Growing Steady | Intentional Creative Business Podcast

We've been doing this online business thing for many years and the one thing we keep coming back to with every business we start is a specific framework for creating content. Spoiler alert: Social media is always the LAST part of our content strategy 😱. In this episode, we'll go over the three aspects of our Content Salad (strategy) and share with you the exact system we use over and over to buil...

When it comes to making our work more enjoyable, we are always on the lookout for helpful or weird things.  In this episode, we share 10 things (5 for each of us) that help us run our businesses and enjoy our daily work. They cover a wide range, from productivity apps to microphone stands (yep!)  You can find a link to everything we talked about on our Wandering Aimfully Tools page . Have a listen...

One of the toughest decisions, when you work for yourself, is deciding when you should PUSH THROUGH and when you should PULL BACK.  In this episode, we share our experiences of times when we had to push a bit harder to meet a deadline or finish a project. We also share times when we pulled back to ensure we took care of our mental health (and our future selves).  We hope the MMM & Enough Numbe...

We are conditioned to get as much done as quickly as possible in life and business, but is that the best way to do things? And how can we enjoy more of the mundane tasks in life? In this episode, we share a subtle reframing that helped us go from: How fast can I get this done to How can I enjoy how long this takes? ** More goodies from us: If you want un-boring business advice every Monday, jump o...

If you’re anything like us, 2020 has really thrown your future plans for a loop. We had some pretty big goals to move to Europe in 2021 and live abroad for a year. That isn’t going to happen. So, what the heck do we do now? Do we just eat our feelings in cinnamon rolls? Do we give up completely on our future plans? In this episode, we explore how to deal with the changes 2020 has brought down on u...

We've worked together in some capacity for nearly 10 years 😱. It hasn't been all sunshine, rainbows, and gumdrops, but for the most part, we have a really great working partnership! So, how do we do it? How do we work together and make it through the inevitable tough days/weeks/months and stay connected as a couple? In this week’s episode, we share a bit of our backstory about working together an...

For years we've been trying to get off the treadmill of "running our businesses" and trying to focus on slowing down, having less stress, and running... calm businesses. The idea of a calm business is to ask our recurring question, what is it all for? What are all the long hours and late nights for if they never end?  In this episode, we share our philosophy on slowing way down, focusing on enough...

You have a business and it's not making money... let us tell you why (from our own experience, obviously).  The three reasons your biz might not be making money aren't the ONLY reasons but they are the mistakes we've made in the past and ones we see ALL. THE. TIME.  Stop making these mistakes and start making more progress toward your financial goals!

For years we didn't have a process to help us understand the most important things to focus on in our businesses. We would jump from working on the product, to marketing, then to our ideal customer avatar, then think about our email content strategy, and it was just a hot mess (maybe you can relate??) Last year, we finally sat down and wrote out a process that could help us and YOU work on your bu...

Mark Manson wrote a quote that we learned about from Liz Gilbert in her book, Big Magic. The quote is, “everything sucks, some of the time. You just have to decide what sort of suckage you’re willing to deal with. The question is not so much “what are you passionate about?” The real question is "what are you passionate enough about that you can endure the most disagreeable aspects of the work?” In...

If you're like us, you can find yourself feeling stuck in the daily slog of work. But what if you reframed the work you were doing? What if you asked yourself during every task... what is it all for? Could the majority of the work you do become less of a burden and more of a purpose in your life?  In this episode, we explore the idea of purpose when it comes to work. Is it important? Is it differe...

From working with clients, to selling our first digital products, to running software companies, and then building a membership community, we've experienced all sorts of fears along the way. This week, we wanted to share our fears with you in case you're on a similar part of your journey and want to hear how we dealt with the bumps in the road you might be experiencing too. Imposter syndrome and s...

As online business owners, we tend to think the grass is always greener. Specifically for this episode, we want to talk about the green-ness of the grass when it comes to product launches (online courses, ebooks, etc) versus running a membership program (a community with monthly payments).  We've spent the past decade selling things in all different kinds of formats and we're here to share EVERYTH...

We've been heavy social media users since Jason ran his IWearYourShirt project all the way back in 2008 (which is basically an entirely different millennium in the Internet age). Since that time we've realized the negative toll being on social media can take.  In this episode, we explore if we're going to continue using social media at all moving forward. We also share our thoughts on if social me...

After two years of recording our podcast as "Wandering Aimfully: The Show" we've decided to switch gears a bit on the name and the focus.  In this episode, we share our journey with this podcast and discuss what the new name ( What is it all for? ) means. Every week on Thursdays we hope to visit your earballs with an honest, thoughtful, and maybe even sometimes uncomfortable conversation about wha...

We've thoroughly enjoyed wandering aimfully through the past 50 episodes of this podcast. There was no real plan with our show other than to share how we bumped into the walls of business and life.  After two years, we're excited for a NEW chapter of our podcast! While, the crux of the podcast will be the same (it's just us, Caroline and Jason Zook), we feel there's a better name for this podcast...

Whenever you're doing a launch for a product you typically have multiple ideas and plans. For us, we had ONE specific plan that involved something way more hands-on and a ton of extra effort (YouTube Live, promotion, etc). We decided to completely scrap 🙅🏻‍♀️🙅🏻‍♂️ that part of our launch plan to keep our sanity. We spent some time talking about  👀SALES FUNNELS 👀 and how we're rethinking thes...

If you're feeling in a bit of a rut or you haven't seen much movement with your biz lately, maybe it's time to SWITCH 👀 IT  👀 UP  👀. Doing something new can reinvigorate you and whatever part of your business you're working on. Yes, we ALLLL want success to come to us faster but it doesn't happen just because you dream about it. For our own Wandering Aimfully business, we've tried tons of stuff...

We're getting really close to the final launch of our (un-boring) coaching program for 2020. In this week's episode of The Uncertain Times, we share what last-minute tasks and to-dos we're working on plus some mindset tips on doing ENOUGH selling. More important than the tasks and the to-dos, we talk a bit about selling in general. Most people undersell their offerings because they don't want to f...

Let's get into the nitty-gritty of how we manage a big project (like our upcoming 2-week launch for our coaching program). We share the details of how we break down a big project into bite-sized pieces and how we stay sane throughout! If you've ever launched anything before you know it's about 10x harder than it looks. There are more to-dos than you think. Each to-do takes twice as long as it shou...

One of the biggest things that are helping us navigate getting ready to do a launch of our Un-Boring Group Coaching program (this will be our FINAL enrollment for the year) is the subtle mindset shift of "we're pushing our launch on someone" to "we're offering our launch to the right person." If you're feeling uncomfortable about selling right now, maybe that shift can help you? We also break down...

This past week we embarked on a new idea 💡 to give back to our online biz owner community while also trying to do something interesting leading up to the launch of our coaching program. In usual Zook-fashion, we bit off more than we could chew with this new idea and it led to a small "breakdown."  After navigating our emotions Caroline brought up the thought that's been going through all our mind...

This week we (obviously) shared our “Quarantine Five” but before that, we went over a few housekeeping items. We reflected on our overall mindset and how we’re managing each day as it comes. Some days are great, productive, and our outlook is positive. Some days are the complete opposite. Both are okay and completely normal right now! Jason shared Twitter poll results based on people’s spending be...

We share with you how we're settling into new routines and taking each day one step at a time. We also talk about how running any type of business is hard (be it a client-service business, a digital products business, or a software business). They all have their "shit sandwiches" you have to eat at one point or another and if anyone tells you differently, they're lying to you.  Back in 2011, Jason...

We're navigating COVID-19 the best way we can but that way may not be the right way for you (and that's OKAY).  👋 Our hope in sharing this series is that it a) makes YOU feel a little less alone in the worries or questions you have through all of this and b) it gives you some ideas or inspiration about how to make decisions in your own life and business that will help keep you afloat as we surf t...