Episode #11: Falling Prey to New Ideas

Interview
Written By Eman Ismail

Caroline and Jason Zook are two creatives who are full of ideas. They’re the founders of Wandering Aimfully – the UN-boring coaching program for intentional online business owners – and Teachery: a software platform for creating and hosting online courses. 

After more than a decade of online entrepreneurship, they found that constantly creating and launching new ideas is exhausting. They figured there had to be another way.

In this episode of Mistakes That Made Me, the Zooks describe how putting less energy into new ideas and more energy into refining existing ideas has created two reliable, profitable, and intentional businesses for them.

 
 

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  • Eman Ismail: I don't know about you, but I feel like there's a lot of sameness in the online business world. Everyone is saying the same stuff, doing the same stuff, learning the same stuff from all the same people. It's just this sea of sameness.

     

    But Caroline and Jason Zook are a breath of fresh air. They are two married business partners who are paving their own way in this online business world.

     

    Jason Zook: We're idea people. We come up with ideas all the time, nonstop, always new ideas.

     

    Eman Ismail: See, Jason was an influencer back in 2009 before being an influencer was even a thing. Before Instagram was even created. He started a project called I Wear Your Shirt, where over 1,600 small businesses, Fortune 500 companies, authors, and non-profit organizations, paid him to post photos and videos of himself online, wearing a shirt that had their logo on it.

     

    In just a few years, Jason generated over a million dollars in revenue wearing these shirts, and he was featured on shows like The Today Show and in publications like Forbes Magazine.

     

    Then there was the time in 2012 when Jason auctioned off his last name and a company called headsets.com bought it for $45,500.

     

    By the way, headsets.com got a lot of attention because of Jason's popularity and they reported an increase in sales of $250,000 in the months after Jason changed his name. Jason auctioned off his last name one more time before finally settling on Zook.

     

    Eman Ismail: So while Jason was working on his business, Caroline was working on hers. 

     

    Caroline, a talented artist, built an art and design brand called Made Vibrant. 

     

    It started out as a freelance design business, then grew into an online course hub for creatives. 

     

    In 2018, her first book was published (a guided creative journal with 60 pieces of her own hand-lettered art) AND she became a TEDx speaker too. She delivered this brilliant talk about shifting her personal definition of success from achievement to alignment. 

     

    When Jason and Caroline decided to start a business together, they launched BuyOurFuture. A project where they sold access to their life’s work. It was a one-time purchase where the buyer would get everything Jason and Caroline had created in the past AND everything they’d create in the future, plus access to a private community.

     

    That project (along with Jason’s original version of it which was called BuyMyFuture) generated over half a million in revenue.

     

    Together they've built an un-boring coaching program called Wandering Aimfully. See, they're creative, they're fun, they're intentional. They're full of wacky, genius money-making ideas. But it turns out, being an ideas person can be both a blessing and a curse.

     

    Jason Zook: It's so gratifying to make new things. Mm-hmm. Like you get the excitement, you have the idea, you're going through all your tasks, this, you're using your productivity tools, and then this, this shiny thing exists that didn't exist before and you put your heart and your soul and your branding and everything into it. But then who's gonna buy it? Because all you've done is spend time making things. And now people don't know that it exists. 

     

    Caroline Zook: They don't know why they should care. They don't know what problem it solves. Yeah, you're, you just sort of like emerge from this creation cave and you're like, look at this new thing. And everyone's like, cool, but how does it help me? 

     

    Jason Zook: Haven't heard from you two years, haven't heard from you, you know, like you've just been like in a cave. 

     

    Eman Ismail: On today's show, I'm speaking to Caroline and Jason Zook, a husband and wife duo, and the founders of Wandering Aimfully and Teachery. They talk about how focusing too much on creating shiny new things in their business left them burnt out and forced them to be in a state where they were perpetually launching and reinventing the wheel, all while making little long-term or sustainable progress in their business.

     

    Caroline Zook: There's a danger in being the idea person because without any self-restraint, you can find yourself creating new things and new things and new things all the time. And we just found that it was exhausting trying to create a profitable business when we were always in this create and launch mode.

     

    Eman Ismail: Welcome to Mistakes That Made Me the podcast that asks extraordinary business owners to share their biggest business mistake so you know what not to do on your road to success. My name's Eman Ismail, and I'm an email strategist and copywriter for online business owners and e-commerce brands. I'm a podcast lover, a pizza binger, a proud mama of two, and I have this radical idea that if maybe us business owners were a little less guarded and a lot more open about the mistakes we've made, we could help each other grow a business that brings us more joy and less regret.

     

    Eman Ismail: Hey, Jason and Caroline, thank you so much for being here.

     

    Caroline Zook: Thank you for having us. We're so excited. 

     

    Jason Zook: Thank you so much.

     

    Eman Ismail: Thank you. Tell me a little bit about who you are and what you do.

     

    Jason Zook: Wow. Where to take it away. Where to start. Uh, we are a husband and wife duo, if you will, and we currently just moved to Portugal three months ago, so that's a big, exciting thing for our lives. But we run two businesses together and have, for the past five years, I've been an entrepreneur for now 15 years. Caroline's been one for 10 years. And we like to think that we bring a little bit of un boring to the online business world. And that's kind of our focus. That's, I'm gonna go with that for me. Yeah. And also I love cinnamon rolls, so I just need that to be like very important in my intro at the end. Very important.

     

    Caroline Zook: It's kind of as brand. Yeah. Um, . But yeah. And just to clarify, the two businesses that we run. So we run Wandering Aimfully, which is in what we like to call an unborn coaching program for intentional online business owners. And then the other business is called Teachery, and that's a software platform that allows you to create online courses.

     

    Eman Ismail: Okay. Now, I have not been part of your, I'm not part of your program, but every time you launch, I'm like, I'm so close to joining every single time just because I love so much how you run your businesses, how you do business, how you show up in business, where you choose not to show up, and that idea of doing business really intentionally has always just really stuck with me, and that's, that's what I love most.

     

    I wanna know before we dive into more of that, because I'm gonna ask you some questions about that. I wanna know how you got into business together. Like how did that happen?

     

    Caroline Zook: Yeah, so to funny enough that our first experience kind of working together was back when Jason had his own kind of interesting marketing company himself. It was a business called, I Wear Your Shirt. It was basically influencer marketing before that was a thing. So he would, this is 2009. This is 2009.

     

    This is way back. Companies would pay him to wear their logo on his t-shirt and then he would promote them on Facebook and Twitter and yada yada. And again, 2009. Yeah. Okay. So this is before Instagram.

     

    Jason Zook: I had a At a Flicker account. Yeah. Just to like, for anybody who remembers that. Yeah, that was, I used that.

     

    Caroline Zook: So if you wanna learn more about that era of business, there's plenty of podcast interviews and, and plenty of good stuff there. But interestingly enough, so around that time, he, it was sort of the height of that business and I had just started my career in advertising and I worked at a few different agencies.

     

    And then I started to get really jealous because , we were living together at the time and I was just in this advertising agency job as a social media manager. And I was not enjoying myself. I did not like the corporate politics of the agency world. And every day I had a 45 minute commute downtown to my office.

     

    And I would almost get ready to, to be out the door and Jason would be like, oh babe, can you like, Paint my face like a lion for like a video that I'm recording today. about like a Halloween costume company. And I would do this like really creative thing and then I would be so jealous because I would have to go to my boring advertising job and he got to make videos all day and and work for himself.

     

    And so it became very clear that I was gonna find a way to figure out this online business thing and work for him. So, cut to about a year later, I convinced him he needs help with the operations. The business is growing and we start to work together because at that point, the business could kind of support both of us and that was our first kind of dipping our toe into it.

     

    Uh, and it turns out we didn't break up , so it went pretty well and a few years after that, um, that was sort of my first, taste of what it was like to be your own boss, what it was like to grow your own company. And I really credit him with like, kind of guiding me through that process because a couple of years later that business ended up closing down and I thought, am I gonna have to go back and get another advertising job?

     

    And that was really my plan. And he said, you know, it was kind of that point where he was like, I really think that you are ready to do your own thing. You know, you've been doing it for me for a long time. Start your own business. And so that was when I had to take a hard look at my skills and go, what can I monetize?

     

    Like what do I think I can add value? And that was where I started my own design business. And so I credit him with really encouraging me to just go for it. And it, that's not to say that it was a success right away. I had to learn a lot. But after about six months, that's when things started taking off.

     

    So we did a couple of years apart. He sort of had his own thing going. I had my own thing going, 

     

    Jason Zook: was the same apart, but we worked like literally like we're in the same room to each next to each other. Just on different businesses. 

     

    Caroline Zook: Separate businesses. Yeah. We, uh, you know, at that point I'm doing design services then kind of foraying that into digital products, online courses, he's doing the same thing.

     

    And then finally around 2018. 

     

    Jason Zook: 20, yeah. 2017. Because it, 2017, it took a whole year of convincing for me to convince Caroline that it was a good idea to come back together. Right. Like, and I think the first, 

     

    Caroline Zook: By that point I was like, um, I'm kind of doing my own thing. . 

     

    Jason Zook: Yeah. The phrase that I kept coming to was just like, we're better together.

     

    Like we, we collaborate a ton on our different businesses and we always bounce ideas off each other. Again, we're working like eight feet apart, so it's not like we're working separately and never talking to each other. And I, I just, I kept seeing, like Caroline at that point had like four or five of her own online courses.

     

    I had four or five plus I had some software products. Plus I had this like really weird idea that I did called Buy My Future, and all of it was kind of like, just, just co-mingling, you know? It was just like the Venn diagrams were overlapping, the Venn diagrams of vendi. It was just like all. And, and I think it took about six to eight months of daily walks the end of the day, which is like a ritual for us that we've just had forever that helps us clear our minds, for me to be like, okay, let's combine everything and let's just like make it all one business and like create an ethos. And that's what Caroline's amazingly good at. I'm good at wearing lion makeup. So it tells you where the real skills lie, and, and let's like actually make one business out of this.

     

    And so that brought us then back together to work on what was Wandering Aimfully and started in 2018 that consolidated everything into one business.

     

    Eman Ismail: Amazing. Okay. Now I am a user of Teachery, your course platform, and I'm a huge fan. I've been using it since I, I think I, since I started my, my, since I created my first course back in 2019, I've been using

     

    Jason Zook: Amazing. You can, you can say since it was ugly, since it was ugly , you can say, you can say, I've been using it since it was ugly. Because, and it, it, it's a great lesson just for all of your listeners that like, anytime you make anything, it starts ugly. And, and just, and that's okay. You have to have people that believe in it enough to buy it or use it or whatever.

     

    And you're a perfect example of that. Like you use Teachery in the ugly phase of Teachery, but it did a good enough job. And now it's, it's beautiful because Caroline redesigned the whole thing in a year. Uh, so yeah. I just want to commend amazing you for sticking through the ugly phase of we appreciate that.

     

    Our own business.

     

    Eman Ismail: I hate, I love Teachery. There was definitely a glow up there Definitely was a glow up. 

     

    Caroline Zook: A much better way of putting it. Thank you. 

     

    Eman Ismail: Yeah. But I, I loved it and it's great and I am really interested to know how, well, why you created Teachery and how that came about as well.

     

    Jason Zook: Yeah, that's a great question. Um, I, we were at a conference together in 2013 and this was like the end of my I Wear Shirt business journey that had just shut down. So Caroline was just starting her own business doing art and design and things. I had no idea what I was gonna do. And a developer actually came up to me at the conference, and this conference was small, it was like a hundred people. It was in Fargo, North Dakota. And he came up to me and he was like, Hey, like I really, I love the, I Wear Your Shirt project. I think it's so creative. If you ever need a developer for any idea, like obviously you come up with weird ideas, I would be happy to work on something with you. And I was like, oh, that's cool.

     

    Like, I've worked with a couple developers here and there, but nothing really stuck and it was right at this time as I was transitioning into something else that, uh, someone had told me, you know, hey, you should make a course on how to help get sponsorships because you've gotten, you know, at that point it was like 2000 total sponsors between I Wear Your Shirt, selling my last name, sponsors in a book, like all these crazy projects.

     

    And, and I was like, oh, you know what? Like I, I do know a thing or two. And which is another great piece of advice of anybody who's looking to get started. Go where, you know, something like you, like Caroline was saying, like, I had these skills, like let me put them to work. And so I, I started to look around this, so this is 2013, I started to look around for course platforms and there were like three at that time. And all of them were terrible, inexpensive. Like they were uglier than Teacher. Teacher he was when you used Teachery. And so I was like, well this can't be that difficult. Of course, that's like the entrepreneur's dilemma, right? You get an idea, you're like, it can't be that difficult to make a course.

     

    Little do you know? Yeah. So I gave myself like a handful of hours to design what I would want a course to look like cuz I wanted it to look better than all these other platforms. 

     

    Caroline Zook: I did it and be branded and be 

     

    Jason Zook: custom and have some nice colors and not just like, 

     

    Caroline Zook: You know, everything out there looks very like kind of corporate and just like nothing branded about it. So I think that's the heart of Teachery, like where it began is really customization and wanting it to look like your own brand. 

     

    Jason Zook: Yeah. So I, I designed literally a Photoshop file, uh, which was hilarious and I, I actually had a different developer at the time who I was working with, other things, and so he quickly did that and as I got like a working prototype in like a WordPress version of this course, I sent it to some friends to ask them about the content and I was like, hey, what do you think about this content in this course?

     

    Like, does it help you understand like my methodologies and getting sponsorships? And they're like, eh, I don't really know or care, but what platform is this? 

     

    And I was like, oh, that's interesting. Like every single person who's looking at this is asking me about the, like the platform itself. And so I actually went back to that developer and I was like, Hey, I kind of put together this little working prototype.

     

    Would you be interested? You asked if you could do some development stuff, could we make something? And so that was like the end of 2013. I was already selling the, the sponsorship course through this like cobbled together WordPress thing, which was great because that actually provided some of the money to like help us build the first version of, of Teachery.

     

    And so Gerlando was the name of, of my development partner at the time. He's no longer with Teachery and it was amicable, so I don't have to like hide that story . Uh, but he, he basically helped build the very first even uglier version that uh, we still have one customer for our very first paid plan who has been with us since 2014.

     

    I don't know that she's ever used Teachery. Yes, she has, but she has stuck with us for now nine years, which is just incredible. But yeah, that's, That's how Teachery started. And then yeah, it just evolved from there in really trying to help people have a creative course platform. A course platform that lets you customize things.

     

    Jason Zook: And so over the years, it has definitely evolved into what we hope is one of the most customizable platforms, especially from like a styling and branding perspective. Um, we don't have all the features that everybody else might have of like doing everything, but that's not what we specialize in. We just want the course to reflect your brand and look amazing, and you can get the rest of the features in other different places.

     

    Eman Ismail: Yeah, I think one of the things that I love most about Teachery was, well, at the time when I joined it was really. Uh, common for course creation platforms to charge you, like for every student. So like for every buyer that buys your course, you're they're, they're charging you a little bit for that, for that course student. So you're essentially like, the more successful your course is, the more you're being punished. 

     

    Jason Zook: Yeah, exactly. 

     

    Eman Ismail: more and more of your money. And so that was something Teachery did not do. You just charge us a flat fee to use the platform and that was it. And it just felt so like, wholesome and just like, you know, this has been created by someone who gets us as small business owners and who is a small business owner like us and who just wants to help the community.

     

    And so that was one of the things that really attracted me to Teachery at the time.

     

    Caroline Zook: I'm so glad to hear that. Yeah. That is a big kind of guiding principle for us in every decision we make in our businesses. It's always like, would we, like, how would we feel if we were the customer and this was the decision that the software made? Or, or even with our program, like I, you know, no fault to other business owners who are all about like, don't leave money on the table, like, that's fine if that's what your primary goal is, but something that's never been our primary goal.

     

    Like we really believe that our businesses are a tool in order to support a life that feels really good. And so we are big fans of leaving money on the table.

     

    Eman Ismail: Mm-hmm.

     

    Caroline Zook: will leave money on the table if it means trading something like our integrity or if it means trading something like our peace of mind, or if it means doing something that we know that we wouldn't like as a customer.

     

    Like that's usually what we defer to. And again, like it's usually we have to then balance that decision with like, okay, well is this still like sustainable? And for us, a flat monthly fee, like without charging per student, like that's still a business that can run very well. So why trade that? Um, just for that little extra bit.

     

    So

     

    Eman Ismail: Yeah. I love, I love it and I appreciated it so much and still do. I was just listening to your podcast and obviously we're kind of, we're still kind of in goal setting season. We are recording this in February 2023. And so most people have either set goals or are feeling really crappy because they've still not set their goals, kinda like me.

     

    Um, what, on your podcast, you spoke about this idea of having an enough number and for your own financial goal, you've set this enough number, tell me about the enough number.

     

    Jason Zook: Yeah, I mean this, I think this really stemmed for me way back at the beginning of my I Wear Shirt project in 2009, where I just had this like arbitrary goal, like, I wanna make a million dollars in my business. And, and I chased after that goal for years, and I never got there. I got to like 600 some odd thousand dollars, which is amazing.

     

    Like that's a prolific amount of money to make in a business, especially when you're just like doing everything by yourself. Or you have a wife who does your lion makeup. Sure. Uh, but also Caroline did so much else, I'm just using that as a joke. But what I found in chasing this like gigantic financial goal was it always made me feel bad when I didn't hit it.

     

    And so it was like this giant number that for no other reason other than just sounds cool to make that money I was chasing after that. So I think over the years we've really kind of honed in on this idea of enough across a lot of things in business. Enough customers for Teachery who don't wanna pay transaction fees and like give a bunch of money to a platform for really no reason. Like it doesn't cost that much money to run a course platform. but for us from a like a revenue standpoint, every single year it becomes really easy to sit down and go, okay, well this is the year Wandering Aimlessly makes a million dollars. But why? Like, we don't, we don't need to deliver a a million dollar lifestyle.

     

    And that's no, uh, offense to anybody who wants to make a million dollars. Fantastic if that's your goal. But what we found is in chasing these giant numbers, it leads you to make decisions that you don't really like. It leads you to go down a lot of different, like marketing and advertising avenues that maybe you don't wanna do.

     

    And also your expenses always go up as you make more revenue, right? And so what we really started to come, come back to was, what if we make like a really achievable number? It's still a bigger number. And that number doesn't have to stay our enough number forever. And, and we actually, so we said at the beginning of Wandering Aimfully, we said it enough number it was to make $33,000 a month with Wandering Aimfully as a monthly recurring number.

     

    Yeah. 

     

    Caroline Zook: And the thing with enough numbers that I think there's like three pieces to it of why, it's just a methodology that works for us. And the first one is, speaks to what Jason just said about chasing arbitrary numbers. And the thing about an enough number is you come up with that number based on what, like you break it down into what actually a good life would look like for you. So you're not just going a million dollars, you're going, wow, okay. So if every month I could. You know, have this amount of living expenses to live this level of lifestyle that makes me feel good. You know, maybe travel's important to me, so I wanna be able to take two trips a year.

     

    So that's what that would cost. Okay. I have like an aging parent and I need to pay for their, you know, care. So let me add that in there. I have kids, I, I wanna pay for childcare so I have time to work on my business. Like, you really break down what does my ideal life look like into financial numbers. And they're not gonna be accurate a hundred percent, but it just, it, it gives you a number to work towards that actually has some tangible bearing on what your life is gonna feel like.

     

    The thing with a million dollars is, I have no idea what my life then feels like if I make a million dollars, right? But I know what my life looks like if I make $33,000 a month because I've broken it down by every piece of it. So that's the first piece, is like, that goal now means something to you in terms of the life you're trying to achieve.

     

    The second one for me is just this notion of satisfaction. And so the, the, the mental image that I always have with enough is like, the thing about being satisfied in your life is, I think it's about defining the size of the container. And what I mean by that is like our, our human brains are always gonna want more, more money, more this, more that.

     

    Like we're just wired for that, right? And so it's this container that by not defining it, it's endless. It's in infinitely large. And so it just keeps filling up everything around you. The thing to me about defining enough is it's me saying, here's the size of the container, because I know if the container is this big, so let's say in financial terms, it's $33,000.

     

    That's the size of my container. When that, when that starts to get filled up and I hit that number, I look around and I go, oh my gosh, that feels so good. That feel, I feel satisfied because I, I set how big that container would be as opposed to never setting the container and always being hungry or always wanting more.

     

    Jason Zook: Yeah. And like in my case, when I hit $600,000 in revenue, I, I was like bummed out. Right? And how many entrepreneurs do we hear? Like similar stories like that, where they're like, oh, my business is a failure. Like fell short. You're like, your business made gobs of money. You know, like in the grand scheme of things, like you, you made a good amount of money, but you never set that upper limit of what that would look like.

     

    Caroline Zook: And again, it doesn't mean that it can't change, it doesn't mean because as your life changes, your goals will change. So what that number is could change. But I think just going through the exercise of asking yourself, what does that money mean in tangible terms in my life, how much will it take for me to feel good and satisfied and like I'm living like a rich life, whatever level that is for you. I think that's a good question to ask. 

     

    Jason Zook: Yeah. And I, one, one last point that we have some like actual anecdotal data that are Wandering Aimfully members, so many of them go through this enough number exercise themselves. So it's just like Caroline's saying, it's like you take care of all the minimum stuff that you need, your rent payment, your mortgage payment, your grocery bills, you know all the life, you know, your life insurances and things like that.

     

    But then you look at, okay, what are the things on top that like I would need for my say, daycare? Uh, we do need to buy a new car. Car is really old, you know, like of two vacations a year. You total that number up and it's almost always to a t And we've seen this through a thousand people being through modern.

     

    Way less than people think. And they're actually shocked when they go, oh, I, I put this number to paper and it's like, way less money than I thought I needed to make to actually live like the ideal life that I wanna live. And again, that's not to say that your enough numbers aren't gonna change. Like ours, ours changed from 2018, it was $33,000 a month, and now it's almost doubled that. And there's a very good reason for that. And it's because we want to buy a house. And so we know that we need to save more money and put more money aside. We also have aging parents, so we're trying to save for that to know that that's gonna be something that we're gonna take on. 

     

    Caroline Zook: We also hope we will have children at some point. We hear they're kind of expensive.

     

    Jason Zook: We hear they take money to, to, you know, operate. Uh, but yeah, it, it's, it's one of those things that I think it for a lot of people when they first hear about setting an enough number, they're like, oh, I don't wanna feel limited by that. And it's like Caroline was saying, it's not about feeling limited, it's about feeling satisfied and it's about feeling like, oh, I actually hit a number in my business that makes me feel really good. And now like I don't have to keep chasing other numbers. I can just exist and run my business and be happy. 

     

    Caroline Zook: Yeah. And before I forget, cuz I will, I did mention three things and for those people out there listening, going, what was the third thing? Cause I like set up this whole three thing. The last piece of the enough number that uh, I think is important to note is it's an also an acknowledgement of trade-offs. And it's what we alluded to before, which is let's say, let's say 33, or let's say 50 is the number, by trying to go for a hundred thousand dollars a month, you're acknowledging that, that extra is going to require extra things of you as well, that you don't want. And this is something that a lot of entrepreneurs don't talk about, which is they're like, I wanna grow, I wanna grow my team, I wanna grow my revenue.

     

    But there's almost always some type of negative trade off to that growth. And so it's an acknowledgement of like, okay, as a business owner, I want to be aware of what those trade-offs are so that I can choose which of those I want and which I don't.

     

    Eman Ismail: This is so refreshing, to hear, and when I first heard you talk about this, it was like, Jason, you just said some people feel limited by it. I just feel liberated by it. Like it just makes me feel so free and it makes me feel like you don't just have to just follow any kind of random numbers that are floating around.

     

    We all have like, like those numbers that are floating around and I'm in a really weird place in my business. I was talking about this in the, in one of the previous episodes with a guest called Layinka Sanni where she spoke about her like obsession with making six figures when she first became a business owner.

     

    And she had no clue why she wasn't even making a thousand pounds a month. But this coach promised her that she could make six figures a month when she wasn't making a thousand. And so, you know, she joins this program and you know, that whole thing, we all know that. So we spoke, we were talking a lot about the fact that I have, I have just kind of exceeded six figures.

     

    And so, and then you kind of look at this and you go, ah, okay, so there's a difference between revenue and profit . 

     

    Caroline Zook: Mm-hmm. . Yeah. 

     

    Eman Ismail: Business is making and what I'm taking home. And so then I start thinking about your enough number, like this idea of the enough number. And it's like, okay, great.

     

    I would be really happy. Like I'm happy now. Cool. But I would be really comfortable if I could just, if I could double my take home pay. That's, that's the, like the simple goal, right? So while it's not maybe like easy to, to do, that's a really simple goal for me. And I can think, okay, this year that's what I'm gonna focus on is just doubling my take home pay.

     

    How can I make that happen? And so, yeah, and it's, it's felt really great. I am, I'm in a place where I feel like, you know, I can say no to the projects that don't feel great and no to the ideas that, you know, don't make me excited. And I know that's a really privileged place to be in, but I have a goal, a simple goal. And I'm not aiming for like, what feels like the moon. This feels doable and realistic.

     

    Jason Zook: And I love that it's, it's a specific goal for you. Exactly. Like that's the thing that we, we really try and hit home with this because it's like you said, like we all know these, people that are out in the world and, and maybe they're well-intentioned that are trying to teach people how to have six figure business months or even five figure business months, and it's fine.

     

    And like we're, we're saying that as people who make that amount of money in our business, not six figure months, but make decent money, is that there are always trade offs to trying to hit those goals. And it's like you're saying like when you start to really get into your business and you see like, okay, my business made over a hundred thousand dollars this year, but it actually costs me like $60,000 to run my business. So I am only taking home $40,000. I could make more than that, getting a regular job, you know, like what? And I, and it feels like a struggle to run my business. So I think that there's a lot of realities that people run into that they, they hear these dreams and they hear these things, but they don't hear all the nuance that comes along with what it takes to get to those places.

     

    As opposed to if you were someone who said, I just wanna make, I want a business that makes $60,000 a year but is ultra profitable, like it costs me like $5,000 a month to run it, or $5,000 a year to run it, you're now making more money with a business that makes less on paper and doesn't seem as sexy to other people, but it's more profitable.

     

    Like you are actually taking more money out of the business. 

     

    Caroline Zook: Which goes back to what you were saying at the top, which is it's about you and it's about the individual. And we probably should have prefaced this entire conversation, which we often like to do, which is take everything we say, put it through the lens of your own self-awareness, put it through the lens of your own circumstances. We certainly don't want to be out here saying that like the right way to do business is to set an enough number. Yeah. All we wanna be is an alternative way of thinking about things. Because I feel like the narrative out there, which is the dominant narrative, is the one about chasing the arbitrary numbers.

     

    And all we ever wanna be with Wandering Aimfully is to kind of be like the kid in the corridor being like, but what if we don't have to do it that way? 

     

    Jason Zook: Yeah.

     

    Eman Ismail: I love it. And also I feel like your question is, but why? Why do you wanna do it that way? 

     

    Caroline Zook: Yeah. 

     

    Eman Ismail: Right. And I love that. And you've taught me to question myself and my own intentions, which I absolutely love. 

     

    Okay. I have so many questions I could ask you that we would never actually get to the mistake. I know, right?

     

    But let's get to the reason I invited you here. Are you ready?

     

    Caroline Zook: Ready? Sure. Ready? We're ready.

     

    Eman Ismail: Okay. Jason and Caroline, what is the mistake that made you?

     

    Caroline Zook: You gonna go for it? Sure. 

     

    Jason Zook: I mean, I think specifically we'll go with what made Wandering Aimfully turn from a business that didn't feel like it was going to succeed in the beginning, and we were making like $1,500 a month and not feeling like the business was gonna be successful and meet our goals. And that mistake was focusing too much on creating new things and not marketing an existing thing that was working. And so I think we see this all the time. We all run into this where it's so, it's so gratifying to make new things. Mm-hmm. Like you get the excitement, you have the idea, you're going through all your tasks, this, you're using your productivity tools, and then this, this shiny thing exists that didn't exist before and you put your heart and your soul and your branding and everything into it. But then who's gonna buy it? Because all you've done is spend time making things. And now people don't know that it exists. 

     

    Caroline Zook: They don't know why they should care. They don't know what problem it solves. Yeah, you're, you just sort of like emerge from this creation cave and you're like, look at this new thing. And everyone's like, cool, but how does it help me? 

     

    Jason Zook: Haven't heard from you two years, haven't heard from you, you know, like you've just been like in a cave. And so, yeah, I think that mistake for us was really the big turning point in Wandering Aimfully. And we can actually see it like in our revenue chart, we can see the, the time that we basically drew a line in the sand and said, we're not gonna make any more things.

     

    We need to focus on how this thing can actually be marketed, promoted, how the positioning can be changed, how we can make sure we're attracting our right audience, how we're putting out good, consistent content.

     

    Caroline Zook: And that was a lesson that it took a long time to learn, which I know we'll dig into eventually, but I think we had to experience the, the detriment that comes with focusing too much on creation for long enough until the pain was so great that we were like, there has to be another way.

     

    Yeah. Um, so I'm sure we'll get to that point, but that was our MO for so many years because we're idea people. We a hundred percent, the place where we shine is ideas. We will never run out of ideas. There's a confidence in that. That's not me trying to be boastful. That's just like, that is where our brains both live.

     

    But there's a, there's a danger in being the idea person because without any self-restraint, you can find yourself creating new things and new things and new things all the time. And we just found that it was exhausting trying to create a profitable business when we were always in this create and launch mode.

     

    Eman Ismail: That makes so much sense. I, I totally get it. And I feel like a lot of people listening will be nodding their heads like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Potentially in that stage right now. So, paint a picture of what business looked like back then. You had Wandering Aimfully, like you'd already started this coaching program. It's making $1,500 a month, did you 

     

    Jason Zook: Yeah, yeah. 

     

    Caroline Zook: Yeah. At the, at the beginning. Yeah. So it was, we've changed the revenue model over time, which is an interesting probably podcast in itself that we should probably do at some point. But, yeah, in the very early days it was a subscription model of a hundred dollars a month. And so we did a pre-launch where we got 15 people, kind of, this is before it even existed and thank goodness we had an audience at that point, because that just shows you like 15 people who also, by the way, were paying monthly for about, it took a, we thought it was gonna take us five weeks to build Wandering Aimfully, it took us five months. They're paying five months and just because they believe in us. And so in those early months we just had the $1,500 a month and they really were like the funding that got it off the ground. So, yeah, growing it from $1,500 a month and, and at that point it was sort of this umbrella that housed all of our courses, all of our pro, you know, products like Teachery and Jason had several other software products that are now in our lovely idea graveyard. and so it was just, it was sort of this umbrella membership for all of these different tools to grow your online business.

     

    Eman Ismail: Okay. So why were these other ideas coming from? Like what were they and why were you like busy creating other stuff?

     

    Caroline Zook: Yeah, I think we were so really to tell that story, we kind of have to back up to that. The previous years before Jason convinced me to do Wandering Aimfully because that period of time between 2014 to 2018 when Wandering Aimfully came on the map, we were just in utter creation mode. And it was, I think it was because the little bit of success that we got that was somewhat repeatable income was this idea of creating a course and launching it, right? And, and we loved the process, but it was this feast or famine. And I think a lot of people will understand this about creating new products. It was this feat or famine kind of thing where you would, the money would dry up and then you'd come up with a new idea and you'd launch a new thing and then you'd get a little bit of a bump of sales and that would fund you to the next thing.

     

    And I think a little bit of that was because the, we would see the money dry up. We would, instead of going, huh there, the customer journey might be broken here. In order for someone to kind of market this effectively, consistently, instead of trying to solve that problem, we would go to the, the comfortable thing for us, which was just, spin up a new thing and spin up a new thing and spin up a new thing.

     

    And before you know it, you have Wandering Aimfully and it has like 40 courses in it. You know, and you're just like, how long can we really do this? And you end up feeling scatterbrained, you end up feeling it's, it's, it becomes incredibly hard to market.

     

    You know, the idea of Wandering Aimfully was, first of all our desire for simplicity. It was like, let's get a vehicle to pull all this stuff together. But then it becomes incredibly hard to market Wandering Aimfully when you're like, well it can do this and it can do that, and it can do this. And you can learn art courses, but you can also do email list growth. And that's actually still, we've figured that problem out to a degree, but we still, because we are people who have a lot of different skills, we still struggle with that a little bit because we're a very general, program.

     

    But yeah, we were just in that place of always relying on that comfortable kind of profit lever, which was let's create a new thing.

     

    Eman Ismail: Yeah, I can totally relate.I'm kind of in a moment right now where I've had this idea for about a year and it's been bugging me, and it almost got to the point where I almost created it just because it was, it was just annoying me that it, this thing was in my head, right? It's almost like to just cut the tension and to just get it out of your head.

     

    You'll just do the thing, right? It's causing that much, tension in you. And then I stopped and spoke to some coaches I'm working with right now, and they were like, we don't love this idea for you, but if you love it, like we'll support you. But here's why it could be problematic for you. And then walked me through that.

     

    It's a subscription like model idea as well, and they were like, Hmm. It's a lot. Like, it's a lot. And. And it was great because they actually came to me and they said, you told us that you want things to be simpler and easier, and this is not helping you get to that goal. You're actually making things more complicated for yourself.

     

    Right? So is there anything we can do that already exists, like where we can help you maybe market something that already exists a bit more and sell more of an existing thing than creating anything? So I totally relate, and I guess my question is how, I mean, I can imagine how and why this became a problem, but how does it show up in your life and business that okay, this is seriously a problem? Like we're creating too much, we're doing too much. It's all just too much.

     

    Jason Zook: Yeah. It's a couple different things. It's, you do a launch. So like, you know, we were, we were kind of doing these little like monthly enrollments. Once Wandering Aimfully was going to be like, okay, we're just going to let like a handful of people in. And that was good. And it helped us get a good core group of beginning users.

     

    But then after a while, like people stopped signing up and so we were like, oh, that, that kind of sucks. And then at the same time as Wandering Aimfully as a thing existed, it's, you know, a membership, it has a dashboard, it has access to all these courses and things we've created, people started canceling. And we're like, oh, crap. Like people are canceling. 

     

    So we would send cancellation emails and be like, you know, we're so sorry. Like, um, this wasn't the right fit for you. We totally understand. Can you just tell us why you canceled so we can learn from it? And almost to a t every single person was like, I just didn't know what to do. You know, there was just so much stuff, I felt overwhelmed. I didn't really know what problem you were solving, and they were 100% right. We weren't solving any specific problems. And it's like Caroline was saying, like you could take an art course from us, you could take a sponsorship course, you could take a copywriting course, you could use Teachery. It was just a, a, a big pile of stuff. 

     

    Caroline Zook: And that actually is a big lesson that we learned amidst all of that, which is sometimes when you're a creative person, it can be easy to just want to create stuff because of, and there are lots of good reasons, like you said, of like, I just, this idea has been bugging me and like, I just wanna get it onto the world. And I think, I think that's fine. But that's how you end up with 40 courses. But that's how you end up with 40 courses. And then, and, and what re we realized is that turning point was when we said, okay, the past four years have been about kind of serving our creative exploration needs. Maybe the next four years is about focusing on what are the needs of our audience and really trying to solve problems for them.

     

    And it, and it sounds so simple because this is advice you hear a lot in, in business, which is just understand your audience, understand what they need, and position your offers so that they're solving a problem. Right. But we were not living that very simple like tactic at all in any way. We were just sort of like, well, wouldn't, wouldn't you love a course about, you know, something else? All the things. And rather than positioning it in such a way that it was solving their problem. 

     

    So, I don't know it, this is too harsh of terms, but I'm just putting it in simple terms so it's easy to understand. Those four years from like 2014 to, to 2018 were kind of the selfish years of exploration. And the next four years we wanted to be more the selfless years of like really focusing on what are their needs, really focusing on creating the things to fit the holes of whatever they're experiencing in their business.

     

    Jason Zook: Yeah, and I, I think one of the, like the biggest turning points for us to get out of the, the phase of only making $1500 bucks and no one buying and people canceling, was we really said like, what is the, what is the one problem that we are trying to solve for people? Like, what is that thing? And what we, what we started with at that point in like late 2018 or early 2019 was, people are burnt out. Like they're burnt out from trying to transition from working with clients to building a digital product business so that they don't have to work with clients. And they're just like, they can't find the time, they don't have a system to do it. And everybody that's trying to sell them on this is saying, you can do this in 30 days, you can do this in 60 days. 

     

    And guess what happens? You try really hard, you do as much work as you can, and then you just don't accomplish it at 60 days and you feel burnt out and you feel terrible cause you didn't accomplish it. 

     

    And so what we did is we put together a six month program that was like, just take it slowly. And it's kind of like we've talked about with so many other things. It's like the antithesis of what everyone else is selling. Like we were just open and honest with like, it will take you longer than everyone is telling you. And it's funny because this was like one of the big jumps in Wandering Aimfully's revenue and people signing up because they said, oh, that's a problem I have. That's a problem I want solved in a way that I haven't tried to do it before. I've only tried to do the, like, get your course seven running in 30 days and make six figures at your first launch. And it hasn't happened for people. They made a thousand, you know, uh, dollars or pounds in, in a launch, and that feels very deflating.

     

    And so we really shifted from a lot of the other ideas that were out there around this topic and this problem to like, let's just do something where the, the stakes are really low for someone to feel like they've succeeded and they also get supported in a community of other people trying to do this thing.

     

    Caroline Zook: And going back to your original question, which was how does this show up in your daily life? I would say one of the most frustrating things at that time was it felt like we were. always reinventing the wheel. So it felt like we would get a wheel kind of like moving down the road, and then it, it would just slowly, slowly, slowly slow down and we'd have to throw it out and build a whole new wheel and then get it going again.

     

    And so this turning point that Jason's referring to is when we started to really shift our thinking into what problem are we solving, shift our thinking into really trying to get in the head of our, our ideal customer, and how can we make their life better, make their business better. Once we started doing that and, and building out the offer based around that, the, the biggest thing happened, which was it didn't feel like we were constantly rebuilding the wheel. It felt like we would push the wheel a little bit and it would keep spinning, and then the next thing we would do, we would just get it going a little faster and suddenly this momentum, and that's the biggest difference I feel in our business now compared to those four years before, is you're not in this stop and start and stop and start and drying up and then pushing again.

     

    We build the wheels, it's like the wheel. And now I, I feel like last year was our big test of this because we traveled throughout Europe all of last year and it was not a growth year for you. For us, our entire goal was just to keep the businesses going and to still serve our customers in a way that felt good, but not to add anything new or really improve, you know, too much, but just could we just really enjoy the hard work that we had put in for the past four years, and to see that without even an extra push last year, that wheel kept spinning on its own is the most gratifying thing to experience as a business owner.

     

    Eman Ismail: I mean, I just, so many things, so many things running through my mind right now. First of all, I told you before we started recording that I absolutely loved following your year in Europe. It was just amazing. And also to be able to hear you say that you had the goal of just keeping the business at the same level, like your growth doesn't always have to be the goal.

     

    You don't have to grow every single year because you do feel this pressure to just grow, go, go grow, grow. Like, yeah, even I've been quite open about the new kind of levels I've been hitting and, and there's pressure with that and you're like, oh crap, wait. No, no, I have to do even better next year and the year after and the year after. So it's so refreshing to hear you say that, first of all. 

     

    And one question I did forget to ask you, which I think is would be is really interesting is, do you have anyone else on your team helping you?

     

    Caroline Zook: Not on the, the full-time team, but you can tell her Yeah. For what our, what our, kind of like support team looks like. 

     

    Jason Zook: For Wandering Aimfully, it's essentially just us. And then this past year, actually while we were traveling, we brought on a person to help with accessibility so that we have better transcripts, we have better captions in all of our videos for our members. And she helps with our podcast. And so we're just trying to make our content more accessible to more people. So, and I think we're all seeing that shift happen. Like we all are watching shows with captions more now, and we're, you know, it's just all these different things. So we have a person who's helping us with that, and she's actually a Wandering Aimfully member, which is amazing because it's just fun to like bring someone from our community.

     

    And then, so that's it for Wandering Aimfully that we do everything else. Caroline basically does like, well we both do strategy. Caroline is probably a little bit, she's like, it's like 51 49, Carol. A little more strategy than me. Wow. 

     

    Caroline Zook: Yes. He's really trying to get some bonus points and it's working. 

     

    Jason Zook: Then from a design perspective, it's like 98% Caroline, 2% me.

     

    And then from a, like running a community and like all the admin of Wandering Aimfully, a hundred percents like 99% me, 1% Caroline. But it's great because it works, right? The relationship works. And, and I think the next step for us is we are thinking about probably bringing someone on maybe this year, maybe next year, to kind of just help with a lot of the admin stuff. Like I don't need to be doing that stuff. 

     

    And then on the Teachery side, we have two developers. We have one full-time developer and the one who's kind of part-time ish. Uh, and then we have dabbled with a designer as a freelancer for a while. But that's basically it. And, and I think one of the things, like when I was running my previous business, I Wear Your Shirt, I, I, there were a bunch of employees of that business, and it just was really stressful because every day I just had to think about all of their energies and all their things and, and so, you know, we hear so many people in the online business space who talk about like, oh, you gotta outsource, you gotta get a va, you have to all this stuff. And, and that's all well and good.

     

    And I think some, some people really thrive in those mm-hmm. situations. 

     

    Caroline Zook: Mm-hmm. Some people really love the collaboration and really wanna grow a team. 

     

    Jason Zook: For us, it's just, it's, it's stressful, you because it's someone's expectations of us that we have to manage and we're already trying to manage two businesses completely along with, you know, everything else.

     

    So, yeah. I, I think there's a time and a place for people to grow and I do think if, you know you have a very specific weakness in your business, definitely try and outsource it as soon as possible so that you can focus on where your strengths really lie. 

     

    Caroline Zook: Yeah. This is a perfect example of a, how we try to do things a little differently and b, kind of what we were saying before about knowing yourself because we just wanna be an alternative to the advice out there that says, In order to grow, you have to grow a team.

     

    And that, that might be true in order to grow to a certain degree, but we definitely know for a fact we can head our new enough number without trying to grow our team. And so we just wanna be an alternative in the business space to let people know if they're like us. And you're self-aware enough to know that managing people is something you don't wanna do in the day-to-day, that's okay. 

     

    Like I really think it's okay to know that, because guess what, if you force yourself to grow a team, you're probably gonna be a bad boss. Yeah. Because you don't, you don't wanna be managing people and you don't want to probably learn how to do it really well. I don't wanna be a bad boss. So I think we, that's one of those trade offs that we talked about is like, could we grow, could we 10 x our business if we grew a team, no questions asked. Yes. But we would also 10 x our expenses, we would 10 x our expenses, we would 10 x our headaches and I'd be doing something day to day that I know is not a, a skillset or a, a gifted area of mine. And so that is a discipline that I say I will choose not to do that. Yeah.

     

    Eman Ismail: I love that. And as we were talking, it made me think of Paul Jarvis, who I know is a friend of yours, and I used to listen to your podcast with him, Jason, brilliant podcast. His book, Company of One, this idea that you don't have to just keep growing and growing to have a, you know, a better business, whatever better means to you. I love that idea. 

     

    And the reason I asked is because when I emailed Teachery support and when I did email Teachery support last year when you were traveling around Europe, Jason would literally be the one who was replying to emails.

     

    Jason Zook: That's still it. We, we looked, we actually found this number. I didn't even realize it. I've answered 15,000 support requests since Teachery has existed. So I don't know how many that breaks down to in like, days of Teachery existing, but it's, it's one of those things that like, I think it's a great number and I'm proud of it, but it's also, uh, like a clear thing to me, and we've, this is one of our goals this year, as we talked about on our own podcast, is to hire a support person for Teachery so, I don't really like, I love answering your questions. I want to help you, but I don't think 10 years into running Teachery, need to keep doing that. Yeah. 

     

    And I think that that's an area where it's not my zone of genius and someone is going to do it better, because I can actually already tell too, and I think this is a, a good lesson for anybody listening to this in any part of your business. Like I have less enthusiasm to respond to those messages. And that's just something that happens over time. You know, you, if you design Squarespace sites for 10 years, eventually you're gonna be like, I don't wanna design the Squarespace sites anymore, or I don't wanna do the implementation. Like, I wanna do the design, but I want someone else to implement them.

     

    And so you find someone to kind of fill that gap. And so I think for me, like the next step for Teachery is to maybe just have someone pretend to be me , uh, no, no. But just to have someone who replaces me, but has the enthusiasm to support course creators and people through their journey in using Teachery.

     

    Caroline Zook: Yeah. And that's a perfect example too, just to bring it back to what we were saying, where again, none of these rules are hard and fast. You have to go, I just, I just went on this whole thing about how we know that growing our team is not something that we wanna do. However, you as a business owner, you have to sit down and go, okay, which trade off is worth it?

     

    So is it, is it, what's more important to us? Is it to keep the team small, but Jason's gonna be answering customer support requests for the rest of his life. Maybe . Yeah. Or is it to grow the team by one member of having a customer support person trying to really be diligent in trying to find like the right person, and that's worth it to us.

     

    And so you just, you're always kind of doing that, that calculation, because you're never gonna just be able to adhere to your rules hard and fast all the time. Right. It's just about that flexibility and figuring out as you evolve as a person, how do I want my business to evolve?

     

    Eman Ismail: Yeah. And I mean, I, I asked that question about the team because when you are talking about you're doing everything, you are, you know, spinning, you are creating this wheel and then creating a new one, like from scratch and doing over and over again. It really is you two, like, it's you two doing the thing by yourselves.

     

    It's a, it's a lot. So if you don't mind, I'm really interested to know what like your monthly revenue looks like from Teachery today in comparison to when you first started out?

     

    Jason Zook: So let's give some context of, so Teachery will turn the idea of Teachery turns 10 this year. It existing as a platform turns nine this year. it has never ever had marketing, so it doesn't have, there's no articles there. there's never 

     

    Caroline Zook: been any, so there's social accounts, SEO strategy, 

     

    Jason Zook: nothing.

     

    It's, it's had a website with a homepage, a pricing page, and then you could join. So its intention was a side business forever, which is now changing for us. Now that we have time and focus. I'm saying all that because the number's not gonna be impressive and I wanna make sure people understand that it's an unimpressive number for me.

     

    Caroline Zook: Impressive. Impressive. To whom? It's all relative. 

     

    Jason Zook: Uh, so Teachery, yeah, Teachery makes $12,000 on average a month right now. And so it's gotten to that place again only through word of mouth. So we're actually super proud of that number. You know, it, it doesn't compare to the other course platforms, but in a platform where like you have told someone, you know about Teachery and they have signed up, we've earned that trust with you and we feel really good about that. And again, that business making $144,000 in revenue a year, it's a pretty lean business as far as it goes, and it's a pretty self sustain, sustaining business. Like if we didn't build a single other feature moving forward, I love our developers, we're not gonna stop doing that. But like, we wouldn't have to have developers and like it could just exist and just have it maintained. 

     

    Caroline Zook: I also just wanna zoom out the lens and I want the listener to picture a, a graph that is 10 years long and it's starting at zero and going to $12,000. Because I really feel like this takes our ethos of slow growth to like the next level.

     

    Yeah. Because when we say that we believe in, you know, that it's okay to take as long as you need to take in order to grow a business, we really mean it because this business that we are equally, I would say even probably more excited now than Wandering Aimfully, you're saying? Um, well, no, than it, than we used to.

     

    Oh, than it used to be. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Like we're still 10 years later still so invested in it, but that's 10 years to get it to $12,000 a month. And again, whether that means a lot of money or not a lot of money or whatever your expectation was of it, I don't know. Like Jason said, I'm proud of the fact that we were able to grow it in such an organic way over such a long period of time. Because I think that speaks to the place that we wanna carve out in the business world, which is like, you know, it doesn't have to be hockey stick growth all the time. Yeah. Yeah.

     

    Eman Ismail: Mm-hmm. it, it's amazing. I'd actually, I actually knew that already about Teachery in terms of the no marketing thing, but I'd forgotten it, so I'm glad you mentioned it. And by the way, I am an affiliate and every time, every month, like a little bit of money comes in and I'm like, Ooh, it's Teachery. It's so exciting. 

     

    Caroline Zook: My Teachery money.

     

    Jason Zook: We appreciate that. Like that's, that's a huge thing. I mean, Wandering Aimfully has now turned into that too. Like yeah, we, we do marketing and we do stuff for Wandering Aimfully more than we do for Teachery, but our affiliates, the people who are Wandering Aimfully members are some of the most helpful in, in helping grow the platform.

     

    And what we've seen is it's not just help grow the platform and then we make more money and then like the community kind of dies. It's like, no, it's, it's great people bringing in great people like, and we feel really lucky to have that both in Teachery and in Wandering Aimfully. And so I think if anybody listen to this is like, you know, our affiliates still a good business model. Absolutely. We have two businesses that thrive from them and that are actually very healthy, fun businesses to run with great people who want to be there and want to be doing the work and, and having fun.

     

    Eman Ismail: Oh, amazing. Affiliate stuff is definitely something I wanna look into a little bit more this year. So that gives me the motivation I need.

     

    And then in terms of Wandering Aimfully, in terms of that revenue monthly, what does that looking like now?

     

    Jason Zook: So Wandering Aimfully has an interesting pricing model. As Caroline alluded to earlier, it started out as a membership. That was just a hundred dollars a month ongoing. And we, so it, it evolved from a, a project before that that I mentioned called Buy My Future. And then we actually did a kind of like a preview of Wandering Aimfully that was Buy Our Future. And so it was this idea that you basically bought like all of our stuff and then anything we create in the future for like a one time set price. And so that price was $1,500. And then we started Wandering Aimfully, it, it got up to $2,000. 

     

    So right now Wandering Aimfully, if you think about it, it's just a $2,000 product coaching program.

     

    Yeah. Coaching program. But we kind of sell it as like a lifetime membership. Yep. So you can pay via a hundred dollars monthly payment or you can pay via a $400 per month payment to pay it off faster. Um, so the reason I say that is because our revenue. goes up and down as people pay their memberships off.

     

    And we love that. So like one of my favorite things that I do a couple days every single week is I get to send someone an email and say, you just finished paying off Wandering Aimfully. You will never pay us another dollar for anything we create. 

     

    Caroline Zook: And they get everything we create in the future, lifetime access to it.

     

    Jason Zook: And it's one of those moments that like, I think you have, when you hear back from me and Teachery support and it's like, oh, that's actually, it's like, oh, this is actually a real thing. Like it wasn't just a note on the sales page, like, you, you live, eat and breathe this. And like, I'm actually not going to pay you anymore.

     

    There's no secret upsell into like a mastermind or anything crazy. So anyway, to get back to your question, all the caveats on a revenue, uh, right now, as of today, I think Wandering Aimfully is making $27,000 per month in recurring revenue. So we hit our enough goal. the end of 2021. 2021, which was $33,000. 

     

    Caroline Zook: So we, we crossed that $33,000 threshold at the end of 2021, which was an amazing feeling. Yeah. And then, like we just said, 2022 wasn't a growth year for us. And if, and if you're gonna take a backseat because of our lifetime pro pricing model, you're going to dip. So that was why Jason said all the caveats, because you might be like, oh, you went backwards, like you lost all these people. And it's like, no, actually we were gaining people, but if you don't gain at a rate, like if, if our 2022 rate of new customers was not the same as our 2021, you're gonna see that revenue number dip a little bit, which is totally okay for us. And we would so much rather kind of have that unique pricing model and, and we have found, we wouldn't recommend it to everyone. I will say that. Mm-hmm. We've done a, a podcast episode on lifetime pricing to give some of those caveats. I, I think it's, there are challenges to it for sure, mainly the one that Jason just mentioned, which is you are gonna see that number dip. And if you're, you know, kind of freaking out, you might, 

     

    Jason Zook: Which we did early on, you did like, you know, you start to see it go down, you're like, wait, this is going the wrong way. 

     

    Caroline Zook: But again, we're comparing that to like, when we were reinventing the wheel every five seconds.

     

    So we were like, I don't care. The wheel is still turning, it could be turning a little bit more slowly and then I'll just give it another kick and it'll start turning more quickly. And like that. We like that. But yeah, so we really love that.

     

    Eman Ismail: That's amazing. And so how long has Wandering Aimfully been running now from like beginning to now?

     

    Jason Zook: March of 2018 was the first. Nikki May was our first buyer. Thanks Nikki. Uh, she, she was the very first person who bought Wandering Aimfully. And so we do, we had a couple different various versions of membership and like monthly launches, but now we have a pretty solid system that we've really honed and has worked well as it especially approved last year while we were traveling full-time.

     

    We do two launches a year, spring and fall, two enrollment periods. And that's where all of our members end up joining us. And our affiliates can invite people year round, which is kind of like one nice caveat of like, that they have a friend. Like we don't make them wait for an enrollment, which is, which is fun.

     

    And we've, we've just found that it's like, we didn't do that in the beginning, but then people will be like, hey, like my friend Sarah really wants to get him right now. We're like, well, that would be crappy of us to, to like, if we were the friend to be like, oh, I have to wait three. Like, I'm not gonna join then.

     

    Uh, so yeah, that, that's how that business model has evolved. So two enrolling periods every year. We feel really good about it. We, we now help people hopefully see the value. Like Caroline was saying, like you get the wheel built, you stop creating all the new things. You really hone the process of people to discover that the wheel exists and to know the value of the wheel and to understand the benefits of the wheel.

     

    And that's something we've had to learn. And we're still learning. Like you, we want to sell Teachery and Wandering Aimfully and we see all the stuff that we've poured into both all the features, all the courses, the roadmap, all this. But that's really not why someone buys, why someone buys is because we tell them, like, Wandering Aimfully is gonna help you have more fun in your business. It's gonna help you carve out more free time for the things you want in life. And it's hopefully gonna help you like feel some more balance and just feel like you're not every single month going, what am I gonna work on? It's like, no, I know I'm, they're gonna gimme one thing in their monthly coaching, but I'm gonna get to enjoy and like focus on in my business. And that gives me clarity. Yeah.

     

    And so I think those are the things that we have continued to learn as well. And another mistake is just, we haven't talked enough about the benefits. We've talked more about like, is the features Yeah. This is a, a, a membership program. This is a coaching program. Like you gotta join and it's like, yeah. But why?

     

    Caroline Zook: And you get these calls and you just, you spend all your time talking about what's in it instead of what's in it for the person. Yeah.

     

    Eman Ismail: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I, I, I think people listening will feel so relieved. And me too. Hearing that you started off, was it, how many years ago was it? I, 5, 

     

    Jason Zook: yeah. It'll be four or five. It'll be, it'll be five years here in March. In a month. Yeah. 

     

    Caroline Zook: But you, you know, those years in there that just sort of blend together and 

     

    kind of 

     

    Eman Ismail: right, exactly. So it's been five years of this, of this kind of just continuation of just working on this thing and then watching it become what you wanted it to be. And it didn't necessarily start off like, you know, you launched and it was like six figure launch and yay. And wow, you know, what a relief that it can work this way. Am.

     

    Caroline Zook: And I, I, just to underscore that point, I want anyone listening to know that there was a point probably in, actually, I know exactly when it was, it was late 2019. There was this point where we were still doing the monthly model of, the recurring model we had yet to do. We had yet to transition to the, our only buying option was the $2,000 a month payment plan option, or not a month, $2,000 total payment plan option. So we had yet to really get the pricing right.

     

    And there was this moment we, we had yet to even come up with the coaching, like the positioning of it being a coaching program. We were still kind of marketing it as a membership of you get access to all this stuff. There was this moment where it was not working and it was, you know, we financially too, we were in a really precarious place and, and we were just like, d we didn't do it. Like we didn't figure it out. And we almost so close to going back on exactly what we told you our biggest mistake was. We were this close to going, let's blow it all up. Let's create a new thing. Let's, we know we can make something. We know we'll at least get drum up excitement about a new thing, right? And this is what, this is what we so easily fall back into the comfort of. It's so much easier to get people excited about a new thing than it is to do the hard work of repositioning an older thing or getting yourself re-excited about an old thing.

     

    So we lean too much on that novelty and it's just a flash in the pan and then you've created a new wheel, but the wheel doesn't turn, you know? And so we were this close to falling back on that and we just, I remember the meeting so, so specifically, and I was. just like What if we're this close? Yeah. Like what if we are this close to figuring it out? And just because we didn't spend enough time trying to solve a problem better, trying to understand our customer better, trying to, let's apply that new, build a new thing, energy into this same thing. Let's just put it back into this thing. And that was when we came up with the idea of, okay, what, who is our person? What do they struggle with? And, and the struggle at that moment in time that we felt was really palpable was the notion that there's so many things to focus on in an online business. There's email marketing, there's growing your audience, there's getting your foundation, right? There's coming up with offers.

     

    How do you come up with a new, there's a million things to focus on that people were being felt pulled in a million different directions. And so I said, what if we just solve that one problem by giving someone one thing to focus on every month? Let's, let's pour that new energy into creating one curriculum every month. Let's get on a call. We do live video. We love live video. Let's do that. 

     

    And now in retrospect it's like, yeah, obviously it's a coaching program, like you do calls like that's so obvious. But at the time we were like, what? Okay. Yeah. And so we repositioned it from a membership to a coaching program. We didn't know that it would even sell. So we actually created a smaller tier, which was a six month option. So you could do the six month option. That was just the coaching for $600. So again, it's the same price. It's a hundred dollars a month at that point. But because you're marketing it as a program, someone doesn't have to make the decision every month of whether they cancel or keep going.

     

    Eman Ismail: Yes. 

     

    Caroline Zook: So six month coaching program, you could still pay the $2000 if you wanted to get access to all the stuff. And when I tell you that was the turning point in our business and we were this close to not coming up with it. We were this close to just scratching the whole thing and starting over, and so I only underscore that because if there's someone listening right now and they feel frustrated because they're, they haven't broken through that financial threshold yet and they're considering scrapping the whole thing, this wasn't me being like, don't do that, but just like take that little extra pause to go, is there still some juice that I can squeeze out of this? Is there still maybe some unexcavated territory in terms of marketing or repositioning or solving the problem better or making the benefit more clear to my audience that you haven't explored yet? And maybe just, maybe just try that piece before you decide to scrap it.

     

    Eman Ismail: Oh, I love that. Okay. And actually feel like you're talking to me, um, actually, because 

     

    Caroline Zook: Oh, didn't I, say I'm on 

     

    Jason Zook: in that ?Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

     

    Eman Ismail: I needed this advice.

     

    Eman Ismail: When you think about this mistake, the idea of creating new products over and over again and just relaunching, like launching new things over and over again, instead of just sticking to your one core business offer, how did this mistake make you and help you get to where you are today?

     

    Jason Zook: Yeah, I, I think it really, especially once we had the turning point, like Caroline was just saying into a coaching program, it started to work. And so we started to see people were signing up when we were doing our launches. And they were really excited and then they were showing up and we were starting to get into this cycle of like, okay, we would, we would launch, we would be able to position as a coaching program. We would say we're solving the problem of like one thing to focus on every month and like not overdo it. And we would execute on that thing and people would give us the feedback that this was fantastic and this was great. And so it was almost the like return to us of, hey, you did it this way before and it didn't really work. Now you changed. You made a mistake and you learned from that mistake and you did something different. It's working. Keep doing that thing. 

     

    And so I think that really kind of like changed the way that we, because like Caroline said, we're, we're idea people. We come up with ideas all the time, nonstop, always new ideas. But it really helped us, I think, create this filter where it's like, okay, we have a new idea, but like, is this going to serve the, we wanna run a calm business, we want to focus on our enough number, we wanna make the existing customers we have happy. We don't wanna overload our work schedule so that we're working 8, 10, 12 hour days. Like we want to have a much like more spacious life and no adding a new project, this new idea is not going to do that, and so let's not do that. And so I think that that was really the big turning point, at least from my side of things of just like, it showed me that we don't need to keep making all these new things we can just keep promoting Wandering Aimfully as a thing that people like and understand, and it will work as a business and the revenue will grow. And then we can just keep doing our two launches a year, which feel very easy at this point. I say easy in quotes, but like they feel honed in. It feels like we have a, a system for it, a process.

     

    Whereas in the beginning it was just like, please buy email. Please buy email. You know, it was just over and over again. We've all been there. 

     

    Caroline Zook: Yeah. Yeah. And I think it just, it definitely, what, what I learned from it too is just the power, and I know I've said it a few times now, but the power of, of empathy for your customer. Putting yourself in the shoes of your customer and really trying to understand what they're struggling with. And sometimes it feels like that's marketing 101, but I think it becomes so easy to forget because we live inside our own heads. And so, you know, we, this is not our phrase, but we've heard it before.

     

    We've said it many times. Let's steal it, it steal it. It's ours. Let's it, it's, go ahead. But we often remind ourselves of this phrase that says you can't read the label from inside the jar. And so it's like, I know that a lot of our customers, they can't see what is perhaps not working in their business because they're just inside the jar. And so our job is to read, read that label, and to be that coaching program that can hopefully point out some of this stuff that, that might seem simple, but it's not simple when you're in the thick of it and you feel like you're just like falling through the quicksand of your business all the time. But for us to step in and kind of say like, hey, did you remember to put yourself in the shoes of your customer and understand what their problems are? And people are like, ah, I always forget that part. You know? Yeah. 

     

    And, and for a long time we actually thought this label of being a coaching program, because, you know, there are people who I do feel like sometimes just decide that they're gonna be coaches without necessarily too much intention paid to what that really means, or how they're really gonna help people.

     

    Jason Zook: Um, or the experience that it's, or the experience. We don't come at being coaches because we took a coaching program to teach us to be coaches. We come from 10 years of running all my businesses in different variations. 

     

    Caroline Zook: And that's sort of the different perspective that we wanted to bring to it. But I only mentioned that because sometimes I think we, we get in our own way a little bit by some of these conceptions that we have. And we fought it for a long time. And then we asked ourselves, what really are we doing here? And it's exactly what I just said. It's helping people. It's, it's being that person who can look from the outside looking in and remind people of the things that, that they need to be reminded of and to motivate people and to get them reinspired reinspired in their business. And like, that's a coach. So like, let's just call a spade a spade and say, we're a coaching program, you

     

    Eman Ismail: Mm-hmm. It's just, it's amazing listening to you both and your journey. And one thing I've noticed is that your content marketing is just mind blowingly good. You are really intentional about where you wanna be and where you don't wanna be. Eg. You used to be on Instagram, and your content was amazing on Instagram, but you decided to step back from Instagram. So your account is still there, but you don't really use it right now. You don't market, certainly don't launch on there. But you do launch over email and you have your podcast. And I think, and I think your podcast, your newsletter and your YouTube right, are maybe the, the strongest, like three areas where you really focus on.

     

    I feel like one of the benefits of focusing on just Wandering Aimfully and letting go of all the other stuff is that your content, your marketing just becomes so much more focused. Is, was that the case? And, and I would love for you to give me some insight into how you plan your content marketing around, you know, launching Modern 

     

    Caroline Zook: tell you that you can start with the first part. 

     

    Jason Zook: Yeah. I, I think it's hard to tell people if you're at the beginning of your journey social media is almost a must have at this point, right? Because it's just like, that's where everybody is, that's where the attention is. But for us who have privilege and advantage and an email is that we built for years, we didn't have to be on Instagram anymore. And, and we didn't know that, but we did have the data that like 11% of our new wanting employee members heard about us through Instagram. And I think we just had this like really big moment at the end of 2021 before going on this full-time year of travel where we just, like Caroline was basically running the Instagram account fully. And, you know, I would be there for the reels. That was really it. Uh, and

     

    Caroline Zook: It's, it's like the lion makeup comes full circle. 

     

    Jason Zook: It's full circle. Just being an idiot. Uh, that's me. Um.

     

    Eman Ismail: rolls. Sorry. 

     

    Jason Zook: And the cinema rolls. And the rolls. Those did not get enough above our Instagram point. I think we would still be doing it 

     

    Caroline Zook: if we, I was a little jealous.

     

    So, yeah, they didn't get a lot of play, 

     

    Jason Zook: My content plan of that. Um, but we, we just looked at this and we said, If we lost 11% of our revenue and didn't use Instagram, would our lives be better for it? And we're like, yes. It's, it's very stressful to like constantly be in the hamster wheel of fighting the algorithm and things changing and, oh, now we, now we don't do posts, we do stories. Oh, now we don't do stories. Now we do reels. Oh, now we don't, you know, and it's

     

    Caroline Zook: Not to mention just the mental health effects of being on it in the first place. I told you we love leaving money on the table. Yeah, exactly. This is another perfect example. 

     

    Jason Zook: Love it. But I think, I think what happened is exactly what you, you surmised, which is when we removed Instagram from the equation of time spent.

     

    Because it takes, if anybody uses social media for their business, you know how much, maybe you don't know. It's such a time investment. It takes a lot of time out of your day. But once you remove it, you go, hmm, I now have like three to six hours in my day where I'm not scrolling, I'm not creating, I'm not posting, I'm not in the DMs. What could I do with that time? 

     

    And so for us, we basically just said, well, let's turn that time into the strongest email newsletter series that we can create every single week for intentional online business owners. And just like, give them a really good email newsletter that we spend hours on. Like, I think the amount of hours we spend in a newsletter, which shock people, like, it's probably every week, 10 to 15 hours for one newsletter.

     

    And then it's also from there, it's like, okay, we don't do a lot of editing in our podcast. We don't do a lot of production, but we do a lot of thought. And Caroline writes like, very thoughtful notes. Now, every episode, if it were up to me, we would just sit down, turn on the mic, and I'd be like, what's going on this morning? You know. 

     

    Caroline Zook: Which it often turns into that, but I like to sh I like to start from a place of notes. 

     

    Jason Zook: We definitely saw a turn in just the, the, uh, interest in people sticking around for the podcast and like the length of listen of an episode. When we started doing that. And so I think all of that to kind of wrap up my, my part of this, which is stepping away from Instagram gave us the time back to then invest in other things.

     

    And so if you're a person who's early in your business, you may not have the luxury of doing that. But I would also say maybe challenge the assumption if you have the ability to go, well, I've got six months runway, kind of like set up, you know, so that I can build this business that I want to build. Let me try and do it without social media.

     

    Let me try and do all the other things that I can do in writing articles and starting an email newsletter and starting a podcast, starting a YouTube channel, investing in Pinterest marketing, like all the other options besides just the shiny ones that everyone's gravitating toward that are gonna affect your mental health and leave you maybe burnt out in a couple months anyway. 

     

    Caroline Zook: And this is also why we did a, a episode on our podcast called Your Social Media Off Ramp. Actually, I don't know if that's the title of it.

     

    Jason Zook: It's probably just we're not coming back to,

     

    Caroline Zook: we should re we should rename that. Yeah. But I really wanted to record this episode because I wanted to acknowledge the fact that it would be bad advice for us as business coaches to just go like, don't be on social media and use that as a blanket statement, right?

     

    Because someone who's starting out is like, well, where are my, it's gonna take months to years for my SEO juice to start paying off for all these other ways, right? Not that there aren't ways, but we recognize that social media is low hanging fruit for people getting off the ground. However, the reason we wanted to call it your off-ramp is because just because you're at a season in your business where like you may feel like that's the right move for you, doesn't mean that you can't create a plan to get off in the future.

     

    You know, it's like, it's, it, it goes back to that intentional piece of if you think that this is not good for your mental health, believe the fact that there are people out here, including us, who run businesses and now going on over a year off of social media. 

     

    Jason Zook: And really you could argue that like, it only contributed to 11% of our business like it. Right. It's, it's, we have the numbers to show that it, it was not a huge contributor, so the amount of time spent on it was not worth the return. 

     

    Caroline Zook: Right. So there are other ways. Yeah. Um, and then going back to your question about how do we plan our content, I love planning. Is, and so we actually at the end of 2020, I think we made the move over to Notion,

     

    Jason Zook: I would like to get credit.

     

    Caroline Zook: Jason gets credit cuz he.

     

    Jason Zook: I introduced you to Notion in 2000, like 18. 

     

    Caroline Zook: Yeah. We laugh about this often because Jason was like, hey, have you seen this new thing called Notion? It's like, and then just proceeded to give the worst explanation of totally what this thing does. I totally didn't understand what it was.

     

    Jason Zook: I had no idea what it was.

     

    Caroline Zook: Like. Okay, cool. 

     

    Jason Zook: Like I was like, it can do like spreadsheet stuff and like also Google Docs. I'm not currently using it, but I think you should because you're the productivity, uh, person in our relationship. 

     

    Caroline Zook: So then I discover it in 2020 and I'm like, babe, this is mind blowing. I think this can really change our lives. And he's like, hey, I told you about that. I'm like, yeah, you did a bad job.

     

    Jason Zook: I did do a bad job. You didn't, you did a bad job. I also didn't use it after that. I just saw it and thought it looked cool. 

     

    Caroline Zook: So in case people are curious about our tool, we used Notion and we love it. And so what that looks like is it's kind of our strategic process starts with zooming out and then zooming in. So what I mean by that is on a yearly level, zooming way out, at the top of the year, we assess all of our marketing channels and we say, what are our priorities? And so because we, you know, on a yearly basis, we're establishing that that financial goal we're saying, is our enough number the same? Cool. What does that look like in terms of launches? How many sales are we going for? Like we really break it down, starting with that financial goal. Then we say, what are the content channels that we think will help us get there? Usually email is always gonna be top for us because that, that's just the way our business runs. And so we say, okay, what does that look like?

     

    We're gonna keep like, and, and we just basically e established like a top level strategy for each channel. So we're like, okay, great. Newsletters. I think we, we stumbled a, a couple years ago into this idea of doing series.

     

    Eman Ismail: Mm.

     

    Caroline Zook: So instead of having like a, a newsletter that's this, you know, kind of the same idea. We do like an eight week series, a six week series, and that gives us freedom to play with different ideas and so, okay. And so we just basically go great, we're gonna keep doing that. We go podcasts. What's the podcast gonna be this year? Last year it was literally just kind of travel updates and some business sprinkled in. This year, it's like, hey, I think I wanna go back to doing more realtime stuff where we just, we think back to what we worked on the week before. We come up with kind of a theme that emerged. We, uh, we kind of deliver that as the podcast episode.

     

    Which is kind of cool because this year the podcast feels a little bit more behind the scenes. You see, we're in a different season of business. Mm-hmm This time because we have all this creative energy cuz we didn't work, you know, create new things last year. And so we, at the top of the year, that's when we're establishing that.

     

    YouTube That's where we go, okay, we don't know yet and that's okay. We can shug at the shoulders and, and that's okay.

     

    We just go, I don't know yet. All I know is that it's not as important as the podcast in the newsletter. Cool. Let's just earmark that for now. 

     

    Jason Zook: And just really quick, the reason why YouTube gets that kind of delineation is because it's kind of similar to Instagram where it's like we could spend yep, 10, 20 hours a week working on a YouTube video, but for it to only get a couple hundred views and for us to not really love the process of creating those videos, why keep doing that? Yeah. Like let's put that time and attention elsewhere and not do that thing. 

     

    Caroline Zook: And I think where you'll, you may see us really crank up YouTube is maybe in the second quarter of the year because, well, lemme get to that. So that's yearly. So then we go YouTube, I don't know Instagram. Do we wanna go back?

     

    Do we wanna stay off? Stay off. Cool check. So top level strategy on the yearly level. Then we check in quarterly and we say what are our quarterly goals? This is usually where the, the emphasis is on projects. What big projects or initiatives are we trying to create. For us, we really wanna get our traffic to our website back up. Cause it's kind of been dwindling over the years without new articles, fresh content. 

     

    Jason Zook: Actually in a good way because I think we had a bunch of articles that were driving traffic that were not really that. Like I wrote a social media detox article in 2014 and that was on the number, it was the number one result on Google for a long time for taking a break from social media or quitting social media.

     

    And while that's kind of close to our audience, it's really not our ideal audience. So it's actually been nice that it's. It's come down because we don't just want inflated numbers on our website. We'd rather have like qualify way less numbers that are way more qualified to what we want. 

     

    Caroline Zook: Right. So at the quarterly level, we say projects. So okay, a big project is to get new, fresh articles on the website that are attracting our ideal audience. Then we go, how does content play into this? How can we amplify our projects? Or, or how does our content channels kind of strategically fit in? That's where YouTube comes in and we go, oh, you know what? I think we could experiment with every time we publish a new article, turning it into a video, linking to it, that could seed some of the traffic early on. So then we'll go, great. Q1 is for creating the new articles. Q2 is gonna be YouTube amplification. So then it's a little bit of prioritization on those levels, right?

     

    And I know this is sounding like a lot, but truly it's really just setting the time aside for like an hour at the top of the. An hour every quarter. Right? So, so I'm saying a lot of this stuff that feels strategic, but like it's really just you're marking that time in your calendar to think strategically. That's all it takes. So quarterly is projects monthly is where you break it down into, let me put the episodes on the calendar. Let me come up with rough ideas.

     

    Podcast, we don't have to do that anymore because the way it's working this year is we record on Tuesdays, we sit down for 30 minutes, we talk about what was the theme last week. We write down our notes, then we just get into recording. So that takes that off the table. Not a ton of planning involved. But the, you know, other stuff, like the email newsletter, again, we set aside one hour and we planned out the entire series for the entire year. We have this series planned. 

     

    That's the first, this is the first year we've ever had that. So I just wanna be clear, if you don't have it nailed in, like do not, it you five years, like took us, it might take you five years to get there. 

     

    The only thing I want people to take away is two things. Number one, if you can get some sort of project management system going, because I'm the type of person who like, I tried to keep it all in my head. I tried. And that was, or in like disparate places, a note here, a Google doc here, this here, maybe a sauna. And I never found the centralized system and until I found the tool that worked for my brain, it was a game changer.

     

    Jason Zook: So also we have an in-depth article on how we use Notion. If anybody wants it, it's wanderingaimfully.com/notion. I'm not sure if you do show notes or not.

     

    But very easy to find. Um, yeah, it's, it's our exact system. So it's, it's literally everything Caroline's saying. We call it the SOAR system. And we get to use the so system, the Eagle emoji with it, uh, which makes happy. But it, it goes into detail of kind of like what we're talking about and how we kind of set everything up there. 

     

    Caroline Zook: Yep. And then, so on the monthly, that's where I can, I have a content calendar so I can see these are the podcast episodes, these are the newsletters that we have. This is what we're doing with our projects. And then as we tackle things, we're just checking 'em off. Changing the status.

     

    Jason Zook: And then we, you know, we get into busy season like anybody else does, right? Where you like, have a perfect plan set for the month, and then like something falls into your lap and you're like, oh, now the whole month feels derailed.

     

    And that's okay. Instead of it derailing us, we go, okay, let's reprioritize. Okay, what is this week's focus? What is next week's focus? And then when we get into super busy season, we do daily meetings. So we'll just do a meeting every morning or even maybe at the end of the day, sometimes it's both. And we go, okay, what, what do we need to get done today to not feel super overwhelmed? Like, what is, what are the three tasks? 

     

    Caroline Zook: What needs to get cut? Yeah. What can we let go of? 

     

    Jason Zook: And I, I think the, one of the things that we've just definitely learned over the years is a lot of times you, you, you feel like you're playing business because you're like, okay, I'm sitting on my computer and I'm, I'm doing stuff. But it would be much more beneficial to actually sit back and go like, let me like take my ego outta this and like, maybe I don't know what I'm doing. Like, let's just chat about the day. Like, what do we need to actually get done today instead of me, like sitting here, like trying to like brute force my to-do list to get done. Like, I'm not feeling good today or I don't feel motivated today.

     

    And, and I think for so many people, they may have the luxury, like we have each other and we talk about this often, like it is truly, we are very lucky that we have opposite skill sets. We have similar brains and like ideas and strategy and we can really work together.

     

    And if you can find a business buddy, if you can find someone that you can work with, if you can find, uh, anybody you can do co-working with, it becomes so helpful to then have that person to even just to like we call it now venti latte. Whenever we want to just like something went wrong wanna talk about it, uh, we're just like, I need to venti latte right now. And it's not a place where like the other person helps. It's not a place where the other person vent criticizes. 

     

    Caroline Zook: Yeah. Latte has very specific rules. We are putting the frustrations here. It is not here. Yeah. You just, it is not here. Pointing to myself. 

     

    Jason Zook: I'm pointing to Jason. There you go. Okay. Alright. You vented that thing.

     

    Okay. But those, those subtle things I think really help even if you work for yourself, just creating little systems and processes that you can better understand how you work. Because you may be someone who gets really motivated on a Monday and like you need to put all of your heavy work at the beginning of the week.

     

    Don't put any heavy work on a Friday, cuz you're just gonna know by the end of the week you're fried and like you don't have the time for it. So I think it's just a lot of like the self-awareness part of working for yourself and understanding how you work and not trying to go, oh, well this is how six figure per month entrepreneur works, so I need to try and use that system.

     

    Caroline Zook: Or this is how Jason and Caroline work, so I need to do that. Exactly. It's like put it through your own filter. Yeah.

     

    Eman Ismail: Oh, that was amazing. Thank you so much for sharing that. And I'm, I don't actually use, Notion. Yeah, I tried it and I got into it and then I got out of it and I was like, oh, okay. It's not from me. Right. But wanna check out your system. Sorry, I'm gonna go have a look at that article will 

     

    Caroline Zook: and, and maybe there's like one or two little things that you're like, oh, I can apply that to what I use and what's good for my brain. Right?

     

    Eman Ismail: Exactly. 

     

    Ah, this has been so amazing. I've got one more question before I let you go. What do you want everyone listening to learn from your experience?

     

    Yeah. Uh, a perfect batch of cinnamon rolls starts with, no, I'm kidding. Um, my, my thing is just like in everything that you do, ask yourself, how can you do it differently? So it's really great to learn from successful people who have businesses that make a lot of revenue and have big teams and beautiful websites, and, and that's all well and good, but like they're already doing it that way.

     

    Jason Zook: What's a way that you can do it that's only something that feels unique to you or that feels interesting to you or just feels different? Like it doesn't have to be, you know, this unicorn business that like no one's ever heard of. You can still be a Squarespace template designer, but you can do it differently.

     

    You know, like every template comes with a video of your cats, like helping build the template. Like I, it's just silly stuff, but like, those are the things that people remember that help you stand out from everybody else. And I think that that is something for us that. We're, we're online business coaches, like there's so many of those, but we're unborn online business coaches who talk about enough numbers and we talk about living spacious lives and having more fun in business and, you know, spending longer periods of time working on things than most people want you to.

     

    And those are the differentiators that people see and go, okay, well yeah, I, I'm gonna buy that program because it resonates more with me than the like, make six figures in 60 days because I've tried that and it doesn't work and I just feel crappy about it. And so I think whatever it is that you're trying to do, just keep asking yourself maybe if it's not working or even if it is just how can I continue to do this differently in a way that really resonates with me and like matches my values?

     

    Love Thank

     

    you. What do you 

     

    Eman Ismail: that too.

     

    Caroline Zook: So mine is, I think the one thing that I would want people to take away is kind of a little bit of an inconvenient truth . But I think you can't think your way to your ideal business. You have to act your way to your ideal business. And the reason I say inconvenient is because I know that people are probably listening to this right now to get wisdom, right? they're looking for insights, they're looking for things to apply to their own business, and I think that's wonderful and I, I get tremendous value out of that as well. But the unfortunate part is you can take all the nuggets that you want from this episode and you can try to throw it into your plan for, for where you're gonna steer your business. But the only way to see if those nuggets are even applicable to your, to your unique path is you have to take action. You have to risk learning your own lessons. You have to risk making your own mistakes. And I think normalizing that and, and going like, maybe you don't make our pitfalls because we just, we mentioned them all to you, but you're gonna make your own.

     

    And when you do, just remind yourself that that's perfectly normal. And actually, it's a really good thing because that means you're one step closer to your ideal version of your business. So just this idea of take all the wisdom that you can, but don't, don't take it all and get so stuck in trying to think your way to the, to your ideal business.

     

    Get out there and take action and make mistakes and do it your way. 

     

    Jason Zook: Love it.

     

    Thank you so much for coming on this show and for spending the amount of time that you have talking to me for this show. How can people find you if they wanna stay connected?

     

    Caroline Zook: Give them drop the URLs, babe. 

     

    Jason Zook: Very easy. Everything, uh, would be at wanderingaimfully.com. If you wanna get on our newsletter, that's, uh, maybe the thing we probably preach the most that we spend the most time on. So wanderingaimfully.com/newsletter, especially if you're an online business owner who is just looking to be more intentional.

     

    If you're a client business owner who's trying to transition to digital products, we're really talking about that a lot this year. That's our big focus. Even our positioning is changing, on our website here soon. So wanderingaimfully.com/newsletter. And then if you want our not ugly anymore online course software that Eman uses, uh, you can go to Teachery.co. and you can sign up for a free trial and try fully featured for

     

    Eman Ismail: You can use Eman's code

     

    Jason Zook: Yes,

     

    do that. do better. 

     

    Eman Ismail: the show notes.

     

    Caroline Zook: do that. Yeah. You better use that 

     

    Jason Zook: Affiliate code. Yeah. That'll make your course better. Uhhuh faster. Amazing. More amazing, uh, than it ever could have just by using that link. Yeah.

     

    Caroline Zook: And then if you, uh, like hearing our, the sound of our voices. No, if you like talking about all types of things like this that we've had in this conversation, you can also find our podcast, which is called What Is It All For? So just search that on your favorite podcast player of choice.

     

    Eman Ismail: And it is a brilliant podcast, so go, go listen to the podcast. Thank you so much, Jason. And Caroline. As I said, I've been following you for years, so I already feel like I know you. And it's, it's just been my pleasure chatting to you and, and picking your brain. So thank you so much. 

     

    Caroline Zook: Thank you for inviting us. This was so fun, and thank you for asking such wonderful questions and it was really enjoyable. 

     

    Yeah, same.

     

    Eman Ismail: you.

     

    Caroline and Jason don't just talk the talk. They walk the walk. They live for intentional, slow, and steady, sustainable business growth that lets you create a beautiful life you can actually appreciate and enjoy.

     

    I mean, they just moved from California to Portugal after a year of traveling around Europe. How's that for loving life? After listening to this interview, I think you'll agree. They're a really special and much needed part of this online business community. They're exactly what we need when you consider all the grow more, earn more, spend more, hire more, move fast break things, business advice we're getting today. I'm all for intentional decision making and intentional growth.

     

    I initially planned for 2023 to be an idea year for me, one filled with lots of new projects, new ideas, and new experiments. But if speaking to the Zooks has taught me anything, it's that there's a time for creating and a time for buckling down and optimizing what's already working so it can work even better.

     

    So my plans have changed. That's what I'll be focusing on this year. As for the Zooks, you might have heard Caroline mention their new exciting venture: having kids. I, for one, can't wait to see them become parents.

     

    You are listening to mistakes that made me. I'm Eman Ismail, and if you loved this episode, take a screenshot, post it on Instagram and tell everyone you know that this is the podcast to listen to. And tag me @EmanCopyCo so we can say hi. And so I can share your post. You can find the links to everything I've mentioned today in the show notes.

    Next time on Mistakes That Made Me.

    Dielle Charon: I didn't really feel accepted in the industry. I felt like an outsider. I felt quirky. I'm like, I, I'm, wasn't taking like these amazing photos on the beach of me living my laptop lifestyle. Like I wasn't doing any of that. And I thought like, well then who's gonna buy from me if I'm not popular? Who's gonna buy from me if I, I'm not promoting this big flashy life. Like here I am waking up at 6:00 AM to go take a bus, right? Like this is the opposite of flashy and popular and all these things. But I just realized that there were more people who were like me than who were out there taking photos on the beach. 

Eman Ismail
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