Growing Steady | Intentional Creative Business Podcast - podcast cover

Growing Steady | Intentional Creative Business Podcast

Wandering Aimfullywanderingaimfully.com
We’re Jason and Caroline Zook, a husband and wife team running two businesses together and trying to live out our version of a good life in the process. In this business podcast, we share with you our lessons learned about how to run a calm, sustainable business—one that is predictable, profitable AND peaceful. Join us every Thursday if you’re an online creator who wants to reach your goals without sacrificing your well-being in the process.
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Episodes

165 - On getting older

This might be a bit of a curveball episode, but, as the name of our podcast suggests we’re always trying to think bigger picture and to question the norms of society (both people named “Norm” and the “standard ideals” we all get brainwashed into from time to time). We’re not immune to the effects AND negative thoughts around getting older. Our age might just be a number and a construct of human existence (WHAT EVEN IS TIME??), but there are some realities to aging and gaining years on Earth. May...

Apr 20, 202351 min

164 - Instagram's invisible noise of comparison

After being off IG for over a year with our business account ( @wanderingaimfully ), we hopped back on to create and share a “9-grid.” Essentially, it’s a way to show what we’re up to, in an interesting visual way for anyone who comes to our account. Because we’re still not using Instagram, we wanted all the traffic that might be finding us there to know what we’re up to… without having to always be creating content talking about what we’re up to. Hence… the 9-grid! In this episode, we meandered...

Apr 13, 202352 min

163 - The “Satisfied Striving” paradox

Life is all about seasons, and the season we’re currently in is filled with more hours spent working than we’ve had in years. In fact, we’ve been spending so much time working that we’re beginning to feel a tinge of guilt about it (like we’re cheating on the idea of enoughness 😂). This week, we discuss the concept of “satisfied striving.” Can we lean towards growth, while still being rooted in satisfaction and gratitude? We think so, but let’s discuss! ➡️ Get the episode show notes and full tra...

Apr 06, 202338 min

162 - Our "PRAM" framework to transition to digital products

We share our simple “PRAM” framework to help client-based biz owners move to selling online courses, ebooks, templates, or any digital product your little heart desires. Making the shift to digital products does NOT happen overnight, but having a scalable profit model that gives you more freedom and flexibility IS POSSIBLE! Hopefully, the steps we share in this ep give you some motivation and actionable tips on what to do in the coming months. And hey, if nothing else, we hope you enjoy the Zeld...

Mar 30, 202359 min

161 - 27 tips to get you from clients to digital products

We surveyed our audience and got some incredibly helpful advice from other biz owners who have made the transition from working with clients to selling digital products. From the ~200 responses, we found 6 common categories of advice. Within those categories, we plucked out the best 27 tips (along with a bonus tip or two from us sprinkled throughout!) If you’re currently working with clients but want to move to selling digital products, we hope this episode gives you tons of actionable tasks and...

Mar 23, 20231 hr 9 min

160 - How to keep going when you can’t see results

It’s so easy to caught up in all the online biz success stories. You see faces and businesses that look and sound similar to yours, only they’ve had some astronomical success in a short period of time (which you’ve never experienced). The more we read/see/hear these OUTLIER success stories, the harder it becomes to understand that consistency and sticking with something through the quiet beginning stage is so crucially important to reaching your goals. In this episode, we want you to walk away f...

Mar 16, 202349 min

159 - All the things we're working on right now

Do you ever wonder exactly what someone is working on in their business? We do too! That’s what we recorded for this week’s episode, sharing all the stuff we’re currently juggling between Wandering Aimfully (our un-boring coaching program) and Teachery (our online course software). This is one of those episodes we wished more people would record. What are all the things currently on the to-do list? How do we manage multiple projects? Who is working on what behind the scenes?? We break down every...

Mar 09, 20231 hr 3 min

158 - Learning the same lessons over and over (is okay!)

This week, we share how our Behind The Build LIVE project went. In that project we ran into a familiar friend: Being too ambitious and not being able to achieve what we’d set out to do. Now, normally our over-ambition just leads to a project taking longer to complete, but with only ONE day to complete our live project, it spurred some additional thoughts about a lesson we continue to learn over and over again. We’re certain there’s a lesson in life or business that you continually run into. We h...

Mar 02, 202341 min

157 - How we built a $500,000+ affiliate program in 3 years

This week we are breaking down our affiliate program for our main offer (WAIM Unlimited). Just a few years ago we weren’t interested in “affiliate marketing” at all. We share those initial misconceptions and how our mindset shifted in a different direction, with the help of our paying customers who were asking if they could promote WAIM to their friends and subscribers. Nearly 70% of our new WAIM customers in the past 3 years are from our existing customers (affiliates) and we love this for mult...

Feb 23, 202355 min

156 - Setting your "good enough" standard

How do you know when your work is “good enough?” How do you know when to stop working on a project and decide you’ve done a “good enough” job to accomplish your goals? Let’s dive into this topic, folks! If you’re anything like us it can feel like a project is never quite done. There’s always SOMETHING you can continue to tweak, design, edit, etc. But, we all know not finishing a project and moving on is a form of procrastination and perfectionism (we’re very guilty of this!) So, what the heck do...

Feb 16, 202339 min

Minisode - Watch us build a project LIVE in one day!

As you’ll hear in the minisode, we’re doing a 1-day challenge to redesign our Wandering Aimfully homepage and lead magnet. We will be sharing this entire day of work LIVE for you to watch. We hope this inspires you to do a 1-day project sprint, while also giving you a template and checklist if you want to accomplish a similar task for your biz! If nothing else, we hope you’ll join us live on Feb 16 just to be part of something different and unique in the online business space. 🔗 Join the LIVE f...

Feb 14, 202316 min

155 - Growing pains in redefining relationship roles

We know relationships can often be positioned as “perfect” on social media, but we all know that’s not the truth. In fact, constantly seeing a “perfect” relationship can be harmful in that it doesn’t normalize the reality that we all often are experiencing. Relationships are wonderful, but they can also be difficult as we’re two humans trying to operate in the world with unique brains and (potentially) opposite ways of thinking/feeling minute to minute. In this episode, we share the “problem” we...

Feb 09, 20231 hr 8 min

154 - 3 things to do when you're at max capacity

We’ve built up a bit of a “creative dam” and are trying to figure out how to not overwork ourselves and get into burnout territory (no thank you!) In this episode, we share a couple of important ways we ensure we notice when we’re reaching maximum capacity and how to create a more sustainable pace. Whether you’ve been working for yourself for years (like us) or you’re just getting started, there are times when you’ll put too many items on your to-do list and we want to help you navigate those mo...

Feb 02, 202358 min

153 - New year, new goals! The big picture in 2023 for us...

In our first episode of 2023, we’re zooming the lens way out and sharing the results of a few lonnnnng planning days we had to kick off the year. We set a new “enough” revenue goal for all of 2023 and we talk about how that breaks down between our two businesses: Wandering Aimfully and Teachery. Hopefully, this episode can help you think about your 2023 revenue goals (that are unique to YOU!) and how to break those goals down into actionable steps you can take. And don’t forget, it’s all an expe...

Jan 26, 20231 hr 18 min

152 - Our 2022 favorite travel moments and MORE (part 2!)

If you listened to last week’s ep (#151) then you know all the advice, lessons learned, etc from our year of full-time travel in Europe in 2022. This episode though, we wanted to share our FAVORITE stuff with you. We didn’t want to spoil the Top 5 lists in this description, but we will share links (out of order 😉) in case you want to look into things we mentioned. Restaurants: Pollen , Grottino 1313 , Finns’ Farmcut , Cavalariça , L’Arpège , Hagakure Noh Samba , Ard Bia at Nimmos , The Newport ...

Dec 08, 20221 hr 26 min

151 - Our 2022 full-time travel RECAP (part 1!)

This episode will serve as a Part 1 of 2 recap of our year of travel! We visited 10 different countries in Europe (30 total cities) and we wanted to go over the UPs, the DOWNs, what we would do differently, what advice we would give, how it affected our relationship, how we changed as people, and some business advice tossed in the mix! There is soooo much good stuff to get through in this episode and we hope you enjoy everything we shared. Watch your podcast feed for the second episode of our tr...

Dec 04, 20221 hr 38 min

150 - The gratitude check-in ("bring 5")

Want to know some of our favorite things from our first two weeks living in our new home in Portugal? In this episode, we share 10 things we have gratitude for in a format that we hope is fun to listen to. At the time of recording and sharing this ep, it’s Thanksgiving for our listeners who celebrate in the U.S. which means it’s the perfect time to express your own gratitude! However, you may not celebrate OR don’t live in the U.S., so how about using the week you listen to this to sit down and ...

Nov 24, 202254 min

149 - We're in our NEW home in Portugal!

If you love podcast episodes breaking down a big moment in life, well friends, this one is for you! We share all our thoughts, feelings, and logistics of getting from the U.S. back to Portugal and accepting the keys to our new house. We’ll take you through the first morning after 3 days of travel, our initial emotions, what we’ve been experiencing right away, and then we’ll share some fun stories from our first shopping adventures and a funny/low moment trying to find a lunch restaurant in a new...

Nov 17, 202259 min

148 - The Portugal visa process... explained!

In this week’s ep, we break down the entire visa process we’re going through to eventually end up with a residency permit (which lasts two years, renewable for another 3 years) and then hopefully becoming dual citizens in the U.S. and the EU [after 5 years]! Whether you’re planning to move to Portugal or anywhere else in the world, maybe hearing us break down this entire process can help you with a big change in your life?? Or, it’ll just be entertaining to hear us go through all the silly steps...

Nov 10, 202259 min

147 - What we're looking forward to in our move to Portugal

This week, we wanted to share some thoughts and feelings about our upcoming move into our new home. If you somehow missed the announcement, we are moving to Portugal and living in the Silver Coast starting in November (2022). We chat about the slower pace of European life, the Portuguese culture we’re excited to explore, the new community we hope to build (friends!), as well as getting back into routines and having all the same STUFF every day of our lives. Hope you enjoy this ep and maybe it’ll...

Nov 03, 202255 min

146 - The 20-hour rule (by Josh Kaufman)

We want to be 100% transparent with you: The 20-hour rule is NOT something we came up with. We watched Josh Kaufman’s TEDx talk and realized this concept was very applicable to how we’ve learned or adapted to new things, especially one thing this year: Caroline’s flight anxiety. 🎥 Watch Josh Kaufman’s TEDx talk: https://youtu.be/5MgBikgcWnY While the super-popular 10,000-hour rule has merit, we think the 20-hour rule makes a lot more sense and is a lot more realistic for the majority of us who ...

Oct 20, 202237 min

145 - The simplest 4-part marketing plan

We came up with this marketing bridge concept back in 2018 and it’s really just another way of explaining the customer’s journey. Lately, we’ve been trying to simplify that marketing bridge concept even further so that anyone who feels stuck or like their product isn’t selling or their business isn’t thriving can just look at this simple 4-part marketing structure and diagnose where the journey is breaking down for their customers. We’ve used this framework time and time again to sell our variou...

Oct 13, 202237 min

144 - Our coaching plans for 2023

If your business is anything like ours and it’s starting to feel a bit overstuffed and overwhelming for your customers (with TOO much good content), it’s time to think about simplification! We did this two years ago when we created the Un-Boring Business Roadmap. And, we’re feeling called to simplify again in 2023 with our monthly coaching sessions. Next year, our goal will be to focus on 12 core topics for online business. Things like Marketing, Email List Building, Audience Growth, Selling, et...

Oct 06, 202216 min

143 - What it REALLY takes to pivot your business

This week, we’re channeling our inner Ross Geller (PIVOT!) and talking about how to actually go about making a big shift in your business. Whether you’re trying to go from clients to digital products, digital products to physical goods, or any other pivot in between, we’re here to help. There are two key factors that need to be taken into account when pivoting and that’s what we chat about… that… and Jean Claude Van Damme’s (JCVD) incredible ability to do the splits. Trust us, the reference will...

Sep 29, 202240 min

142 - Has every idea already been done?

In online business, there’s this idea that if you don’t have an original idea you can’t succeed. We’d argue that ALL ideas are unoriginal at this point and that choosing to follow a well-worn idea is actually a GOOD THING. You should 100% put your own twist and uniqueness into everything you do, but you may very well want to pick a crowded space, an “overdone” topic/idea, or create a product/service that lots of folks are already creating. The reason you want to go in this direction is there’s a...

Sep 22, 202238 min

141 - The emotions of experimentation

This week, we hope to normalize the feelings and the roller coaster of emotions that can happen when you embark on new experiments. We share some specifics as it relates to all the experiments we’ve run on YouTube. We also share a recent YouTube experiment that didn’t go well and how we’re handling that. We hope you walk away from this episode feeling motivated and excited for your own business experiments but also remember that your self-worth shouldn’t be tied to the things you try to grow you...

Sep 15, 202240 min

140 - Are we ever going back on social media?

We all know being on social media has its ups and downs. While it’s a great place to have a brand new business or idea get found, it’s also hard on our mental health and can constantly feel like you’re stuck in this never-ending hamster wheel of content creation. This week, we’re sharing our thoughts on how we’re viewing social media as it relates to our businesses moving forward. We also talk about our personal social media profiles (really just IG) and if we think we’ll come back to those eith...

Sep 08, 202254 min

139 - Ending things (not a clickbait title and not this podcast)

We hope our podcast episode title wasn’t too attention-grabby, but the topic really is “ending things” — haha! Thank you to Nicole Antoinette for sending in a very thought-provoking topic idea and having us go down a bit of a rambling rabbit hole. Ending things in business, whether it’s quitting, pivoting, or a nice smooth planned transition, doesn’t get talked about a lot in the online space. So, we wanted to talk about it. ✈️ Our pramvel stories take you through quite a roller-coaster week in ...

Sep 01, 202259 min

138 - Tiny things that have helped our relationship

In this week’s episode, we share a lot of the tiny “isms” and phrases we’ve come up with that help us work through different parts of our relationship. Whether it’s a simple question to make sure the other person is ready to have a conversation or a set of rules we put in place before embarking on a big project/discussion/change/etc. We’re always coming up with ways to better converse with one another, especially during the more stressful and tense times. These are things we’ve learned in our 12...

Aug 25, 20221 hr 11 min

137 - Welp... we're moving to PORTUGAL! (we hope?)

Holy moly this is an exciting episode to share! So much so, we just pushed the rest of our podcast (and pramvel) schedule so we could record in real-time and talk through everything that’s been happening the past two weeks. What started out as a casual scouting mission to two areas in Portugal (Silver Coast and the Algarve) quickly turned into conversations with sentences like, “are we moving to Portugal??” and “is this really happening, are we doing this!?” Have a listen to this episode and may...

Aug 18, 20221 hr 12 min
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