216 - Evergreen vs Launching 👀

[00:00:00] Caroline: Welcome to Growing Steady. The show where we help online creators like you build a Calm business, one that's predictable, profitable, and peaceful. We're your hosts, Jason and Caroline Zook, and we run Wandering Aimfully, an Un-Boring Business Coaching Program, and Teachery, an online course platform for designers. Join us each week as we help you reach your business goals without sacrificing your well-being in the process. Slow and steady is the way we do things around here, baby.

[00:00:29] Jason: All right, cinnamon rollers, that's you. Let's get into the show. Hello and welcome back to the podcast. I am fired up.

[00:00:41] Caroline: Podcasts are cool Dot, dot, dot. Yeah.

[00:00:42] Jason: I'm fired up.

[00:00:42] Caroline: Oh, gosh.

[00:00:43] Jason: I want to talk about this whole evergreen versus launching, but before we do that... 

[00:00:47] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:00:47] Jason: I have a little preamble top.

[00:00:49] Caroline: You came with this preamble top pretty hard, so I'm excited to participate. Go ahead, tell the people what you want to do.

[00:00:55] Jason: I don't know if it's actually going to be enjoyable for folks, but I just...

[00:00:58] Caroline: Well, we never do, Jase.

[00:01:00] Jason: Exactly. I saw this in an email, and it was someone shared a tweet that was what are your weird or unique rules for your life?

[00:01:08] Caroline: Mm-hmm.

[00:01:09] Jason: And I realized looking back at them, a lot of them are just habits. They're just what are your weird habits?

[00:01:15] Caroline: Yes.

[00:01:15] Jason: But some of them...

[00:01:16] Caroline: But it's more fun to frame it. You said it was a tweet?

[00:01:18] Jason: Yeah.

[00:01:18] Caroline: So it's a very tweet way to frame something. It's like these are my 12 rules for life.

[00:01:22] Jason: Exactly. But they're just supposed to be...

[00:01:24] Caroline: It's like, "Brian, those are just the things you do every day."

[00:01:25] Jason: Exactly. Those are the weird things you do. All right, so we're going to go back and forth. You said that you had one that you know that I do.

[00:01:31] Caroline: I hate these because it's hard to think of them.

[00:01:35] Jason: Yeah, for sure.

[00:01:36] Caroline: It's like the couple's dictionary thing. I'm like, we say so many things all the time, but the second that someone goes, "What are the things you say all the time?" You're like, "I'm actually not a human being who says human words."

[00:01:43] Jason: Exactly. All right, so I'll just start with an example that came from the original tweet and information, which led to, "Oh, we do that same thing now. What else do we think about?" And that was a never being mad, rude or frustrated with servers at restaurants. 

[00:01:58] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:01:59] Jason: We abide by this rule as well. We just think these people work a very hard job.

[00:02:04] Caroline: Well, also when you have worked in a service industry, I do think that that changes your perception to be no amount of frustration that I didn't get my lack of onions on my thing is any match for the gauntlet that that person has just run since the moment they walked in the door. So I'm just not going to be upset about it.

[00:02:23] Jason: Exactly. We just always try and lead with absolute kindness. And they could literally bring if we ordered a cheeseburger. And it's like, here's half of a bun, and be like, "Hey..."

[00:02:32] Caroline: I love half a bun.

[00:02:33] Jason: "Thanks so much."

[00:02:34] Caroline: Less cows, thanks.

[00:02:34] Jason: I guess you're telling me that I need a little bit less food today, and I'm going to take that.

[00:02:38] Caroline: Kind of rude, but okay.

[00:02:39] Jason: All right, so let's go back and forth. So go ahead and start. Ladies first.

[00:02:42] Caroline: Okay. This is an unspoken rule. And again, it's just something that you do, but...

[00:02:48] Jason: Oh, you're saying for me?

[00:02:49] Caroline: Most of mine just are things you do.

[00:02:51] Jason: Oh, okay.

[00:02:53] Caroline: Okay. But I would say the rule is take the groceries in one trip.

[00:02:58] Jason: Oh, nice. I should have had that. That's a really good one.

[00:03:00] Caroline: That's a good one, right? 

[00:03:00] Jason: Yeah. You have to take all the groceries from the trunk of the car...

[00:03:03] Caroline: In one trip.

[00:03:04] Jason: ...all the way up. And we have a three-story place now. We've had a three-story place before, and I've had to do this before. You got to carry them all up in one trip.

[00:03:11] Caroline: You have to.

[00:03:11] Jason: You can't leave one bag behind...

[00:03:13] Caroline: No. No.

[00:03:13] Jason: ...because those groceries could be stolen by somebody.

[00:03:15] Caroline: And somehow it has evolved into some type of thing that you need to prove to yourself, because you always come upstairs to the kitchen, which is on the top floor, and you're like, "I did it." And I'm like...

[00:03:26] Jason: Well, also we can see our neighbors, and when they come back to the grocery store, I watch them take multiple trips, and they carry one bag. And so, I like to just come up and I carry them all, then I just pretend like I beat them.

[00:03:35] Caroline: Yeah, exactly.

[00:03:36] Jason: We're recording this in the Olympics are going on. So I feel like I'm winning the gold medal.

[00:03:39] Caroline: You're in Olympic of it.

[00:03:40] Jason: Yeah. So, yes, that is something that I do, you have to carry the groceries.

[00:03:43] Caroline: You have to.

[00:03:43] Jason: Yeah. Yup. That's a good one.

[00:03:45] Caroline: Thank you.

[00:03:45] Jason: All right, one for me. I was just going to talk about my own rules. I didn't know where...

[00:03:49] Caroline: Oh, I don't have rules.

[00:03:51] Jason: Was always swing by for the top spot when you're going to park.

[00:03:54] Caroline: Oh, yeah.

[00:03:54] Jason: You just have to do a lap. Just do one lap...

[00:03:57] Caroline: To see if there's a top spot.

[00:03:58] Jason: ...if there's a closest spot that you could park. And I understand we live in enough mindset everywhere else in life, but enough for me...

[00:04:04] Caroline: Yeah, you're right.

[00:04:05] Jason: ...it's parking as close as possible.

[00:04:07] Caroline: You're right. You have a very not enough mindset when it comes to parking. I have such an enough mindset. I'm like, if we're moderately close to the front and I see an open spot, I'm like, perfect. And to me, it's an efficiency thing. I'm like, why roll around, and...

[00:04:21] Jason: I just don't...

[00:04:21] Caroline: You know what else it is?

[00:04:22] Jason: Yeah.

[00:04:22] Caroline: I just realized it. It's also a perfect microcosm of our risk aversion.

[00:04:27] Jason: Yes.

[00:04:28] Caroline: Because I'm like, the spot is right here in front of me. Let's take it.

[00:04:31] Jason: Take the spot, yeah.

[00:04:31] Caroline: And you're like, "Roll those... yes, baby."

[00:04:34] Jason: Yeah. I'm like, there could be some good crypto waiting for us in that spot. We could just pick up and have a 10,000% return. So always swing by for a top spot. All right, your next rule, or weird thing that I do.

[00:04:45] Caroline: Oh, I love this one. This one, I would say is for both of us, but definitely leans more towards you.

[00:04:49] Jason: Maybe this one's just for you. Go ahead.

[00:04:51] Caroline: Don't give me paper.

[00:04:52] Jason: Ah, yeah. Yeah.

[00:04:53] Caroline: Don't give me paper. So it's like, if the question is, "Do you want a receipt?" Or "Do you want a copy of that?" Or "Do you want me to print that out?" The answer is absolutely not.

[00:05:01] Jason: It's not...

[00:05:02] Caroline: Absolutely not.

[00:05:03] Jason: It's not a no, thank you. I'm actually offended...

[00:05:05] Caroline: Offended that you ask.

[00:05:05] Jason: ...when the paper comes toward me.

[00:05:07] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:05:07] Jason: I'm like, "Oh, oh, I didn't realize you knew nothing about me."

[00:05:10] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:05:11] Jason: This is offensive to you.

[00:05:12] Caroline: Do not give me paper.

[00:05:13] Jason: Yeah, I don't want paper at all.

[00:05:14] Caroline: Absolutely. It makes you actually disgruntled.

[00:05:16] Jason: Yeah. Okay. My other weird thing, growing up, neither of us, when we would go out to eat, you didn't have the full menu that you could order from.

[00:05:27] Caroline: Yup.

[00:05:28] Jason: So now, as adults...

[00:05:29] Caroline: Yup.

[00:05:29] Jason: ...it's always order an appetizer or a dessert.

[00:05:31] Caroline: I knew I almost wrote that one, Jason. But yeah, this is a really funny one that you almost...

[00:05:38] Jason: It could be the bread. It could be the $3.99...

[00:05:40] Caroline: We've been doing it so long that I also take for granted the fact that this is a real thing that we do at every meal. But I think I have mentioned this on the podcast before that when we first met... Well, first of all, I was basically a broke early in my career person, and so I was still operating off of the money mindset that I had grown up with, which is like, do not even look at the appetizer menu.

[00:06:01] Jason: Yeah.

[00:06:02] Caroline: We are here to just get the meal, and we're going to choose something that is probably the least amount on the menu. And if we're eating out, we really need to be budgeting. And I remember when we had our first couple of dates and you were ordering appetizers, and I was like, "Whoa, rich." Sorry, didn't know I was dating a billionaire. Excuse you for ordering the little tapas at the beginning of the meal. And so, yeah, now it's just like, I feel like it's... And it never gets old. I'm just like, yes, let's order an appetizer.

[00:06:34] Jason: And I know it's very basic, but yeah, just always give me the dessert menu. I just want to see it.

[00:06:38] Caroline: Well, that's you, yeah.

[00:06:38] Jason: Yeah, I don't have to order it, but I just, at least, want to know what my options are.

[00:06:41] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:06:41] Jason: It could be a surprise.

[00:06:42] Caroline: Don't give me paper. Do give me a dessert menu. Okay?

[00:06:45] Jason: Absolutely, 100%. All right. Do you have another one?

[00:06:46] Caroline: Yeah, I have two more.

[00:06:47] Jason: Oh, fantastic.

[00:06:49] Caroline: My second to last one is popcorn is not for sharing.

[00:06:52] Jason: Oh, that is a good thing rule. Yup.

[00:06:55] Caroline: Okay. So the rule is, we have proven in our relationship to ourselves that we cannot share a tub of popcorn.

[00:07:00] Jason: Yup.

[00:07:01] Caroline: We're very loving people. We're very collaborative people. We love each other so much. Where we sort of get into hot water is both trying to share a popcorn tub. So that's a no for us.

[00:07:10] Jason: Yeah. That's a hard no.

[00:07:10] Caroline: That's a separate into your own serving and enjoy your popcorn without the pressure of someone else grabbing at it constantly.

[00:07:19] Jason: Yeah.

[00:07:20] Caroline: I think popcorn's basically the only thing, I was going to say fries. We typically do separate the fries first. Fries and popcorn I think are the two.

[00:07:26] Jason: Yeah. Fries and popcorn, I think are the two non-negotiable.

[00:07:28] Caroline: You really need your own serving.

[00:07:29] Jason: Everyone gets their own bowl. Just it's not...

[00:07:30] Caroline: Otherwise, it's sort of a race. It's sort of like the groceries. It's like a race to the...

[00:07:30] Jason: It is. It is a race to the bottom...

[00:07:31] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:07:31] Jason: ...to the fighting. Yeah, that's a good one.

[00:07:31] Caroline: Okay.

[00:07:31] Jason: My other one was somewhat related to desserts as well, but it's always get the pastry at the checkout counter. If I'm at a checkout counter and there's a nicely wrapped chocolate chip cookie waiting for me. Always. Yes.

[00:07:48] Caroline: Yeah, you're that little impulse buy that they dream about.

[00:07:51] Jason: That's for me. They made that section for me.

[00:07:52] Caroline: They did.

[00:07:53] Jason: They're like, "Hey, someone's going to check out, and we can easily add like a $2 extra thing." That's me. I will always take it. I'm like, "Yeah, I'll have that. You put that there for me." Yes.

[00:08:00] Caroline: Yup.

[00:08:01] Jason: Okay. Your last one.

[00:08:02] Caroline: The last one, I thought of this last minute because of the first thing that you said of what inspired this whole thing, and this is another thing that you did when I met you that we have adopted as a family rule, but always over tip.

[00:08:15] Jason: Yeah.

[00:08:16] Caroline: And so, I will never forget, so I think we were out somewhere, like a coffee shop or something like that. Somewhere where the total was very small.

[00:08:24] Jason: Yeah.

[00:08:24] Caroline: And I just had grown up with this mental math of 15%. You do 15% or 15 or 20, right? So you move the decimal and you just do the math. So I was so habitually used to just doing the math. And also, this is mainly targeted, I guess, towards our American listeners...

[00:08:39] Jason: Yeah.

[00:08:39] Caroline: ...but I was just always so used to just doing the mental math that I wouldn't even question what the total was. So if I was at a coffee shop or whatever, your total is $7, $10, whatever.

[00:08:49] Jason: Exactly. Yeah.

[00:08:50] Caroline: So you're tipping a dollar. And Jason was like, "We were out of the thing." And Jason tipped $5, and I was like, "Don't you understand that that's like 50% tip, whatever." He's like, "I don't think about it like that." He's like, "I think about it where it's like what's $5 to me versus $5 to the person who's been working here all day and is making a dollar in tips at a time."

[00:09:09] Jason: Exactly.

[00:09:09] Caroline: I was like, "Oh, I never really thought of it like that." Which makes me sound terrible, but...

[00:09:14] Jason: No. But I think that's how everybody thinks about it. It's how we're conditioned. I do think it has changed because the point of purchase displays...

[00:09:20] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:09:20] Jason: ...now automatically do a 20% or 30%.

[00:09:23] Caroline: It's true. And I gauged, it's gotten a little out of control.

[00:09:26] Jason: And I know that people find that really frustrating, but I also think that especially in the US, the financials are not there for people who work at these places.

[00:09:34] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:09:35] Jason: It is, again, the $4 difference for me tipping $5 versus me tipping $1 is not a big deal in the grand scheme of things for me. And it is for them to be like that, that's really helpful. That adds up.

[00:09:47] Caroline: Yeah. And of course, that does come from a place of financial privilege...

[00:09:49] Jason: Of course.

[00:09:49] Caroline: ...where it's like, if you're the person who was like, "Yeah, but I really need those extra $4." Then, of course. No shame in that game at all. But I think what you opened my eyes to is if you can afford it...

[00:10:01] Jason: Yeah.

[00:10:01] Caroline: ...goes back to the server thing. It's like this person's busting their ass, and you're just coming in to get a latte. So a couple bucks goes a long way.

[00:10:07] Jason: Yeah. And also, I don't know, coffee shops have a very special place in my heart of I always want them to exist. And so, the tiny amounts of money that I can deposit extra every time we go buying the cookie, adding a little bit more for the tip, I want those places to exist, so.

[00:10:22] Caroline: For sure. So that's just something that you have taught me as a general rule.

[00:10:25] Jason: Oh, that's nice. My last one, this is more of a habit. This is not really that weird.

[00:10:29] Caroline: Okay.

[00:10:29] Jason: It's kind of a dumb one to end on. But when I first got an Apple Watch, I got so frustrated by the inconsistency of when the battery would run out. I just would be like, "Oh, I thought this battery would last 36 hours." And for some reason, it's like the next day, and it's dead. "Ah, this is so frustrating." I just charge it every morning. It is such an easy life hack. I get up, I take my watch off, I put it on the charger, have coffee, have breakfast. First hour or two of the day, I'm not wearing the watch. It's also the least active I'm going to be in the day.

[00:10:57] Caroline: Right.

[00:10:58] Jason: Then I put it on. I have not had a dead Apple Watch in literally after the first six months.

[00:11:03] Caroline: Can't say the same for myself, Jason. That reminds me of this little clip that I saw online of this girl doing a podcast interview. And in real time, she was like, "When you plug your phone in at night." And everyone was like, "What do you mean when you..." She's like, "Wait, what?" She's like, "I thought we all."

[00:11:19] Jason: Yeah.

[00:11:19] Caroline: "All of us, I thought we were all agreeing that we charge our phones at night. We plug them in at night, and then our alarm goes off, and then we unplug them, and then the whole day, you start at 100% battery." The other girl's interviewing her like, "100% battery, like, I haven't seen 100% battery since..."

[00:11:36] Jason: I live in 100% battery territory. Yeah.

[00:11:38] Caroline: I know. And so, I watched that, and I laughed so hard because I was like, this would be you being like, "What do you mean you don't charge your phone?"

[00:11:46] Jason: Yeah.

[00:11:46] Caroline: "What do you mean you let it die?"

[00:11:47] Jason: Exactly.

[00:11:48] Caroline: So...

[00:11:48] Jason: All right, well, those are the silly rules for life. If you have any you want to share with us, especially if they're just really weird, feel free to leave a comment on Spotify. That's fine.

[00:11:56] Caroline: I know, I wish I had more time because I know we do weirder stuff.

[00:11:58] Jason: Sorry, you're out of time. Or you can send us an email hello@wanderingaimfully.com. All right, let's get into the actual episode content here. Let's talk about evergreen versus launching. I'm ready.

[00:12:07] Caroline: Controversy.

[00:12:08] Jason: I'm ready to just unleash my fury upon this episode.

[00:12:11] Caroline: I wish you wouldn't.

[00:12:12] Jason: Okay, then I won't.

[00:12:14] Caroline: Okay.

[00:12:14] Jason: I will release my ideas.

[00:12:18] Caroline: Okay.

[00:12:19] Jason: Different than unleashing my fury. Yeah.

[00:12:20] Caroline: Yes, that's a different energy.

[00:12:21] Jason: Okay, so you want to bring us into it?

[00:12:24] Caroline: Yeah. Well, you actually were the one who came up the idea for this episode because obviously launching is on the mind for us lately. And I came to this realization that we have evolved our thinking when it comes to launching because we have figured out this way that launching used to be this big pressure filled thing, but now in a weird way, launching has actually created more predictable income, income that does feel evergreen in a way where it's like you do have sales coming in all the time. And sometimes I think I take for granted the fact that we have been able to achieve that with launching. And I was like, oh, I think most people out there, most solopreneurs don't know that this sort of approach to launching exists. And I do think that evergreen tends to be the shiny pinnacle and the ultimate dream that people are striving for because it's painted as this more passive, easier, go to bed, wake up to sales, ding, ding, ding, all your sales notifications. And that is a really attractive picture to someone who really just wants to be able to have digital product sales and feel predictable with their income. But I was like, I want to do a podcast episode letting people know that launching can actually be that. And it doesn't have to be this feast or famine thing where it's all this pressure. You can actually do it in a way that gets you regular sales. So that's what I wanted to talk about.

[00:13:49] Jason: Listen, there are certainly people in our space of the online business, digital product world who have cracked the nut of getting sales every single day of their offer, and they have figured this out. I think there is a lot behind the scenes that they're not exactly sharing. I'm not saying that people are liars. I'm not saying that people are hiding things, but I think a lot more people are using ads. I think a lot more people have paid content across multiple places and they're not specifically sharing when they make a $50 sale every couple hours, that that's costing them $35, $40 in ad spend, content creation, et cetera. It looks beautiful when you get that $50 notification stacking up or whatever, but that's only part of the story. And I think that there's a really big misconception and it's really easy to sell the dream of evergreen. And I think that's the thing that gets just sold over and over to people. And I think the dream of running a business is having predictability. And for us, in 10 years, we have never been able to figure out evergreen.

[00:14:50] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:14:50] Jason: And I think we are two very smart people who have done a great job of selling things. We have made almost $5 million in total selling digital products in our entire careers of digital product creation. Never have we been able to crack the nut of evergreen.

[00:15:04] Caroline: Do you have any ideas about why that is? Because I have a theory.

[00:15:08] Jason: My thought is that it's actually almost impossible because the trends change, and the tactics go out of favor. So it's like, oh, well, if you just write a bunch of blog posts and you get a bunch of organic traffic, then you put a lead magnet on a thing, then you have like a limited time offer, whatever. Yes, that does work for a time, but it doesn't work forever. And so, it's like evergreen can work for like a six-month chunk and then something changes and then it like dries up or like people's behavior change and it's like, "Oh, I don't need to learn that thing anymore in that way. I'm moving on to something else."

[00:15:42] Caroline: Well, that is an interesting point because like I said, I do think launching is the, if we're just pitting the two strategies against each other, launching ends up getting the bad rap about like, okay, if you're only going to launch like once a year, like you're putting all your eggs in this one basket and whatever, but it's like in a weird way, when you do evergreen, like you said, you put all your eggs in this one tactical basket when it comes to wherever your traffic's coming from, whether it be Facebook Ads, whether it be the SEO game or whatever, and it can shift on a dime. And I feel like if you put all your eggs in that basket, it's a little bit dangerous. So I just think that point is interesting. But I was actually going to say, for me personally, I think why we haven't cracked evergreen is because it requires a lot of complexity.

[00:16:26] Jason: Yeah.

[00:16:26] Caroline: And more power. Like I said the point of this episode is just cheeky. It's not to actually say whoever's doing evergreen is like that's the wrong thing to do, or you shouldn't do that. It's just to point out the differences between the two and why our business has really steered more towards launching. In case there are listeners out there who are like, "You know what? I've tried evergreen, it didn't work for me." Here's an alternative. But I think for me personally, it stresses me out to try to keep it all in my head in terms of like, okay, I've got this offer ladder. It's got five offers into it. This sequence goes to that sequence goes to that sequence. And I have to make sure that I update this automation rule when I want to change one thing. And, oh, there's like self-set timers that have to do with when someone enters the funnel, and I have to check it and it's hard to check it. And just the, the little that we have tried before is like the amount of complexity and steps it takes to get it running smoothly, more power to you if that is the way that your brain works, and you love that game and you love that puzzle. For me personally, it steers me further away from a Calm business. It steers me into this complexity Rubik's cube place where it's like having a business is already feeling like a Rubik's cube. I'm trying to reduce the amount of sides that this Rubik's cube has to reduce the amount of variables that there are. And for me, that's why I like launching. It's very simple. I'm like, there's an email list. There's a sales messaging. There's my offer, there's my sales page. Everyone's going through the same sequence at the same time. I love that.

[00:17:55] Jason: Yeah. The complexity of evergreen and everything that you just said, I think is one of the things that people who teach those models really gloss over because they have figured out a system that does some version of that. But in figuring that out, it has been like years of tweaking and doing it. And trying to teach someone to get that set up is like it's so difficult. It's so hard to figure out all those systems. And then, like you said, to mentally juggle it, like I remember back when I had my how to get sponsorships course, and that was the first time, I was really like selling a course. I was using Facebook Ads to drive to webinars. And I know those tactics still exist today, but I could not get consistency in that. It just was always like, oh, for some reason more people would sign up to this webinar and then like next month, like less people would sell during or buy during the webinar and then I would get people on my email list. My email list was constantly growing. I was adding like 1,000 people per month, and it just never converted at a consistent rate that I could rely on. And had I just taken all of that time to go, okay, if I just create really helpful, valuable content, if I just capture an email list of people who really like the topic that I'm talking about, not that they just got swayed by some slick copy in a Facebook Ad and then I warm them up to a launch, then I do the launch, I have a limited time offer or whatever, a bonus or anything, that puts me in control of my business. And I think the idea of evergreen, it actually like removes a lot of your control because then you have all these moving parts that can all break down.

[00:19:23] Caroline: Mm-hmm.

[00:19:23] Jason: And we've seen it multiple times. We've set up like an evergreen system and then all of a sudden, you get like one cog in all the wheels that's broken, and you don't even know. It's just that like randomly someone will email and be like, "Hey, I don't know if you know, but this link is broken." And you go and you look it like, "What happened?" Like this is working perfectly, I don't understand.

[00:19:41] Caroline: Yeah. Remember when Google Drive changed their link structure.

[00:19:45] Jason: Like structure. Yeah.

[00:19:46] Caroline: Oh, boy.

[00:19:47] Jason: Yeah, it just like it threw everything off. So I think that again, I'm going to be the more, I think, negative person towards evergreen, and it's probably just because I'm salty that we've never gotten it to work. But it's also...

[00:19:57] Caroline: At least you're self-aware.

[00:19:58] Jason: Yeah, but it's also because I really do believe that a lot of the people who sell evergreen, they're just selling the dream of it and they're not telling the full story of how complex and difficult it is. Now, I will say we have an interview that by this going out is already up on YouTube, but it will come out on the podcast with Michelle Rohr.

[00:20:15] Caroline: Mm-hmm.

[00:20:16] Jason: ...who is a Wandering Aimfully member. And I think she has cracked the nut of evergreen in a different way.

[00:20:22] Caroline: Definitely.

[00:20:22] Jason: But her evergreen is not like, set it and forget it. She sends emails every week. She's creating content like she is getting sales every day. But she also has an engine running of creating new things, telling stories, helping people. And I think that that's a way that evergreen would make sense to us if we were going to do this. But it's not a reliance on Facebook Ads. It's not a reliance on the super slick funnels. It's a reliance on just making things that people like and then having a systematic approach to creating content around those things and showing the value.

[00:20:53] Caroline: Yeah. And she has a super cool, interesting story in terms of this bold move of basically deciding to delete her entire free email list, like people who signed up using freebies and instead to only build an email list of customers, people who had paid for something. I think that's a really interesting approach because it filters out the people who are only there for free information and it creates these raving customers. I've never seen anyone like a Michelle Rohr customer. And so, if you're interested in her approach to evergreen, I do think that is a podcast episode worth catching. But yeah, I think, listen, yes, you're the one who's always going to be...

[00:21:33] Jason: Grumpy.

[00:21:33] Caroline: No, you're not grumpy. It's just you're the one who's always going to be more comfortable with the black and white. And I'm always going to be the one who, I just, I don't like black and white thinking. I like living in the gray. And I find it very hard to say, like this thing is better than this thing because it's all context and nuance. But I take your point. And I look at it more as like both can work, obviously, both have different pros and cons. Neither one is easy. This is what I also want to hit home. It's not like we're painting launching as like, oh, gosh, it's so easy. I just think when your variables are reduced to just this formula of launching, it feels more simple. It's not easy, but to me it's simple. It's simple to keep in my mind one sale sequence. It's simple to keep in my mind these are the sales emails. This is the timeframe window. Everyone is not on their individual timeframe. Now the downside, I think to be fair, we have to say what the downsides of launching are versus evergreen is like you can't meet someone when the timing is perfectly right for them. So it's like, the downside of evergreen is like you have to do all this complexity to make sure that you're hitting that person at the exact right moment that they're the most interested. The downside of launching is you're telling someone, this is your only two weeks to buy. And if that timing doesn't line up for them in their life and what they want to do, you're a little bit like out of luck.

[00:23:00] Jason: Yeah.

[00:23:01] Caroline: But I just love the simplicity of it.

[00:23:03] Jason: Yeah. And I think the way that I was just putting together like a timeline in my head is if you were to ask me, okay, on January 1st, you have the option of choosing launching or evergreen as your business strategy. And then for the next six months, you essentially get to choose, okay, I am either literally in the weeds of the systems and the automations and the things and the funnels and trying to figure out evergreen sales. And every month that goes by that I'm not seeing momentum with that, I'm just getting deflated.

[00:23:34] Caroline: Mm-hmm.

[00:23:34] Jason: And there might be a month where I do see a little bit of momentum, but then I can't replicate it the next month. And that up and down that roller coaster ride, it's really difficult to manage your mental in that time.

[00:23:44] Caroline: Mm-hmm.

[00:23:44] Jason: But with launching, what I really love about that, and we've seen this in the past four years with extreme consistency, is for six months, you're creating content around the problem that you solve, around whatever your product is. For one month leading up to the launch, you're getting really focused on delivering a ton of value to someone before you do the launch, and you're telling that it's coming and you're getting them excited about it. Then for two weeks, you're selling that product, you have an incentive, you have some type of urgency, you have some type of bonus or whatever. That is like a very predictable thing. Like you know you have the audience that's interested in what you're doing because you're building that audience based on the topic that you're sharing. And I just think if you give me those two options, this is where I'm less risk averse. I want the one where I have like a little bit of a known like, yeah, the launch, I know I have an audience that's interested. I'm going to do it. The evergreen, I'm like, I don't know if I'm ever going to get those people consistently coming and being the right people around my offer.

[00:24:39] Caroline: Yeah. And here's the thing that I want to move into now that I think we accidentally discovered that I want to let people know is an option, is the predictable income piece of it, because I do think part of what gets shared in that evergreen dream picture is sales every day. Like, you can plan your cash flow because you know exactly, like if you make three sales a day, then you know exactly how much money you're going to make every month. And I do think that if you are a solopreneur who has been living, especially if you're someone who maybe has been doing client work or whatever, and it's been very up and down revenue per month, and it's hard to plan your life and it's hard to save and all these things. And I think you think of launching and you go, "Well, that's not so different, because I could do a launch, and I could get this huge influx of cash. It could flop. I could get no influx of cash." Like it feels like more of the same unpredictability. For us, we made this decision a long time ago to only offer payment plans for our main core offer, which is WAIM Unlimited. We have two options to buy, and there is no pay in full option. Now, in the back end, if you do want to, just pay it off, you can.

[00:25:43] Jason: Yeah, yeah. Someone sends a message like, "Can I pay you the full amount?" Like, yeah, sure, we can charge your credit card.

[00:25:46] Caroline: But we don't offer it as an option on the sales page. Instead, we offer the two payment plans. Now, I want to share the pros and cons of that. The cons of only offering payment plans are, yes, you do have to do more admin work to chase people down for failed credit card payments. That's always going to be a thing.

[00:26:03] Jason: And just, I'll give you the truth of this is the person who manages those, 75% of your customers on payment plans will have a failed payment...

[00:26:10] Caroline: At some point during the...

[00:26:11] Jason: ...at some point during the thing.

[00:26:12] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:26:12] Jason: And like, I would say if you're asking me for statistics, 25% of people will have a failed payment in the first six months. In the first 12 months, it'll be 50%, but it'll be 75% after the first 18 months.

[00:26:24] Caroline: Yeah, because people's cards expire.

[00:26:26] Jason: Exactly.

[00:26:27] Caroline: They change their cards.

[00:26:27] Jason: It's not necessarily anything they're doing wrong or whatever. It's just that this is just the nature of people's credit card habits.

[00:26:33] Caroline: Right. So that is admin work that you do have to build in. And it does mean that people are not paying in full, which means that some people will cancel, and you won't get that revenue. I mean, thankfully for us, if you have a really good offer, you have a very low cancellation rate. So that's great. Those are the cons. Now, the pros, though, are that because everyone is on this monthly plan, it almost ends up feeling like monthly recurring revenue.

[00:26:58] Jason: Yeah.

[00:26:59] Caroline: Right?

[00:27:00] Jason: That's exactly what it is.

[00:27:00] Caroline: It's exactly what it is. So you can predict it very after a launch, Jason and I know for the next seven months, we know exactly what... Well, actually for the next like 20, until we do another launch, we know exactly how much money we're making every single month, which is such a weight off of our shoulders and that predictability has gone such a long way to creating Calm in our lives. And so, the admin is worth it in order to know that we have like an income. Right? And then the thing for us that is maybe unique is because we have a lifetime product, people do stop paying after a certain, which, I mean, if you're offering a program or if you're offering anything that isn't a monthly membership, you will have this drop off. Right? But as long as your a payment plan, like we have now a seven-month plan and a 28-month plan, as long as you're launching, we launch twice a year. What's happening, and I wish I had a visual to show you, but it's a podcast.

[00:27:55] Jason: Yeah.

[00:27:56] Caroline: Is people's monthly payments are coming in, you launch again, and the people from the previous launch are still paying you monthly, and the new people from your new launch are now paying you. And so, it stacks.

[00:28:07] Jason: Yeah.

[00:28:07] Caroline: It starts to stack, and you see this very predictable growth launch over launch. And that decision to do the twice a year launches to only do payment plans, that is what finally put our cashflow in a place where we could predict our yearly monthly income, if that makes sense, by year-to-year, we could predict our monthly income month-over-month.

[00:28:30] Jason: Yeah. And I think that obviously, the caveat here is you have to be selling something that is worth enough to have some sort of payment plan.

[00:28:36] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:28:36] Jason: And like the plan goes on long enough. But I think if you're selling anything over $500 where you have $100 per month payment plan or something like that, you can get to that place where you have your launches that are four to five months apart where you can have that stacking of revenue happen. And it is this really beautiful predictable income thing where you have a month where the revenue is really overlapping and it's like, this is awesome. This is like so fun to see in the spreadsheet. Like all of these customers stacking up. But then there is the reality of by the end of the five months or however long your payment plans are, you have a month where it goes down. Like I remember when we were first getting started with Wandering Aimfully and we were switching to lifetime. There was a time when we would get to like a February and we would be like, okay, we're going to have a $6,000 drop in revenue.

[00:29:27] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:29:27] Jason: And it's because we didn't plan enough how the revenue would end. And now we're at a place where it's perfect. Now I almost, and I don't think you know that I do this. I try and pick our payment dates.

[00:29:38] Caroline: Yeah, I know.

[00:29:38] Jason: So that in the month, we've basically flattened out where the curve is of payments throughout the month.

[00:29:44] Caroline: And we have, I don't know if you've known this because I'm the one who more picks our launch window dates. We have launched with enough variation versus August, September, October.

[00:29:54] Jason: Exactly. Yeah.

[00:29:55] Caroline: And March, April, May.

[00:29:57] Jason: Yeah. So it's not all of like...

[00:29:58] Caroline: That the drop off has never happens at the same time.

[00:29:59] Jason: Because that's what we had in the beginning.

[00:30:00] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:30:01] Jason: It's like, it was a very even, huge drop in February, huge drop in August. And so, these are the things you learn. And again, to me, that's a very nuanced, small problem to do. It's a good problem to have because you just have to figure out the timing of things. It's still a way better solution in launching and having these launch windows and we just do two a year. If you're a person who would want to do more, that's totally fine. You can launch as many times you want a year. I wouldn't overdo it with your list and launch six times per year. I think it's probably too much and it's too much for you to manage. But I do think that knowing that we have the predictability of these launches and knowing that we have the predictable monthly income of the payment plans, I can't stress enough to you all listening to this how good it feels in our business as opposed to how it felt five years ago when we were just scrambling to get people to pay on like a daily, weekly, monthly basis.

[00:30:51] Caroline: Yeah. And to me, the biggest change is also which I didn't write in the notes here, but I think this is a good place to wrap it up of why, again, launching works better for us is only having to be in that sort of selling mindset twice a year. I love that.

[00:31:06] Jason: This is huge. Yeah.

[00:31:07] Caroline: I love that because there's nothing wrong with selling. But as creative people, we love the creation process and the connection part of the process so much more than the selling part of the process.

[00:31:17] Jason: Also, can we stick on this for a minute?

[00:31:18] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:31:19] Jason: I know you wanted to wrap up.

[00:31:19] Caroline: That's okay.

[00:31:20] Jason: I think this is actually a really important thing to hit home that a lot of business owners don't understand until you start doing it, especially relates to evergreen. The mental state that you have to be into, to constantly be tweaking a funnel and to making new lead magnets and testing them to making new signup pages and testing them to looking at what emails are converting, what buttons are people clicking. Like, all this, that stuff for the majority of us sucks. Like, just to be real, it is not fun work to be doing. And so...

[00:31:48] Caroline: That's where I think it goes back to self-awareness.

[00:31:50] Jason: Exactly.

[00:31:50] Caroline: It's like which type of person are you? Do you love the scientific complexity of that, that you want to be looking at that every day? You want to be looking for patterns, you want to be tweaking things? Again, more power to you.

[00:32:02] Jason: Yeah.

[00:32:02] Caroline: Do that. We are very much embrace unicorn power here. But if you're someone who you think that exhausts you, if you're someone who just wants to keep things simple in your mind, I do think that this launching thing is a different alternative.

[00:32:15] Jason: Yeah, because like you said, and we've talked about this for a long time, which is just like, launching puts you more in control of the time you need to be selling.

[00:32:21] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:32:22] Jason: And the less time you can spend selling for the majority of us, the better our lives and businesses are because we don't have to be in that uncomfortable stage of like, oh, I feel like I'm sending too many emails or doing this stuff like, that is a necessary part of running a profitable business.

[00:32:35] Caroline: Also, if you're in that first one to two years where you just started selling digital products. I also think starting with launching is a really smart idea because you learn without having to be on selling mode all the time. You learn how do I talk about my offer in a compelling way?

[00:32:51] Jason: Yeah.

[00:32:52] Caroline: How do I grow my audience in a way that attracts the right ideal customer? You can figure all those things out in a launch model where you have this built in urgency of the timeframe so that you can figure out what works and then you can, if you want, later, apply all those lessons to what you did learn to evergreen.

[00:33:11] Jason: As always, choose what's best for you.

[00:33:14] Caroline: Yes.

[00:33:14] Jason: If for some of you out there, and I would love to hear from those of you who have figured out evergreen and you don't spend $1.50 to make $1.60, like that math doesn't math to me. Like, I don't like running a business in that way because I don't think the margins are good enough and you're at the beck and call of like a meta or whatever. Like they can pull your business out from under you. No one's going to pull our business out from under us. That's the other thing with launching is it literally like, creates more control of your own business. But if you have cracked it, I would love to hear the story because I'd love to come back around and do another episode and be like, "Hey, so and so sent us an email. This is how they set everything up. They actually showed us how this works." I would be happy to share that. Do I think we're going to get a message about that? I don't necessarily think so, but I hope this is just a helpful conversation to hear the differences between evergreen and launching. Obviously, we're pro launching, but you choose what's best for you. If that doesn't work for your business, by all means, that's fine. But it has worked extremely well for us to create that profitability. Profitability. Predictability.

[00:34:13] Caroline: Nice.

[00:34:13] Jason: And honestly, feeling like the most calm in our business we've felt in a long time is doing these two launches per year. That's the only time we have to be selling. Everyone has now gotten used to it who's in our audience, too. They're like, "Hey, I'm waiting for the fallen Roman.

[00:34:26] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:34:27] Jason: Like, I know it's coming. Like people are then they're getting excited to join because they're looking forward to it and they're figuring out how the finances are going to work to be able to pay for it. That's great. It gives them time to do that.

[00:34:37] Caroline: Yeah, I think that's great. So that is the episode. Hope you enjoyed it. And obviously for the next few weeks, we are just all about launching around here. And for those of you who are interested in having bigger launches with less stress, we hope these episodes are helpful for you.

[00:34:54] Jason: And you can join our still time to get our last couple of emails of our Calm Launch Fundamentals series.

[00:35:00] Caroline: Yup.

[00:35:00] Jason: Wanderingaimfully.com/newsletter. You can sign up for that and you'll learn more about our Calm Launch Formula that is coming out as well.