183 - Simplifying your business (part 2!)

[00:00:00] 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're 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.

[00:00:28] Jason: And I'm here too. Hello and welcome to a post Halloween episode.

[00:00:39] Caroline: Okay, real talk. We forgot that this episode would come out two to three days after Halloween, and we forgot in the previous episodes to include a little fun segment.

[00:00:52] Jason: Some fun. You're getting it a couple of days late. So add this to your IMDb watch list. Everyone out there uses an IMDb watch list, not just me, right?

[00:01:00] Caroline: They're like, what's this? What's IMDb? What he's saying is we're going to do a little segment about our favorite Halloween movies at the top of the episode here. In case you were like, what does he mean? Add this to your IMDb? And so that's what we're going to start with. If you're already be on to Thanksgiving or onto the next holiday, feel free to skip to the meat of the episode.

[00:01:19] Jason: Do not ever skip. Listen intently on every single word.

[00:01:22] Caroline: But that was a test and you failed because you shouldn't skip through the podcast.

[00:01:24] Jason: Exactly. All right, let's jump right into it before we talk about simplifying your business, part two, because that's obviously, that's the bulk of this. But just, we want some fun to kick this off with.

[00:01:33] Caroline: Right.

[00:01:34] Jason: All right, you can go first. Ladies first.

[00:01:35] Caroline: So we're saying three movies.

[00:01:37] Jason: We're saying top three Halloween movies. And Halloween has to exist in the movie at some point or the franchise is fully a Halloween franchise. Case in point, Scream. Scream is a Halloween franchise movie. I think Halloween happens in some of them.

[00:01:54] Caroline: Or like, what's the Jason movies?

[00:01:57] Jason: Yeah, Jason.

[00:01:58] Caroline: That's fully Halloween,

[00:01:59] Jason: Friday the 13th. Yeah.

[00:02:00] Caroline: But maybe like a tricky one would be like...

[00:02:03] Jason: Start with your first one. Let's go.

[00:02:04] Caroline: Okay, my first one is a basic pick, but it is a classic. And that is Hocus Pocus.

[00:02:11] Jason: I knew it.

[00:02:11] Caroline: I have not seen the second one, which is embarrassing. I'm going to watch it this year. And that's my ultimate classic. It's got all the good witchy stuff. Love it. Gets me in the mood.

[00:02:24] Jason: Okay.

[00:02:24] Caroline: It's the Disney version of Halloween.

[00:02:26] Jason: I've never watched it. I could watch it on a Saturday movie night with if you'll watch Gremlins.

[00:02:33] Caroline: Oh, babe, I don't think I can agree to that.

[00:02:36] Jason: You really do not want to watch Gremlins. You hate little animatronic puppets.

[00:02:40] Caroline: I do not like animatronics. You know this about me. It creeps me out, man. I don't like it.

[00:02:47] Jason: Something happened to you when you were a kid. Some animatronic got you in a Toys R Us or something?

[00:02:51] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:02:52] Jason: All right, so that's your first movie. These would have to be in top order here. I'm going to go with Happy Death Day. Now again, these are Halloween movies. So like death and murder and things. So it's like, again, these are not good plotlines that are helpful for our...

[00:03:07] Caroline: Just to be clear, you're anti death is what you're saying. Yeah.

[00:03:11] Jason: In a fictional movie where you just want to watch and let your brain go.

[00:03:15] Caroline: Yeah, let your brain go.

[00:03:17] Jason: If you've never watched these movies and you like kind of like the thriller slasher type movies , it's a very interesting, fun take. It's like Groundhog's day meets a slasher.

[00:03:29] Caroline: Oh, yeah, I remember that now.

[00:03:30] Jason: And you watched it and you were like, that was really good. There's two of them. I think they're both worth watching. That's my first one.

[00:03:36] Caroline: Okay. Do you have Scream on your list?

[00:03:40] Jason: Maybe.

[00:03:41] Caroline: Okay, my second pick is just all the Scream movies.

[00:03:44] Jason: You're going all? Come on, you have to pick a favorite at least.

[00:03:47] Caroline: Oh, they all just run together for me.

[00:03:49] Jason: Yeah. You should have done a little bit more research in the 1 minute I gave you before we started recording.

[00:03:54] Caroline: Okay, I'll just pick the last one that we watched because...

[00:03:56] Jason: It was very good.

[00:03:57] Caroline: It was good.

[00:03:58] Jason: All right.

[00:03:59] Caroline: Which was the latest one?

[00:04:00] Jason: Scream 6. My second pick will be Scream 5/ 6. They're both basically the exact same movie.

[00:04:07] Caroline: The reboot.

[00:04:07] Jason: They're the same cast as the early ones are the similar cast, but they very much make fun of the entire franchise.

[00:04:14] Caroline: I love that.

[00:04:15] Jason: And it's great. They do a really good job. When I was looking at it... So the first couple of Scream movies were like two years apart. Then 2001 to 2011, they had a break.

[00:04:24] Caroline: Right.

[00:04:24] Jason: And they did Scream 3 and then 4, like two years apart. And then they had another ten year break. Then they did Scream 2 last year, Scream 3... Scream 5 last year, Scream 6 this year. They were like...

[00:04:37] Caroline: Blowing through them. Here's what I like about the Scream movies is I love the who-done-it aspect.

[00:04:44] Jason: Right.

[00:04:44] Caroline: And then I love the self referential on top of that where they always have the monologue where the person is like, okay, here's why you did it. Here's why you did it. And then our favorite game during it is to be like, it's so and so. No, it's so and so.

[00:04:57] Jason: Yeah.

[00:04:58] Caroline: I mean.

[00:04:58] Jason: Okay, your last pick.

[00:05:02] Caroline: So we both said that?

[00:05:03] Jason: Yeah, you said Scream 6. I had Scream 5/ 6 on my list.

[00:05:07] Caroline: Okay, I'm going to go with... All of these are like very nostalgic for me. They were like the movies I watched in Halloween.

[00:05:13] Jason: Listen, no one's judging your picks.

[00:05:15] Caroline: You're always judging my picks.

[00:05:16] Jason: Absolutely.

[00:05:16] Caroline: That's all you do is after we do a game like this, you're like, it'll be fun, it'll be great. And then afterwards you're like, why'd you pick that?

[00:05:22] Jason: Well, yeah, that's the part of doing this.

[00:05:23] Caroline: Yeah, I know. That's the part you like.

[00:05:24] Jason: Go ahead.

[00:05:25] Caroline: I'm going to go with the original Adams family.

[00:05:28] Jason: Oh, okay.

[00:05:29] Caroline: With star studded cast. And I know the hot thing is Wednesday, but Christina Ricci, the original Wednesday, and I watched those a lot growing up. Really, the whole thing. I think there's like three of them.

[00:05:44] Jason: We definitely watched the first one in a classic movie night many Halloweens ago because we've been doing classic movies more than 4 years now.

[00:05:49] Caroline: I don't think they hold up. I don't think the comedy translates.

[00:05:52] Jason: Comedy does not. It's very like slapsticky.

[00:05:54] Caroline: It's not funny in any way, shape or form. It is literally just like nostalgic for me.

[00:06:01] Jason: Did you watch Wednesday?

[00:06:04] Caroline: I watched the first episode, I think.

[00:06:05] Jason: Okay, as of recording this, we still have a couple days until it's Halloween. You should watch it before Halloween.

[00:06:09] Caroline: I know people say it's so good.

[00:06:10] Jason: It's so good. Jenna Ortega is just fantastic. She's just great. All right, my last pick here, I'm going to go with one that we recently watched, Freaky Friday. Oh, it's just called Freaky, but it's basically like a play on Freaky Friday. Yes. With Vince Vaughn. And I don't know.

[00:06:29] Caroline: But like objectively, that movie wasn't good.

[00:06:31] Jason: No, but it was very fun to watch. That's what's great about it. They switch roles. Vince Vaughn is just Vince Vaughn, the entire movie being absolutely ridiculous. And it's just entertaining. It's just a slasher entertaining movie.

[00:06:42] Caroline: Also my honorable mention, which is not...

[00:06:44] Jason: I have an honorable mention, too, of course. This is how we're married.

[00:06:46] Caroline: This is how we're married. My honorable mention, which is not really about getting in the mood of Halloween, but I just think it's like a phenomenal movie, is Coco, because it's technically dia de los muertos.

[00:06:59] Jason: We should watch it again.

[00:07:00] Caroline: Oh, my gosh. Talk about just like a phenomenal...

[00:07:02] Jason: Yeah, very good. My honorable mention is Idle Hands. And the only reason it's not one of my top three is because I'm very certain it doesn't hold up. And that it's very problematic.

[00:07:11] Caroline: I bet it's very bad.

[00:07:13] Jason: Yeah, very problematic.

[00:07:15] Caroline: The reason I'm laughing is I don't even think I've seen that movie all the way through because I think it came out when I was too young to be old enough to watch it. And I think I just saw glimpses of it on tv.

[00:07:24] Jason: It's very gropy because the hands, just the movie title alone is problematic a little bit. But it's an honorable mention because I remember watching at the time and it was a very interesting, fun take on the story.

[00:07:37] Caroline: Okay.

[00:07:37] Jason: All right, let's get into the part two here. That was our movies. We can move on. Hopefully...

[00:07:42] Caroline: Everyone listening...

[00:07:43] Jason: Added those to your Watch list.

[00:07:44] Caroline: We are...

[00:07:45] Jason: Way past.

[00:07:45] Caroline: Way past.

[00:07:46] Jason: Yeah. But you know what? There's three people who listen to this out of the 27 listeners who are like, thank you. I love adding new movies to my watch list. And I'm excited too. I didn't hear about any of this.

[00:07:55] Caroline: Honorable mention is the original Halloween Town from Disney Channel.

[00:07:58] Jason: Never heard.

[00:07:59] Caroline: Movies.

[00:07:59] Jason: Honorable, honorable, honorable mention. Spooky Buddies, the dog movie that we never watched. But we just always see the poster and we laugh.

[00:08:06] Caroline: They always want us to watch Spooky Buddies.

[00:08:08] Jason: Let's get into part two of simplifying our business framework now.

[00:08:13] Caroline: Okay.

[00:08:14] Jason: So we shared a bit about this in episode 180 just a couple of episodes ago, how we were coming up with a framework for a coaching session. We were deep diving into all these different things, getting clarity on what people struggle with, how we wanted to help them. We even explored just some of the ideas in that episode.

[00:08:31] Caroline: Right. So it's a little bit of a meta idea because, yes, we are going to help you with simplifying your business in this episode, but also as a meta lesson, wanted to share with you, how do we come up with frameworks? So first episode, like Jason said, we talked about wherever we start, which is what's the problem that we're trying to solve for people. And that's where I really dig in. And I think about our members. I put myself in their shoes. I think about our business experience. I go, when did we feel most overwhelmed and like things were getting too complex. And that was how we basically came up with what we eventually called The Flavors of Chaos. And we narrowed it down basically to these five different Flavors of Chaos, which I'm going to tell you right now, in case you didn't listen to 180, just briefly. And so you listening can think about which of these flavors do you feel like you're experiencing right now in your business? What areas of your business have gotten too complex? So you have offer complexity as number one, too many customer segments, too many sales events and strategies. You're trying to sell too many things at too many times. You're always wondering, what do I promote, when? And ultimately maybe even splitting your audience. And it's just very confusing for you about what the common goal is of what people are trying to buy. That's, number one, offer complexity. Number two, marketing bridge complexity. So you've gotten to the point where that you just have too many lead magnets, too many kind of opt in experiments. You're having a hard time tracking all the conversion metrics and different funnels, and so you don't really know what is effective and what's not. And so it's creating complexity in your mind.

[00:10:03] Jason: Yeah, this definitely goes to a lot of you who you come to your website and you have a home page that has this offer. Then you go to another page, you have a pop up with another thing, a lead magnet. Then you go to an article and there's, like, another lead magnet. It's just like there's so many different things and ways you're trying to capture people, which is good because it's good to experiment with those, but you need to simplify and find the one that actually works.

[00:10:23] Caroline: Exactly. There's a time to experiment, then there's a time to refine. Number three is content cadence overwhelm. So you're just swamped with the sheer amount of content that you feel like you need to create in order to keep up, whether that's social media content or article content or just all the content. And so you feel like you're stretched between multiple content platforms. Number four is task and time ineffectiveness. So you feel busy all the time and you feel underwater, like you're always trying to catch up on your to do's, but then you look back and you feel like nothing you were spending your time on really moved the needle.

[00:10:54] Jason: This is definitely those of you who you go on a whole work week and you look back and you go.

[00:10:58] Caroline: What did I do?

[00:10:58] Jason: What did I even do? And we're with you. We have had those.

[00:11:01] Caroline: Oh, my gosh, totally. And then finally process and app bloat. So your efforts at documentation and automation are actually creating more operational drag. You just feel like you have a lot of processes going and none of them are being very efficient, and even sometimes some of them are... Maybe you're trying to document them too much and that's actually slowing you down. So those are kind of the five Flavors of Chaos. And so where we landed with the coaching session was we started people out there because we wanted them to be able to define, again, what is the problem that I need to solve in my business? And so then I thought to myself, I know what the next question is going to be from our members. They're going to go, okay, great. But what order do I solve these in? Because that's always the thing we're trying to think about for people, is, what's the order?

[00:11:46] Jason: It's like you're playing overcooked on Nintendo Switch.

[00:11:48] Caroline: Right.

[00:11:48] Jason: And you have four fires that have started. Which fire do I put out first with the fire extinguisher? Shout out to those of you who played overcooked and know how stressful but fun that game is.

[00:11:56] Caroline: And that's crucial. So part of your job as a business educator is to really anticipate those roadblocks that you feel like your students or your members or anything are going to encounter and to try to solve for that. So immediately after identifying The Flavors of Chaos, we tried to come up with an order that we feel like, strategically, people would want to tackle these in. And what we landed on was offers first. Really, what we landed on is the order that I told them to you in, which is offers first, because that is going to clarify your message, your audience, your value proposition. Everything gets clearer when you simplify your offers, and that's why we're such big believers in, if you can come up with one signature offer, I think that's a fast track to a calm business. I know that doesn't work for everyone's business, and that's okay.

[00:12:46] Jason: Also, one way to get to a signature offer is to create multiple offers over a period of time like we've done, and then refine. And also, I'll repeat this many times throughout this episode, there's never going to be a clear indicating moment of, you should change this now. It's going to be going with your intuition and your gut and looking at everything and then going, okay, I believe based on the data that I have and the way that I feel, this is what I should go with. And we felt the same way about Wandering Aimfully moving to coaching. So when we moved to a monthly unboring coaching program, nothing told us that this was the exact right thing to do. There was nothing staring us in the face. It was just, we felt like that was the right move. And then you have to take the risk to do it.

[00:13:27] Caroline: Exactly. We actually go through an exercise in the coaching session that is called The Offer Scorecard. And that is a way for you to choose what your guiding principles are for what offers you want to move forward with, and then to score your offers based on that and cut the ones that don't make the cut of the score that you want. So that makes sense to start with offers, because everything else is going to be simplified by a cascade effect. So if you simplify your offers, then you move on to number two, which is your marketing bridges, because a lot of those marketing bridges are going to get cut out by the simple fact that you're no longer marketing those offers. Right. So when it comes to your marketing bridges, I think this is the hardest one to simplify because, and we took people through an exercise of basically writing down every single entry point that people come to your brand. What is the lead magnet you're offering them? What is the nurture sequence that you are tacking onto that and a way to evaluate metrics at basically every stage of your customer's journey so that you can look for... And basically what you're asking for here is what is creating complexity for not enough impact?

[00:14:32] Jason: Yeah, I like to think of the marketing bridge part of this process of just like trying to get out of debt. So it is looking at all of your expenses, downloading all of your credit card statements for the past 90 days, combing through every single transaction and finding what can you cut, what can you get rid of, what can you change? And that's really what this process is going to be like for all of your marketing efforts. It's writing down everything that you're doing and clearly identifying, does it continue to bring value to your business? Is it actually working in some way? Can you see some type of conversion? And again, we're giving this to you in like an abridged podcast episode because we did a full coaching session to our members. So we're just trying to share some of it with you so that you can have some of it to take forward. But all of these different parts of this are going to require effort. But having a simple business is an amazing feeling. And if you can put that effort in over time and continue to come back to it, we can tell you as two people who now have a pretty simple business, overall, it is so worth it. It's hard to do. Just like getting out of debt is hard to do, downloading, looking your expenses is hard to do, but doing it does help you move forward.

[00:15:34] Caroline: Yeah, and just to tell you where we landed on that for our business, after the marketing bridge simplification process that we walked people through in the coaching session, we're strongly considering maybe even switching our home page back to our quiz. That worked the best because we had this hypothesis this year that we tested about a more tailored lead magnet from our homepage, just going after client based business owners who want to transition to digital products. And while we, I would say it was effective, but the question is, and this is what I mentioned earlier, are the results worth it for the complexity that it creates?

[00:16:13] Jason: Exactly.

[00:16:13] Caroline: Because the problem is it wasn't so drastic enough of getting people onto our list. First of all, it didn't convert better than the quiz, which we kind of knew once we started getting into it because we were like, ok, it's going to be a smaller segment, but is that going to translate to more people going through our sequences and eventually buying WAIM? And the truth is, not enough people... Like it didn't improve our conversion to sales enough for just the mental bandwidth that it takes up for us to think, okay, we have people coming through the quiz. Okay, we have people coming from the home page. Trying to manage all of that, it creates more complexity than is necessary, but you don't know that until you experiment. So if you're in that stage right now, cool. Just make sure that you have a benchmark that you are measuring and that at some point you have it on your calendar or your to do list to evaluate that experiment and then to prune it if it didn't work out or if you feel like it's creating too much complexity. And we'll talk about that. Those are the three steps of simplification that we'll talk about in a second. Moving on, number three, content channels. So once you simplify your offers, then you can simplify your marketing bridges, which is going to naturally simplify your content channels because now you know, okay, my target audience, where do they spend their time?

[00:17:28] Jason: Right. Not spending a bunch of time creating Instagram content. But my audience lives on LinkedIn.

[00:17:32] Caroline: Exactly.

[00:17:32] Jason: So it's like I need to stop being on Instagram, even though that's what I thought I was supposed to do. And I need to move to a different...

[00:17:37] Caroline: And if you are someone who feels underwater on the amount of content that you need to create, I would really challenge you to audit every single channel that you're posting content on, decide how much you're putting into that on a weekly basis time wise, and then what are you getting out of it? Do you really feel like it's moving the needle in terms of sales? Do you have a post purchase survey where people are saying, I found you through Instagram? Do you feel like you get really good conversations in the DMs, et cetera? Or do you feel like you're just spinning your wheels? Because if so, I would ask yourself, if I had to cut my content channels in half right now, which ones would I choose to keep? That's always a good clarifying question. And then once you do your content channels, then you can simplify your tasks and time, because again, a lot of these activities, these business activities are going to fall off the map once you realize, oh, I don't have that offer anymore. I don't have to keep up with that sales email sequence, marketing bridge anymore. I don't have to post on that content channel anymore. That's going to naturally cut a lot of this off of your plate. But you're still going to have quite a few things that you're doing in your business. And this is where we are at right now. So something that we are spending time doing for the end of the year, in order to simplify for next year, is we're writing down all of the repeated tasks that we do that we've spent time on this year and that we continue to spend time on. And wow, is that weird once you see it written out. And we are evaluating all of those tasks by two things. And if you can imagine in your head, for me, if this is something that you need to do in your business, imagine right now kind of this two by two matrix, right? It's like two squares on top and then two squares on bottom. And if you've ever done like an Eisenhower matrix or something like that, it's just the idea of you're trying to balance two different variables. And so you have four quadrants, basically, and you're trying to evaluate impact and your involvement in the task. Okay, so impact is, do I feel like this contributes to moving my business towards my business goals? So you have things that are high impact and you have things that are low impact. And then involvement. It's like, how much do I have to be involved in this task? Does it have to be me or could I delegate it out or could someone else take that on? So then you have tasks that are high involvement and low involvement. To give you an example, this podcast would be very high involvement because it has to be us.

[00:20:05] Jason: Yeah. No one's going to do this podcast on our behalf.

[00:20:08] Caroline: Right. So you end up with these four quadrants. And so you're going to have these different categories. You're going to have tasks that are basically low involvement and low impact. You're going to have things that are high impact but high involvement, low involvement, high impact and high involvement, low impact. And I know it's confusing, but again, if you go back to that quadrant, the reason this becomes really powerful is because anything that is high involvement but low impact, you should really think about pruning it, cutting it from your task list. And I just feel like most of us, we're so busy working on our business that we never take a step back and ask ourselves, is this thing that I'm doing high impact or low impact?

[00:20:50] Jason: Yeah, well, it's the classic. You're working in your business and not working on your business. So you're just like, in the day to day, every day, doing the thing and you never take a step back to be like, but is all the things, or are all the things that I do throughout my entire work week, are they worthwhile? Like, do they actually benefit my business in some bigger way? And it feels like all the tasks add up to what your business is.

[00:21:08] Caroline: Exactly.

[00:21:09] Jason: But the reality is that it's probably, it's the 80-20 rule, right?

[00:21:12] Caroline: Exactly.

[00:21:13] Jason: Like 20% of the actual tasks you're doing make up the actual value of your business.

[00:21:17] Caroline: Yeah. So I think the discipline of this strategy is really sitting down and being honest with yourself about, if you had to say these 20% of tasks are the ones that actually lead to 80% of the results, which 20% would you choose as high impact and which 80% would you choose as not?

[00:21:36] Jason: But you probably wouldn't know that unless you wrote them all down. So whether it's in a matrix or not, just write down every single task that you do in a work week and look at the, what is the 20% of those that are actually the ones that move the needle? Of the 80% that's left, what can you get rid of or delegate or...?

[00:21:52] Caroline: Exactly.

[00:21:53] Jason: Not do.

[00:21:53] Caroline: And so this goes to the other quadrant, which would be low involvement but high impact. So these are things that you do feel like move the needle but if you're really honest with yourself, you don't have to be the one creating it. So a perfect example for this that has become abundantly clear to me is I create all of the slides for our coaching sessions and I take a lot of pride in them. This is not like phone it in and do a Canva template and just have things. I put a lot of heart and soul into these slides, but after five years, I find myself spending hours doing this and going, okay, what's really important here are the frameworks. What's really important here are the visuals, the way that I explain concepts, the information itself, not me spending time designing every slide and every animation and all these things. So that's an example of something where I would think, okay, is there a way I can systematize this better? Is there a potential for me to delegate this even? Is it us hiring someone to do maybe the...?

[00:22:57] Jason: Hey, are you good at Keynotes? Send us an email, hello@wanderingaimfully.com.

[00:22:59] Caroline: I write the curriculum and they turn it into slides. Are there AI tools out there that could even help? I don't know, but those are anything in that category of low involvement but high impact, think about delegating it. If you're not at a place in your business where you feel like you can afford to delegate it, use those other options that I mentioned. Look for ways to systematize it to make it more efficient, to somehow compress the amount of time you're spending on it.

[00:23:26] Jason: Great. So last part of the pyramid here.

[00:23:29] Caroline: So last part of the pyramid is the processes. And so the example here is really to just have all of your different processes laid out in terms of, these are the things that we do on a recurring, ongoing basis. And you're going to want to go through all of those step by step and ask yourself, is this something that I need to document better so that someone could... I could delegate it out? So doing the slides would be an example of something where I need to document that. Maybe do a Loom video or something so that someone else could be able to create that. Or do I look at my process for, let's say, quarterly planning and go, this is actually too cumbersome?

[00:24:14] Jason: Right.

[00:24:14] Caroline: You need to evaluate basically, do I need more documentation or do I need less? Are there things that I'm tracking that is actually I'm not using to my benefit at all? In which case let's totally prune that and let's not even worry about it anymore. And so that's what you want to do with your processes. Same with your software apps. We do this once a year. But take a look at all of the recurring subscriptions that you pay for in your business and ask yourself, can I combine tools? Do I need to look for alternatives to certain tools? Do I have too many tools and they're not talking together? Look for efficiencies there as well. So that is the overview of basically the solutions for each one of The Flavors of Chaos. Now, of course, in the coaching session we went much more in depth, but the idea is that whatever you feel like your Flavors of Chaos are, you start with the top of that pyramid. So offers. Basically, number them one to five. You kind of clarify and prune that, and then you move down the list and you'll notice that I keep using this word prune. And that's because going back to our meta of how we come up with coaching frameworks is now I take a step back and I ask myself, okay, what is the bigger process that someone could be able to repeat over and over again, no matter what they were trying to simplify in their business, regardless of whether it fit into one of The Flavors of Chaos or not? What is the process? So I go back and I think, okay, all the times we have simplified our business in the different areas, what is that three step process? And what it looks like is what I determined are the three steps. Clarify, prune, and then organize. Clarify is like decide what your clarifying metric is for how you're going to prune things. Because ultimately, if you're going to simplify, things have to get cut. That's the only way to simplify things.

[00:26:04] Jason: If you're in need of simplification, that means that there's too much going on and that you need to get rid of something.

[00:26:08] Caroline: Exactly. So how do you know what gets cut and what doesn't? You first have to start with clarify. That step is so crucial. You have to know. What is my criteria for what gets cut and what doesn't? And so I always think of the Marie Kondo process as the metaphor for this, where if you are familiar with her process of decluttering, she has, which I think most people are familiar with now, the phrase, does this spark joy? That's the clarifying thought. So if I hold the object, does it spark joy or does it not? You need your own version of does it spark joy for whatever you're trying to simplify. So for the example of the offers, it's like my organizing principle is, is it validated? Does my audience want it? And they've proven to me that they want it? And do I enjoy working on it? Cool. Let's score our offers based on those two criteria, and then let's cut all the ones that don't measure up in that regard. Right. So no matter what area of this flavor of chaos you are working on, you need a clarifying criteria.

[00:27:06] Jason: Yeah. The reason why I also like the Marie Kondo kind of analogy here is everyone gets that your house and your closet are not going to be organized just because you want it to. You have to literally go through every item. You have to review it. You have to understand. Do I want to keep this? Does this spark joy? And then you get rid of it if it doesn't work. It's the same for simplifying your business. I think maybe a lot of you clicked into this episode when you heard our first episode, and you're like, okay, they're going to give me the really easy way to simplify the business. And it's not necessarily difficult, but it takes effort, like all these things, to get a simpler business, to have a more streamlined business that runs more smoothly, that doesn't feel hectic. It takes making something hectic by trying a lot of things, then looking at it all, reviewing it all, pruning out what doesn't matter, then moving forward, and also having better processes to work in and on your business.

[00:27:55] Caroline: Yeah. To me, simplification actually comes down to one key skill, which is decision making.

[00:28:01] Jason: Yeah.

[00:28:01] Caroline: That's what it comes down to. So whatever the area of your business is that you're trying to simplify, the reason it's gotten hectic is because you haven't made decisions in order to cut things. So whichever one you want to tackle first, go back to that part of this episode where we kind of talked about what the solution is and think about, okay, if it's tasks, I need to make decisions about what is creating impact and what isn't. If it is marketing bridges, I need to make decisions about what is creating sales results and what isn't. If it's offers, I need to make decisions about what is bringing me revenue for enjoyment or not. So that's really the three steps. It's clarify, it's prune, and then it's organize what's left into a more streamlined and efficient way of operating. And if there's one kind of final parting thing that I would leave you with for simplifying your business, it's that the discipline that you apply to pruning things is proportional to the amount of relief that you will feel. So what I mean by that is, the more you can make the hard decisions to cut things, even though it's like that offer that you love so much, but nobody's buying it, and it's creating more complexity. If you are feeling overwhelmed, I implore you to get to the point in your business where you go, cool. Maybe I can do that as a hobby in a different way. But I don't need to put business resources and mental resources toward trying to bring people to it as an offer anymore if it's really just not moving the needle.

[00:29:26] Jason: Yeah. All right. That's our framework in a nutshell, because, again, we did a full two hour coaching session with our members that went through all this in much greater detail. So the next time we open up WAIM Unlimited, you would want to join. You can get the whole session, but hope it was at least helpful to talk about that. Now you want to talk about Calm Biz Confidential?

[00:29:45] Caroline: You got one for me?

[00:29:46] Jason: I do have one for you. We said last episode, we're just doing one each. So I am on the Calm Business Confidential here, and I am bringing you a Gen Z-er, which I was excited to find someone young for this because when you think of running a calm business, we tend to think of people who've been in business much longer.

[00:30:05] Caroline: Right.

[00:30:06] Jason: And so when I found the story of this creator, I was like, oh, this is great because you don't see a lot of young people who think in this way.

[00:30:13] Caroline: No, because now that we're in our 30s and early 40s, we can appreciate that in your 20's I do feel like you're very ambition focused and you want to grow, grow, grow because you have something to prove to yourself.

[00:30:25] Jason: And you also have a lot more energy, too, right? So you're willing to do a lot more things, which was definitely me. I did so much stuff in my 20s.

[00:30:31] Caroline: But I have a lot of respect for any Gen Z-er who has come to realize and has the wisdom to run a calm business right out of the gate.

[00:30:38] Jason: That is Kate Brunott's. So Kate is an audio producer and again, a Gen Z-er. I believe we have one Gen Z listener of our podcast, which is fantastic. And Kate decided that she didn't want to go to college after high school, which I love people who make this decision, and moved from just outside of DC to New York City, which was like a dream for her.

[00:30:59] Caroline: Never heard of it.

[00:31:00] Jason: And one of the first things I loved when I found her story was that she worked at a grocery store to save up $10,000 in savings to move.

[00:31:08] Caroline: Wow.

[00:31:08] Jason: So it was like her life goal as a kid was to move to New York City. So she said, I'm going to work a job that I can store away enough money so that I can have money to go move to New York City.

[00:31:17] Caroline: Instant respect.

[00:31:18] Jason: Yeah. I was like, wow, great job. So when she moved to New York City, she just took any job she could get. So she worked at a coffee shop. She worked at a guitar center. She was already into music, but she just started to try and work with anybody who's doing anything musically. And so just to clarify it, because when I was reading the story about her, I was like, well, what does audio production mean? Because it sounds like there's a lot of things. Making beats, sound mixing, and overall audio setup. That was, like, her part of audio production that she focused on because it could be a lot of other things as well.

[00:31:47] Caroline: But, like, specifically music production.

[00:31:48] Jason: Music production, yes. But she did. She... Okay, we'll get into that. So when she was working those random jobs, she was, you know, I didn't move to New York City to work at a coffee shop. I moved to New York City because I wanted to pursue my audio career. And so she hopped on Upwork, and that was the first place that she started to try to get audio production work. And so she kind of did what you did with your design career. She said she could do everything. So she was literally helping people set up their podcast studios, virtually. She was helping people make a beat. She was helping people produce a random jingle or something like that. But it was all in the idea of, like, she just wanted to hone her skills and build her own business.

[00:32:30] Caroline: And I think that is the right move. When you're starting out at anything, you really have to taste a bunch of things, and you are taking anything you can get in your wheelhouse because you just want to get experience, not just from a credibility standpoint, but also from, like, a what do you like to do standpoint.

[00:32:47] Jason: And what I loved about this is that when she first started on Upwork, she was making almost nothing. No money at all. But the point for her is she knew it wasn't just about making money. It was about trying to build the skills of running her own business. She never worked with people directly before, so she was really trying hard to figure that out. So she ended up getting a couple little jobs here and there for no companies or businesses you would ever want to work with full time, because it's just like, you're the newest thing on Upwork, so you're probably the cheapest. So it's just going to be people who only want cheap work. But she started then to make videos on YouTube and Instagram. So promoting herself, teaching some of the things that she learned about making beats, but then also just sharing her work to build a portfolio. And then one of the things that she said that was like, she would not skimp on doing this was over delivering in the beginning. So anybody that paid her on Upwork or like a friend that told her that recommended her, she just would over deliver as much as she possibly could. And after six months of working on Upwork and just getting various jobs, she started to get consistent referrals through Upwork.

[00:33:53] Caroline: Nice.

[00:33:53] Jason: Which was really cool because at that six month mark, her revenue from Upwork outpaced her two minimum wage jobs that she was juggling.

[00:34:01] Caroline: Wow.

[00:34:02] Jason: So she was able to, in six months, replace her part time jobs. And she also started putting her music that she was making in her other time up on Spotify, which she, as of recording this, has a listener base of 20,000 listeners, which is awesome. And she wasn't making any money with posting her music on YouTube or Spotify, but again, just like she enjoyed it, she wanted to do it. So she finished out her first full year of basically audio production stuff, making $48,000.

[00:34:33] Caroline: Wow.

[00:34:33] Jason: Which in your first full year...

[00:34:34] Caroline: Amazing.

[00:34:35] Jason: I think it beat your full first.

[00:34:36] Caroline: Definitely beat my first full year.

[00:34:37] Jason: Incredible. And her second year, she jumped up to $60,000 total. And 60% of her clients still came from Upwork, but 30% came from referrals and existing clients, and then 10% came from getting into sponsorships, especially like Instagram and other things like that. And the end of her $60,000 year was last year. So it'll be very interesting to see how much money she makes this year. But she said she's not chasing some huge financial goal. She's now covering her costs of living in New York City. She just shares an apartment with a couple of people. Again, Gen Z. Can live with just like on a couch. And she's very happy just doing this work. She feels like she has a really good balance. I'll link it up. CNBC's Make It. You've seen those videos on YouTube. So she has one of those episodes that they featured her.

[00:35:26] Caroline: Amazing.

[00:35:26] Jason: And so you can kind of watch her talk about this. And I just loved, you can see this young entrepreneur who still not fully sure of herself, but knows that she loves the music part, knows she loves the audio production, but also knows that she's not trying to chase and become a millionaire doing this.

[00:35:42] Caroline: Just wants a calm, flexible business. So many of us found this path in life because we're looking for flexibility. We just have figured out that there's more to life than the rigidness of someone else dictating your schedule and someone else dictating the office you have to go into and someone else dictating how much you have to commute into work. You know, Jason, I really believe this. When I go back to the mission of Wandering Aimfully, I always think, can online business be a tool for mental health? I really believe that it can. For those of us who don't fit into the box, there's plenty of people who that works for. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it, but there's a segment of the population that craves a flexibility. And some of us who, quite frankly, need a flexibility that a regular job can't afford us. And I just get really inspired when you see people like that who, yeah, it's not about chasing the fame and fortune. It's about chasing freedom and good for them.

[00:36:39] Jason: Yeah. And I love also highlighting. I know some people listening to this. You can't live off of $60,000 per year, especially if you have a family and provider. Yeah. But I like hearing that there's a story of a young entrepreneur who's not trying to even make six figures as their financial goal. They just want to replace their part time jobs. They want to like the work they do every day. They want to have time to make their own music career happen. It's just... I just think it's a fun story that's definitely a big departure from...

[00:37:05] Caroline: Amazing.

[00:37:06] Jason: You know, what we would normally find or look at as like a success story in business.

[00:37:10] Caroline: Totally.

[00:37:10] Jason: So, Kate, great job.

[00:37:12] Caroline: Great job.

[00:37:12] Jason: You don't listen to our podcast, but it's really fun to share her story and other stories like this. So fun. And always good to hear from you all. If you have Calm Business Confidential ideas, we do take every single one of them that is emailed in, so feel free to send those if you find fun ideas and we can share them on the podcast. We always try and find something that just has, like, a unique angle or something different or interesting.

[00:37:35] Caroline: Surprising little spin.

[00:37:36] Jason: Yeah. All right, I think that's it for this episode. As we mentioned, we're going to do a life in Portugal, a big update here coming up on the podcast because we will have lived here for a year, and so we want to share some of our big takeaways, some of our favorite things, some of the things that are just weird that we've gotten used to, just different life here. But, yeah, I think that's it for this episode. Anything else you want to share?

[00:38:00] Caroline: Tendha bom dia.

[00:38:01] Jason: Or you just want to say goodbye?

[00:38:02] Caroline: Have a good day.

[00:38:03] Jason: Have a good day. Okay, bye.

[00:38:04] Caroline: Bye.