02:20] Jason: Just a little birthday recap.
[00:02:21] Caroline: We took a little staycation birthday getaway to Lisboa.
[00:02:24] Jason: Yeah.
[00:02:26] Caroline: For those of you who don't know, we live in Portugal. We live in a little beach town that is about... people say 45 minutes. It's not. It's an hour away from Lisbon.
[00:02:33] Jason: Yeah.
[00:02:34] Caroline: Forty-five If there was not a single person.
[00:02:35] Jason: I mean, in fairness, it is 45 when you hit Lisbon. But that's like saying, it's like when we used to live in southern California. It's like 45 minutes to get to San Diego. It's like, yeah, in fairness, when the highway.
[00:02:45] Caroline: Right. Or like Atlanta. Like, oh, okay, you're in Atlanta, but are you in Atlanta? Or do you have an hour left to get to Atlanta?
[00:02:51] Jason: Right.
[00:02:52] Caroline: But it is really nice that I just... I've always known this, but this trip especially, I'm like, this beautiful, rich in culture, European metropolis is just an hour away from us.
[00:03:07] Jason: Yeah.
[00:03:07] Caroline: It's so neat. And you're walking around with, like, tourists, because you're basically a tourist in this city. You're walking around with a bunch of tourists, and you're like, whoa, this is cool. Like, all of you flew across the world to come visit the city, and I get to visit the city an hour away from my house. That is so cool.
[00:03:21] Jason: Yeah. I was having a Facetime with my mom because it was her birthday. Our birthdays are five days apart.
[00:03:26] Caroline: Cute.
[00:03:27] Jason: But she was saying, she was like, I don't know if it's just because you guys live there now, but I feel like I'm hearing everyone talk about Portugal more.
[00:03:33] Caroline: And definitely it is.
[00:03:34] Jason: And I think it is part of that. I think it is a little bit of priming, but I do also think Portugal has seen quite an uptick in travel.
[00:03:41] Caroline: It's why we moved here.
[00:03:42] Jason: Yeah.
[00:03:42] Caroline: You know.
[00:03:42] Jason: And... and so, anyway, we spent two nights in Portugal. We stayed at a lovely little hotel, and we went to a bunch of different restaurants. And I will say the restaurants were great. We had some wonderful meals.
[00:03:54] Caroline: Very memorable.
[00:03:55] Jason: For those of you who have been listening since our full year of travel in 2022, my life bucket list goal that was achieved was to basically eat at a Michelin star restaurant in every country that we visited, which was unbelievable, amazing privilege, and, like, so many great food memories. Also, a couple that were kind of lackluster if we're being honest.
[00:04:11] Caroline: Yeah, but that's part of the fun.
[00:04:13] Jason: But that's part of the fun. And what was exciting is that there was... There were three restaurants that we were gonna eat at, and they all kind of three satisfied... satisfied different things.
[00:04:21] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:04:21] Jason: One was, it's a two Michelin star restaurant, which is incredible to be able to eat at. The two fun things about it. Number one, I've been looking at it for a year and a half, and the bookings are usually, like, three months in advance, and so it never, like, fit, timing wise. And so I wanted to do it on my birthday, but I kind of forgot three months ago to, like, look it up. I was like, oh, dang it. And then it was, like, a month and a half ago. I looked again. I was like, well, let's just see one booking available for lunch on my birthday. That's the only day of the week.
[00:04:49] Caroline: You have to do it.
[00:04:49] Jason: In May.
[00:04:50] Caroline: You have to do it.
[00:04:50] Jason: And I was like, okay, we have to do it. So that was fun.
[00:04:53] Caroline: And it was phenomenal food.
[00:04:55] Jason: My second.
[00:04:55] Caroline: One of the best meals I've ever had in my life.
[00:04:57] Jason: Yeah. The restaurant's called Alma, if you want to peep the menu and those things. But the other. The second fun thing that I wanted to share is we ate at a two Michelin star restaurant in Scotland on our travel year, and these two could not have been more different in, like, the enjoyability of the full experience. And so I think that's just a testament to, like, you can't, you know, apply the same thing you see in one restaurant to another and be like, oh, it's gonna be like...
[00:05:19] Caroline: No, and that's why we love food experiences, because every single one is different, and we just love food. And I just think, like, food for me personally, is, like, I say this all the time, but, like, tasting food is one of, like, the few things that makes being human and being alive in this messy human experience worth it.
[00:05:39] Jason: Absolutely.
[00:05:40] Caroline: Okay, listen. Am I on an emotional rollercoaster all the time and experiencing the heartbreak of the world and the elation of the world and social dynamics and interpersonal relationships and personal growth and critical thoughts and all these messy ass things that come along with being a human? And then I taste a bite of food, and I'm like, worth it.
[00:05:59] Jason: Worth it. That was worth it. And then some bites are not worth it. The second restaurant we went to was a 14 seat only restaurant. It's basically a U-shaped table with the chefs cooking in the middle.
[00:06:09] Caroline: So cool.
[00:06:09] Jason: And then they come up and they bring, like, a little tray of gadgets and gizmos, and they put your dishes together for you.
[00:06:14] Caroline: It's like you're watching, like, the ending of Chef's Table, where they, like, put all the little tong-able items on and you're watching them do that, which I absolutely love.
[00:06:24] Jason: Very, very fun. There... I think there were, like, twelve moments in that, little dishes that you ate. I think half of them were, like, not our favorite bites of food.
[00:06:32] Caroline: Yeah, they weren't bad, but that you just were like, there's a lot going on.
[00:06:35] Jason: There's a lot going on here. You're like, ooh, that's zippy and spicy and kind of, like, tart and also, like, a little too fishy for me.
[00:06:42] Caroline: But what I liked about it is it definitely fit with the theme of the restaurant, which is very much more, just more experimental, more kind of, like, less refined, I would say.
[00:06:52] Jason: Also finding the restaurant was part of the enjoyment. You had to, like, walk through this secret garden of a hotel. You go down this tiny staircase, and it's not a big room. Like, you think of a restaurant, you're like, oh, it's a big space.
[00:07:02] Caroline: No, no, no.
[00:07:02] Jason: High ceilings.
[00:07:03] Caroline: It's like someone's kitchen.
[00:07:04] Jason: This is like someone's kitchen, essentially. And so I just thought that was very fun. And then the third one was a vegetarian tasting menu, which was just incredible. They were just like, we got to spend.
[00:07:13] Caroline: This is what I told Jason. I go, okay, if Alma was, like, extremely refined, very delicious, like, thoughtful food that was blow your mind good. And Two Monkeys was, like, totally adventurous. Like, such an experience. Just like, unique and like a... just an adventure for the...
[00:07:28] Jason: Sitting in someone's kitchen.
[00:07:28] Caroline: Yeah, adventure for the senses. Encanto, which was our... Encanto?
[00:07:32] Jason: Yeah.
[00:07:33] Caroline: Oh, okay. Like the movie?
[00:07:34] Jason: Yeah.
[00:07:34] Caroline: Oh, cute. Was our third one. And I'm like, that's like those two restaurants had a baby. Because it's a, it's a vegetarian tasting menu, so you feel the flavors are very adventurous. Like, here's like a pea shoot cocktail, a non alcoholic cocktail with a something soup with, like, lemon coulee.
[00:07:52] Jason: Oh, great job. Throw out some herbs.
[00:07:53] Caroline: Throw out some herbs. Okay. But the flavors were more refined. So anyway, you don't need to hear us talk about food more. I don't know why.
[00:08:02] Jason: Well, it's just fun to share. It's just fun to share this, you know, living in a different country, the things that we can appreciate and enjoy just 45 ish minutes down the road from where we live. I do know, as the person who reads the emails of people who send us messages say, like, oh, I really miss, like, the Portugal updates. Or, I love hearing the stories about things you do. We love hearing these stories from other people on podcasts. So I know you get tired of, like, oh, just get to the business stuff. People want to talk about that. It's a nice amalgamation. It's like...
[00:08:27] Caroline: It's not.
[00:08:27] Jason: You don't just go to the restaurant for the steak, Carol.
[00:08:29] Caroline: Okay.
[00:08:29] Jason: You want the pea shoot coulee, and you want the phone, and you want the other...
[00:08:33] Caroline: I just think that audio podcast format is a weird way to taste food. That's all I'm saying.
[00:08:37] Jason: Is it, though? I listen to a lot of food podcasts.
[00:08:40] Caroline: Because you do.
[00:08:40] Jason: So I'm very happy to hear people talk about the food they ate that I can't eat right now. But I'm like, oh, that sounds fun.
[00:08:46] Caroline: The whole point is, the trip was magical.
[00:08:48] Jason: Let's skip over the best part.
[00:08:50] Caroline: Which was?
[00:08:51] Jason: What's the best part?
[00:08:52] Caroline: The best part.
[00:08:53] Jason: What was the best part? What was the highlight of the trip?
[00:08:55] Caroline: The highlight of the trip.
[00:08:57] Jason: What was the highlight? You want me to tell you? So you're not... You don't feel like you're on the stage?
[00:09:00] Caroline: The highlight of the trip.
[00:09:01] Jason: I'm sitting in our hotel room, and I go...
[00:09:03] Caroline: Oh, that's the highlight of the trip?
[00:09:05] Jason: You're telling me it's not? The cinnamon rollers will appreciate this.
[00:09:08] Caroline: Yeah, they will.
[00:09:08] Jason: And I said, you know what? I really want a cinnamon roll or some cookies or something. Then I remembered we're in a big city, and in a big city, you can open up Uber Eats, and things are available. Where we live in our tiny little beach town, you have a pizza place. It's mediocre, and you have sushi, and, like, that's basically all you can get. There are a couple more, but, like, you can't get, like, anything on your whim's desire. But there is a place called Funky Chunky Cookies, I think is the name of it. And within 20 minutes, cookies were delivered to our hotel room. And, boy, let me tell you, €20 well spent on just immediate happiness. I enjoyed those cookies for the rest of the time that we were there. I even got to bring them home. I didn't eat them all. I I didn't eat them all in the hotel room. I brought two home.
[00:09:46] Caroline: Good job.
[00:09:46] Jason: Which is incredible.
[00:09:47] Caroline: Should we also tell them the low point of the trip? Which was, now we're sharing all these good memories of food, but the cookies are really gonna help give you a preview into what happened on Jason's actual birthday. We go to Alma, we do this tasting menu. By the way, it's already like a twelve course thing. And then they throw in, like, three other things that are surprises. So it's a lot of food. Even though the bites are small, it's a lot of food. Then Jason gets cookies. Of course, I have to have a couple bites. Then we go to Two Monkeys. We're doing the thing. Their portions are bigger than Alma's. By halfway through that tasting menu... just don't do two tasting menus in one day.
[00:10:23] Jason: You can't do that.
[00:10:23] Caroline: Don't do that.
[00:10:24] Jason: Yeah.
[00:10:24] Caroline: When I tell you that by halfway through that meal, that dinner meal, I start sensing my body temperature rising, and I start realizing that I'm actually so full of food and I'm actually getting uncomfortable that I'm so full.
[00:10:41] Jason: I just had a thought.
[00:10:42] Caroline: And I was halfway through the meal, you guys, and when I tell you...
[00:10:45] Jason: I just had a thought.
[00:10:46] Caroline: What?
[00:10:46] Jason: It's not the food... because 14 years ago, we started our relationship by going to a Brazilian steakhouse.
[00:10:53] Caroline: It's you.
[00:10:54] Jason: No. And after the Brazilian steakhouse meal, you were also in a bit of a food coma, feeling too full. What are the two exact relatable things? Cowboy boots. You were wearing cowboy boots on both occasions.
[00:11:10] Caroline: First of all, you know, they're not cowboy boots. They're cowgal. They're cowgal boots.
[00:11:14] Jason: Am I not right?
[00:11:15] Caroline: Okay, maybe there's something to this. Maybe they cut off the circulation to my stomach. I don't know. Either way, I almost had a... I was, like, really so full. I almost had, like, a bad reaction to this. I had to excuse myself into the... the fresh air for a couple of moments.
[00:11:33] Jason: And then we did walk. We did walk the 30 minutes.
[00:11:34] Caroline: Jason thought it was hysterical. I'm, like, sort of halfway moaning. Oh, and then this part was funny. We're about three courses from the end, and I tell Jason I'm in, like, a desperate, dangerous, panicky place. I'm like, buddy. He starts laughing. I'm like, buddy, this is not good. I'm being serious right now. Like, help. And he's just giggling. Okay. Then they... I'm like, I have to look. I had been not looking at the menu because I wanted to be surprised. I'm like, no, no. This is like a marathon. Like, I got to know how much to the finish line. So I look, I'm like, okay, we're almost at dessert. We get to dessert. Then after dessert, they bring you petit fours, like, right before the check.
[00:12:07] Jason: Which is just little... If you don't know what those are, they're just, like, little tiny bites. There's, like, a bunch of little sweet bites.
[00:12:12] Caroline: I'm like, okay. So I eat those, and I'm like, I did it.
[00:12:14] Jason: You made it.
[00:12:15] Caroline: Over the finish line. I'm okay. I have not vomited in this establishment. I feel very good about it. And then everyone leaves the restaurant. We're the last people there, and we're just, like, just waiting for the check. And they bring out a... another item, which is a cute little banana cake for Jason's birthday. The look on my face was, like, so desperately like I had just the worst news.
[00:12:38] Jason: So good.
[00:12:39] Caroline: I've ever gotten.
[00:12:40] Jason: I died.
[00:12:41] Caroline: You ate it for me, but...
[00:12:42] Jason: You had this moment, like...
[00:12:44] Caroline: I'm home free.
[00:12:45] Jason: I did it. And then, boom.
[00:12:46] Caroline: Boom.
[00:12:47] Jason: All right, that's enough food talk. That was our Lisbon trip. It was very fun. I hope you enjoyed hearing about it. Again, we don't tell a ton of Portugal stories because we're not doing a lot of things. And also, in case you're curious, almost every single night of our lives, we eat some form of, like, chicken, chickpeas, vegetables, and, like, it's very boring food items on a day to day basis.
[00:13:04] Caroline: Oh, so you're just saying.
[00:13:05] Jason: So I'm just saying, like, this is not, like, a normal for us, multiple fancy restaurants in a 48 hour period.
[00:13:10] Caroline: No.
[00:13:10] Jason: This is, like, once a year.
[00:13:12] Caroline: Yeah. This is a very special occasion.
[00:13:13] Jason: All right, let's get into this. So the content extravagancia continues.
[00:13:18] Caroline: Extravaganza.
[00:13:18] Jason: And as mentioned, we're going to talk about articles. So the reason why we didn't just jump into this last week, and we mentioned this in last week's podcast episode is that we have been doing kind of, like, our own version of SEO research and knowledge and article creation for ten plus years. And I have written a handful of articles I will give myself credit for.
[00:13:39] Caroline: That have ranked.
[00:13:39] Jason: That have ranked on the front page of Google for pretty hard keywords. Like, right now, we have an article that I wrote six years ago that's called, Start a business with no money and no ideas. That is, I think it's on the second page of Google. But what a competitive keyword.
[00:13:53] Caroline: Definitely.
[00:13:53] Jason: Start a business with no money is, like, an ultra competitive keyword. And also, our debt payoff article almost hit the front page of Google and then, like, it didn't, probably because of, like, something we have on our site that we learned about. But none of that matters. The point that I wanted to share is we are not SEO strategists, but we are people who dabble and write lots of articles and some of them have ended up ranking for specific keywords. So we know something.
[00:14:14] Caroline: You know this, if you're listening to this, we are admittedly, you know, generalists. Deep generalists.
[00:14:20] Jason: Exactly.
[00:14:20] Caroline: I would say.
[00:14:21] Jason: So what I wanted to kick this off with was we paid an SEO strategist. So this is someone that we've known for a while. They've helped us before. And essentially what they were going to give us was a little bit of a report of, like, what we should do with Teachery moving forward from an SEO standpoint. So what should our focus keyword be for like all of our content? Then to go down there from, and then what are other, like, SEO based things, things you can do as a software company to get traffic to your website through people using Google and searching for things.
[00:14:50] Caroline: And so that's what we're going to kind of share with you that has informed our strategy moving forward for the Teachery articles that we want to publish. We're going to share that with you. And to kick things off, the most helpful thing I think we got from that strategist was something that we had kind of come to on our own, but that it was very helpful to have validation and see the data behind it, which is online course platform. Like, when we think of what's the main keyword that we should rank for for Teachery, it is an online course platform. So that's what you'd think. It is simply too competitive at this point in the market. Like...
[00:15:23] Jason: And you just have to think.
[00:15:24] Caroline: To go after it.
[00:15:24] Jason: Yeah, and you just have to think like in the past ten years, Teachable, Thinkific, Podia.
[00:15:28] Caroline: Kajabi.
[00:15:28] Jason: Learn Words. Kajabi.
[00:15:32] Caroline: Learn Words?
[00:15:32] Jason: Learn Words, as I said.
[00:15:34] Caroline: But you should learn words too.
[00:15:35] Jason: All of those companies who are very venture backed, they're all like ultra trying to make money as quickly as possible. They're pouring as many resources as they can into owning this keyword. Right. Because it's a very competitive thing. So for us, as a small side project, you know, software company, and for you all listening, I think even in your business, if you're going into a crowded market, this is a good thing for you to learn as well. What is the next thing? What is the future keyword or the one that people are kind of transitioning to? Because we all know that online courses, while they're still prevalent and they're still popular and, like, they still bring a good living to people. The, the nomenclature has slightly changed and we were actually talking about it as it relates to WAIM, where like, you know, ten years ago, creative entrepreneur is kind of what you thought of yourself as, but now it's more you're a content creator, you're a solopreneur, you're, you know, even freelancer feels like it's maybe a little bit outdated, if you will. So for us, for Teachery, the big takeaway, what we, you know, gleaned from this, you know, kind of the main thing that kind of leads everything forward from here is not going after online course platform as a keyword, but going after digital product platform and then specifically digital products.
[00:16:42] Caroline: Right.
[00:16:43] Jason: So really trying to create SEO based content. Yes, we will still use online course in titles and in articles.
[00:16:50] Caroline: As an example of a digital product. Right. Because courses are digital products. And the beauty of Teachery is you can use it as a container for anything. You can deliver an ebook, you can deliver templates, you can deliver, you know, fonts, digital goods. You can deliver programs like any type of digital product. So that is what we are going to move forward with.
[00:17:09] Jason: Yeah. And I think one of the things that we've been talking about too is like, we know Teachery and everybody who uses Teachery knows it as an online course platform. So to create content that says we're a digital product platform, is that going to confuse people? Because they get in, they're like, well, this is create a course or a theme. Like, it doesn't say create a digital product. And all of that for us to think about is not like, uh oh, our platform doesn't work for these people. It's like, no, we just have to get creative and create little, like, moments for people to go, hey, a course can be used to promote your digital product in this way.
[00:17:40] Caroline: Right. And you were saying. Yeah, exactly. The templates and our themes are really, I think, what will also help show people that, and our content is an example to help educate our customers on that. But I think you were right because I said that and I was like, well, are they going to get it? Is it going to be a mismatch between, like, we create all this content to attract someone who's interested in digital products. They get into the product, to Teachery, and they feel like this is really set up for courses. Is that going to be a mismatch? And it's like, let me solve that problem down the road.
[00:18:05] Jason: Exactly.
[00:18:06] Caroline: 'Cause what I know for sure is that a strategy of going for online course platform is not going to bear fruit. So let me just solve that problem down the road.
[00:18:15] Jason: Exactly. And so I think even for you, as someone who maybe you're making a pivot in your business from, oh, I was a Squarespace designer, but now I want to be a Webflow designer or whatever. But like, everything that you've written before out there is like Squarespace design. That's okay. Like, you don't have to immediately like, go through and redo all that. It's just about creating new resources that help those new people. And like, if you have that existing content, that's totally fine. You don't have to like, not move forward because you've, you've got the sunk cost bias of having this previous way of doing something.
[00:18:43] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:18:44] Jason: Um, okay, so the good news is we got this report back from the SEO strategists. We got this main focus keyword, and we have two other kind of like parts of this strategy that we're going to move forward with. But we do want to kind of jump a little bit to the end of the report. That was, what we didn't get was one big deliverable that was how to actually take that digital product keyword and help us craft articles for it because, again, like, we can come up with a list of article topics. We can write our best examples based on what we think. We can use ChatGPT to come up with things. We can use all kinds of tools like Ubersuggest and Spark Turo. And like, these are all great and helpful, but it's, it's difficult to take that keyword and know, like, I need to apply it to our software.
[00:19:30] Caroline: Exactly. Like, this is what I was really hoping to get. And, you know, we created this deliverables document, which I would recommend. This is like a total meta side point. But like, if you are going to work with a strategist or somebody, like, write out a document of this is what I'm hoping to get. And so part two of what I was really hoping to get was we have this list of article topics we had already come up with. Right? Like, we've kind of done the heavy lifting on that. Here are our categories. Here are, you know, there was, I think, 40 ideas total on this list of articles that we felt confident we could write. I'm now looking for you, as someone who is the strategist, to look at the work that I've done as the amateur and say, cool, here's why this is a good idea, or here's why this is a bad idea. Here is how to match those article ideas to my strategy of focusing on this keyword. Like, that's kind of what I was really hoping for is kind of, like, a bridge to, from the data of, here's the search volume for these keywords. Like, here's the target term for each one of these articles. Or, like, don't need any articles on this because it's already too saturated. Or, hey, this doesn't really match up with your customer that you told me that you're trying to go for it, that type of thing. It's okay that we didn't get that. I think the lesson there is, yeah. First of all, you know, not to discredit that person. They don't know what... You know, they don't know exactly what's in my brain. I could write the best, the best deliverables document in the whole world, and they don't know exactly what's going to be most helpful for me. So that's like no shade to that person whatsoever. But for you, if you're hiring someone, do your best to say exactly what you're looking for, what would be most helpful to you, and then also recognize that it's never going to be perfect. And I think a lot of times when we are outsourcing things or when we're hiring experts to help us, what we're really hoping for is some type of silver bullet. Like, do it for me. Like, make it easy for me. And it's just, it's not. You have to do the heavy lifting.
[00:21:17] Jason: I have a metaphor for us.
[00:21:19] Caroline: I can't wait.
[00:21:20] Jason: Okay, so let's just be a little bit general about this. Running your business. You're an archer at an archery range where you have a target that is, you know, 100ft away or whatever, right? So in your business, you're doing things and you're shooting arrows, you're writing articles, you're creating content or whatever. And if you're at the very beginning, your arrows aren't even hitting the target. They're actually not even close. They're, like, landing feet in front of you, and you're just feeling dumb, right? And eventually, through experience, you're like, okay, I know how to hold the bow. I know how to shoot the arrow. It's actually moving forward. It's not going to hit my toes, which is fantastic.
[00:21:53] Caroline: Love that.
[00:21:53] Jason: And it's actually going forward in a direction, which is great, but I'm not even hitting the target at all, let alone the bullseye. So that's like, I think where we were, we're like, okay, well, let's hire a strategist. And what we're hoping is now we're gonna go from barely shooting it past my feet to I'm gonna hit the bullseye because I'm hiring a strategist. This person is an expert. And guess what? They're not necessarily going to help you hit the bullseye, because no one really can. And so what they're helping us do, though, is now hit the target. So, like, we have this target that's a hundred feet away. For the first time, we're gonna walk away with a plan that, like, hits us on the target.
[00:22:28] Caroline: Like, hey, hold the bow more like this.
[00:22:30] Jason: Right. And also, it's specific things to do that we hadn't been thinking about doing that will help us with organic traffic growth, which is what we're really looking for in Teachery that we didn't have the specific strategies for. So to me, that means we will now be able to shoot the arrow. It will hit the target. It doesn't mean it's going to hit the bullseye of the target. But I think the... the big takeaway there in this metaphor is like, you can hire the best person ever for whatever it is that you want to do. There's no guarantee they're going to help you shoot your arrow into the target, because no one can really do that. It's all guesswork. It's all made up. Everyone's just doing their best. And, like, you just have to hope that you're going to put in enough reps that one time or another, you're going to get close enough to the bullseye that things work.
[00:23:10] Caroline: And this goes back to the entire original premise of Wandering Aimfully, the name, which is experimentation with intention. So you, you know, you set your intention, you with all the wisdom that you have, but you have to have that experimentation piece in order to see what the results are going to be. And that is how we have gotten to where we are in every place in our business, is experimentation with intention. Experimentation with intention. Okay, we have a strategy. Okay. We execute the strategy. We see what the results are, and so on and so forth, and you loop and loop and loop. And I think the main takeaway that I'm hearing from you that I agree with is just setting your expectations, because what I'm hearing from you is like, don't set your expectations of the bullseye. Set your expectations of, like, getting closer to the target.
[00:23:52] Jason: Exactly. Just hitting the target, which I think... which I think we will do. And it also goes back to my metaphor episodes ago of increasing the surface area of luck. The quote by Jason Roberts where just doing more things gives you more opportunity for people to find you to hear about you. And with Teachery, we have done zero things. So anything would be better.
[00:24:12] Caroline: External things.
[00:24:12] Jason: So we'll get, we'll come circle back around to our plan with these articles based on not having our main deliverable thing with that kind of brought through by the strategist. But that's okay because we have next steps for it.
[00:24:23] Caroline: So you don't want to go over the categories and the ideas yet?
[00:24:28] Jason: For the articles?
[00:24:29] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:24:29] Jason: No, we'll finish with that.
[00:24:30] Caroline: We'll finish with that.
[00:24:31] Jason: So let's go to the two other tactics that we're going to take from the strategist, one we had already been thinking about, but it was good to get confirmation. It was kind of like, we think we want to do this. We're seeing other people.
[00:24:42] Caroline: Should we prioritize?
[00:24:42] Jason: Does this actually matter? Really what I was looking for is like, do these things matter? And basically they confirmed, yes, 100%. And that tactic is writing competitor pages. So essentially what that means is writing a, like, Teachery versus Teachable documentation.
[00:24:56] Caroline: And this is obviously very specific to a tool or a software product.
[00:25:00] Jason: Right. Because if you're someone who sells Etsy, you know, digital journals, you're not probably gonna write like, mine versus Sarah J's. You know, you could, I don't know.
[00:25:11] Caroline: But it's something to think about where, like, if you're someone who teaches people how to sell on Etsy, maybe you do wanna write the article that's like, should I sell on Etsy or my own website? Or whatever. Like, maybe there's some... Think about the, they call it bottom of funnel decision making, meaning someone's closer and closer to, like, making a decision. What are the really hyper specific kind of alternatives that they're considering? That might also be something like, I'm thinking of another one. Like, okay, if you're a VA. Working with a VA, a freelancer, versus...
[00:25:48] Jason: Like, an agency.
[00:25:48] Caroline: An agency. Or like, hiring someone in house. Like, what are the alternatives that someone is considering when they're thinking about hiring you, even if there's not like, such a direct competitor and you can try to create content around that.
[00:25:59] Jason: Yeah. And I think, like, especially for those of you who, you know, are like, designers and things like that, and you're looking to have, you know, clients hire you to do work for them. It's like hiring me versus doing it yourself. Hiring me versus someone on Fiverr. Hiring me versus... You know, like, show the difference between the things they're already, already thinking about. And then if you want to call out one of your direct competitors just like smash them in this page. No, I'm totally kidding. So, yeah, so we, we have those competitor articles. One of the things that I thought was very interesting. So we'll definitely write like Teachery versus Teachable, Teachery versus Podia, Teachery versus Thinkific. And like, those will be in the footer of our website and we'll talk about a little bit of how we're going to do that in Framer in a second. But the other thing that... Then this is one again, like, I just, we would never have thought of this, but it's actually writing comparison articles, our opinion of two platforms with Teachery not included. So it's like our opinion of Teachery versus... or Teachable versus Thinkific. And Teachery is not even really mentioned in the article. And I was like, can you explain to me, like, why this matters? And he's like, because people want to know, like a third party, objective opinion... objective opinion about these two platforms if they're thinking about them. And it just helps them see you as, oh, well, this is someone who I actually think, like, is going to tell me the truth on this. Not just Teachable saying we're better because we're Teachable.
[00:27:19] Caroline: Right, but that's funny because...
[00:27:21] Jason: But then they might choose another platform, right, is what you think?
[00:27:23] Caroline: No, no, I was saying it's just funny because, like, obviously Teachery is not a fully objective platform of comparing these two.
[00:27:29] Jason: Well, of course. Yeah.
[00:27:30] Caroline: But I hear what you're saying. You're not one of those. You're not one of the platforms.
[00:27:33] Jason: Exactly.
[00:27:34] Caroline: Which I understand.
[00:27:34] Jason: And it is a very counterintuitive because you might be scratching your head thinking about this right now.
[00:27:38] Caroline: I mean, I'm certainly down to just try it.
[00:27:40] Jason: Yeah, you're like, but... so Teachery isn't mentioned at all? And it, you're, you're not.
[00:27:43] Caroline: Because that's what I was saying. Like, what happens then? I'm someone, I find that article, and then what? I see that it's on Teachery.Co and I'm like, what's Teachery?
[00:27:51] Jason: Yeah.
[00:27:51] Caroline: And then I'm like, oh, I hadn't thought...
[00:27:53] Jason: 100%.
[00:27:53] Caroline: Yeah, but I also think people are smart, though, and they kind of have that moment where they're like, okay, yeah, I see what you did here.
[00:27:58] Jason: They might for sure, but then they might also like, it's a them finding Teachery and they never would have found Teachery moment.
[00:28:04] Caroline: Which is true.
[00:28:05] Jason: Which is true. Again, increasing the surface area of luck is all we're trying to do.
[00:28:09] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:28:09] Jason: Do you want to talk through the way in Framer just for a moment here of how we're going to accomplish these competitor pages?
[00:28:14] Caroline: Sure, this is kind of a more in the weeds tactical thing, but it's something I'm very excited about, which is in Framer, which is our new platform that we switched to from Webflow. I really like the way that you can, and you can do this with any kind of CMS, any platform that has a CMS, but you can basically create one page design. So we're going to do these more like landing pages versus articles. But imagine I create one page design just called like slash compare or whatever. And it's like, okay, you have your headline, you have three features to call out. You have screenshots, you have a pricing table, and then like a little call to action at the bottom, right? Like, that's the layout of my page. But now what's cool is with Framer CMS, I can basically assign dynamic content on that page. So I can say like, okay, here's my title. I want you to dynamically replace that with all of my CMS entries. So then I do one for Teachery versus Teachable. And I say, okay, make the title Teachery versus Teachable. But then I do one that's just Teachery versus Kajabi. I'm like, make the title Teachable, Teachery versus Kajabi. And what's cool is I just have to make the entries and then it just populates the design based on the almost like database entries.
[00:29:27] Jason: Yeah, that's really all it is.
[00:29:28] Caroline: That's really all it is. And that's really helpful because you're not having to reinvent the wheel and create.
[00:29:33] Jason: All these new pages.
[00:29:34] Caroline: All these new pages. It's kind of doing it for you and it's much easier to then update as well.
[00:29:38] Jason: Yeah. So very excited to put that to the test. I would say we're actually probably like 80% done with the competitor pages project. We had already started this about a month ago. And so I basically took a wireframe that I put together. You made that in Framer, you put together the CMS. I filled out all the entries with all the data. So we just really have to like kind of button that up and then publish it. Um, I don't think there were any necessary big changes from the strategist on what we were thinking through. I actually did a little bit of research on like other software companies that have competitor pages and just cobbled together the one that I liked the best because who knows how they all work. But it was just the one that I thought was kind of the easiest.
[00:30:17] Caroline: Take imperfect action.
[00:30:18] Jason: Yeah, exactly. So our goal, I'll come back to our goals at the end, but our goal is going to be six completed and published pages by the next time we record a podcast episode. So that is a goal for this.
[00:30:29] Caroline: We do it.
[00:30:30] Jason: All right. The next and last thing before we come back around to articles with categories and topics is one thing that we had not been thinking about, has not been on our radar whatsoever, and that is basically user generated content, UGC, as the kids say, but in article format for Teachery. So essentially what this is is reaching out to our customers and saying, like, hey, what success have you had with Teachery? What features do you really love? Like, what are things that you would want to highlight? Having them write an article based on their experience and publishing that on our website with the hope that they're going to then share it with their audience so that you're getting them, sharing them, adding backlinks to it. And again, the whole point of everything we're doing this week is organic traffic increasing through Google. So we're trying to create moments for Google to see like, oh, this page was created. It was shared by a bunch of people. It, you know, got a bunch of views from Instagram because this person had a bigger audience or whatever. This page should rank higher for whatever this keyword is.
[00:31:32] Caroline: Yeah. And I think it also makes sense to try and, like, I could see us rolling out this strategy a little bit later, not necessarily this month, because I think it makes the most sense. When we start publishing content, we have a little bit of a social audience. We can add that as a value add of like, hey, we'll shout it out on our socials, etcetera. I'm not saying you would have to do that, but you also want to think about what's in it for that person. Right. Part of it is just the validity of being recognized by a company, a platform. Um, but I think the sharing and exposing them and kind of getting their name out there to a different audience is also obviously a value add. So this is a little bit more of like a bigger project because you have to create a system for it, right. You have to have, what's the submission system like, you have to have someone kind of managing the influx. You have to be putting it all together. So I'd be lying if I said I wasn't, like, overwhelmed by this part of the plan, but I do think it's a very interesting idea and I'm definitely down to do it.
[00:32:32] Jason: I also like doing it three months from now anyway, because you want to see all this other stuff that we're doing if that creates a lift.
[00:32:40] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:32:40] Jason: So it's like we always talk about this. It's like, don't change all the variables. You don't know which thing actually moved the needle. So it's like, you know, publishing a couple competitor pages and some articles is good enough for three months.
[00:32:51] Caroline: See what that does.
[00:32:52] Jason: See what that does. See if any of those things start to rank, see if any of those things actually start to get traction. And then in three months, we could start doing the UGC content tactic. And then we'll have some data from there because that's going to take time anyway to figure out. So those are really the big three buckets. Again, we're going to come back to the articles here. So right now, no immediate goal with the user generated content. Just three months, we'll come back to it. But I think that was a good, interesting idea that we had not been thinking about at all.
[00:33:17] Caroline: Definitely.
[00:33:18] Jason: So articles, competitor pages, and user generated content. Articles, if you will, are kind of the main three. Now let's circle back to article content, kind of like topics, ideas, and then what our goal is before next podcast episode with articles.
[00:33:33] Caroline: Yeah, and I think we might have mentioned this in a previous episode, but I don't think we went deep into the actual titles of these articles. But Jason and I just sat down and we said like, okay, let's think about our ideal customer for Teachery. And if they were trying to create and sell a digital product, what are the things that they would need help with? And the simplest way, this is my tip for you. The simplest way that I thought about the categories was like a process, start to finish. So we kind of established the five different categories would be step one, how to like plan your digital product content and come up with your idea. That's kind of the planning part of the process. How to build your digital product, how to design your digital product, how to sell your digital product, and then how to improve your digital products customer experience. Right. So for you, if you're like, I don't know where to start with my article ideas, think about it like a process. What is the ultimate outcome someone is trying to get to? And think of each step in the process as a potential category. That's one way to do it.
[00:34:32] Jason: Yeah. Yeah. And I think in our notes, I'm looking at a little table that we created that basically has like the five categories across the top and then articles listed below it. I actually still think even though we used online course as the keyword and like, the ideation as we were coming up with this, to give this to the strategist to have them say, like, yay or nay on this, even though the keyword has completely changed from online course to digital product, I think it's a pretty easy replace.
[00:34:58] Caroline: Totally.
[00:34:58] Jason: I think for the majority of these, like, how to come up with your next online course idea. How to come up with your next digital product idea. Three ways to validate your online course idea. Three ways to validate your digital product idea. You know, then we have like a bunch of like, Teachery specific things, but like, how to price your online course, how to price your digital product.
[00:35:13] Caroline: Exactly. And if anything, then there's even more opportunities to then add, like, you know, ten different digital products.
[00:35:20] Jason: Exactly.
[00:35:21] Caroline: Like, and then all the ones that I just listed before, it's like selling templates, selling this, selling that, so...
[00:35:25] Jason: And I think the really helpful thing there too is whenever we say, like, you know, create and sell Notion templates, it's like, cool. Here's our Teachery Notion template.
[00:35:34] Caroline: Theme.
[00:35:35] Jason: Theme.
[00:35:35] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:35:36] Jason: That you can literally click and it's like three lessons are set up for you. It kind of has a Notion-y, like, design and feel already and just some simple instructions on, like, put links to your themes here, do here, customize your payment page and you're set. Like, that's all you have to do is give someone the payment page and they can buy this and it's set up. So I think that's actually going to be really helpful. So that's really kind of the plan of those articles. I think overall, our goal would be to have, I think there's something like 30 ish here that we would eventually have published, but we're not going to get 30 done in a week. So our goal that we came up with was...?
[00:36:12] Caroline: What?
[00:36:13] Jason: Eight.
[00:36:14] Caroline: Eight.
[00:36:14] Jason: So between the two of us, I think we could get eight done. It's actually between the three of us.
[00:36:19] Caroline: You mean Tobor?
[00:36:20] Jason: You mean Tobor. Tobor is what we call ChatGPT. It's robot backwards. Tobor. I think we can get three or eight done for each. And I think even if we did send a message back to the SEO strategist to kind of confirm, like, hey, can you just let us know if switching out these article names with the new keyword makes sense? Um, even if for some reason that person doesn't get back to us within the week, it's not going to hurt to get these articles going because we already know like, these are articles that we should have for Teachery.
[00:36:46] Caroline: Yeah. We're just going to move forward imperfectly and better than nothing.
[00:36:49] Jason: Yeah. And I think the other part there is kind of with the same short form content, long form content. It is not to be publishing those articles yet. It's just to have those articles written so we can be like, okay, does this feel like the right content? Because we also have to, sorry to leave you high and dry on that. We also have to create the design in Framer for the blog and the actual articles themselves.
[00:37:11] Caroline: Which I'm about halfway done with. Again, I sort of started this many months ago and so it's just a matter of now that we kind of have a better strategy. I can button up some aspects of good examples, like, okay, if we want to do UGC in the future, have a little author thing with a link, that type of stuff. But I'm almost there on that.
[00:37:31] Jason: And I think we've also learned a lot about like how to structure like an articles page on a website. And it's just like make it so much simpler. You know, it's like gone are the days of like trying to make it fancy and different and unique. It's like that just slows Google down for being able to crawl your site and serve up your content. Just make it really easy. So like an article landing page, it should just be very clear of like, okay, what are the categories? If there are categories of content. List the links to the articles and like, don't overthink it and don't overdo it. And that's, that's really more of like a lesson learned for us, of like we're the people always trying to fancy everything up and overdo the design.
[00:38:05] Caroline: You got to do it differently sometimes. It's just about knowing when to do it differently and when to not reinvent the wheel.
[00:38:11] Jason: Exactly.
[00:38:11] Caroline: And it's hard. It's hard to figure out.
[00:38:13] Jason: All right, so hopefully by the next time we record this podcast, we will have eight written articles, we will have six competitor pages published. Those will be live.
[00:38:21] Caroline: So far our trend line has been establish a goal.
[00:38:24] Jason: Yes.
[00:38:24] Caroline: Get about 75% there.
[00:38:26] Jason: Yes.
[00:38:26] Caroline: So we'll see, though, this could be 100%.
[00:38:28] Jason: But I hope that's relatable for everybody listening to this. It's like, it's great to set these goals, but if you don't hit 100% of your goal, you're not hitting that bullseye on your target. That's okay. It's not about always...
[00:38:38] Caroline: Shoot for the moon and you'll land among the stars.
[00:38:40] Jason: I don't like that.
[00:38:41] Caroline: Shoot for the bullseye and you'll land on the target.
[00:38:43] Jason: You won't hit your feet.
[00:38:45] Caroline: Okay, the new phrase is...
[00:38:47] Jason: Here we go.
[00:38:47] Caroline: Aim for the bullseye and you'll not land among your feet.
[00:38:51] Jason: And you won't shoot your foot with an arrow.
[00:38:54] Caroline: We're gonna workshop it.
[00:38:55] Jason: I think that's the phrase.
[00:38:56] Caroline: Put it on a cross stitch pillow.
[00:38:58] Jason: We'll walk away from this...
[00:39:00] Caroline: What is it? Shoot for the bullseye and land and not, and nobody land among your feet.
[00:39:07] Jason: Okay. It's really doing it. Okay, we're done.
[00:39:10] Caroline: Shoot for the bullseye and don't hit your foot.
[00:39:11] Jason: Okay.
[00:39:11] Caroline: That's the best one yet.
[00:39:12] Jason: Thank you so much, everybody, for listening. We'll be back next week with another content update and then what we're working on after that, which is pretty much going to be publishing and starting to get back into short form content again.
[00:39:25] Caroline: Then we out there.
[00:39:25] Jason: Then long form.
[00:39:26] Caroline: And also, how are we going to publish this content on a regular basis? That's the big question I have not figured out yet.
[00:39:32] Jason: We'll all find out next week. All right, thanks, everybody. Bye.
[00:39:35] Caroline: Bye.