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We’re Jason and Caroline Zook, a husband and wife team running two businesses together and trying to live out our version of a good life in the process. In this business podcast, we share with you our lessons learned about how to run a calm, sustainable business—one that is predictable, profitable AND peaceful. Join us every Thursday if you’re an online creator who wants to reach your goals without sacrificing your well-being in the process.
[00:00:00] Caroline: Welcome to Growing Steady, the show where we help online creators like you build a calm business, one that's predictable, profitable, and peaceful. We're your hosts, Jason and Caroline Zook, and we run Wandering Aimfully, an un-boring business coaching program and Teachery, an online course platform for designers. Join us each week as we help you reach your business goals without sacrificing your well being in the process. Slow and steady is the way we do things around here, baby.
[00:00:29] Jason: All right, cinnamon rollers, that's you. Let's get into the show. Here we go.
[00:00:38] Caroline: Welcome, welcome.
[00:00:38] Jason: Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. I'm gonna say it. I'm gonna try to remember to say it every episode, because this is the content extravaganza.
[00:00:44] Caroline: We're in the midst.
[00:00:45] Jason: We're in week one, technically.
[00:00:47] Caroline: We are in week one.
[00:00:47] Jason: We recorded the first episode, which was laying the groundwork. But this is week one of the extravaganza.
[00:00:53] Caroline: Because I very much had this reaction as I'm describing the content extravaganza last episode. I'm like, we're doing the thing where we're doing so much.
[00:01:01] Jason: Yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure.
[00:01:02] Caroline: We just really.
[00:01:03] Jason: 100%.
[00:01:04] Caroline: Like, I just want everyone listening to know when you're having that thought as you're listening to us and you're like, this is so complicated. This is... We know. We know that, and we don't have any other gear. We don't have another gear, okay?
[00:01:17] Jason: I don't know what the answer is because I think, for years...
[00:01:19] Caroline: I've been thinking about this.
[00:01:20] Jason: Okay, go ahead.
[00:01:20] Caroline: I've been thinking about this. We love a challenge.
[00:01:23] Jason: Yeah.
[00:01:24] Caroline: We like the game of it. Like, you and I are never gonna play a video game and be like, easy mode.
[00:01:30] Jason: Never gonna do.
[00:01:31] Caroline: It's not fun. It's not fun. And if you're one of those people, more power to you. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. I'm just saying that the universe conspired for us to find each other in life because we both find that absolutely boring.
[00:01:43] Jason: We just want to bleed a little.
[00:01:43] Caroline: Just a little. Just a little. Okay.
[00:01:46] Jason: Yeah.
[00:01:47] Caroline: We just want to push ourselves to the brink of a mental... mental breakdown. Just a little.
[00:01:51] Jason: Yeah. It is not lost on us that we are taking on a tremendous amount of work. But I think the other thing to mention here, too, is that we are in, like, a little bit of an interesting time frame for our lives as well, which is tiny Zooks are on the horizon.
[00:02:06] Caroline: I'm not pregnant. Just saying.
[00:02:07] Jason: Yeah, that's not an announcement. We're not doing you know, any type of, like...
[00:02:11] Caroline: Can you imagine, though, if we just, like, dropped that? Like, that's the announcement, just like, right there.
[00:02:14] Jason: Just in the beginning of podcast?
[00:02:15] Caroline: Listen, like, okay, fine, they're on the way.
[00:02:16] Jason: But the point of that is that, like, we're in this time window where this is a season of work for us. And we talk about seasons a lot on this podcast and, like, how we're feeling. And this is a work season. And so, you know, our year of 2022, full time travel, that was not a work season. That was a life, you know, make... make memories, do experiences, like, all these different things. And so, as, you know, our lives ebb and flow, we are in really, like, a thick work season. But I will say it's not like we're working 12 hours a day. We're not eating meals. Some of us are brushing half our teeth, but, you know, some of us are not.
[00:02:49] Caroline: That's a personal flaw. That's not like a...
[00:02:51] Jason: But I think... I think the thing that we have learned over the years, especially for me, because I think between the two of us, I used to be the one that was more work obsessed in when we were, you know, first starting to work together.
[00:03:00] Caroline: Definitely.
[00:03:01] Jason: You hadn't even learned how to be work obsessed yet. But I had all the bad habits, and I have since really broken those. So, like, even in a, like, hardcore workday, I still will be maybe baking bread or I still will be doing something. I still will be getting up and going, you know, for walks. And I think there was this thing that got passed around a lot. I think you told me about it, the Martha Stewart thing of, like, how she stays so active so late in her life, and it's because she just takes so many breaks throughout the day. And I naturally do that. Like, I'm the type of person. But I think that's also the difference between our brains, right? I can take the break. There's no switching cost. I get right back into a thing.
[00:03:32] Caroline: Yes. And for me, I have... I will not take the break if I don't set the intention.
[00:03:36] Jason: Right.
[00:03:37] Caroline: So I have to be like. I have to set reminders. I have to, like, have an alarm go off to be like, get up. I need those things because the way my brain just latches and all. Also, I was thinking about this. I think part of it also has to do with the fact that as a person who struggled with really debilitating anxiety for many years, I am now in this era of my life where I don't experience anxiety really ever anymore. And I am so grateful to say those words, because when I tell you that there was a time not very long ago where I thought that I would be experiencing awful, debilitating, torturous levels of anxiety on a daily basis for the rest of my life, and it gets me emotional just thinking about it because the person that I am sitting here right now is so different from the daily existence that I was living just like three or four years ago. And so I think as a person who now feels like I have a greater capacity for things that I enjoy, I have a greater capacity for work that I love. I think sometimes I use that.
[00:04:44] Jason: Exactly. Yeah. And I think that's just natural for humans. Okay. We did have one little pre episode topic that we wanted to just go over very quickly because we always love doing the relatable, especially couples things. And I think, like, our biggest hit. Do you know what our biggest hit in the relatable couple stories that we've ever told? The top sheet.
[00:05:02] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:05:03] Jason: Whether you're a top sheet person or you're not a top sheet person, I don't remember what episode that was. But this really, like, it's the most emails, comments, messages we've ever gotten from a podcast episode of just like, couples really resonate with. Like, one of them usually loves the top sheet and the other one despises and just wants to duvet cover on top of it.
[00:05:20] Caroline: Yeah. And my issue is that when... when we entered into a marriage contract, you told me you were a no top sheet person.
[00:05:27] Jason: But we don't have a top sheet now.
[00:05:28] Caroline: And then you changed.
[00:05:29] Jason: I know. We had a top sheet for like, a little while.
[00:05:31] Caroline: This isn't being like, yeah, like, I want children. And then, like, halfway through you're feeling, no, just kidding. Like, that's the severity.
[00:05:38] Jason: That's the level.
[00:05:39] Caroline: That's the severity.
[00:05:40] Jason: But I don't have a top sheet.
[00:05:40] Caroline: I feel like you're a different person.
[00:05:41] Jason: I don't have a top sheet now.
[00:05:42] Caroline: No, I know, but I know it doesn't make you happy, but you're...
[00:05:44] Jason: No, no, it's fine. Okay. Let's get into this one, though, because I think this is a funny little moment.
[00:05:47] Caroline: Well, last night I'm unloading the dishwasher. I do the dishes at night. It's the last thing I do before I go downstairs to go to bed. And I had this moment where I opened the bottom drawer of our kitchen island. And that's where we keep our Tupperware.
[00:06:02] Jason: Yeah.
[00:06:02] Caroline: Okay.
[00:06:03] Jason: Everyone has a Tupperware drawer, cupboard, etcetera.
[00:06:06] Caroline: And there's a very specific... first thing you need to know in case you're unaware. I just want to clue you in. Jason is a highly organized person. Highly organized person. Okay. I am, compared to the average person, I would say I'm an organized person. Compared to Jason, I'm a, what we call, slop. It's worse than a slob. It's a slop. It's like, somehow, like, you're just devolving into, like, a puddle of chaos.
[00:06:31] Jason: Also, this was not my moniker given to Caroline for this. This was her own appointed moniker.
[00:06:35] Caroline: I misspoke one time, and I called myself a slop, and I was like, wow, that feels right.
[00:06:41] Jason: Yeah.
[00:06:41] Caroline: So, okay, so that is the balance in our relationship. So we have Tupperware almost every day. We just use the same little set of Tupperware. And so I'm always unloading it, and every day, I go to unload it, the Tupperware, and put it in the Tupperware drawer, and it just, like, I can't... Jason stacks them on top of each other, and they're plastic, so they, like, swish around.
[00:07:04] Jason: For those of you who know, it's the Ikea Tupperware set. A lot of you have that.
[00:07:07] Caroline: We know, plastic. We use a lot of glass. I just want you to know we use a lot of glass. But we have one Ikea Tupperware set that we bought when we first moved in, and that's what we used.
[00:07:14] Jason: It actually was here.
[00:07:15] Caroline: Oh, it was here.
[00:07:15] Jason: It was here. Yeah. We didn't...
[00:07:16] Caroline: Okay, well then, I feel better about it, so that's what we use. And so whenever I put it away, it just, like, fucking... the tower. Just, like, it just falls over and it becomes. And I try. I try to, like, reorganize it 'cause I'm like, it's just an act of love, like an act of service that I do for you because I know that your brain likes it tidy. So I'm like, oh, every time, I'm like, damn it. So I... whatever. I do my best, right? So last night I'm doing the unloading dishwasher, and I remember distinctly the night before when I was unloading the dishwasher. I had one of those, like, tower fall over moments where just things, like, would not stay put.
[00:07:49] Jason: Yeah.
[00:07:49] Caroline: And I was so frustrated, but, like, I did my best. And so this evening, last night, I go to put the Tupperware away, and my tower of chaos that I had done the night before has been magically transformed into the... It's like he put glue in between each. Like, they're sitting so upright. They're sitting so perfectly organized. Everything has its own little place. The lids are somehow perfectly matched up, which I can never get them to be, and it just looks immaculate. And I had this moment where I was like, oh, he doesn't... He looks at what I'm doing, and he thinks that I'm just, like, throwing shit in there. And so what did I do? I said, you were watching something on tv, and I said, hey, babe. You're like, yeah. And I was like, I just need you to know that when I put the Tupperware away, I need you to know that I'm doing my best. He's like, what? And I'm like, you do it so good. You do it so good. And I don't know how you do it. And I know you think that I'm putting zero care into it, and I need you to know that I'm putting a ten plus care, a level of care that is ten plus into trying to stack it, and it is... It is... It is not going well. But I know you look at that and you think, I'm not caring at all, but I'm caring the most.
[00:09:00] Jason: Yeah.
[00:09:00] Caroline: So next time you look at the messy Tupperware drawer and you think that I... I didn't think about it. Just know that I thought about it the most.
[00:09:06] Jason: But you did ask me, am I, like, upset by it when I open it?
[00:09:10] Caroline: Yes, I did. I said... I said, does it hurt your feelings when you see it so bad?
[00:09:14] Jason: And the answer is no. I just fix it.
[00:09:17] Caroline: I know.
[00:09:18] Jason: And this is... And this is, like, how our relationship has evolved, and I think is actually, like, a healthy thing that I have come to, which is, like, instead of seeing something that, like, ruffles my brain feathers and being like, oh, I need Caroline to, like, learn how to do this, I've just decided, like, I'm just gonna fix it every time I see it, because it actually takes less stress for my brain to, like, reorganize the Tupperware quickly, because we also know this about, like, packing a car. Like, my tetris brain knows exactly how big things are and how many will fit. And I know many of you listen to this, you, like, have...
[00:09:45] Caroline: But this is the dangerous thing, because if you're in a relationship where you are with someone who's, like, highly competent in the organization category, you can definitely fall into a trap where, like, the car is a perfect example where I would just be like, I mean, that's actually a bad example because I'm always going to let you load the car because it's, like, it's not even worth me trying, but the Tupperware is a good example. It's not fair to you for me to just go, oh, he does this ten times better. So let me just let him do this. Because if I said that, you would do everything in our lives.
[00:10:12] Jason: Yeah, but...
[00:10:12] Caroline: I have to have some things.
[00:10:13] Jason: For sure. But I think you do. I will give you credit. I think you do a good job of, like, your ten out of ten best on doing that.
[00:10:20] Caroline: But that's what I was going to say. This is a good lesson, though, for... for other people, I think because I don't think you did know that I was giving it a ten out of ten.
[00:10:26] Jason: Oh, no. I thought maybe three.
[00:10:28] Caroline: Because the result is a three, but the effort is a ten. And so I think that that is a relationship hack is like, if you are someone who is giving a lot of mental effort to something, but you know that the results are probably not very observable by your partner. I think you need to voice that, and I think you need to say, just so you're aware, I know it doesn't look like it, but I am putting a ten out of ten effort into this.
[00:10:52] Jason: Yeah.
[00:10:52] Caroline: And I blame it on Tupperware.
[00:10:55] Jason: For sure. Absolutely. And I think anybody listening to this, you know, you live in a household where, like, one person can organize the Tupperware like a magician.
[00:11:01] Caroline: Explain to me how you get it like that.
[00:11:02] Jason: I just... My brain sees it.
[00:11:03] Caroline: Do you, like, press it down? What do you...?
[00:11:05] Jason: No, there's no pressing. No, it's just organizing. It's just putting things in the right shapes in the right ways.
[00:11:11] Caroline: I do think there's a shape.
[00:11:12] Jason: I think there's a shapes thing because it's the same thing with packing. Like...
[00:11:15] Caroline: I'm trying to match it up.
[00:11:16] Jason: I know you are. I think everything looks like a circle to you. It's the problem. And you just have, like, tiny, little, like, octagonal lids on top of, like...
[00:11:24] Caroline: It's not my strong suit, I'm gonna be honest.
[00:11:26] Jason: Anyway, that was a six minute trip down Tupperware lane. We hope you enjoyed that. Shout out to those of you who have a completely organized Tupperware drawer. And for those of you have a completely unorganized Tupperware drawer, I hope you find a Jason on Craigslist who can come help you weekly.
[00:11:40] Caroline: We're all just out here doing our best, you know.
[00:11:41] Jason: We are. All right, let's get into the second episode here as it relates to our content extravaganza. So last week, we basically set the stage for you. So we are, for the next five weeks, getting back into the content creation game, and specifically what that means is social media content, which we didn't really touch on last week of, like, you know, you know, why social media content, how do we feel about it? So we're gonna talk a little bit about that today, but I think the, the thing that we're tackling this week. I know the thing we're tackling this week is short form video content. So we're gonna talk about that specifically for Teachery.
[00:12:13] Caroline: Which is our software business. Yeah, it's... We're in a very unique position because for those of you who don't know, we have been not creating any business content on social media for...?
[00:12:25] Jason: Two and a half years.
[00:12:26] Caroline: Two and a half years. And let me just tell you something. It's been blissful.
[00:12:30] Jason: Yeah.
[00:12:30] Caroline: It's been great. We are not racing to get back. It's been fantastic. We had built a system for our business that allowed us to still actually have our revenue grow while being off Instagram, if you can believe that.
[00:12:44] Jason: You can go back through, I don't know what episode number it is, but it's our $500,000 affiliate system. You can listen to that episode if you want to hear, like, that's basically the thing that has grown our business, especially WAIM.
[00:12:56] Caroline: Yeah. We had this idea of, like, if we pour every ounce of our effort into making our program incredible, then our members will get results and they will love it, and they will become affiliates and they will tell their audiences. And that was our marketing engine, and it still is. It still very much is. However, we have arrived at this place in our business where we're kind of seeing the next five years on the horizon of both of our, well, for Teachery, it's obvious because we have hit a revenue ceiling and we have zero content, not a single piece of content. For WAIM, at least, we have old content that is still bringing traffic to us.
[00:13:31] Jason: But I think the point there, too, and I don't mean to cut you off. WAIM has hit a ceiling of the amount of customer growth.
[00:13:37] Caroline: Yes.
[00:13:37] Jason: And audience growth that we can hit with this existing kind of like affiliate based model.
[00:13:41] Caroline: Yes. The amount of people, of new people we're bringing into our audience through that.
[00:13:45] Jason: Yes.
[00:13:46] Caroline: Is... and also with the combination of, you know, our price increase on our program. Anyway, the math is no longer math.
[00:13:52] Jason: Exactly. And so I think the point of setting the stage here, because we really set the stage last week so you can go listen to that episode to really get the whole thing, is just to say we're, we're getting back into social media content creation, and we're starting to have some feelings about it, too.
[00:14:07] Caroline: Yeah. So let's start with feelings. We are going to get into what are we actually doing? Like, we're going to give you the nitty gritty of going behind the scenes of, like, how we're approaching this and what we're trying to create. And what does Teachery shorts week look like around here? Just to give you an insight into our process. But before we do that, let's start with feelings.
[00:14:25] Jason: Be in the feelings corner.
[00:14:26] Caroline: Yep. How do you feel?
[00:14:27] Jason: I'll start. I don't want to do it.
[00:14:30] Caroline: I know.
[00:14:30] Jason: So here's the interesting part of this, especially creating short form content. So we're talking about Instagram reels, TikToks, and YouTube shorts. Now, for Teachery, we are going to cross post the same sixty second or less short form video through all three platforms.
[00:14:46] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:14:46] Jason: So, you know, Teachery has absolutely zero followers across all these things. Never posted a piece of content ever. So for us, we believe it just makes the most sense just to do a little bit of spray and pray and just see what happens, you know, see how it goes.
[00:14:59] Caroline: We're in that... We're going to be... I think it's important to know what season you're in with it. And when you're just getting started, you very much have to be in experimentation mode, and you have to be okay with just figuring out what works by doing things.
[00:15:11] Jason: And I also think what I want to find out from this, too, is does this content really resonate on this platform? So it's like, you know, we'll get through the content types that we're going to experiment with in short form videos, but if we see that, like, oh, YouTube shorts are actually getting the most discovery for a channel that has absolutely zero followers. And those people are converting into our lead magnet because, again, we're not just going to post videos to get views or subscribers. We want to move people to a lead magnet so we get them on our email list and in a trial or whatever. So getting back to the feelings, though, I feel equal parts completely overwhelmed by, like, all of the things to be done.
[00:15:49] Caroline: Overwhelmed is definitely a word I resonate with.
[00:15:50] Jason: I also feel interestingly, like, incapable because you're the one who's doing the production work. So I'm going to be the one who's kind of doing the post production work on this. We are going to hire an editor company, which we'll talk about that when that starts to happen, but we don't have that information to share now. So it's not even worth really talking about. But I do feel a little bit, like, not helpless, but just, like, what am I doing? You know? And I think...
[00:16:16] Caroline: Oh, you mean, like...?
[00:16:17] Jason: Yeah, like, what am I bringing to this? Because, you know, one thing that you would think with two people is like, oh, well, you know, we have ten short form videos we want to create this week. You create five, I'll create five. But we know from previous experience that when we do that, you have more of a creative vision than I do. I have a creative vision, but it's not as strong as yours. And we've learned this over time, that, like, one person should be head chef, one person should be sous chef. So the head chef basically is, like, taking on the... the bigger tasks. The sous chef is there to support. So in this, we haven't even said this out loud, but I think it just naturally is the truth. I am the sous chef.
[00:16:50] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:16:50] Jason: So I'm just trying to be here to support in whatever way possible, doing whatever things we have to do. We also still have to run our two businesses. So, like, that is the bulk of my work anyway. But as we're talking about the feelings, just to reiterate, like, I do feel a little bit of, like, incapable. How can I help? You know, what am I...? Probably, how you feel with the Tupperware drawer.
[00:17:08] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:17:09] Jason: It's just like, I'm trying my best out here.
[00:17:10] Caroline: And I think the last thing about that is also recognizing which one of us likes doing it more. So you said, when we said feelings, you said, I don't want to do it. And I think I feel less strongly about, like, I enjoy the content creation process, and so I think that's worth paying attention to, to be like, well, why would you make the person who doesn't want to be doing this the person doing this? It doesn't make any sense.
[00:17:31] Jason: And what's really, like, very small aside to this, when the pandemic was happening, I started posting Instagram Stories because reels weren't even really a thing yet about my mediocre baking. And so I had this, like, mediocre baking series, which people loved, and I had fun making it, but I didn't have more fun than I disliked the process of making it.
[00:17:50] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:17:51] Jason: So that, for me, is a clear indicator of, like, oh, I just... I don't really thrive in this. This isn't something that, like, lights me up where, as opposed to you, like, you love getting into it. You love doing. You love the storytelling, you love the things so I think we're just really trying to find the balance of, you know, how that work gets distributed. So that's my feelings corner.
[00:18:07] Caroline: Yes. I think for my feelings corner, it's been interesting to watch. It's taken me, like two months, I think, to get to this place where now I'm excited to create content. And I just want to share that because it wasn't like an overnight switch. Like, if you've gone for two and a half years of not being on these social media apps, and when I say we're not posting business content, it's not just that. It's like I'm barely using it for my own personal use. I started a very small, very private Portugal Instagram account just so that when we meet people, like, I can connect with them. And it has, like, 38 followers of, like, our friends that we've met in Portugal, and I'm never on there. And it... And so that has brought so much peace and productivity to my life the past couple of years that I was very hesitant to, like, give that up. However, I, you know, for all the reasons we've mentioned, I do think it makes sense to try to, to use these social platforms to get visibility for our businesses. And so I'm asking myself, how can I do that in a way where it's enjoyable, that I don't feel sucked in to now trading my peace for that? And I think that's part of what I want to explore on the podcast is sharing people in real time how I'm doing that. And I'm not going to know right away how to do that, but I will say... so it's, it was like, in stages. It started with like, okay, I think we're going to start doing this to, okay, let me just hop on a little bit and, like, see what people are posting. When I tell you, I had spent zero time on TikTok, and I know it feels very rare to come out of the pandemic era having spent no time on TikTok, I did not. I'm like, what are people doing over there?
[00:19:39] Jason: Yeah.
[00:19:39] Caroline: And whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I learned... I just... Woo. It is a journey.
[00:19:47] Jason: Yeah. You show me the interface and I'm like, I'm stressed out.
[00:19:52] Caroline: Jason was like, such a boomer.
[00:19:53] Jason: I'm like, how do you make other things go away?
[00:19:55] Caroline: What do you do? So, yeah, we're a little bit... It's a weird feeling for two people who used to always be early adopters, who used to always be on the forefront of technology, to now feel like, we're kind of playing catch up a little bit, so it's just natural to have those feelings. That's okay. Same thing with, like, you're getting older and, like, these platforms are very much made for people who are on them twenty four seven. And that's usually younger people. And so there's a little bit of, like, oh, weird aunt Caroline's joining TikTok. What's she going to do? But I have just been trying to embrace that feeling and going, this is natural, this is normal. And trying to rely on the feeling of excitement I get about creation. Like you were saying, I just trying to remind myself, I do love storytelling. I do love video editing. I love learning new skills. And I do have a little bit of historical reference point for this, because if you remember, in 2021, we got on a kick when reels started to become popular of trying to do Instagram reels and posting those pretty regularly. And we did that for, like, a month or two, and it, or, like, maybe three months, and it grew our... it grew our account a lot. And, like, I saw the results that come from it, but it very much took, like, a buy in of me mentally to be like, okay, I'm just gonna play this game. And so now I have finally reached the point where I can get past some of these feelings to the place where I'm like, no. Like, I'm viewing this as, like, a fun, creative exercise. Like, how can I do short form content that feels good to us and that matches our business goals?
[00:21:28] Jason: Yeah. And I think I, you know, as we start to create these things, I'm hoping that in the process of creation, it will kind of unlock a little bit more enjoyment for me and a little bit less resistance.
[00:21:38] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:21:38] Jason: And so I think, you know, maybe there are a lot of people listening to this who you really hate the idea of filming short form videos. You don't like the trend, you don't want to be on TikTok. But again, I go back to this analogy constantly in this podcast now, which is like, you can't keep using the yellow pages to advertise your business when the Internet is here. And so it's like, for us, we can't just keep writing long form blog post articles and hoping that people are going to find us via Google. Like, everyone's attention is on these apps. We have to be on these apps if we want to grow.
[00:22:08] Caroline: Right.
[00:22:08] Jason: And if the other things that you've tried to grow your business aren't working, there are lots of things you can do. But for us, this is what's going to help us grow the fastest because it's where everyone's attention is.
[00:22:18] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:22:18] Jason: All right.
[00:22:19] Caroline: Okay.
[00:22:19] Jason: That's the feelings corner.
[00:22:20] Caroline: Those are the feelings corner. So let's start at the beginning. So we just go, cool. We're going to start posting shorts. What do we do? And again, if you want to hear the entire way that we started with our strategy and you want to hear about our content salad matrix, listen to the previous episode. That will explain to you how we arrived at we're doing shorts. But I think a natural place to start is where I always start with business stuff, which is your audience. Who are you trying to attract? And even not just your audience, but also a keyword strategy. Because, and what I mean by that is the purpose of this short form content is to find new people who have never heard of Teachery before, right? And so if that's the case, we need to have some sort of strategy to utilize certain keywords in our content that tell the social algorithms, whether it's YouTube shorts or it's Instagram or it's TikTok, what bucket to put our content in so that we can show up in the explore page and the for you page of these people that we're trying to target. So it all begins with knowing who you're trying to find and what are they searching for.
[00:23:27] Jason: Yeah.
[00:23:27] Caroline: That's, that's where it begins.
[00:23:28] Jason: Yeah. And so for us, for Teachery, that's creators who, what we're trying to draw the line in the sand is they have already created an online course. They have digital products out into the world and that they're a little bit design leaning. So they want a course that looks good, it represents their brand, it feels a certain way. And that really ties into Teachery's differentiator because we're the only course platform that gives you the full customization suite of colors and images and CSS and all this other stuff. And that's something we can offer that you can't get from these other platforms. So really being specific about, that's the person we want to target, so...
[00:24:01] Caroline: In a simple way.
[00:24:02] Jason: Exactly. Yeah. And I think what we don't want to do is, you know, we've talked about this a bunch, but like, we don't just want to offer up online course tips. Like, we don't just want to offer up, like, okay, well, here's how to use ChatGPT to write your lessons. Like, that might be a piece of content that we create, but that's not like our full content plan, which is just those things.
[00:24:21] Caroline: Right.
[00:24:22] Jason: Especially from the beginner standpoint is what I'm saying, like...
[00:24:24] Caroline: Yes, we will get to our content buckets for sure, but I think what Jason is trying to say is we don't want to be the, like, here are five ways to promote your course. Like, we don't want that to be the majority of our content. We don't want it to be like, you know, how to, how to write your lesson content is what you were trying to say.
[00:24:41] Jason: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
[00:24:42] Caroline: We want it to be more design leaning. And I think that also takes advantage of the fact that short form video content is a visual medium. And so, you know, pairing that with this design focused person that we're trying to attract and trying to kind of tell the algorithms that we exist in this world of online course design or design inspiration or web design or even Canva design, I think, is going to be something that we really lean on because obviously no one's searching for Teachery... yet.
[00:25:13] Jason: I think that's a big tip, though. It's like, whatever your kind of topic is, is there a tool that someone's using in that topic? And so for us, that's Canva for sure.
[00:25:24] Caroline: We know a lot of solopreneurs, a lot of digital product creators, they are using Canva because it is an easy and quick way to get assets up and going. And then the type of person who is interested in those types of templates is someone who is design minded, right? So we also have a little bit of that data from a audience survey that we did from Teachery of like, what platforms are using. Yes. You know, you could argue there's also a subset of people who are full time designers, so they're using tools like Figma and things like that. So we will integrate that as well. But we really just had to pick a tool to kind of focus on. So we're going to try to target all of those different things. And so then you have to ask yourself, cool, what are those people searching for and what are they hoping to find? And I really think it's going to be a lot about design inspiration. I think this type of person, yes, it's about making money with their digital products, of course, but the person who's trying to make like a, you know, seven figure empire with their online course is probably going to use a Kajabi...
[00:26:29] Jason: For sure. They need the funnels and they need the like, drop sell, upsell, bump sell, side sell, undersell. Like they're going to do all that crap.
[00:26:37] Caroline: What we want is the person who, yes, they care about earning a good living selling digital products, but what, what we also learned from doing some customer interviews is this type of person, they have ideas, and they just want to see those ideas come to life in a beautifully branded way.
[00:26:53] Jason: Yeah.
[00:26:54] Caroline: They love the idea of being like, okay, I'm going to create a course on how to create sales pages in Squarespace, right? Or whatever. Maybe not Squarespace, because they would probably create it there, but how to design a really beautiful sales page. Okay. They want their course to reflect their brand and look beautifully designed and not look like anything else out there. And so that's where their mind is at. And so from that standpoint, I think a lot of it comes from this place of wanting them to fall in love with the flexibility and customization that Teachery offers and show them how fun it is to create, like, a million different ways that a Teachery course can look.
[00:27:31] Jason: Yeah. And I think the really important thing to, like, wrap up this first section here is just like, we just need to know who our audience is and then think about the content that is right for them, because you could go the route of, like, it's an online course platform. We need to create content around online courses. It's like, no, you need to create content around the customer that you want to reach and, like, the problem that they have that you're trying to solve.
[00:27:51] Caroline: Right. So, okay. So from there, we kind of built this picture of who this person is and what they're maybe searching for. So then Jason and I, we did something that we don't normally do, which is we just decided to dive in to creating one piece of content with this idea of, okay, if we were going to show, like, how to create a custom looking course, how would we do that?
[00:28:11] Jason: How'd it go?
[00:28:14] Caroline: We spent a Sunday. We were like, we're gonna do this together.
[00:28:17] Jason: Yeah.
[00:28:17] Caroline: And I was like, I just want to dive in. And so I am... First of all, my first hurdle was, like, in my mind, I was like, it's just a screen recording, right? I want someone to see my screen recording of me building out this, like, course design. So I record my screen. We use Screen Studio, which Jason loves.
[00:28:37] Jason: Love Screen Studio. I love Screen Studio so much. It's so fantastic. I'm gonna put a link in the description because it's so great.
[00:28:44] Caroline: So my first hurdle was, I'm trying to use Screen Studio, and I just cannot figure out how to between, like, screen ratios and, like, trying to fit it into a aspect ratio.
[00:28:55] Jason: Yeah. You're recording horizontally on your screen.
[00:28:57] Caroline: You're recording horizontally to try to get everything on screen. And then I was thinking, okay, Screen Studio is gonna, like, zoom into the certain parts when I do certain... Anyway, I'm not gonna bore you with all of it. It... I spent so long trying to retrofit this screen recording into a video.
[00:29:12] Jason: Yeah.
[00:29:13] Caroline: What happened, Jason?
[00:29:14] Jason: So 6 hours later, Caroline comes and sits next to me on the couch. This is after we had both been, like, kind of collaborating, sitting next to each other at her desk.
[00:29:21] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:29:21] Jason: Working on things.
[00:29:22] Caroline: I would try to edit a thing together. And then Jason was, would be like, what if you did it this way? And then he would go to the computer and try to do it his way.
[00:29:28] Jason: Also brought CapCut into this. So like, we were, you know, we were just all over the place. And so she sits down, she's like, okay, I have the final video done.
[00:29:35] Caroline: It was not final. No, no, no. It was not final.
[00:29:36] Jason: Final enough.
[00:29:36] Caroline: I was like, okay, here's what we did today.
[00:29:39] Jason: Exactly. Ten seconds later, the video stops playing, and Caroline just starts laughing hysterically.
[00:29:46] Caroline: I have not laughed like that in a long time.
[00:29:47] Jason: And I'm just like, uh oh, what am I missing here? And I'm just, like, watching her laugh. And then what did you say?
[00:29:51] Caroline: I just like, I'm like, it's so short. It's only 10 seconds. I just... The absurdity of spending all day to create a ten second video just like, it hit me in the right funny spot, right? Was dying laughing because it was just so funny. Like, oh, my God, the amount of production that goes into these things.
[00:30:10] Jason: Yeah. And I think that that, for me, was, like, that first important lesson where that feels like, oh, no. Like, what are we getting into? We're gonna be in this, like, thing that's gonna take 6 hours per video?
[00:30:19] Caroline: But this is why I think you have to do that first one, because it's the bad pancake.
[00:30:23] Jason: Yeah.
[00:30:23] Caroline: So I needed to do that in order to be like, okay, first of all, the 10 seconds that I did create is so boring. It's just boring. Number two. Okay. All of me trying to retrofit this screen recording and, like, match up all the cuts and, like, do... that actually is a waste of time. So let me try to find a solution to that problem. And so you need to do that first one to find all of the pitfalls to be like, okay, let me come at it from a different angle now, right?
[00:30:49] Jason: So then we made a second pancake.
[00:30:50] Caroline: So the next day I wake up and I'm like, I'm gonna do something different. I'm gonna find one piece of content that I really like that's in the kind of design inspiration category. Again, going back to, like, step number one. And I'm gonna actually extract a formula from this person's video. So I found this one web designer guy. He had really cool videos. It's like cool storytelling elements. It's not screen recordings. It's like actually pointing your phone at your monitor.
[00:31:15] Jason: Which is blowing my mind.
[00:31:16] Caroline: Jason's like, this doesn't look good. I'm like, babe, I love you. Nothing looks good on TikTok.
[00:31:21] Jason: I know. I come from a world of video production where it's, like...
[00:31:25] Caroline: Glossy.
[00:31:25] Jason: Glossy. The camera setup is perfect on a tripod. Everything's in focus perfectly.
[00:31:30] Caroline: Better if it's not.
[00:31:30] Jason: And it's just like hurting my brain to see, like, mediocre lighting on a video clip. Like, you show me a video that has, like a million views, and I'm like, this is lit poorly. It's blurry half the time because the angle is wrong. And I'm just like this... everything in my soul is telling me this is wrong, but it's not.
[00:31:47] Caroline: We're in a different world now, babe.
[00:31:49] Jason: I know.
[00:31:49] Caroline: It's just... nothing makes sense.
[00:31:50] Jason: I gotta let go of it. Yeah.
[00:31:51] Caroline: You gotta let go. You gotta evolve. So I go, okay, so here's what I'm gonna do. I downloaded his video. I'm gonna tell you exactly what I did. I downloaded his video. I brought it into... I also use an... I know I could have done this in CapCut, but I'm used to using InShot. So on my phone, brought it into InShot, and I... I literally mapped out the cuts. Not every single cut, but basically the biggest story beats. So I would write in my little Notion document, I'd be like, intro, 3 seconds. Like, context, 4 seconds. Like, problem, 5 seconds. Because it was like, oh, like, how do I design a logo that does this? And then it was like, solutions, 2 seconds. Like, literally I'm doing that for the entire sixty second video, right?
[00:32:30] Jason: Yep.
[00:32:31] Caroline: And the point of this is not to, like, steal this guy's video idea, right? That's not the point of this. I equate it to, like, when you're learning how to draw, you like, try to trace some things first, right? Like, you try to get the muscle memory of, like, what maybe it's feels like to draw. And you can work on the steadiness of your hand. You need an outline. Otherwise it's so overwhelming. And so that turned out to be so great because what it allowed me to do was take his formula but apply it to a completely different idea, which was online courses versus, like, I'm designing a logo but kind of use the same story beats, right? It's the same way that, like, someone would write a movie and be like, okay, I'm going to follow a three act structure. It just, it gives you something to go off of. And so I did that, and I spent the next day creating that, and I showed it to you. And what did you say?
[00:33:19] Jason: It was a thousand times better.
[00:33:21] Caroline: It was a thousand times better.
[00:33:22] Jason: Yeah. And I think it was a really good example of the Austin Kleon Steal Like an Artist, you know, mindset where we're not copying someone else's video. Like, you know, he's designing, I think, a logo for a brand or whatever. We're designing a course for, like, a certain type of person or whatever the content was. It doesn't matter that it follows the same structure, because when you put them next to each other, like, oh, I could see some similarities there. But, like, this is not stealing. This is just, like, complimentary formulas for creating a video. And I think that's a really important thing for us to move forward because we are feeling like we're way behind in short form video creation. So whatever can make us feel more competent as we move forward is good. So I think the second pancake was really a helpful exercise because it moves us forward and not, doesn't keep us stuck after the first one being like, uh oh, what are we getting into?
[00:34:07] Caroline: Yeah. And I think if you're diving into anything, I think giving yourself a kind of introductory season of just pattern recognition of going, what are people doing and why is it working? And kind of putting your analytical brain on and breaking things down into their parts is a really helpful process so that you can then reassemble them in your own way, right? So once we did that, I felt like, okay, and once, that didn't take me forever...
[00:34:32] Jason: Right.
[00:34:32] Caroline: It really probably only took me, I mean, 3 hours. But again, you can keep, like, shaving that down, right?
[00:34:38] Jason: Yeah.
[00:34:38] Caroline: But I could see how it was going to be a process that was repeatable. And so then I said, okay, what are, maybe if this fits in one little category of content, like, what are our kind of, like, content pillars? Like, what are the categories of content that we want to create for these shorts? And I basically came up with, like, four categories that I could see, the first one being the biggest category, which is just design. So this goes back to the design inspiration thing. So an idea of a shorts idea in this category would be watch me design a course for... And then insert the, like, fill in the blank.
[00:35:10] Jason: Yeah.
[00:35:10] Caroline: So for this first one, that was the second pancake that I created. It was watch me design a course for a brand designer, and it was watching me basically take a blank Teachery course and turn it into this, like, highly custom, very brandable course with fun music and kind of telling that story, right?
[00:35:27] Jason: Yep.
[00:35:27] Caroline: So we have different ideas in that category, but we're also leaning into just being okay with, like, repeating that formula for different creators. The second category, that's probably the next biggest, would be tools. So this is how to use other tools in combination with Teachery. I find that a lot of this content does well on short form because it's like a tool you didn't know about or a hack in a program that you didn't know about. You've seen this content. It's like, bet you didn't know you could do this in Canva. You know, that type of stuff.
[00:35:53] Jason: I mean, we literally just learned that you can host videos in Canva up to 5gb for a free account and a terabyte for a pro account.
[00:36:01] Caroline: Which means you can host your course lesson videos...
[00:36:05] Jason: All of them.
[00:36:05] Caroline: In Teachery, you can host them on Canva. So we'll do a short form about that because people don't know about that. And then the third category is just going to be supporting tips. And this is where, again, we don't want it to be that beginner content of, like, how do I write my lesson content? But an example of this would be the surrounding areas of, like, marketing your course, promoting your course, et cetera. So this would be how to build a freemium version of your course using Teachery's public course feature, and then, you know, place where people could watch, like, three free lessons and then upgrade to your course. So that's kind of a blend of a supporting tip because it's kind of like a tip of how to market your course better. But then also it's using Teachery, which leads us to the fourth category, which is just a straight up Teachery tutorial.
[00:36:48] Jason: Yeah.
[00:36:48] Caroline: It's just how to use a Teachery feature. This is the final category that is not very search friendly because people are not searching Teachery. But I think it is important for us to highlight features of our software program.
[00:37:00] Jason: Yeah, absolutely. So those are the four categories of the types of short form videos that we want to create. And then you sat down and you made a big brainstorm of a ton of different ideas across those categories.
[00:37:13] Caroline: Yep. And so then we picked out ten. We said, okay, this is a bunch of ideas. That's great. We have an idea bank. We went through them together and we said if for our week of focus, of trying to build, like, what would be a goal that we could, what would be a result that we would want out of that week? And I was like, if we walked away with like ten short form videos, that gives us enough to really try out different things. Try out, make sure that they span the gamut of these four categories. See what we like, see what we don't like, see what kind of like my first pancake, what took us way too long, what wasn't effective, et cetera. And so we are on day two of shorts week, and I don't know if I'm going to be able to get ten done, but I do know that it's a worthy pursuit and we're going to find out.
[00:37:57] Jason: And also as it relates to, quote unquote, getting them done, that does not mean posting them. So as we mentioned in the last episode, our idea these next five weeks is not necessarily to start posting all of this content. It's to bank a bunch of content that we can then start posting and then figure out what our production schedule will look like moving forward. So things like when we get into article week, which I think is next week for Teachery, those will be published right away because it's not necessarily we're going to be sharing those or whatever, but that'll just be kind of like that's that that content bucket done and executed. The short form thing. Obviously, it's an ongoing, you got to continue to do it, both for what we talked about last week and people finding you through discovery content and then also nurturing people who start to follow.
[00:38:36] Caroline: If we were under the gun more and we weren't making any revenue, I would go ahead and post as we were figuring all this out. Like, I wouldn't try to make it perfect, but, you know, we talked about it a couple of different ways. And I think for, for me personally, since I'm the one mostly producing and creating the content, it is going to cloud my brain to try and post at the same time as create. So I just wanted to just be in creation mode and just focus on the outcome of, like, trying to get these things produced and enjoying that process and learning my own kind of systems for things. I've already developed... Like, even in just trying to create three videos, I've already developed my own processes that help me work faster.
[00:39:18] Jason: Yeah. And I think that's the whole goal of getting these ten done this week is to hopefully look at, like, okay, we created these ten, which were the most difficult to create, which were the most fun to create, which were the easiest to create, and then, like, write notes about those. Then as we start to post, kind of compare the result of, do any of them get traction? Oh, look, this one got traction. And we talked about this. We're like this... Our short form video strategy could just be a watch me design a course for... insert type of business owner.
[00:39:46] Caroline: And just do that every time. Who knows?
[00:39:48] Jason: That could replace all of them. We would have no categories. That would be the only category would just be that. But what we want to do is create a couple so that we can kind of experiment and test the waters and see what does well.
[00:39:56] Caroline: Exactly.
[00:39:58] Jason: Cool.
[00:39:58] Caroline: And nobody might see these at all. Like, we could do all of this and nobody could see them. And that might happen, too, but you're going to find out with us, and that's part of the whole journey. You just, you don't know what's going to happen. And it's uncomfortable when you get back into something. It's uncomfortable when you feel like you don't know how these apps operate. It's overwhelming. I have not, like I said, been on Instagram looking at business content, and I just went to look at a couple of carousel designs to just try to come up with templates for ourselves. And I was like, oh, you could very easily get pair, like, have analysis paralysis because you could convince yourself, like, there's so many people talking about things on here, why even try? And I just think you have to do everything you can to try and fight that because you're counting yourself out before you can even have a chance to, like, carve out your own little section. Like, nobody's on there that's you.
[00:40:50] Jason: Yeah, exactly.
[00:40:51] Caroline: So.
[00:40:52] Jason: And there, there are always unique experiences and stories that you can share and ways that you can do things. And again, Steal Like An Artist, see what other people are doing, but put your own twist on it. And that's what we're just hoping to do with... you know, there are so many other online course platforms that are cranking out social content. We are way behind on what they've done, but we have our own unique way of doing things. So I'm excited to see if ours stands out for a subset of people.
[00:41:16] Caroline: And we're running our own race, right, where I'm like, forget about, like, how our content is doing compared to those other platforms, or forget about how your business is doing it compared to other people. And just ask yourself, if I start posting content, does, am I giving myself a greater opportunity for people to find me than I was when I wasn't posting content? And the answer is yes. And this goes to Jason's like, whole thing that he talks about with luck surface area. I know that's not your concept, but you've been big on it lately.
[00:41:41] Jason: It's a fellow Jason.
[00:41:42] Caroline: Fellow Jason. Another Jason.
[00:41:43] Jason: Jason Roberts. Yeah.
[00:41:44] Caroline: Jason Roberts. And it's like, am I increasing my luck surface area? Am I increasing my opportunity that something good could come from this? And of course that's what the caveat of, like, you have to reevaluate and go, is the input worth the output? That's what we're going to do. So we're going to do all of this, and then a couple of months from now, we're going to be able to look back and be like, that wasn't worth it. Or that was worth it. Or we're doubling down on articles. We're not going to do short form anymore. Like, all of that is subject to change after a period of at least going hard on this strategy and then seeing what it does.
[00:42:13] Jason: Cool. So for next week's episode, we will start the week off with a recap of how this week went. So every week, as we, you know, this is the week we're working on ten short form videos, 60 seconds or less for Teachery's account. Next week's episode, you will hear us recap how this week went. Then we will talk to you about what we're working on that week. And then as we start posting, whenever that happens, that might be a month from now or whatever, then we can start to also share some initial results. Because that is the one good thing about short form video versus articles and things like that, is you get immediate feedback. So, like, we will very quickly be able to tell, like, oh, one of our videos got 200 views. That's amazing for an account with zero followers. You know, that's great for us. You know, all these other ones didn't get anything. Oh, YouTube shorts. Like, actually some videos moved even further with an account that again has zero subscribers. So we'll share that as that comes. But that's probably not going to be for again like a month or so from now. But yeah, that's what you can look forward to in our five week extravaganza. Wish us the best of luck.
[00:43:13] Caroline: Wish us the best of luck. I mean, video is notoriously not our...
[00:43:18] Jason: It's not, which is also why I think head chef, sous chef is a good idea in this, where it's like, I actually just it's better if we if I stay out of the way, and then if you just have questions, if you want me to help with something, I'm here to assist, but if I...
[00:43:30] Caroline: You know how you can assist me?
[00:43:31] Jason: Yeah.
[00:43:32] Caroline: Organizing the Tupperware.
[00:43:33] Jason: I'll do it. Yeah. I do it anyway already, but I'll just... I'll appreciate your efforts.
[00:43:38] Caroline: Oh, thank you. Yeah.
[00:43:40] Jason: It's not a great job, but I'll appreciate it.
[00:43:41] Caroline: No, it's not a great job, but it's a great effort.
[00:43:43] Jason: Yeah. Fantastic. All right, that's it for this episode. We will be back next week, and you'll get to hear how this week of short form content creation went.
[00:43:53] Caroline: All right, thanks for listening.
[00:43:53] Jason: Bye.
[00:43:54] Caroline: Bye.