Growing Steady | Intentional Creative Business Podcast

The Zooks are back behind the mics! After a 5-week trip back to the U.S. that included two hurricanes, two doctor’s visits, three bouts of sickness, and some sticker shock at prices and quality of things, we’re sharing how it all went.

In this episode, we’re also giving you an update on our fertility journey and the new findings with a bunch of blood work Caroline did to find some genetic conditions. We DO have a plan in place to move forward with our goal to grow our family and we’ll keep you posted. 

We also give a glimpse at how we’re feeling about work/business right now and what’s “shifting in us” as we like to say. We’ll have a lot more to share in the coming weeks/months as we always do this time of year.

If you listen on Spotify, please comment with what you want to hear more of with our podcast? We’re always keen to hear from you folks! ❤️

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😏 If you’ve been thinking about using Teachery to build your online courses, take advantage of our Lifetime Deal at https://teachery.com/limited-time 

💌 Want practical tips to help you grow your creator

business-without burning out? Join our Growing Steady newsletter and every Monday you'll get 3 actionable tips for growing a Calm Business—one that is predictable, profitable, and peaceful: https://wanderingaimfully.com/newsletter 

TW: miscarriage, pregnancy loss, chemical pregnancy, infertility 

In this episode, we share our personal story of trying to conceive (TTC) earlier this year, which resulted in two very early miscarriages, also known as chemical pregnancies. Now that we’ve had some time to process, we wanted to give you more details about what's been going on behind-the-scenes for the past few months, the emotional rollercoaster of moving through these losses and navigating these uncharted waters together, as well as how this has shifted our priorities and played a role in our business decisions. 

If these are topics that could be triggering at all, please don’t hesitate to skip this episode or come back to it when you feel ready. We also want to emphasize this is our personal journey, and we’re not medical experts. Our hearts go out to anyone who is in the midst of a similar journey or has gone through struggles conceiving in the past. Thanks for listening. 💛

It’s time for a recap of our latest launch of WAIM Unlimited! We share the sales numbers, the lessons learned, and what changes we are/aren’t making for the next launch.

Spoiler alert: For the second launch in a row, we did NOT hit our low goal 😬. BUT, we still had a successful 6-figure launch and welcomed in a great new group of WAIM members.

We share the positives, the negatives, the strategy we used for this launch, and then takeaways for what we’re going to tweak for 2025 enrollment periods. If you like launch recap content, you should thoroughly enjoy this ep!

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😏 If you’ve been thinking about using Teachery to build your online courses, take advantage of our Lifetime Deal at https://teachery.com/limited-time 

💌 Want practical tips to help you grow your creator business-without burning out? Join our Growing Steady newsletter and every Monday you'll get 3 actionable tips for growing a Calm Business—one that is predictable, profitable, and peaceful: https://wanderingaimfully.com/newsletter 

Who wants to pull back the curtain and hear about a BIG experiment we ran with Teachery this summer? You do?? Then let’s dive into it!

In this episode, we talk about a huge shift in direction for Teachery as a business. What might seem simple on the surface to offer a Lifetime (Pay-Once) Plan to Teachery, is actually quite complex. We share how we got to this place, how the experiment went, and the risks we’re looking ahead at.

The initial results of our Lifetime Plan experiment have us extremely excited for the future of Teachery. Not only does it feel very “us” as a business move, but it also immediately gives us the cashflow to afford to invest in additional design and development work! 

Can’t wait to continue to share this story with you as Jason takes the reins with Teachery (and Caroline is still in the wagon, she’s just more relaxed and less directing the horses which way to take us down the trail). 

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😏 If you’ve been thinking about using Teachery to build your online courses, take advantage of our Lifetime Deal at https://teachery.com/limited-time 

💌 Want practical tips to help you grow your creator

business-without burning out? Join our Growing Steady newsletter and every Monday you'll get 3 actionable tips for growing a Calm Business—one that is predictable, profitable, and peaceful: https://wanderingaimfully.com/newsletter 

If there’s ONE thing we believe makes every launch successful, it’s having a pre-launch strategy. Specifically, we like using a 4-week email lead-up series based around a few key themes.

Over the past 10 years, we’ve used pre-marketing to get people ready to purchase all kinds of things. That strategy was never fully dialed-in and easy to share with someone else… until now! 

If you’re looking to learn our specific 4-week pre-launch strategy AND get AI prompts that can create the exact pre-launch content discussed in this episode (for you!) in less than 30 minutes 😱 you can join WAIM Unlimited and get our Calm Launch Formula program at https://waim.co/join 

Join us this week as we deconstruct our 4-week pre-launch plan for our current enrollment. Hear how we’ve gone from scattered to focused, and the initial results are proving to be worth it!

Other things mentioned in this episode you can check out:

🔗 Our "Journey to 330" recap: https://waim.co/330 

🔗 13 Marketing Ideas: https://waim.co/online-business-marketing

What if you didn’t have to use all the standard tactics and strategies to make millions of dollars selling digital products?

We interviewed Michelle Rohr, founder of Secret OWL Society, to find out how she harnesses her intuition to sell courses, templates, planners, and more without stress or overwhelm.

🔗 Michelle’s business is https://secretowlsociety.org 

Michelle has made many choices in her business that are different than the status quo in the digital products world, including some things that go against the typical marketing advice out there, and we hope digging into the details of her business will inspire you to do business YOUR way. 

She is an incredible example of how to run a calm business in the sense that she is always evolving her business to make sure it supports her well-being and her personal development. Hope you enjoy hearing her story!

Is the future of digital products and selling information online moving towards Done-For-You? We believe so and we’ll share why and what we’re doing about it (and what you should do too!)

In this episode, we talk about a big shift we’re seeing in customer behavior and how that impacts solopreneur creators. Having been in the online course industry for 10+ years, owning a course platform, and running a community of 1,500+ members, we have quite a bit of data that’s informing us.

We talk about our newest course, Calm Launch Formula ✌️🚀 and how we added a Done-For-You element in the form of pre-written AI prompts. There are multiple ways you could add a Done-For-You element to your digital products and we share some thoughts throughout this episode. 

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💌 Want practical tips to help you grow your creator business-without burning out? Join our Growing Steady newsletter and every Monday you'll get 3 actionable tips for growing a Calm Business—one that is predictable, profitable, and peaceful: https://wanderingaimfully.com/newsletter 

We are doing something we’ve NEVER done before in 200+ episodes of our podcast… having a guest! We are excited to share this chat with our friend Wayne Fick, who, over the past two years, he transitioned from working with clients, having zero audience, to selling his own digital products, and building a calm business that he’s thoroughly enjoying.

Wayne started with his first product, which sold to just 7 people. Realizing it wasn't a good fit, he pivoted and a year later generated $30,000 in sales for his Canva course! 

🔗 Wayne’s business is https://createdbywayne.com 

📺 Subscribe to Wayne https://youtube.com/@createdbywayne

Using our un-boring coaching advice and our Calm Launch Formula, Wayne managed to grow his email list to thousands and his YouTube channel to 20,000 subscribers in just a year and a half. He achieved all this with intention, honesty, and without using any sleazy or dishonest tactics.

In this interview, we discuss picking a niche, pivoting strategies, and overcoming the mental hurdles to finally being consistent and growing an audience. We hope Wayne's story will inspire you as much as it inspired us. Enjoy the conversation!

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🚀 If you want less stressful launches, our proven plan of action, and tips to help you generate more sales, get our 4-week Calm Launch Fundamentals email series by joining our weekly newsletter at https://wanderingaimfully.com/newsletter 

Evergreen sales are often painted as the ultimate dream: you fall asleep, wake up to sales, and money magically deposits into your account without lifting a finger. Sounds perfect, right? However, the reality of Evergreen is far from this idyllic picture… 

This week, we discuss selling digital products Evergreen vs Launches. While Evergreen is often seen as the “easy,” passive income model, we believe there are a lot of hidden tactics and costs, not to mention a TON of technical setup and ongoing experimentation that is really difficult. 

For us, Launching offers a simpler, more manageable alternative. An open and closed launch model provides built-in urgency and a single, streamlined experience for our audience. Through trial and error, we discovered a recurring revenue launch model that combines the best of both worlds, giving us Evergreen-like results. 

Listen in as we discuss the pros and cons of each model and, as always, you decide how you want to run your own business, we’re just here to share our stories and experiences.

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🚀 If you want less stressful launches, our proven plan of action, and tips to help you generate more sales, get our 4-week Calm Launch Fundamentals email series by joining our weekly newsletter at wanderingaimfully.com/newsletter 

Since the beginning of the year, we’ve been on a mission to help more entrepreneurs build businesses that allow them to live a balanced life. We initially thought the key was giving our members one thing to focus on each month through our live coaching sessions. While this provided clarity, it also led to overwhelm as members felt they had to prioritize every aspect of their business equally. That's when we introduced the Un-Boring Business Roadmap to provide a clear sequence for tackling business tasks, which was a game changer.

However, our thinking evolved further this year. We realized that to build a calm, profitable business, you need to focus on what we call the Calm Business Trifecta: 1) an irresistible offer that you can sell with repeatable launches; 2) an engaged audience grown with a sustainable content system; and 3) a peaceful daily schedule grounded in an 'enough' mindset. 

We believe that if you narrow your focus to having a successful launch of your core offer, everything else will fall into place. This approach not only helps you build momentum but also ensures that all the important elements—like a great offer, knowing your audience, and building a list—are working together in harmony.

In this episode, we share a story from the early days of Made Vibrant, where Caroline was constantly creating new products instead of capitalizing on successful launches. This scattered approach led to more effort and LESS profit, the opposite of what we aim for. 

By focusing on repeatable launches with Wandering Aimfully, we found clarity and control, leading to increased profitability and a sense of momentum. If you're a business owner feeling overwhelmed and directionless, tune in to learn why making calm launching the center of your focus can finally get your head above water.

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🚀 If you want less stressful launches, our proven plan of action, and tips to help you generate more sales, get our 4-week Calm Launch Fundamentals email series by joining our weekly newsletter at wanderingaimfully.com/newsletter