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It’s hard to believe that being an online creator has really only existed for 20ish years. We’ve been building businesses for the majority of that time and we’ve learned a bunch of lessons along the way that we wanted to share with you this week.
To kick off this episode we’re sharing a “mini meltdown” that Caroline experienced the day before recording. We wanted to share that and talk about how we’re trying to reframe using Uncle Jhery as a metaphor/story to continue to move forward when we experience something difficult in growing our second business Teachery.
Then, it’s time to go through the 7 things to pack for the long-term journey as a creator. Tune in to the ep to hear us discuss discomfort, self-care, self-awareness, taking risks, self-belief, tunnel vision, and thinking long-term.
If you’re feeling frisky, jump on over to wanderingaimfully.com/contact and share the action item we mentioned at the end of the episode! 😜
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💌 Want to get a weekly jolt of business inspiration and learn tactics and strategies that can help you increase profit, save time, and enjoy your work more? Sign up for our weekly email at wanderingaimfully.com/newsletter
✳️ Are you a freelancer looking to transition to digital products (selling online courses, etc)? Check out our free coaching session created just for you at wanderingaimfully.com
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 What Is It All for?, a podcast designed to help you grow your online business and pursue a spacious, satisfying life at the same time. We're your hosts, Jason and Caroline Zook, and we run Wandering Aimfully, an unboring business coaching program. Every week, we bring you advice and conversations to return you to your most intentional self and to help you examine every aspect of your life and business by asking, what is it all for? Thanks for listening. And now let's get into the show.
[00:00:28] Jason: And I'm here, too. Hi. Hello, and welcome to a podcast that is this podcast.
[00:00:39] Caroline: What was the intro from way back when?
[00:00:40] Jason: Podcasts are cool Dot dot dot
[00:00:43] Caroline: That's our intro.
[00:00:44] Jason: Pretty soon here, our podcast is going to have a new name. It's pretty soon.
[00:00:48] Caroline: Jason.
[00:00:48] Jason: Yeah. I'm just teasing. It's a tease.
[00:00:48] Caroline: You didn't say you're going to reveal that.
[00:00:51] Jason: It's called a tease.
[00:00:52] Caroline: It's called a tease. Have you ever tried it?
[00:00:54] Jason: I just did it.
[00:00:55] Caroline: And people are like, wait a second. Didn't you just change the name three years ago? We did.
[00:01:01] Jason: Yeah. It's longer than you think.
[00:01:03] Caroline: It is longer than you think. And also, anyway, we'll chat about it. It was just a tease.
[00:01:09] Jason: That's a tease. Okay, before we get to the mini meltdown here, melt made me think I need to give a Creami update to everybody because this is a saga that everyone is here to listen to.
[00:01:20] Caroline: Also shout out to my friend Nicole, who texted me and was like, what's the portuguese word for creamy? And maybe that could be better for you.
[00:01:26] Jason: Did you look it up?
[00:01:27] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:01:27] Jason: And?
[00:01:28] Caroline: Cremoza.
[00:01:28] Jason: That is definitely better.
[00:01:30] Caroline: Definitely better. I was feeling close, but yeah, no, Cremoza, I think is better.
[00:01:36] Jason: Cremoza is better.
[00:01:37] Caroline: It really depends on. It could be masculine or feminine. So I'm going to pretend that ninja is feminine because it ends in an a.
[00:01:44] Jason: You could say cremosa. I'll say creamy. It's just for historical accuracy.
[00:01:49] Caroline: For historical accuracy. Right.
[00:01:53] Jason: When they use this podcast in the history of Ninja Creami.
[00:01:55] Caroline: They're like, wait a second. Was it the ninja Cremosa? And you're like, no, it was the...
[00:01:59] Jason: Anyway, if you don't know what I'm talking about, this is the ice cream making device that was popular a couple years ago. We got on the trend, as we do, late. And as you might, too. You might be a late trender, like we are an old foggy.
[00:02:10] Caroline: I told my friend Leah about it. She'd never heard of it.
[00:02:12] Jason: Exactly. And it has just been, I am a Creami scientist, so I'm just out here.
[00:02:17] Caroline: You're having just the best time.
[00:02:18] Jason: My Notion expert that I hired on Upwork made me a Notion database to track all of my recipes.
[00:02:26] Caroline: He said that entirely seriously. But he's talking about me, and I am not on Upwork, and he didn't hire me. And so as you said it, I was like...
[00:02:33] Jason: Who?
[00:02:34] Caroline: If someone didn't know that that's your sense of humor, they would think you really hired someone.
[00:02:38] Jason: So I just want to say that I am continuing to have fun with it. I will admit that I believe we have gotten to a good vanilla base but not a perfect vanilla base.
[00:02:48] Caroline: It's so good.
[00:02:49] Jason: I think the key is the homemade cashew milk is very helpful because it's delicious, it's not filled with anything weird or gross. And it just doesn't take away from the flavor.
[00:02:58] Caroline: And also because we had it last night, I have to remind you.
[00:03:01] Jason: Two nights ago.
[00:03:01] Caroline: Two nights ago, I really enjoyed the coffee.
[00:03:04] Jason: Yeah, you like the coffee. Which I got to give a shout out to Jill and her plant based recipe that I found on YouTube that you put actual coffee beans in the blender. Little, tiny little bites.
[00:03:14] Caroline: You know how like a good vanilla has, like a vanilla bean bits?
[00:03:17] Jason: Yeah. You would never notice it.
[00:03:18] Caroline: I like it.
[00:03:18] Jason: So my question to you, as the Creami enjoyer that the Creami scientist.
[00:03:23] Caroline: The cremosa taster.
[00:03:23] Jason: Your title of fellow Creami scientist has...
[00:03:24] Caroline: I got demoted.
[00:03:28] Jason: Yeah.
[00:03:29] Caroline: Jason let me know last night. I had to come to Jason, like, two days ago, and I was like, hey babe.
[00:03:34] Jason: You can't keep up.
[00:03:35] Caroline: I have some things I need to share with you, which is that I don't think I can keep up with that one Creami bowl a day pace that we're on right now. I think I'm starting to feel like for my body and my soul, I think maybe like an every other day, is a more appropriate cadence for me and my ice cream consumption.
[00:03:52] Jason: That's okay. Everyone can make their own decisions.
[00:03:54] Caroline: And Jason was like, okay, that is fine. Thank you so much for sharing your feelings with me. I do need to let you know that your title is going to be revoked.
[00:04:01] Jason: Yeah. You're no longer Creami scientist. Yeah. Do you remember which title it is?
[00:04:05] Caroline: I think I'm an assistant.
[00:04:07] Jason: Yeah, you're an assistant Creami specialist.
[00:04:09] Caroline: Oh, okay. Yeah, but I'm still a specialist.
[00:04:11] Jason: But you're assistant. Yeah. You're actually an assistant to the Creami specialist.
[00:04:18] Caroline: That's different, but I'll take it. I have to be honest.
[00:04:20] Jason: My one important question I wanted to ask you. What's the most memorable Creami batch that we've made so far?
[00:04:26] Caroline: The most memorable that comes to mind is the first one you did with the banana.
[00:04:31] Jason: So there's the butter pecan? Is that what you're saying?
[00:04:33] Caroline: Yes, because I know banana is a very polarizing flavor for people. I really like banana, and like, a banana base for an ice cream is very pleasing to me. And so we had had absolute garbage play doh ice cream for the two batches before that.
[00:04:47] Jason: I was trying to make it with unflavored protein and boy it was bad.
[00:04:49] Caroline: I was looking at you like, this was a mistake.
[00:04:51] Jason: They went straight into the garbage. It's not like I can usually just like, I'll eat that.
[00:04:56] Caroline: We discovered, it was not the recipes. It was the protein powder that you were using to put protein in it. Tasted like just nasty.
[00:05:02] Jason: Tastes like playdoh.
[00:05:02] Caroline: And so that first banana batch was just a respite after the playdoh.
[00:05:07] Jason: And it was butter pecan. It just was the base was with a banana.
[00:05:10] Caroline: So that's why it was delightful.
[00:05:12] Jason: In the freezer. We currently have a butter pecan. I made one yesterday. We have two vanilla proteins. I bought some actual vanilla protein powder.
[00:05:19] Caroline: So we're going to try.
[00:05:19] Jason: We'll see how that goes.
[00:05:20] Caroline: Reserve.
[00:05:21] Jason: Because I am trying to make. Not just, and I'm not adding sugar to any of these. I'm using dates as the sweetener.
[00:05:25] Caroline: Right.
[00:05:26] Jason: But I am trying to try to make, like, a protein one so that it's healthier for you in the macronutrient sense. Still has sweet things and whatever. But anyway. Okay, so your favorite is the butter pecan, the banana base. My favorite is, I think, the one I'm going to make today, which is going to be a piece of apple pie that I'm going to put in as a mix in a literal piece of apple pie.
[00:05:48] Caroline: After you just said that this is going to be better for our macronutrients.
[00:05:50] Jason: Yeah. In the long term.
[00:05:53] Caroline: Okay, I'm sorry, the what?
[00:05:55] Jason: Term?
[00:05:57] Caroline: No, you did a concierge.
[00:05:58] Jason: The long term. Don't go down the concierge.
[00:06:01] Caroline: You said long turn is what you said.
[00:06:04] Jason: If there's a single person, this is who knows what the concierge references to. You are our best friend ever. But I don't think anyone is going to know that. Very specific. I don't think it's possible. Anyway, that is the Creami update. Too long spent on that. Let's get into from melty ice cream to Carol meltdown.
[00:06:23] Caroline: Let's talk about my meltdown yesterday, because if you tune into this podcast, you know that about once a quarter we have a meltdown and then we have to record a podcast episode about it.
[00:06:31] Jason: Right.
[00:06:31] Caroline: It was a mini meltdown. It was fine. But yesterday, I learned something about myself. Okay. I found a little bubble gem of myself again. Longtime listeners will know what that means. I discovered that I am very not good at the chaos that comes, the digital chaos, specifically, that comes with building a plane while it's flying of a software app.
[00:06:57] Jason: Really, the metaphor is building a parachute on the way down. But that's okay.
[00:07:01] Caroline: No, I think it's also building the plane while it's flying.
[00:07:03] Jason: Okay sure. Yeah. I think the plane would have to be built to fly.
[00:07:07] Caroline: I said it confidently and then my brain was like, is that right?
[00:07:09] Jason: Think the plane would have to be built to fly, but that's okay. Yeah.
[00:07:12] Caroline: Let me set the scene.
[00:07:13] Jason: Sure.
[00:07:14] Caroline: Yesterday, one of our goals for this month, our focus areas that we've been taking all of our Wandering Aimfully Unlimited members through for our monthly coaching sessions. That's a little plug, because we are sharing the behind the scenes of our 2024 goal, which is to grow our other business, which is a software application called Teachery. And so we're taking people behind the scenes and we are identifying three focus areas a month of things that we're trying to do. And the number three focus area was to get our email and customer infrastructure in place so that we can see clearly segments of people and where they are in our app based on certain behaviors. So people who have started a trial, people who are paying customers, people who their trial is expiring, people who have yet to build a course yet, all these things, right?
[00:08:00] Jason: Yeah.
[00:08:00] Caroline: Because the more you know about your customers, the more you can create marketing to meet them where they are and to kind of move them through the customer journey. Well, part of the software that we use to do that is a little software called Intercom. Many of you probably are familiar with it. It's the little chat bubble that's in many websites. And for many years, our Intercom software just hasn't had any attention to it.
[00:08:21] Jason: I would say for all of the years that it ever existed.
[00:08:23] Caroline: Because it hasn't needed to. Jason was largely running the business by himself, basically.
[00:08:28] Jason: And to defend myself slightly, but not because I need the defense. It's more the defense of the use case. Intercom started as a chat support software. That was it. Then they started shoehorning in users, email marketing, like all these other things. So the way that we started using it, it was set up correctly.
[00:08:45] Caroline: Right.
[00:08:45] Jason: But then they started putting all these other things in, and we never took the time because we're just building the plane on the way up so that it can fly, and we never took the time to figure out and fix all the different ways all these new pieces of Intercom fit perfectly so they fit well enough. Like, the plane is up in the air, but at any moment, the wing is going to come off.
[00:09:02] Caroline: Right. And so I'm coming in, and I'm trying to do all of these. I'm trying to set up customer interviews. I'm trying to build a marketing plan from scratch from the ground up. And it's really hard to do that if you don't have accurate data of this is how many people are using your software, this is how many people are trialing, et cetera, et cetera. So I've been there, and I'm realizing quickly that certain things are not set up correctly or things are not firing or whatever, and it fritzed my brain out.
[00:09:26] Jason: Yeah. Unfortunately, where I have the brain fritzing in our physical space, if there's a lot of things that are, like clothes piles or lots of stuff being left out, it short circuits my brain, and I have to go and move it around and fix it and make it so that my brain is like, hey, it's calm, it's fine.
[00:09:43] Caroline: Right.
[00:09:44] Jason: This is for you in the digital space.
[00:09:45] Caroline: Which was kind of a fun moment. It wasn't fun, but I think it was a moment of empathy for you, and it gave me a new understanding of how your brain is feeling in that moment.
[00:09:57] Jason: Exactly. Because you can't relate to it as the other person. You're like, I love my clothes pile. All of my clothes are piled, which is perfect for me because they're in a pile.
[00:10:06] Caroline: They're in a pile.
[00:10:06] Jason: And I look at it, and I'm just like, put the clothes in the closet. That's where they belong. And so this is a perfect example of, like, I have lived with this Intercom system being a hot mess for years, and it doesn't bother me because it does a well enough job. I know it's not doing the job that it should, but it does a well enough job that I can just move on because I got to work on a bunch of other things.
[00:10:25] Caroline: Well. And what I realized was it wasn't just that it's kind of a hot mess. I was sending out emails to people, and what I've discovered was I was sending, a couple of those emails went to the wrong people.
[00:10:36] Jason: They were mistagged or they had unsubscribed and didn't want to hear from us.
[00:10:38] Caroline: I'm like, hey, want to hear how much you love Teachery? And it's like, they...
[00:10:45] Jason: I quit four years ago.
[00:10:45] Caroline: That's embarrassing.
[00:10:45] Jason: Cool.
[00:10:46] Caroline: Okay, close that. And so, of course, my personal thing is I do have these residual perfectionistic tendencies. I think I've broken that habit in a lot of areas of my life, but I'm realizing that this is one area where there's still this residue of perfectionism in terms of, like, I want the foundation to be sound before I can move forward and take action. And with a software application or when you're trying to grow something, you really can't always do that. You can't spend three months trying to get the foundation right before you ever email a customer, because that's wasted time. Right? And so this metaphor of, like, I'm just going to use it building the plane as it's flying sure makes me deeply uncomfortable, which is okay. And I had my little mini meltdown of, like, this is fritzing my brain. We went for a walk after I had kind of come down from the just destabilization of... And it was one thing after the next. I'm not going to get into all of it.
[00:11:41] Jason: No.
[00:11:42] Caroline: It wasn't like I flew off the handle all of a sudden. It was, like, frustrating because it was like this wouldn't work. And then I couldn't look up this tag, and then none of our data metrics matched. And it was just one thing after the other until I got all fritzed out. We went for a walk to try to come down from it, which is a good go to tip, get outside, get some sunshine, kind of like let your nervous system reset. And Jason came up with this metaphor.
[00:12:04] Jason: Oh, you want me to share it?
[00:12:05] Caroline: I do want you to share it, because I do think that a big part of how you and I work together is when we, and we did last week's episode, I think was the one on resistance, right?
[00:12:15] Jason: Yeah, I think so.
[00:12:16] Caroline: We work through these things in a way. Like, this is our go to thing, where when we realize that something is creating, getting us to a place where our emotional state is sort of too intense, we come up with these key phrases, we come up with these stories. We reframe things for us as a couple and as partners, so that almost as this, like, safe word to be able to bring the emotional state back down, because when you're in an activated emotional state, you end up taking it out on each other. I'm feeling all this discomfort inside of me. I'm feeling this loss of control about this stupid tagging software, and it's coming out in frustration at Jason, which is not what my intention is, but he's the only human being nearby that can feel the energy of this. And so we often come up with these reframing stories. That can be a helpful thing between us. And so I wanted you to share your reframe story.
[00:13:12] Jason: Yeah. So what I was thinking about we were on this walk is, I was like, okay, there needs to be a way that Caroline can feel okay with Teachery being a hot mess. That doesn't make it feel like I need to feel bad, because I'm the one who's run this thing. So if anybody should feel bad it should be me...
[00:13:27] Caroline: NeIt's neverike I make you feel bad.
[00:13:30] Jason: It can lead to that. So what I said was. I was like, how about we reframe Teachery as this? And maybe this will be helpful for you, listening to this. If you've been running a business for a long time and you need to pivot it or you need to do something, or maybe this has happened to you. You have an Uncle Jhery. J-H-E-R-Y by the name. By the way, that's how he spells his name, very weirdly. And Uncle Jhery passed away, but he lived a long life. He lived to be, like, 97, just, like, full life. And Uncle Jhery built Teachery. And Uncle Jhery did the best that he could. But Uncle Jhery kind of didn't do a great job with all the things.
[00:14:00] Caroline: And he left...
[00:14:01] Jason: But he left Teachery to us because he knew that we would be the best people to move it forward, even though it was just, like, a hobby for him. And he was working on playing on it. But when we get in there, boy, Uncle Jhery did some weird stuff. Uncle Jhery set up tagging wrong. Uncle Jhery has a bunch of customers who are labeled as paying customers, but they actually cancel. They don't have an attached plan. People who are in trial for four years. You can't be in a trial for four years. So, like, there's a lot of things that Uncle Jhery did wrong. But you know what? It's okay, because Uncle Jhery did it. We didn't do it. So how do we just go into this thinking, ah, found a new thing Uncle Jhery did. Let's fix it.
[00:14:34] Caroline: I want to say that when you first brought this up to me, Uncle Jhery didn't die. This has been, like, a new development.
[00:14:41] Jason: Well, I had to give, like, a back story.
[00:14:44] Caroline: But what you brought up to me was, you were like, I think it would be helpful if we imagined that we inherited this business or we bought this business and that it's not us who did it before that. We're starting fresh, and every sort of obstacle and every crack in the facade is an opportunity to make it better. And something about that reframe of being like, oh, we bought this, or we inherited in the case of Uncle Jhery.
[00:15:10] Jason: Yeah. What a nice guy.
[00:15:11] Caroline: And I do think that your approach of assigning, like, a character and a person is really helpful because it creates enough distance between the emotional baggage of the ten years that have accumulated from this business to be, like, we can now put that onto this character.
[00:15:28] Jason: I think this is just the nature of when you're a solo creator or you're a partnership like we are, and you're building your own things. As much as you don't want, your self worth gets tied to that thing because you pour so much effort and so much energy into it. And you listening to this, you do the same thing with your business, whether it's a side project, a thing that you're working on, or it's, like, your full time gig. It's so hard to detach how you feel when something doesn't go right to that. And I think with Teachery, what I'm really trying to do for us is to really detach us from it, because it really doesn't need us specifically to succeed. Like, Wandering Aimfully is different. It is us. We are the coaches. It's so much of us wrapped into it, so it's hard to kind of separate ourselves from it. Teachery can be completely separate from us, and so I'm just trying to, at every turn now, think about this as, like, it doesn't matter who did it. Doesn't matter what was done. It doesn't matter any of those things. Just like, this is a problem to be solved. Let's solve this problem. It shouldn't get us frustrated. It should look at it as like, oh, someone messed this up. Doesn't matter who did it. It's the thing we need to fix for it to move forward. Let's fix it.
[00:16:32] Caroline: And won't it feel so good when you fix it? Yeah. Something about the whole mentality of, if I bought this business and I came in and I tried to make it better or inherited it as an asset, there's something about that frame that made it suddenly fun. I was like, oh, it's not just like I see problems everywhere, and like I was saying, the cracks are showing. I get excited, and I think that's the entrepreneur in me that sees these cracks and goes, oh, my gosh, if we patched that up, the business would be doing so much better, and that's all opportunity, right? So I think, for you listening? Whatever that is for you, whatever emotional baggage maybe that you have accumulated over the past of running your business, trying to reframe it as though, like, okay, but what if I pretended for a second that I inherited this business and it was my job to just make it better? Suddenly the cracks are just opportunities to do better, and they're not like these wounds that are kind of painful to look at.
[00:17:28] Jason: Yeah. All right. Do you want to take them on another metaphor here?
[00:17:31] Caroline: Yeah. So, with that in mind, we thought it would be fun to. Since we're not just going to gripe about my meltdown.
[00:17:39] Jason: Also, we don't gripe about meltdowns. We just share them and then we move on from them.
[00:17:42] Caroline: Right. But by the end of the day yesterday, I had sort of come down from my. Well, that's not even true. It infiltrated my entire day yesterday. And by the evening, I sort of resigned myself tomorrow morning. And you were really good at this. You said, we're going to get to a stopping place. I'm going to help you do x, y and z right now. And then we're going to be done for the day. And I sort of told myself, tomorrow I'm going to wake up, and my intention is going to be to come at this with a different mindset with Uncle Jhery and...
[00:18:11] Jason: Uncle Jhery Bear.
[00:18:12] Caroline: Uncle Jhery Bear. And just trying to have a good attitude about it. And thankfully, that worked. I feel like a totally different person today. And I just was thinking to myself how important it is that days like yesterday, that's just what happens when you're on the journey of creating your own thing, of creating your own business, of just trying to do this path of being a creator, an online creator. And so Jason said, wouldn't it be interesting to have an entire podcast episode about what do we think those qualities are that you're going to need? And the metaphor here is, like, on your journey, the long journey of being creator, I'm picturing you, like, trekking across a desert, because that's how it feels sometimes.
[00:18:54] Jason: Flew your plane to the desert.
[00:18:55] Caroline: You flew your plane to the desert, and all you have is a backpack. And what are you going to need in the backpack to sustain you on this journey of being a creator? And so we have seven things, and there's way more, I'm sure.
[00:19:08] Jason: Of course.
[00:19:08] Caroline: But off the top of our heads, we came up with seven things that if I could tell someone, like, hey, you're about to embark on this long journey because we've done it already with WAIM. Right?
[00:19:16] Jason: Yeah.
[00:19:17] Caroline: But Teachery feels like we're going back to the beginning. And so I know I can see how long this journey is going to be to try to grow Teachery. And it's sort of like my WAIM self is looking back at my Teachery self and going, hey, just pack a couple of things that you're going to need on the road. So we have seven things and we're going to start with. The first one is something that you'll need to pack on the long term journey of being a creator is a strong tolerance for discomfort.
[00:19:43] Jason: Yeah, this is one of those things that I don't think can be said enough. If you run your own business or you're building your own thing is that it is going to be stressful, it is going to be uncomfortable. You are going to have to learn a bunch of stuff that you're not comfortable learning and you don't know well. And it's going to put you out of maybe your quote unquote zone of genius. And you have to be able to handle when those things don't go right. And so that can be an angry customer saying that, oh, the thing that they bought from you, they really don't like, and it's crap. And it's like, well, that sucks. That makes you feel really uncomfortable, but how do you deal with that? How do you not let that derail a whole rest of your day or week or month? And also these kind of like mini meltdowns that happen. And they happen to me, too, as we're working on these businesses. And it's about what do you do to get through that thing? Because it's very easy to let that situation fester and to build. But you're going to be faced with these things over and over again. These uncomfortable situations. These situations that make you feel stressed, that make you feel like, why am I doing this? That is just a part of business. I don't think there's any single business owner who has ever created a business that. That has not had those things. So as long as you can say, oh, okay, that's going to happen, I'm going to throw it in my backpack as the ability to deal with this, and I'm going to be able to move forward because I'm prepared for it.
[00:21:00] Caroline: Definitely, and that comes with practice. Right. I just want to say at the top here, these are all things that are a work in progress. They're not things that you suddenly have or don't have. And if you don't have these things already, then somehow you're not cut out to be an entrepreneur. I don't think that's it. They're all things that you cultivate with time, but I think...
[00:21:16] Jason: We could call them your everyday carry items. These are your EDCs.
[00:21:21] Caroline: Is that a real acronym that people use?
[00:21:22] Jason: Oh, my gosh, babe. You are wading into a world you don't even know exists.
[00:21:26] Caroline: Okay, EDC or ED... And just a last note on the discomfort thing is not just sort of weathering the discomfort of a lot of these, whether it's customer service or things breaking or, like, weird... How many times have we... You send out an email that has the wrong link or something like that, and you're like, so there's always going to be things like that. But also in business, if you are growing both the business and personally, new things are going to be required of you at every step of that journey. Right? Like, the things that were required of you to get going are not the same things that are required of you to hire your first support person or to become more efficient or whatever those new stages are of optimization. It's going to require a new thing of you. And growth is by nature, uncomfortable. And so I think about that every day. Now where I'm going back to you know, we wrote a newsletter at the end of last year called the Valley of the Beginner. And it's this mindset of, I'm going back to the beginning with Teachery. I am not in the software as a service world. I am not in the SaaS world for short. And I feel out of my depth a lot of the time because I just haven't spent a lot of time here. But I can handle the discomfort that comes with being a beginner. And that's how I know I can weather that feeling and sit with that feeling. I've built up a tolerance to that feeling because I know that that's what it takes in order to get out of that feeling, which is it just takes reps and actions of learning and doing and learning by doing. So that's the first thing, though, because I think it kind of infiltrates everything else.
[00:23:04] Jason: Yeah. All right, so the second thing you need to pack.
[00:23:06] Caroline: So, number two thing you will need to pack in your EDC as a long term creator is, and this is related to the first one, an emotional health and self care routine. And I put this at the top of the list because I'm telling you, the biggest difference between what it feels like to be an entrepreneur, a creator now, versus five, six, seven years ago, is I feel like I have such a better developed wellness ritual routine, right. Not just emotional health, but also physical health. And so that means taking care of your body. That means understanding you need sleep. That means being able to walk away from your work and take a walk. When you feel yourself at an emotionally heightened state, it's just like good emotional hygiene. Because if you don't establish that foundation and that baseline for yourself, there's no way you're going to be able to have number one, which was the tolerance for discomfort.
[00:24:00] Jason: Yeah. And I really believe that. It's interesting to look at the time frame of more and more people moving to working for themselves, and you look at, like, 20 years ago, there were not a ton of people doing what we're doing, right. Like, it just did not exist because the technology wasn't there, the opportunities weren't there, kind of like the socioeconomic things were not there. So it was like we all knew our routines for working a nine to five job, because it's pretty much the same, right? Like, you get to that job, you sit at that job, you do work at that job, the routines are kind of the same for everything. But when that goes away and now you're in your own home or you're going to an office or whatever, and...
[00:24:39] Caroline: You have unlimited flexibility.
[00:24:40] Jason: There is so much that we don't know, which is why I think it's funny when you talk about, like, guys, why do we need advice on how to have a morning routine? And the reason we need advice on how to have a morning routine is because 20 years ago, there was a whole different way that we all operated.
[00:24:53] Caroline: Yeah, there's no time for a morning routine.
[00:24:55] Jason: And I think it's kind of funny when people, they just laugh at like, oh, here's humans in 2024 don't know how to take care of themselves on a day to day basis. It's like, yeah, but a lot has changed very quickly in our human lifetime, and we've been around on this earth for however many millions of years, but for super long periods of time, it was always the same. And now we're in this super compressed, highly changed time. So I think it is so important for our brains that are constantly trying to adapt to all this change to have small moments of routine and mindfulness and all these other things. However that works for you, it doesn't have to necessarily be getting on the call map and spending 3 hours doing all the things in there, but it's like what works for you and makes you feel good every day so that you have that good emotional and mental health to move forward in working and spending time on creative endeavors.
[00:25:44] Caroline: I think you're absolutely right. And I think part of the reason maybe this is emerging as a theme and so much emphasis on the morning routine and everything is because we are in sort of like unprecedented times in terms of the stress of our environment. And it's almost like our software of our brains has not adapted at the same rate that our environment has changed. And I was listening to an interview the other day, I think this was Arthur Brooks, perhaps happiness expert, but he was talking about how, if we think about the origins of anxiety and the way that that manifests in your body, back in the day, there's a threat, and your brain sends a signal that there's a threat and it spikes your adrenaline and your cortisol, so you can run away from the Sabertooth Tiger that we always know about. But he was saying how what we're not programmed for, in which so many people are now dealing with anxiety, is this sort of like low grade threat all the time, right? And so it's like you think about news and you think about social media and you think about work stress, and you think about all these things that are sort of this low grade, unspecified, unfocused threat all the time. And it manifests as this anxiety, which is undirected fear. And so acute, momentary fear was very adaptable for our biological systems. This sort of like low grade everywhere anxiety is not. And so I think about that, and what I want for people is I don't want anyone to have to go through what I went through in 2019 to figure out that your mental health and your physical health has to be your number one priority. I don't want anyone to go through that type of acute crisis before they understand that if I just focus on this thing, which is my brain and my body being in a great solid place, everything else on top of that, I can handle because I'm taking care of myself.
[00:27:37] Jason: Yeah, exactly. And I think we all are aware at this point of the fact that if you can't wake up and cognitively function, then you're not going to be able to work on your business in a way that moves it forward at all. So you got to get that part right first. And that may feel like a step back, but it's actually a big step forward long term. And I think that's what all of these key factors are for, is like long term, working for yourself, building your own thing, carving out your own little niche in the world, and living a good life along the same way, sometimes you have to take little step backs and reset to do that.
[00:28:09] Caroline: Definitely. So, number three, you will need to pack on your journey. A self awareness filter is what I'm calling this one. And what I mean by that is this is super important. The ability to take advice and feedback and sort of outside influence and run it through your own goals and your own perspective. So that's why I say filter. But also just self awareness and being like, okay, listen, that person is telling me that I need to do business in this way, X, Y and Z. But that doesn't exactly apply to me because I have different desires and I have different things that I'm not willing to sacrifice than that person. But I'll still take the 10% of what they said and apply it to my own business.
[00:28:49] Jason: Yeah. And I think that there's so much that we say here on this podcast that we have just shared from our own experience, and it may not be right for you.
[00:28:57] Caroline: A lot of it is not probably right for you.
[00:28:59] Jason: A lot of it.
[00:28:59] Caroline: But that's the power of this filter.
[00:29:01] Jason: No, for sure.
[00:29:03] Caroline: We are two people who live our life in a very specific way, and everyone has different contexts.
[00:29:10] Jason: Yeah, for sure.
[00:29:11] Caroline: It's ridiculous to think that you should listen to someone and take 100% of what they say.
[00:29:14] Jason: Yeah. And I do think it's very easy to get caught up in kind of the hype and excitement of finding someone new, finding some new thing that gives you the motivation, inspiration that maybe you haven't had before. And I know for me, you found this podcast, my first million last year, which I think we're like three years late to it. Again, this is very on brand for us. And we started watching it, and I had this moment where I was like, 95% of this is really not applicable. Some of it, I'm just like, guys, what are you even talking about? But 5% of it, I'm like, I'm not getting this content anywhere else.
[00:29:47] Caroline: Yeah, it's kind of funny, right? Because it's like our podcast and our business mentality is so slow and steady. It's so much about millions. I don't want it to be about money. I don't want it to be about, I'm trying to make 100 million dollar business. This. This other podcast is very much for people who want to make $100 million. And you're like, listen, that's not my goal. But as Jason said, can I get 5% out of this? That can inspire me towards my own goals. And I think that, unfortunately, we have gotten to this place where we think that a piece of content needs to resonate 100%, or needs to be for us 100%, or we need to 100% align with the person who created it. And we forget that we're all extremely varied people with extremely varied perspectives. I think it's kind of, in a weird way, a little bit narcissistic to think that everyone is going to share your perspective in the world. And therefore, I think it's on us as the person consuming the information to go. First of all, there's no way that person could possibly know my unique circumstances because I'm just a person listening. But second of all, how can I take what serves me and leave the rest? And I think we'd all be better off if we just consumed everything through that filter.
[00:30:59] Jason: Another part of the self awareness filter that I really wanted to bring up here is that friends and family can also give you bad advice. Because when you tell them that you're going to embark on a journey, all they can hear is, what would this feel like to me? And it feels scary. And they immediately say, like, hey, you shouldn't do that. Don't start your own business. Don't quit your job to do this thing. Because all they can think about is like, how does that make them feel? And I brought up this metaphor a couple of times on the podcast, but I'll bring it up again. And the way that I look at fear, especially as it relates to business, is like when you're first starting out, fear is sitting with you in a smart car. They're right next to you in the passenger seat you're driving, and they're just screaming at you all the things you shouldn't do, and it's all you can hear. It really is hard to get away from. But then you start, like, putting yourself out there. You start doing some things. You start pushing...
[00:31:42] Caroline: And surviving.
[00:31:43] Jason: Beyond that and surviving, and then it becomes a Ford Taurus. There are fears in the backseat now, and you can hear them. There's still plenty there, but you're starting to make some more decisions on your own. You're not paying so much attention to them. Then you get a little bit further, and now it's like a stretch limo with the dividing partition. And it's like, oh, okay, I know they're back there, but at any moment I can decide I need to put up the partition and I need to move forward with what I want to do, no matter what they're saying. And I think this is just so applicable, especially when you aren't surrounding yourself with people who are doing what you're doing, because a lot of us don't have that in our lives necessarily, especially in our physical space, that you have to just take everything people say around you with a grain of salt, know that they love you, they appreciate you, they're trying to look out for you, but also know that a lot of things are saying are coming from a place of fear that they have, and you might need to move forward, which is going to curtail into our next EDC item in your travel pack here.
[00:32:35] Caroline: Yes. So good thing you were speaking so much about fear, because the next thing we're going to need to pack in our EDC is the courage to take risks.
[00:32:43] Jason: Yes. And this definitely falls under the same kind of, like, discomfort, but we definitely want to talk about it, because risks are things that it's hard to quantify exactly what a risk is. They come in all different shapes and sizes. They are packaged differently. They can feel different to other people, but there are always going to be moments, little inflection points, where you make a decision to do something that you're like, ooh, I don't know. This isn't the easiest way to move forward, or this isn't the simplest decision, or this isn't the software that everyone else is using to do this thing, but I feel like it's the right move for my business to make or a pivot or a rebrand or whatever those are. The things can actually be the huge turning points that feel scary, but they're the things you need to do to move forward.
[00:33:27] Caroline: Yeah. It's like when we combined businesses in 2018, that's the first one that comes to mind. That was a big risk. Right? Because we had been kind of going along and we had our own individual businesses and brands. We had a strong sense of those brands and what that meant. And so combining was starting over and not understanding what would this mean for our businesses. But we had this deep belief that we would be better together. And so, as you said, it was choosing a path that was not the easiest or the most obvious, but that we ultimately felt like would be the best thing long term. And that risk has paid off big time. But it doesn't have to be a big risk like that. Like sometimes just like deciding that you're going to post on social media and show your face for the first time, that feels like a risk. Like, as Jason pointed out in the beginning, it can come in all shapes and sizes. But I truly believe that in order to grow, we talk all the time on this podcast about having an experimenter's mindset. And by nature, experimenting in business means you don't know how something is going to turn out. You are moving forward and taking action with uncertainty and without knowing that it's going to be the right move. And that's why you have to have courage, and that's why you have to be able to have fear in that limo and to keep driving anyway.
[00:34:40] Jason: Yeah. And I do think that something that we have learned and done kind of like naturally ourselves, is to take calculated risks that are intentional.
[00:34:50] Caroline: Right.
[00:34:50] Jason: And a lot of that comes with a lot of pre preparation to taking that risk. So it's like talking to potential customers and asking them do they want this thing. If you're making a new product or service, it's getting people to go through the first version of it before you put it up for sale to see where does it fall short. Where do people not find it interesting or helpful? It's a lot of these little small tests that you can do before you just put something out into the world where you can go, okay, I'm going to take this risk, but also I'm going to do a little bit of pre planning, and I'm going to see if people actually like this thing or it helps them or whatever, and then I can take the risk. And it doesn't feel as scary or as daunting.
[00:35:25] Caroline: Definitely. And I think it's interesting because on this topic of risk and sort of how do you. I know the follow up question to that is like, well, you're telling me courage to take a risk, but how do I have that courage? And of course, practice is the answer. But also I think, and this probably could have been its own item, but I think this is why it's so important to cultivate your own sense of self worth and self perception. Because if you're still worried about what other people think of you and how other people perceive you, you're never going to want to take a risk because your entire self worth is tied up in it feels too risky. You know what I mean? You're never going to be able to overcome and go, okay, well, if it doesn't work out, I'll be okay, because I know that I'm not a failure, or I'm okay with looking silly or I'm okay with looking embarrassed and those things. And this is where I think important things like therapy or things like journaling, or just things like contemplating your own sense of identity are very important because the more you can build that up within yourself and have that relationship with yourself, where you go. I know that this decision I'm about to make does not define who I am or my worth in the world or my success as an entrepreneur. It's just another experiment that is an important component to being able to have the courage to take those risks.
[00:36:38] Jason: Yeah. And even if you're doing something like I did, like, I wrote down a bunch of my projects that I've done over the years that I think would be considered very risky or scary for a lot of people. You embrace the fact that, yeah, these are putting myself out there, and I am going to get judged for these things, but I also believe in these things more than I'm worried about the judgment that's going to come with them. So, like, my IWearYourShirt project. Who am I? This random dude at the time, living in Florida with zero following on social media, saying, I believe companies would want to pay me to wear their t-shirt and post on social media. Before that was a thing.
[00:37:11] Caroline: Now it seems obvious.
[00:37:12] Jason: Yeah, that's like a really risky move for someone who has literally no following and no experience to do this. But I just believe that anybody could do this, so why couldn't it be me?
[00:37:22] Caroline: And why not try?
[00:37:23] Jason: Yeah. And then through my BuyMyLastName project, the amount of people that told me that was a stupid idea, it's totally fine. But you know what? I had the risk tolerance to say, like, yeah, but I got paid to wear t shirts for five years. You don't think someone would want to buy my last name? That seems easy. Having a sponsored book, selling my future, then selling our future, then moving into, like, all of these things just lead to being better at taking risks, because you then know, well, you know, building our software platform from Uncle Jhery is going to be a lot easier than trying to convince people to buy my last name. It becomes so much easier than in the future when you've done risky things to then make those future decisions with that kind of experience. Like you said, it just happens over time.
[00:38:07] Caroline: It does. And that courage builds on itself. So you start small and you take little risks, and then you can kind of build up the tolerance for those bigger ones. But speaking of all of your ideas, wild ideas, and having a strong sense of self, that kind of moves into number five. So the fifth thing that you'll need to pack on your long term journey as a creator is a deep sense of self belief.
[00:38:29] Jason: Yeah.
[00:38:30] Caroline: So I think this is so important because I really do think this is one of those x factor things. That you can't quantify it, but I think it really contributes to whether someone is actually able to attain their goals or not. And it boils down to, do they believe that they can get there?
[00:38:48] Jason: Yeah. And this came up recently for us. I stumbled across a YouTube video about the 13 year old kid who is the first human ever to beat the original game of Tetris. And many of you may have seen recently, right? It happened in December. So just a couple of months ago or a month ago. Why does December feel like a couple of months ago already? That's kind of crazy. But literally no one had ever beaten the original Nintendo game of Tetris. And then an AI beat it in 2021. And then two years later, this 13 year old kid who only started playing it after, I think he saw the AI beat it because he was eleven at the time and it was two years later, he's the first ever to beat the game. The funny thing is, 13 days later, then another Tetris player beat it, who they were actually live streaming at the same time when the 13 year old beat it. And he was super happy for him. Then one day later, another person beat it. And I just think it's so crazy because then you brought up the four minute mile and I looked it up and the first four minute mile ever was run in 1954. Ever in the history of people running, which was a long time. One month later, it was then done again.
[00:39:54] Caroline: Right? And so you go, oh, was this a coincidence? And you go, no, the timing is not coincidental. What's going on here is the power of belief of someone going, oh, it's possible. And so now I believe that I can actually do this. And so that's what I mean by this x factor. It literally gives me chills. It gives me chills thinking of someone thinking suddenly having a new gear and a new capability because they believe it's possible.
[00:40:20] Jason: And I think it sounds so silly for me to say these next words, but I really do think it's very important because if you just have the belief to be a person who can send consistent, valuable email newsletters, I can do that. Be a person who can create an interesting Instagram account that's a little bit different than people in my field. I can do that. Be a person who can create an online course that actually delivers helpful content in a way that people can digest it and take action. I can do that. I know these things sound so silly on the surface, but I also know so many of you listening to this have gotten to the place where you've been paralyzed by the decision to move forward because you don't necessarily feel like maybe you have anything to offer in an email newsletter that someone's not doing. And you really just have to have the belief and the courage to be like, yeah, but I'm just going to try. I'm going to take the risk, and I'm going to do it, and I'm going to be able to deal with the discomfort of if some people don't like it. But I really believe that I can do this because I see all these other people doing it. Why not me? Why can't I do it?
[00:41:15] Caroline: Is the power of things like affirmations and things like that, right? So if you don't believe that right now, it's okay. Write down, I believe I have something valuable to say and repeat it every day until you start to believe it. Right. Like, those are the things where you can actually cultivate your mind. Our minds are incredibly malleable. And if you know that belief is that powerful of a tool to have in your toolkit, do everything in your power in order to cultivate that belief. It doesn't have to just be, either I have it or I don't. And I think a lot about you and I were both watching this interview on Colin and Samir's channel, and I believe the creator was her name is my fam. And I had never heard of her before. So, again, that's dating me. If someone's like, really? And I'm like, I don't know. This is also the nature of the Internet now, where everyone's in their silos, of course. And so you're like, how have you not heard of so and so? But I loved what she was talking about in terms of knowing that she, from a very young age, was going to be an entertainer and just believing that that was her kind of, like, destiny, that was what she wanted to do. And there's something about feeling like something is meant for you and deciding that it's meant for you that I really do believe you act in accordance with that. And she actually referenced James Clear's book, Atomic Habits and the power of Identity. And so if you haven't read that yet, look up the section specifically on the power of identity and how, if you decide in your mind, I am a person who sends regular newsletters. I am a person who earns a good living online. I am a person who has a profitable business. You start to embody that identity, and you start to take action in accordance with that identity. Because identity is that powerful to your brain? And so, yeah, just going back to this one, I think in your backpack, a deep sense of self belief and whatever you need to do in order to cultivate that belief.
[00:43:03] Jason: Absolutely. All right, number six, we have two left here.
[00:43:06] Caroline: Number six, I think you're also going to need to pack tunnel vision.
[00:43:10] Jason: Absolutely.
[00:43:10] Caroline: Is what I wrote down.
[00:43:11] Jason: Yes.
[00:43:11] Caroline: So what tunnel vision means to me is also this ability to keep your head down and focused on your own path rather than being pulled and distracted by the environment around you.
[00:43:23] Jason: Yeah. And I think this is one of those that it's easy and it's difficult at the same time because you want to ignore, but you also want to embrace trends and fads and things. And I know that that is a horrible piece of advice because it's basically telling you to do both things. But I think you and your own gut and intuition have to know, when is it the right time for me to jump on this trend in my business? And I think here..
[00:43:49] Caroline: That's when you pull out your self awareness filter. It's in your backpack.
[00:43:51] Jason: Absolutely. And I think for us, it's like, right now for, like, we so badly want to execute on a YouTube strategy that we've been thinking about for years for Teachery, but Uncle Jhery gave us this app and it is just a mess on the inside. We have got to clean up all of this beginning foundational stuff. So as much as we want to do that and we see a path forward with that, we have to ignore it for now, and we have to have tunnel vision on. We've got to get the foundation right. And I think for you listening to this, you probably know in your business where things are falling through the cracks, where things haven't been set up properly, you're maybe trying to pivot from clients to digital products, and you know that there's a big transition there that you need to make, but you're already seeing like, oh, but I could do this new TikTok thing that everyone's doing, but that is a distraction to the fact that you have to have the tunnel vision to do all the first long term stuff that'll set you up for success in a long form, as opposed to just jumping on something shiny and new. That's only going to add more stress to you over time because you didn't fix the actual foundation.
[00:44:53] Caroline: Keyword long term. We'll come back to that in a moment.
[00:44:56] Jason: Okay.
[00:44:56] Caroline: But I think you're absolutely right. And also that pertains to comparison as well, because I think comparison is something that traps so many people, and we've done several episodes on it. But when it comes to tunnel vision, it's not just tunnel vision for your goals and the things that are working in your business and not being distracted by shiny new things. It's also tunnel vision in the fact that don't compare yourself to someone else's journey. It's sort of like keep your eyes on your path and your goals and going back to what we were saying about that self awareness filter and the context that is your own situation and pursue that. You can be happy for other people, you can be excited for other people. But the moment when you feel like your attention is on peers or people and it's making you feel more paralyzed because you suddenly feel discouraged that you're not farther along than you thought you would be. That's when you have to engage that tunnel vision and go, their journey is not my journey. So where am I today?
[00:45:53] Jason: I would challenge you listening to this today. The next person that you interact with their content on Instagram or in your email inbox or getting their newsletter, whatever, and it makes you feel like your business is less than theirs. Unfollow them. We go through this in periods of time where I'm signed up to a bunch of SaaS newsletters. But then when we start working on Uncle Jhery Bear's software product, I have to unsubscribe because all I can do is look at all the things that they're doing and that company is making $100,000 a month or whatever, and we're not even close to that. I've got to unsubscribe because even as inspirational as it can be, it's going to distract me from where we are right now and what we need to do to move forward right here. Then I can resubscribe to those things later. But I just think this is something where people tend to stay in these loops of, and I'm guilty of this, too, of continuing to consume that inspirational content, thinking it's going to be the one thing that moves us forward when we know the one thing that's going to move us forward is doing the really boring work that's going to move.
[00:46:50] Caroline: Forward when it sort of has this insidious nature of actually pushing you further away from your goals because it's making you feel discouraged and it's the opposite of motivation. My question for that is always because I'm different than you. I get inspiration from things and I love taking insights from other people and kind of assimilating it into my own software. But the question I ask myself is, is following this person bringing me closer to action or farther away? So for me, it's like, did I get a useful tactic that I'm going to apply? And now it's actually helping me reach my goals. So I can now get into my tunnel vision and I feel like I'm going faster and more efficiently, or do I feel discouraged when I stop reading? Do I feel like I'll never be where they're. You just have to have an awareness of what's going on in your brain when you finish consuming that content. And do you feel like it's propelling you forward or do you feel like it's dampening you down? And that self awareness is going to help you in deciding what to do with that?
[00:47:47] Jason: Yeah. And I think one of the things I wanted to touch on, especially as it relates to WAIM and building WAIM over the past five years and using that tunnel vision, is there were multiple times, I think, back to when our Instagram reels started to pop, when you were really focusing on Instagram reels. And it would have been so easy to ride the wave of the virality of some of those and feel good about that, but it would have taken away from the things that actually mattered, which was like, really good email marketing and sales and launch planning, a really good affiliate program that we didn't have to redo every single time. Great monthly coaching that our members walked away from being like, yeah, this is worth paying for every week. And the quality of those things would have suffered had we continued to pour more time into Instagram. And so we had to make the decision to go, yeah, but you know what? This doesn't actually tie directly to our business revenue and goals that we have. All these other things do. So we need to have tunnel vision to step away from that and focus on the things that actually help grow our business.
[00:48:44] Caroline: Yeah. Which now that we have all these things in our backpack, that also ties into the courage to take a risk. Right? Because then you combine that with what if we didn't keep going on Instagram? Let's see what a launch looks like without it. Take that risk. It could have gone the other direction. It could have know much less, in which case we would have had to go back on. But you never find out unless you're willing to take the risk. And so that's why all these things are so necessary in our. What is it? EDC.
[00:49:09] Jason: Everyday carry.
[00:49:10] Caroline: When you say EDC, it makes me think you're going to say, ED SATA.
[00:49:13] Jason: ED SATA. Yeah. Which is a city about 45 minutes south of us.
[00:49:17] Caroline: Number seven. Our final item in our little trek backpack here is you are going to need to pack a long term perspective.
[00:49:25] Jason: Yeah. I think this goes back to my idea of like, we've only been doing this for like, 20 years, this idea of online creators, freelancers working for ourselves. We have such little cognitive processing time to deal with what it means to think kind of long term in this. But so many of the things we interact with on a daily basis are such a short term blip in our minds that we have a hard time going like, oh, but I'm going to work on this business for the next five years. I am going to spend the time and effort that it takes to have experiments, to rebuild foundations, to pivot, to interview customers, to come up with marketing campaigns, like, do all of this stuff. But over the course of five years, I'm not going to do it for three months and then give up and be like, well, online business doesn't work for me.
[00:50:11] Caroline: And maybe it's longer than five years, but I told you that every day I'm reminding myself as it relates to Teachery, because it feels fun to have a goal, right? It feels fun to be like, I want to end this year having grown Teachery X, Y and Z. But again, going back to that interview with Arthur Brooks, he was talking about this arrival fallacy. And we all know it's the classic thing of, you have a goal and it feels really good and you achieve the goal and it never sustains that joy longer than you think it's going to. And that's because our brains aren't wired, that know. And so every day I'm trying to remind myself the goal is only helpful in that it fuels the journey. And whenever possible, I want to shift my focus from the destination and putting all of my hopes and dreams away from the destination and just to the journey. Which sounds cliche, but it's just true. I look back and I'm like, oh, yeah. Just every time I think to myself, why am I doing this work? And it's, oh, to reach this goal. And it's like, no, I'm going to look back five years from now and be like, it was so much fun trying to work towards that goal, not the goal itself. It was so fun every day trying to reach the goal, not the goal itself.
[00:51:19] Jason: And I think that's such an important thing for people to take a moment and think about, like here at the end of this episode, am I building a business for myself that I actually enjoy working on? Or am I building a business that I've seen someone else succeed so much with that I think I can do that and I'm willing to weather I hate doing this work, but I want to get to that person's success that they had doing this thing.
[00:51:41] Caroline: Am I postponing joy for a day that may not come?
[00:51:45] Jason: Like you said, with what's the rival fallacy? Even if you get to that goal, you've spent the whole time not enjoying it, that you're going to get to the goal and statistically not enjoy it. And then what?
[00:51:59] Caroline: Even the most mindful, fully transcendent has full control of their mind. Even the person who has the most mindfulness possible will arrive at a goal, and it will eventually that satisfaction will wear off because our brains are built for it. So, you know, listening to this podcast, we are all about trying to focus on enough, not more, trying to cultivate more satisfaction. All of that is still true, but it is worth noting that our brains are quite literally not built for that. And so our goal is just to push in the opposite direction. But we're under no assumptions that we're going to somehow transform our brains into being forever satisfied. That's just not the way they're built. And so it is important to at least acknowledge this idea, and this can protect you from some of that disappointment or some of that emptiness that could come when you do eventually reach your goal. Right? And it's just going like, great, what's my next journey?
[00:52:55] Jason: Yeah, totally. And I think it is just important to reiterate here that the long term perspective is helpful and doing what you love and trying to find a thing that you enjoy. The destination of building that plane on the way up, every single step of that building process, it's still going to be uncomfortable. You're still going to have to manage your mental health. You're still going to have to have a self awareness filter. You're still going to have to take risks. All of these things that we just talked about are going to continue to repeat over and over. It's never going to be so easy that you're just like, well, I won the game of business and it's good to go. I think that's a fallacy that happens to zero, zero 1% of people in business. But even they would tell you that it was still really hard to get to whatever point they got to, and maybe they still don't feel fulfilled even if they got to whatever that point.
[00:53:40] Caroline: Was totally, and I think also coming up with a frame that can help you interpret that difficulty as a positive, not a negative. So for me personally, growth is what brings me meaning. Growth is what gives me a sense of purpose. Am I growing? Am I changing? Am I approaching my life with a new perspective that I didn't have before? And so for me, if that's my overall filter on life, the way that I approach everything, if something is hard, even if it's difficult in the micro, I feel like in a weird way, that's a positive in the macro because it means I'm growing and changing.
[00:54:17] Jason: Yeah. Do you have anything else you want to add? I have an action item for everybody.
[00:54:20] Caroline: Oh, no. Go right into the action.
[00:54:21] Jason: You have an action item here, but I think I have a more fun one.
[00:54:24] Caroline: Oh, sure.
[00:54:24] Jason: If you made it all the way here, you like our podcast, you listen all the way to the end.
[00:54:27] Caroline: Thank you so much for listening.
[00:54:28] Jason: We appreciate you. The action item. Head to WanderingAimfully.com/contact . Fill out tell us who you inherited your business from. Who's the made up family member?
[00:54:38] Caroline: Yes.
[00:54:39] Jason: It can't be Uncle Jhery because he only worked on Teachery. Who made it up in your family? Who's the person that gifted you this business that you can reframe? Man, I've kind of been feeling down about my business or I've kind of not been excited about it or like this is a new thing I'm starting that someone gave me. Like they just started it.
[00:54:54] Caroline: And I'm also very say, it doesn't have to be a family member. It could be I want a business on the price is right. It could be Tom Cruise gave you the business. Someone walked up to me on the street and said, hey do you want this business? I want full creativity, full imagination.
[00:55:10] Jason: Take a couple of minutes, have some fun filling out that form. Maybe it'll give you a mental reset of working on your business and making you excited for it to start this year. So let's do that. WanderingAimfully.com/contact. Look forward to reading those. This is the episode that we hope helps you move forward, get through some of the things that maybe you're getting stuck on in your business. And that's it. That's all we have. EDC plane on the way up. Packing things. Creamies. Meltdown.
[00:55:35] Caroline: Cremosa.
[00:55:36] Jason: Cremosa. I think we got it all.
[00:55:38] Caroline: Thanks for listening. Bye.