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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 are 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. Hello and welcome to Jason's baking podcast. Wait, do we have a name for this?
[00:00:41] Caroline: Yeah, remember, it was like the... Oh, man.
[00:00:44] Jason: What was it?
[00:00:45] Caroline: Something about rise.
[00:00:46] Jason: On the rise.
[00:00:47] Caroline: On the rise.
[00:00:48] Jason: On the rise. Okay.
[00:00:49] Caroline: Oh, wait, I just thought of an even better one.
[00:00:51] Jason: Okay, go ahead.
[00:00:53] Caroline: Something about... This is not perfect. No bad ideas...
[00:00:56] Jason: You said, "I thought of a better one."
[00:00:58] Caroline: Okay.
[00:00:58] Jason: And then we backtracked, and I watched you backpedal. Go ahead.
[00:01:00] Caroline: Because I don't know exactly how to nail it, but watch your dough rise. Get it? It's like your money rising and your...
[00:01:09] Jason: Got it. Okay. Here we go.
[00:01:09] Caroline: ...dough rising.
[00:01:09] Jason: Clean take.
[00:01:10] Caroline: Rising dough.
[00:01:11] Jason: Three, two, one. Hey, there. Welcome to Watch Your Dough Rise. I'm Jason Zook, your host. I blend business and baking and...
[00:01:18] Caroline: Ew, ew, ew.
[00:01:18] Jason: Stop, stop, stop, stop. In this podcast. We're going to talk today about my Black Friday deal results and the apple pie I currently have in the oven.
[00:01:26] Caroline: Buddy...
[00:01:27] Jason: This is actually happening... Like this is happening.
[00:01:29] Caroline: No, I know, but can you not do your short form video voice please?
[00:01:32] Jason: Hey, what's up, everybody? Welcome to my... We watched a YouTube video of a guy, Welcome to The Preamble section of the podcast, who sold his business. And I'd heard of the business, and I was very curious because it's in the food space.
[00:01:45] Caroline: Yes.
[00:01:45] Jason: And I love hearing what these stories. We both were watching this person record this YouTube video, and I'm not going to name them because I don't want the person to feel bad. They don't listen to our podcast. I'm going to find out. But it was so hard to watch. He was not a real person.
[00:01:58] Caroline: Because he was in fake put on voice. Yeah.
[00:01:59] Jason: But so much so that I'm like, when that camera gets turned off, you must just deflate because you're just giving so much fake energy.
[00:02:07] Caroline: I know.
[00:02:07] Jason: And I can feel it.
[00:02:09] Caroline: I think we all do it, but you really have to try not to do it.
[00:02:12] Jason: That was to the nth degree.
[00:02:13] Caroline: And it was to the nth degree. And yeah, I even agree with you.
[00:02:18] Jason: Yeah.
[00:02:18] Caroline: I'm like, a little bit better with that stuff, but...
[00:02:20] Jason: Very quickly. An apple pie...
[00:02:22] Caroline: Wait. Can you tell everybody that just before we move on?
[00:02:24] Jason: Yeah.
[00:02:24] Caroline: You don't even watch that many short from candy, as we call it.
[00:02:28] Jason: Yes. Yeah, we call it candy.
[00:02:29] Caroline: Short from video stuff. But your new thing lately is...
[00:02:31] Jason: Oh, you want me to give it to them?
[00:02:33] Caroline: And I didn't know that, I guess, this is rampant in the...
[00:02:35] Jason: I'll give it...
[00:02:36] Caroline: ...short form video food space.
[00:02:38] Jason: Can I give them a clean drop?
[00:02:39] Caroline: Give them a clean drop.
[00:02:39] Jason: It's not just the food space, but it's a lot in food space.
[00:02:41] Caroline: I know it's not just... It's a lot in the skincare space as well but go ahead.
[00:02:44] Jason: Okay. I'm a 42-year-old millennial who's been baking for the past 10 years, and I am not going to gatekeep this information any longer.
[00:02:51] Caroline: Jason's new thing is he does that once a day.
[00:02:54] Jason: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:02:55] Caroline: The whole thing.
[00:02:56] Jason: Yeah.
[00:02:56] Caroline: From start to finish.
[00:02:56] Jason: I'm a 42-year-old millennial man who's been making pour over coffee for the past 20 years, and I am not going to gatekeep this information any longer. You should grind your own beans. And it's usually with a very stupid thing at the end.
[00:03:06] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:03:08] Jason: I'm not going to gatekeep is like, wow, this is...
[00:03:10] Caroline: We got to retire. We got to retire.
[00:03:11] Jason: Let's see how it goes. All right. Let me get through these prambles. There's a lot I got to share here with everybody before we get to the Black Friday recap.
[00:03:16] Caroline: Right.
[00:03:17] Jason: Number one, there is a pie in the oven right now. An apple pie. This is smelling delicious already.
[00:03:23] Caroline: Delicious.
[00:03:24] Jason: We have a hard stop because I have to go rescue the pie from the oven. I am pre-tenting it for my bakers out there because it got a little bit too golden.
[00:03:32] Caroline: Let your dough rise. Listeners will understand.
[00:03:35] Jason: All the on the rise baker's dozen...
[00:03:39] Caroline: What was the... Watch your dough rise.
[00:03:40] Jason: Watch the dough rise.
[00:03:40] Caroline: Watch the dough rise.
[00:03:40] Jason: All the WTDRs out there will know, longtime WTDRs. WTDRs, what's up?
[00:03:49] Caroline: WTDRs.
[00:03:51] Jason: WTDRs. My apple pie is in the oven. This apple pie is going to taste better than the one I made last week.
[00:03:57] Caroline: Because what did the one that you made last week have in it?
[00:04:01] Jason: It had, instead of ginger, mustard powder.
[00:04:05] Caroline: Jason accidentally put mustard powder in the apple pie, and we were...
[00:04:09] Jason: But...
[00:04:09] Caroline: Okay. What?
[00:04:10] Jason: But I don't think the mustard powder was actually the culprit of the hot garbage taste.
[00:04:16] Caroline: I know that your brain's telling you that.
[00:04:18] Jason: We did the smell test of the two spices. So we bought nutmeg from the grocery store here.
[00:04:22] Caroline: Would you like to make another mustard powder pie for me so we can confirm it's not a good pie taste?
[00:04:28] Jason: I want to. I want to make another pie.
[00:04:29] Caroline: I dare you.
[00:04:29] Jason: And I want to not put nutmeg in. I didn't do nutmeg in this one. I'll do the same quarter teaspoon. Because that's the thing, it's a quarter teaspoon. It is not that much. The nutmeg, however, got a full half teaspoon and maybe a little more, maybe it's a little generous, and it tasted like hot garbage.
[00:04:43] Caroline: Okay. I still think we can admit...
[00:04:46] Jason: It's a...
[00:04:46] Caroline: I still think we can admit that putting mustard powder in the apple pie was not a good move.
[00:04:49] Jason: Absolutely.
[00:04:50] Caroline: Okay. That was on a no, no list.
[00:04:51] Jason: I fully agree.
[00:04:52] Caroline: Okay.
[00:04:52] Jason: I will say the latticed crust that I made, the top on the pie...
[00:04:56] Caroline: Was beautiful.
[00:04:56] Jason: ...looked great.
[00:04:57] Caroline: Beautiful.
[00:04:57] Jason: So I did that again with this one. And I'm excited to see how this pie turns out because it should be a lot more edible and delicious.
[00:05:04] Caroline: Yeah. I'm very excited to be able to eat the entire piece of pie, not just pick around the crust so that I don't hurt your feelings.
[00:05:09] Jason: Yeah, it's okay. My feelings weren't that hurt because it tastes like hot garbage.
[00:05:12] Caroline: But did you eat an entire piece anyway?
[00:05:14] Jason: Oh, I ate three pieces.
[00:05:15] Caroline: Something's wrong with you. Something's deeply wrong with you.
[00:05:18] Jason: They weren't that tasty.
[00:05:19] Caroline: Something that we work on in our relationship and this is why we're a good balance for each other...
[00:05:23] Jason: Yeah.
[00:05:23] Caroline: ...is like, I am really good at comfort and Jason is really good at discomfort.
[00:05:28] Jason: Yes.
[00:05:29] Caroline: And so, whenever, for example, we'll be on a walk and Jason will get a pebble in his shoe and he won't take it out. He will walk for the entirety of the walk.
[00:05:36] Jason: Yeah.
[00:05:36] Caroline: And we'll get home, and he'll be like, "I had a pebble in my shoe." And I'm like, "Buddy, it's okay to let the pebble out of your shoe. It's okay to go, "I'm not comfortable walking on this pebble. That..."
[00:05:45] Jason: That's weakness. That's weakness.
[00:05:45] Caroline: Yeah, exactly. "That hurts. I can take it out." So that's where I'm good for him. And where he's good for me is like, you don't have to be comfortable at all times. Like, you can do hard things. You can be uncomfortable.
[00:05:52] Jason: I have been putting pebbles in your shoe just to see how long you can last.
[00:05:55] Caroline: And so, I think the pie is a great example of you will eat the not great tasting pie...
[00:06:02] Jason: Hot garbage.
[00:06:02] Caroline: ...because you don't want to waste it.
[00:06:04] Jason: Yeah.
[00:06:04] Caroline: And I'm sort of over here on the other side being like, it's okay to admit you don't want to eat the mustard powder pie. Your life is too short to have the mustard powder pie. And you're like, "Life's too short to waste the mustard pie."
[00:06:14] Jason: It's true. In between the two pies, I did make a redemption bake, which you requested, kind of. I didn't get the full request. You requested peppermint pinwheel cookies. And for people don't know what pinwheels are, they're like the chocolate and vanilla dough spun... Not spun together, rolled together so you get a nice little swirl.
[00:06:31] Caroline: I want to be clear. I didn't think that they had peppermint in them.
[00:06:34] Jason: Right.
[00:06:34] Caroline: It's that in my mind, they're sort of convoluted because they look like a peppermint because it swirls.
[00:06:42] Jason: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get you, for sure. But we don't have peppermint extract here in Portugal.
[00:06:45] Caroline: Right.
[00:06:45] Jason: It's not a thing.
[00:06:46] Caroline: I'm sure there is online.
[00:06:47] Jason: I'm sure I could find it online, but that takes a lot of work, and then it would take probably two weeks to arrive in the mail.
[00:06:51] Caroline: Right.
[00:06:52] Jason: And I just didn't feel like it, so I made regular pinwheel cookies instead of chocolate. I did red food coloring, and I made them red and the natural color of the dough, and they have been delicious.
[00:07:01] Caroline: They're just cute little butter cookies.
[00:07:01] Jason: They're very, very good. They're hard to not eat three of, is the problem.
[00:07:04] Caroline: Yeah, they go a little too smooth going down.
[00:07:07] Jason: They really do.
[00:07:08] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:07:08] Jason: And it's because they're basically like a shortbread cookie, just a lot of butter. Anyway, those are the baking updates for my WTDRs who are out there.
[00:07:15] Caroline: For all the WTDRs.
[00:07:15] Jason: You're still cinnamon rollers. Don't worry. I will never forget that you're cinnamon rollers.
[00:07:19] Caroline: Of course.
[00:07:20] Jason: And that's just what I wanted to share before we got going here.
[00:07:22] Caroline: Yeah. We're talking about the dough, and now we're going to talk about the...
[00:07:25] Jason: The dough.
[00:07:26] Caroline: Do you see how this is a concept? Do you see where it really has legs?
[00:07:30] Jason: This has been the podcast...
[00:07:32] Caroline: What?
[00:07:32] Jason: ...for years. I always bring my dough escapades.
[00:07:35] Caroline: I know. Maybe we should... podcast for the 12th time
[00:07:36] Jason: And then we always bring our dough escapades.
[00:07:38] Caroline: I know.
[00:07:39] Jason: Dough escapades.
[00:07:39] Caroline: You know I don't like how it's like. I like Growing Steady so much better because it's not all about the dough. You Know what I mean?
[00:07:45] Jason: I'm a 42-year-old millennial and I am not going to gatekeep this information any longer.
[00:07:48] Caroline: But at the same time...
[00:07:48] Jason: I like dough and dough.
[00:07:50] Caroline: Who doesn't want to make a little extra dough? That's why we're all here.
[00:07:53] Jason: Totally. So let's talk about the dough that we made over the past weekend here with our Black Friday deal.
[00:07:59] Caroline: Okay. Great segue, babe.
[00:08:00] Jason: Thank you.
[00:08:01] Caroline: First of all, I do want to acknowledge those of you who tuned in last week. Thank you for listening to our big blowout fight.
[00:08:07] Jason: I finished editing that episode...
[00:08:09] Caroline: You did.
[00:08:10] Jason: And Caroline doesn't listen to them or anything...
[00:08:11] Caroline: Was it okay?
[00:08:12] Jason: ...like before it gets posted. And she was just like, "Hey, buddy..." This is like a day later. She's like, "I don't think we should post that episode."
[00:08:17] Caroline: No, I never said that. Hey, hey, hey, hey, look at me in the eyes. I never said I don't think we should post it.
[00:08:22] Jason: What'd you say?
[00:08:22] Caroline: I said, I am feeling vulnerable posting that.
[00:08:25] Jason: Oh.
[00:08:26] Caroline: I never said I don't think we should post that.
[00:08:28] Jason: Okay.
[00:08:28] Caroline: I said...
[00:08:29] Jason: Revision is history, maybe. But anyway...
[00:08:30] Caroline: By you?
[00:08:31] Jason: Yeah, and...
[00:08:32] Caroline: Okay. Great. Second big blowout fight podcast episode.
[00:08:34] Jason: And I was like, no matter what you said, and it matters what you said, but I'm saying no matter in the context of what you said...
[00:08:41] Caroline: Sure.
[00:08:41] Jason: My response was this is a real conversation...
[00:08:43] Caroline: Yes.
[00:08:43] Jason: ...between two people, and it is messy. And I don't know, maybe it'll be a little bit uncomfortable to listen back to, I think... when we share an episode like that, that it's more uncomfortable than it actually is.
[00:08:53] Caroline: Well, yeah, because I know we're very respectful in disagreeing with each other. But...
[00:08:57] Jason: Also, people are listening to us at 1.2 or 1.5x, so when we talk...
[00:09:01] Caroline: I know, but I think what makes me uncomfortable. So that is why I didn't say we shouldn't post that, because I knew the part of my values that always wins out is like, if we value transparency, then these are the real conversations that we have sometimes when we disagree about certain tactics or strategies in the business.
[00:09:17] Jason: Yeah.
[00:09:17] Caroline: And so, I do think that there's value in people hearing how you disagree with one another if you have a business partner, if you work with a spouse, et cetera. But the part that I get nervous about is just like, I think... Listen, everyone listening to this is a wonderful human being because we attract wonderful human beings to the show. But I also know...
[00:09:38] Jason: We do disagree.
[00:09:38] Caroline: ...that we as human beings are bad at, we'll listen to a piece of content, or we'll watch a piece of content or something. And we'll say that we want the real, authentic version of it.
[00:09:49] Jason: Right.
[00:09:49] Caroline: But then when someone shows their authentic vulnerability, we'll go like, we'll pick it apart. You know what I mean?
[00:09:55] Jason: Yeah.
[00:09:55] Caroline: Like, we'll be like, oh, do you see how she undercut his thing here?
[00:09:58] Jason: Boy...
[00:09:58] Caroline: Or did you see how he said that there? And I'm like, can we all just not step back and agree that sometimes we disagree with one another and sometimes things get heated or sometimes we have opinions...
[00:10:09] Jason: Yeah.
[00:10:09] Caroline: ...or we don't listen to each other as well as we should all those things. And so, there is a part of me that...
[00:10:15] Jason: Wants to gatekeep some of that information.
[00:10:16] Caroline: ...that knows that, but then it is also a practice and just going, you can't control other people's opinions of you.
[00:10:22] Jason: Yeah.
[00:10:22] Caroline: And I do think ultimately it is valuable to hear those conversations. So that's why I meant it when I said, thanks for listening to our big blowout fight. I'm kidding. It wasn't a blowout fight.
[00:10:32] Jason: Yeah, exactly.
[00:10:33] Caroline: Those of you who didn't listen to it, it was like a very respectful discussion about just one of us believes in the power of Instagram and one doesn't.
[00:10:39] Jason: Pramble to the pramble. Here we go. Let's get into the actual Black Friday deal, so...
[00:10:42] Caroline: Let's do it.
[00:10:43] Jason: ...we have not done a Black Friday deal in seven years.
[00:10:47] Caroline: Right.
[00:10:47] Jason: Do you remember what our last Black Friday deal was? I love to give you a little quiz.
[00:10:51] Caroline: Vibrant Stuff Bundles?
[00:10:51] Jason: It sure was. So this was literally right when I was doing BuyMyFuture, before we did BuyOurFuture, we did a, what we called a Vibrant Stuff Bundle made by when it was Caroline's business. JasonDoesStuff was my business. And we used the product that I created called Bumpsale, which does incremental pricing at a dollar, increasing every single purchase. And we bundled together like 12 of our courses, and that was the bundle and people could buy that. And so, I think the first time we did that, I think we did that for like three times, the Vibrant Stuff Bundle.
[00:11:19] Caroline: That sounds right.
[00:11:20] Jason: The first time we did it, it made $30,000, do you remember?
[00:11:22] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:11:22] Jason: Which was incredible. And that was also the incremental pricing really creates some fun urgency and things. What we didn't use that this time...
[00:11:29] Caroline: I think it was also the era of bundles.
[00:11:31] Jason: Yeah.
[00:11:31] Caroline: I think the online product, digital product space was a lot less saturated. So people were... It was before people had a whole gigabyte graveyard of all the things that they had not gone through.
[00:11:42] Jason: I'm now actually wondering why didn't we even discuss doing Bumpsale on this Black Friday deal. Are you just over it? Did you not want to do it?
[00:11:48] Caroline: No, no, no. I think...
[00:11:49] Jason: Or did we just not think about it?
[00:11:50] Caroline: No, I definitely thought about it, but based on the results from seven years ago, I was just like...
[00:11:57] Jason: Yeah.
[00:11:58] Caroline: ...maybe this... And also, for one course...
[00:12:02] Jason: Yeah. Okay.
[00:12:04] Caroline: And also... No, I think it was just I was lazy.
[00:12:06] Jason: Yeah. I'm not going to bury the lead now because I want to give this little response here. So we ended up with 85 total sales. 86 total sales.
[00:12:16] Caroline: 86 total sales.
[00:12:17] Jason: So I'm just giving you that and... Well, I'll give you the total revenue here in a second. Had we done Bumpsale...
[00:12:22] Caroline: For 86 sales.
[00:12:23] Jason: ...for 86 sales starting at $20.
[00:12:26] Caroline: Okay, so bumping by $1.
[00:12:28] Jason: $1 every purchase.
[00:12:29] Caroline: Okay.
[00:12:29] Jason: So the first person to buy would have been 20. The second person buy would have been $20. The third person would have been 22, et cetera.
[00:12:34] Caroline: So that means the final price would have been $106.
[00:12:35] Jason: Final price would've been $106. What's your guess on how much revenue that would have been?
[00:12:41] Caroline: I think it would have been $5,800.
[00:12:44] Jason: Close. $5,400.
[00:12:45] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:12:46] Jason: Yeah. And we ended up making $6,800.
[00:12:50] Caroline: Exactly.
[00:12:50] Jason: So it actually would have worked out better if we would have had the same amount of sales.
[00:12:53] Caroline: Now, the benefit of using Bumpsale is that we'll never know is it gives you this very... This built in way to find out what the perceived value of your product is. Right?
[00:13:04] Jason: Yeah.
[00:13:04] Caroline: Because what I mean by that is it bumps up by a dollar, so if you started at $20, for those of you who don't know what a Bumpsale is, if you start at $20 and you go up by $1, the sales will stop at wherever someone is not willing to pay that price. Right?
[00:13:18] Jason: Exactly.
[00:13:18] Caroline: So if it goes up to... We priced ours discounted at $80. So if someone goes $81, $82, and then let's say you see it top out at $120, you're like, okay, cool. Like that's the perceived value of that product. And it's a cool way to be able to see what someone is willing to pay based on the value that you describe. So we'll never know. Yeah.
[00:13:37] Jason: No, but when we did the Vibrant Stuff Bundles, I remember the first year we did it, I think it ended at like 180 sales.
[00:13:43] Caroline: Mm-hmm.
[00:13:43] Jason: And then the second year we did it, it ended at like 120 sales. And then the third year it ended like 80 sales. And that's where you really just saw the tapering of bundle excitement.
[00:13:50] Caroline: Buddle bonanza.
[00:13:51] Jason: Anyway, I brought that up. That wasn't even in our notes list, but it just literally hit me in the head of like, oh, we used to use the Bumpsale pricing, but it's just a little reminder to folks, if you're ever looking for a different way to sell something, if you feel like you've tried all the things, try out Bumpsale, bumpsale.co. I'm no longer involved at all, but the person who owns it is a WAIM member, and we love that it's stayed in the family. And it's very cool. And it costs you almost nothing to use. It's just a little transaction fee.
[00:14:15] Caroline: Yeah, just Jason created this as a software product because...
[00:14:19] Jason: Yeah.
[00:14:19] Caroline: Anyway.
[00:14:20] Jason: Yeah. Okay. So...
[00:14:21] Caroline: I don't know if we said that.
[00:14:22] Jason: We did our first Black Friday deal in seven years. I already gave you the revenue results. We'll come back to them later. But why did we even do a Black Friday deal, Caroline?
[00:14:31] Caroline: Right.
[00:14:31] Jason: Besides just making some dough.
[00:14:33] Caroline: A few reasons. I first want to start with why we hadn't for seven years. And it's very simple, which is just... Well, it's a few things. Every year, we would check-in with ourselves, and we would be like, A, this is usually the time of year where we like to slow down. B, this is usually the time of year where in past years, we would be traveling, and we do not want to be managing a sale while we're traveling. C, there is always going to be a part of us that's like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, we all know it's very consumeristic, right?
[00:15:05] Jason: Yeah.
[00:15:05] Caroline: And even though digital products aren't things, they're still things that people gather and probably overconsume to some degree. And so, it's like...
[00:15:16] Jason: Do you want to contribute to that?
[00:15:16] Caroline: Do you want to contribute to that?
[00:15:17] Jason: Yeah.
[00:15:17] Caroline: That's always a part of it. And so, for the past few years, also, we would check in with the business, and we'd be like, do we need to do this?
[00:15:25] Jason: Yeah.
[00:15:25] Caroline: Do we need the extra revenue? Do we have financial goals that we're trying to hit by the end of the year? And so, our answer for the past several years was just no.
[00:15:35] Jason: Yeah.
[00:15:35] Caroline: And we don't want to travel, we don't want to do it, et cetera. This year was a little different because we were not traveling for Thanksgiving.
[00:15:41] Jason: Mm-hmm.
[00:15:41] Caroline: We had traveled in October, so we were already back. B, if you've listened to the podcast, you know that our launches this year have done well, but it's not like...
[00:15:54] Jason: Our revenue has stayed flatlined, basically...
[00:15:56] Caroline: Exactly.
[00:15:56] Jason: ...because the way our pricing model works with WAIM, the lifetime purchases end up tapering off, so our recurring revenue goes down every month. A launch will bring the revenue back up. And we haven't had a increase in revenue. We've just stayed the same.
[00:16:09] Caroline: So it would be nice to have that extra revenue. And then the most important reason why we did it, and the last one is that we have been talking a lot the past few months about experimenting again with lower priced offers.
[00:16:23] Jason: Mm-hmm.
[00:16:24] Caroline: Because, again, the thing that we took away from the two launches this year and taking a step back from our business and realizing now we're only selling pretty much one offer at this, what we would call high ticket price point. And yet we know that so many people in our audience are either getting started, they are not yet ready to make the commitment to be in the full WAIM Unlimited. And we wanted to offer a couple of options that would be at a more accessible price point. And so, we had been having these conversations could the... Calm Launch Formula was one of the first ones that came to our mind. And so, we were like, Black Friday would be such a great opportunity to kickstart that and experiment and try. And it would also force us to create the sales page and just get the ball rolling and all that.
[00:17:06] Jason: Yeah. I think the last part for me especially was this is the first product in Calm Launch Formula, it's really just a course, we're just being honest, that we had released in a while where people raved about it.
[00:17:18] Caroline: Raved about it.
[00:17:19] Jason: We gave it to our WAIMers at the end of the summer, early fall.
[00:17:23] Caroline: Yup.
[00:17:23] Jason: And they loved it. I mean, it's some of the best testimonials we've ever had on anything we've created.
[00:17:29] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:17:29] Jason: And it was one of those things where I was like, okay, I'm a 42-year-old millennial who runs an online business and I am not going to gatekeep this course. So we put up for a Black Friday deal. And I think that was really one of the big signals for us is we had this product that actually people were really enjoying, and we wanted to see, okay, is this just our Wandering Aimfully crew because they love us so much and they're always appreciative things we give them, and they don't have to pay any extra for this thing or is it actually good enough that people really love it? And so, this was our test to do that, and we did get some immediate results. People loved it, which we will get to.
[00:18:00] Caroline: Yeah. And so, again, just touching back on this strategy that we're going to bring into next year, which is if you've been listening to this podcast, you know we have an interesting relationship with this idea of evergreen sales. And what it comes down to is we've just never been able to crack the code on consistent evergreen sales. I mean, we did a long, long time ago when I had my hand lettering course. That was like the most true evergreen...
[00:18:23] Jason: Yeah.
[00:18:23] Caroline: ...daily passive income we've ever had.
[00:18:27] Jason: That one was accidental. That one was... Yeah.
[00:18:29] Caroline: And that was accidental. I mean, a little bit accidental. Like there was definitely strategy involved. Because, obviously, we don't teach stuff that we haven't experimented with ourselves. But also, we have just seen when you're getting started and you don't have this very consistent attention and traffic source, we very much believe that launching is the way to go because you can launch to even a small list and you can still do great numbers in terms of your revenue. So you've heard us do many podcast episodes about why we believe so much in launching versus evergreen, but that doesn't mean that we've ever put to rest this Notion of wanting to crack the code for ourselves.
[00:19:05] Jason: Exactly. So this is giving us something that we can use as an evergreen product, essentially, moving forward...
[00:19:12] Caroline: Yes.
[00:19:12] Jason: ...which we will talk about more in future podcast episodes as we start to do some of those experiments and share with what's working, what isn't working, and how we're setting it up. Now, let's talk about the deal itself and probably most importantly, to just explain what is Calm Launch Formula, because for those of you who maybe this is the first time you're hearing us talk about this, because we don't talk about it a ton on the podcast because it was never for sale. It is a course, essentially, and it helps you create a launch of a product, a digital product specifically. You can use it for other things like services or whatever, but it's really for a product. And the whole idea is to help you have a calm launch. So it is to set the launch up three to six months in advance. It's to get all of your sales emails written, your sales page written, get everything about your offer honed in.
[00:19:52] Caroline: To really focus on simplicity and enough and not trying to hustle to do every launch tactic in the book, so that you're running around like...
[00:20:00] Jason: A chicken with your head...
[00:20:00] Caroline: A chicken with your head.
[00:20:01] Jason: And the cherry on top is that we added in the done-for-you resources, which we did do a whole podcast episode on about the shift that, I think we're going to see in online courses where we have 20 AI prompts or over 20 AI prompts that you can use in ChatGPT or Claude, or whatever that Caroline, our prompt engineer wrote.
[00:20:18] Caroline: I love... in there.
[00:20:18] Jason: And these help you get every single part of the Calm Launch Formula pretty much done. If you use ChatGPT and you use these prompts in about 30 minutes or so. I think two hours total was how long it took me to get literally everything like my full sales page written edited, my emails written edited. Like I was done in two hours.
[00:20:37] Caroline: Which is wild.
[00:20:38] Jason: Which is insane. Like my launch literally, like there would have been a lot of other like small things I would have had to do, like build the sales page, like you can...
[00:20:44] Caroline: Of course.
[00:20:44] Jason: ...like AI is not yet anyway going to build you like a beautiful sales page. But I had every single bit of copy ready to go just to plug in in under two hours for a brand-new offer. It was something that I hadn't even created yet. So I think that was a really cool thing to see and that's why we really like this product. And we were excited to put up for the Black Friday deal. And on top of that, we did put a little latticed crust with an egg wash and a sprinkle of sugar on top.
[00:21:09] Caroline: Bring back that dough.
[00:21:10] Jason: Which is our bonus, dough for the dough. And that was a coaching session that we just hosted a couple of months ago on building your product.
[00:21:18] Caroline: Yes, because... And again, like the strategy behind adding in is not just to add something that felt like a bonus, which I feel like is a good idea, especially when you're doing a specific promotion. Like you always want to be thinking about what is the deal sweetener to really put in your customer's mind the fact that there is so much perceived value inside what you're selling. But also, just truly we wanted to get results for people, and we knew that we were going to be basically selling this to two types of customers. And one customer already has their offer done their product, they've already probably launched it. They just want better launches to better results with less stress. So good, they're good to go. They have everything they need in Calm Launch Formula. But we knew that, again, going back to our audience is some of them at the beginning of their journey. And maybe they don't even have their offer created yet. And Calm Launch Formula doesn't teach you how to... It teaches you how to position your offer with your messaging and price it and all that. It doesn't tell you how to build a digital product. And so, this coaching session really offered up a very broad look at our start to finish like main steps of building a digital product offer if that is overwhelming to you. And so, we thought this would be a really good supplement for someone who was like, I know I want to create a digital product. I don't know where to start. And this would be such a good one hour kind of give you the crude details so that you have somewhere to start.
[00:22:34] Jason: Exactly.
[00:22:35] Caroline: So those were all the reasons we decided to add it. We price the entire bundle at 320 is where we felt good. I personally think that that's lower than the value of Calm Launch Formula.
[00:22:47] Jason: Of course.
[00:22:47] Caroline: But again, we know that the whole point of this is to have a more financially accessible offer. And so, that's where we price like the full price of it of the bundle. And then we decided to just do a ridiculous Black Friday, which was 75% off, so we discounted the bundle to $80.
[00:23:04] Jason: Yeah.
[00:23:05] Caroline: And why did we decide to do 75% off, Jason?
[00:23:08] Jason: Yeah. I mean, I just think you see... I think we all do this. Like you see a lot of these Black Friday deals come through and it's like 15% off or 20% off and you're just like really? Like if we're going to do it, like do it.
[00:23:18] Caroline: A 15% off is like a Memorial Day sale. Don't give that to me.
[00:23:21] Jason: Also, that's like a enter your email to get the 15% off code.
[00:23:23] Caroline: Yeah, exactly.
[00:23:24] Jason: Like those things are floating around like crazy. And listen, no shade to anybody who doesn't want to discount their products or services further.
[00:23:30] Caroline: Totally.
[00:23:30] Jason: But just for us and for a digital product that is infinitely scalable and doesn't have any costs associated once it's made, I think we can all be honest with ourselves, like you can discount it further, and just knowing the buying habits that people are in for a Black Friday Cyber Monday, they are looking for a really good deal. They're not looking for a 10 to 15% off just to save a little bit. And I know for some things you are, but I think for things like this it's probably not as important.
[00:23:52] Caroline: Totally.
[00:23:52] Jason: So we knew the headspace that people were going to be in. We wanted the deal to feel like it was a no-brainer. No one was going to question the price and that it would just be like, yeah, it's under 100 bucks. You're going to get this thing and you're going to be able to access it and use it over and over again for launches. And if you have one launch that does even $1,000 in sales, you only paid 80 bucks for the Calm Launch Formula. That's a great deal. Like you just grabbed a fantastic deal.
[00:24:14] Caroline: Ridiculous deal. And then we decided to do...
[00:24:16] Jason: Not to mention, if you get a six fig, seven fig, even eight fig, nine fig, 10 fig launch, gosh, imagine.
[00:24:22] Caroline: 10 fig. And then we decided to do the sale. The sale would run from Friday, Black Friday.
[00:24:28] Jason: Until?
[00:24:30] Caroline: We fully intended it to go through Cyber Monday.
[00:24:33] Jason: Right.
[00:24:33] Caroline: But I think I blame myself somewhere in the prelaunch emails I wrote December 3rd, which was actually Tuesday.
[00:24:40] Jason: Right.
[00:24:40] Caroline: And so, then we couldn't go back and change it. So had I chosen this, I would never have done it through Giving Tuesday because it's like I don't want to distract from, like people giving to causes and things like that. That was my bad. I just did the dates wrong. And Jason was like, "But didn't you do the 3rd?" And I was like, "Oh, I don't know why I thought Monday was the 3rd."
[00:24:57] Jason: I think I know why you thought that is because you didn't want to send the email. That was like, "Just kidding, we're extending the sale for one more day." I hate those emails that come through.
[00:25:05] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:25:05] Jason: They're like, "We decided, we listened to you all and we extend." It's like, no, you didn't. You just wanted one more day of sales. So accidentally we just got one more day of sales in our deal.
[00:25:13] Caroline: Well, yeah, except for we didn't do that email because...
[00:25:14] Jason: No.
[00:25:15] Caroline: ...the whole time... Yeah.
[00:25:16] Jason: Exactly. Yeah, we just set it up.
[00:25:17] Caroline: And that's just also a little bit to share, like we mess up.
[00:25:20] Jason: Yeah, absolutely. There's a whole relatability section I'm going to get to here with a couple of different notes. And that was the main one that we just literally didn't pick the right date, and it wasn't the end of the world.
[00:25:29] Caroline: So now let's talk about the work. So what did it take to actually execute on this and implement it? As you'll see, probably why I got the date wrong is just we kept it as simple as possible and didn't overthink it. So that was a big part of, I said, if we're going to do this Black Friday deal, I don't want to make it complicated. And to be perfectly honest, we just had gone like a crazy travel trip, and I just was not in a place of wanting to work a ton and I was like, I don't want to overdo it. So we had a little planning session to see what we needed to do to make this as simple as possible.
[00:26:01] Jason: Mm-hmm.
[00:26:01] Caroline: I created the sales page in our Framer, is what we use for our website now. I used actually the Calm Launch Formula AI prompts to write the sales page, so it was very meta.
[00:26:11] Jason: Mm-hmm.
[00:26:12] Caroline: And just rewrote it. In the course, I show you how to have it write in your own voice.
[00:26:18] Jason: Voice.
[00:26:18] Caroline: But of course, I had to rearrange some stuff and everything, but it saved me so much time. And so, that was done in pretty much a day.
[00:26:25] Jason: I'll talk about the Teachery side of things.
[00:26:26] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:26:26] Jason: So the course is built in Teachery and lives in Teachery. And so, admittedly we know that Teachery there's not a lot of payment options built in. It's just credit or debit card, that's it. And this is just, it's really hard to build payment stuff. And we are going to work on that for Teachery in 2025. But for now, we looked at, well, should we sell it somewhere else? Like we could use Gumroad, or we could sign up for like Lemon Squeezy or whatever and like so people could use PayPal, people could use Apple Pay, people could use Google Pay, like all these different options and it's like we just want to keep this thing simple. We're going to use Teachery's payment pages. The people that are willing to buy with a credit card or debit card are the people that are going to buy. And we're just going to make it simple and easy on ourselves. We don't have to sign up for anything else. So literally just a Teachery payment page. We created the 75% off promo code and then in Teachery you can do a little URL parameter. So just put like "?promo=Black Friday" for the code that we used. And so, that link for the payment page with that parameter added automatically injects the promo code into the page so a user doesn't have to do anything, so it seems very seamless. So we just plugged that URL into all the buy buttons on the sales page.
[00:27:29] Caroline: And then we did have to set up a few automations in ConvertKit. But originally, I think I told you I was like, okay, we need to set up a welcome sequence and all this stuff and you were like, nope.
[00:27:37] Jason: Yeah.
[00:27:37] Caroline: We're just going to use Teachery's welcome email that comes with what your course so that it gets sent whenever someone buys. And we'll tag them so that we know who purchased the course, but just don't overthink that part. And that worked out great. And then I also designed a little announcement bar and added that to every page of our website so that whatever traffic was coming to the site would be directed to the Black Friday deal as well.
[00:27:58] Jason: Yeah. I mean...
[00:27:59] Caroline: And that was basically it.
[00:28:00] Jason: I think the maximizing our website in every page had a mention of the Black Friday deal. It's very hard to track and know. I mean, I think there are some services that could do this. We could have set some stuff up, but again, we want it simple.
[00:28:12] Caroline: Simplicity.
[00:28:13] Jason: But just like we set it up across our whole site so that if anybody landed on any articles or whatever, they would still see it as well. So I'd be curious, actually, we should look at who was on our email list. Maybe we can follow up with this at some point or we'll just do it for ourselves. But who was already on our email list that bought and who wasn't. Because the people who weren't may have been cold traffic to our website that found it and then just bought, and they weren't on our email list.
[00:28:35] Caroline: Do you think it's worth it to find that out?
[00:28:37] Jason: Oh, just for us afterwards because it only take two seconds just to do the whole thing.
[00:28:41] Caroline: You can do that.
[00:28:41] Jason: But anyway, that's fun. So for the sales emails, we knew we were going to do one email per day during the sale, so Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. And then two emails on Tuesday, one in the morning, one in the night to close it down, because people always need that last reminder. And in the sales numbers by day, you'll see that.
[00:28:58] Caroline: Yup. So that was six total emails, if you're curious.
[00:29:00] Jason: Six total emails. And then I used the same prompts that are in Calm Launch Formula to write those sales emails as my first draft version. Then I rewrote them a little bit in our own words, even though GPT does a really good job getting you started. And those got done. I mean, all six of those emails were done in like one hour or less.
[00:29:18] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:29:18] Jason: So that's pretty incredible. And that was with me fully rewriting them after it had given me the copy. And then we can get to the results. So quick drum roll, Carol. Very nice. Just in case anyone's curious, 31 minutes until the pie is done. All right. We had a low goal of 40 sales.
[00:29:37] Caroline: Yes.
[00:29:37] Jason: We had a high goal of 100 sales.
[00:29:40] Caroline: Yes.
[00:29:40] Jason: Our total sales were 86 with a total revenue of $6,880.
[00:29:47] Caroline: It feels great. Doubled our low goal.
[00:29:49] Jason: Doubled our low goal. Yeah. Really, really nice. We hit our low goal on the second day almost, basically. So the way the sales broke down, first day, 21 sales, second day, 13 sales, third day, which was Sunday, eight sales, Monday, 21 sales, and then Tuesday, 18 sales. And then we had five stragglers, which I will get to in a second of how we had stragglers who got in afterwards because it was a mistake on our part.
[00:30:12] Caroline: Wait, do you see how wild that is? So it was basically 21 sales on the first day.
[00:30:17] Jason: Yes.
[00:30:18] Caroline: 21 sales across the whole weekend.
[00:30:19] Jason: Yes. This goes back to my third, third thirds that I've always said in launches, yeah.
[00:30:23] Caroline: Well, kind of. Well, it's really fourth. So...
[00:30:24] Jason: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:30:25] Caroline: ...21 sales on the first day, 21 sales over the course of the weekend, 21 sales on Monday, and then basically 23 sales for the last day.
[00:30:32] Jason: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:30:32] Caroline: That's wild.
[00:30:33] Jason: In the last 48 hours, it was over 50% of the sales.
[00:30:38] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:30:38] Jason: So that holds true, I think, in a deal launch like this. I think in our WAIM Unlimited launches that has stopped happening because there's no deal. It's just a time to get in and people know if they're going to get in or not. It doesn't happen with like a scramble at the end anymore.
[00:30:52] Caroline: Right.
[00:30:53] Jason: So, yes, almost $7,000 for what was probably, what? 20 hours of work in the week?
[00:31:00] Caroline: Can't do much better than that.
[00:31:01] Jason: Yeah, it's pretty great. And it feels good because it actually helped set us up for all the things that we need to do evergreen to sell Calm Launch Formula moving forward. Now, let's get into the relatability moments section. I just wanted to share these things as little inspirational, hopefully relatable things that if you are selling something, if you have your own business, if you're doing launches and you feel like you're not doing business "perfectly", we have done 70 plus launches over the past 10 years.
[00:31:28] Caroline: Yup.
[00:31:29] Jason: We absolutely still mess things up. We already talked about the fact that Caroline picked the complete wrong last day to do this deal.
[00:31:36] Caroline: Fantastic.
[00:31:36] Jason: Absolutely wrong. Normally we love getting our sales emails done ahead of time, scheduled ahead of time so that we're not writing and finishing them the day of, and hitting send.
[00:31:46] Caroline: Yes.
[00:31:46] Jason: Every single day we were finishing, polishing, and then hitting send. That is not to make anybody in our relationship feel bad. That is just shared as a...
[00:31:55] Caroline: No. I quite literally just did not want to sit down for the two hours it would take to format all the emails.
[00:32:01] Jason: And schedule them.
[00:32:02] Caroline: And so, I just did them day of, and that's okay.
[00:32:05] Jason: Yeah, absolutely. One of the tactics that we put on the sales page was a new feature that's in Teachery, which is the free lesson preview feature where you can say in your course what lessons you want to be open for anybody publicly to view. Then the rest are behind a Buy To Unlock button. So we put this together, turn the feature on, set the lessons, we set a spot on the sales page for it and then we never mentioned it in the sales emails.
[00:32:29] Caroline: Which is so funny because in Calm Launch Formula, the way that we walk you through how to decide on your what we call launch events, then write your emails like based around those events. If I had followed our own advice, we would have certainly been like, oh, we should do an entire email about the free lesson preview. Just like, one thing I did catch was doing an entire email about the AI prompts at the last minute. But again, these are the things that you are able to see when you're not doing your emails last minute. So just a reminder of why that's not advisable. But you don't beat yourself up over it.
[00:33:01] Jason: Yeah.
[00:33:01] Caroline: You just go, yeah, I am taking things more slowly. We're going through personal stuff and it's okay that we can't sit down and just...
[00:33:10] Jason: Exactly.
[00:33:10] Caroline: ...crank out the emails. You do what you can do.
[00:33:13] Jason: Yeah.
[00:33:14] Caroline: Wait, what do you always say? You do your best...
[00:33:16] Jason: And you forgot the rest.
[00:33:17] Caroline: And you forgot the rest.
[00:33:17] Jason: Thank you, Tony Horton. The last relatable moment is between the countdown timer on the website.
[00:33:25] Caroline: Yes.
[00:33:25] Jason: The countdown timer in the kit emails, the countdown timer on the payment page. That is three countdown timers. The promo code timer, which would have been the fourth timer that no one saw because it's behind the scenes, got set wrong. So all the other ones were fine and synced up. This one ended three hours too early.
[00:33:42] Caroline: Which is the one that you really need to be right because...
[00:33:45] Jason: So we ended up getting 15 emails from people that were like, "I'm trying to buy, but the promo code says it's expired, so I can't get the deal." And we woke up to those emails because of the way the timing. So I emailed everybody back, I made a new promo code and said, "I'm so sorry it expired three hours early." This was not a tactic. This was an accident.
[00:34:00] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:34:00] Jason: And if you want to use it, you can use it. And that's why we have those straggler sales that have come in the day after was because those are people who tried to buy but couldn't buy because the promo could expired early.
[00:34:09] Caroline: And just a reminder, I always am like, are people really going to be making a decision last minute?
[00:34:14] Jason: Last minute? Yes, they are.
[00:34:15] Caroline: 15 people, yes, they are. Yes, they are.
[00:34:16] Jason: Absolutely. Yeah. No doubt in my mind. We probably would have had 10 more sales on the final day just based on the amount of emails we got. And now those people won't buy because they've lost interest. And that's okay.
[00:34:25] Caroline: That's okay.
[00:34:27] Jason: Doing this, I wanted to share that setting up the Black Friday deal going through Teachery and like getting a course ready for sale, working in the payment page, doing the sale, getting sales to come in. There are so many little quality of life improvements that I now see in Teachery...
[00:34:42] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:34:42] Jason: ...actively selling a course because we have not actively sold a course in Teachery for quite some time.
[00:34:47] Caroline: We hosted courses, but we haven't sold them in Teachery. Yeah.
[00:34:50] Jason: Exactly. And so, like even I wanted to know like, well, how many people saw this payment page and how many bought? What's the conversion rate of the payment page?
[00:34:57] Caroline: Yup.
[00:34:58] Jason: How many people... What was the other thing that I wanted to see? Oh, I wanted to be able to see, like just like you said, like sales by day.
[00:35:06] Caroline: Sales by day.
[00:35:07] Jason: Like I want to be able to see that and like do it by week. So these are things I'm absolutely going to prioritize in Teachery for early 2025 and to be able to have a lot more better metrics when it comes to selling things. And also, like I mentioned, we are going to have different payment page solutions, which really truthfully is just going to be, you can use our current payment pages where you can customize them or you can use the stripe checkout pages, which is kind of what Shopify checkout pages look like.
[00:35:31] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:35:31] Jason: That you can't brand, you can't change all the colors of. You just like put a logo in a thing. Yes, you can do upsells and that stuff, but like you can't customize it a ton.
[00:35:39] Caroline: Mm-hmm.
[00:35:40] Jason: But it does have Apple Pay built in. In Europe, it has PayPal built in. There's lots of things, Klarna is in there. Like there's so many other payment options that are just like built in. You could even turn some other ones on. So that will come to Teachery. I think that's going to open up the doors for a lot of people to not have to use third party selling apps. But if you want to use ThriveCart and other things and still connect to Teachery, you absolutely will still be able to. I just want to have those improvements in there because we do need to have those things in 2025.
[00:36:06] Caroline: Absolutely.
[00:36:06] Jason: All right, Carol, what are some final thoughts we want to share?
[00:36:09] Caroline: Final thoughts. I didn't write this on here, but I'm just grateful that we decided to do the deal.
[00:36:14] Jason: Because we now we have dough for our dough.
[00:36:15] Caroline: We have dough for the dough.
[00:36:16] Jason: I can afford to buy more flour.
[00:36:18] Caroline: And like I said it, we leaned into simplicity, so it didn't feel like this, like nothing about it felt cumbersome, I should say. And I'm so glad that we did that because we worked so hard on Calm Launch Formula, and as you said, people have raved about it. And I think sometimes we have been on this kick for the past few years about simplicity, having this one main chef's kiss offer of WAIM Unlimited and it has served our business so well and it has created a calm business for us. But as all things, you run the risk of going too far in that direction to where it becomes clear that in our case like having some of these lower priced offers that are still incredibly valuable. I think there's a lot of opportunity that we've perhaps missed out on the past year two, et cetera, just to create a well-rounded diversified business. And I think doing the sale reminded me that, I don't know, it just like kick started that for me and I could start to envision what that might look like experimenting with these offers in the next year and see if we can create a more well-rounded offer structure.
[00:37:22] Jason: Yeah. And I think when you look at like the overall pie of Wandering Aimfully as a business's income, the pie has been 98% WAIM Unlimited.
[00:37:32] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:37:32] Jason: And then like 2% random odds and ends, affiliate marketing. If I do a one-on-one coaching thing here or there, like that's how that pie breaks down.
[00:37:39] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:37:39] Jason: Pies in the oven. Yes.
[00:37:40] Caroline: Dough. Pies rising.
[00:37:42] Jason: What's up? How the pie is going to break down in 2025 that I foresee is like 65% WAIM Unlimited. I think we'll end up with like 30% of revenue ends up coming from Calm Launch Formula.
[00:37:55] Caroline: Really, 35?
[00:37:55] Jason: Yeah, I think so for sure. This is my prediction. My bold prediction. What's up? I'm 42-year-old millennial business owner and I'm not going to gatekeep this bold prediction.
[00:38:03] Caroline: I love giving a bold prediction about your own business of which you have control over, so you can like do that.
[00:38:08] Jason: For sure. So yeah, 65% WAIM Unlimited. 30% will come from these smaller digital product offers that we want to set up and experiment with. And then I think 5% will be affiliate stuff and one-on-one coaching...
[00:38:19] Caroline: We'll see, won't we?
[00:38:20] Jason: I already had one person convince me to do one-on-one coaching with them to start the year and this is not a sales pitch because I don't want to take on more people to do it, but...
[00:38:27] Caroline: Yeah. You actively tried to discourage her.
[00:38:28] Jason: Yeah.
[00:38:29] Caroline: And you did some real like reverse Jedi mind. You were like...
[00:38:32] Jason: Yeah.
[00:38:32] Caroline: You're like, "I can't guarantee anything. Here's what I'm not going to do for you."
[00:38:37] Jason: Yeah. Without...
[00:38:38] Caroline: And she was like, "Sounds great. I want that."
[00:38:40] Jason: I am in. Can I pay you more? One of the other things was we, again, as we mentioned, our WAIMers were raving about Calm Launch Formula when they got access to it. A lot of people were talking about how awesome the prompts were. If you just want to read some of the things that people said, you can go to wanderingaimfully.com/deal, you'll still be able to see the sales page for Calm Launch Formula and you can read some of those testimonials. But one that I loved was right away after someone bought Calm Launch Formula, they said, "Calm Launch Formula is exactly what I needed. The progress I made in one day far exceeds what I've been able to do in the previous three months. Unbelievable." And that, I think, is really the power of setting up some done-for-you stuff. And if we're just going to be honest, it is AI prompt things within your digital products that can help people apply and get value out of what you're selling as quickly as possible.
[00:39:26] Caroline: I'm so excited about it. Also, we have been playing around with this idea of creating a prompt vault.
[00:39:34] Jason: Give it to them. Give them a sneak peek.
[00:39:36] Caroline: And using that as a product that is available for purchase because when I tell you...
[00:39:40] Jason: How much is it? Tell me right now how much it is.
[00:39:41] Caroline: No. I don't know how much it is.
[00:39:42] Jason: Just tell me right now.
[00:39:44] Caroline: I think it would be... I mean, I think it would be in the...
[00:39:47] Jason: Don't gatekeep the price.
[00:39:47] Caroline: ...$45 range.
[00:39:49] Jason: Can I pre-buy it right now?
[00:39:50] Caroline: Stop it. Because I love prompt engineering so much. I know that sounds so nerdy, but I love it, and I think the payoff is so magical and for people who, I just use it for everything. I use it to spur my creativity. I use it to help me think through decisions. I use it for research, I use it for all these different parts of our business, and I just love it so much and I would love... Again, I think when you find something that you're truly passionate about and you lose all track of time doing it, it's something that you should listen to and go, how can I turn this into something that I can create in my business? Because you know that you'll want to spend time on it. So...
[00:40:26] Jason: Yeah.
[00:40:26] Caroline: ...that is coming also.
[00:40:28] Jason: One thing that I really liked about this was it forced us to write sales emails for this deal, which if we're going to try and experiment with evergreen, you're going to need evergreen sales emails. And this basically already gave us the first version of those emails.
[00:40:42] Caroline: Right.
[00:40:42] Jason: Which is really great that like now all we need to do is just like remove all the Black Friday mentions, remove all the deal parts of it and it's all the same core messaging that we... I would say our messaging is very validated in this first sale of it and so we don't have to reinvent the wheel there. We can just apply these emails into an automation forward list.
[00:41:00] Caroline: Yeah. And we won't really know until we try to do that without the discount aspect and like the Black Friday added...
[00:41:07] Jason: Yeah.
[00:41:08] Caroline: ...purchase intent because that's the only thing that is clouding the data right now is that people are so intent on purchasing already during that time window and you're just never really going to have that. But how can we create that intention from the get-go with this evergreen? And I don't know if we'll crack the code, but it's worth trying.
[00:41:24] Jason: Yeah. I think at a bare minimum just the free lesson preview and letting someone get into that offer lesson and like consume some of the content, they can grab that one AI prompt from there and use it and like it'll be good to go. Like it'll be a really good start for that. Cool. So for right now, we have obviously finished the Black Friday part of this. We are going to leave the sales page up and accessible. We're going to leave the payment page up and accessible. So if you're listening to this and you do want to buy Calm Launch Formula, you're going to buy it at our "full price", which is 320 bucks. Still an absolute seal of a deal. If you're selling a digital product and you think that your launch might make $2,000, still having a full launch plan done-for-you that only takes you two hours to complete, start to finish with AI prompts. That is a deal to save you all that time and energy.
[00:42:12] Caroline: Or like Leah, who normally selling her sewing patterns.
[00:42:16] Jason: Leah, person who bought the course.
[00:42:17] Caroline: Yes. Normally makes around, I think she said $800 a launch. And her launch immediately after applying what she learned in Calm Launch Formula made 5,500.
[00:42:26] Jason: 5,500, yeah. 7x.
[00:42:28] Caroline: So that's a nice return on your investment from Calm Launch Formula.
[00:42:30] Jason: Yeah. And my absolute favorite part of her thing, her story with this was that she's never felt calm in her launches before.
[00:42:38] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:42:39] Jason: It has always felt stressful. And she was like, "Everything was ready. I was just like, ready to go. I just did the things that you told me to do, and it worked."
[00:42:47] Caroline: Which is what we did.
[00:42:47] Jason: And that was great. So this is not a sales pitch to go and buy it, but it is still up in case you're just like now very hungry for this product and you still want to buy it.
[00:42:54] Caroline: Hungry for dough. Whoa!
[00:42:56] Jason: This is just working out really great. You might see a new podcast name and art in 2025.
[00:43:02] Caroline: Maybe we finally found it.
[00:43:04] Jason: Maybe that's it. Maybe this is what the people want. They want my baking stories when I put mustard powder in a pie. They also want to know how we're making dough and how they can make dough, and then also how they can make dough. You know?
[00:43:18] Caroline: Right.
[00:43:18] Jason: Fantastic.
[00:43:19] Caroline: I know.
[00:43:19] Jason: All right. Anything else you want to share? You want to wrap it up?
[00:43:22] Caroline: I love you so much despite our big blowout fight, and...
[00:43:25] Jason: You're talking to me or them?
[00:43:26] Caroline: Definitely you.
[00:43:27] Jason: Okay.
[00:43:28] Caroline: But also, all the listeners.
[00:43:30] Jason: Of course.
[00:43:30] Caroline: I love you so much. And thank you for listening and thank you for just following along on our winding journey.
[00:43:38] Jason: Yeah. We've been Wandering Aimfully for years. We're going to continue to. Wandering Aimfully and...
[00:43:43] Caroline: Yeah. We really were onto something when we named our business Wandering Aimfully because we continue to do that.
[00:43:48] Jason: All right. We have one episode left, and then we're done for the year.
[00:43:51] Caroline: What's our last episode about?
[00:43:52] Jason: Year-end review. Yeah.
[00:43:57] Caroline: This one will be spicy this year.
[00:43:58] Jason: Well, well, well, what didn't go well?
[00:44:00] Caroline: Would you say that this is maybe, since we've been together, the year that went the most off track?
[00:44:09] Jason: No, 2019 will win, for sure. Yeah.
[00:44:11] Caroline: Okay, fine. That's true.
[00:44:12] Jason: You literally had to sit in a dog bed and look outside to, like exist...
[00:44:15] Caroline: You bring up the dog bed way too much. Okay? I had a moment. I wanted to look out at the lagoon.
[00:44:21] Jason: Yeah.
[00:44:21] Caroline: And the dog bed was there. And so, was it one of my...
[00:44:24] Jason: Buddy...
[00:44:24] Caroline: ...lowest moments of my life? Yeah.
[00:44:25] Jason: ...for six months, and this is not to make you feel bad, for six months...
[00:44:28] Caroline: Oh, you can make me feel bad.
[00:44:28] Jason: ...you would sit next to me, and you would rock back and forth.
[00:44:31] Caroline: I know.
[00:44:31] Jason: And you did that all throughout the day. And...
[00:44:34] Caroline: I know.
[00:44:34] Jason: ...I can't see you rock now, where I'm like, "Are you okay?"
[00:44:36] Caroline: I know.
[00:44:37] Jason: And it's not, again, a criticism at all...
[00:44:39] Caroline: No, I don't receive it that way.
[00:44:39] Jason: So anyway. Let's save this for the next episode. We got a lot of stuff to recap.
[00:44:42] Caroline: No. Pause there. Because it's really important to take a moment. And you're right, for a second, I was focused on all the ways this year went off the rails, but you did a really important thing, which is you reminded me that...
[00:44:56] Jason: the past trauma.
[00:44:57] Caroline: Of my past trauma. You reminded me that we have been through so much worse and how far we've come, and it is so worth taking a second to be grateful for the fact that I don't rock anymore, and I don't feel anxious the way that I used to.
[00:45:13] Jason: Yes. Yes.
[00:45:13] Caroline: And so, that is something to be very grateful for.
[00:45:15] Jason: This year is tough. It's its own new challenge, its own new difficulty. But if we're just ranking, if we're doing a tier list of our life challenges...
[00:45:22] Caroline: And I think anyone who has been through the darkest time of their life will know you would never go back and choose it. But there is a freedom that you get by going, like even this year, this is very hard, what we're going through. And I'm like, it's definitely not the worst thing I've ever been through...
[00:45:35] Jason: Yeah.
[00:45:35] Caroline: ...by a long shot.
[00:45:36] Jason: For sure.
[00:45:37] Caroline: And so, there's something valuable about that.
[00:45:39] Jason: That just give me an idea for maybe next week's podcast episode, or maybe this is a YouTube video, to do a tier list ranking of our 15 years together. And which one ranks at the top, which one ranks in the bottom? And what are the three highlights or lowlights of each.
[00:45:53] Caroline: Cute.
[00:45:53] Jason: It could just be a fun thing, and then it's like an exercise for everyone else to do with their partner. It's like a fun way to do that.
[00:45:58] Caroline: That's cute.
[00:45:59] Jason: We'll see. We'll see if we do that.
[00:46:00] Caroline: We'll see.
[00:46:00] Jason: Okay. That's it.
[00:46:01] Caroline: Thanks for listening.
[00:46:02] Jason: I got 13 minutes. I got to go untent this pie so we can get a nice golden top, and it'll look delicious.
[00:46:08] Caroline: I cannot wait to have apple pie without mustard powder or nutmeg. I'm so excited.
[00:46:11] Jason: Fantastic. All righty. See you later.