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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 gGrowing Steay, the show where we help online creators like you build a calm business, one that's predictable, profitable, and peaceful. We're your hosts, Jason and Caroline Zook, and we run Wandering Aimfully, an unboring business coaching program and Teachery, an online course platform for designers. Join us each week as we help you reach your business goals without sacrificing your well being in the process. Slow and steady is the way we do things around here, baby.
[00:00:29] Jason: All right, cinnamon rollers, that's you. Let's get into the show. Hello and welcome back to the podcast.
[00:00:41] Caroline: Hello, it's me. I'm here as well.
[00:00:43] Jason: You are here as well. We have a couple things to cover here to kick things off. Number one.
[00:00:48] Caroline: What?
[00:00:48] Jason: We have two episodes left. This one and then another one. And then we are taking a break for six weeks ish. We'll be back, as you're listening in, like, mid November. So we're gonna be back. We are traveling to back to the United States, and we will be seeing family, you're gonna be seeing friends. We're gonna be doing that whole rigmarole that we do once a year, and then we have a nice little vacay at the end. One little week of just shutting everything off. We worked this summer. We don't normally work this summer.
[00:01:22] Caroline: Very unlike us.
[00:01:23] Jason: Next episode, you'll heal, hear a little bit more of a personal thing that we are recovering from, essentially. And so that week is really going to be a nice, like, let's reset. You know, let's just reset. And you know how you reset, margs, sand between your toesies.
[00:01:40] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:01:40] Jason: Reading your favorite thriller on your Kindle right as the battery is about to die because that's where your Kindle always exists.
[00:01:46] Caroline: I need a longer battery Kindle. No, I need to charge.
[00:01:50] Jason: No, you don't. Kindle battery life is, like, two weeks. That is, like, very good.
[00:01:55] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:01:55] Jason: It's very solid.
[00:01:56] Caroline: My bad.
[00:01:57] Jason: So that's the first preamble top. The second preamble top. I just want to share with everybody, this is an audio medium.
[00:02:03] Caroline: Yes.
[00:02:04] Jason: There's no visuals here.
[00:02:05] Caroline: Nope.
[00:02:05] Jason: I do understand that Spotify is like, hey, you can add video to your podcast now. Yeah, great. Thanks, Spotify. We did that, like, six years ago, and no one cared.
[00:02:14] Caroline: Side note, do you see how, like, I just think it's fascinating how, like, every audio platform is now becoming, like, a video platform, and then it's like, okay, now they're talking about turning video platforms into, like, social platforms.
[00:02:25] Jason: Yeah.
[00:02:25] Caroline: And then they're just like, turning social platforms into Netflix. It's like, pretty soon everything is just becoming video and, like, comments.
[00:02:32] Jason: It's like everything is everywhere all at once.
[00:02:34] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:02:35] Jason: Back to my, my second preamble top that I want to bring up. There's a keyword here that's going to cue this up, and you're going to know exactly what it is after I say it. Vibes. What have I done?
[00:02:52] Caroline: Can I tell this story from my perspective?
[00:02:54] Jason: Oh, sure.
[00:02:55] Caroline: Okay. Jason comes to me and he goes.
[00:02:58] Jason: It's about a month ago.
[00:02:59] Caroline: Can I be responsible for some lighting vibes in our house? I was like, what are lighting vibes? He's like, just don't. Just trust me. Like, can I be fully responsible, not tell you anything? I was like, sure. So lo and behold, Jason has stumbled across. This is. I find this out later, has stumbled across the side of Instagram reels that are mood lighting.
[00:03:20] Jason: Yep.
[00:03:21] Caroline: Okay. That just, that is a new algorithm tag that has found him. And it's just mood lighting.
[00:03:25] Jason: Yeah.
[00:03:26] Caroline: And he has gotten it in his brain that he wants to create mood lighting in our home.
[00:03:31] Jason: Because we, we, in our home, we have a very spacious living, open concept dining, kitchen space. It's a big, long room, and we do not use the big lights.
[00:03:40] Caroline: We don't use.
[00:03:41] Jason: The big lights or the big overhead lights. And I don't know if you feel this way as well, but, like, they're just not enjoyable and they're just, like, a lot in your face.
[00:03:48] Caroline: Yeah. And we do love, like, sun going down. It's an evening, it's a mid evening vibe. And so the way that he sort of pitched this to me was, he just goes, I want, like, a mood lighting to create the way that you said it to me was a sunset glow. That's what you said.
[00:04:04] Jason: Yeah.
[00:04:04] Caroline: You said a sunset glow. I said, wow. Sold. That sounds lovely. What I'm picturing is, like, some type of just, like, warm light that creates sort of a golden hour glow.
[00:04:13] Jason: Yeah.
[00:04:13] Caroline: What I didn't know is pretty soon, Jason gets his little packages that he has ordered, and I'm, like, purposely not looking at, like, what he's doing, but I just, I sense him, like, just, like, shuffling around our living room and, like, hiding cords and doing things. And I'm like, okay, don't look. Don't look. Like, what is he doing? And before I know it, our living room has been turned into what I call a planetarium. Okay. Because Jason has created several. I'm calling it a lighting schema, which I don't think is the right use of that word, but it's a... because I think it's a lighting scheme, but it's just in my head, it's a schema.
[00:04:48] Jason: Yeah.
[00:04:48] Caroline: And the sunset glow that was pitched to me is, unknowingly to me, just like a projected planet on the ceiling of our living room.
[00:05:00] Jason: Yeah.
[00:05:01] Caroline: And I, at first, I will admit I was trying to have, like, a yes and attitude, but I... my first reaction was not the best reaction. I'll say.
[00:05:09] Jason: No, it wasn't.
[00:05:10] Caroline: I apologize for that. I want you to know.
[00:05:12] Jason: Because, because?
[00:05:13] Caroline: What?
[00:05:14] Jason: What happened, like, two days later?
[00:05:16] Caroline: I loved it.
[00:05:16] Jason: Yeah.
[00:05:17] Caroline: Well, it's like tasting food. I don't know if I like it.
[00:05:19] Jason: But, yes, yeah. Your first reaction, you can't be trusted. So I set a budget for myself. I did not want to spend more than $150. And I know for some people, you're like, you spend $150 on, like, a lighting scheme? That might be a lot. For some people, it might be like, you only spent $150? I bought three items, so I bought the piece de resistance, which is the sunset light, which basically is, like, this weird little.
[00:05:45] Caroline: I thought it was a sunset, babe?
[00:05:46] Jason: It's like the... It's a circle. It's a glow.
[00:05:49] Caroline: It is a light that quite literally projects a circle onto your...
[00:05:53] Jason: Yeah. But it's got sunset colors.
[00:05:55] Caroline: Okay. Sunset colors I'll give you.
[00:05:57] Jason: So anyway, that it's just like this, like, little projector light. And so you can... You can shine it basically, like, forward at a wall or you can shine it up at a ceiling.
[00:06:05] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:06:05] Jason: Now, a lot... Not a lot of people are gonna have, like, a big ceiling space. A lot of people use it as a wall because more people have a wall space. We have a... We have a big ceiling.
[00:06:13] Caroline: As described, it's a very open concept. So it's just a blank ceiling.
[00:06:16] Jason: Very, very fun, because you get to have this big planetarium circle on the ceiling. So then we have the... the second item, which is this little Ikea lamp. It's called, like, the, like, Vliksburg brow or something like that. I'm not gonna look it up, but it's this little orange dome. You've probably seen it in a lot of people's, like, homes. It's a little orange doughnut.
[00:06:35] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:06:35] Jason: Not little, really. It's kind of big, actually.
[00:06:37] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:06:37] Jason: And we have that sitting next to the TV.
[00:06:40] Caroline: I'm gonna be honest with you. It's not my favorite shade of orange.
[00:06:42] Jason: Yeah. It's a little bit bold, but also, you know, it's fine.
[00:06:46] Caroline: Yeah. And I did say we wanted more color in here because it's a very neutral.
[00:06:49] Jason: Very warm lighting aesthetic is the key.
[00:06:52] Caroline: Warm lighting.
[00:06:52] Jason: And then the last item are these, like, little... they're like gamer LED tubes is what they are. But I knew they were gonna go behind the couch and you'd never see them. So they... they're two LED tubes that just stand vertically. The color selection on them is absolutely horrible, but I just wanted, again, like, a warm light. So I have, like, the yellow orange setting. So we have the two LED tubes behind the couch. We have the sunset lamp on the ceiling projecting the planetarium, and then we have the vlix brow over in the corner.
[00:07:20] Caroline: Your couple little, like, standalone bulbs.
[00:07:22] Jason: Okay. I did get their little wireless battery powered, just two little small circular lights. And we have a butt candle on our coffee table. And so I put one of the lights right behind the butt kindle so it accentuates the butt. At night, they're very, like, light, and they don't project light. But that's our fun little lighting schema. It has added a vibe to our home. Our friends are gonna come, and they are gonna feel the vibes.
[00:07:47] Caroline: I do. I do think it was a good investment, because as a person who's very mood driven, I have to say it does create a very nice, cozy, warm vibe at night that I feel brings a lot of joy to my life. And so if there's anything you're going to spend money on, I feel like something that brings you good vibes long term is a good investment.
[00:08:06] Jason: Yeah. Oh, also, can I share my one final thing?
[00:08:09] Caroline: But of course, you don't need this for your home in any stretch.
[00:08:13] Jason: Also, we did this now a year and nine months after living in this home. So it's like, this is, you know, way down the road.
[00:08:19] Caroline: Right.
[00:08:19] Jason: Um, I am not a big home automation guy. Like, it just kind of takes too much to, like, set all these things up.
[00:08:25] Caroline: I would think that you...
[00:08:26] Jason: Yeah, but it's just like, it's just not. We're not good enough yet at all these things. Yeah.
[00:08:30] Caroline: You like efficiency.
[00:08:30] Jason: But what I do like is that, like, the LED tubes, they've got a crappy app you can download on your iPhone, and then you set a little lighting schedule. So, like, I have that that comes on at 7:45 at night, and that shuts off at 8:00 a.m. in the morning. So you get a little vibe in the morning, too. And they're a little LED tube, so you can run them longer. The vlik sprout doesn't have a lighting thing. So I just have, like, a little socket. A little smart socket. So I have an app for that. We used it for our Christmas tree. A little smart socket. Stop doing that. And then the last thing, the sunset lamp has a built in little bluetooth app that you download. And so that I set a schedule. So I'm so mad at you. So all of these lights have their own little home automation schedule set for the same thing. So it's 7:45. I just wait like a little child, and then it goes click, pop, ding. And then they're all on. It's great. And then when I come up in the morning, because I get it before you, it's still dark. They're still on. Oh, it's just great. This is great. This is my preamble.
[00:09:22] Caroline: Okay, everyone has fast forwarded through this. They have not stuck around to hear about our lighting.
[00:09:27] Jason: I am very excited if any of you listen to this. And you're like, you know what? My living room could use a little bit of a lighting scheme. And I do have, like, a $100 that I could put towards just having an ambiance moment for every single night of my life just to have a little bit of fun.
[00:09:41] Caroline: Yeah, this is my hot take. Invest in ambiance.
[00:09:44] Jason: It just, it adds a whole different feel. It really does. And again, listen, I know that not everybody can afford to do stupid things like this.
[00:09:51] Caroline: Actually not important.
[00:09:52] Jason: But...
[00:09:52] Caroline: It is simultaneously important and not important.
[00:09:54] Jason: Exactly. But if you're just like, your place has been feeling maybe a little drab or like, it's been the same for a long time, this is a great way. Like, this can go. $100 can go a long way to make it feel very different at nighttime.
[00:10:04] Caroline: I will say also, do you remember back when we lived in California and we had our little garage like gym, which was really...?
[00:10:09] Jason: Yeah, we did a little LED lighting.
[00:10:11] Caroline: Mat and a mirror and some weights. But yeah, we did the... the LED thing on...
[00:10:17] Jason: Just like a little LED strip light.
[00:10:18] Caroline: Strip. And I... When I tell you that I love to go in there and I would set the color based on my mood for my workout. And I'm just telling you, those little touches.
[00:10:27] Jason: They go a long way. All right, let's get into the topic.
[00:10:31] Caroline: They're just here for the juice, Jason.
[00:10:32] Jason: Of this episode, which is our biannual launch recap. So we completed a launch of Wandering Aimfully Unlimited. If you listen to this podcast for the past couple of weeks, you would have probably known that. You would have heard us doing our little ad reads at the beginning of the episodes.
[00:10:48] Caroline: And now you're here because you're nosy like me and you're like, how did it go?
[00:10:52] Jason: And we just, one of our key values of Wandering Aimfully is we like being transparent about how things go in business and how much money our business makes.
[00:10:59] Caroline: And that goes for the best launches we've ever had. And that goes for the not best launches we've ever had. Like last spring launch was admittedly one of our...
[00:11:08] Jason: Second worst launches.
[00:11:09] Caroline: Second lowest launches. Worst.
[00:11:12] Jason: Well, just, yeah, if you're comparing it.
[00:11:13] Caroline: And so we just like sharing the good and the bad.
[00:11:16] Jason: Yeah. So just to give you an overview of this fall launch, uh, it was a $2,800 price tag for WAIM Unlimited, same as the spring. $100 per month plan or $400 per month plan. We got rid of the $140 per month plan that we introduced in spring because not many people took advantage of that. The dates were August 26 through September 10. We had our first ever live cohort that we promoted. So this was a group that would go through our new product, which is called Calm Launch Formula, which you probably heard us talk about. And so the idea was you join WAIM and then right after you join, we have four calls over the course of two weeks to help you get immediate value from this new program that we created.
[00:11:53] Caroline: Yes.
[00:11:54] Jason: And then we also, with this launch, had a new website built on Framer and we had a new sales page that is just so much more fun and exciting and up to date.
[00:12:04] Caroline: Update and just reflects our brand.
[00:12:06] Jason: Not on WordPress. Yeah.
[00:12:07] Caroline: Reflects our brand a lot better.
[00:12:09] Jason: Great. So that is the overview of what we did. You have some hypotheses you want to share?
[00:12:14] Caroline: Yes. So I like to take people on the journey of, because this also goes back to the idea behind Calm Launch Formula is once you get your sort of basic launch system down, you want to be testing variables every time to see if you can improve those results. Right. Like that is the crux of what we're trying to get people to do. And so every time we have a launch, we do a debrief afterwards and we say, how did it go? And we ask ourselves, what could we have done better? What would we change? And we formulate some hypotheses that we want to test the following launch for what we think could improve sales. And so following our spring launch of this year, which we'll get into. Well, I'll, just a quick overview.
[00:12:53] Jason: You can jump ahead.
[00:12:55] Caroline: Not jump ahead, but it was 45 total buyers, right, of our spring launch of WAIM Unlimited, which was fantastic, but still it was lower than what we were used to. And so we wanted to form some hypotheses of why that might have been. One of the biggest gut instincts we had was the price jump, because we did raise the price for the first time in five years on WAIM Unlimited. It's now in a price category that is, you know, I would say it's now in a high ticket category.
[00:13:19] Jason: I mean, I think $2,000 was always high ticket by most people's descriptions.
[00:13:22] Caroline: I would agree with that.
[00:13:23] Jason: Yeah. But the fact that our lowest payment plan now goes beyond two years of payments, it does make someone think a little bit more about that because it truly is a long time to think about paying for something.
[00:13:33] Caroline: Exactly. And so Jason and I had a meeting and we were like, you know, do we want to bring the price back down? Do we want to...? Like, getting this, this feeling like maybe our audience wasn't completely aligned with the price, but we believe so deeply in the value of WAIM Unlimited, especially being a lifetime product where once you stop paying, you pay for the entire future. And so our hypothesis that we formed was, let's try to attract a, we, we noticed that in the spring launch, we were attracting like those who were making that investment in WAIM Unlimited were a little bit further along on their journey of being a digital product solopreneur. And so we thought to ourselves, our hypothesis is, if we steer some of our content and messaging and the value of WAIM to a person who's maybe a little bit further along in their journey, not beginning their online business, would that attract during the launch people who would be willing to make that investment because maybe they had a little bit more resources to buy the higher priced product? That was our hypothesis. And so what we did to kind of strategize around that hypothesis was we decided to create Calm Launch Formula. Calm Launch Formula is about, you know, is you... is mainly targeted at someone who has done a digital product launch before and it has been chaotic or it has felt stressful. And so we're trying to get you better sales with less stress. Right. We did create it in such a way that our existing members could still take advantage of it. So there's an entire offers module of like, how to come up with your offer. But in general, it's really targeted at those who have already done a launch and are trying to make a calm launch. Do it better. And so that's what our entire pre launch strategy was about, was really attracting people who wanted these calm launches and to make Calm Launch Formula the big thing that we were building the launch around. And so I just wanted to share that background because I like sharing the meta decision making behind the business, why we're testing certain variables. You know, we had another option which was to just completely, like, figure out a way to lower the price again and do that. But we wanted to, at least because spring was like our baseline launch, we wanted to do this fall launch around a different, a little bit of a different messaging.
[00:15:40] Jason: Yeah. And I think if you listen to our spring launch recap episode, you know, there was definitely some hesitation to, uh oh, we raised the price. And we believe that the price was raised for the right reasons, which is we've invested so much in WAIM since its inception in 2018, and there was just a ton more value. And also, as we were seeing, there were more affiliates promoting WAIM each launch. And so our profits were going down every single launch. And it was just kind of this, like, we found ourselves in this weird situation where, you know, eventually it was just not going to be a very sustainable business in kind of how the math math. So, uh, but for the fall launch, you know, as Caroline was saying, we didn't want to just lower the price and kind of give up on our gut, saying that it was worth more. And so adding a new program definitely made us feel like it was still worth that price. There was a lot more value for people.
[00:16:28] Caroline: Adding that to a program that could very clearly get you a return on your investment.
[00:16:32] Jason: Right.
[00:16:32] Caroline: So if you go through Calm Launch Formula and you plan your launch and you're not scrambling at the last minute, and you create a launch that allows you to get more sales, almost guaranteed, you're going to bring back that $2,800 investment, whether it's over the course of one launch, two launches, et cetera, not to mention the peace of mind that you feel. So by tying the value to something that had a very clear ROI, which, you know, something like monthly coaching is fantastic and it improves your business and it. And it keeps you motivated for the long haul, but it's not as tied to a financial return. And so that was another hypothesis was like, okay, if we tie the value to this financial return, will that move the needle?
[00:17:09] Jason: Yeah. All right, so our pre launch efforts, as we led up to this launch, we had our Calm Launch Fundamentals four week email series where we also kind of had podcast episodes that were similarly related. We uploaded a weekly video to our YouTube channel for the first time since 2018 fifteen weeks in a row. So that is the most amount of videos leading up to a launch that we have ever done since the very beginning of the channel. And then on this podcast, we use the dynamic ads feature of Transistor, which is our podcast host, which is really great because we just record a couple like 1 minute ad reads, we queue them up in a campaign, and then we can basically have them run across our entire library of previous 200 plus episodes without having to touch the previous episodes. So that is what we did. Now, just to firstly or fully recap the launch of spring, to give you an idea of comparison, 45 total buyers. As Caroline said, 77% of the buyers came from affiliates. And then we generated a net revenue of $101,000. So that's after we end up paying our affiliates. We will, we will take home $101,000 from that launch. Can't complain about a six figure launch. This is exactly what we said in the recap of the last thing. But the really interesting thing about the spring launch is that we had no pre launch lead up campaign. We had not posted any YouTube videos, and our email list had basically been the same from the previous launch to that launch. So all things considered, we basically did nothing.
[00:18:36] Caroline: That was our baseline.
[00:18:38] Jason: Yeah, that was setting a baseline. Now, how did the fall launch do that we just completed? The too long, didn't read of it all, is that we had 49 total buyers.
[00:18:50] Caroline: Four more buyers.
[00:18:51] Jason: We had four more buyers. And as a reminder, we recorded 15 YouTube videos. We built an entire new program, we promoted the Calm Launch Cohort and we did an email lead up series.
[00:19:03] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:19:04] Jason: Our net, or let's do our gross revenue was $137,000 from the launch. Or it will be once all the payment plans, you know, pay out. And after paying our affiliates, it is a $103,000 launch.
[00:19:18] Caroline: Okay, so we... It is an increase.
[00:19:20] Jason: Yeah, go ahead.
[00:19:21] Caroline: A $2,000 increase. We'll take it. We'll take it.
[00:19:23] Jason: Hit them with that 2% launch increase. Now, was the 2% increase worth all the extra work? We will talk about that.
[00:19:30] Caroline: Okay. Well, here's what's interesting to me, because those of you who listen to every episode of the podcast will remember we recorded a podcast episode when we were one week into the launch and we were feeling so confident because the launch number started out so strong compared to spring. So to give you an idea, in that first week, just from Monday to Friday of the fall launch, this most recent launch, we ended Friday with 20 sales.
[00:19:57] Jason: We were feeling good.
[00:19:58] Caroline: And we were like, whoa. Like, we're definitely going to hit our low goal, which was our low goal was 55 sales. And so we were like, great. You know, this, it feels like this effort is paying off. Like, it really felt like we started strong. And then the second week, it was just so much slower than last time. We ended up also, I'll talk about this later, but we, there was also one JICLI, we call them just in case launch idea that we decided not to do as a bonus, which moved more sales in spring. And we opted not to do that for lessons that will become clear probably in a few weeks. And so I think that also not having that push the sales in kind of the second week. And then the biggest thing is that the second week of the launch was following Labor Day weekend. And I think, and we, it's not like we were unaware of that. We knew that that was going to be a hiccup. We just didn't know kind of how much of an impact that would have. I think that, you know, through the holiday weekend, so people weren't paying attention to their email, which is sometimes when we move some of those sales, and then I think maybe, who knows? Kind of getting back into work after Labor Day.
[00:21:02] Jason: Yeah.
[00:21:02] Caroline: Kids are going back to school, things like that.
[00:21:04] Jason: This is something we have tried to avoid every launch since we've been doing biannual launches is the summertime or holidays, because we have just seen it over the course of our launching careers. Anytime you deal with that, people are distracted, they're not checking their emails, etc., etc. And it was just one of those unfortunate things for the timing of all the things we have going on in our lives. It, this was just the only time we could do the launch for the fall. The only other time would have been in November. But with the election going on in the US, we were just like, we can't do it. Like, we can't push it because there's just gonna be a whole other distraction. So, but to go back real quick, this launch started out with 20 sales. In the first week in the spring, we had seven sales.
[00:21:40] Caroline: Oh, I forgot to say that part.
[00:21:41] Jason: Which also the wild thing about the spring, in the first seven days of the spring launch, three of the days had zero sales.
[00:21:48] Caroline: Which we never had.
[00:21:50] Jason: What is happening? And then this launch, we only had one day with zero sales in that first week. So, yeah, a lot of different factors going into the differences between the two, which is why it's also really hard to compare each launch because they're never really created equally.
[00:22:03] Caroline: Exactly. So you just do your best at kind of looking at the data and going and drawing your own conclusions. And that's why you have an experimenter's mindset where it's not an exact science, but that's kind of the fun part about business, is you go, okay, cool. I chose to focus on this, you know, this launch. What that had this effect. Let's focus on that next time, etcetera. And the more you launch, this is the whole repeatable launch idea, the more you launch, the more you also just get a sense internally for kind of like, what moves the needle. Right. Like, um... so that is interesting to me as well, because you're just picking up all of these data points along the way. But so overall, we ended up, yes, better than spring, but also very similar to spring, basically. Um, and so, as Jason pointed out, marketing wise, we did a whole pre launch series. We had a new product, 15 weeks of YouTube lead up. But through our buyer survey, we did see that 15% of buyers specifically purchased due to the Calm Launch Formula. That's what they said. So to me, that is validating.
[00:22:58] Jason: Yeah, I mean, it would have been very deflating if it was like, I think it was like 5%.
[00:23:03] Caroline: 5%.
[00:23:03] Jason: I think, like, okay, well, that was kind of a waste of time, but 15, I think, over the threshold of ten.
[00:23:08] Caroline: Exactly. And then 5% of buyers found us through YouTube. So I still feel like that, you know, validates that a little bit. Do you feel like that effort was worth it?
[00:23:16] Jason: No.
[00:23:16] Caroline: You don't?
[00:23:17] Jason: No.
[00:23:17] Caroline: So then, and then one person found us through the podcast. Thank you so much for listening.
[00:23:21] Jason: Yeah. And then for buyers, we actually talked about this with our Wandering Aimfully folks on a coaching call we had last week. They were like, oh, didn't you say you're using ConvertKit's Creator Network to grow your email list? Because we moved to ConvertKit in February of this year. Like, oh, yes. And we quickly on the call did a little filtering and found out that four buyers from this launch came through ConvertKit's Creator Network. So those are basically like free subscribers that we earn through other people promoting our ConvertKit account through their email signups, which is just a great free marketing thing to do. So if you've been on the fence about switching to ConvertKit or even like Substack or beehiiv, any of these email platforms that have built in marketing, definitely worth it. And awesome to see four people buy a high ticket item through that. I do want to mention, as always, well, not as always, but for the past many launches, we have been off of social media. So since the end of 2021, we have not been. And really, it's just Instagram. We have not been using Instagram at all. So the only thing we did that we do every single launch is we change the link in our bio. That's it. And funny enough, I think two people who bought this time around said that they had been following us on Instagram for years and maybe they, like, thought about... Yeah. And ended up, like, literally coming from Instagram to buy, which is very silly. I don't think that's a repeatable system we should use. But still not sure if we're going to come back to Instagram. We will see in the future what that holds.
[00:24:47] Caroline: We'll talk about that in a little bit, Jason. So, okay, all of that is to say, you know, when you look at it just on paper and you go, the input that we put into leading up to this launch and the output that we got out of it to get very similar results to spring, like, was it worth it? Let's talk about that. So let's do positive takeaways from the launch. And let's do negative takeaways from launch. So the positive takeaways are always in the first thing we have to remind ourselves of, not even have to remind ourselves of, but we do remind ourselves of, is that we, no matter how many sales we got, those are not just sales. Those are people.
[00:25:17] Jason: Yeah.
[00:25:17] Caroline: So we gained a lovely group of new WAIM members who are already in the chat, like, being very lively, being... They're clearly aligned with our brand.
[00:25:27] Jason: You mean Slack?
[00:25:28] Caroline: I mean Slack.
[00:25:28] Jason: Okay.
[00:25:29] Caroline: And also, in my mind was because we just finished the cohort call, so it's like the chat of the live calls. And so that feels really good that we continue to attract the right audience of business owners. You know, I think another huge positive takeaway was just, again, we were able to maintain a sense of calm during the launch window. Before the launch windows, a little bit of a different story, which we'll talk about. But during the launch window, the launch itself felt very calm. And I was almost thankful that we had the spring launch that was like, more, I guess you could say, disappointing because it didn't hurt. Like, it didn't hurt when that second week the sales kind of slowed down because I had already felt that disappointment in the spring, and everything turned out okay. And so just sharing the real kind of, like, how do you deal with the emotional roller coaster of that when a launch is maybe slowing down and you're, you know, just not going into panic mode? And I think it's just, you only have that happen through practice.
[00:26:23] Jason: Yep.
[00:26:24] Caroline: And then Calm Launch Formula now exists. I am so proud of this program. So there's nothing... There's almost nothing... I know you said if it was 5%, we would have felt like it was a waste of time. I don't think I would have felt that way because I learned so much through building this program and seeing the amazing feedback that we've gotten from people of how finally they are able to make progress because it's so bite sized. And the people who went through the live cohort, which, loved that so much.
[00:26:49] Jason: Yeah. And people who have been using the AI prompts to write their sales copy or their sales emails, and they're like, these things were so daunting to me in the past. This is such a huge head start to get these things done. And I do. I also want to point out that whenever you make a new product, you probably have heard this a million times from us and other people, you have an asset, you have a thing that now you can do other things with. It's really important for us to... I think now that Calm Launch Formula is very validated as something that is very helpful for people and also can't wait for them to all do their launches so that we can actually get some results from people. Because the idea is that this is not for you to turn around a launch in two weeks and then start doing it. It's to plan a launch three to six months from now, have it be calm when you do it, and you're way ahead of the curve, but excited for that. And then also future content about this, maybe selling this by itself. There's a lot of things that we can do with Calm Launch Formula as an asset. So just simple to have.
[00:27:38] Caroline: And then, like Jason said, a huge positive takeaway, too, is like, being able to do a six figure launch without social media, to me, is like a win, regardless, across the board. And we continue to be really grateful for the way that we've set up our business because it works in a way that works for us. And then on that same point, you know, WAIM continues to generate around $35,000 monthly recurring revenue. Revenue. That's not profit, that's revenue.
[00:28:06] Jason: Yeah.
[00:28:06] Caroline: But the point is you just can't be upset about that.
[00:28:08] Jason: Yeah. And I think it's, you know, whenever you have a launch that's maybe doesn't meet your goals. So we'll get into the negatives here. Our low goal was 55 buyers, and we only ended up at 49. You do have to go back to that revenue chart and look at it and go, yeah, but we're still making really great money as a business. Like, this is a fantastic business. We love working on. We love our membership, we love the things we're doing. Like, yes, the launch, we wish it would have been a little bit better, but this is a great business and it's still profitable.
[00:28:35] Caroline: Exactly.
[00:28:35] Jason: And then the other kind of big negative for this launch is that we just worked a lot more hours leading up to the launch than we would normally like. We didn't take our summer sabbatical, but a lot of that was kind of just like the timing of everything we have going on. Again, next week's podcast episode, you'll hear a ton more about this, but it was a little bit more of a stressful work time than we've had in quite a long time. And it was just... It was really a reminder of just, we don't want to be working like that.
[00:28:59] Caroline: No. And we, we were very much intentionally going into this, like, compression mode where we thought to ourselves, we need to be in work mode right now, so that when we have potentially less time in the future, like, we know we won't be able to keep up that pace forever, basically. And so we were trying to use that time period in a smart way. And I think what we ended up doing was reminding ourselves that we just never, regardless of the circumstances, regardless of any reasons behind it, I just don't want to work at that pace.
[00:29:30] Jason: Yeah, exactly. And just having such hard deadlines, too, is just not great for feeling good about everything.
[00:29:35] Caroline: But we all need those reminders. So, as Jason mentioned, the biggest takeaway is just gratitude. So it's important to just maintain perspective, even when your goals aren't perfectly met. I think this year as a whole was, is going to be a chance for us to reset our expectations for sales of WAIM Unlimited at this price point.
[00:29:54] Jason: Yeah.
[00:29:55] Caroline: I think we now have two data points. So, you know, it's like spring. You could kind of be like, was that an anomaly? Like, what happened there? Now we have the two. And I think it's just, this is the price of WAIM Unlimited, and this is the sales that we can expect is like, in that forties range. So then it goes, okay, either that is totally enough and like, we are good with that, or we need to create offers that are more aligned with our audience, who tends to be at the more beginning of their journey, and they just are not in a financial place to be able to make that investment in their business right now. And so, you know, the hypothesis for the fall launch was like, let's shift around the offer to meet this, or let's shift around the audience to meet our offer, which was like trying to attract a segment of our audience that was farther along in their journey. And I think next year it's going to be, let's shift around our offers to meet the audience that is already here.
[00:30:46] Jason: Yeah. Because we're just, we're definitely attracting an audience that is more at a beginning stage of their business journey than someone who is further along. And we really, truthfully, just have a lot more resources for those people anyway. So it'd be better served to think that through. So we'll talk about some potential changes in a second. One thing I wanted to bring up, and I mentioned this when we were talking to our WAIMers about it, which I think is just a really helpful perspective thing. Our 2023 revenue was so inflated with our two launches because it was the last two launches we were ever going to do at our $2,000 price point. So it really jumped up above any other year of launches that we'd had. And so what I kept telling caroline was like, I think we need to look at 2022 is actually, like, the realistic comparison to where we are. So in 2022, we had 140 buyers total of WAIM, and at $2,000, that's $280,000 in gross revenue. Okay, so that's a normal year essentially. This year, we're going to end up with, I mean, essentially it will be 100 buyers with, like, trickle in people and whatever. At a $2,800 price point, it's $280,000. It's the same.
[00:31:49] Caroline: Totally.
[00:31:49] Jason: And so I think it's... it's one of those moments where you go, 2023 was just an anomaly. It was, the price was going up, people were buying, et cetera. Whatever was happening in the online world, there were some, you know, people were selling more things last year than were this year, economic things going on. I just think it's important to not always compare to, like, your most immediate last thing that you've done and kind of look holistically at the whole picture to be like, oh, okay. So actually, this year, it's kind of really in line with what we've done, and it's okay. It just feels different because we're used to more people.
[00:32:20] Caroline: And that's exactly why I said that I think this year was a really good reset of our expectations, because anytime that you have any feeling of disappointment from sales goals that you didn't meet, that's really just the distance between reality and your expectations. Right. And so if you can't control reality, you can control your expectations. And I think that that is. Listen, like, it sucks. There's no. I'm not going to pretend that it doesn't suck when you have goals and you don't meet them. But there's something really freeing about putting all this effort towards trying to brute force our way to a different result in this launch and seeing that it actually didn't move the needle. Because now you're free to go. Okay, well, why don't I just accept what is enough and let me do what I want to do?
[00:33:10] Jason: Yeah.
[00:33:10] Caroline: I'm not saying Calm Launch Formula wasn't what we wanted to do. I just think it was very. The things that we focused on with the YouTube videos, with the, you know, the pre launch lead up and everything, like, those are all versions that we'll do in the future, but not in this, I think, highly tactical way that we were so focused on.
[00:33:27] Jason: Yeah. You know, I just. I think every time we do a launch, there's just always an interesting experiment to be run or a thing to change. So let's talk about some of the things that we are thinking about, because it's very easy to have these two launches and kind of see the numbers be a little bit lower, not hit our low goals that we set, even though, as I just told you about the revenue compared to 2022, it's actually pretty much the same. But you can look at this one of two ways. You can be deflated and you can go, well, you know, we need to change things. We need to reduce the price back down. We shouldn't have done that. Or you can go, well, what are some other options? And so one of the things that we kind of came to was, what if instead of changing the price of WAIM Unlimited or doing anything else, we went back to offering a six month coaching package? That was basically like a first step for someone getting into WAIM. So it wouldn't be because we hear this all the time. You get into WAIM Unlimited and there's a lot. There's so... there's 60 plus coaching sessions now. There's the Notion Starter Pack, there's the Page Layout Library. There's like all these different things you can get into and you kind of can feel like if you don't have a clear goal of what you're trying to do, there's too much. And so for someone who's at the beginning of their journey, we know that they need more focus on the specific things they need to do, which is having a really good offer, having an ideal audience that they're trying to reach, having a marketing strategy that helps them grow their audience so they can sell a product to those people and that can be done in a six month container. And it's actually a better use of their time to be really focused on just those things and not on all the other stuff that's in WAIM Unlimited. So the idea for us, I think moving forward, is to offer a six month coaching package, which we did back in 2021.
[00:35:02] Caroline: That's actually how we launched monthly coaching was...
[00:35:04] Jason: Yeah.
[00:35:04] Caroline: With a six month option.
[00:35:05] Jason: Because we also didn't know if we wanted to do monthly coaching.
[00:35:07] Caroline: Exactly. And so then there was a point where we took away the six month option just because we wanted to prioritize simplicity and just selling one thing, which was a great decision for us because it really did, especially like for our travel year and everything, it just became really easy to just sell WAIM Unlimited. So what we're looking at now is, yes, we might be adding in a little bit more complexity to the business with different offers, but we now feel like we're at the place, especially with the WAIM Unlimited launches being so repeatable that let's try peppering in some different offers in a format that can lead people into WAIM Unlimited and recognizing that it is a larger investment. You want to get in, make sure you're going to use it, make sure this is the right community for you. And we recognize all of that. So I think that's something that we are going to experiment with in next year.
[00:35:55] Jason: Yeah.
[00:35:55] Caroline: Maybe sooner.
[00:35:56] Jason: Yeah.
[00:35:57] Caroline: And, and possibly, like you said, experiment with also maybe selling Calm Launch Formula as a standalone product. What does that look like? As, you know, a lower price, great entry level product into WAIM, our style of coaching, our style of teaching, and it's a very clear, um, result. Right. So I think that, that it works well for a standalone product as well. So those are all things that we're considering.
[00:36:22] Jason: Yeah. And it'll be interesting to see kind of how it all pans out and how it works out. You know, it sounds really easy to say offer a six month coaching package, but then like we wrote down the logistics of what that looked like, just like do an initial brainstorm, we're like, okay, we can't even start working on that until like November, December, January because of just the amount of stuff that it's going to take to kind of set that all up. And it's just a reminder that, like making a new offer, having a new thing, it's always more work than you think. It sounds easy in theory of like, oh, well, I'll just do this. And there's just a lot of complexity. So we try not to add new offers as much as possible that are, again, like you've heard, WAIM Unlimited has been the only thing that we have sold since 2021, basically the end of that year. And it's been really nice to just have that as the one thing. We are going to go to a little bit more complexity to start the year. But I think there are some really easy ways that we do that where, like, the six month coaching is only available during our launches. So it's not like something you can buy all year round. We got to, like, keep up with it and we'll see how all that goes and what decisions we make, but there are ways to kind of keep that more streamlined. All right, what about some final thoughts and things we want to talk about from this launch?
[00:37:31] Caroline: Well, one thing I wanted to share was some people might be wondering how do you stay calm and how do you combat kind of that disappointment that creeps in when you don't meet your low goal for a launch. And so I just wanted to share some of how we mentally do that. And I think, you know, the first thing is just always trying to shift from a scarcity mindset into an abundance mindset. And really all that means is focusing on what you have, not what you don't have.
[00:37:57] Jason: Yeah.
[00:37:58] Caroline: And so that's like gratitude. All the things we mentioned this episode, like, you focus on the amazing customers you do have. You focus on everything that's going right. You focus on the, how proud you are of the thing that you've created. You focus on, you know, the fact in our case, that we do have a thriving business that makes enough money for us, and it doesn't matter that we had, you know, some future goals for things we wanted to save for or future financial security that we want to have. You know, we hope to buy a house eventually one day. But it's like if you always focus on those things that you don't have, you will never feel happy and fulfilled and present with what is right in front of you, which in our case is a life of our dreams. And so we just always try to bring that back to feeling that sense of abundance, because scarcity will also have you not just in a negative mental place, but it will also have you making panicky decisions that are not always best for you in the long term.
[00:38:55] Jason: We're all about not making panicky decisions.
[00:38:57] Caroline: Panicky.
[00:38:57] Jason: We're about making vibey light decisions nowadays.
[00:39:01] Caroline: That's... that's not coming from.
[00:39:02] Jason: Next is our bedroom. We got a vibe to light that place up.
[00:39:04] Caroline: Okay.
[00:39:05] Jason: Uh, the other thing we talked about was, what would we do differently to avoid the slowdown in sales in week two? I mean, the really easy answer is, don't do a launch around a holiday. So it's just a good reminder for us to, uh, to do that.
[00:39:15] Caroline: Of, like.... yeah. I think we saw, like, the impact that truly does.
[00:39:18] Jason: Yeah. I mean, you see the huge dip in, like, email open rates, even though those aren't, like, extremely reliable, you do see and notice it, so I think that's good.
[00:39:29] Caroline: And then I think I touched on this earlier a little bit. But we did offer a bonus in spring that was really compelling for people, and we saw it immediately sell out. And this time around, Jason and I, it was... it was a lot of, like, mental effort and time effort to put into that bonus.
[00:39:47] Jason: Yeah.
[00:39:48] Caroline: And so Jason and I thought about offering it, and we just told ourselves we were already at this place where we were pretty energy depleted. And because we want to protect our mental health above all else, and because burnout is the very last thing that we ever want to do, I think we made the smart decision, which was even though we know we're missing out on more sales by not offering this bonus, we prioritize our mental health more than that. And so we decided not to offer it. So what I would change is next time, I will just plan to probably offer that bonus, in which case, I will plan to build in the...
[00:40:20] Jason: The time to be able to deliver.
[00:40:21] Caroline: And energy in order to deliver that, because we do know that it is... It's an action mover for people.
[00:40:28] Jason: Yeah. All right. Future plans for WAIM, because every launch makes us think about the future. The big one is that we talked about this in the previous episode about Teachery's lifetime kind of experiment results, is the strategy is shifting a little bit for Caroline to work more on WAIM.
[00:40:45] Caroline: Interesting.
[00:40:46] Jason: For me to work more on Teachery. And I mentioned this in the Teachery episode. If the Venn diagrams, the two circles were completely overlapped for the past few years of we're both working on, or really, this year, we're both working on both of these businesses together. The Vennies are being pulled apart. So there still will be a bunch of overlap, but it'll be you doing more WAIM things, and I'll still be here, like, on the podcast and if we do YouTube videos and that type of stuff, on the coaching sessions, in Slack, like, all that is not going to change, but it's going to be you more directing that ship and then me more directing Teachery and just kind of going on more of the path that I want to go with it and just being okay with that. We've spent the past, you know, year and a half, maybe two years, like, I think really overlapping all this stuff. And I think it's worked really well and we haven't had any problems. But I think what we really talked about after just this year of working even more together on these things, you're more excited about WAIM and it's, and what the content to create, the things to talk about, the idea of it, I'm less excited about that. I'm more excited about Teachery, working on new features, working on a big overhaul of the entire way the interface works. You're not excited about working on software. And so I think it's really important as, as business owners to be smart about that, not force ourselves to keep working on things that aren't lighting us up.
[00:42:02] Caroline: Exactly. You really want to follow your spark because I do think that that creates just a deeper well of motivation and sustainability for your business and the type of business that we run, you know, we often talk about combating burnout through your schedule and balance and all these things. But another really important way to combat burnout is by making sure you're working on things that you enjoy and that feel purposeful to you. And so right now, at this moment, you're gravitating more towards Teachery. I'm gravitating more towards WAIM. And so that's where the next most immediate season is going to lead us. And that feels really good. I don't know what that looks like. I don't know what I, how that is going to change things at all. Um, but I think we've laid a lot of really good groundwork together this year that I just, if anything, I want to... I want to, you know, further next year. So it's like I want to dive deeper into Growing Steady. I want to, I keep telling Jason, something that feels very much aligned with my purpose right now is just normalizing the ups and downs of business. And I think that is one gift of having two launches this year that were not these, like, blow out better than our high goal launches is, that is very normal. And it is very normal for that to happen, especially in a year where you're going through stuff in your personal life. And so I know there are those of you who are listening right now that had goals for this year that didn't pan out the way that you anticipated. And if anything, I want to be a place where you can come and listen to two people who have been successful in business for over 15 years at this point and... and go through the same things you go through.
[00:43:39] Jason: Yeah, exactly. And it is... It's so easy to get caught up in the comparison and the stories of other people. And again, a lot of those are stories like, you don't know the whole truth behind it. You don't know how happy and balanced someone's life is and all the things that you can't see. And I think for all of you listening to our podcast every single week, you know that we're very honest about how we run our businesses. We're very honest about the idea of enough. We're very honest about, we don't use ads for growing WAIM. We're going to start to use ads for the first time in forever to grow Teachery. But, like, that's a whole different way of doing ads. We don't hire a bunch of people. Like, we make as many decisions as possible to live a good life and our businesses fuel that life. And we want that for all of you as well. And so whether that's you're working in a nine to five job and you just want a side hustle that makes a little bit of extra money so that you don't feel like you're falling behind. Awesome. We love that for you. If you're working with clients and you want to transition to digital products because you don't want to trade time for money, we love that for you. If you want to keep clients, but you want, like, a signature product that you can sell to bolster some extra money when you don't want to take client work for a couple months, we love that for you, too. And I just think there is a way for everyone to run the business that feels right to them. And the longer that we're in this, the more we're just always trying to optimize for what feels right, what feels interesting. And I think, you know, if you hear us talking about Caroline working more on Wandering Aimfully and me working more on Teachery, it's not at all because I don't want to work on Wandering Aimfully. Wandering Aimfully was, truthfully, my idea to begin with. I was the one who wanted to do it. But six years later, I have changed as a person. And what I want to spend my time doing has changed. And I think for anyone listening to this, maybe you're in a season of life that feels the same way. It's like, I want to shake things up. I want to mix things up. I think that's the beauty of owning your own business. We get caught up in our own previous way of doing things and thinking that's the way we always have to do things, and it's just not the truth. And I think for anybody who might feel stuck or feel like you've kind of been doing things the same way, and it just feels monotonous, it's just time to shake it up. And so I think that's just a reminder for all of you. These two launches this year, I think, really showed us, like, all right, we've been doing things a certain way, and it's totally fine. There's absolutely nothing to complain about. We are not feeling down about these launches, but it's also a moment to go. Well, cool. If we are still doing things this way and they're still working this way, it's probably only going to get better from here if we do some things differently and kind of off... add new offers, change the content a ton and, like, how that's being shared. Go back to Instagram. But, like, share in a very, like, different way than we've ever shared before. It's not as polished. It's more just real and interesting. So I think there's a lot of possibility there. And it's kind of the same way of looking at these two launches. It's like...
[00:46:10] Caroline: Yeah, and this is exactly, it's like, I know my sensibility is always to look at the glass half full or like, what's the silver lining? And like I said, there is a freedom that comes from actually not getting everything that you thought that you wanted because it allows you to break new ground on you almost are in this place where you're like, well, that didn't work. I have nothing. Switch it up. Let me try something completely different. And there's a freedom that comes from that. I think people who continue to find better and better success at one tactic feel more and more locked into whatever that is.
[00:46:43] Jason: Exactly. Because you don't want to let go.
[00:46:45] Caroline: Exactly. And so it's like, listen, if we were sitting here and we said our last two launches did even better and even better than we had thought, it's not like I'd be saying, like, I want to blow it up. Like, obviously, I would be like, okay, great. Let me just finish that. All I'm saying is whether something works out the way that you fully wanted it to or whether it doesn't, there is gratitude to be found there, and there is a positive way to frame that moving forward.
[00:47:09] Jason: Yeah. All right. Well, hope you have enjoyed listening to another launch recap episode here on our podcast. And funny enough, just for the real, real, we had originally planned to record this as a video. We were going to do, like, a video podcast and, like, kind of just test the waters of video. And the more that we talked about, we were like, no.
[00:47:27] Caroline: No.
[00:47:28] Jason: Not going to do it. Not going to do it. And I just give that to you as, like, a little note of permission that if there's something where you're like, I think I might do this, and it's going to take a lot more effort. And you're like, for what? Like, why? Why am I doing that? What is that extra effort going to be for?
[00:47:41] Caroline: Especially when you're in a place where you know and can feel your own battery and you're like, I could push this a little further, but you got to be really honest about where in your own personal battery you are.
[00:47:52] Jason: Yeah.
[00:47:53] Caroline: And for all the reasons that you've heard and for all the reasons that you will hear next week on the podcast, Jason and my battery are... They're low right now.
[00:48:01] Jason: Also, we do not have a vibey place to record the podcast. So that's really the big part. We could record it at night, but, like, it's not going to look as good. So we got to have a vibey podcast studio, maybe that's coming in 2025.
[00:48:13] Caroline: Remember when I talked about your expectations? I think your vibes expectations have maybe, like, gone a little bit astray here. I think you're...
[00:48:19] Jason: I'm living in the vibes. That's me. That's the T-shirt that I need, or hat.
[00:48:24] Caroline: I'm sure it exists.
[00:48:25] Jason: It does. All right, that's it. We will be back in your ears next week. And then again, just as a reminder, after that episode, we'll be taking a break for five to six weeks or so. We'll be back in mid November ish.
[00:48:36] Caroline: Thank you for listening.
[00:48:37] Jason: Okay, goodbye.
[00:48:39] Caroline: Bye.