175 - Our worst day of filming videos ever (OOF!)

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: Hi. Hey, there.

 

Jason: Hold on. I had a song I wanted to start this with. Hold on. What was it?

 

Caroline: After you told me that you never started with songs. If you have to think of a song, it's...

 

Jason: Dang it. I just had it a minute ago. You can dance if you want to. You can leave girlfriends behind your friends or girlfriends?

 

Caroline: We can dance if you want to. You can leave your friends. I think it's your friends.

 

Jason: What if you just want to leave girlfriends behind?

 

Caroline: You can leave girlfriends behind.

 

Jason: Yeah. Anybody's girlfriend.

 

Caroline: Don't leave your girlfriend behind.

 

Jason: No, no, it's fine.

 

Caroline: Bring them with you.

 

Jason: It's if you want to dance.

 

Caroline: But your girlfriends want to dance.

 

Jason: Maybe they don't like me. I don't want to dance. Don't make me dance.

 

Caroline: You can dance if you want to. You can leave Jason behind.

 

Jason: Okay. Sure. Yeah. Congratulations and welcome.

 

Caroline: Did you know, listener, Jason does not like to dance. This is a fun fact about him.

 

Jason: I don't like to dance in public.

 

Caroline: Yeah, you dance around the house all the time.

 

Jason: Yeah.

 

Caroline: We need to unpack this because...

 

Jason: We don't need to unpack. We don't.

 

Caroline: Okay, but listen, I think it's so puzzling to me that you are a person who, I would say, out of all the people that I know, has a very strong handle on not caring what people think about you. I would say you have that... have me beat on that.

 

Jason: Yeah.

 

Caroline: Okay. It's perplexing. You have to agree. It's perplexing that the person who doesn't care what people think of them has trouble dancing in public.

 

Jason: I have an analogy for you.

 

Caroline: I would love to hear it.

 

Jason: You, when we're around our house, just together, improv-ing, you love doing it, don't you? Isn't it just fun?

 

Caroline: I don't think so.

 

Jason: No, you do. Like, we play little games. You'll dive into...

 

Caroline: Don't tell them about our little games.

 

Jason: We play all kinds of little games. And don't you love it? You enjoy it, don't you?

 

Caroline: Yeah.

 

Jason: Hold on.

 

Caroline: You're proving my point.

 

Jason: No.

 

Caroline: Go ahead.

 

Jason: Because then in, like, a public setting, if I try and get you to improv, you do not want to do it.

 

Caroline: Okay, I agree with you, and you're proving my point, which is that I am someone who cares deeply what other people think about me. So that feels like it matches that. Of course, someone who cares what people think about them would not want to do improv in public because what will people say? But the person who doesn't care what people think about them, why would they care in public about what people think about their dancing?

 

Jason: I think this stems back to, like, a childhood dance situation.

 

Caroline: Okay, let's go into the bubble cave.

 

Jason: I think when Yolanda.

 

Caroline: Shout out to last week's episode.

 

Jason: I think when Yolanda stood me up in middle school.

 

Caroline: Really?

 

Jason: I think that's what happened.

 

Caroline: Wait, so you equated Yolanda standing you up to, oh, it must be my dancing?

 

Jason: Well, it's just like, we were at a dance and she didn't dance with me and, like, I think that just ruined it.

 

Caroline: I don't think you understand what standing you up means, but okay.

 

Jason: I was eleven.

 

Caroline: When Yolanda stood up and didn't want to dance with me.

 

Jason: I don't like her. I'm going to find her on Facebook.

 

Caroline: No.

 

Jason: I'm not going to find her on Facebook.

 

Caroline: Yolanda, we hope you're happy.

 

Jason: Yeah. Has anyone ever tried to do that, by the way? Have you ever tried to look someone up? Not on Facebook, because I only do on Instagram because I don't go on Facebook because that's...

 

Caroline: Like a person from your past that popped in your head?

 

Jason: But all I can remember is their first name. And Steve like, not a chance. Never going to find them.

 

Caroline: You just type Steve into instagram. You're like, okay, that's a dead end.

 

Jason: Guess that's not going to help me at all. And then sometimes I'll try and type, like, the town that we lived in as well, and it's like zero results. Like, yeah, they're probably right. Yeah.

 

Caroline: Like, whoa, Steve didn't put the town in his bio, his childhood hometown.

 

Jason: I just want to know if anybody else might do that because I find myself. I'm like, I'm going to look up Stephanie. Don't know anything else about her. Well, looks like there's a couple Stephanie's on Instagram these days. Well, I guess I'll just go do something else with my time. Anywho.

 

Caroline: I try to find videos that I forget to save or favorite sometime where I'm like describing the video in the search. That's not how you find stuff.

 

Jason: No, it's really not.

 

Caroline: I don't think you're alone in that.

 

Jason: Let's get into the episode. So this is kind of like a real, real time type of episode here because this just went down. Although last week we kind of did this as well. So I think this is...

 

Caroline: A new era for the podcast.

 

Jason: It's an interesting thing for you podcast listeners to note when you take on a big project, things get stressful.

 

Caroline: Drama.

 

Jason: Things get out of routine, things get difficult. And if you listen to last week's episode, you know that we basically started recording it. Then we had to pause. Then we in the next day recorded it. And so this week we kind of have a similar story, but it doesn't have to do with the podcast.

 

Caroline: Yeah, we really seem like a mess right now.

 

Jason: Yeah. And I think that that, I'm hoping, is just a relatable moment for anybody who's embarking on a big project to know that it is messy. We've been doing this for years and we're pretty good at this type of thing, but it's still really hard when you take on a big, challenging project.

 

Caroline: I also really believe that if you are pushing yourself and evolving and trying new things and doing something different... I'm not saying that our content blitz is earth shattering. I'm just saying it's something we've never tried in our business before. You have to expect that it's going to be uncomfortable. You have to expect that you're going to embark on new challenges. So I do think you're right, there's a little bit of humbling. Not that we need humbling, but there's a humbling that has to happen even if you're a veteran business owner of going, oh, well, of course, if I'm trying to push myself and embark on new challenges, I'm going to not always handle those the best.

 

Jason: Do you think growth is painful?

 

Caroline: Growth is painful.

 

Jason: In all aspects, in business and in life. I remember when I was growing and I'd wake up with hip pain because I just went through a growth spurt overnight.

 

Caroline: There you go.

 

Jason: This is our growth spurt right here.

 

Caroline: That's the metaphor.

 

Jason: I'm going to wake up with hip pain tomorrow. So let's talk about what happened. So we were in this 26 day content blitz. If you've not been listening to the past couple of episodes, we are creating 26 YouTube videos and 26 articles that accompany those videos. The goal is to get them done by September 18, release them every day. There's a whole concept behind it that will be revealed. And if you want to see the behind the scenes of this, every week on Mondays, we're sharing this in our newsletter, wanderingaimfully.com/newsletter.

 

Caroline: Also, last week we did the design visuals and there were hints, there were sneak peeks. So if you wanted to guess what the concept is, you can...

 

Jason: Also, some people really love the magnets photo that just... We tried to have AI help us make some magnet photos and it did not go...

 

Caroline: Fun fact, AI does not know what a magnet is, I'll tell you that.

 

Jason: So anyway, this Monday, two days ago, essentially, it was like, we're going to start recording some videos.

 

Caroline: Yeah, we had about, I think it was ten or eleven scripts fully developed at that point. And so it was time to... I think our goal was to well, here was the plan on Monday. Let me tell you. The plan was Monday, we were like, we're going to hit the ground running. It's recording week. We're going to sit down, we're going to spend about an hour doing what we call punching up the scripts. Meaning this is the first time Jason's going to look at them, and so he's going to offer ways to make them funnier, ways to make them more concise, like just really refine them to the point where we feel like they're ready to record. Right. And then we were like, we're going to try to at least record five of these videos in one day.

 

Jason: And the videos are going to be about five minutes in length.

 

Caroline: Yeah, they're pretty short, but still.

 

Jason: Yeah. Recording five in one day should be doable.

 

Caroline: Right. That was the plan. And also, I want you to know that we both... Okay. So we wake up Monday and we both know that recording videos, in case you're, like, new to this whole world, recording videos is the one thing in our business and in our life where we have the most friction.

 

Jason: Can I give a little bit of...?

 

Caroline: We will discuss why we think that is.

 

Jason: Can I give a little bit of analytics, analytics back for you, too? In the five years we've been running Wandering Aimfully, we have written over 200 email newsletters together. Almost every single newsletter gets written by both of us in some capacity. For a little bit, behind baseball, I typically write the first draft.

 

Caroline: Inside baseball?

 

Jason: No, behind baseball.

 

Caroline: Behind baseball is a different game.

 

Jason: We're going around the stadium, around back, and it's a little bit dirty back there, but we're looking at stuff. I write the first draft almost always. There are some times we've had some weekly chunks. Yeah. So I write the first draft because I can just crank it out and it's not good, but...

 

Caroline: Clay on the table.

 

Jason: It's clay on the table. And then you come in, you sculpt it, you shape it, and you're doing all kinds of stuff. And then I do like, final pass of adding in images and then formatting it in our email platform and then queuing it up for sending. So it's kind of like a back and forth process. We've done 200 plus of these. I can't even think of a single time when we've ever had a word of disagreement on them.

 

Caroline: No. The most is that I come in and I'm like, hey, your clay. I really appreciate that you put it on the table. I need some new clay and I'm going to write it.

 

Jason: What have you learned about my writing in the eight years you've been helping edit my writing?

 

Caroline: That I can change anything and you're not precious.

 

Jason: My words are not precious. I do not care. I am not the type of person who's like, no, but I eloquently wrote that sentence and you have to keep it, throw it away, I don't care. I'll just write new ones. It's fine. So anyway, newsletters, 174 episodes of this podcast we have recorded together. I would say 96% of them have gone perfectly. Not a hitch, no issues whatsoever. There have been a handful where we've had to, without you all knowing, stop recording, talk about something, whatever, or we disagreed on how something was presented, but it's very small in the grand scheme of those...

 

Caroline: Very small.

 

Jason: Episodes. Now... Oh, we also have our coaching sessions, 47 coaching sessions we've done. Those are almost 3 hours each.

 

Caroline: Completely seamless.

 

Jason: Not a single disagreement in any of those.

 

Caroline: Right.

 

Jason: So we work very well together is what I'm trying to the point I'm trying to say.

 

Caroline: Right.

 

Jason: Now, we also have a YouTube channel where we have filmed some videos like the ones that we're embarking on. And I would say 15 is the appropriate number of those videos. All of them have sucked to work on. And I think this should have been a red flag for us. And I knew it in the back of my mind, which is why I've been saying it in our email newsletters. Like, this is going to be a tough week. We've been talking about it. We've probably talked about on this podcast. It's going to be the hardest part of this.

 

Caroline: And there was a part of it where we were like, so okay, great. I think that's really helpful.

 

Jason: The backstory.

 

Caroline: Now I want to go back to like...

 

Jason: Behind baseball is where I took everybody.

 

Caroline: Right. So let's finish the behind baseball game. Let's come back to the chronological timeline.

 

Jason: Corona-logical? Something.

 

Caroline: The chronological timeline is that Monday morning we wake up, I can tell we both are like mentally gearing ourselves up. We're like, this is recording week. We don't want this to be bad. We're like doing all the things we can to be in a good headspace. And then I decide that we were planning to go to the gym together because it just makes me feel better. We both feel better when we've been to the gym, but in the morning we have coffee. Jason answers emails. We kind of have this hour of quiet time before the gym, right? And so before we go to the gym, I think to myself and I'm like, I think we need to get on the same page and that'll really help us. I turn to Jason, I'm like, hey Jason, just so we're on the same page, I have a couple of videos that I want you to... and I knew that there was going to be some discourse of a shared vision for how these videos could go. So I brought up a couple on YouTube.

 

Jason: These are some examples.

 

Caroline: Example videos. And the only point that I was trying to make is I don't want to make these videos. I don't want to have like super... They were pretty popular YouTubers.

 

Jason: And very meticulously edited.

 

Caroline: And I was like, just so you know, I don't want them this edited, I just... I was sharing it for... and there were a couple of things I wanted to point out. And he was like, okay, good, I'm really glad this is like that you did this because we could be on the same page and blah, blah. So that actually, I think did set us off on a good foot where we were chatting, but then we sort of were, like, trying to talk it out where we could be like, here's the vision that we see for both of these. And I think we were just bringing both a lot of anxiety to it where we didn't want it to go badly. We were trying to figure out how to make this work. And so I remember before we even got to the gym, remember, we were sitting at the kitchen island and we were like, okay, just so we're clear, though, I don't want you to bring negativity. You don't want me to bring negativity.

 

Jason: Which is always a great way to do what?

 

Caroline: Bring negativity. In trying to prevent the negativity, we end up in this discussion at the kitchen island that's, like, feeling very negative. And so we were like, okay, let's shake it off. That's okay. We both have the same goal here, which is to have this not suck. We do go to the gym. That ends up being great. We both get kind of our energy out, whatever. We walk back, we're chatting about stuff, and then we sit down and we do this 1 hour, what we think is going to be 1 hour of punching up the scripts. The fatal flaw. There's so many fatal flaws, but one of them is like, this is the first time Jason is seeing the scripts, really.

 

Jason: Not because I didn't want to, but just because...

 

Caroline: I was just in the creation cave. And also we have an entire business that needs to run. And so he's doing other things.

 

Jason: Two of them.

 

Caroline: And so pretty quickly, he has thoughts, and I feel some type of way about those thoughts. And how long do you think it took for it to kind of derail?

 

Jason: 15 minutes.

 

Caroline: About 15 minutes before it...

 

Jason: I think, the third line.

 

Caroline: Yeah. And I think it's a combination of things. First of all, I want to say I was trying very hard to be open to changes. And also, Jason made it clear that he really wanted to add, which I also wanted this, the whole idea was like, the scripts are like, the information that we want to get across, but Jason's going to come in and make it funny like that 10% entertaining, which he always does so well. But he made it really clear to me, don't dim my light. I just want to be able to be weird and silly.

 

Jason: Yeah. And I think a big part of this is also trying to figure out where do we walk the line? Because unboring is one of our brand values, right? And so it's like it's what sets us apart from all the other online business coaches out there saying the exact same things. Start an email list, write blog posts, have a good sales page, do pre marketing, create content. We're all saying the same thing. We're just saying it with a little bit of spice thrown on it with a little bit of unicorn pizzazz thrown to things. And that's me, right? That's mostly what I bring to this. You bring the smart stuff, right? You're like, here's how to do something smart. And it's like, that's great. But also here's also a little bit of funny aside to it so that someone's like, okay, I learned something and it was funny. And so my whole thought was when we were going through these videos was for these to be us. If it's just an informational video, this is no offense to you, but it just would be boring.

 

Caroline: But I know that.

 

Jason: Yeah, exactly. I'm trying to bring the punching up and the fun of it.

 

Caroline: Completely.

 

Jason: But what happened was we started to get into this and then it's like the script starts to pull away from educational into my silliness. And then I think what's happening is you're looking at it and you're seeing these things that I want to interject with and they are funny ideas, but you're like, but this is pulling someone out of the information we want to get across.

 

Caroline: That actually wasn't my criticism, the pulling out of, because I had already made peace with the fact that that could work as a format. So I was fine with that. It was more like the lines started to bleed for us between like, okay, you would have thoughts about the educational content and how that could be better, and then I would have thoughts about the entertainment content and be like, that joke doesn't really land. But both of us, I feel like, felt like, okay, we did this whole thing where we had separate hats and we had separate purposes. But I don't think in retrospective, I don't think we each did a good job of being open to critical feedback from the other person in our realm of expertise.

 

Jason: Totally. But I also think this is why we have so much trouble in filming videos like this is because it's never going to feel comfortable to have the other person workshop your part of it because you feel or know that you do that part better, right?

 

Caroline: Totally.

 

Jason: I think that is what really comes to the crux of the issue with these specific types of videos where it's a scripted video you're trying to deliver. You specifically are trying to deliver helpful information. I'm trying to deliver entertainment and just like break the user's attention span for a moment to make them laugh.

 

Caroline: You know what it is? I just had this revelation. This is not something that came to me on Monday, but when you just described it that way, I realize now why it causes so much personal friction, where it feels like it's bordering into this place where it's no longer... because sometimes we can separate work and life. People ask us that all the time. How do you separate your work? I mean, sometimes we can be like business Caroline and Jason versus home Caroline and Jason. Sometimes they blend, whatever. But in this moment, you just describing it that way made me realize there's, like, a breach of trust almost that happens where if I criticize... not criticize, but if I give feedback on a joke, you're sort of like, oh, you don't trust me to be funny. That's sort of like my whole thing that I bring to the table. And if you give me feedback on a concept or a point, I'm like, oh, you don't trust me to teach this. That's sort of like my whole shtick. And so what ends up happening is it's not that both of us are so ego driven that we can't possibly receive feedback. It's that this is one of the landmines of working with a spouse, is that mentally and emotionally, it somehow also feels like you don't trust me.

 

Jason: Yeah. And I think it doesn't have to be a spouse. It's just like a working partnership.

 

Caroline: Right.

 

Jason: So it's like, if you're working with anybody else. Now, for all the solopreneurs who are listening to this, you don't have these problems. So this might not be super helpful for you, but I do think sharing this with you might make it feel better. If you run into difficult parts of running your business where you're just like, it is so difficult to record Instagram reels. I just find so much friction in that process. And it might be because you haven't found a process that works for you, which I'd like to get to what we decided on, which I think has made us feel a lot better.

 

Caroline: I do want to get to that.

 

Jason: Yeah.

 

Caroline: But that's the solution. And I want to spend a little bit more time on...

 

Jason: In the mud.

 

Caroline: In the mud, because we spent a lot of freaking time in the mud on Monday, and I need to honor that mud.

 

Jason: This is our therapy session.

 

Caroline: I need to honor that mud time.

 

Jason: Thank you for coming to our therapy session.

 

Caroline: Thank you for coming to our therapy session. So pretty quickly, we have the kind of friction of the two hats. I'll call that the two hats problem, which is like, okay, you kind of represent entertainment and...

 

Jason: Funny hat.

 

Caroline: The funny hat and I sort of represent the teacher hat.

 

Jason: Graduation hat.

 

Caroline: They feel at odds, and I don't know, in that moment, for some reason, we hadn't yet, in that moment, figured out how to blend them and collaborate in a way where we respect each other's hats that we bring to the table, they just felt, like, completely in combat with one another. Okay. So we were sort of like, okay, that's happening. On top of that, we have the whole scripted versus non-scripted thing happening, which is my instinct was to write a full script, not because I think that that's the best way to deliver information. Listen, I'm no actress. You know what I mean? I don't actually enjoy delivering lines that are prescripted because it feels unnatural to me. The reason I do it is because I believe it's economical for the viewer. I know that I tend to be very verbose, and on a podcast, it doesn't matter because it's sort of like you have that time and space.

 

Jason: The expectation.

 

Caroline: But I don't want to deliver a message to someone who took time out of their day to watch a video and not be concise about the message I'm trying to get across. So that's why I script, because it gives me time to think and plan and see exactly what I want to say. However, that becomes a problem because you have such an aversion to scripted content.

 

Jason: Yeah, and I mean, to me, this is a weakness that I cannot deliver a line to save my life. It's like we were joking before the start. It's like if I was an actor and they're like, hey man, here's your line. The pizza is ready. You're just saying it to a friend. And I'm like, the pizza is ready. What are you doing? Try it again. The pizza is ready. Like, hey, sir.

 

Caroline: You've never sounded like that in your entire life.

 

Jason: Just talk to a friend. Okay, I got this. Here we go, one more take. Pizza is ready. And it's obviously not that bad, but it has been. And we've noticed this in the previous times we've recorded videos when we have a script, I'm trying to deliver the helpful lines. It's just like it's not the way my brain works. My brain is very much like an improv brain and it's very much just like playing along with and I'm fully okay with being the sidekick unless I'm the one filming the video from start to finish. We have videos on our Wandering Aimfully YouTube channel and obviously I have a whole past of filming videos. If I'm in control, I can deliver helpful content. It's the problem when I'm trying to deliver the way that you wrote it, which doesn't come from the way that I would say it.

 

Caroline: Right.

 

Jason: It's just so difficult for my brain to process.

 

Caroline: And something happens where you're trying to remember the line or even just the general idea of what you're trying to say in the line, which I feel like is hard for you already naturally. But then what happens is something happens where you're activating the part of your brain, that's memory, that's trying to remember the line. And it almost brings the common sense like I'm a person offline in a way. And so when you finally get the line, you can deliver it, but at that point, it's just words stacked together. It's like your brain is not able to say the full combination of all those words next to each other in a way that is delivering the idea of what the expression is. Does that make sense?

 

Jason: Yeah, totally. And so anyway, I think we got to this place on Monday. We had finally worked through three total scripts.

 

Caroline: Right.

 

Jason: We slogged through it, but I think we finally got to a place where it was just like I'm not going to comment at all on the information. I'm just going to let the teaching information be you. We had kind of decided you would be the main face on camera. And so the idea would be all 26 of these videos. You're going to be the center stage of it and then I'm going to be the sidekick who pops in from behind the scenes with the funny interjections, break things up. And then at the end of the videos, we'll both be sitting together and we'll kind of just wrap the video up, right? And that's a little bit more like... that doesn't have to be lines. That's just like, hey, thanks for watching, blah, blah, blah. So we got to this point and we were taking a break and I had this thought in my mind. Can I go here or do you want me to go somewhere else?

 

Caroline: I have more places that I want. Are you going to say the solution again?

 

Jason: Well, I'm just ready to move to the solution.

 

Caroline: There could not be a more appropriate example of the way that our brains work. I'm like, first of all, there's so much that happened.

 

Jason: Yeah. If you want to share more, we can. I just felt like...

 

Caroline: I do because I feel like it's so helpful because again, I need the listeners to understand. The punchline here on Monday is we didn't turn on the camera for a single second.

 

Jason: Right.

 

Caroline: Okay. I don't know if we've mentioned that yet. We didn't get a single second of the camera turned on. And it's because do you know what we did on Monday? We punched up three scripts and we talked for five fucking hours. Okay? We talked for 5 hours. And I think that needs to be acknowledged before we get to the grand solution that we came to at 4:30 or 5:00 on Monday because, first of all, that is something special. But because I do think that I'm actually, in a weird way, proud of that because I think that what also helps our personal relationship is when we encounter hurdles like this, we do go down all the bubble caves to figure out what is going on. So that we don't just brush it under the rug and keep going and then have the same thing happen. I really needed to figure out what is happening here that we are not able to collaborate in a conducive, productive way on this? So that we don't run into this in the future. I am always like at this point, this feels so cruddy that I want to understand it so that I don't have to feel this way again. I know we've talked about this before, but for whatever reason in our relationship, we had an unspoken rule that when we fight, we don't yell. We don't yell. We don't get heated. That's not true. Sometimes we do get heated, but it's like in a dysregulated, emotional way. It's not like a taking it out on the other person type of way. And so what that ends up being is when we have disagreements, it does end up being like a lot of very considered talking. But there were a couple of points that I just wanted to hit home before we arrived at the Final Solution, because I also think that that's not true. It's not like we just hit this roadblock, took a break and came back. And you had a light bulb moment.

 

Jason: Yeah. No, I was going to say my light bulb moment was when I...

 

Caroline: Oh, your light bulb moment was what derailed? Yeah. Say that.

 

Jason: Okay.

 

Caroline: Absolutely.

 

Jason: So I was on the right path anyway.

 

Caroline: You were. You did a great job.

 

Jason: Just for everyone. No, I was doing okay. I was still staying in the mud. I didn't get out of the mud. So we had this three script punching session which basically took like 2 hours. And we thought it was going to take like 30 minutes per, obviously that we were wrong about that because we were finding all this friction amongst ourselves on Deliver this line, deliver this funny thing. Is this funny? Is this line helpful? Blah, blah, blah. So we come to it and I just am having this moment, and I think I'm in the kitchen, like getting lunch set up or something. And I was just, oh, like, I have this thought and I want to share it with Caroline. I feel like I might derail her if I share this. But it's an important thought for me. 100%.

 

Caroline: Because the way that you came to it was like you were so excited.

 

Jason: No, 100%. And I've gotten to the point now in 13 years of being together, almost, there are some times when I don't have the filter, but almost always it's like, do I tell Caroline this? Because it might derail her. But I have to make the decision on do I think this is right? And this was one of those where I was like, I think this might derail, but I have to share it because it's actually helping me move forward from the 3 hours that we just spent that wasn't very much fun.

 

Caroline: Right.

 

Jason: And so my point was that I brought up was like, hey, I am fully prepared to do these 26 videos this way. You're the teacher, I'm the sidekick. We'll punch it up. Listen, these videos are not going to be YouTube hits. We're not trying to do that.

 

Caroline: Which we both agreed was never the point.

 

Jason: It's just trying to get through the project and not hating every second of it. That's very important for this. And my point was, I want to do these 26 videos like this, but I never want to record videos like this again. And we have got to learn. This is now, like, the third time we've done a batch of videos like these. It always sucks. Why are we doing this to ourselves? And so in bringing that up, I was like, I want this to be a point of positivity. I'm ready to use this as fuel for me to get through these 26 videos, get them uploaded. They will be helpful. They will have some funny moments. Are they as good as, like, Ali Abdaal videos? No, we're not Ali Abdaal. We're not trying to be that person. Our friend Matt D'Avella makes killer videos. We're not Matt D'Avella. Like, we're just us. We don't make videos full time. We're going to do the best we can. And so was just like, I'm sharing this. I might derail her.

 

Caroline: But you were so excited to tell me this revelation.

 

Jason: Because it gave me motivation.

 

Caroline: Totally.

 

Jason: To get through the project.

 

Caroline: Yes. And I want you to know that I'm still glad. I always want to make space for you to share your authentic reaction to what's happening. I do.

 

Jason: Okay.

 

Caroline: I absolutely do. My whole point is just like, if I'm making space for you to do that, we also have to make space for me to react in an authentic way. And that's not always going to be the way that you had hoped. But this is the crux of being in a relationship with two people, is you're allowed to have your feelings. I'm allowed to have my feelings about your feelings. You know what I mean? And so what I just want to share where I was emotionally when you came to me with that. So we've spent the morning. It's already taken longer. It's already gone off the rails. I'm trying to get myself reset still to salvage this whole thing of like, can we still record something today? Can we still get something out of this? And I'm taking a break. Jason comes to me and he's... I just have realized I never want to do this again. And a couple of things that that immediately made me feel. Number one, I'm not somebody who likes to just walk away from something. To me, it felt a little bit like throwing up your hands and saying, like, we can't figure this out. And that didn't make me feel good. It made me feel like, oh, you're just deciding that we can't ever figure this out. And I didn't like the way that that made me feel. Of course, with time, I've now come around to the fact that I see where you're coming from, which is it shouldn't have to be so hard.

 

Jason: And it's not like I'm saying I don't want to film YouTube videos together. It's that I don't want to do them this way. We are better and smarter than this. We should be able to come up with a different way to do them that actually feels like our newsletters, our podcasts, our coaching sessions, we can do all of those things almost flawlessly together. There's something wrong with this way of doing this and it's on us to figure out.

 

Caroline: I understand now that that's what you meant, but in the moment, it felt like instead of figuring out what's going on, let's just crush it and move on. Which, again, this is the friction of our different perspectives in life, which are both valid perspectives and helpful perspectives. But this intersection of, I want to dig in and figure it out and get better and practice.

 

Jason: You got to understand, I am like a Container Store of black boxes in my brain. There are so many shapes and sizes available that you can put any circumstance in life right in a black box, and you can put it right on a shelf.

 

Caroline: And you came back from lunch and you said, I found a new box that I'm going to put this in. Ready to move on. And I said, I don't do boxes. Thank you so much. But so that was the first thing where I was just, like, disappointed of it felt a lot like throw up our hands. Can't figure this out. Move on.

 

Jason: Which is funny because in what I said was, let's do these 26 videos, I'm ready to commit to it, which is my personality, right? Like, I can push through the difficult thing all the way to the end, and it's not going to stop me from getting it done with any less of me being in it. I just want it to be known that at the end of this, I don't want to do this again.

 

Caroline: Right. Yeah, but again, even you just saying that right now. It's just so funny how our brains work differently, because I'm like, that makes so much sense to you. But my point to you when you brought that to me, was like, but we haven't started. The way that you can't understand why it might be disheartening to me, who's trying to work up the mental discipline and motivation to get on camera and do a thing that already has been tainted. And you're coming to me and being like, I figured it out. I hate this, and we're never going to do it again. And I'm like, we haven't even hit record yet. How am I supposed to be excited about...? I'm trying to Rocky moment pep talk myself. And Jason's like, I got a little bit for your pep talk. Fuck this. And I'm like, hey, man.

 

Jason: But in my brain, it was so easy because it was like, OOH. One video done means only 25 to go, and I never have to do this again. Two videos done, 24 to go. I never have to do this again. It would be a motivator for me because I see the finish line of never having to do this again.

 

Caroline: And I think that reveals also how we approach things differently, which is you have the ability to move forward whether you love something or hate something.

 

Jason: Right.

 

Caroline: So to you, you were like, we're just going to hit record. And it doesn't matter if I hate every second of this. I have the mental capacity to just do the actions to move forward.

 

Jason: Childhood trauma.

 

Caroline: Yeah, you were like, so sorry, you don't have enough childhood trauma to just march through this.

 

Jason: No, you have childhood trauma. You just don't have this specific childhood trauma.

 

Caroline: You've got the good kind, the kind that allows to just move forward. What I wouldn't give for that kind.

 

Jason: Okay, can I move to solution now or do we still have to play in the mud?

 

Caroline: No, I think that was a lot of the mud. So then I just want to share. The last piece of the mud that I'll share is you can imagine that revelation did not elicit the response that Jason was hoping that it would. And then I got to this place where I was in an emotional deficit, which doesn't happen that often anymore, but I couldn't dig myself out of the negative feelings to work up the compartmentalization, to be able to flip on a camera. I was like, anything I record from this point forward is going to be absolute garbage because I do not have it in me to fake it. And so then the guilt story starts. Then we've wasted a day story starts. Then the like, I can't believe we're trying so hard to avoid this and it still happened. So then all of those judgments about how this all went start happening, and I'm just like, I'm in a mud pit now and I can't get out. And then you have the ability. If I would have been like, hey, Jason, it's 3:00 p.m.

 

Jason: I'm like, literally...

 

Caroline: You're ready.

 

Jason: I'm on a horse, like, riding through the woods. No, I'm just riding through the woods. Like, I'm gone. You're in the mud. In the mud pit, stuck. And I'm just like, let's go.

 

Caroline: Yeah, exactly. If I would have said, okay, ready to record, you would have been like, yeah, let's go. And so then that guilt story starts, which is he's like this. I'm like this. Why am I like this? Why can't I push through? Like, he does that whole comparison thing which is never good for us, but it happens. And all of that's happening, and it's not dire. I don't want to be overdramatic. I'm just letting you know the realness is just so you know. I was sitting in a corner of our couch. I had a fuzzy blanket on me, and I was just like, how did this go so poorly?

 

Jason: And also we do come back to in these types of discussions, we're just like, this is so dumb.

 

Caroline: Totally.

 

Jason: It is such a ridiculous thing that we are getting so upset over. But I think many people listening can relate, whether it's business stuff or life stuff. Something can just derail you completely and you just have to figure out, all right, how do I get out of this? How do I get out of this?

 

Caroline: Well, that is one thing that we do have in common, is we often combat that in the same way, which is perspective. So we take a step back and we're like, really? Videos that are going to get 300 views on YouTube. We're making this a whole thing? And so I think that perspective is helpful. But you also want to honor the fact that these creative projects, they unearth all of these little tributaries of these different conflicts that you've had, these different insecurities that you have, this baggage that you bring to different things. And that's okay. That's what it means to be a complex human and to be in a relationship and to work with your spouse. Those are the things that are going to happen. And as we touched on in the beginning of this episode, if you're trying new things in your business, you're going to run into new roadblocks.

 

Jason: Yeah, let's get into the solution.

 

Caroline: So then we were like I was like, I'm not going to end this day without at least a win. And to me, the win is if we're not doing it this way. Because you're right. I had a couple of hours to think about what your big revelation. And I was like, the thing that I can take away and agree with is it shouldn't feel this hard. And back to the whole title of this podcast, which is What Is It All For? What is a 26 day content blitz for if you hate the process?

 

Jason: Exactly.

 

Caroline: It's not worth it. So we have to figure out a way. I needed to almost grieve the fact that we're not going to do this like other people, and that's okay, but what is the thing that we're going to do instead?

 

Jason: Yeah. And so I think we really sat down and just started thinking about it. And that's actually where the revelation for me came up of the 200 articles, 174 podcast episodes, 47 coaching sessions. And I'm like, we haven't had any problem with these. Let's focus on the one that's closest to what we're trying to do, which is our coaching sessions. And so in our coaching sessions for our WAIM members, we essentially do a Keynote with all these slides that have all text on them and visuals and things. And it's very natural for us to just boom, boom, boom. Click through the slides, talk over them. I threw in some funny bits. I just say the words that are on the slides and listen. I know most of the things that we're talking about. I'm not a dumb person. I build online businesses myself. But there are some concepts and things that you want to deliver in a certain way that you've thought in your head, like, I don't know, as well as you.

 

Caroline: Yeah, I think the best way to describe it is, you know, all the raw materials because it's the experience that you've gained. But my teacher hat comes in, and I organize it in a way that I can teach it to someone.

 

Jason: Right.

 

Caroline: So you may not know the exact way that I've organized it, but you know all the information.

 

Jason: Exactly. And so it's one of those things where we started to think about we're like, okay, well, these coaching sessions actually go very smoothly. And what is smooth about them? Well, part of it is we don't feel like we're delivering lines. You're just reading things that are on screen. And then I can adlib little...

 

Caroline: It's like prompts.

 

Jason: Exactly. And you can deliver on ones... And we've already started talking about this. Like, we have one video that we want to record on a certain topic that you went through it yesterday, and it was just like the way that you did it when you went through it. I'm like, let's just do that 100%. If we just hit record on that, I think you talked for, like, three minutes quickly. It's helpful. It's done. I just want to be over. So as we were sitting on Monday kind of going through this process, what we kind of got to was, well, what if we did it this style, where it's the two of us sitting with mics, casually clicking through slides, reading what's on the slides? It's a little more fast paced. Like, we're not trying to deliver lines. We're just trying to get the point across that's on screen. And then I'm throwing in maybe little interjections here and there, and then it's just done. And so it's not like this beautiful shot of a person sitting at a desk on camera and delivering lines. It's us as like a talking bubble, like a little video bubble, like a Loom video recording. And then there's the Keynote slides. And those are the impact. Those are the information. And what about that being a solution for doing this?

 

Caroline: Totally. And I think my way that I came around to that idea is one of the discoveries that we made, which was this whole tension between entertainment and education. Like, if you bring the entertainment and I bring the education, why do those things always feel like they're at odds instead of working together? And I realized that the one place in our business that I feel like they work together the best and the most seamless is in our coaching sessions. It's unboring coaching for a reason. Our members always have a good time live. There's always laughter, there's always fun, and yet there's always some concept that is a light bulb moment for someone. And so to me, we've done our job if we can produce some type of content that has both a light bulb moment and laughter to me. So that's what we're aiming for. And if the coaching sessions are the closest we get, then as much as I had this idea that I wanted to try to make this other type of video, realize... and as much as I have the sunk cost bias of writing however many, 11, 12 scripts, I have to sit there and admit this isn't working. This other thing does seem to work for us. I don't know if it'll be valuable for someone, I don't know if it'll keep someone's attention, but I know that, at this point, I'd be willing to at least try it because this other way is never going to get us anywhere.

 

Jason: Yeah. And I think this is a great example of like if you run into a roadblock in your business and you're trying to do something and it's adjacent to something that you already do. So for us, it's like these YouTube videos that we're trying to put educational, entertaining content out in like a five minute format. They are adjacent to what we're doing in our coaching session in a very micro format because our coaching sessions are 3 hours long, these are five minutes.

 

Caroline: And in that way it makes so much sense, right? Because...

 

Jason: Exactly. And so I was just like, hold on a second, as we were talking about this. Let's just do the style that we already do that we're comfortable with that works on YouTube. Yes. It is not what YouTube wants. It is not the flashy, beautiful studio shot with a person sitting and all these graphics coming on board. But you know what? Who cares? I think this is a perfect example of it's probably going to drive the exact same result of 300 to 500 views per video with our goal internally that we talked about this the other day. At the end of this 26 day content blitz, if we get 500 new email subscribers that we can clearly tie to, they come through the landing page for this thing that we're building from the YouTube videos. That's a win. I am so happy. And I think that would happen. Whether it's the scripted talking head version that everyone does on YouTube versus our Coaching Spotlight sessions where it's more slides and things like that, I think it's still going to work.

 

Caroline: Yeah, well, that's where... So I know I spent a lot of time talking about the mud, but the reason that I spent so much time talking about that is because I did finally arrive at this place where now I'm very excited about this direction. And sometimes you have to go through that dark night of the soul to come to a new idea. And the more that I allowed myself to sit with this, like, what if what if they were just like this? I got more excited about it because of all the reasons you just said it's a mini coaching session. Which is like, if the whole point of this is pre marketing for our program, why would we not want...? We would want to attract the type of person who is going to sit through a coaching session. Right. So that makes sense. Also, we talk about this a lot, but I guess I just needed to take my own medicine for a second, which is the best content format is the one that is sustainable for you. Because I think going back to what I said about like I had this desire to be like, well, if this is so hard right now, the scripted idea, why can't we just practice and get better at it? That was sort of like my idea was we just haven't done this enough to get better at it. But if it's this hard in the beginning, let's say it gets 15% easier over time with practice. Is that ever really going to be sustainable? Let's say that we did 26 videos in the scripted way. We slogged through it, we fought the whole time and we produced these videos and people loved them. Okay, let's just say that that's the thing. Well, now you've trapped yourself because you've done something that is not quite authentic or natural to you. You've now trapped yourself in a thing where you're going to want to continue to do that format and you're going to hate it the whole time.

 

Jason: This has been something we've talked about for years I called the career dungeon, which is like, don't start an Etsy business if you absolutely hate selling things on Etsy. Why do that to yourself?

 

Caroline: You're literally building a box of dissatisfaction around you.

 

Jason: Now if you have a container store of black boxes in your mind, maybe that's there. But yeah, I think this is a really important realization that you would get to this point at the end of this project and we would say, great, so we're seeing these videos, they're getting thousands of views. Now we have to keep making videos like this. This is something we do not look forward to at all every single week of our lives. We don't have anything like that on our docket right now for our business. Like, why would we do this?

 

Caroline: Why start now? And then I finally came around and was like, okay, well, what do I like doing? I love teaching, I love presenting information. I actually think slides are more helpful for me because they keep me on point because I tend to go off the rails.

 

Jason: Yeah. And I think...

 

Caroline: And I love designing and I get to actually do visuals.

 

Jason: Yeah, it's kind of funny because if you look at some of the most popular online business shorts on YouTube right now, they basically are slides but with like a person on them. So it's like you have a visual that comes on, you have text that comes on. But it's like it's always things to kind of keep your visual attention where it's not just someone sitting in front on camera, which is what longer form YouTube videos are. So I think what's kind of interesting about this is it's kind of bringing what works in shorts to longer form videos where it's, like slides that are more like, action packed that you're getting through them. So I think it's actually kind of interesting to see as a departure from what a lot of people do in the space of long form content to kind of what some people are doing in short form content to keep your attention. So I'm actually very interested in this. It's also kind of fun, I think as we started to get through this. Yesterday, we took this. So Monday we kind of agreed on this idea. You loosely took our first script, put it in Keynote, and kind of like, let me see how long this would take to kind of build a Keynote out of this that we would then talk about to see could we do this 25 more times and what would that time look like? So you did that and we got it to a place that it was to look at on the big screen, as we like to do. And we started clicking through it and I think we were both like, yeah, this is good. This actually feels like we can stick to this. We can do it. So tomorrow we're going to come back to this and we're going to see. You've already spent all this time on these other scripts. What does it take to then turn those into Keynotes? What does it take to turn all that information you've already taken the work for and not have lines to read, but have points to get across?

 

Caroline: And then we also practice, what would it look like for you to take the script script and do the rough version? Because then not all of the creation time is on my plate. And so you were like, what can I get done in an hour and a half? And you did a great job.

 

Jason: Yeah, and I think this is also it goes back to what works well with our newsletters if I just do the first draft? So I can just put stuff in there. It's not great. I'm kind of using the same formatting over and over, but I'm trying to add little things to just help give you some ideas of how you can visually make slides look different. Because I think if I just put text on every single slide, it's not that helpful. But I'm trying my best. I'm finding gifs, I'm finding little stickers. It's what I do in our coaching sessions as well. And I felt myself actually enjoying that process yesterday. Right. As opposed to when we sat down to punch up a script. It's not enjoyable.

 

Caroline: No.

 

Jason: And I think that that's a big green flag to notice. We're like, okay, the building part of this is actually kind of fun. So where we are now, can we get people caught up?

 

Caroline: I want to go where we are now and then to wrap up the episode because I do want to get to Calm Business Confidential. And I know we've already talked for a while. I want to also talk about what do we think our lessons are from this roadblock.

 

Jason: Fantastic.

 

Caroline: From the mud.

 

Jason: So where we are now, is that what I'm going to? Yes. Great. So where we are now is we have three or four of these Keynotes in various... Well, I think four of them in various states of completion.

 

Caroline: One is done.

 

Jason: One is done, meaning, like, ready to record.

 

Caroline: Ready to record. One is rough, meaning just the information with no real design, but just the general slides. Two are...

 

Jason: Jason first draft.

 

Caroline: Jason first draft. So they need designing and animation.

 

Jason: So we have five more scripts that you have finished that I can first draft today, which is going to be my goal is to get all five of those first drafted. And what we came to is that it takes about 30 to 45 minutes for me to do the first draft, depending on the length of the script. So that's like four to 5 hours of work for me today that I have ahead of myself.

 

Caroline: But I do think this is a good process because I'm timing myself right now of what does it take for me to get all four of those first scripts to the completion. And I'm trying to do it in under an hour and a half, which actually is much better total time than just going from start to finish. An hour and a half for each one. Does that make sense?

 

Jason: So the goal by the end of the day today is four will be completed fully.

 

Caroline: Ready to record tomorrow.

 

Jason: I will have five in my first draft state by the end of the day. Tomorrow, we'll sit down and record the first four and we'll see what that feels like. And then while I'm then doing a rough edit of the first one, for sure, but maybe all four, if we like it, you can then be going in and going and working on the Jason first draft ones that we can continue to then the following day do some recording, kind of keep that process going. Where we haven't really figured out is what do we do about the 17 scripts that don't have any information yet written in them? And do those get bullets, those get notes, those go straight into Keynote, and we're trying to figure those out. So that's going to be kind of the next thing, which maybe you'll hear us talk about next week on like, okay, what do we do next? How did we figure out.

 

Caroline: Yeah, I don't think...

 

Jason: This process.

 

Caroline: I don't think you know this, but there's like nine or ten beyond those done scripts that have at least bullets in them.

 

Jason: Like multiple bullets?

 

Caroline: Yeah.

 

Jason: Oh, cool.

 

Caroline: Yeah. I don't know if you know that.

 

Jason: No, I don't look at those.

 

Caroline: Yeah, they're not just... They're not just empty documents. They have...

 

Jason: I don't poke around your Notion pages unless I'm told to because I might delete something. I don't want to get in trouble. So anyway, I think the takeaway before we get to the lessons learned is it feels good that we slogged through the mud of this project. It sucked on Monday for sure, but I think if anybody listening to this has had a sucky day that you got all the way through, you realize on the other side of that sucky day. Oh, I'm glad because now I have a way to look at this work that I'm doing. It doesn't have to be so painful. And maybe I'm leaving behind something that I was dragging along...

 

Caroline: Totally.

 

Jason: That I do not need to drag anymore. And for me, it's filming, talking head, scripted videos. No more of those for us.

 

Caroline: Yeah, for me, it's like I know there was a point on Monday when I felt like, man, what a waste of a day. But with a few days under my belt and distance, I can see, wouldn't you pay the price of 8 hours to figure out how to save yourself 100 hours of doing something that you didn't want to do?

 

Jason: And more moving forward, right? If you trapped yourself into something.

 

Caroline: Wouldn't that be a worthy price? So I did look at it that way where it was like it felt like, quote unquote, unproductive at the time. It felt like, oh my gosh, we had all these plans and now we've set ourselves back a day and there's tension, whatever. But because we were willing to talk through it and get to the bottom of it and really not put it in a box and move on, because we were willing to come to look for a more creative solution, I do feel like ultimately we've saved ourselves from boxing ourselves into a content corner that we didn't want to be in.

 

Jason: Listen, in the Container Store of black boxes, that doesn't mean the black boxes are like in an abyss. Like you can go and take one off a shelf. It's just some of them, they're buried deep.

 

Caroline: We know.

 

Jason: You're going to have to...

 

Caroline: They're very deep in bubble caves and you have to go find them.

 

Jason: Find them. Shout out to last episode. Big Lessons Learned. Takeaways. What do you want to share?

 

Caroline: A couple of lessons that even if you're not doing a content project or even not working with someone, a couple of things that I think I take away from this. Number one, when you keep hitting a roadblock in your business and your instinct is like, well, I should just figure out a way to push through this, I mean, there comes a point where you've hit it so many times that you just go, is there a different path that I'm not seeing to go around this? And the truth is that other path is probably going to require you to make a choice that feels maybe a little unconventional, maybe a little different, maybe not so strategic or what's expected of you or what you should be doing. But I think it's really worth considering taking that alternative path if it means that you can find less friction on that road.

 

Jason: Yeah.

 

Caroline: And that's what we did.

 

Jason: Yeah. It reminds me of the first time I went into the Lionel Coliseum in Tears of the Kingdom, and I was just getting my butt kicked because Lionels are very difficult to beat. And what I realized was, if I built a fire before I started fighting the Lionels, fire creates an updraft. Like a big enough fire. I'll always have an updraft, and I can shoot arrows and I can beat the Lionels, and I can always go back to my fire and use it as an updraft. It made it so much easier.

 

Caroline: So you got to start by creating the updraft.

 

Jason: You got to start creating whatever updraft. Yeah. Whatever updraft is going to help you get through that thing or creates a different way of doing it because that's the thing. I could create a different way to beat that part of that game.

 

Caroline: So Keynote is our updraft, am I right?

 

Jason: Keynote is our updraft. Absolutely. In this metaphor.

 

Caroline: In this metaphor. I think the second thing is to really be careful when you... This is a lesson for me, specifically, to be careful when you find yourself trying to follow a blueprint.

 

Jason: Yeah.

 

Caroline: Because...

 

Jason: And this is where comparison is...

 

Caroline: It's dangerous, for sure. I am a person who I like to consume YouTube. That is my consumption of choice because I love to learn. I learn a lot. And I see what a good, quote, unquote good video feels like, one that keeps my attention, one that feels like it's not clickbaity, one that feels like I learned something. And when you're a creative person, I think it's the ivory glass thing of the gap. Do you remember that?

 

Jason: Of course.

 

Caroline: When you're a creative person, there's this gap between your taste and what your skill level can produce. And so my taste of what makes a good YouTube video is way up here, very high, and my skill and ability of trying to follow that particular blueprint is way down here low. And I think that what happened in this process was I was trying to just go, well, if we can make these 26 videos and I can get better at that, why wouldn't I do that? And the mistake I was making was believing that I had to go off of that blueprint. And it goes back to what we were saying about, like, who says that a good YouTube video has to be scripted? Who says that a good YouTube video has to be anything? Again, you're never going to find that unique DNA that is singularly yours if you don't risk going out on a limb and doing something that you think might not work. You have to be willing to kind of, like, try that stuff that's not based on a blueprint. Feel the vulnerability of creating your own blueprint in order to reap the spoils on the other side of developing a whole new way that is uniquely yours.

 

Jason: Yeah. Great. Love those lessons learned. Let's move into Calm Business Confidential because we're already at the 50-minute mark.

 

Caroline: I know.

 

Jason: So we're going to need to, for the listeners, scooch this thing right along.

 

Caroline: Okay.

 

Jason: Would you like me to go first?

 

Caroline: I would because my Notes app is not updating to my phone.

 

Jason: Fantastic.

 

Caroline: So let's hope that it figures out how to do that.

 

Jason: All right. So I have to admit, also, if you don't know what the Calm Business Confidential is, this is a new segment where we highlight business owners that run businesses that we feel like are calm in ethos. The parameters are that they are making some money with their business. It doesn't have to be a lot, but it does have to be less than, like, 1.5 million a year. I'm pushing that boundary with this, but that's okay because I get a pass. Excuse me. And I'll explain why. Okay.

 

Caroline: Oh, you went bigger.

 

Jason: Kind of. A little bit. It wouldn't have been bigger a year ago, I don't think. I don't know.

 

Caroline: Well, it's not a year ago, so.

 

Jason: I'm kind of cheating. I wanted to highlight a business that was on my list from the very beginning. I could not find any backstory information. I did a ton of googling. There are no interviews with the founders. They don't have any blog posts before or after, like, 2015. They've just quietly been building this business.

 

Caroline: This isn't just a calm business. This is an invisible business.

 

Jason: This is an invisible business. And I think they're doing well. Like, they've been doing this for a while. And maybe I'll bring them up later because I might just send them questions.

 

Caroline: Yeah, why don't you do that?

 

Jason: I think I'm going to do that because...

 

Caroline: I want to feature you...

 

Jason: Exactly. In this podcast that like, seven people listen to.

 

Caroline: Twelve. I think we're up to twelve, Jace.

 

Jason: We might be in the 20s, but definitely there's a cinnamon roll army that's around here. So I'm going to cheat.

 

Caroline: Cinnamon LOLers.

 

Jason: Stop. I'm going to cheat slightly.

 

Caroline: Okay.

 

Jason: But I think you'll agree it's an okay cheat. I would like to talk about Paul Jarvis and Jack Ellis's Fathom Analytics.

 

Caroline: Never heard of them.

 

Jason: Never heard of it. Caroline is being facetious because for those of you who don't know, back in 2014, Paul Jarvis and I ran a podcast called Invisible Office Hours.

 

Caroline: And you were Internet boyfriends, and we loved you.

 

Jason: We were Internet boyfriends. And in that time, for many years, I would say probably four years, we worked on a couple of courses together. We built two separate small SaaS products together. There was, ofCourse Books.

 

Caroline: Different than sauce products.

 

Jason: And YourPack, which both still exist. Those were actually both sold with tiny little exits. And we had a great time working together, but we kind of, like, moved on from working together because we built so many things right and we were ready to, you and I, to work...

 

Caroline: Consciously uncoupled.

 

Jason: On WAIM. Yes. So a little bit of backstory. So in 2016, while Paul and I were still working, I remember he was on Twitter and he shared a screenshot of what a nice, beautiful, simple analytics dashboard could look like. And this tweet went kind of viral. I mean, you probably wouldn't think it was as viral as things would go, but for one of Paul's tweets, it went pretty bonkers.

 

Caroline: Question from the crowd, was it something he was designing or...?

 

Jason: Just literally one day he was like, I just want to design what a good...

 

Caroline: Beautiful...

 

Jason: Analytics dashboard.

 

Caroline: Because Google Analytics...

 

Jason: Looks like trash.

 

Caroline: Trashy.

 

Jason: Trash. Straight up garbage.

 

Caroline: Okay.

 

Jason: And so he tweeted this, and a bunch of people wrote back and they were like, this looks great. I want to do this. 2016. Okay. We were still working on projects together at that time. He was working on his Creative Class and Chimp Essentials courses. So he was very busy.

 

Caroline: Different era.

 

Jason: Different era. And I think it was like 2017 or 18 that Paul kind of started building it a little bit with a co-founder. And they didn't get too far with it. I think they ended up building like an open sourced version that wasn't for sale. It was just anybody could use it. But you had to be super technical because you had to install it yourself and whatever. So that was the very beginning of it. And again, I'm trying to cobble together some memories because Paul canceled his Twitter so you can't go back and look at it. And I wasn't going to listen to a ton of interviews with Paul because I know Paul pretty well, so I'll get most of this right, but also because he's Paul. Paul started working on another SaaS product called Pico. Do you remember Pico?

 

Caroline: I do remember Pico.

 

Jason: So Pico was a Medium competitor, and we both were writing on Medium. We both liked it. And then it just turned into this growth hack website, and all the articles just became listicles, and it just kind of got gross. And then they started adding in lots of features. Then they started charging for it, and it was just like, what happened to this simple, beautiful writing app? And so Paul built Pico.

 

Caroline: Boy, I do remember when the era when Medium was like, new on the scene, and it was like, whoa.

 

Jason: For those of you who don't know, I did a 60 day daily journal to build up to my Buy My Future project, which is still on Medium. You can still find it. And that was one of the best build in public things I had ever done to launch.

 

Caroline: I think that was your first real taste of build in public. You loved that.

 

Jason: Yeah. So anyway, in 2000, I think it was like 2018-ish, Pico sold... Paul sold Pico to Ghost, which is a blogging platform. And Paul was ready to kind of, like, move all in on Fathom because he was starting to get excited about it. Starting to have traction. He changed co-founders to a guy named Jack Ellis, who's a younger guy, but I think Paul and Jack really had, like, a really good match of personalities, where I think his first co-founder maybe didn't. So that was in 2019. In 2020, Paul basically disappeared from the Internet again.

 

Caroline: Love that.

 

Jason: So this is when... I think he ended in 2020. This is when Sunday Dispatches, his awesome newsletter that had been going for almost ten years.

 

Caroline: He was just like, peace out, Internet.

 

Jason: Yeah, he was just like, I'm done with this. I don't want to be a thought leader anymore. Which is basically like what you become when you have a newsletter for ten years and was just focusing on Fathom kind of behind the scenes. So they launched on Product Hunt, and I think they actually launched on Product Hunt in 2018 with the first version, and then the second version had an official launch in 2020. But if you remember correctly, there was a big thing that happened in 2020, especially in the US and North America. Do you remember what it was?

 

Caroline: GDPR?

 

Jason: GDPR. And this was the time when everyone was starting to realize, like, oh, Google Analytics is causing a lot of trouble because they're tracking all this user data. I don't really want to do this. I have to figure this out for my site. And Fathom kind of solved that because you could just turn off Google Analytics, turn on Fathom, and you didn't have to do anything to be GDPR compliant. They were just compliant.

 

Caroline: Because they weren't tracking.

 

Jason: Exactly. So Fathom's whole thing is they're like a privacy first analytics. They're not storing user data. They're not cookie-ing your users. They're just tracking things that are happening on the website. And it has nothing to do with the user.

 

Caroline: It's just like, how many pings are you getting?

 

Jason: Yeah, so Fathom had been up for a couple of years at that time.

 

Caroline: By the way, if they needed to outsource to me to explain how their software works, how many pings you're getting.

 

Jason: Okay.

 

Caroline: They can...

 

Jason: I think they're doing pretty well at this point. So from 2021 to 2023, Fathom really exploded in growth. And what I love is that it's almost exclusively product-led growth, but it's also interestingly because it's a big, huge business in this space, self-destructing. So Google Analytics in some ways just destroyed itself. And I think intentionally, because they just don't want to be in this business. But they moved to the GA4 product or whatever, and everybody to a T is just like, this product is worse trash. Why did we have to move to this? It doesn't track things. Like it's... Building a dashboard in it. Like, I tried to do it the other day, and I'm like, what am I even looking at? This is so difficult to figure out. So basically what they've done is they've leaned on, like do you want to switch away from GA4? Like this is too difficult. It's not helpful. Don't you just want simpler analytics that are GDPR compliant? All this stuff. And I think that has been a huge opportunity for them. And I think it's a great business lesson to learn of, like when the big company in the space is doing all the things that are pissing off all their customers.

 

Caroline: That's your opportunity.

 

Jason: Carve out a arbitrage?

 

Caroline: No.

 

Jason: You can carve out a... You could carve out a huge opportunity where you do the things that people like that that thing did and then don't do anything else.

 

Caroline: Yeah.

 

Jason: So I don't know the numbers from Fathom. I wasn't going to ask Paul, but very conservatively, just based on some of the things that I've read and seen, if they have 10,000 customers at the $14 per month level. And I think that's extremely conservative at this point. I think that's probably where they were a couple of years ago. That's $140,000 a month, or 1.6 million per year. So I think they're very much beyond that. But it's been really fun to watch this. We've been using Fathom since day one.

 

Caroline: Yeah. I would also just love to know from Paul, what amount does he contribute disappearing from outward facing content and marketing? Basically what I'm asking is was the decision to kind of no longer put any time, energy and attention towards building a personal brand, was that actually the best marketing thing he could have done? Because it actually gave him the space, time, attention and energy to put it into this app?

 

Jason: I think too, like selling both of his courses. So getting out from Creative Class, getting out from Chimp Essentials. It's like everything we did to move into WAIM. Right. It's just like the consolidation. And I think anybody who has built multiple things and tried to juggle them at the same time, you eventually are just like, this has got to be simpler. It's too many things.

 

Caroline: And I think this is... We talk about this a lot of I think there's an inhaling and an exhaling. There's an expansion and contraction that happens over the course of your career as a creator, where sometimes you're in a season of expansion, where you need to launch that new class or you need to try and it needs to be more complicated because you're testing things and you're tasting things and you're trying things and you're just sort of seeing what sticks. I think expansion and complication makes sense there because you're trying. Then you arrive at this place where it feels overwhelming and overly complex. So you ask yourself, of those things that I just branched out, which has the ability to get me farther, what do I like the most? So you naturally simplify again, but I just think over the course of time, it's always going to be that dance between branching out and then simplifying and then branching out and then simplifying. And that I think, is kind of natural.

 

Jason: Yeah, I've definitely listened to a couple podcast episodes because they have their own podcast called Above Board and they talk about running a SaaS business is difficult. You have complications, you have technical challenges. But it definitely seems like Paul has found a calm business to run. It's something that's in demand. It's not an online course that takes a lot of convincing to sell to someone. It's just this is a tool. We talk about this all the time with Teachery. It is a tool. Do you want to use this tool? Great. Sign up for the tool. It doesn't have to sell you on all of the problems it's going to solve in your life. And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. I'm just saying it is a bit easier when you create a tool that people want to sell it. So kudos to Paul and Jack. It's been fun to watch. And honestly, I use Fathom as our main analytics platform. And I don't even know why we have Google Analytics installed anymore because I never look at it. I tried to go and look at it for historical data, for an article that we were writing. Couldn't do it. I literally couldn't even figure out how to do it. So like, what's the point even having this anymore? It doesn't make sense.

 

Caroline: Exactly.

 

Jason: All right, who is your Calm Business Confidential?

 

Caroline: Great one, babe. Love walking down memory lane as well.

 

Jason: I figured you would, even though it's a little bit of a cheat, but it's fine.

 

Caroline: Okay. My Calm Business Confidential, I specifically this time went looking for a specific type of business.

 

Jason: Nice.

 

Caroline: And the type of business that I wanted to find was someone who was having some success on Patreon. Because I know we have a lot of artists, we have a lot of content creators in our community, and we don't play in that space necessarily. But I was interested to know, could I find an interesting cool, calm business in kind of the Patreon realm? Well, little did I know. First of all found a lot of cool Patreon businesses.

 

Jason: Nice.

 

Caroline: But the one that I wanted to highlight is someone by the name of Paloma the Peach. Do you know Paloma the Peach?

 

Jason: No, of course not.

 

Caroline: Paloma the Peach is aka Paloma Cordova, whose pronouns are she/ they, by the way. But Paloma is an artist and an illustrator who grew up in South Texas, currently based out of Houston. And she says, I'm hugely inspired by my childhood and experience as a Mexican woman. She immigrated here as a child, and she's also inspired by all things nature and of course, my lovely pets. Okay. So Paloma is just an artist and an illustrator. And I'm actually really upset that I didn't find her sooner because I checked out her instagram. And she's definitely someone who I would have been incredibly inspired by when I was more in my art era. But what's really cool about her story that I think is just the evolution of her business as an artist. And I think some of our artist listeners will find it interesting. So the origin of basically her online presence as an artist is that...

 

Jason: Bring your mic down a little bit.

 

Caroline: Well, I think it's because I'm melting.

 

Jason: Yeah.

 

Caroline: The origin of her art and illustration career. And I hope I'm going to get some of this right. But I was able to do a little bit of research. But her father gifted her a cricut machine. Do you know what a cricut machine is, Jace?

 

Jason: A cricut machine?

 

Caroline: Yeah.

 

Jason: It's like a printer.

 

Caroline: Yeah. But it does complex cuts and vinyls and things. Exactly.

 

Jason: As a person whose first job was at a sign shop, I have to say I know a little bit.

 

Caroline: Okay. Her father gifted her a Cricut machine as a way of lifting her from like a depressive season. And she seized the opportunity by launching her online sticker shop in mid 2019. Okay, so she launches a sticker shop. And also I'm now just remembering with Turtle Tags, like, I'm really on the sticker train, I guess. The sticker to online business pipeline is really getting me right now. And so I was trying to piece together her business because she now has all these multiple streams of revenue, which I think is really inspiring, but I'm trying to actually there was a part of me that was like, is this a calm business? Because it's a lot. Like she does YouTube, she has a Patreon, she has a shop, and it's all these different revenue streams. And I was like, this is a lot. But then I realized it was very organic, I think, how it all came about. So launches the stickers and kind of grows a little bit of an audience of people enjoying her art and things like that. And then I guess in late 2019, she decided to start YouTube, I think as a way of promoting her stickers and things like that. She also is quite a bit younger than us. I think she's in her early 20s. And so I read in an interview that she said she's had her channel since she was 15.

 

Jason: Wow.

 

Caroline: But didn't post on it for like many years.

 

Jason: Incredible.

 

Caroline: So I think her oldest video that I saw on her channel was actually 2019. So she had the channel since 2014, but then 2019, she starts posting behind the scenes and art and all that stuff and now incredibly prolific. I think she does art videos maybe every week. I think it slows down a little bit, which I think I was checking in on her Instagram too. I think this happens with any artist who decides to monetize their craft. I think you inevitably hit periods of burnout or you kind of lose your inspiration a little bit. So I think that's a natural part of the process. But I do think it's really inspiring to only have started like four years ago. Okay, so here's the Patreon which was my way in, right?

 

Jason: Yeah.

 

Caroline: She currently has 1,050 patrons.

 

Jason: Wow.

 

Caroline: And multiple tiers. Right. But let's say the most popular tier is the $5 tier. That's $5,200 a month at the minimum.

 

Jason: Just in Patreon.

 

Caroline: Just in Patreon. I think the tool that I actually looked at says she could be making anywhere between $3,000 and $11,000 per month just from Patreon. Okay.

 

Jason: Great.

 

Caroline: That's not only her shop sales. That's not including brand sponsorships from her YouTube content. That's not including YouTube AdSense. So like multiple revenue streams, which is really cool. But I will say the one thing that I think it's just really cool regardless and the reason I wanted to bring it as a Calm Business Confidential is anyone who can take their creativity and turn it into their full time business. I don't think that's the right path for everyone. I think some people want to leave their creative pursuits non-monetized so that they can really enjoy them. But I think other people are like, if I could find a way to earn a living doing the thing I love to do all the time, why wouldn't I do that? I think there's pros and cons to each, and I wanted to share it because I do think it's inspiring. And if you are an artist and you want to grow your Patreon, if you want to see someone who has done it effectively, check out Paloma the Peach and see kind of like the different channels that she's done in order to get there. But it is a lot of content.

 

Jason: Yeah.

 

Caroline: I really do think that part of the... And I don't know, I'd be interested to hear what you think about this, but I think part of the contract that you make as someone who just purely wants to make art and make it monetized is you do have to kind of rely on content because it's not like a course where you can really trade on inherent value. Right. Of business knowledge or something. It's very easy to tie that to value. But with content you have to almost think of yourself as an entertainer. The value you provide is in... well, it could be fellow artists are getting, but it could just be art lovers, right? That love your illustrations and get joy out of it and whatever. But I think you are making an agreement that in order to market your business, you're going to have to make a lot of content.

 

Jason: Yeah.

 

Caroline: What do you think about that?

 

Jason: I think making it as a super creative focused business, you have to be prolific with content.

 

Caroline: Right.

 

Jason: It's not the same where the advice we give for an online business is like, make eight to ten foundation articles, have a weekly email newsletter or a podcast or a YouTube channel, then sprinkle in some social media and just like, slowly but surely, people will find you because you're solving a problem. So people are going to be searching for that problem. They'll find you. People aren't searching for a problem when they're finding art.

 

Caroline: Right.

 

Jason: It's very much like it has to come up for them. And the only reason it comes up is because so much of it is getting created by the person who's making it. And I think that is just something that as a creative person, I truly believe this, I don't think there's another way. And I think this is the same for, like, go back 100 years in time. Prolific painters who we all know well today, they were painting constantly. They were sculpting constantly. There's so much of their art that never saw the light of day or that did, and people didn't even really notice. But it was just a war of attrition. Like, they just had to keep going and keep going and keep going until all of a sudden enough people had seen it. It's like, oh, this is important work. We should revere this, basically.

 

Caroline: Yeah. And maybe that goes back to everything we were talking about in this episode, which is that doesn't necessarily mean that you have to do content like other artists do it. You may not have to do these incredibly cinematic, well edited studio vlogs where it's like every angle of you painting or whatever. Maybe there's a way for you to get creative of what's your Keynote solution to doing that. So is it just I flip on the camera, I do a speed paint or I do a time lapse or I do just watch me paint, or I do live videos where people can come and paint? I think there's some creativity to be had in how you figure out a way to document your creation process in a way that maybe takes a lot less time of editing and things like that.

 

Jason: But you still have to do it.

 

Caroline: Yeah. And I do think, though, going back to what you said about you're not solving a problem, but I do think what I would tell people is there is value in asking yourself it's not the same as an information business, but you are solving some problems. So I think figuring out, is the problem you're solving for your audience that they want to feel inspired to do their own art? Is the problem that you're solving that they want to learn how to get better technically at their art? Is it that they feel anxious and actually art is the thing that calms them down and gives them time to themselves? Why are people even interacting with your stuff? And if you can figure that out and kind of get a gauge on your audience of what is it that brings them to your things, then I do think that that can give you a better idea of how to create content because then it changes from like, okay, I'm going to do a live stream where I Q and A about my tools if it's the people who are coming to you for technical stuff, right? Or if people are coming to you for stress relief, I'm going to do a 1 hour Paint with Me, where we listen to call music and we all paint together.

 

Jason: Right.

 

Caroline: So there is a little bit of problem solution that I think can guide your content in a way that then you could do some type of Patreon.

 

Jason: Great. All right. That's the Calm Business Confidential for this week. As always, if you have ideas for us of calm businesses that have a unique twist, a good story, send them at wanderingaimfully.com/contact or directly to our email address, hello@wanderingaimfully.com, and you'll find the links to both of those in the show notes of the podcast episode every week. Now, let's finish off with the Pomble. This is the time where we talk about our lives in Portugal here. We used to call this the Pramble, but we do this at the end now. So I'm calling it Pomble. And it's a short update this week because we've been in the work zone.

 

Caroline: For sure.

 

Jason: It's a mostly work zone. I do have a slight bit of knee news for everybody who's been keeping up the knee news.

 

Caroline: Let's hear the knee news.

 

Jason: I did have a second opinion on my MRI results. It did not look like the doctor was looking at a picture of a car wreck this time, which is really nice.

 

Caroline: Love that for you.

 

Jason: But he did say mandatory arthroscopic surgery. The loose bodies, free bodies that are floating around in my knee, which is basically pieces of meniscus and scar tissues that I wish you saw.

 

Caroline: Delicious.

 

Jason: That needs to be removed. And part of what he explained to me, which I didn't really think about because I obviously am not a doctor and I only play one on TV every Wednesday.

 

Caroline: Right.

 

Jason: Is when you have loose things floating around around a joint, when the joint is moving, if the loose thing gets in between the two bones or in between the joint, that's trouble. That's a lot of trouble. And that's actually kind of what probably is causing most of my issues, aside from I also do have a torn ACL again. But what was really interesting...

 

Caroline: It's basically like creating a nutcracker.

 

Jason: It's like a little wedge.

 

Caroline: You know, like a nutcracker.

 

Jason: Yeah.

 

Caroline: It's like your loose bodies are the nut. The reason a nutcracker works is because when you put something in between two opposing forces, it creates a...

 

Jason: But it's not cracking it. It's not cracking it. But the one interesting thing that I did learn I'm happy to share with all of you, thank you for asking, is a lot of data has come out in the past like ten years that when you have an ACL reconstruction done, it will almost guaranteed with 100% certainty tear after the new one will tear no matter what. In like two to five years, naturally, your body will just basically break it down.

 

Caroline: So does that make you feel better that yours tore because you feel like it was inevitable?

 

Jason: Yeah, he thinks mine has been torn for a while.

 

Caroline: Right. Because you got yours replaced when?

 

Jason: 2007. So 16 years ago.

 

Caroline: Right.

 

Jason: Yeah. So a long time ago. And he was like, your left one is probably torn now as well. But the good thing is I couldn't go and play competitive basketball right now. But you can live everyday life with a torn ACL if everything else around your knee is healthy enough and you have strong enough muscle.

 

Caroline: If you don't have any loose bodies.

 

Jason: Exactly. When you have loose bodies, though, is when you're getting in trouble.

 

Caroline: We got to tighten the bodies.

 

Jason: This week is mandatory arthroscopic surgery. They do want to clean up my meniscuses, which are like your little cartilage pads.

 

Caroline: Meniscus.

 

Jason: Meniscus. He also was trying to decide if he wanted to do meniscuses or meniscus on the call multiple times. I laughed because how do you decide? So that is going to happen for you, boy.

 

Caroline: Now the question is timing.

 

Jason: Now the question is timing, because we are going back to the States in November, and it's about a two to three month full recovery. Two months, I should be recovered enough to the point where you wouldn't even notice that I had a surgery. But I'm not maybe fully back to the workout I did today in the gym. But we'll see. We haven't decided yet. But I will continue to share because I do think it is probably helpful for people to hear, how did it go having a surgery in a different country? We do know someone through the Internet, not personally, who had an Achilles surgery here in Portugal and said it was amazing. The cost was very minimal, the recovery was great, the rehab was great. The entire process was really easy. So I'll share those.

 

Caroline: I have found in our limited interaction with medical things here, which I say limited, but it's actually quite a bit more than in an average year in the States, is just like there's so many things about dealing with your health and medicine that are transferable anywhere, which is just that you have to put a lot of trust in the people that you're interacting with. And it was one of my biggest fears. Moving to a country that isn't my home country was actually dealing with the health system because I used to deal with a lot of health anxiety and things like that, but so far, I have just been like, oh, it's actually the same amount of anxiety.

 

Jason: Yeah.

 

Caroline: Hi. I mean, I think the only difference so far is the language barrier, which hasn't been a real challenge yet. And you do realize how much, like, we moved around quite a bit when we were living in the States. So we were always trying to figure out a new insurance, a new medical group, a new this, a new that, which is very similar to coming to a different country and figuring out a new medical system, a new group.

 

Jason: Everybody has horror stories everywhere, just like a bad experience. So it's like if you have better than that, I think you're winning. The last thing I wanted to share is that I really feel like I'm in the bread groove.

 

Caroline: Yeah, you are.

 

Jason: I am in the sourdough bread groove.

 

Caroline: Guys, people, the sourdough bread that Jason makes is truly some of the best bread I've ever had in my life.

 

Jason: I'm not even trying to toot my own horn. It's just delicious.

 

Caroline: It's life changing.

 

Jason: It is the combination of the Portuguese bacteria that's in the air that I have created through the starter, the yeast.

 

Caroline: Microbial.

 

Jason: It is the Italian flour that I have found that it's like a super high protein, high quality flour that's just delicious.

 

Caroline: And the American baker.

 

Jason: And then it's just the love and care and tenderness that I put into every single loaf. Like, I'm going to be doing 3 hours of stretching and folding today.

 

Caroline: You are?

 

Jason: And I'm not even mad about it because I know that such good bread is going to come out of it. This bread is starting to travel around the neighborhood.

 

Caroline: Yeah. There have been rumblings about... There have been some requests.

 

Jason: People are like, have you ever thought about selling this bread? And I'm like, I don't want to become a full time baker. I like doing this as a hobby.

 

Caroline: You're a hobby baker.

 

Jason: For twice a week.

 

Caroline: Just to get clout in the neighborhood.

 

Jason: Exactly. I want to be known as, wow, that guy makes really good bread.

 

Caroline: I mean, so you've accomplished that because there's lots of rumblings.

 

Jason: So I'm in the groove. I'm in the bread groove. So you better watch out.

 

Caroline: I'm in...

 

Jason: Paul Hollywood.

 

Caroline: Shut up, Paul.

 

Jason: Better watch out.

 

Caroline: I'm in no grooves.

 

Jason: You're in no grooves, right?

 

Caroline: No.

 

Jason: Work groove.

 

Caroline: I'm in a work groove. It's very hard for me when we're in the middle of a creative project to focus on...

 

Jason: Life.

 

Caroline: Life or anything. I will say this. It's not like everything goes to crap. It's just everything goes to a baseline. So I'm doing a baseline workout right now. Not pushing it. Doing a baseline taking care of myself.

 

Jason: I was going to say baseline hygiene.

 

Caroline: Baseline hygiene, baseline social outreaches, baseline interactions with family. And that's just the way that it's going to be for probably the next month. And that's okay.

 

Jason: That's fine. It's great. Okay, let's wrap it up. That was a long one. For those of you who made it all the way to the end, wow, we really appreciate you.

 

Caroline: Thank you for joining us in the mud. Thank you for listening to our couples therapy session. I like to just share the realness sometimes.

 

Jason: Absolutely. We're all about...

 

Caroline: It's easy to believe that we, after working together for basically 13 years, have it all figured out. No.

 

Jason: Still run into it.

 

Caroline: But we do still love each other very much and I want to make that clear. I'm still so glad we run businesses together, babe. Okay.

 

Jason: Yeah, I hear you. And I'm with you and I think that's a great thing to bring to the end of the podcast. Okay. Love everybody. Goodbye. I agree with Carol.