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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 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. Hello, and welcome to our podcast.
[00:00:40] Caroline: What's our podcast?
[00:00:40] Jason: This is our podcast.
[00:00:41] Caroline: What's it called, Jason? Ooh.
[00:00:44] Jason: I do have my finger to my ear, because I'm, you know.
[00:00:49] Caroline: A seasoned profesh.
[00:00:50] Jason: A seasoned professional.
[00:00:51] Caroline: Also, it was giving, like, swallowing your vowels. You kind of like hootie and blowfished it. You were just kind of like...
[00:00:58] Jason: It sounds like you said it to me. That's the name of our show, and that's our new...
[00:01:00] Caroline: Sometimes Jason and I just do... It just sounds...
[00:01:06] Jason: Yeah. If anybody is listening from, like, outside of our house and the door was open, they'd be like, everybody okay in there?
[00:01:10] Caroline: Are you murdering cats?
[00:01:11] Jason: Everybody okay in there? All right, we have basically wrapped up the five week content extravaganza as far as it goes for Teachery.
[00:01:19] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:01:19] Jason: Yeah. So now we're moving to.... It's hard to keep track of around here.
[00:01:23] Caroline: I'm dying because it just... It went off the rails so quick. Like, we were like, it's a five week content thing. It's like three weeks of Teachery and then two weeks of WAIM and we're doing this whole five week thing, and we kind of told all of you that. And then Jason went off and did his YouTube series, where he also called it a five week content extravaganza, but he knew that it would be too confusing to do Teachery and WAIM, so we just, like, made it about Teachery, but it was still five weeks, and now the timelines are diverging.
[00:01:48] Jason: I think forever this will be a five week content extravaganza, but it might take five years.
[00:01:53] Caroline: The multiverse is starting to get very convoluted in my head. The point is, we have concluded the content exploration phase that we were doing for the past five weeks, which really turned out to be six weeks because it was your birthday. Anyway, it's a whole...
[00:02:06] Jason: Listen, who cares? No rules. Just right. That's what we say around here. That's our phrase.
[00:02:10] Caroline: No rules. Just right. We came up with that.
[00:02:12] Jason: For those of you who are not from America, that's the phrase from Outback Steakhouse.
[00:02:15] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:02:16] Jason: So it's just funny to say, you know, if you're from America and you've been to Outback Steakhouse, it's funny. All right, so let's talk about one of the bigger things that kind of...
[00:02:25] Caroline: Came out of this.
[00:02:26] Jason: Evolved out of this, which wasn't really specifically content related. Like, it wasn't article related or video related or any of that.
[00:02:33] Caroline: It was serendipitous. It was... This is why you do these little projects like this, because sometimes unforeseen clarity comes from engaging in your business in a new way.
[00:02:44] Jason: Hey, what's up, everybody? We're Unforeseen Clarity. This is our first hit single...?
[00:02:48] Caroline: Sparkle. Because clarity, it's like a diamond.
[00:02:52] Jason: Sure, sure, I'll give it to you.
[00:02:53] Caroline: So what happened was all of this content really led us to some evolutions in terms of our strategy for, you know, what audience we are focusing on for Wandering Aimfully, what the solutions are that we are going to focus on and then what our content is going to focus on. It's really just, it has tendrils in every aspect of our business.
[00:03:17] Jason: Yeah, we're gonna get into it more, but I just wanna say off the top here, I think this is actually a really good thing that happens. But I think of you listening to this, it might sound like, oh, boy, now you gotta, like, change everything and do all that. And like, yes, you can look at that as like a negative thing and like, oh, wow. Like, we have to reposition all this stuff. But I really see it personally as an opportunity to be like, oh, no, this is just us getting better at what we do.
[00:03:40] Caroline: Yeah, and you're always doing that. You know, we talk about this often. I'll come back to this metaphor, but we talk about business being this Rubik's cube. Right? Like, that's the visual that always comes to my mind because the sides, it's like a three dimensional puzzle. It's not just a regular puzzle, it's a three dimensional puzzle where things are shifting on you all the time. It's like what you want as a business owner is changing. What your audience wants is changing. What the market is doing is changing.
[00:04:03] Jason: Exactly.
[00:04:04] Caroline: What the media landscape is doing is changing. It's like... So do not be surprised if every year, every two years, every five years, you're finding yourself at this place where you have to change the sides of your Rubik's cube again to go, what do I really want out of my business? What's the most clear way that I can communicate that to my audience? Who do I want to go after? Who do I want to help? Etcetera. And that's kind of where we are, is we're just reevaluating a lot of things and finding new ways for us to evolve. And that is going to happen forever. Is going to continue to happen forever.
[00:04:36] Jason: I think, just again, to give everybody listening to this a permission slip if you feel like you might be in this phase in your business. We are at, like, not absolute peak, but, like, just at the top of our monthly recurring revenue we've ever made with Wandering Aimfully. So you would argue, why would you change anything? You, you have gotten to this place, you have hit your enough goal, like, all those things. And the point is not to do it to make more money. The point is to do it to make our job easier as the people running this business and to deliver even more focused and better value to the people that we want to help.
[00:05:06] Caroline: Yes. And the third thing I was going to add to that, which I thought you were going to touch on, is to add to the overall sustainability and longevity of our business. And so, you know, we have to make sure that these different pieces are aligned so that what we continue to work toward is a winning formula and that it's not like a bridge that has all these cracks in it and that's going to crumble, if that makes sense.
[00:05:31] Jason: Right.
[00:05:31] Caroline: So we're really excited that this took us in a new direction, and we decided we would hop on the podcast and just walk you through what we're thinking, which is very close to real time as we're thinking it. Like, we haven't implemented all of these changes yet. We've just been kind of dripping out certain little teasers to our community, to our WAIMers, kind of testing the waters a little bit. But, you know, part of what we love about this podcast is sharing the transparent kind of behind the scenes of our decision making process, because I don't think enough people do that as business owners. So we're going to kind of lead you through the story of where these kind of insights came from and how it's going to affect our business moving forward.
[00:06:09] Jason: Great. So let's talk about basically what the big shift that's happening for us is. Narrowing our audience.
[00:06:14] Caroline: Yes. So if you've been on this podcast for a long time where you've seen Wandering Aimfully, you know this has always been, like something that we've struggled with is niching down our audience. And it's because we, Jason and I, are generalists, like I would... I would say we're what you would call deep generalists. Like, we have deep skills, but in a variety of different aspects. And it's what we have loved about Wandering Aimfully is always being sort of a very broad online business unboring coaching program. And so that means that we've had business owners who are everything from selling artists to even some people who have brick and mortar businesses and want to market better online to freelancers to, like, all these different types of business owners. And we've really enjoyed that because we've kind of said, in general, if you are overwhelmed with all there is to do in your business, and you want one thing to focus on every month and you want clarity, we can help you with every aspect of your business. Right. And to do it with an enough mindset, and that's kind of always been our unique selling proposition. The problem is, and it really became obvious when we sat down to get into this content extravaganza, because obviously, the first question you ask yourself when you go to write content is, who am I helping? Because then you want to say, what are their problems? What are their pain points? Let me write content that helps them achieve the outcomes they're looking for. And what happened was Jason and I sat down and we started going, okay, who are we helping here? And several different kind of avatars popped up in our heads. And we actually... So the first step in this process was actually writing out who those avatars are, right? Like, who are those people that we're helping? And I want to give a quick shout out if you're more of a visual person. We actually walk you through this process. How we did this process on our YouTube channel, I recorded a video showing you something that I created called the calm business, the calm creator business plan. And I did it using Canva's whiteboard feature, which I'm like a new super fan of. And so in that video, I show you these four different kind of customer avatars, and I'll just name them for you. When Jason and I sat down, we were basically like, okay, there's, we have such a diverse array of people we help, but here they, you can kind of break them down into four different categories. The first one I would call kickstarters. So these are your online business beginners. They are probably working nine to five jobs or in between gigs, and they're looking for ways to make money online. And they're curious about doing that using digital products. And how can I, you know, earn money online? So they're like a sponge for information, but they're your people who like, they need to know what an audience is, they need to know what an offer is. Like, it's more of that kind of, I'm getting started content. Group number two is just freelancers. So service based business owners, they want to transition more to product income. They're short on time, they're working with clients, but they're ready for, like, a more scalable digital product option. And they already know what business niche they're in. So they're designers working with clients or any type of consultant working with clients, et cetera. Then group number three is what we call smart scalers. So these are kind of what you would say are stuck digital product creators. They've already launched one or two things, or several things, but they have kind of topped out and they want bigger launches, they want better systems. They want to feel more clarity of their purpose and who they're talking to and to just not feel like they're in the chaos all the time so that they can really have a repeatable system. And this is basically us back in 2019 where we were like, okay, we've got something here, but we just don't have systems to, like, really level it up. And then we also have this group of veteran optimizers who are kind of your solopreneur veterans. Like, they're seasoned business owners. They've sold multiple products. They are looking for better results with less effort, and they're really, really looking for honing those systems. And how are they going to continue to do all that they do while still trying to stay small and not hiring a big team?
[00:10:05] Jason: Yeah.
[00:10:06] Caroline: Now, if you're exhausted just listening to those four groups, or maybe you were even just mentally trying to put yourself in one of those categories. This, of course, doesn't cover everyone. It's just, it's very much generalizing. But Jason and I looked at that list and we were like, well, no wonder it's hard for us to create content like, and not hard, but no wonder it's confusing, right, to be like, do we do the beginner article for, like, what, different ideas for digital product offers, or do we do the advanced article on, like, how to, like, advanced strategies for automated email sequences? Right. It's confusing.
[00:10:38] Jason: Yeah. And I think we really got to this place here in 2024 where we've been running WAIM now for six years. We have had all these different iterations where we really have focused at different times on these four different customer avatars. You know, we had our build... Build Without Burnout program, which is basically like kind of for the kickstarters, we had the Client Off-Ramp OS, which was really for like the freelancers. We did the, you know, kind of like Future Finding series, which could be for the smart scalers. And then along the way, we've had like a couple little things here and there for the veteran optimizers. Right. And so all these different years, we've tried different things, and I think getting to this place where we were writing all this out, we're starting to do all this content exploration through the extravaganza. It's going to last us the next 33 years. Is that you, you just find out that in trying to serve all these different people, it just makes so much more work for you, the business owner. But then it's also makes so much more work mentally for the person coming to your website to figure out if we're the right people for them.
[00:11:34] Caroline: Exactly.
[00:11:35] Jason: So it's really like, I remember multiple times in the past couple weeks, we were looking at this stuff. We were looking at this stuff and I was just like, I just think we need to give ourselves the advice that we give all of our Wandering Aimfully members, which is we need to choose boldly.
[00:11:48] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:11:48] Jason: And we need to be okay with the fact that choosing boldly means we're going to attract a smaller audience in that if we say that we are for these people and we're going to talk about what kind of, what we decided on, but we need to be okay with that because we've gotten to where we are thus far by being so general and it has kind of worked. But it's always felt like we're just really trying to talk to too many people. Like, what if we tried to really focus in?
[00:12:10] Caroline: Yeah, and I blame myself a little bit for this because, you know, you're a lot more equipped to just choose boldly and say, yeah, like, this is, this is what I want to do really well. My heart often is like, but I want to help everyone.
[00:12:25] Jason: Right.
[00:12:26] Caroline: I want, like, I feel so truly, like, when I take a step back, the origin of where our business comes from is I feel so grateful and lucky to live the lives that we do. I feel like we have discovered this pot of gold, which is we have complete freedom to live our lives the way that we want to live it. We have achieved financial freedom. I hear how stressed everyone is about money and making ends meet and, like, working for these jobs that they don't look forward to going to every day. And all I want is for everyone in the world to be able to do something that they love and earn enough money doing it. That's where my heart is. And so I blame myself a little bit for trying to keep it so broad because I'm just like, I want everybody to...
[00:13:06] Jason: And just so you know, I fully blame you.
[00:13:11] Caroline: Yeah, you should.
[00:13:12] Jason: No, but, yeah.
[00:13:13] Caroline: You know what I mean? Like, I'm saying that because I think a lot of people listening may resonate with that. Not people pleasing, but sort of that, like, that desire to want to serve everyone. But the cliche holds true, which is in trying to serve everyone, you're actually doing a disservice to everyone because you're not doing a very good job of getting them the thing that you want to get them. Like, in trying to teach you everything from a to z in business, I think I'm actually not moving the needle forward for you very much or very well. And so finally I had to come to this place to be like, okay, I need to accept the fact that I'm not going to be able. I'm actually not the right person. There's, like, a little bit of narcissism in this where you have to, like, release yourself from that and go, what? What makes me think that I'm the right person to help everyone? Like, absolutely not. I'm the right person to help these people because this is what I know really well. The question is, who are these people? And so I'm actually gonna skip ahead here because I think the light bulb moment, for me personally, you were already brewing on this. You were sort of like, I'm feeling like we're trying to help too many people. And I think as soon as we did the four person avatar thing, you were like, absolutely not. This is not gonna work. So that was already brewing for you. The eye opener for me was, and some of you who have been following this series will probably have had this thought 'cause we talked about it in the episode where we talked about WAIM article, like SEO strategy. We wrote down all of our new article categories that we wanted to be on the new website, and it was ten categories. And I'm just like, what? And it's because we can. All of these pieces are so crucial to running an online business that works, right? It's like you're growing your list with your email newsletter and social media and coming up with your offer and what's your marketing bridge? And like, yes, all of those pieces are crucial, but in trying to talk about it in this, like, very topic siloed way, you end up talking about ten things and then you become known for nothing.
[00:15:13] Jason: Yeah.
[00:15:13] Caroline: And so that was my wake up call to be like, okay. And so I took a step back and I said, let's start with the solution that we want to be known for. Like, what do I think that Wandering Aimfully should be known for, right? And so we kind of brainstormed this, and I was like, let's start at the most broad level, and then let's get more and more specific as we go. So at the most broad level, we help people achieve freedom. Right? Like, creative freedom, time freedom, financial freedom, all the things I listed. Like, that's really what people are after, is they don't want to work at a job that they dislike. They don't want to have client meetings all the time. They want to have control over their time and their money and their creativity. Cool. What do, what are we really good at that can help people achieve that goal? Well, we believe, because this has been our path, digital products are the pathway to do that because you can have location freedom, you can have time freedom, like, run your own business. Okay, cool. Digital products. Then I come in with, like, but what makes us different? Telling people how to run a digital products business, like, what is our differentiator? And this part, I think we have done a pretty good job of, of talking about calm business, having this enough mindset, like, not trying to grow just for growth's sake, but always constantly asking yourself, like, why? And what is it all for? And trying to achieve balance in pursuit of that. And also, really, the past few years, trying to show people the value of systems and processes to create a more calm and repeatable business. Right, great. So we've got all these pieces coming together. Now, I look back at those ten topics and I go, if I had to pick, like, one, two, how, like, if everything fell away, like, what is the one thing that we would narrow in on and what you and I kind of decided on... well, you, you said even, like, the thing that we always come back to with people is launching.
[00:17:03] Jason: Yeah. And this is like, this has been a sticking point for me for, for quite a while because I think it's something that we have done so many different ways and over the years with so many different types of businesses that we have learned a repeatable process that, not saying it doesn't matter what type of business you have, like, it's focused on digital product businesses. But the idea of having a calm launch and having a strategic plan and knowing the pieces of the puzzle that you need to fit in to make that work out in your favor. And this is not saying that we can guarantee you're going to have $100,000 launch just by signing up for WAIM Unlimited, but it is saying you're going to have a much less stressful launch by following this plan that we have executed on over and over and over. You know, for me, it's really the same plan for almost 15 years.
[00:17:47] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:17:47] Jason: And it has honed itself from, like...
[00:17:48] Caroline: Different products.
[00:17:49] Jason: Exactly. And wildly different calls to action and, like, you know, price points and from as little as the thing cost a dollar to as much as the thing cost, you know, $2,800 with WAIM, which is our most, you know, expensive thing we've ever sold. Well, I guess we had a $3,500 version of BuyOurFuture. But nonetheless, the, the point there is that, like, that's the problem to me that has stood out for a long time, that I think we have a really good system for, that we don't talk about enough and that there's not enough people out there in the online marketing world who are talking about it's not just about a six, seven figure launch, blah, blah, blah. It's about a calm launch. It's about making it less stressful.
[00:18:23] Caroline: And I was actually doing a deep dive. And I'm like, it's funny because I feel like we talk about launching, we talk about our own launches, but as far as, like, teaching content around launches, I think we do a poor job of it. I think we focus a lot more on, like, audience and foundation and all these things. And I'm like, why is that? And I think part of it is because launching gets so wrapped up in money, and you and I don't like to be money forward, even though financial freedom is what we're trying to get for people. And it's because there's so much, for lack of a better word, shitty people out there just trying to talk about, you know...
[00:18:54] Jason: Have a seven figure launch.
[00:18:55] Caroline: And they're promising it in 30 days, in ten days or whatever. And, like, we don't want to be put in that bucket. But I think that has ultimately done us a disservice because, again, if I go back to our mission, I just need to be honest about the fact that, like, I do want people to have financial freedom. You know, like, I do want that for them. So we need to find a way to talk about launching in a way that doesn't put the money first, but also acknowledges the fact that people are looking for a cushion. They are looking for savings. They are looking for living a more comfortable life where they don't have to stress about money every day of their lives. And doing that with creative freedom and with time freedom. So you first kind of put your finger on this launching thing, and I was like, okay.
[00:19:34] Jason: Which I think just to put a pin in that, the launching solves the problem for a lot of different people at a lot of different levels.
[00:19:40] Caroline: Yes.
[00:19:41] Jason: So if you're doing your first launch, the same system can help you. Whether you're a seasoned veteran and you have launched a bunch of things yourself, I guarantee you we're going to be able to give you some advice and tips that even if it just helps one little thing tick over, that it increases your sales by 25%. That's worth it to you because you're always looking, as a veteran solopreneur, for, like, one more thing you can add that streamlines your process that makes you feel less stressed out or that increases your revenue.
[00:20:06] Caroline: Yes. And I don't have this written down here, but another thing I wanted to point out that I think adds to this equation of kind of evolving is we did notice that some of our friends who are content creators would come to us for tips on launching. Right. They were like, okay, you've done this so many times. And I'm like, okay, it's always worth paying attention when people are asking you for tips about something because they see you as some sort of authority or expert in that area that you have experience in. And so it's silly to not then infuse that into your business if that is something that you want to be doing. So that was also in the back of my head. I was like, okay, people are already kind of coming to us for tips on this, and then what? Also another key that was contributing to this shift in strategy a little bit, we were thinking about our spring launch because...
[00:20:58] Jason: That just happened.
[00:20:59] Caroline: That just happened. Those of you who... Feels like a million years since then, but it's really not.
[00:21:04] Jason: Yeah.
[00:21:04] Caroline: Those of you who listened to that episode, we raised our prices for WAIM Unlimited for the first time in five years. And we had big launches last year, part... due in part to the fact that we announced we would be raising our prices, but we are trying to learn from the launch still did very well, but it did less sales. Right. And really less revenue. And so we were asking ourselves, like, what do we learn from that? And I think one of the big takeaways I shared on that podcast episode is, and it's something I tell people all the time about pricing your offer is your price of your offer has to match your solution and the perceived value of your solution, and that has to match your audience. And so to me, the biggest disconnect was, I think we have been creating content, a lot of content that speaks to maybe the Kickstarter that more online beginner kind of beginner person, or even freelancers. And then WAIM Unlimited is priced at a point where that solution is really priced, where it needs to be towards someone who is maybe a smart scaler or a veteran optimizer. Right? So there's a mismatch there. And so that is already framed in our minds. And so we're going, cool. What is a new way that we can frame our audience? And when we hired our SEO, the SEO strategist that was helping us think up new titles for the new articles that we want to create for our long find content, if you're following along with your content matrix, he even was like, hey, how do you guys describe your audience? And we were like, great question. And he was like, well, let me do some research and try to help you target from like, an SEO perspective, not even from like a strategic perspective, but just from a what keyword should you be using in your articles to try to find the person that you're talking to? And he actually had this great breakdown where he's like, okay, here's what I came up with. And I think he had a couple. It was like, is it freelancers? Is it creator, digital creator, content creator, entrepreneur, solopreneur? He had this whole list, and his recommendation was kind of where we had landed, which was solopreneur. And when he said that, I thought it was so interesting because we haven't used the term solopreneur in our messaging for like a few years now. And I don't know why we moved away from it, but I took a step back and I was like, this makes so much sense because you and I often come on this podcast and we talk about this, like, this inner debate that we have about we don't want to manage people. We want to keep a small business. We love the agileness, the agility, the flexibility of being able to just be creative and not have to spend our time managing people, but also having the limits of our time. And so we're constantly solving for that problem. And I go, doesn't it make sense to try to target people who also want to stay solo or small? Maybe they work with some, maybe they outsource a little bit. They have like a VA or they hire contractors or whatever. But for the most part, they don't want to build a team. And I do think that's an opportunity to niche down a little bit because there is a group, a whole different group of online entrepreneurs who do want to grow a team, and they want to grow to, like, these big, you know, revenue numbers, and they want the empire and they want the... We don't want that. That's a different brand of, that's a different flavor of entrepreneur. And so that was a lightbulb moment for me, is like, let's be more explicit about trying to reach solopreneurs.
[00:24:30] Jason: I think another thing that really came out of, especially working with this SEO strategist, and this is a really great example for us of we don't take our own advice very often, which is like, if you get stuck somewhere, you need someone to help you get you unstuck, like, you, you clearly don't have enough knowledge or experience or whatever, or you're just too close to whatever the problem is that you need someone from the outside to, like, break you free of that, that stuckness, pull you out of the mud as you just watched Prey, the most recent predator movie in the movie series.
[00:25:01] Caroline: We're deep in the Predator universe right now.
[00:25:03] Jason: But the point that I wanted to say here is that, you know, this guy that we hired, you know, bringing this up to us, I think, was one very much like, okay, that confirms it from someone who, like, lives, eats, and breathes, like, what are people searching on the Internet? Right? Like, seeing the trends of those words. But I think the other thing that I want to give credit to, because I think this has actually been a huge inspiration for us, whether we want to admit it or not, is Justin Welsh. I think Justin Welsh, and for those of you who don't know who he is, Justin Welsh has really owned the digital product for solopreneur space in a lot of different ways. And they're like, you know, whether we agree with, like, his content strategy or, like, anything that he does or even the things that he said, that doesn't really matter. But I think subconsciously watching him succeed to the point where, like, you know, it's come out that, like, his, his business with two digital products makes $5 million a year, and it's just him. And, you know, I'm sure he has some freelancers and maybe does some ad stuff here and there, but all of that, I think, was just a really interesting moment for us to realize, like, okay, he really runs with the word solopreneur. We really resonate with the word solopreneur.
[00:26:06] Caroline: Yeah. I remember reading his copy on his website and it almost in, like, the best way, I was like, he's saying something so clearly that I've been trying to say for years. And it's like, you can either take that and be like, like, how did he like...?
[00:26:21] Jason: But I think, and I think we've taken it both ways.
[00:26:23] Caroline: Well, yeah.
[00:26:24] Jason: So 50% of us is like, why didn't we say that? But 50% of us is like, oh, nice. Like, you said that in a way that we've been trying to say.
[00:26:31] Caroline: What's possible.
[00:26:31] Jason: Exactly. And I think this is where, as business owners, like, we have to be smart and not play the game where we go, oh, look, like Justin Welsh is already doing this. Like, we can't do it. Yeah, it's like, no, there's a whole other, like, group of people who live in this solopreneur world that they don't care about LinkedIn, which is the thing that he sells stuff on. You know, maybe the way that he's talking about content, which we haven't talked about yet, is a problem that we're solving. Maybe the way that he talks about it is very different, the way that we talk about it, and so that actually will separate us nicely. But I think it's actually really good that we have someone like him in our space who is lifting up the word of solopreneur so that more people are resonating with him being like, oh, I'm going to raise my hand. That's me. Like, I now know how to, like, define myself in this space.
[00:27:13] Caroline: And what I really love is like, you know, and this is no shade to him. I think he would totally agree with this. But, like, his stuff is more dry, right? It comes from this very sort of, like, dry, like...
[00:27:21] Jason: Practical.
[00:27:22] Caroline: Very practical. That's a perfect word for it. Extremely practical. I think it's what makes his content resonate, because it's very clear and it's very practical and it's very clear cut. But it's like our opportunity to come into, like you were saying this word that he's now kind of creating more awareness around is to be the unboring version of that. What's the silly version of a Justin Welsh? What's the comic book version of a Justin Welsh? What's the...?
[00:27:47] Jason: He's, listen, he's out here scooping ice cream out of five gallon tubs into little balls on cones. You know what we're doing? We're making dippin dots.
[00:27:55] Caroline: I was like, I was like, he's gonna go with dippin dots.
[00:27:57] Jason: Ice cream so small and fun and different and like...
[00:28:00] Caroline: Melts in your mouth. Look at these space ice cream.
[00:28:02] Jason: Tiny little space ice cream balls that I get to eat.
[00:28:04] Caroline: Did you guys freeze dry?
[00:28:05] Jason: That's us. He can be the normal ice cream.
[00:28:07] Caroline: We're the dippin dots.
[00:28:07] Jason: The dippin dots of solopreneurs.
[00:28:08] Caroline: We are the dip... We should just put that on the website.
[00:28:11] Jason: Everyone will get it.
[00:28:12] Caroline: So moving on from that. So I think, yes, that also contributed to this kind of revelation. But even for me, I was like, okay, solopreneur isn't like, to me even.
[00:28:22] Jason: It's not clear...
[00:28:23] Caroline: Specific enough. And so I, based on all this stuff that we, that was already brewing about wanting to help people with launches, and I really had this moment where I was like, I feel like this word creator, it used to be like, creative entrepreneur. I don't know if anyone remembers the creative entrepreneur era. 2013, 2015 ish things, but thank God we landed on creator because it was so hard to type out creative entrepreneur the whole time.
[00:28:48] Jason: Yeah.
[00:28:48] Caroline: I do feel like speaking to what you were saying about these words that kind of gain popularity and people's lexicon, I think creator is one that we are on the very tip of and that it is for the next ten years, it is going to be the creator economy. But in my mind, there's kind of two different brands of that. Right. So you have the content creator who is someone who, a YouTuber, a TikToker, like, they have cracked the code on creating the content to kind of get the attention, to grow the audience. What they struggle with is the monetization of that that goes beyond brands and sponsorships. Right. So we have a few friends like this that are primarily...
[00:29:24] Jason: Yeah, we, I mean, I talked about it with Matt D'Avella on his channel in a video. So he doesn't care if we talk about it, but I think he's a perfect example. Matt D'Avella, fantastic YouTuber, grew to almost 4 million subscribers in a couple of years. But, like, wanted something more than just the YouTube sponsorship and Adsense income.
[00:29:41] Caroline: Exactly.
[00:29:41] Jason: So wanted to make a course. And so we had multiple calls on talking through, like, how to do that, but we had multiple calls even more specifically on, like, how to launch the course.
[00:29:49] Caroline: Exactly.
[00:29:49] Jason: There's one thing to just, like, make a course and sell it, and there's another thing to have a launch with, like, all the things taught through. And his launch did extremely well in the very beginning.
[00:29:58] Caroline: And he was really grateful for just kind of like, you know, being there as a sounding board. And it was, it made me realize that this whole content creator to monetization, that's a very specific problem that we can help people with through this launching. But then there's another brand of people who come at it from a different angle, which is a digital product creator, right? Like, they've already created the product, they know what their skill set is. They've made the online course, or they've made the templates, or they've created the membership community. But now their challenge is creating the content to market and support that digital product and sell more. And so you have these two groups of people who kind of have complementary skill sets but have also juxtaposed needs all around this idea of content and launching. And so this is where Jason and I, the pieces started to come together, is like, okay, we want to focus on solopreneur creators. We want to help them with calm launching and a calm content system. And so there are two pathways to that. Whether you're a digital product creator who needs help with content, whether you're a content creator who needs help with monetization and digital products, we can help you both. And that doesn't mean we're going to stop talking about what I call, like the outer ring, the outer ring of newsletters, growing your email list, lead magnets, website, branding, all of that is in the ecosystem, but it's sort of like one ring removed from launching and content, right? And then I would put also in that inner ring, I would put launching, calm launching, calm content and then calm mindset. Like enough mindset.
[00:31:27] Jason: And I think what that really boils down to is the strategy for us, for, number one, how our website is going to be positioned. So let's, we'll talk about that in a second. But what I wanted to say was this now gives us a lens to look at all of the articles that we currently have on our website. We have 400 articles on the Wandering Aimfully website, which is hilarious because in 2018, when we had two separate websites, we had 400 combined articles that we whittled down to 100 to keep. And now we are in a process of, we have 400 again. And we looked at them and we've been through all of them, and almost none of them are helping toward these two problems of a calm launch or calm content system, which is totally fine because that has not been our goal for the past couple years. But what I'm really excited about, and this is just something that I love doing in life and in business, is just like decluttering the crap out of all of the things we've created. So we basically went through and I think we're going to keep, if I had to guess, maybe 50 of those articles, literally 50 and 350 of them are just going to get literally put in the trash.
[00:32:26] Caroline: Yep.
[00:32:26] Jason: And that was they, they literally lived in a nice time in our lives, in our businesses. And you might be thinking to yourself, like, oh, don't throw them away. Like, you might want to come back to them. And I think this is just like, we're just not very precious about these things because they can always be created again. And I think if anything, actually we're probably just going to put them in the trash and not like fully delete them forever so they would still exist. But the goal is to move forward with Wandering Aimfully with 50 of those existing articles. That'll probably mostly fit in the mindset category we call mindset. But now we have a new goal of great. So with this SEO strategist advice, with this new focus, of the two problems we solve are calm launches and calm content creation. Now we need new articles and short find content for TikTok, Instagram, YouTube shorts, long long form content for YouTube that'll be around these two topics. And this then takes that like ten category list that you talked about before where it's really two categories and then there's a bunch of subcategories underneath. So it's like, you know, just very quickly with the launch, you have like the pre marketing, you have your sales emails, you have your sales page, you have your bonus offers, you have the pricing itself, you have surveying your audience both after they buy. And then if people don't buy, like, you have all these different parts that are like things underneath that people don't necessarily know about, that we can now create content about that has existed in our members only content but hasn't existed in actually, like, customer facing. Like, this is a problem you want to solve right on the homepage of our website.
[00:33:53] Caroline: Yeah. And the funny thing is, is I thought it would feel so limiting to go from like this wide lens of ten different topics and I can talk about whatever I want. I thought it would feel limiting to be like, okay, I'm just going to focus on launching a content. What you start to realize is you're not limited. It brings so much more clarity that it, like, fuels your creativity. It's like the whole creativity needs constraints thing, right? Because I'm like, now I know what I'm trying to help someone achieve. So now when I think about talking about a newsletter I'm wrapping it up in the lens of, well, why is growing your list important to have a stress free launch? So I'm connecting those two things because I know that my person, what they actually want is bigger launches with less stress. And so I'm going to tell them how an email newsletter is going to help them achieve that. Right. And so it becomes more clarifying, it becomes more fun for me because I feel more connected to our mission, because I feel like I'm actually helping someone. Going back to what I said at the beginning of this episode, whereas when I was trying to help everyone, I ended up not really moving the needle forward for, you know, everyone as much as I know I could. And so I felt very reinvigorated. Also, I'm sure we'll maybe do a full episode on this, but going back to what I was saying about kind of like being the dip, well, you said the dip in dots, but trying to differentiate ourselves from people who are helping solopreneurs, you are going to see, and maybe have already started to see, like, on our YouTube and things like that. Slight shifts to our branding to really play up more of the unboring.
[00:35:21] Jason: The dip and dots.
[00:35:21] Caroline: The dip and dots of it all.
[00:35:22] Jason: Yeah.
[00:35:23] Caroline: So you will start to see solopreneur creator in our stuff. You will start to see a real dip and dots flavor come to our branding and our design. And all of this is very important as we get ready to re enter the social media world. You want to know who you're talking to. You want to know what you're talking about. You want to know what problem for that person you're helping solve. And so I hope that this episode has been helpful. If you feel, like, uninspired in your own content, it could just be that you're trying to talk to too broad of an audience.
[00:35:54] Jason: Or that you have been talking about the same thing for four years and the market has shifted, and that's not really a thing that people care that much about anymore.
[00:36:03] Caroline: Right.
[00:36:03] Jason: And there's always gonna be niches. There's always gonna be little groups of... I mean, we just literally found out that paper quilling was a thing that exists.
[00:36:09] Caroline: Paper quilling.
[00:36:09] Jason: And, like, there's a lot of people searching for paper quilling.
[00:36:12] Caroline: Oh, my God. I looked up with a keyword tool 'cause we were putting together a business strategy for a WAIMer who is a paper quiller, a very talented paper quiller. And I was like, well, you know, I was like, should she go after paper quillers or should she go after, like, people looking to have a creative hobby and they don't know about paper quilling yet? And I was like, let me do some keyword research to find out. I searched for this keyword. I want you, listener, to think of how many monthly searches of paper quilling.
[00:36:39] Jason: Yeah.
[00:36:40] Caroline: Can I think of that number in your mind right now?
[00:36:42] Jason: Just a number of, like, how many people a tool would tell you search for this.
[00:36:46] Caroline: On a monthly basis. When I tell you it was under 100 for me is what I thought.
[00:36:50] Jason: Yeah, I guess 60 when you asked me. 60.
[00:36:52] Caroline: Oh, 65,000.
[00:36:54] Jason: Yeah.
[00:36:55] Caroline: Like, I feel like I have been duped. I feel like there's a whole, like, country of paper quillers out there that I have not discovered yet. And shame on me for not knowing that. And so, to Jason's point, like, there are these niches that...
[00:37:11] Jason: Exactly. And I think it's important to recognize, like, are you in one that's growing or are you in one that's declining? And if you're feeling the kind of the push against wanting to post things, wanting to create things, like it just doesn't feel enjoyable to you anymore, then it might be a good time to shift the problem that you're solving and who you're solving that problem for so it can get you reinvigorated. And that's, I think, what we feel like. It's not like we felt, you know, negatively towards working on Wandering Aimfully or any of the content, but I think we definitely had zero interest in posting on social media because there wasn't anything that we were excited to share. And now I think having these two problem buckets, it's like, oh, I actually feel really excited to create a lot of content around launches. Like, I feel very much in, like, we could talk a lot about launches, content creation, I'm a little bit less excited about. Yeah, but because it's not something that I'm super interested in, but I know you're really excited about it and, like, the amount of things that you're able to do in Canva and just all these new tools that are popping up, like, I think it's really helpful. And then also the AI of it all. Like, there's so many things that we have been able to streamline, which we'll talk about in future episodes just based on ChatGPT alone, let alone other tools that exist that, that haven't even come out yet.
[00:38:19] Caroline: Again, going, like, tying it all together, I think is even smart to really further play on the solopreneur niche because I do believe that with AI, more and more people are going to realize it's possible to keep your team small. It's possible to be a solopreneur because AI can empower you to do so much more that you weren't able to do within the limits of your time. There's only so many hours in the day. So again, part of this is like kind of market spotting. It's trend spotting. It's not chasing trends. It's just kind of being a smart, strategic thinker about, as Jason said, where is the future moving and how can you evolve your business so that it meets the demands of the market while also meeting the demands of you as a person and what you want out of your business? Because that's... That's what it's all for.
[00:39:07] Jason: Yeah. So we will have a brand new website coming in July that's going to be built on Framer, which Caroline is already working on. And it already has so many dip and dots layered on top of it.
[00:39:18] Caroline: So much more dip and dots than the current website.
[00:39:19] Jason: We are going to still have to keep our WordPress site for our members only thing. We'll do, probably do a future episode about the transition of that and what that all looks like because those are the nerdy things I love to listen to, is like, okay, how did you make this work? And, like, what changed? But really excited for that shift. We've been posting regularly on YouTube for the past couple weeks, which has been fun to put those videos.
[00:39:40] Caroline: We figured out the secret.
[00:39:42] Jason: We did figure out the secret.
[00:39:43] Caroline: We figured out the secret.
[00:39:43] Jason: We have been running a YouTube channel together for six years. But we've been making YouTube videos together for ten years. And it has always been the most frictionful thing we have ever done.
[00:39:54] Caroline: Yep.
[00:39:54] Jason: And the secret is, Caroline?
[00:39:57] Caroline: We make videos separately.
[00:39:58] Jason: Yeah.
[00:39:59] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:39:59] Jason: Don't be in the videos together.
[00:40:00] Caroline: Yep, yep, yep.
[00:40:01] Jason: Just don't be in them together.
[00:40:02] Caroline: Listen, you might think that, no, I think this is the best relationship advice. If you find something that creates incredible friction in your relationship, try doing it apart.
[00:40:11] Jason: Yeah. Like if you cook meals, as an example, with your partner, and it just always feels like she doesn't cut up the garlic right. She's not cleaning as she goes. Why is there stuff everywhere? Here's the secret. Don't be in the kitchen together.
[00:40:23] Caroline: Don't be in the kitchen.
[00:40:23] Jason: Just let the other chef cook.
[00:40:24] Caroline: Sometimes there are... We do... You and I do 99% of things together. If there's one thing that we don't do together, I think it's gonna actually be for the best. I think it's a health thing.
[00:40:35] Jason: I think this separation of the way we're doing videos now where, like, I write the first draft of a script, and then you do a second draft, which is actually much better because you think through, like, the problem and the audience. I'm just like, here's the ideas I want to put in, like, little whiz bangs on screen.
[00:40:49] Caroline: Yep.
[00:40:49] Jason: And. And then it's like, okay, great. Please go downstairs. I'm gonna record. I'm not gonna have you here listening to me and judging me. And, like, when I say something like whatever, like...
[00:40:57] Caroline: Which isn't the real thing that's happening.
[00:40:59] Jason: No, no. But it's...
[00:41:00] Caroline: If you're the person recording.
[00:41:01] Jason: Exactly.
[00:41:01] Caroline: That's what you think.
[00:41:02] Jason: And I will say that, like, there are so many moments in the video recording process where it feels very, like, vulnerable and embarrassing when you're not getting something right when you're sitting next to another person.
[00:41:12] Caroline: Definitely.
[00:41:12] Jason: That sucks. And for me personally, I'm horrible at remembering lines. So I always felt like when we were recording, especially, like, business videos, I wasn't hitting the line that you wrote.
[00:41:21] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:41:21] Jason: And so it just felt not fun. And now it's like, you're not even here. I can mess up, like, ten times. And then now we're working with a video editing company, which I think we'll talk about in a future episode, to kind of share how they're kind of fitting into our workflow. And this has been the biggest game changer for us on getting these videos out every single week. And even the video that you did, which has gotten a bunch of steam on our kind of calm creator whiteboard, you know, that was one where we worked on it slightly together just to, like, plan it out. And then, like, I just left and you did it. And then I...
[00:41:51] Caroline: And you remember I had to say this one line that I could not get. Jason was like... And I heard, let's just say the first line was like, as a calm creator.
[00:41:59] Jason: Yeah.
[00:41:59] Caroline: And then he's like, for literally twelve minutes, I just heard as a calm creator, as a calm creator, as a calm creator. And I was like...
[00:42:07] Jason: Yeah. And it's, it's much easier to get frustrated by yourself than it is with someone next to you, because, boy, we have tried the next to you for a long time. So, anyway, that's just if you've been seeing our videos come out on our YouTube channel more consistently, I think we actually found a good secret here.
[00:42:21] Caroline: Plus, you guys, you get enough of us together on the pod. You get an... our members see us together all the time on coaching and on our weekly vlogs.
[00:42:28] Jason: You know, short form video. Like, I'm gonna be popping in the background of things, doing silly stuff. So, you know, we'll be there. But anyway, so that kind of wraps up this, the shift here in our content pillars, focusing more on solopreneur creators. You messed me up there.
[00:42:43] Caroline: Well, I thought it would be...
[00:42:44] Jason: Let me do a clean, a clean take. Let me do a clean take.
[00:42:45] Caroline: As a calm creator.
[00:42:45] Jason: Let me do a clean take.
[00:42:45] Caroline: Okay.
[00:42:50] Jason: This is just for everybody so they can really, like, they're in their car and they can have it.
[00:42:53] Caroline: You got it, babe. I love you so much.
[00:42:55] Jason: As we have talked about in this episode, shifting our content pillars, one of the biggest things that we're taking away from this is focusing on solopreneur creators as our ideal target audience. Thank you so much for that.
[00:43:05] Caroline: I wanted to say it with you so bad.
[00:43:07] Jason: I know you did. And the problems that we're solving are helping people have more calm launches and helping people have a calm content creation system. And then the side thing will be kind of calm mindset stuff, which is always peppered in. That feels really good to us. We're going to kind of, uh, this next week, start focusing on the WAIM content of it all. So that's going to be short form video. Getting back on Instagram.
[00:43:28] Caroline: We have a whole new monthly content creation system that we're piloting ourselves for the... speaking of the calm content system.
[00:43:37] Jason: Yeah, you'll hear about that. Um, by the time this podcast episode comes out, the YouTube video has come out about that system. Kind of our, like, um, our process, you can watch that. And, yeah, just as a reminder that if you're in this place with your business, no matter where you are on the journey and you're feeling like it just, it doesn't feel as easy as it should to talk about things. Create content, write newsletters, you know, put yourself and your content out there. You might need to focus in a little bit more, you might need to hone your audience in more. You might need to have your problem be a little bit more niche down. And that's okay, because it's just we're always evolving a business as things go on. And ten years ago, content creators didn't really exist.
[00:44:15] Caroline: Yep.
[00:44:15] Jason: Ten years from now, maybe content creators won't be a thing anymore. But as a good, smart business owner, you evolve with the times, and that's just a part of doing what you're doing here. An online business. Anything else?
[00:44:25] Caroline: That's it.
[00:44:26] Jason: Okay. Any more Rubik's cube metaphors you want to give before we go?
[00:44:29] Caroline: No.
[00:44:29] Jason: How long do you think it would take you to solve a Rubik's cube?
[00:44:31] Caroline: A million years.
[00:44:32] Jason: Never would happen.
[00:44:32] Caroline: All the years.
[00:44:33] Jason: I don't think it would happen for me either. I think we can't solve a Rubik's cube puzzle together.
[00:44:37] Caroline: Yeah, I did recently find out that, like, it's like, a strategy. You have to, like, you have to know what you're doing.
[00:44:42] Jason: There's math, isn't there?
[00:44:43] Caroline: And I think it's a little bit of a...
[00:44:44] Jason: You add the blues and the reds, you get the yellows, you end up... I don't know. I'm just making...
[00:44:48] Caroline: I just mean, like, I... the kid version of me thought that it was like, just, here's Rubik's cube. And, like, try to figure it out. And then you get older and you're like, oh, you people have, like, practiced?
[00:44:56] Jason: Yeah, exactly. All right, that's it for this episode. We hope you enjoyed it. Hope it gave you some nuggets of wisdom to walk away with in your business. And if it didn't, then we'll be back next week and we'll try again.
[00:45:05] Caroline: Yes.
[00:45:05] Jason: Okay, bye.
[00:45:06] Caroline: Bye.