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Another launch of our WAIM Unlimited (un-boring) coaching program is in the books and we’re sharing all the exciting recap details with you...
We open enrollment for our coaching program twice per year and have done so for the past four years. We love sharing the launch recaps to give you the good, the bad, and any lessons/takeaways that might help you with your next launch.
We don’t use paid ads, and we aren’t on social media, yet this enrollment period saw the highest amount of customers in our business history! How’d we do it? Listen to hear all about it!
[00:02:14] Do you listen to launch recap podcasts? Send em to us.
[00:03:18] Launch breakdown, goals, numbers, sales, MRR, affiliates, final thoughts.
[00:07:19] Time for an episode on lifetime pricing?
[00:11:23] Excitement and energy increased sales in spring.
[00:12:27] 10,538 email list size with 10-person increase, targeted launch for business owners transitioning to digital products.
[00:18:14] Jen Carrington's case study brought us success and gratitude.
[00:21:36] The total net revenue and our 90% survey response rate.
[00:28:40] No social media or paid ads. Email, website, affiliates only.
[00:32:27] Entrepreneur avoids pressure and starts teaching baking.
[00:34:50] Calm business confidential!
[00:38:27] US podcast episode? Differences, portions, candy excitement.
👋 Are the episode timestamps helpful? Let us know!
***
🔗 Calm Business Confidential:
👩🏻🦰 Carol’s pick: Chef Amanda Schonberg of Chef Schonberg Sweets | @bakingforbusiness (Professional Baker and Course Creator)
If you have a calm business you think we should talk about, send us an email and share it!
***
💌 Want to get a weekly jolt of business inspiration and learn tactics and strategies that can help you increase profit, save time, and enjoy your work more? Sign up for our weekly email at wanderingaimfully.com/newsletter
✳️ Are you a freelancer looking to transition to digital products (selling online courses, etc)? Check out our free coaching session created just for you at wanderingaimfully.com
⚙️ Looking to create online courses with a platform that lets you customize everything? Give our course software a 14-day free trial at teachery.co
We’re Jason and Caroline Zook, a husband and wife team running two businesses together and trying to live out our version of a good life in the process. In this business podcast, we share with you our lessons learned about how to run a calm, sustainable business—one that is predictable, profitable AND peaceful. Join us every Thursday if you’re an online creator who wants to reach your goals without sacrificing your well-being in the process.
[00:00:00] Caroline: Welcome to What Is It All For? A podcast designed to help you grow your online business and pursue a spacious, satisfying life at the same time. We're your hosts, Jason and Caroline Zook, and we run, Wandering Aimfully, an un-boring business coaching program. Every week, we bring you advice and conversations to return you to your most intentional self and to help you examine every aspect of your life and business by asking, What Is It All For? Thanks for listening. And now let's get into the show.
[00:00:28] Jason: And I'm here, too.
Here we are doing a podcast as two people. What a weird...
[00:00:38] Caroline: Wait. What was our intro? Podcasts...?
[00:00:40] Jason: Are cool. Dot, dot, dot. When you really think about it, it's so weird. Just podcasting, just being a human.
[00:00:49] Caroline: Hey, I'm just a human having a conversation. I know what can make this even better. Let's record it and then publish it on the Internet for anyone to listen to?
[00:00:58] Jason: For other people to listen to. But then...
[00:01:02] Caroline: What's up?
[00:01:02] Jason: Some of it's very compelling. I like podcasts. But I'm not saying ours. I'm saying some of it in podcasting is very compelling.
[00:01:10] Caroline: I would agree with you.
[00:01:11] Jason: It's just very weird being a human.
[00:01:13] Caroline: Yeah. Honestly, if I sit for too long and I think about just technology and advancements.
[00:01:20] Jason: Do you believe there are aliens? Like other life forms? I don't know if we've ever talked about this in the podcast.
[00:01:25] Caroline: I just think it would be very egotistical to think there aren't.
[00:01:30] Jason: That we're the only ones.
[00:01:31] Caroline: So I just think, listen, I'm a person in life who leaves a lot of room for mystery. So if you're like ghosts, I'm like, nah, maybe. You're like aliens. I'm like, probably. You're like magical fairy dust in the air that is a portal to a different dimension. I'm like, probably not but...
[00:01:50] Jason: Can't disprove it. Can't disprove it.
[00:01:52] Caroline: I'm one of those gray area people. I leave a lot of room for mystery.
[00:01:55] Jason: 50 Shades of Gray is how they describe you.
[00:01:58] Caroline: That would be such a phenomenal title for a book.
[00:02:00] Jason: Nice. Let's get into a completely unrelated topic, but one that we like to do on the podcast, which is a launch recap.
[00:02:08] Caroline: You love a launch recap.
[00:02:10] Jason: I love a launch recap.
[00:02:11] Caroline: I like a launch recap but you love a launch recap.
[00:02:12] Jason: Anybody who's listening to this podcast, if you have heard on another podcast someone do a launch recap, please send me a link, hello@WanderingAimfully.com. I really do. And I've looked for it. I've tried to find some. But a lot of the ones that you find are like, they're like what you expect. It's like I did seven figures through paid ads and stuff, and it's like, I'm not going to do anything with that. Sure, I'll listen to some of those because there's always something you can take away. But I don't want that. I want the type of business that we run where it's just you're running a calm business, but you're launching and you're sharing what worked, what didn't work, what you liked, what you didn't like.
[00:02:47] Caroline: That makes me think we really should do a better job of kind of advertising the fact... Well, it's funny because advertising the fact that we don't use ads.
[00:02:56] Jason: Right.
[00:02:57] Caroline: Because that's a very particular brand of business.
[00:03:02] Jason: Yeah. Running a business without paid ads. That's not to say paid ads are bad.
[00:03:05] Caroline: No. It's just we've decided that we like to do organic.
[00:03:10] Jason: We are not going to pay to acquire your hard earned attention. We're going to do it through long, slow and steady.
[00:03:16] Caroline: We're going to play the long game.
[00:03:18] Jason: Yeah, but it works. All right, let's get into this. We've got this broken down into a couple of different sections. We're going to talk to you about the lead up of this launch. We're going to talk to you about our launch goals because those are very important whenever we're doing a launch. We're going to go over the numbers of our previous launches and then this current launch, and then we're going to do a little, maybe sales by day, just kind of like quickly go through that. Our total MRR, that's Monthly Recurring Revenue added. And then we'll chat about affiliates and then a couple of fun facts and maybe some final thoughts on launching.
[00:03:49] Caroline: Sounds like a plan.
[00:03:50] Jason: And then we'll do some Calm Business Confidential and that'll be it. Are you ready?
[00:03:53] Caroline: Ready.
[00:03:54] Jason: All right, cool. So let's start with the lead up. I don't think anybody has heard us talk about this.
[00:03:58] Caroline: No one.
[00:03:58] Jason: If you've listened to the podcast episodes.
[00:04:00] Caroline: You're like, wait, you did a Fall enrollment period? Wow.
[00:04:03] Jason: I'm not saying the launch, I'm saying the lead up. Yeah. So for the past two months, that was a soft toss and it was a strike. You swung the bat and just...
[00:04:12] Caroline: Honestly, I didn't swing the bat because I didn't realize I was at the plate.
[00:04:17] Jason: Well, I was just talking a lot so I thought I would pass it to you.
[00:04:19] Caroline: I had this huge grin on my face in the dugout, just watching my man out there on the field, and I just picture you tossing the ball, and it just rolls at my feet. And I'm like, oh, I didn't realize I was on the field.
[00:04:29] Jason: Yeah, but you're like, wearing the full outfit. You have a mitt. You're assigned to a position.
[00:04:36] Caroline: I just thought I was wearing the costume. My bad.
[00:04:38] Jason: Gotcha. Okay, so we did a big lead up to this that we have talked about a lot in this podcast and it was, Caroline...?
[00:04:45] Caroline: The Calm Business Encyclopedia, and she knocks it out of the park. The crowd goes wild.
[00:04:52] Jason: Are they going wild?
[00:04:53] Caroline: No, they're like, oh, sweetie.
[00:04:54] Jason: There's no one there. Honestly, our team is so bad.
[00:04:58] Caroline: Hey, sweetie, go to the concession stand and get yourself some sour straws.
[00:05:02] Jason: Oh, yeah, that would be delicious. Or Big League Chew. You just like some shredded.
[00:05:05] Caroline: You hated Big League Chew.
[00:05:06] Jason: No, I love Big League Chew. I did a Big League Chew challenge. Back in the day. A Big League Chew challenge.
[00:05:12] Caroline: Do you want to explain what that is?
[00:05:13] Jason: Oh, just trying to put as much Big League Chew in your mouth.
[00:05:16] Caroline: Like, the whole pouch?
[00:05:17] Jason: Yeah, but I think I did, like four pouches.
[00:05:19] Caroline: I am now just in this moment as a 35 year old adult realizing, did they put it in a pouch because it's like dip?
[00:05:26] Jason: Yeah, probably. For sure. Yeah.
[00:05:28] Caroline: Just in this moment, I was like, why is it in a pouch?
[00:05:30] Jason: It's a great observation of doing it differently. Gum comes in sticks, and every pack of gum is like sticks. You pull out a slice, you unwrap it, you eat it. Big League Chew is like, nah, we're going to take those sticks, we're going to shred them up into things. We're going to put them in a pouch, and that'll be enough for people.
[00:05:45] Caroline: We're going to get the kids hooked on tobacco products early, just so they know, like, what it feels like.
[00:05:51] Jason: Maybe. Okay, anyway, back to this. So we did the Calm Business Encyclopedia. We finished that up. You can listen to the previous podcast episode where we did kind of our recap of that. And this was our final launch of our Wandering Aimfully Unlimited coaching program at our $2,000 lifetime pricing.
[00:06:09] Caroline: Can I just give a quick overview in case someone is joining us for the very first time, doesn't have a lot of context about our business?
[00:06:14] Jason: Absolutely.
[00:06:16] Caroline: As Jason just mentioned, we have literally one offer for Wandering Aimfully, and it is our coaching program, as he just described. It's $2,000. It's a lifetime model. So after you pay the 2000, you never pay us again, and you continue to get whatever we create. We sell that offer twice a year.
[00:06:34] Jason: Yes.
[00:06:34] Caroline: Once in the spring, once in the fall. We do it for two weeks. So we open up the enrollment period where everyone can join at one time and it's this beautiful influx of new energy and members into our business. And so we have been using this sort of launch formula for probably four years now.
[00:06:54] Jason: Yeah.
[00:06:56] Caroline: So that's eight total launches and not a ton of deviation. Early on when we were really getting started, we did a lot more in terms of, we did free workshops during the launch series and we had different kind of promos during it. But now we have it down to a science. It is as calm as can be. And so if you were just joining us now, that's some context.
[00:07:19] Jason: Yeah, I know people have asked us before about our lifetime pricing and how that has worked out over time. And I think it's probably time for an episode that's fully on lifetime pricing. I looked back at this. I think what we really talked about was our hybrid launch model and then the lifetime pricing was kind of talked about in there, but we didn't really talk about just lifetime pricing in general versus other pricing models. So it could be, if that's interesting to you, feel free to send us an email. Let us know you'd like to hear about that. As always, we get a couple of those emails because we only have 27 listeners of our podcast.
[00:07:50] Caroline: That's right.
[00:07:51] Jason: We know you all want it.
[00:07:51] Caroline: But if you get 2 out of 27, it's pretty high percentage.
[00:07:54] Jason: Someone in our WAIM Slack said they were our 18th listener, saying that they were like the newest listener and I was like, give us credit. We've been over 20 listeners for at least two years.
[00:08:03] Caroline: At least two. No, about a year.
[00:08:05] Jason: Probably about a year. Yeah, that's a joke. We have more listeners than that. But it doesn't really matter because we're talking about our launch recap. So Caroline got you caught up on what our program is. We do two launches per year. This was our fall enrollment. And we feel like we have gotten our launch to a very sustainable, predictable, we have the tasks.
[00:08:23] Caroline: It's not stressful.
[00:08:24] Jason: We don't have a ton of work when the launch comes up. If we weren't doing the Calm Business Encyclopedia leading up to this one, it would have been so simple just to kind of write some sales emails because we basically just adapt our, we have a nine email sequence and probably about half those emails get rewritten. But for the most part it's like pretty cut and paste at this point. We have figured it out. Do you want to talk about our goals?
[00:08:46] Caroline: Yeah. So we always set low goals and high goals for any sales push of any kind. We highly recommend this. The idea behind your low goal is that you feel pretty confident you can hit it. It's based on historical data. And if you haven't sold this offer before, though, gauge it based on your email list. Gauge it based on how many people you're going to be sharing this with. What is a low goal where you feel pretty confident you can hit it? And that's kind of like what your target is, what you're expecting. But then you also have a high goal, which is sort of like, wow, this would be really cool if I hit this number. Now, your high goal is not supposed to be unrealistic and unreachable. It's sort of like take whatever would be like a good optimistic scenario and then maybe push it by a little.
[00:09:32] Jason: Exactly. So our numbers for this launch, these are the highest, low and high goals we've ever had. Our low goal was 120 new members and our high goal was 150 new members.
[00:09:45] Caroline: And can I just say, part of the reason of raising those goals was not because we were trying to push it. It was more a reflection of we've been in business a long time and we know that if we're clear about the price going up next year, you're probably going to get more people making that decision because they want to lock in at the lower price. So a little bit of that is just experience in business and going, okay, we're not doing anything wildly different. You could argue Calm Business Encyclopedia was different, but we knew that wasn't going to move the needle so much on sales. So that's why we changed our goals.
[00:10:21] Jason: So let's give you the overall numbers and then we'll break it down a little bit further. So a year ago, when we did our fall enrollment launch in 2022, we were finishing up our year of travels. We were basically just keeping our business afloat without doing too much. And we had 67 sales of our program in our fall 2022 launch. So that was not a very big launch, but we also didn't have much time to spend on it.
[00:10:45] Caroline: Yeah, based on how much we were traveling at the time, I felt really positive about that.
[00:10:50] Jason: Absolutely. And that was very much 2022's launches were like copy and paste as much as we could, and we still kept our business going profitable.
[00:10:58] Caroline: Basically, any effort we put into our business in 2022 just went to monthly coaching and to delivering the value for our members. Exactly.
[00:11:06] Jason: So our email list size at that time was 10,528 people. Spring of this year, 2023. This was our biggest launch to date and it was 113 people. So stopping traveling. Everyone was happy to see us stop traveling. Like, oh, you're going to do some business stuff. Great, we'll sign up.
[00:11:23] Caroline: I think what's so fascinating to me about the difference in sales between fall and spring? The only real difference, it was two things between the 67 sales and 113 sales. Number one, it was just this energy. It was like us actually pouring excitement and energy into our business. It wasn't even like we were showing up that differently. It was just responding more to the community and being I think you could feel the energy in our emails and doing a couple of experiments like the Behind the Build Live and stuff like that. And so I think that my only lesson there is just when you're excited about your business, it does actually translate to sales. People can feel the energy. The second thing is at the top of the year and this year we thought to ourselves, we're not going to have a lot of time before the spring enrollment to do any big marketing push. What's the one thing, the one lever that we do have? And that was affiliates. So we created a better affiliate hub experience for our affiliates to get marketing materials and stuff. And I think that actually did move the needle. The combination of people seeing we were excited about the business and then we had more affiliates.
[00:12:27] Jason: I think there was a third thing there. But I also wanted to mention our email list size was 10,538 people. Ten person difference in list size between fall and spring. Now, obviously hundreds of people unsubscribed during those six months, hundreds of new people subscribed. So there's a good ten percent net difference. My third thing that I think we did in the spring that made a big difference was we positioned the launch toward client based business owners who want to move to digital products. And so I think that was really helpful where in 2022 there was no real positioning that specifically spoke to a person who has a business and wants to transition to digital products. This one we did. And I think it was very easy for someone to see themselves in. Oh, this is me. These are the things I want to do in my business that becomes a more compelling pitch as well. So those three things I think were what changed it for the spring.
[00:13:16] Caroline: Cool. Now onto the fall.
[00:13:18] Jason: Onto the fall. So surprisingly enough, our email list size grew by about 250 people between the spring launch and this fall launch. I don't really have much to attribute that to because we didn't really change much. Our website traffic didn't change much.
[00:13:32] Caroline: Yeah, well, we did change the home page and the Client Off-Ramp, but it wasn't like that really improved subscribers.
[00:13:38] Jason: Yeah. If anything, I think that kept the subscribers about the same. So I think that was probably just word of mouth, people sharing WAIM between that time.
[00:13:46] Caroline: Being consistent with the podcast.
[00:13:48] Jason: Yeah. Our total amount of customers for this past enrollment, which is now our biggest enrollment ever, reminder, our low goal was 120. Our high goal was 150. We brought in 142 new WAIMers, smashed our low goal. You hit that home run.
[00:14:06] Caroline: I did.
[00:14:06] Jason: And then we went to hit the second home run for the high goal and it just bounced off the wall. It didn't make it out of the park, but it bounced off the wall, which felt really good.
[00:14:14] Caroline: And you're like, wow, we hit the wall.
[00:14:15] Jason: Yeah.
[00:14:16] Caroline: This is what's so great about low and high goals, because if you don't hit your high goal, you're not disappointed because that was just sort of like something fun to try to reach for. This is the whole thing about, I think low goals and high goals are also kind of a microcosm of the idea of enough, which is your low goal, is kind of like you're setting that as enough. Like, if I got this, it would be enough. I would be happy. But that's not to say that you can't always have something that is fun to look forward to or something to aspire to. I think it can be motivating, but the difference is that you're not setting that as an expectation for yourself because if you don't hit it, you're not disappointed.
[00:14:52] Jason: Yeah. Do you want to go over our sales by day?
[00:14:55] Caroline: Sure. If people are interested in how that actually broke down over the two weeks. I'm not going to go day by day. We do that actually in our coaching session. We show you exactly how many sales by day by email we got. But just to give you the overview, day one and two basically accounted for 20 sales. So you're getting everyone who kind of got warmed up in the pre marketing and who's ready during those first two days. That's usually a pretty big chunk. The last day was 44 sales.
[00:15:22] Jason: Just on the last, like last 24 hours.
[00:15:24] Caroline: So we always remind people, send the reminder email on the last day.
[00:15:30] Jason: We send two emails. So we do one in the morning and one in the late afternoon. And to me, I think this is like, you have to do this if you're selling anything, especially if you do like a launch format like we do. Because I will tell you, having launched now eight times of WAIM Unlimited in the spring and the fall. We always hit this point in the middle where we're like, we are not going to hit our goal. And we felt this way every single time. And you go, but you got to wait to the end because so many people wait. They're trying to make the decision to make sure it's right for them.
[00:15:58] Caroline: And they should, right? It's a big decision. And so we only want people who really feel committed and are going to use the resources in WAIM. So we would rather you take the time, and then on that last day, you kind of have this deadline that helps you decide. So I think that's a totally natural part of any sales cycle. And then if you're like, well, what happened in the middle? That was the beginning. That was the end. So the best middle day was Thursday the 19th, which I thought was so interesting. We had eight sales that day. So if that tells you anything in the middle period, maximum 8 sales.
[00:16:32] Jason: Yeah, it wouldn't have been the 19th. It would have been like the 12th I think.
[00:16:35] Caroline: No, babe, it was Thursday the 19th. We had 8 sales.
[00:16:38] Jason: Our launch went from the second to the 17th.
[00:16:42] Caroline: No, babe, the 19th. Subtract 7, the 12th. Okay.
[00:16:43] Jason: Yeah, that's what I thought.
[00:16:47] Caroline: That was my bad. I looked at the calendar. So the 12th, we had 8 sales. Boy, I'm really embarrassed at the authority with which I was like, no, babe, but it's okay, we make mistakes. On the 12th, we had 8 sales. And what's funny is we didn't even have an email on that day. We had a podcast. And we do ad reads on the podcast. Those of you listening will appreciate it. And if you can believe this, I remember there was like a full year where we didn't even do...
[00:17:16] Jason: Any podcast promotion.
[00:17:17] Caroline: Any podcast promotion whatsoever of the sale.
[00:17:20] Jason: And I think it's probably because we just thought like, oh, it's a podcast. Like, no one ever goes to anything. But the reason why it matters is because you just need touch points.
[00:17:28] Caroline: Touch points.
[00:17:28] Jason: And it's all about someone hearing about your offer multiple times to remind them that, like, oh, yeah, I do want that thing. Life got in the way and I was too busy doing other things.
[00:17:36] Caroline: And the previous day's email was our big case study email. And I do think that that's really powerful because you have to remember people are looking for. There's so many people scamming these days. There are so many people out here making huge promises and not delivering a sliver of what they promise. And so the more results based stories that you can share and say, listen, this is the real way that somebody used the information inside this program and actually was able to make their business more sustainable, make it more profitable, make it more peaceful. And so I think that goes a really long way. So whatever you can do to get that sort of results proof, do that.
[00:18:14] Jason: Shout out to Jen Carrington, who so lovingly joined our program. But then B gave us an amazing case study, and she was actually the one who was pestering us, saying, if you ever need a case study, I will write anything you want because your program has really helped me. And so, Jen, we know you listen to the podcast. Thank you so much. Your case study continues to be something we love sharing with other people. So those 142 sales, that amounts to $17,500 in Monthly Recurring Revenue, added on top of our existing Monthly Recurring Revenue. You do have to remember that two things about that revenue, our Lifetime model. So our revenue has an endpoint for a customer, which is usually about 20 months. Most people use our 20 month plan, and then we do have a portion of that that goes to affiliates. So that affiliate total of that money was 71% of our sales came from our affiliates, which accounted for $4,800 of that $17,500 will be paid out to our affiliates. So that's to say that...
[00:19:14] Caroline: You said that in a really weird, convoluted way.
[00:19:16] Jason: Everyone who's listening will get it. So of the 17,500, 4,800 will be paid to our affiliates, which gives us a net of 12,700.
[00:19:24] Caroline: Okay.
[00:19:24] Jason: I just was bringing them along on the journey.
[00:19:27] Caroline: I went on a journey all right.
[00:19:29] Jason: Yeah. And our affiliates continues to be basically our best overall marketing/ advertising to bring in new Wandering Aimfully customers. We don't mind having affiliates and giving them a really good commission because we want people to come from our existing members. That makes our community the best it can possibly be, because it's someone basically saying to their list like, hey, I trust these people. Come join. It's not like they're just pitching a laptop that they love. It's like, this is a program. It has helped me. Here's how it has helped me, come join this.
[00:19:58] Caroline: Absolutely. And I just think if our overall mission is to help empower more people to be able to make money in a flexible way so that they can live a really beautiful life, there's nothing that could be more aligned to that mission than using your marketing dollars to be paid back into the pockets of the people you're trying to help.
[00:20:17] Jason: Yeah, we do have a podcast episode that I think came out sometime a couple months ago, not too far back in the archives if you want to listen to it. It's basically how we've made half a million dollars just through our affiliates. So if you want to go back and listen to that one, we basically talk through all of our affiliate things that we have done over the years. And like Caroline mentioned, in the spring of this year, we really put a lot more effort into our affiliates. We have this hub, we send out more emails now. We let them opt out if our members don't want to hear about it. It's very easy to opt out of those emails.
[00:20:46] Caroline: We have a very not...
[00:20:48] Jason: Pushy.
[00:20:49] Caroline: Not pushy affiliate program. We try not to do any of the crazy.
[00:20:54] Jason: I mean, you can get a BMW, though. We will get you to diamond level.
[00:20:57] Caroline: The top seller gets a BMW, like a watch of some kind, a medallion.
[00:21:03] Jason: Yeah, I'll make an omelet for. Which is really what everyone's coming for.
[00:21:06] Caroline: That is the big prize.
[00:21:08] Jason: One golden omelet made with...
[00:21:10] Caroline: No, we don't have prizes.
[00:21:11] Jason: We don't do that.
[00:21:12] Caroline: Should we have prizes?
[00:21:13] Jason: Should we do omelets? Just... I'll fly to your house and make an omelet. A couple of fun facts. You want to go over some fun facts?
[00:21:19] Caroline: I thought you'd want to, but sure, I'll do the fun facts.
[00:21:21] Jason: Yeah, we can bop back and forth if you want.
[00:21:23] Caroline: So now that we have the data, we can actually see, I forget what the stat was that we said on the Calm Business Encyclopedia recap. But officially, five total WAIMers came from the Calm Business Encyclopedia.
[00:21:37] Jason: Which is $10,000 in immediate net revenue. And that's incredible because while we made the Calm Business Encyclopedia with the idea that in the short term people would find it and maybe sign up for WAIM, it was never really the goal because it's not really like a lead magnet into the launch. It's more of like an overall ecosystem of content. So it was really cool to see that five people basically came directly from that or mentioned it directly in their survey. Which gets me to second fun fact, 90% of the people who joined WAIM. So I think it was like 133 people filled out our welcome survey. And I don't know if you are someone who has sold something and you've tried to send a survey and you have not received a 90% response rate. Our biggest tip we can give you: embed the survey on the post purchase page.
[00:22:27] Caroline: And if you're like, wait, why do I need a survey? Let me tell you. This is the most important thing for you to be able to get real information from your customers immediately when they're still in the buying mindset, they just put in their credit card. So if you're one of those people who's like, I don't know what tactics are leading to people buying, I don't know what is resonating with people. That is what you need to put in your survey. Like, which of these is the reasons that you decided to purchase today? What were you hoping to get out of this? What was the most valuable part of my offer that you thought? And so you can start to get real data from people who decided to pay you. And that is invaluable when it comes time to do a sale again.
[00:23:07] Jason: Oh, it's also you get direct quotes from people that you can not necessarily copy and paste onto a sales page or in emails, but you can change the wording to position your product.
[00:23:18] Caroline: Exactly.
[00:23:18] Jason: On how someone else thinks about it. Because you might think like, oh, I sell Squarespace design for wellness professionals. And it's like they say, like, I'm a yoga teacher who just wants my business to be more simple and help people book online. You're like, oh, that actually makes more sense to help someone do that because that's what people are saying.
[00:23:37] Caroline: Exactly.
[00:23:37] Jason: So you start to hear these phrases.
[00:23:38] Caroline: It's basically a copywriting hack.
[00:23:40] Jason: Yeah, it's really, really helpful. So embed that post purchase survey, and then our last little fun tidbit here to share is eleven of our new WAIMers found us directly through the podcast or through YouTube. I was actually a little bit surprised, but I guess I shouldn't be because we're more consistent with the podcast than we are YouTube. Seven people from the podcast, four from YouTube. So more of you podcast listeners are cinnamon rollers.
[00:24:05] Caroline: We need to do a podcast survey because what I'm curious about is people who found us from the podcast. How did you stumble on the podcast? Did a friend tell you about it? Did you search? Because I know we have some keywords in our name, so we have intentional creative business, I think.
[00:24:23] Jason: Did our podcast show up as recommended under another podcast somehow? I mean, we know nothing about this.
[00:24:28] Caroline: Did someone else on another podcast talk about us? And then you were in the podcast, and you were like, I'll go to their podcast.
[00:24:33] Jason: Were you listening to Pandora? And you just thought to yourself, why am I still listening to Pandora? And you bopped over to Apple, and then you found our podcast on there somehow?
[00:24:41] Caroline: By the way, Jason had the idea of Pandora for podcasts about ten years ago, but they do that now.
[00:24:46] Jason: Yeah, it's fine. It was one of those ideas we kept talking about over and over, and we're like, nah, we don't want to build this. But anyway, those eleven people that accounts for $22,000 in net revenue added to our business. So thank you to those of you who listen to the podcast or find us on YouTube and then sign up for our program, because that's awesome. I mean, that's just more fuel for us to continue to do the podcast because it helps us keep our business profitable, which is what we can do. How we can have a podcast that has no sponsors or anything else.
[00:25:14] Caroline: Right. So that's the launch. And we feel... I just.
[00:25:19] Jason: Do you have any feelings you want to share?
[00:25:21] Caroline: Of course I do.
[00:25:21] Jason: Yeah.
[00:25:22] Caroline: I continue to be so grateful. Not just... I mean, man, I'm so grateful for a lot of things lately, but I'm so grateful that we pushed through the harder moments in our business to continue because we knew that we would one day hopefully get to this place where we have this repeatable system that is not stressful. We feel very much like we're using our gifts for good, that we're able to share all of our business knowledge. We still feel excited about our business, even though there's obviously things that are not the most favorite tasks. And that's a natural part of any business. But I still feel excited to share our wisdom. I still feel excited to help people grow their businesses, to be able to live good lives. I mostly these days, I'm just so grateful to not feel anxious every day. And so whenever we finish a big, busy season, which this was busier than we like to be, honestly, the Calm Business Encyclopedia was more of an undertaking, and we even knew that going into it, and it was still more of an undertaking than we thought. But I continue to be so grateful that I don't feel anxious every day anymore. That, to me, is the biggest win that I have a business that actually allows me to have good mental health. That's the biggest thing I could ever be grateful for.
[00:26:45] Jason: And I think it's a good thing for people listening to this to hear, is that it's taken us four to five years to get there...
[00:26:52] Caroline: And really 10+, if you think about the big picture.
[00:26:55] Jason: Right. But yeah, I would say the third year of WAIM was when we finally found our stride in who we are for and what our offer is.
[00:27:03] Caroline: Right.
[00:27:03] Jason: And we had already been doing the monthly coaching by that time, but it was when we really figured out, like, okay, this is the positioning of it and how to put it out there. And then last year, it really showed us that while our launches were smaller last year, again, our fall launch last year was 67 people. This year was 142. Yes, we have the pricing urgency for this launch because the price is going up in the spring of next year. But it's definitely something that shows you. Like, we're continuing to hone our messaging, position ourselves in a way that people understand what we're doing, and then we're showing up and building the Calm Business Encyclopedia. People can feel that and be like, oh, I want to learn from these people who are excited. We're not just gallivanting around Europe.
[00:27:40] Caroline: I think something interesting that I didn't fully realize that last year brought us is when you intentionally take a season where you're going to step back from your business, what it actually gives you is it kind of gives you a new courage in your business because you realize that even if you take your foot off the gas, it doesn't all fall apart. You know what I mean? So it's like we had this example now of a year where we were kind of just coasting, and we're not apologetic about that because we were having this life experience. We were still delivering value, but we weren't pushing our foot on the pedal to try to go any faster. And what that gives me is, I think I did used to have this fear around, like, oh, if I take a break or if I take my foot off the gas, could it all just fall apart? I think a lot of people can relate to that feeling, but by proving to yourself that it won't all fall apart, that fear gets a lot quieter.
[00:28:39] Jason: I also, one of the things I wanted to share at the end of this launch recap was that we didn't talk about that I think is worth talking about is no social media. Again, we've been off Instagram for two plus years now. YouTube, basically, we had the call and business encyclopedia leading up for 26 videos that went into the launch. But if you go and look at the views in those videos, it is not a lot of views. So we can't attribute so much of it to that. So what has really worked for us, a consistent email newsletter for years, good articles on our website that continue to bring traffic and grow our email list through a good lead magnet in our quiz, which we now have a couple, which we're going to try and figure out how we want to do that. Kind of simplifying things. And then our affiliates. So we didn't have an affiliate program many years ago. But once we had a bunch of happy customers who liked our product, then we said, okay, great. We would love to have you help us promote it. And that feels like a very predictable, calm business that we love to run. That doesn't feel like, well, if Facebook changes the algorithm on our ads tomorrow, this could all come crumbling down.
[00:29:43] Caroline: Right.
[00:29:43] Jason: We're basically in control of this business, which feels really good. And again, I'll just reiterate, it has taken us four to five years to get there. So you can get there. You can probably get there faster by using social and doing those things. But if you don't want to burn yourself out, take a slow and steady approach. It is okay. Zoom the lens out. Be all right with it taking a little bit longer.
[00:30:02] Caroline: Definitely.
[00:30:03] Jason: All right, let's get into the Calm Business Confidential.
[00:30:08] Caroline: Is it me?
[00:30:08] Jason: It is going to be you this week. We're just going to do one this week, and then we'll do one next week as well.
[00:30:14] Caroline: Trying to keep the episodes a little shorter.
[00:30:16] Jason: Yeah, we've been going over an hour, and we want to respect your time and also our time, because, again, as Caroline mentioned, this has been a very busy season, you know, we're just trying to make sure that we don't burn ourselves out spending hours trying to find calm businesses to share with you.
[00:30:28] Caroline: Okay. I think you're going to like this because it is...
[00:30:32] Jason: This is me or this is the listeners?
[00:30:34] Caroline: Well, the listeners are, but you specifically are going to like this because it is in a category of one of your favorite things.
[00:30:39] Jason: Interesting. I'm excited.
[00:30:40] Caroline: Which is... baking. Okay. I would like to introduce you to chef Amanda Schonberg, I think it's how you say it.
[00:30:50] Jason: Okay.
[00:30:51] Caroline: Chef Amanda Schonberg. Chef Amanda is based in Baton Rouge and, after graduating culinary school in 2011, she worked in the food service management for companies like Great American Cookies, Sam's Club, and Costco. Then people kept asking her for her cakes, and so she decided to start a personal baking business back in 2015. So that's, like, eight years ago. And what she did was... her business was Chef Schonberg Sweets, and she specialized in creating alcohol infused desserts. Okay, so this is the first business lesson that I like about this story, is you take a category like baking, and you ask yourself, how do I differentiate?
[00:31:34] Jason: Right.
[00:31:34] Caroline: Not only how do I differentiate, but how do I become known for a thing? Because you could bake anything. You could be the cookie person, you could be the cake person, you could be the cupcakes person. And I think a lot of people do try to do that, but by just going super niche, which is what I did when I started my design business, I tried doing it all. So I was like the everything baker.
[00:31:56] Jason: You're making cookies, you're making muffins.
[00:31:57] Caroline: And then I finally was like, okay, what do I like to do the most? And it was brand design for solopreneurs. So I niched down to that. That was my alcohol infused desserts era, and that was when I really saw the business take off. So she did the same thing. And one quote that I really liked from her was, "In our industry, people tend to put things on a scale and assume that the only way to make thousands of dollars is if you complete thousand dollar wedding cakes. But that's just not true. If something stresses you out or you hate baking it, then be comfortable with letting it go."
[00:32:26] Jason: Love it.
[00:32:27] Caroline: And I love that. She was like, okay, people are telling me that the real lucrative baking niche is wedding cakes, but I just don't like the pressure, or I don't like the baking time or whatever. Let me go a different direction. Love that. I think that's a key part of a calm business, is, like, doing your own thing and playing by your own rules. So then where I feel like this really takes a turn is she started her online course business. And so the way that she started that out was actually partnering with someone else in 2016. And so she was basically the one who was in charge of teaching, and her partner was in charge of all the technology side, and this was for aspiring home bakers on how to start a baking business. So once she felt like she was making consistent money and really had figured out how to do a baking business, then she started teaching other people that skill. And so she started her second business, Baking For Business. And eventually she basically peeled off from her partnership and decided to do it by herself. And I think it doesn't sound like there's, like, any bad blood or anything there, but I think just realizing, like, oh, I learned what to do, and if it's me doing the teaching, I can create my own thing. And so she opened that in 2021 and ended up with... like, she opened it, I think, January of 2021, and it says, ended up with five times more revenue than she had in the previous membership course for four years.
[00:33:52] Jason: Wow.
[00:33:53] Caroline: So she really, I think, honed. There was that time period where she was figuring it out, kind of realizing what people resonated with, and then really could crank it up. And then when I found out about her, I think she was doing a monthly membership. And at the time, I think she started out at $12 per month, and then it moved up to 25 eventually. But if you do the math, it said 400+ members. So 400 times 25 is $10,000 per month.
[00:34:22] Jason: Nice.
[00:34:22] Caroline: For the business of baking, basically.
[00:34:26] Jason: Cool. It's helping people build baking businesses.
[00:34:29] Caroline: Exactly. So the lesson that I told you about, like niching down, I assume she would talk about how to find your niche within baking that you want to really do. She also has a top rated podcast called Baking For Business.
[00:34:44] Jason: Whoa. I'll check this out. I'm very interested.
[00:34:46] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:34:47] Jason: As we discussed at the beginning of this episode, podcasts are interesting.
[00:34:50] Caroline: And then I also saw to reduce the overwhelm of running two businesses because I think she still does the Chef Schonberg's Sweets. And then, so she has the education business as well. And so she talks a lot about batching and setting aside one day per week where she creates her reels and short form video content. I think a lot of it is driven by short form video content. So if you're listening to this, and we always talk about not doing social media, but you're someone who really likes social media, and you are looking for someone who has effectively marketed their business in that way. Maybe her business, even if you're not into baking, is like a good one to look at and be like, what is she doing? What's her kind of...
[00:35:27] Jason: She's batching her batching.
[00:35:28] Caroline: She's batching her batching.
[00:35:29] Jason: Yeah.
[00:35:30] Caroline: And I just thought it was really cool business of someone with a passion and a skill and turning that into a digital business.
[00:35:40] Jason: Yeah, I love that. I think it's very interesting to hear about people in the food industry who figure out a way to make a good living, both through creating food, but then also then kind of evolving out, because then you're just trading so much time for so little money in baking for your entire life.
[00:35:59] Caroline: And what I love about that is by diversifying and having these two businesses, I know we always say simplify and focus, and I truly do believe that. But once she got what works for the sweets business, what you do then is you create the scalable version, which is the education business. And then that frees up your time so that you can bake the things that you really want to bake. And you're not just working to the grindstone in the non scalable business. You're using the scalable offer in order to bring in the income that gives you the time and the focus and the space to do your passion.
[00:36:35] Jason: Love it. This is great. This is a good one. Very fun find. We'll obviously have links in the show notes. Check out more about Chef... Chandra?
[00:36:43] Caroline: Schonberg. Amanda Schonberg. And so on Instagram, if you want to find her baking at Baking for Business.
[00:36:50] Jason: We will again link that up in the show notes. It makes me think, should I start selling my sourdough loaves and my cookies? And the answer is no. Those are just for fun. I don't want to ruin that by putting a price on it.
[00:37:01] Caroline: Exactly.
[00:37:02] Jason: Which I don't think they're worth right now.
[00:37:05] Caroline: You are bartering with the neighborhood for your baked...
[00:37:07] Jason: I like it being something where it's just fun for our little community that we have here. It's like, bring something new, bring something different. And then also I just get to try things and have things, but not at a too consistent basis where you get tired of it.
[00:37:21] Caroline: Totally.
[00:37:21] Jason: That's great. Also this week, cinnamon rolls. Haven't made cinnamon rolls in about a month.
[00:37:25] Caroline: Long time.
[00:37:26] Jason: So it's time.
[00:37:27] Caroline: Also, you have not made biscuits in a long time either. And I would like a gluten free biscuit, please.
[00:37:32] Jason: We don't have gluten free flour here.
[00:37:34] Caroline: That's like, I would like a gluten full biscuit. I will also accept that.
[00:37:38] Jason: I can try a gluten free flour from the store. We haven't tried that.
[00:37:40] Caroline: Oh, interesting. So suddenly he just went from, we don't have that here to, okay, I'll try.
[00:37:46] Jason: Well, you can try it. I'm not sure if it's going to be any good. Anyway, we would normally then finish off here with a life in Portugal update, but we are going to skip that for the next couple of episodes. We have friend arriving in town tomorrow as of us recording this, and we will have lots of adventures to recap, once they're here for a week.
[00:38:02] Caroline: And we will be doing a full...
[00:38:05] Jason: Year in Portugal.
[00:38:06] Caroline: We have lived in Portugal for one year on our one year anniversary of living here, which is very hard to believe.
[00:38:11] Jason: Yeah.
[00:38:12] Caroline: So we're going to do a whole episode on you know what it's been like living here. Do we love it? Do we miss...?
[00:38:18] Jason: Well, yeah, that episode is going to come out while we're in the US or after.
[00:38:23] Caroline: Oh, that's funny. No, it'll definitely... I don't know.
[00:38:27] Jason: I think we'll probably do an episode at some point because we're going back to the US for three weeks and it's our first time going back in over a year and just kind of sharing some of the differences. I don't want to say that one is better than the other. I just want to share like, man, the portions are big in this place or I wish the portions were bigger in this. Some other things. I don't think that's ever going to be an issue. But I am excited to buy all of the candy that I can't get here very easily. All my sweet treats. My underwear, I can't find it here.
[00:38:53] Caroline: Underwear and candy. You heard it here first, folks.
[00:38:58] Jason: All right, that's it for this episode. Hope you enjoyed the launch recap. Got some value out of it.
[00:39:03] Caroline: We are just so grateful for your listenership.
[00:39:05] Jason: Nice. Your listener ears.
[00:39:06] Caroline: Your listen-ear-ship.
[00:39:08] Jason: Are you fading because you just want to get back to our puzzle? Is that it?
[00:39:13] Caroline: I'm really hungry.
[00:39:13] Jason: You just want to get back to our puzzle.
[00:39:13] Caroline: I'm hungry and I really want to do some more puzzle time.
[00:39:18] Jason: Yeah, because it's puzzle season, everybody.
[00:39:19] Caroline: My brain's kind of being like...
[00:39:21] Jason: We didn't say that, but it's puzzle season out here.
[00:39:23] Caroline: It's puzzle season.
[00:39:24] Jason: All right. We'll talk to you in the next episode. See you soon. Goodbye.
[00:39:28] Caroline: Love you. Bye.