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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 un-boring 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. All righty. Let's start this episode.
[00:00:40] Caroline: Let's start this episode with a very important thing.
[00:00:43] Jason: Oh, okay.
[00:00:43] Caroline: It's your birthday.
[00:00:44] Jason: Oh. As of recording, it is my birthday.
[00:00:46] Caroline: As we're recording this, it is your birthday. I would like to say happy birthday.
[00:00:49] Jason: Yeah.
[00:00:50] Caroline: I would like to say that I am very glad that you were born.
[00:00:54] Jason: Oh, okay.
[00:00:54] Caroline: And that you're my favorite person.
[00:00:57] Jason: Oh, that's so nice.
[00:00:57] Caroline: And I love you so much.
[00:00:58] Jason: I can't wait for you to bake me birthday cinnamon rolls this weekend when we get back from our little trip to Lisboa.
[00:01:03] Caroline: It feels like you're really setting me up for failure, and that's the part that you're gonna find enjoyable. And I don't know what to think about that.
[00:01:09] Jason: I was trying to decide this morning, do I want you just to make the cinnamon rolls that I make all the time so I have, like, a comparison, or do I want to give you, like, a batch that, like, I've wanted to try but I haven't done yet?
[00:01:17] Caroline: I think you should give me the OGs.
[00:01:19] Jason: We'll find out.
[00:01:19] Caroline: We'll be able to...
[00:01:20] Jason: 'Cause it's my birthday, I get to choose.
[00:01:22] Caroline: That's true.
[00:01:22] Jason: I have a little fun thing to share.
[00:01:25] Caroline: To kick things off?
[00:01:25] Jason: With the audience.
[00:01:26] Caroline: How much of this are you going to play?
[00:01:28] Jason: Oh, I'm going to play, like, I think, like, 15 seconds or so.
[00:01:31] Caroline: Okay. Okay. Okay.
[00:01:31] Jason: Yeah. So this.
[00:01:33] Caroline: Tee it up for them.
[00:01:34] Jason: This is. I heard about this AI tool on another podcast, and these AI tools are popping up constantly, and so I'm always interested just to try them out. This one, specifically, is creating original songs from prompts. So you just give it a prompt, and it creates a song. And so.
[00:01:49] Caroline: What... Do you have the prompt?
[00:01:51] Jason: I think, yeah. Let me see.
[00:01:52] Caroline: You told me it was a one sentence prompt.
[00:01:54] Jason: Yeah, it was a one sentence prompt.
[00:01:56] Caroline: Which is pretty incredible.
[00:01:57] Jason: Let's see here. Let's go to create. Oh, it went away.
[00:01:59] Caroline: Okay. It was about WAIM, though.
[00:02:01] Jason: It was literally the... I can kind of tell you exactly it was. We're a husband and wife team named Caroline and Jason Zook, who run an un-boring coaching program for digital creators who want to build calm businesses.
[00:02:16] Caroline: Okay, that's all you said?
[00:02:16] Jason: That's what I wrote.
[00:02:17] Caroline: Okay.
[00:02:17] Jason: Okay. Let's go ahead and hit play, and you all get to listen to this masterpiece that is created by computers, which is incredible.
[00:02:24] Song Lyrics: With Jason and Caroline. They got the healing touch for creators, for businesses, without the rush, with a calm approach. They bring zen to the game, teaching entrepreneurs to find peace and fame. No hustle, no crime. They'll show you how to build without causing a scene. From the early morning meditations to the late night chats, they'll guide you through the chaos where true success is at. In the quest.
[00:02:50] Jason: This is amazing.
[00:02:51] Song Lyrics: Brainstorm and create. Crafting strategies that'll make the business elevate from marketing to mindset. They've got it all down.
[00:02:58] Jason: Here comes.
[00:02:59] Caroline: Here comes the hook.
[00:02:59] Song Lyrics: Success is the only crown.
[00:03:00] Jason: What?
[00:03:02] Caroline: Okay. Yeah. In case you didn't hear it, that the hook of the song is success is the only crown.
[00:03:09] Jason: Is the only crown.
[00:03:10] Caroline: And the fact that that is so, first of all, antithetical to what we talk about, but then also, like, wait, what?
[00:03:18] Jason: Yeah.
[00:03:18] Caroline: What does that mean?
[00:03:19] Jason: A little bit confusing.
[00:03:20] Caroline: I love it so much. So the official new motto of this podcast, in an ironic way, is success is the only crown.
[00:03:26] Jason: Success is the only crown.
[00:03:27] Caroline: But I loved, first of all, pursuing something about pursuing peace and fame. I really liked that part.
[00:03:33] Jason: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:03:34] Caroline: 'Cause we're nothing if not pursuing fame on this podcast.
[00:03:36] Jason: This is very true. All of you should be famous, and we hope you become famous. You can try this tool out for yourself. It's completely free. All you have to do is just create a login to sign up. It's suno.com. suno, suno, suno.com. i think it's also dot AI, but I actually. I'm very interested in looking up what the... the rights are for creating songs and tracks because you can do instrumental versions only. So I could just click instrumental on that. And we just have, like, a chill hip hop beat.
[00:04:04] Caroline: For YouTube videos and stuff?
[00:04:05] Jason: Yeah, exactly. So I'm... I'm very curious.
[00:04:07] Caroline: Wait, that's kind of cool.
[00:04:08] Jason: I also love the... the podcast that I heard this on. The guy is like me, where he's not good at doing prompts for AI's. And he was like, I just draw. Like, I become like, a blank mind when I see this. And so I just wrote, like, give me, like, a song in the style of Journey. That's... What did he say?
[00:04:25] Caroline: Don't stop believing.
[00:04:25] Jason: Don't stop believing. And it's like, okay, that's just a Journey song. And I died because I'm like, that's me. When I look at, like, writing prompts, and I think a lot of you listening to this are similar to the way that I think about it. Caroline is a prompt master, so...
[00:04:37] Caroline: I was... My brain was built for prompt engineering. Like, I feel like I am thriving...
[00:04:43] Jason: In the prompt...
[00:04:44] Caroline: In the prompt era right now. And Jason and I love doing this at our house where I'm like, I'm training it on this. I'm telling it this. I'm asking it this. Jason's like, I asked it for some Portuguese verbs I could practice.
[00:04:57] Jason: Yeah. Also, this is the perfect illustration is a year ago today when we had the Zelda Tears of the Kingdom birthday themed quest that you had ChatGPT, the early version of ChatGPT, create an entire scavenger hunt.
[00:05:10] Caroline: Scavenger hunt. And it was great. So we just have fun with these tools. Obviously, we got a good laugh out of that. And, you know, there's a part of me where, like, literally, when you just said that about the ideas sparking for, like, you know, background tracks for YouTube videos and things like that, I know the first instinct is always like, well, we need to pay real people who make those songs. And I'm like, but here's... Here's what I do think is the... is the promise of AI. Do we really think that talented musicians want to be composing, like, just generic background music for, you know, YouTube videos? No. To be licensed? I think that those musicians create that because they know that it's a way to monetize their talents. But I just wonder if there are ways for AI to take the spot of that type of creativity, to free up musicians to actually create, like...
[00:06:05] Jason: Their, like, dream music.
[00:06:06] Caroline: Their actual good music, you know what I mean? And of course, I don't have the answers to, like, how the economics work out on that. On, like, where, where then are they going? But I just wonder, like, is this going to be a new era of creativity? Yes, of course you're going to have the garbage. Yes, of course you're going to have, like, a lot more clutter and noise. I think we... we are going to have to get through that era, but I'm hoping that some of the efficiencies created by AI will also mean that creative people are able to use their talents for truly artistic means. Does that make sense?
[00:06:39] Jason: It does. That's a whole other existential conversation to have at a different time. Let's move into the content extravaganza, because that's what everyone's here for. We already wasted too much time talking about AI hip hop intros. And everyone is here for the Sunday! Sunday! Sunday! Updates.
[00:06:54] Caroline: That's right.
[00:06:55] Jason: So we, this week, if you listen to the episode last week, we had a little bit of a pivot from, we were going to write articles this week for Teachery. That was the goal. But we, spoiler alert, hired an SEO strategist that the report didn't get back to us in time for our schedule. So we pivoted to long form videos. And we're getting into that. But before we get into that.
[00:07:14] Caroline: Yes.
[00:07:14] Jason: I wanted to do a little brief history of our long form video experience.
[00:07:18] Caroline: Okay.
[00:07:18] Jason: Because we both have different experiences in this.
[00:07:20] Caroline: Yes.
[00:07:20] Jason: And so when we embark on this project, there's a lot to kind of, you know, there's baggage that we're both bringing.
[00:07:26] Caroline: Yes.
[00:07:26] Jason: And also, it has historically, long form video has been the hardest thing for us to collaborate on.
[00:07:32] Caroline: Yes.
[00:07:33] Jason: If there was a match game and they were asking us a question of, like, in your business...
[00:07:38] Caroline: What is the single greatest activity that causes the most tension?
[00:07:42] Jason: Friction.
[00:07:42] Caroline: And we'd be like, video creation.
[00:07:44] Jason: Always long form videos.
[00:07:45] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:07:46] Jason: So let's...
[00:07:47] Caroline: We'll do a whole other episode about why that is, maybe, but...
[00:07:49] Jason: Yeah, it's two chefs in the kitchen. We know why it is.
[00:07:52] Caroline: That's true.
[00:07:53] Jason: That's why there really aren't two directors on movies. It's just usually a director, and that's it. Okay, so my history, I'll just jump into it since I'm already talking, is I have been making videos since 2008. Now, I was not a kid who made videos when I was growing up. I didn't. We didn't have a camera or anything, so I never did that. But, like, the first time I ever made a video was really 2008 with my friend, Chet, and we just were playing around with things and whatever. That led into my IWearYourShirt business, where then I created over 1600 YouTube videos.
[00:08:22] Caroline: That's so many videos.
[00:08:24] Jason: Every single day. And what's funny is yesterday I was actually pulling a couple of them down to give to our editor for the video that's coming out about our recap of long form video on YouTube. And I was watching some videos. I'm like, I remember these videos being like, nine minutes long.
[00:08:37] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:08:37] Jason: They're like two and a half minutes long. And that still took me, like, 6 hours to edit.
[00:08:42] Caroline: Absolutely.
[00:08:42] Jason: And there's no editing. Like, there's not a lot going on in the videos.
[00:08:46] Caroline: Yeah. But just the process of, like, bringing clips into iMovie... early, early iMovie.
[00:08:54] Jason: Yeah.
[00:08:55] Caroline: iMovie was great. I was even able to use iMovie.
[00:08:57] Jason: I was going to say, in your history. But anyway, so, you know, years go by. I then took a big break from video because I did 1600 videos almost every single day. I got very burnt out. I didn't want to touch a camera. And then with really, with like, Wandering Aimfully, video started to come back in, which was like a five year break.
[00:09:12] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:09:12] Jason: So that's where we started to do a couple more, like, informational educational videos.
[00:09:16] Caroline: And we've experimented with a lot of different styles over the years for those videos. When we were building Wandering Aimfully, remember we did the, the build diary videos?
[00:09:23] Jason: Yeah. We even did some, like, artsier ones. Like, I tried to film a lot of, like, challenge ones.
[00:09:29] Caroline: Challenges. We did unedited meanings. Like, we've never, we haven't yet found our stride with that, but maybe with this new thing, I don't know.
[00:09:36] Jason: Yeah, well, I will say, I think the thing that I really like in getting into this project this week that it showed me is that video has actually gotten a lot easier.
[00:09:44] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:09:44] Jason: But it's not necessarily one tool that rules them all to make it easier. What I think has really changed is now you have different tools that are very good at singular things, and you combine them together and we'll talk about the four tools that have really helped us in this process. But I have really learned as someone who transitioned to only working in Final Cut, and then, like, I would do supporting graphics in Keynote or Photoshop or whatever, it's a very inefficient way to do things, and that's how I've always done them. So I'm having to relearn all these new or, well, forget all the things that I used to know and learn new things. So that's my history.
[00:10:16] Caroline: All these, like, animation tools have come a long way, right, of... And these user friendly tools. So it's like you have your CapCuts and you have your Canvas. And I do feel like software developers or software tools are making tools for kind of the masses now of like, no longer do you have to be an expert of learning Final Cut Pro.
[00:10:34] Jason: Or After Effects.
[00:10:35] Caroline: Or After Effects, yeah. So that part is cool. So my video experience is very limited, I think. I can't even remember the first video I did, but I do remember, I think I edited the BASSSF videos in iMovie. Do you remember that?
[00:10:48] Jason: Oh, I think you definitely edited the tutorial part.
[00:10:50] Caroline: Yeah. So that, I think.
[00:10:53] Jason: There's a series on our YouTube channel called, Watch us build a squarespace site from scratch. The acronym was BASSSF because it was fun to say. If you want to go into the Wandering Aimfully channel, I'll drop a link to the playlist in the show notes and you can watch some of those.
[00:11:05] Caroline: I think that was my first experience of trying to do long form video, and I'm... Like, all my skills, I'm glad that I did that because it provided a foundation for this. But I am much more experienced in doing short form video, which is not even to say very experienced. So I was going into this just like having a basic understanding of, like, timeline management and clips.
[00:11:25] Jason: And I would say you came in without the baggage that I did of, like, I work in Final Cut. I use Photoshop and Keynote to support the graphics. That is how I work.
[00:11:34] Caroline: I was very much coming clean of, like, whatever tool is going to help me get this done fastest and most painlessly is the way I'm going to do it. So that brings us to our plan for the week. So we set a very simple goal for ourselves of three long form videos for Teachery. Teachery was the goal this week, and we described what the video topics were in the last episode, where they basically span across these four buckets of design tools, Teachery tutorial tips, and then just kind of like supporting tips for course creation.
[00:12:08] Jason: Yeah.
[00:12:08] Caroline: And so the first video that we decided to film was our first pancake. And that was just my process of designing a Teachery course from start to finish for a brand designer, which is just kind of like an avatar of a Teachery customer.
[00:12:22] Jason: Very much in the vein of, like, if you've seen these YouTube videos, like, watch me design a site for x.
[00:12:26] Caroline: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:12:26] Jason: So that, that style.
[00:12:28] Caroline: And so we tried to take some of our learnings. Let's just talk about, like, how the process went of that first pancake.
[00:12:34] Jason: Yeah.
[00:12:35] Caroline: And of course, it was a slog.
[00:12:36] Jason: Yes.
[00:12:36] Caroline: Because if we have taught you nothing at this point, the first pancake is always the slowest, the most inefficient, the hardest, the most frustrating. And that's okay. You have to get past those first few in order to, like, really get better.
[00:12:49] Jason: Oh, can I talk about one thing that...?
[00:12:51] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:12:51] Jason: So one big change for this experiment of these long form videos. In previous eras, when we have made, a kind of watch us build video. The way that we would do it was there really wasn't a script. There were kind of bullets to follow. But what you would do is just start recording your screen, have a mic, start working, and you would work and then talk. You would work, and then talk. And the video that you recorded might be an hour and a half long. Like, it's just there's so much pausing. You're doing things and whatever. And that's a real pain to edit a huge file like that.
[00:13:20] Caroline: You know what's funny? And I'll tell you why I did it that way. Because in my mind, my brain tricked me into thinking that was the easiest way to do it because I didn't want a script. And I just thought, well, obviously, let's lower the barrier to getting started. So if I can just hit record and talk, that's great. But in retrospect, it made every part of the process worse. It made the recording of it harder because I felt under pressure, and it felt very like, I don't know what I'm doing. Like, I don't know where to guide the viewer next. The second thing is, we all know I'm long winded. That is, I like to talk. I would watch the end result of the video and be like, why did we get...? So many unnecessary words.
[00:14:04] Jason: And also, it's like, where is...? There's no place to cut.
[00:14:07] Caroline: Exactly.
[00:14:07] Jason: Give me a place to cut, ma'am.
[00:14:10] Caroline: She does not give you a place to cut. Once I hit record on my computer, I can talk for... I'm not kidding you. If you needed me to talk for an hour straight, I could talk for an hour straight, and I just forget to breathe and stop. The third thing. And there would be plenty of parts where I'm just like, there's nothing happening on screen. Like, the mouse is just idle and I'm talking, and, like, that's not an interesting video. And also the... And then it makes the edit ten times harder because I'm like, how do I cut this out? How do I trim this down? Okay, so my lesson learned, and also from short form video, was we must script.
[00:14:42] Jason: Yeah.
[00:14:42] Caroline: There's a new rule. We must script. I think it also is, like, respect to the audience, because more than ever, there's so much content, and we don't have time to view it all. And, like, you have to be economical with your words and your time. Okay, so I thought, I'll just script. And that's my first lesson. And I will say that the filming of the video was a million times more enjoyable because I scripted. And so that was my first learning of, like, definitely that works. Um, the problem and the biggest thing that I learned. So my plan was like, let me write the script, and then let me record the, what we call a roll where I'm just talking to camera. Let me do all of that first. Then we're going to edit the a roll down, you know, to take out all my flubs and stuff.
[00:15:23] Jason: Also, just a quick note here for all of you who care and are interested like me. Um, we do not have, we do not own a single piece of lighting equipment. We do not own a camera. We used an iPhone using the continuity feature through Quicktime on a laptop. We recorded next to a window. The only thing we have are these podcast mics.
[00:15:38] Caroline: Yep.
[00:15:38] Jason: So I bought a little stand that the mic could sit on so it wouldn't be a big boom arm in the way. That's our minimal setup. Like, we just were like, we're not going to invest in a bunch of stuff or like a big, like, room. Like, I really want to have a recording studio, but we just got to get going with this. We just want to share that.
[00:15:52] Caroline: So my plan was record the a roll, edit down the a roll and then in... For me, since I was editing using CapCut, basically, then do my screen recording footage and kind of pull the clips in as I edit. Okay. That turned out to be a bad idea because it was so tedious to go back to CapCut, then be like, okay, I need this screen recording, then go to the screen recording, do the couple of clicks, then match it up, then...
[00:16:17] Jason: Which is, which is what makes sense logically.
[00:16:19] Caroline: It does.
[00:16:19] Jason: It makes sense to record the script. Okay. Because this is how I think, too, in video. It's like, you have the a roll. Great. Now what do we need to put on top of it?
[00:16:26] Caroline: What's the visual? Yeah, it's like, do the audio, then do the visual. That made sense. It was just too long and too tedious. And so what I thought was, let me.
[00:16:36] Jason: Sorry, I don't mean to interrupt you, but I like just having these little asides. We're sitting on the couch together. I'm working on something. You're editing this first pancake, and I think you're like four minutes into the edit and you're like, hey, I have an idea. And I'm like, okay. And you're like, I'm going to continue to work on this video, but I think for the second video, I really want to change my process where I do this. And my brain hates stopping the momentum of a thing we're already doing.
[00:16:59] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:16:59] Jason: So I'm like, no, you figured out a new process. You're scripting and then you're a rolling, and then you're doing the clips. And so I'm like, don't... don't change. And you're like, this is the first video. I'm only a couple minutes into it, and I think this would be a better version for the second video. So I just want to share that I had apprehension about how you decided to ship things for the second video. But I think it was a great idea just based on your experience.
[00:17:19] Caroline: Yeah. Thank you so much. And that happens a lot. That's okay. We have different brains and we have different resistance to different things. But for the second video, I thought, here's an idea. Why don't I record the screen recording footage as I say the a roll. So, for example, if my script says, now you're going to open up a new design in Canva and you're going to select doc, right? Video one, I'm just recording that to camera. And then I'm like, let me... Then I'll do the...
[00:17:47] Jason: Then you'll do it after.
[00:17:48] Caroline: Then I'll do it after and I'll put the clip on top. And that ended up being tedious. So instead, what I did was, for the second video, I wrote the script. And then in my Notion script, I created these fun little automation buttons that basically allow me to insert a different type of visual. So it's like, put an a roll here, put a screen recording here, or put like a graphic on screen here. And so I went through line by line of my script. It's like double scripting, right? It's like scripting and storyboarding. Like, what is this thing you're saying and what is the visual on screen? And again, I had so much resistance to that because it's so much prep work and it's so much before you ever get going. But the way that it made the experience so much better on the back end. So then with my second video, what I did was now I have the script and I have the visual on screen. I prepped all of my assets, I got all my tabs open. And then all I have to do is I set up the camera and I'm like, okay, open your doc. So I'm saying the thing as I'm clicking, right.
[00:18:41] Jason: Yeah.
[00:18:41] Caroline: And then what that also does is it makes the timing really great. So half of what took me the longest time in the first video was like, I'm mousing around because I'm doing it after the fact and it's a 20 second clip of my mouse and it's a 12 second clip of my audio. And I have to like speed it up and do do do and chop it up and that took forever, so...
[00:19:00] Jason: I also...
[00:19:01] Caroline: I know we're in the weeds here, but I hope this is interesting.
[00:19:03] Jason: I think this is helpful for people, especially who are thinking about video, to hear some of these things because it might be, like, for us, these little light bulb moments. You're like, oh, I hadn't thought that you could even do it that way. Like, and I want to say that if you're hearing us talk about, like, how much prep goes in the beginning of the video, this is the thing I really struggle with is it feels inefficient to me to spend a bunch of time in the beginning where I don't feel like I'm actually doing anything. But what you don't realize is you're actually setting later you up for success. And I want to give you a quick little aside metaphor, especially for a lot of you listening. You have probably launched a product, and I think many people will relate to the fact of your first time you ever launch something, you don't really have a plan. You don't know what to prep. You don't know what to do. So you kind of get into it, and then you feel like you're scrambling the entire launch. I'm writing emails last minute. I'm creating social graphics last minute. I'm trying to, like, get things on the sales page fixed, like, the night before.
[00:19:52] Caroline: Because if you've never done it, it's hard for your brain to think ahead and go, oh, I'll need to do that.
[00:19:54] Jason: Exactly. But then you get a launch under your belt and you think like, oh, I'm gonna get this done a month in advance. The sales page can be ready, my emails are gonna be written, my social graphics can be done, whatever. And then as the launch comes, you're like, I'm just literally hitting publish or things are already queued up. It's so much easier. That, to me, is exactly what this second video felt like.
[00:20:10] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:20:11] Jason: You do all this work ahead of time, and it actually doesn't take that much longer. What happens is you end up saving a ton of time in the editing time, and that's just a way of changing your thinking of, like, how a video gets edited together.
[00:20:21] Caroline: Definitely. And, yeah, so that process worked a lot better. And so just to, again, recap that. For my second video, basically what happened was I had an a roll clip of all my audio, and then I had a screen recording kind of b roll, let's just call it, clip of my mouse movements.
[00:20:41] Jason: And you were basically just recording the a roll with the Quicktime setup with the camera, like I said. And then the b roll would be with?
[00:20:47] Caroline: Screen Studio at the same time.
[00:20:49] Jason: That's our, it's one of our favorite applications. We absolutely love it. Link in description.
[00:20:53] Caroline: And it worked so great. And then you, well, on the first video, I was like, I think I can use a text based. If you listen to the last podcast episode, you'll know that one of our big learnings as well, since we're new to this editing world in 2024, is text based editing, where the AI transcribes your audio.
[00:21:13] Jason: Yeah, transcript based editing.
[00:21:14] Caroline: Transcript based editing. They call it text based if you google it, but it'll transcribe your audio and then you can basically just almost like editing a document, but it'll edit the video footage that goes with it. And so CapCut, it was a little long to transcode, so I found that Adobe Premiere Pro does this. And we subscribed to this creative suite, Adobe Creative Suite. So I was like, great, I'll download Premiere Pro. I'll just use it to do the text based editing. And Jason was like, I think I can do this faster than the AI can do it. And I was like, no freaking way.
[00:21:44] Jason: Well, the AI plus you, right? So it's like...
[00:21:46] Caroline: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:21:46] Jason: The time of you sitting in Adobe Premiere Pro, you've never used it, so you kind of have to figure it out, but then just edit the text of the transcript.
[00:21:52] Caroline: But I was like, there's no way. There's no way. And he was like, do you want to bet? And I was like, great competition for our marriage. Always good. So we set up a dueling edits where Jason would just edit the a roll old school style on the timeline in Final Cut, listening to it and just cutting it together. And I would use the text based editing. I was at a little bit of a disadvantage because I had never used Premiere Pro before, but Jason was generous enough to let me, like, set up my project before we got started. I finished like probably 30 seconds after him, but he freaking beat me. And I will give you credit because your edit was way better. It was like tighter.
[00:22:29] Jason: Yeah.
[00:22:30] Caroline: And that was just...
[00:22:31] Jason: I think that's the thing, too, is like, you know, there are always gonna be different ways to do things. And so I think part of this process, what we learned is like, it still may be faster for me to do the a roll, and not just faster, but the quality of the a roll that you get out of it is actually better because I tighten everything up really nicely. And that's a tedious task to go back and do that a transcript based editor can't really do, but I can do it while I'm editing, like a normal timeline. So that was just a learning for us of, like, well, let's put it to the test because the transcript based editor feels faster because you're just editing text, but the end product is not as good. So it's like, okay, in our learnings, me editing the a roll, it doesn't take me long at all. I can rip through it. So that's actually, let's keep doing that because I don't mind doing it. It's really fast. I literally put, like, synthwave in my headphones.
[00:23:14] Caroline: I have to give you all the credit. Like, it's incredible how fast you can do that. And I think that's just from muscle memory.
[00:23:18] Jason: Repetition, for sure. And you learn, like, actually, our friend Matt D'Avella made a video about this. And I was like, oh, I didn't even think that I did that. But, like, you, you don't even edit by listening to the video. You just edit by looking at the wave forms. And you just know, like, I can see the pattern of you messing up four times in a row.
[00:23:35] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:23:35] Jason: And going, oh, okay, fourth one, boom. I'm not going to listen to the other ones.
[00:23:38] Caroline: Yeah, totally.
[00:23:39] Jason: So anyway.
[00:23:40] Caroline: Yeah, that's... so that really helped with our process, and that's all we're learning. Like, that's what these five weeks are about. It's about experimentation. It's about what do you learn? It's about, again, our newsletter this week was all about, like, you can't come up with a predictable process without first having an inefficient process, right? Like, so don't... Don't set yourself up for predictability right out of the gate. Experiment and then refine over time. And so, yeah, that the first video was a slog, of course, but I learned so many things. I did learn do not sleep on Canva video.
[00:24:13] Jason: This is incredible.
[00:24:14] Caroline: Because for those, as I kind of alluded to before, for those little moments where I need a visual on screen because I don't have a screen recording thing. Like, a perfect example is like, there's a moment in my second video script where I'm like, I need to tell people what the pricing tiers are for... because we talk about embedding your lesson videos using Canva. So I'm like, okay, if you're on the free plan, it's 1 or 5GB of footage. And if you're on the pro plan, it's 1 TB. There's nothing really for me to mouse over in that. So I just need to create, like, a little design graphic on screen that's visually interesting. And if you watch YouTube videos, you'll see people do this plenty of times. So I just go into Canva video and I have my little doodads and I just hit their animation for the page and it has some movement and it's interesting.
[00:24:59] Jason: It's really incredible. As someone who like...
[00:25:01] Caroline: It's so fast.
[00:25:01] Jason: I've been making those things by hand with, like, individual PNGs and, like, movies them.
[00:25:06] Caroline: Yep.
[00:25:06] Jason: It's incredible to watch you do that. And, like, I started to get in and play with it a little bit and now I do everything in Keynote, so I just export Keynote, little animations, movies.
[00:25:14] Caroline: Which you can.
[00:25:14] Jason: Which is about the same speed, I think.
[00:25:17] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:25:17] Jason: But I, but I think I can do that faster than you can necessarily do that in Keynote, but you can do it faster in Canva than I can do it in Canva. So it's like, it's such a great tool to have at our disposal. But, yeah, I think there's just...
[00:25:28] Caroline: And I do think Canva's animations are a little bit better suited for video than Keynote's animations.
[00:25:34] Jason: And I definitely, this is, this was one takeaway for me from this process, too, of like, again, old dog learning new tricks. Like, I do want to learn more about Canva video because I did play around with it a bit while you were doing this and I was like, oh, now I can see how to, like, re time the things and how to, like, you know, do this and the quick export and all this. Like, it is really, really nice. And, and the fact that you can kind of keep everything in like a nice timeline to, like, grab other images and things, it's really, really well done.
[00:25:57] Caroline: This is the part where I want to pause because anyone who's listening to this, I don't want to set the expectation that you're like, I'm sure you're probably listening to this and you're like, how am I supposed to know this about every, all these tools? Like, how am I supposed to. There's so many tools out there now. It's so overwhelming. What's the best thing to use for the right thing? And I just want to remind you, you only figure that stuff out by doing. You only start and then you go, okay, I need graphics. Okay, what's a good option for this? And then you learn and you kind of like, pick these little things up over time. Don't set yourself the expectation that you have to do that right out of the gate and your videos are going to be different than our videos. And what you like to use is going to be different than ours.
[00:26:40] Jason: It's fine.
[00:26:41] Caroline: So I just wanted to kind of set that. Don't be overwhelmed. Like, the only reason that we can talk about all these things that we learned is because we just got our hands dirty and started doing stuff.
[00:26:52] Jason: Yeah. All right. So I think by the end of the week, we kind of got to this place where you finished the first video with the first pancakeness of it. It was a little bit of a slog to kind of get through the edit because it wasn't, you know, so well done. The second video, while it was a shorter video, it also just showed, like, how much more efficient it was to put, get the visuals done ahead of time, record all those things, you know, have all that stuff set up. So I think by the next video that we work on for Teachery, we're gonna have a much better system in place for knowing that process.
[00:27:24] Caroline: And... and I will say the second video was really encouraging because, as you mentioned, it was only a five minute video, but I think it still turned out really great and was really helpful.
[00:27:32] Jason: And the first video was like 17 minutes.
[00:27:34] Caroline: And the first. The five minute video, I was like, oh, I can get that done in a day.
[00:27:39] Jason: Well, and this was a big takeaway for us, too, is, again, trying to get into this and experiment and play around is like, well, what type of videos do we want to be recording? Because no one says we have to record 17 minutes watch us build videos. Like, we get to choose that. We got all the sounds going on. But I think what we as business owners need to always be looking out for is like, but what is the thing that's best for us? Not what's the thing that, like, other people are doing. So maybe our Teachery YouTube strategy is they're only five minute videos. Like, we're not going to do 17 minutes long videos because it takes too much time. It takes too much effort. We don't have those resources. What we do have is the ability to crank out five minute videos once a week. Let's just be okay with that.
[00:28:16] Caroline: Yeah. So overall, two out of three ain't bad.
[00:28:19] Jason: Yeah.
[00:28:19] Caroline: And we learned a ton. And the most important thing that, again, we always want to come back to in this process is I enjoyed the process.
[00:28:26] Jason: Yeah. Yeah. And that. That is a really important part of this because no one wants to keep doing work they don't want to be doing.
[00:28:32] Caroline: Right.
[00:28:32] Jason: Um, we have a note here for me to talk about. We are starting to work with a video editing company because we don't want to be spending time doing these edits.
[00:28:39] Caroline: Well, and we're editing videos for two businesses.
[00:28:42] Jason: Right. And... and I... It's a little bit, I think, maybe premature to talk too much about it, but I just wanted to say that we are experimenting with that for the first. Well, we did a little bit when we were traveling full time in 2022. I worked with some editors on Upwork, which was good and very helpful because we really didn't have the time because we were traveling. But now I'm really trying to figure out, you know, can someone use all of the design stuff that we do in our videos and actually be able to apply that? And that is the really tricky part for us, is like, our travel videos were actually pretty easy. There's not a lot of graphics, not a lot of things. Like, it's just, here's a couple templates for the transitions. Everything else is just footage. So it's like, that's easy to match up. In these videos, like, there's lots of little whistles and, and biggs bangs and full on, like, little gizmos and pop ups and little things and lots of other little words that describe all that stuff that pops on screen.
[00:29:30] Caroline: Yeah. Gadgets and gizmos a-plenty.
[00:29:31] Jason: Um, it's not easy to give that to an editor who doesn't work in Canva, let's say, or doesn't have our design aesthetic or doesn't know these things. So we are trying to work with that. I'm not exactly sure how well it's going to work moving forward, but that's also a thing that I'm trying to work on is, like, releasing the, like, you have to do this as well as we can do it.
[00:29:48] Caroline: That is so funny because I feel like I have a totally different experience than you.
[00:29:52] Jason: Which is like, you're excited for someone else to try it?
[00:29:54] Caroline: Yes, because we got our first edit back from them and I had really, really low expectations and I think this actually reveals to, like, an affliction that you and I both have, which is nobody can do it but us.
[00:30:07] Jason: Yeah.
[00:30:07] Caroline: And I know that that's the case because we have all this knowledge and all this experience and all this branding and all this whatever in our heads, no one's going to ever be able to replicate that. But can they get close? And in getting close, can they save us 20 hours a week? Because this is the, I think, trap that a lot of solo creators fit into. And I consider us like solo creators. Like, if you don't want to manage a team, you just can you end up telling yourself that nobody can do it like you, and so I'll just do it. And this is. We both know that we're control freaks. That's. We know that about ourselves. We actually like that about ourselves. And it's part of the fun of having our own businesses. But we got the edit back from this company, and I had super low expectations. It was by no means perfect. Like, if what you create is an A plus, it was probably, you said a B minus. I'll give it a solid B. It was probably a B, but, like, it was the first one. For them to get a B on the first one, I was like, this is incredible. Like, I thought the design was actually gonna be quite bad, and it was not at all. They took some guidelines we gave them, and they did a really great job. So I think to myself, that's video one. What does video 30 look like?
[00:31:15] Jason: Yeah, exactly. Well, and that's just part of, like, anything that you're doing that is changing the way you've been doing it. It is just hard to do that. And the older we get, like, especially for me, it is so hard to change those things and to release, I think, the control of someone else doing it, so...
[00:31:30] Caroline: That's a lesson learned, though. So we'll. We will bring you along on that journey. We will give you updates as we, you know, kind of hone that process and see if it works for us. It may or may not, but so far, I feel optimistic about it.
[00:31:41] Jason: Great. All right, what's next?
[00:31:43] Caroline: What's next? The next thing. I don't want to spend too much time on this, but I came to a pretty big kind of revelation about two weeks ago.
[00:31:51] Jason: Yeah. Something was shifting in you.
[00:31:52] Caroline: Something was shifting in me, Jason. It always is. And I've alluded to it on this podcast since the beginning of the year. But we set these kind of aggressive goals to grow Teachery this year. And at the beginning of the year, that was extremely motivating, and I had all the hope in the world and all the optimism in the world. But if I'm just being honest with myself, the focus with which I have had to deploy for the first four months of the year is not a focus that I think is sustainable. And I was asking myself, like, why do I feel like I've been working so hard? I don't even know if that's the right word for it, but just focus, I think. And so I'm the type of person, and I have the type of brain that when I have a singular goal, like I'm a very goal oriented person. Some other things in my life can kind of...
[00:32:38] Jason: We've talked about that in multiple episodes.
[00:32:39] Caroline: Fall by the wayside and I don't like the way that that feels. And so I was kind of evaluating for myself and I'm like, why do I keep working this hard? And things are falling by the wayside and I don't like that. And where is that coming from? And I realized ultimately that these metrics that we're trying to hold ourselves to with Teachery and the combination of the fact that we're sharing it inside of our coaching program publicly, which means there's like this accountability piece to it, is keeping me stuck to those goals in a way that is actually not sustainable or healthy for me long term.
[00:33:14] Jason: Well, and it's becoming, it's a negative, right?
[00:33:16] Caroline: Exactly. It has flipped. It has gone from motivating to actually detrimental to like my daily well being. That sounds dramatic, but you know what I'm saying. Like, I just, I'm noticing kind of like the, I'm extrapolating this towards the next four months and I'm like, no, that's not going to end me up at a good place. And so as a calm business owner, like, you have to pay attention to that and you have to say, this is not sustainable. And so I told you, I think it's time that we just completely relinquish these like revenue goals, these customer goals for Teachery. You and I both agree that we want to at least be creating content for three to six months to see what happens, which to me says we need an input goal, not an outcome goal. So I don't know what that's going to mean for our customer base. I don't know what that's going to mean for our MRR by the end of the year. All I know is that I want to put content into the business and see what happens.
[00:34:06] Jason: Yeah. And we've gone on multiple walks now since you kind of made the shift. And I can tell that you just feel lighter. I can tell that you don't feel the pressure and I can tell that, you know, and it's, it is good to have goals. Like we, we like setting goals and we believe in setting goals. And I think when the business is moving along predictably, goals are really helpful.
[00:34:26] Caroline: And when you feel stuck and when you feel lost, I think a big goal, like an ambitious goal is so... It's like the spark that you need, it's the carrot that you need in order to get up in the morning and be like, yeah, I'm doing this. But as Jason just said, like, there does come a point where maybe it's no longer serving you and you just have to pay very careful attention to when that flip happens. And again, we go back to this all the time. If we are our own bosses, let's not be shitty bosses.
[00:34:51] Jason: Exactly.
[00:34:52] Caroline: Like, let's not be. If I'm in fully in control of my own mental state, let me not create a condition where I wake up in the morning and I feel like there's not enough time in the day. Like, that's not how I want to live my life. I want to live my life where there is an abundance of time, an abundance of amazing things I get to work on. And it will get done when it gets done.
[00:35:13] Jason: Exactly. Uh, yeah. And we'll see how that goes and we'll keep you posted here on the podcast with that shift from, you know, more input focused as opposed to outcome focus. And, and really, you know, is content going to move the needle for Teachery? That does need to be something that we pay attention to. So in, you know, three to six months, when we're consistently posting the content, because all we're doing is creating it right now, we will let you know how that's going.
[00:35:33] Caroline: Cool.
[00:35:33] Jason: Now, let's transition to a question we've been getting from a few folks, especially within our WAIM community, which is how do we decide what content goes where when it comes to Teachery versus WAIM?
[00:35:41] Caroline: Great. So I'm going to do my best to explain this, but it is a little confusing because there's so much overlap between the two businesses. But I think the best way to think about it is that both Wandering Aimfully and Teachery kind of serve the same ultimate goal for our customers, which is to help someone earn a living as a creator selling digital products online. Right. That is the goal that both of those businesses get for someone, but in different ways. So Teachery is the tool that allows someone to sell digital products online. And Wandering Aimfully is the knowledge, the community and the accountability that kind of supports that. And so when you realize that, that they're the same goal, but kind of different ways of going about it, the way that I think about it in my head is if you picture a big circle that is labeled building a digital products business, that's kind of like what all of our content for both businesses fits under that big umbrella. So you have this circle, and in that circle you have a bunch of like, kind of topics within that. So it could be like branding and website design, growing an audience through content creation, building a list with lead magnets, monetizing your audience with the right offers, launching the offers. Like there's all these things that go into building a digital products business. And so that fits within that big circle. And then one of those topics is building the actual digital product. So you have to outline your content, you have to decide on your topic, you have to record your lessons, et cetera. And so that little building your digital product, I just picture that as one smaller concentric circle inside the big circle. And so when you realize that anything that is in that smaller circle related to like building your digital product, designing your digital product, naming it, branding it, coming up with your curriculum, writing your lesson content, those are kind of all the things associated with Teachery. And so anything that fits within that realm is going to be for Teachery's content and with a special kind of bias towards anything design related and visual related, because that's our content strategy with that business and then everything around that, that is the supporting knowledge related to building the fullness of the business. Like I said, anything about website design, anything about who is your audience, anything about writing articles, technically, those are all topics and content and knowledge that supports having a successful launch of a digital products business. But if it's in that bigger circle, it goes under WAIM. And if it's in the very more niche topic of building the actual product itself, it's for Teachery.
[00:38:13] Jason: Yeah, and the other thing that I touched on when I was answering this question in our Slack channel was WAIM is us. So that is, we're the faces there, we're the people there. Like, we're the coaches. So that's who you're, you're getting, you know, direct information from. Teachery does not need us to give you information. Like, we're just a conduit to get the result for what you're trying to do with your digital product business. So that's why even, like our little diary series that I'm doing on YouTube of this five week content journey, that's why that's not being posted on the Teachery channel, even though it's about Teachery's content, because it's about us and it's about what we're creating. What we want Teachery's channel to be about is again just those topics of videos, of design, tips, tools, tutorials, that's it. And our faces are there, but we're really irrelevant to the fact of, like, we just want to help you get this thing done that we're telling you it's a promise in this video. It doesn't involve us and how we live our lives and all that and what we think about. And I think that also really helps because many of you listeners may not have two businesses that you're trying to juggle that are kind of closely related and you don't run into this problem too much. But I do think it is helpful just in understanding, like, oh, I'm thinking about creating a piece of content. Like, does it actually help my end user who's watching this like, that I'm involved in this? Or am I just really trying to get them to learn how to do x thing and like, I should pull myself out of it a little bit and just help them get that result? Because that's really all that matters, then that's all you want from people to receive when you're creating content.
[00:39:36] Caroline: Yeah. So that's how I think about it. And it is a challenge to be running two businesses that are closely related, but it makes sense to us. Like, we both are pretty much always on the same page. Like, oh, this makes sense under Teachery. This makes sense under WAIM.
[00:39:50] Jason: Yeah. And I think the one thing that, you know, we knew in this five week content journey is that it's a lot. It's a lot to juggle. Making short form videos for a week, transitioning then to making long form videos. Next week, we're gonna go into articles. Like, these are all different kind of, like, mindsets and skills to, like, you know, bounce in and out of. But it's good that we have each other because we can support each other and, like, what I do well. What you do well, you know, et cetera. And I am really excited for us to come out of this five week journey, which is what I would hope if anybody else was doing something similar to this, of, like, okay, now I know what I want to create in 2024.
[00:40:21] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:40:21] Jason: Now I know what feels right to me. Like, I don't like long form videos. It takes too long, or I don't like working with an editor. I'm just not going to do those because short form video, there's so much attention there. I can put all my energy there. Maybe you don't like video at all and you want to go hard on articles or LinkedIn or being on Reddit or whatever that thing is for you. You can totally make that decision, but you may not know that until you try all these different things.
[00:40:43] Caroline: Exactly. And I think that's the biggest thing that I've learned is about this kind of journey that we've gone on is when I started, I thought it was going to be a creation journey. I really thought, oh, we're going to bank a bunch of short form and then we're going to bank a bunch of long form. What I realized very quickly is that it's an exploration journey. So, you know, the output's great and all, but, like, you have to set aside the time to be messy and to go slow and whatever. And I think this is actually a really good framework for people. Going back to what I said about being overwhelmed by tools and overwhelmed by all these things, if you feel like you're stuck and you kind of go, I don't know what platform I want to create content for. Give yourself a week to figure out, like, three of your top platforms and go, okay, this week I'm gonna, like, learn everything there is to know about LinkedIn. This week I'm going to learn everything to know about Instagram carousels. This week I'm. And then just, like, dive in and give yourself that space to explore and test and try. And like Jason said, that's the only way that you know what you like, what you're good at, what you can create sustainably.
[00:41:44] Jason: Yeah, exactly. All right, so that'll wrap up our long form video recap week. As we mentioned in last week's video, there will be a link in the description if you want to follow Teachery's YouTube channel for when we start posting these videos here. We think that'll be happening in about like a month or so. And we're excited for those videos to see the light of day because we spent a ton of hours working on them and we think they're good. So we want you to see them. And then next week's podcast episode, we're going to talk to you about our week of doing SEO long form content. But actually, it's not next week, is it? Because I think we're taking a break in between because we got my birthday trip, we've got our coaching.
[00:42:18] Caroline: Next week we're going to talk about our plan.
[00:42:20] Jason: Yeah, next week we're going to talk about the plan. So we won't have actually done anything, but we did hire an SEO strategist. Two different ways. One way for Teachery, one way for WAIM. So I think what we'll do next week is we'll also talk about what that experience was like, because we are not SEO strategists. We're also not deep in the weeds of SEO in 2024.
[00:42:37] Caroline: And as we mentioned, we're trying to relinquish some of our total control.
[00:42:42] Jason: Do it all ourselves. Yeah. So we'll share those things with you next episodes. We hope you're excited to hear about that. Now, we have to go finish packing our bags so we can go to Lisboa and eat our way through the city for a couple days and have some fun and relax. Oh, my gosh. Thank you so much.
[00:42:58] Caroline: You're welcome so much.
[00:42:59] Jason: Okay, talk to you guys soon. Bye.
[00:43:00] Caroline: Bye.