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

Jason: She said, let's just wing it and see how it feels. So here we go.

Caroline: Okay, before we get into the episode, it's very important that we remind you that coming up on Monday, March 20, we are opening the doors to our program, Wandering Aimfully Unlimited, affectionately known as WAIM Unlimited. Tell him about it, Jason.

Jason: Oh, nice. This is so well planned. It's an unboring coaching program. You get access to monthly coaching, live coaching sessions, where we hang out with a bunch of folks and you don't feel alone in working on your business. You get one thing to focus on working on your business. It ends up being multiple things, but we break it down for you. You also get access to an unboring roadmap if you're looking for something just to give you straight direction into what to work on next in your business.

Caroline: We're going to tell you.

Jason: We have this awesome flow chart that helps you, too.

Caroline: How to build an audience. How to grow your audience using content. A simple marketing plan. How to make sure your website is optimized for the audience that you're trying to go after. How to eventually grow your online business revenue, but also intentionally, in a way that you get to have a spacious, satisfying life at the same time. If all of that sounds good to you, then definitely make sure you're on our email list. You can hop on that over at wanderingaimfully.com/newsletter.

Jason: Yeah. And if you're listening to this after March 20, that means enrollment is open. So just go to wanderingaimfully.com and you will see our program is there for you. And just one little note that we are going to increase the price of WAIM in 2024. So the price that you see right now in 2023 is the lowest price you're going to pay, because the price will be going up for the first time in five years. But we're going to give you a whole year because we didn't want to just drop that on people.

Caroline: We don't like dropping stuff on people.

Jason: Well, some stuff.

Caroline: Knowledge. We like dropping knowledge.

Jason: Chocolate. I like dropping chocolate on people. Here's some chocolate. And maybe that's a little bit like melty and gross and sticky. I'm not going to do that. Anyway, go check it out, wanderingaimfully.com.

Caroline: Welcome to What Is It All For? A podcast designed to help you grow your online business and pursue a spacious, satisfying life at the same time. We are your hosts, Jason and Caroline Zook, and we run Wandering Aimfully, an unboring business coaching program. Every week, we bring you advice and conversations to return you to your most intentional self and to help you examine every aspect of your life and business by asking, What is it all for? Thanks for listening. And now let's get into the show.

Jason: And I'm here, too.

Caroline: First of all, it is a gorgeous day, right now.

Jason: Because everyone listening to a podcast can always see what you're looking at.

Caroline: I just wanted to let everyone know. That's what I wanted to lead with. I have extreme gratitude for the weather right now. It's a beautiful blue sky day.

Jason: Wow. Thank you so much.

Caroline: You're welcome.

Jason: Bringing us in on a weather note. We hope it's beautiful wherever you are too, whether you're inside, outside, upside down, inside out, or whatever you're doing. Welcome to our podcast. This is a show where we talk to you about our lives in Portugal. We talk to you about running an intentional online business.

Caroline: Sure do.

Jason: We talk to you about just asking the question, What's it all for?

Caroline: What is it all for?

Jason: Anything you're doing in life just to be like, wait a second.

Caroline: How would you answer that question right now?

Jason: Cookies.

Caroline: It's all for cookies.

Jason: Cinnamon rolls. But this month, I'm on a no processed sugar rule for myself in my own baking. I can, of course, eat anything processed that comes from a package.

Caroline: When Jason came up with this rule that he wanted to give himself, I wish you could have been in the car with us, driving to the grocery store, where he announced this to the car. And by the car, I mean me. And he was like, just so you know, I'm doing this thing this month where I can only use different sugar alternatives.

Jason: I can't use processed sugar. That's the easiest way to say it.

Caroline: Yeah. Whatever. The more important thing was you said that, and then immediately after, you were saying and just to be clear.

Jason: Yeah. Because I didn't want any...

Caroline: That doesn't mean I can't buy the lemon poppy seed muffins at the grocery store.

Jason: Or some chocolate cubes if I want some chocolate cubes.

Caroline: You just want to be really clear about the caveats.

Jason: Listen, when you're someone who bakes a batch of cookies a week, a batch of cinnamon rolls every other week, that's a lot of processed sugar you're putting into your bod. And I was like, I don't need to be putting that into my body that much, even though I enjoy baking. So I have been trying to bake some cookies with honey as a substitute for processed sugar.

Caroline: They are delicious. They're a weird freaking texture, man.

Jason: Delicious?

Caroline: Yeah, they're good. I like the taste of them.

Jason: I've really actually enjoyed going from, like, a chocolate chip in a cookie to a chocolate bar chunk.

Caroline: Yeah, like a chunk.

Jason: I saw this in a New York Times recipe that got fed to me on YouTube, and this person who made, like, 19 batches of chocolate chip cookies to make this, like, perfect recipe said that he agreed, and he just liked the texture of it was better. The way it distributes is better. So anyway, I'm on my third...

Caroline: It feels more rustic as well.

Jason: Batch now of doing a gluten-free...

Caroline: Feels more artisanal, I would say.

Jason: Honey sweetened chocolate chip cookie. And we're not quite there yet. Delicious? Not yet. Edible? Yes.

Caroline: The texture is a little strange.

Jason: Yeah, the first batch kind of had to be thrown away, but threw away half of it because it just wasn't very good. Anyway, those are my baking updates for everybody who cares.

Caroline: Yeah, love that.

Jason: Let's talk about life in Portugal.

Caroline: Okay.

Jason: We're still here. We're living here in Portugal still. Do you ever have any moments where you're like...?

Caroline: No.

Jason: Man, when are we going back to Carlsbad where we used to live?

Caroline: No. First of all, I love living here so much. I don't have any moments where I'm like, man, whatever. But I do have moments. I have nostalgic moments for that time in our lives.

Jason: Okay.

Caroline: I don't think I want to go back to the place. I love it there. It's wonderful, but I like it here. I think whenever I have fond memories in my head of going back there, it's more of like, oh, like, memories of Plax and memories of...

Jason: Plax is our dog, by the way.

Caroline: And, like, our friends, Jen and Caleb, and we hung out with them all the time. And so it's just, it's more of that. But it's a recognition of, you know, time marches on in all of our lives regardless. So you can't go back in time.

Jason: Yeah. Well, and I think there's something very interesting about, like, when you're in a place, even if you're experiencing joy in that place, your mind tends to tell you, like, previous experiences were better because it's maybe had more time to think about them and process them.

Caroline: Which my Mind Hack for that...

Jason: Okay, go ahead.

Caroline: Is when I...

Jason: Welcome to Mind Hacks podcast, where we hack your mind.

Caroline: Whenever I think of that, I have a moment where I go, it's the classic thing of like, yeah, but three years from now me will look back on this time of when we're getting settled in Portugal and like, it'll be such an exciting, you know, the year before we have kids or whatever, like, I'll want all those things. And so whenever I have that moment of thinking of the past, I just think of future me, and I think that the past is now, and I'm in a time continuum.

Jason: Good job. So we haven't talked about anything Portugal-related yet, which we do want to get to. The big thing last week for us is we went to the nearby walled city with a castle called Óbidos.

Caroline: And I think we've talked about Óbidos.

Jason: We did when we did the Christmas market trip there.

Caroline: We did the Christmas market trip. So if you listened to that episode, you might be like, I remember that name. And it's because we just love this little town. I mean, granted, there are parts of it that are...

Jason: Very touristy.

Caroline: Muito turistica. That's maybe 90% correct. It can be touristy at times, but there's a reason, and it's because it's just so charming and so lovely. And so we went on a Saturday. We went finally to this pizza restaurant.

Jason: Been waiting. I have been waiting. I got thwarted in December when we went, and I was really looking forward to it because the photos... This is like, my perfect pizza. It's a sourdough crust. It's thick and bubbly. It's like personal size. So I know I'm going to be able to eat the whole thing by myself, which I'm very excited about.

Caroline: Right?

Jason: And you get to cut it with scissors. They give you scissors. So the restaurant is called A Janela, which we believe translates to "at the window."

Caroline: It's just a little window where you order. I brought up on my phone because, when you sit down, they bring you this little piece of paper that has Portuguese on one side and English on the other. Do you want me to read it?

Jason: Not the whole thing.

Caroline: I won't read the whole thing, but I think it's cute. This part of it says, "Relax, take the opportunity and breathe. The oven is small. We are a window. We are making pizza, but we don't serve fast food. Order pizzas to share. Wait for the first one. Don't rush. Grab the scissors. Cut, share, choose from several foot..." And they say it three times. We are just a window.

Jason: Just a window. And they really are like, it's just a window. And then you have some benches that you sit at and they bring you a pizza out. And honestly, I have to believe it is the best pizza I have ever had.

Caroline: It was so tasty. But I also wanted to read that because I know listeners are thinking about their online business and I think it's such a great lesson in branding because, when I read that I was like, we really should make more of an effort. I mean, I do think we do a pretty good job of this, but places on our website, and maybe you listening, can do this as well. What is the manifesto? You know what I mean? What are the phrases, the messaging that you can say right off the bat to set someone's expectations about...

Jason: Here's what you're going to get.

Caroline: Here's what you're going to get here. We don't rush. We're just a window.

Jason: It just also helps to set expectations too.

Caroline: Speaking of expectations.

Jason: What's that?

Caroline: We're going to talk about that a lot in this episode.

Jason: We are, but let's finish talking about Óbidos because I wanted to paint the picture for folks who just like hearing about this.

Caroline: I want you to paint it.

Jason: So basically you walk into this walled city and it's like a tiny, like one street that winds a little bit and there's just shops on every side.

Caroline: Ceramics and...

Jason: And some of them are like...

Caroline: Art.

Jason: Trinkets and stupid crap that you don't need to buy.

Caroline: Yeah, some of them are very gift shop-ey.

Jason: Some of them are like a ceramic shop that they make the ceramics probably in the back.

Caroline: Yeah. And remember we went to the shop this time that we didn't go to last time? And it was like twelve rooms and we ended up at the very end of this room with not a single salesperson or person working at the store in sight. And it felt like we ended up in their wine cellar. And it was just...

Jason: It was beautiful.

Caroline: This wine room that was covered in wood, like, natural wood with this, like, ladder and the lighting. And I was just like we got to live here.

Jason: We got to chatting with the woman, and she was telling us they just finished the construction of that room, and they were so happy with how it turned out. And I'm sad that I think most people aren't going to find it because it's like upstairs through room through room then around a corner and you kind of feel like, do I go this way? And that's for us, we always go that way.

Caroline: Also we got totally... The experience really got to us because we ended up buying a bottle of port. We now love like a little bit of port because...

Jason: If you don't know what port is, it's like an after dinner wine. It's like a sweet wine.

Caroline: Sweet wine. And we just fell in love with it because we would have it when we first traveled here at the beginning of last year. So now it has all these memories tied to it. And I love having a little bit too because, in the future, every time we taste it, it'll remind us of that time when we first moved to Portugal.

Jason: We've been really really excited to set up a little bar cart in our home to have like little wines we love.

Caroline: We don't even, literally, like we don't even drink that much anymore.

Jason: We get through a bottle of wine every two weeks.

Caroline: We get through a bottle of wine every two weeks. But we do still very much love that experience of just sipping on a little something and relaxing and enjoying the day.

Jason: But yeah, I just think the rest of the city, I just wanted to say, walking through that city to me is like the perfect example of I just had this moment where I was like, we live 20 minutes from here. It feels so magical. And I know in the summer it's not going to be a place we go because it's going to be so busy and so packed. But right now walking in there, it's not overwhelming at all. There's like one big group of tourists that are getting a tour and I just love the oldness of it mixed with just like some of the fun, like popping in a store and seeing what's going on and then the pizza.

Caroline: Speaking of popping in a store, every week we tell you about our Portuguese lessons and how this is coming. But I feel like we've hit a new level now that we can do little sentences and we know, like, more vocab because I went into a shop, it was like a little clothing boutique, and there was an older Portuguese gentleman. And one of my favorite ways to start conversations is just to try to think of words or to just say phrases and kind of lead with clearly... the way in delivering it is, like, I'm a little uncertain, and they're so eager to help or say things. So when I walked in, it was so calm, and he was listening to music, and he was just kind of relaxing, and I said, It's so calm in here. And he said, Oh, thank you. And then I said, Tranquilo. And that's the word for, like, tranquil or calm. And he said, Sim. And then that started a conversation, and so we started swapping back and forth, and I was using some of my words, and then all of a sudden, then we're off to the races. Then he's telling me that he moved here from Lisbon because it's muito tranquilo.

Jason: But in English, just to be clear, you're not having this whole conversation in Portuguese.

Caroline: No, no, no, but in and out, actually some Portuguese, some English, and...

Jason: I think this is what we've heard from a lot of people. It's just like, they so appreciate when you try. And that's a big part of why we wanted to learn the language, is just to show people that we didn't want to just move here and be like, okay, we're just going to speak English everywhere and that's what everyone has to do because they do. You can get away with that.

Caroline: I got to say, Gustāmus, which is like, "We like" and, boy, his face lit up when I said gustāmus.

Jason: Yeah. I've been loving throwing out a "Tenha um bom dia," which is "Have a good day." And I asked our language teacher, what's the normal phrase for just, like, you're leaving somebody and you just want to say, take care, have a good day, or whatever. And she was like, "Tenha um bom dia." It's like the normal one. And so now I've gotten comfortable with it, and I've thrown it out a couple of times, and people look at me, but then I've said this before, then they throw a sentence back at me, and I'm like, I have no idea what you just said. Sorry I ran out. That was my allotment.

Caroline: But it's okay.

Jason: Yeah, that's fine.

Caroline: And it was just so delightful to be able to converse. And the way that the language acts as a bridge to open you up to experiences and to people in the world is just so gratifying. So that's still going well.

Jason: Yeah. Again, the plan is to do that for the entire year. And it's kind of a nice metaphor for what we're talking about in this episode because you're not going to have overnight success in learning a language. You're not going to have overnight success in running your business.

Caroline: Exactly.

Jason: And it takes you longer to get the results that you want to see.

Caroline: So let's get into it.

Jason: Yeah, let's do it.

Caroline: Okay. So we wanted to record this episode specifically because we remember what this was like at being at this stage of business, and then also we still run into this at different tactics or different marketing strategies that we're trying to employ. And it's just this idea that there is a period of time where you start, whether it's... Let's just call it a marketing strategy, right? Like you want to use YouTube to grow your business, or you really want to grow your social media account, or you want to grow your email list and you start something and you feel like you've been putting so much effort and so much thought and so much time towards it. But you don't see the results of that strategy right away and you lose motivation for it. And not just lose motivation, but you start to second guess yourself and go, this is a bad use of my time. And the problem is that if you do that enough times, if you kind of stop and start and stop and start, you're never giving yourself a chance to see any type of consistency pay off. So you don't know when those results are actually going to come. But you know for sure that if you quit before you ever see any of those results, you're eventually not going to get any results at all.

Jason: Yeah. And I think the thing that really stands out to me and what I really want to talk about in this episode is just this idea that you have to understand there will be no results in the beginning.

Caroline: Right.

Jason: And even if you're not in the beginning, if you're in a pivot or if you're moving, let's say you're working with clients right now and you want to work with selling digital products, that's a whole different business model. That's a whole different problem that you're solving for a person. It's a whole different audience that wants to buy that thing from you.

Caroline: Absolutely.

Jason: And I think that too many people are getting sold a bill of goods of you can make X amount of money in this short amount of time and it's guaranteed to work because here's a testimonial for someone that it worked for. Here's a testimonial for someone that it worked for. And the problem is that those are outliers.

Caroline: Yeah. And of course it's important to... Like we understand why those stories are being shared, right, because you do want... For the people on the other end of that, they want to show, yes, I was able to get these results for someone. But I think for you, listener, the very important thing for you to take away is to always have a discerning eye and recognize that if it sounds like it's overnight, if it sounds like it's the accelerated path that you've been hoping and dreaming for, take a good hard second...

Jason: Run the other way. That's what I'm saying.

Caroline: Yeah. And really start to have a discerning eye because if it sounds too good to be true, it's probably too good to be true.

Jason: I also think there's really something interesting here in like, if you're the type of person where you're reading like a sales page or a sales email or whatever, and someone's promising you something, if you can take a second and go, Now, hold on. Can I devote 100% of my life to this plan right now? And if the answer is, No, I have kids. No, I have another job. No, I have a family that I have to take care of. No, I don't have a lot of time to work because I have a chronic illness. I know how much... Like if the answer is no, then you have to understand it's not for you. And that's an unrealistic expectation that person is...

Caroline: Exactly.

Jason: Instilling.

Caroline: That's what I would say. Again, it's much more nuanced, right? But I would say if all those things are true, then you can't expect that result.

Jason: Exactly. That's what I'm saying. And I think that a lot of times it's hard as anybody reading any sales thing that's exciting or you feel interested in, you go, oh, well, I think I can do that. And you're like, yeah, but if I don't take a hard look at what I actually have available to me, it's not going to work out for me.

Caroline: Yeah. And the frustrating thing for me is that the way that the Internet works is, of course, these Outlier stories are the ones that get viewed the most. Like, for example, if you see case studies on YouTube, there was a period of time last year where I was like, I really want to start like an Etsy side hustle just to learn that world and not always looking for creative things to...

Jason: Crochet some hats.

Caroline: And I just started to get in the algorithm where I was getting fed all of these. Like, I started my Etsy shop three months ago and I make $10,000 a month. And I was like, okay, first of all, very happy for that person.

Jason: Sure.

Caroline: Absolutely. They picked the right product. They found the right product market fit. Great for you. However, that is... I know that's the Outlier. I know that it's harder than that, but I would just continue to see those stories. And if you continue... So if you think of the YouTube as an algorithm where those Outlier stories are what people are interested in because they want to believe in that result, right? So those are the things that are going to float to the top. And then what you're going to see is you're going to start to see only those, and you're going to have this, like, I don't know what the logical, like, the word for the bias is, but you're going to have this bias where you think...

Jason: Is that recency bias? It's like all the things you see...

Caroline: Recency bias is, I think, when you... The things you saw most recently. So I don't know what... the survivorship bias? I don't know. One of those biases.

Jason: It's a bias.

Caroline: It's definitely a bias.

Jason: It's a bias. I even...

Caroline: But the thing you have to realize is like, oh, it's giving me the impression that this is what is the result for everyone, but it's absolutely not.

Jason: Yeah. So we want this episode to be two things for you to walk away with, hopefully. Number one is to normalize the feelings of I'm not seeing any progress in all this work that I'm doing.

Caroline: Right. Like, you're not doing it wrong, you're doing it right.

Jason: Exactly. So that's the first thing. The second thing is we really want to provide some encouragement for how to stay excited and continue going when you find yourself in this new phase and things aren't paying off.

Caroline: Right.

Jason: So it's very easy to give someone a plan, to have someone start that plan. But it's very difficult to help someone, especially because we have seen this with the 1000 plus people that have joined WAIM, stick with the plan through the muddy, tough time and through the time when you're not seeing any results. So what we want to really talk about is how do you not just abandon ship before you even really give yourself or your plan a chance to be successful or to see any type of results? And I think there's a lot of different things that we should dig into here. One of which just is like, what is quote unquote, results?

Caroline: Right. But what I was going to say is this conversation is so tough to talk about, especially that question of when do you know when it's time to sort of abandon the strategy or dig in and keep going? That's so hard because it's different for every person, for every marketing strategy. And so there's no hard and fast rule. But all I know is that what we mainly see is that people have not given their ideas and their strategies enough time. I can't tell you when the cut off point is, but I can tell you that nine times out of ten, if I look to someone, it's not enough time.

Jason: Yeah. And I wish there was like, this well respected rule in the online business space. It's like the six months, no results, have to post four times a month rule. And it's like, you can definitely judge the success of what you're working on if you can post every week, whatever the thing is that you're doing, whether that's like a new YouTube video, a new podcast episode, a new article on your site, a new email newsletter. But you have to do it every single week, and you have to do it for six months. And you have to actually, like, put quality and effort into it. And at the end of that six months, if it really has brought zero results whatsoever, then 100% you can move on.

Caroline: Yeah, I do think six months is actually a good...

Jason: Totally.

Caroline: A good, like, what am I... average time investment.

Jason: Yeah. Because I think let's just take, for example, like a YouTube strategy. Let's just talk about that for a second. And granted, we're not YouTube successful people who have hundreds of thousands of subscribers.

Caroline: Do you know why we haven't? Because we intentionally have not been consistent. The day that we decide that we're going to post every week for six months, I guarantee you we will see growth. I guarantee it.

Jason: The fact that our account has 10,000 subscribers now and over probably at this point a million total views, that's successful by a lot of people's metrics when it comes to YouTube. But for us, we know how inconsistent we have been with that medium and we have not given it the time in a very focused way and it's exactly the things that we're talking about today. And the reason why we're sharing that is because, A, we want it to be relatable that we run into these things too. But I think we also just want to talk through what are some of those ways that you can push past that initial stage of the excitement, the starting, and then when you don't get any vanity metrics or vanity comments or any sales at all of a thing, you kind of throw up your hands and say, well, that didn't work, and now I have to move to the next thing.

Caroline: Well, I think I'm skipping around in our notes here just to let you know. But to answer your question of how, I think it requires listening to this episode and then falling in love with the no results phase. I think it takes a major mindset shift because so many people go into a new marketing strategy. The reason they're doing it is because they want results. Obviously. They want to see their email list grow, they want more revenue in their business because what... They want more freedom, they want more flexibility and we know those are the... That's ultimately what people want. So there's nothing wrong with going into a strategy wanting results. That's just you want to know that your time is being spent in an effective way.

Jason: And results are worth measuring because otherwise why keep doing the things?

Caroline: Exactly. But I just wish more people went into it going, Yeah, I definitely need to see results but there's going to be a six month no results phase and every new thing that I publish is one week into that six months. Right. Falling in love with that first beginning period where you're not seeing any results because you're expecting it. And this is why we were saying this episode is so much about expectations. If you know going into a strategy that you're not going to see any results for six months, it changes the way that you approach it. You have to fall in love with the journey, you have to fall in love with the doing of the thing because I do think that so much of that six months of no results is also about you figuring out what's your process?

Jason: Exactly.

Caroline: Do you enjoy it? How do you do it in your way? How do you figure out your creative voice? How do you add quality to it? Right. Again, to go back to the YouTube example, it's how can I streamline this process that I can actually make a video every week, that I can get it out the door? How do I make sure I'm not... Maybe a little bit in the beginning, it's copying your favorite YouTubers, and then eventually you evolve into your own voice and your own style.

Jason: That'll take six months.

Caroline: But that will take six months.

Jason: Yeah. I think a big part of the falling in love with the no results phase and this is just extremely difficult for a lot of people to hear because it sucks as advice, but it's true, is you have to build a runway so that you can have six months to do it. So if you're working with clients right now, you need to build up your client runway and get clients secured for the next six months and lock in that revenue so that you can see, oh, I have six months. Now I don't have to think about getting money in the door. Now I can go work on this. If you work at a full time job, it's okay, great. I know I'm going to get my paycheck every single week, but I have to carve out the time whenever that time is so that I can devote to this for every single day, an hour or 2 hours a day, whatever that looks like, the weekend, and then work on it for six months. But you have to build that plan because this time is not going to just show up for you. And I think with every realistic, successful online business story, what you don't hear about is the no results pre-plan that went into it, where someone carved out the time, the money, the energy, and then went into it and started working.

Caroline: Yeah. It's almost like if I was going to give someone a strategy, I would say plan six months of a runway, six months of no results experimentation. Well, no results... You're experimenting with one channel, but you're committing to it for six months without results. And then six months of optimizing. The six months is to carve out the runway to be able to spend the time on the thing. The next six months is just picking a channel and trying to be consistent in that one channel for six months. And then after that mark, you evaluate and you go, okay, did I see any inkling whatsoever? That's where you check in on the results. Right. You say, Did I see any hint whatsoever that there was momentum that was built?

Jason: Yeah. And I think what's really helpful in this exercise, too, is you have to define what worthwhile results would be for you that are realistic in the beginning. Because if you don't and you get to the end and you go, oh, well, now I only have 10,000 subscribers on YouTube.

Caroline: And you don't even know.

Jason: 10,000 subscribers on YouTube, and it's someone who's like, oh, my email list only got to 500 subscribers. If you looked at a room of 500 people, and I understand email lists are not what they used to be and email open rates are not what they used to be, and people's attention is not what it used to be. But that is a lot of captive attention. And so in the beginning, if you're at this about to start a six month journey of doing this, and you're thinking about this as you're listening to this episode, you have to say, what are my tangible results in this effort? And what would be a win for me? And what's realistic? Because it can't just be the outlier results where you see like, oh, this person on YouTube got to a million subscribers in six months. It's like, I'm sorry, I hate to be the one to bring this to you. That's probably not going to happen for you.

Caroline: Yeah, but again, I wouldn't even check in on that until after that six months mark.

Jason: But I'm saying you need to set it ahead.

Caroline: Set it before. Fine. But what I would focus on for those six months is the input, not the output.

Jason: Absolutely.

Caroline: So I would set... Yes, we're talking this, like, six month arbitrary time frame, just because that feels...

Jason: Well, it's now the most proven time frame for online business success.

Caroline: It's scientifically proven. You heard it here first. We just did the experiment. It's extremely controlled, very peer reviewed.

Jason: Yup, yup, yup. I read papers.

Caroline: Sewing papers, peers and papers and papers and peers.

Jason: Peer papers. Yeah.

Caroline: But okay, I also think you should set... This is how I would do it if it was me. And again, everyone's different, but if you want an idea, I would approach it very similarly to how I approached falling in love with the process of fitness in 2021. If you haven't heard me talk about this, I talk about it all the time, but I was a person who hated exercise. In 2021, I decided I wanted to shift that, and so I said, I'm going to set a challenge for myself to exercise for at least ten minutes every single day of 2021. I knew that I needed to be consistent in order to fall in love with the process, but the different thing that I did that time to any other time that I've started a challenge like that in the past is I focused so much just on the input, just on can... I had a little tracker, and I did it 90 days at a time. So I had a sheet of paper with 90 circles on it, and after every workout, I got to put an X in my circle, and I saw that paper fill up 90 days at a time until I had filled up all every day of the year. And what that did for me is it just helped me focus on what some people would call the rep, like putting in the reps, just the repetition of doing the thing. And so it was the input. It was focusing on what am I putting in? Not what am I getting out? Not am I losing weight? Is my body changing? Am I getting stronger? Yeah, those things were interesting for me to pay attention to along the way, but I made the intentional choice at the very beginning to only focus on the input, not the output. Because again, it was about just not hating exercise. And I knew I had to fall in love with the process. So if I was someone who needed to... was being discouraged by the fact that I wasn't seeing results in my marketing efforts, I would set a rep number. So if it's six months of weekly YouTube videos, quick math. What's that? Four times six? Twenty-four.

Jason: Twenty-four.

Caroline: Wow, I got it before him. It's 24 videos, right? I would create a tracker. I would have it super large on my wall, and I would mark off an X every time I create a video. And I would just focus on the reps. Focus on the 24 reps you're trying to get out. And then before you know it, you'll be at the end of that six months. And that's when you can check in on the results and see, okay, what did I learn? Maybe you just don't even like that channel and you need the six months to figure it out.

Jason: And I think the metaphor of working out is really good because literally anybody listening to this podcast, I believe has probably tried some type of fitness challenge. And even if you've stuck with it for like two weeks or three weeks or a month, you know the pain of like, I'm not feeling any difference. I'm not seeing any difference, I'm not feeling a difference. This still sucks every single day. But you're not doing it to just get results in the first month, which is the exact same thing of this online business advice. And I know that everyone who's listening to this that wants to start an online business or has an online business and wants it to improve, you want success in a month. We all do. We want success in a month too. But it does not happen. And if it does happen again, it's an outlier. It's not something that you can actually say that's going to work for me. What you can say is going to work for you is I will make 24 YouTube videos in the next six months. I will post on Instagram every single week, twice a week for the next six months. That's 48 posts. I will write a newsletter three times a week for the next six months. That's 72 newsletters. Like, whatever the tangible thing is that you can do, focus on that because that is the input. Like you said, that's the thing you can actually track and see.

Caroline: I often think of this visual that comes to mind. I read it in Atomic Habits by James Clear, but it's just one of those visuals that's always stuck with me. It's in the very beginning of the book because I'm sorry, I didn't finish the book.

Jason: You got the habits you needed and you moved on.

Caroline: I got the concepts. Okay. Also, enough people have talked about the book that like, I get it, it's a really good book. Okay. But anyway, the visual in the beginning of the book is he talks about an ice cube and how if you raise the temperature on an ice cube from, you know, zero degrees Fahrenheit, the melting point of ice is 32 degrees Fahrenheit, right? Like if you get above 32 degrees, that ice cube is going to melt. But from zero degrees to 32 degrees, you don't see anything happening. But picture you're getting closer and closer to this melting point where the whole thing transforms. And so think of raising the temperature as the effort you're putting into the system of the thing that you're trying to do. And with every rep, you don't see a change. You don't feel like you have a big audience, you don't feel like you're any closer to your dreams. But little do you know, you're inching towards this melting point and there is going to be a point where that does pay off. But if you give up, if you stop heating the room, if you stop putting effort into the system, you're no closer to that melting point of finding out where that transformation lives. I always think about that.

Jason: Yeah. As two people who run a coaching community that has had 1000 people go through it, I can tell you unequivocally, 100% truth, I don't know anybody in our community who has stayed consistent for six months and not seen results.

Caroline: Definitely.

Jason: I know a lot of people that I can think of that started a podcast and, all of a sudden, they started to have more people listening. And more people listening. We just had someone post today who had like 280% growth in their podcast in like the past year, which is amazing. That's fantastic. We've had folks who have finally figured out how to get an email newsletter routine going and even just in sending an email newsletter every two weeks have seen fantastic results in their business that they didn't see before. And I'm not saying that these are like overnight million dollar successes, but that's not what we talk about around here. We talk about defining your own enough number, your own goals for what matters to you and then how you can use consistency to achieve those goals. And this is just one part of it, which is like the six month start to building your reps, to focusing on input to not hating the journey of doing whatever the thing is on a consistent basis so that you can get good at that thing. And that thing can be something you can repeat often.

Caroline: Yeah, and I also just want to have a caveat here about consistency because I feel like so often the consistency conversation ends up being this all or nothing conversation. Right. And again, like Jason said, we teach all kinds of entrepreneurs and I know people's different circumstances enough to know that not everyone's ability to be consistent is the same. Like, there are people who consistency is going to be harder for them.

Jason: Even the two of us. It's very different.

Caroline: Yeah, exactly. It is harder for someone who has a chronic illness or a disability or someone who is neurodivergent. All of those things are going to present challenges to being consistent. But to me, the most important thing is not that you... I want to be really clear about the difference between consistency and perfection. Like, it does not mean that you go every single rep and you never miss a day or you never miss an upload or you never miss a post. And that's the measure of success. If that happens, though, guaranteed, the best thing that you can do is train your brain to not throw it all away because of one missed rep, so to speak.

Jason: And again, this is different for everyone's situation, so you have to take this little side tangent with its own grain of salt, but you can also share with your audience why that didn't happen. Hey, folks, just letting you know, I'm going through a season of depression. It's going to be harder for me to be consistent, but I think for so many people who have ever been vulnerable in their journey and sharing things, they realize, oh, there are a lot of people just like me who are also paying attention. When we were going through your anxiety journey in 2019, that opened up a whole world of people who I think appreciated our content more because I think probably before that they looked at us as like, well, these two, nothing is ever difficult. It's two of us. So it's even like twice as easy for most people because we can do twice the work. But then we ran into that roadblock and it was very difficult to overcome. And instead of just pushing through and making sure that everyone thought everything was perfect, we just were honest about it. And I think that really opened up for everyone to see, like, oh, okay, this can happen to anybody. It's maybe happening to me, and I can still show up in different ways.

Caroline: Yeah. And like, for example, I think of last year while we were traveling full time, and I think it was when we hit France. This was like April or so, and it was just too much. Like, I remember being in Colmar and I was having a meltdown. And this was like... And of course, two weeks later, I get shingles, that's obvious. But I remember we recorded a podcast episode and just said, hey, we're going to have to take a break with the podcast. It gets too much for us to keep up with right now and explaining that. And then we came back to it, I think maybe...?

Jason: Six weeks later.

Caroline: Six weeks or so later. And from that point forward, we were consistent.

Jason: But we needed that break.

Caroline: But we needed that break. None of this conversation is all or nothing. And if you don't like that six month arbitrary timeline that is peer reviewed and reviewed by peers.

Jason: All the peer poll.

Caroline: Make up your own. Definitely put all of our advice through the filter of your own experience. As always, we definitely recommend that. But the point is about the podcast, when we were traveling and everything, it wasn't about being perfect. It was just if it was in our capacity to be consistent. At all costs, we want it to be consistent.

Jason: Yeah. And I think one point that I would really like to hit on here, especially related to that, is you have to share consistently an amount of times that feels doable to you in a time that feels reasonable based on your circumstances. What I mean by that is let's just take the 24 YouTube videos in six months example. So that's one YouTube video a week, and I'll get you six months, 24 total videos. If you're listening to this and you're like, okay, I can't do that in six months. I just don't have either the resources or the health abilities or whatever. Then what does 24 videos look like to you? Is that the next year? Great, then that's your timeline. If it looks like longer than that, that's fine. If it's shorter, that's fine too. But if it's shorter, I still think this is where the advice needs to be you still have to do it longer because it's not about just going, well, let me just upload 24 videos the next 24 days and just like, smash through all this and like I'm going to do it.

Caroline: There is a time element, marination.

Jason: There is a time element because also what happens over the course of time is, if you cram everything into a tight window of time, you don't learn enough about the thing that you're talking about to know, oh, how is this actually resonating? The audience that you're talking to to know, oh, I thought I was talking to these people, but I'm actually better suited talking to these people. And you don't learn how to talk to them. So you might have gone, oh, I was doing these, like, 20-minute videos. But actually what's working better is it's got to be under ten minutes, and I have to have, like, this, like, FAQs thing, like, at the end or whatever.

Caroline: You need the gaps in the middle in order to sort of have a little bit of a creation loop to be able to adjust going forward and optimize and make it really good. Yeah, I think I do agree with that. I would say a month is the absolute least arbitrary time block and a six and six months is a great line.

Jason: Yeah, I think three months is the least because I don't think you get enough time to hone your processes.

Caroline: Yeah, I agree.

Jason: Because that alone takes just a month in itself of like, okay, let's say you're like creating an Instagram reels schedule for yourself and you want to post three reels a week for the next six months. It's like you have to figure out what's my recording set up? I need to like, what tripod am I using? What part of my house am I recording? What time is...?

Caroline: And this brings us to, yet again, the crux of what's so difficult about this is you're doing all of that right and trying to figure all that stuff out and to tell someone they have to be putting so much effort into the system without seeing any validation that that effort is going to come back to them in any form of return is so difficult. But I think that this is just one of those areas of business where you go, oh, it is a leap of faith. It's not always a calculated move of like, oh, well, I have the data that says that this is going to be a good move for me. It's like, no, I just believe in the ability of like, let's say YouTube to bring traffic to my website or whatever. I've seen enough people see good results with that. I know I'm different than them, but I believe that I have the ability and opportunity to see this pay off. So I'm going to put into the system and I am going to rely on that faith. It takes an amount of decision to buy into that, right?

Jason: Yeah.

Caroline: And I'm just mentioning that because, again, I always love the mindset stuff of like when you're not seeing results, what can you fall back on? Number one, falling in love with the no results. Find a way to love the process. Find a way to track the input, not the output. And also find a way to remind yourself of that belief and that buy in and just like like almost not to like a delusional level.

Jason: Yeah.

Caroline: But there's a little bit of convincing yourself like, no, no, I just believe in my gut that if I give six months to this, I believe I can see some results.

Jason: Yeah. One thing I wanted to talk about was so let's just play this example out a little bit further for someone who might be listening. So what do I do when I'm at four months I've been putting in all this effort. I feel like I've got good processes in. I feel like I'm on a good consistency schedule, but I'm still seeing no growth or traction or results because it is impossible not to look at those things, the views, the comments, the subscribers, whatever the thing is that you see.

Caroline: I think at that point, it's maybe time to enlist some outside eyes, like loop somebody in, a business coach, a friend. Be weary, though, because of who you enlist.

Jason: You have to go someone who's in the arena.

Caroline: You have to go to someone who's in the arena who's making things as well, even bonus points that they're making things...

Jason: Similar.

Caroline: In the platform that you're talking about because they're going to have a better eye. But that's where I start to wonder, what are we missing there? And sometimes, clearly with four months in, we talk about this idea very often of you can't read the label from inside the jar. So at that point, you've been inside the jar for four months. You need somebody to maybe read the label from the outside and say the pace of, like again, I keep going back to the YouTube thing because it's just top of mind, but the pace of your videos is maybe too long. Or I wasn't really sure what my takeaway was supposed to be exactly. Or I felt like I needed more visuals to understand what you were saying. And then you go, Great. I've got three ideas about how to experiment the next month of how to add visuals, tighten up my video. You know what I mean? I think at that mark, that's where you can kind of very carefully employ the feedback from other people. What else did you say?

Jason: I think two things. One, I asked this question and I already had answers. One is increasing the quality. And this is not something that I would say to do from the beginning. I would say to do this when you're four months or five months in, when you know that you can make some level of jump in quality and don't be obsessive about it, but how could I just make this look a little bit better than 90% of what's out there? Because when you're getting started, it's going to be ugly no matter what it is.

Caroline: In fact, you should...

Jason: Embrace that.

Caroline: Embrace that.

Jason: Yeah, embrace the ugly at the early stages because it always starts that way. So your videos aren't going to look fantastic. Your audio is not going to sound great on a podcast. Your reels aren't going to be as funny. Your email newsletters may not be as valuable for someone to read, any of those things. So quality is something that at that point I would definitely look at, okay, how can I improve the quality? And I don't have to go overboard with it, but what could I do? The second thing is, how can I make this wildly different? And a lot of that is you have to lean on your own personality and know what suits you best because you don't want to, like, put yourself in an uncomfortable position where you're, like, dancing around and being goofy. And, like, that's not you at all because that's going... You're gonna hate creating what you're creating. But it's about going, okay, let me just ask, like, five of my closest friends, like, what what's what do you think is unique about me or different about me now? Have some thick skin because you might get some weird responses, but be open to the fact that someone's like, oh, I always love how you present big ideas in simple ways and like, oh, you know what? I haven't been doing that in my content at all, so how could I use that idea?

Caroline: Yeah, because I think for most people, the instinct for those first the first phase of reps is probably going to be using a formula that already exists. It's going to be taking the template that's already sort of the norm out there and just replicating that, which is, I think, a natural part of the creative process. But, yeah, maybe that four month mark is like, okay, now it's time to really pursue my own voice, really remix something, really maybe experiment a little bit more and just be kind of ruthless in your own critiquing of your output and going, how can I try something different?

Jason: Yeah, I think to kind of, like, wrap this up, what I think would be helpful is, okay, you're someone who's listening to this. You have been consistent for six months. You've been sending the email newsletters, you've been publishing the YouTube videos. You're an outlier that we haven't really heard from much, that this has not worked for you. What do you do now when you're at that place that you still haven't seen results? And I can answer first if you want.

Caroline: Yeah.

Jason: I think this is where you have to go a really hard look at are you actually delivering valuable information based on a skill you have? Because I think if you've been consistent for six months in doing something, but it hasn't been showing results of people being interested, it's that you're not maybe teaching a thing or sharing a thing that's giving enough value to someone for them to feel like that was important enough or helpful enough. And that's where you need to go, listen, I need to get better at this thing that I'm doing.

Caroline: Right. At that point, it's time to hold up a mirror and reinvest in the skills of you to kind of go, okay, I'm going to build up my own arsenal, so then I can create an offer or create a message or create value.

Jason: Just as a quick example, let's say that you had a Squarespace Tips newsletter, and every week you're sharing Squarespace Tips, but it's all information that's really easy to find, and it's even in Squarespace's, like, Help Docs or whatever. For you, what I would say is invest in learning something really narrow in Squarespace. So it's like how to set up e-commerce websites that help sell better whatever the products are, but through whatever the means are that work really well. So if it's like the pop ups, the announcement bars, the abandoned carts, anything but really, really narrow on a topic to go, okay, I'm going to know more about this than most people ever would.

Caroline: Yeah, I think that's good advice. Like if you're one of those people, like you said, who now you've found yourself and you're like, it's just not working, that's the variable that I would tweak is go hyper narrow and then do it all again.

Jason: You're going to need a break there to figure it out. So you're going to have to invest in your skills. And I think for us, this is even something that we did with Wandering Aimfully. When we started as a membership, things weren't selling very well. And then we figured out, oh, group coaching. But we didn't even know if group coaching was going to sell that well. But we did it for six months and thankfully we had enough people sign up that it was enough to keep us afloat and going. It wasn't at all close to our enough number and what we were trying to actually make per month, but it showed us, okay, people are interested in this, which is good. Now let's do it every single month. Let's get feedback back on how people are liking it because the first one that we did, we had no idea it would even be the way people would want to do it. And then we just started to adapt over time. And now we've done 41, as of recording this, coaching sessions, which is crazy that we're going to hit four years of monthly coaching sessions. And we know it's good and we figured it out, but we've also tweaked it along the way and it has changed in different ways. And it's something that's an internal piece of content that a lot of people don't see in the external. But to me, it's a really good one to just look at for ourselves because it has kept people paying for our membership. It has kept people, for our group coaching program, it has kept people in because we've invested in the quality, the differentiator, the value of it, the skills that we've been learning that we now turn over and share with other people.

Caroline: Definitely. But listen, it's tough, and we know it's tough. And that's why we hope you can come back to this episode when you need a little bit of a pep talk.

Jason: Especially if you're, like, three weeks into starting something and you're just like, I am getting four views on this, or like, I have no more new subscribers than I did two weeks ago. And I've been sending out the emails and I've been talking about this on social.

Caroline: Believe me, I know it's hard to believe because we've been at this for many years now, but we too started there. My first email newsletter went out to four people and two of them were out of us. But it goes back to what I was saying about that little bit of belief I told myself I remember so distinctly. I had read a few articles and listened to a couple of podcast episodes about email marketing. Okay, this is like 2013. And I'm like, this is it. I believe in it. This is the way to build an audience. I get it. And so I just bought in and I just said, I am going to do this for a year. I'm going to send a newsletter without fail every Monday for a year. And I know that I'm going to have an audience at the end of that. And I don't know if it's going to be 500 people or 5000 people, but I just know that this is the channel that I'm going to commit to. And that was my non-negotiable for Made Vibrant.

Jason: And the truth of the matter is, you wrote that email Sunday night almost every week.

Caroline: Almost every week.

Jason: At the beginning, three months of that. But that's that's what it took for you to figure out, okay, I don't want to be writing this every Sunday, so let me build a process after that. Then you started to build a process and you got better at doing it and you started to hone like, what am I writing about? Who am I writing to?

Caroline: Exactly.

Jason: And all of those things tweaked and changed to, by the end of that year, you had a business that was making thousands of dollars every month off of digital products and you had an audience that really loved your content. And it started from four people.

Caroline: Four people.

Jason: And it didn't jump in the first month. I think the first month you probably ended up with like 30 people.

Caroline: Yeah, it was so slow over time. But I don't know, I have this mentality of every day waking up and just being like, if I take one step forward, it doesn't matter how far I go, it's one step further than I was the day before. And so, again, if you can fall in love with the no results phase, if you can fall in love with the process, if you can fall in love with the input, the input is what is going to get you the output.

Jason: And just remember, plan it out now. So what is going to help you have that time, energy and effort? And if that's, oh, I need to hunker down and focus on just working with clients for the next six months and saving every dollar I can to build myself a nice runway to be able to work, then that's great. Six months from now you're going to be able to do something you've never been able to do before because you've actually planned out to do it. So whatever that looks like for you, we want to have you understand that the no results phase of online business, even if you've been doing it for a while, if you're starting a new project, if you're venturing into a whole new way of making money, it is going to be less than awesome as it gets started. But that is how it is for the majority of us. And if you're reading slick sales copy and emails that's telling you it can be done in 30 days, or it can be done in two months, or you don't even have to be on social media anymore to see success, you can just... I don't know, whatever it is, it's not true. Go the other way from that and build yourself your own plan that feels like you can do it and stick to it and see the results because they will come.

Caroline: I think a good place to end it.

Jason: All right, that's it. I'm going to go bake another batch of these honey sweet cookies.

Caroline: No, let's go for a walk. It's such a gorgeous day. Remember the weather?

Jason: I do remember the weather that you talked about, yes.

Caroline: Let's go enjoy it.

Jason: As a meteorologist. And yeah, we'll be back in your ears next week. As a reminder, as you heard at the beginning of this episode, our Wandering Aimfully Unlimited coaching program kicks off next week, March 20. So if you want to learn more, check that out at...?

Caroline: WanderingAimfully.com.

Jason: Nice. Good stuff.

Caroline: Slash join.

Jason: Well, until March 20. After March 20, you can just go to .com because I work some wizardry and I just make the sales page the home page. Pro tip, when you're in an open and closed launch, make the sales page your home page. Just do it. You're welcome. Okay, good...?

Caroline: Bye.