221 - Teachery's Lifetime Plan experiment results

[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.

[00:00:37] Caroline: You didn't do a silent countdown.

[00:00:39] Jason: I didn't do anything. I just, I sat here, and I looked at you.

[00:00:42] Caroline: You looked lovingly into my eyes.

[00:00:43] Jason: And here I am. Welcome to the podcast.

[00:00:46] Caroline: Everyone.

[00:00:46] Jason: This is, I think, going to be a Jason favorite episode, if I was to describe it.

[00:00:51] Caroline: Yeah. You really wanted to record this episode.

[00:00:53] Jason: Love some numbers, love some experiments. It's just like my favorite thing to share these little...

[00:00:58] Caroline: What do I like to share?

[00:00:59] Jason: Emotions.

[00:01:00] Caroline: Feelings.

[00:01:00] Jason: Feelings.

[00:01:01] Caroline: Oh.

[00:01:01] Jason: Oh, look at the butterfly. Oh, the wind is blowing. Ah.

[00:01:05] Caroline: What did I say right before we started? I love this changing of the season.

[00:01:09] Jason: I love this changing of the season. Yup, that's a thought I have.

[00:01:12] Caroline: But I will say, I am fully ready for you to take the wheel. And this is your episode that you're so excited to talk about. I am in a very good mood today.

[00:01:19] Jason: Yeah.

[00:01:20] Caroline: And so, I was contemplating that as I sat here, I said, why am I such a good mood today? Is it hormones? Is it this? Is it that? And I thought to myself, I just got a lot of sleep last night. I just got an appropriate amount of sleep last night.

[00:01:34] Jason: Yeah.

[00:01:35] Caroline: And I was so tired the day before you saw me.

[00:01:38] Jason: Your girl needs sleep.

[00:01:39] Caroline: Your girl needs sleep. And I just thought to myself, wow, what a simple solution to life is. When you get a full night of sleep, you are happier.

[00:01:46] Jason: This is true. Do we want to quick preamble?

[00:01:51] Caroline: Sure. Preamble it up. What do you want to preamble about, babe?

[00:01:53] Jason: I have no knees left.

[00:01:55] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:01:56] Jason: Because I was curious.

[00:01:56] Caroline: You're in a sad state of affairs with the old joelhos.

[00:02:00] Jason: For those of you who have not followed the saga of my knees closely, I'll just, very quickly. In 2007, 2008, I tore each ACL in my knees, had them both surgically repaired, kept playing basketball after that. I hurt them playing basketball. And just my right knee should have had a different surgery than what it had.

[00:02:16] Caroline: Right.

[00:02:16] Jason: And so, it just ended up wearing down the meniscus and yada, yada, yada. Fast forward to 15 years later.

[00:02:22] Caroline: Right.

[00:02:23] Jason: 17 years later.

[00:02:24] Caroline: Sure.

[00:02:24] Jason: Boy, time is flying. And, boy, both my knees don't feel great. Now, however, my left knee was always like the strong boy. It was always...

[00:02:31] Caroline: Yeah, left knee was carrying the team.

[00:02:33] Jason: Carrying the team. The right knee, not so good.

[00:02:35] Caroline: Right.

[00:02:36] Jason: I went and got an MRI last summer. I think we talked about this in the podcast...

[00:02:39] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:02:39] Jason: ...because it was amazingly affordable.

[00:02:41] Caroline: The loyal listeners will be like, "Wait, didn't we just do this last year?"

[00:02:43] Jason: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I decided after speaking to one, well, three doctors, two of which I basically just didn't even listen to them because they were like didn't even really care about me, but one really did. And I didn't have a good feeling about having surgery, so I was like let me just try and strengthen myself, see how this goes for a year, really focus on it. And I did.

[00:03:03] Caroline: And you did. Why did you?

[00:03:03] Jason: And my legs are much stronger, but the pain has not gone away, and that's just never going to go away because I'm much meniscus.

[00:03:08] Caroline: Yeah. But your thighs look great.

[00:03:10] Jason: But my thighs do look beefy.

[00:03:11] Caroline: They've never looked better.

[00:03:11] Jason: Which is really nice. However, the problem now is strong boy, left leg yesterday, felt a pretty gnarly pop.

[00:03:18] Caroline: Because you know why? Strong boys can only be strong boys for so long, Jason.

[00:03:22] Jason: Yeah.

[00:03:22] Caroline: Okay?

[00:03:22] Jason: Strong boy really had a pretty gnarly pop in the knee yesterday. And it's what I remember from an ACL tear feeling like.

[00:03:31] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:03:31] Jason: Because those are feelings that you just know what that feels like.

[00:03:34] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:03:35] Jason: And so, I've been on ice and elevation for the past 24 hours, essentially, and hobbling around. And I think I have come to terms with the fact that as a 42-year-old person who is not getting any younger and my knees are not gaining any more cartilage, magically...

[00:03:49] Caroline: Mm-hmm.

[00:03:50] Jason: ...I think surgery is in my future. And so, that is just something I'm going to have to do. I'm sharing this with all of you because this is one of those things where like getting older and talking about these things, it really sucks.

[00:04:01] Caroline: It sucks sometimes.

[00:04:02] Jason: It's not fun to be a human sometimes. And I know so many of you listeners deal with chronic illness and other things, and it's hard for people to understand and empathize when you're not feeling good. And this is just me sharing a little bit of vulnerability, if you will, of I feel real crappy. I hate the fact that I may have 18 months of rehabilitation in my future to fix both my knees. But as we talked about earlier before recording, I'm not getting any younger, and I'm going to wish that I did this sooner, because I'm going to need knee replacements in 20 years or something. Hopefully longer than that because they don't last very long, but this is going to hopefully bridge me until that point.

[00:04:38] Caroline: Yeah. And it's like I told you earlier, I think it's really good for you to get these feelings out. I'm glad you're sharing it on the podcast because I think it's important to share. I mean, I told you, like being an adult like there are things that happen that are outside of your control in life, and it is the most frustrating feeling when you don't feel like you have any control. But I do think that the added suffering that comes on top of those uncontrollable curveballs is when you don't accept what is, right?

[00:05:11] Jason: Yeah.

[00:05:11] Caroline: When you continue to wish that things were different or if you continue to ruminate on, "I wish I had done the surgery earlier." Or "I wish I wouldn't have played so hard of basketball." And it's like, you can't change any of that. Those are fine thoughts to have. Those are natural thoughts to have. But I do think we add more suffering to ourselves when we say if only things were different. And if I learned anything from my personal health stuff back in 2019, it was like it was a journey to coming to terms with what was...

[00:05:38] Jason: Yeah.

[00:05:38] Caroline: ...not what I wished it would be.

[00:05:40] Jason: Yeah.

[00:05:41] Caroline: And so, that's why I think sharing your emotions is really important because you can purge those things. And like I said, those are all very natural thoughts to have, but it's a processing that needs to take place for you to finally come to terms with like, okay, I let it out and we are where we are. What can we do now moving forward to give you the best quality of life possible for these joelhos knees. That's Portuguese.

[00:06:07] Jason: These knees in Portuguese. It does make me think about I still have a lot of room to go in my surgery journey though.

[00:06:14] Caroline: Different than rooms to go.

[00:06:14] Jason: Different than rooms to go.

[00:06:15] Caroline: The furniture.

[00:06:15] Jason: There's an ex-NBA player who basically, I grew up, we played at the same time. We never played together, but...

[00:06:21] Caroline: Not me thinking ex-NBA was an alternate league for a hot second.

[00:06:25] Jason: Right.

[00:06:26] Caroline: But I was like, an ex-NBA...

[00:06:27] Jason: But I actually check in on him from time to time just to see what he's up to in life...

[00:06:30] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:06:30] Jason: ...because our timelines were so close together.

[00:06:33] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:06:33] Jason: And this is no one anybody would know. He basically played the NBA for a year, and then...

[00:06:37] Caroline: You mean the ex-NBA.

[00:06:37] Jason: The ex-NBA. And he's had seven knee surgeries total.

[00:06:41] Caroline: Wow.

[00:06:41] Jason: And so, I feel like I've only had two.

[00:06:43] Caroline: Some perspective is good.

[00:06:44] Jason: I have two more that I'm going to opt-in for. And then that leaves me with three more I could get to catch up to him.

[00:06:50] Caroline: Totally.

[00:06:50] Jason: So I think this is a new way...

[00:06:53] Caroline: Okay. Do whatever you got to do, bruh.

[00:06:54] Jason: All right, that's enough sharing of that nonsense because no one cares about my knees or how...

[00:06:58] Caroline: People care, Jas, your feelings are important, and they're valid.

[00:07:01] Jason: No, they're not.

[00:07:02] Caroline: They are.

[00:07:02] Jason: Feelings are invalid, unless they're yours. If they're mine, they need to go away.

[00:07:07] Caroline: Nobody. Nobody.

[00:07:08] Jason: You got to put them in a box in the back.

[00:07:09] Caroline: No, we're opening the box. It's okay.

[00:07:12] Jason: All right, let's talk about this episode because this is a fun little recap here of an experiment that we have been running and a shift in one of our two businesses that we are embarking upon and sharing with all of you.

[00:07:22] Caroline: I know. And honestly, if you're new to the podcast, we have two businesses. And you've probably been hearing a lot about our one business, Wandering Aimfully, which we call WAIM, which is our Un-boring Coaching Business. But those of you who've been around a while are like, "What about Teachery, your other child? Do you not love them anymore?"

[00:07:39] Jason: Especially because the beginning of this year, we talked a good bit about Teachery.

[00:07:42] Caroline: It was supposed to be a year of Teachery. That's correct.

[00:07:43] Jason: We talked about Uncle Jerry, and Uncle Jerry was...

[00:07:45] Caroline: Uncle Jerry.

[00:07:46] Jason: ...the person we inherited Teachery from, who we were blaming all of its problems on.

[00:07:49] Caroline: Yup.

[00:07:49] Jason: Not me.

[00:07:50] Caroline: No, no, no, no, no, no.

[00:07:51] Jason: That's for sure. It wasn't my fault.

[00:07:52] Caroline: Nope.

[00:07:52] Jason: So we're not going to point things over here.

[00:07:54] Caroline: Uncle Jerry.

[00:07:54] Jason: So uncle Jerry messed up my knees. Uncle Jerry messed up Teachery. Uncle Jerry doesn't take the trash out when he's supposed to. That's all that guy.

[00:08:00] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:08:01] Jason: So what has changed, Carol?

[00:08:03] Caroline: Okay, so yeah.

[00:08:05] Jason: From your side and then...

[00:08:06] Caroline: Well, that's what I was going to say is, don't worry. In the background, we've still been very much trying to focus on Teachery, and we still have goals. However, I want to do a check in on this because many of you will remember, we really went on this content extravaganza. We started out the year so strong in terms of all these big goals for Teachery. But like all things, life happens. Things change. You evolve. And for us, well, really, for me, I can only speak for myself. I wanted to start this year and give my all to Teachery. I was just like, I've never really gone full tilt, really trying to play the just dig my heels into the SaaS game. And what did I learn about myself in that process, Jason? I learned that I don't like it. It's not that I don't like Teachery. I do. I love it. There's a lot of things I love about it. But two things happened. I don't think that my skillset nor my interests align very well with the software business world.

[00:09:07] Jason: Yeah.

[00:09:08] Caroline: I was telling Jason yesterday, we always kind of have like a little debrief after the day, and I was like, okay. My revelation is I think that the level of sort of my whole theme for this year was learning in motion. Turns out I'm not good at that. The level of imperfection that is required, the move fast and break things of it all for software...

[00:09:29] Jason: Yeah.

[00:09:30] Caroline: ...is just not what I like to do. It's not what I enjoy. I always wanted to get the analytics right. I wanted to set things up right. You know what I mean?

[00:09:40] Jason: Yeah.

[00:09:40] Caroline: I wanted to get our marketing plan right. I wanted to get our management timeline correct. And no, you can't do that in the software world. It quite rarely...

[00:09:54] Jason: There is no right.

[00:09:55] Caroline: There is no right.

[00:09:55] Jason: Yeah.

[00:09:55] Caroline: There is none of that. And I know that that is deep rooted stuff having to do with perfectionism and having to do with all these things. And I, for sure can work on that and will continue to work on that, but there comes a point in your life where you go, should I just continue to operate in spaces that are not aligned with my strengths under the guise of personal growth? Should I really just put myself through this? Because I think I need to expand myself into getting better at this. And I don't think it serves us well in our businesses.

[00:10:26] Jason: Yeah. I mean, I think there's some really good parallels here to people listening to this who like you work with clients and you want to move to digital products because the grass is greener and you see a better way of running your business that may be more predictable, profitable, and peaceful, but I think anybody who has dipped their toes into that and have realized like, "Oh, this actually just doesn't mesh with how I want to work."

[00:10:44] Caroline: Exactly. And that's what I was going to say. This is why the Wandering Aimfully ethos of experimentation is so important because I needed to go to that level of commitment with Teachery in order to discover that it wasn't some underdeveloped skillset or any issue. It was just like I don't like this.

[00:11:06] Jason: Yeah.

[00:11:07] Caroline: This doesn't mesh with me. I enjoy the things that I do for Wandering Aimfully so much more. And that was the second thing I was going to say is what it also showed me is I still believe that I could have developed that skillset, but trying to service two businesses at the same time with equal commitment, I mean, I'm sure many of you who were listening to these episodes earlier in the year were kind of like wagging your finger at us, being like, I don't know...

[00:11:33] Jason: Yeah.

[00:11:33] Caroline: ...these two businesses, it's going to be tough. And it is. And so, again, sometimes you have to go to that edge in order to pull back and go, cool. I went to the limit, and I saw that trying to create content for two businesses at the level that we wanted to do it, me trying to create strategy for two businesses at the level that we were trying to do it, it's not sustainable. And that's okay now. I know that.

[00:11:55] Jason: Yeah. Yeah. And I think there is just a truth to the fact of when we work on Wandering Aimfully, almost everything is within our control. When you work on Teachery, almost nothing is in your control.

[00:12:06] Caroline: Yes.

[00:12:07] Jason: And so, that is very difficult. And I have had 10 years' experience of letting go of that control as probably the person in our relationship who is more controlling. But with Teachery, I have just learned time and time and time and time again I want a thing to exist, but I have to realize it will never be exactly as I want it. And that's just how it's going to be.

[00:12:26] Caroline: Totally. And I think what's really interesting about that point is what I discovered is that because I'm a designer, I had this illusion of control.

[00:12:34] Jason: Yeah.

[00:12:35] Caroline: So I could think about a feature, design a feature, and then hand it off to our developers. And to me, that gives me the illusion of control. Right? Like, oh, I can totally steer the product in the direction that we want it. But that's almost more painful because then...

[00:12:49] Jason: You don't get...

[00:12:50] Caroline: You don't get what you want.

[00:12:51] Jason: Yeah.

[00:12:51] Caroline: And it doesn't work out the way that you want. And you have to be so ruthless with your allocation of resources, and then you spend all this time designing and you don't have time to split to then go create marketing. And so, it was like, for me, it was almost this curse of like I had, I did have a little bit of control, but it put me in a position where I was even more frustrated. Whereas with you, you're not designing things, you're managing. You're being a product guy. You're putting strategy into everything, but you know from the outset that you don't control the outcome.

[00:13:22] Jason: Yeah.

[00:13:23] Caroline: And you're okay with that.

[00:13:24] Jason: Exactly.

[00:13:24] Caroline: You made peace with that.

[00:13:25] Jason: Yeah.

[00:13:25] Caroline: I did not have time to make peace with that, and I can't.

[00:13:28] Jason: Yeah. All right. So as a visual metaphor, we, at the beginning of this year, we're in the covered wagon with the Teachery logo on the side of it. And we were both at the helm holding the reins and our horses where we were on our way up the Oregon trail together.

[00:13:42] Caroline: Yes. Very humanely taking care of horses. Of course.

[00:13:44] Jason: Yes, of course. Absolutely. They get to stop as often as they want.

[00:13:47] Caroline: They are grass-fed.

[00:13:47] Jason: Tons of apples. Yeah, that's great.

[00:13:48] Caroline: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:13:49] Jason: But now, basically you are still in the wagon.

[00:13:53] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:13:53] Jason: But you're more in the back under the cover enjoying the shade.

[00:13:57] Caroline: Oh, I thought you were going to say under the covers, which sounds great.

[00:14:00] Jason: You could be, but you're going to have to come out from under the covers because you are going to help.

[00:14:04] Caroline: I'm going to help. Yup.

[00:14:05] Jason: So Teachery is not going to be something that you...

[00:14:06] Caroline: I can feed the apples.

[00:14:07] Jason: ...stop working on.

[00:14:08] Caroline: Or I can feed apples to the horses.

[00:14:09] Jason: Yeah. It's not going to be something you stop working on completely.

[00:14:11] Caroline: No.

[00:14:11] Jason: But I will be in the driver's seat of the wagon and...

[00:14:14] Caroline: I have let go of the reins.

[00:14:16] Jason: Exactly. And so...

[00:14:18] Caroline: Can I just do a sidenote...

[00:14:19] Jason: Sure.

[00:14:19] Caroline: ...about that? Because this is another thing that I think is important is, I want to say letting go of those reigns also is there's a little bit of like an ego deflation that has to happen. I just want to be totally honest and transparent because I've done a lot of soul searching about this of I think also there was a part of me at the beginning of this year that wanted to tackle Teachery, too, because not... I mean, yeah, I do think it's a little bit of an ego thing of wanting to prove something in terms of SaaS is such a male dominated space. It's such a competitive, for lack of a better term, just kind of like a bro-ey industry.

[00:14:58] Jason: Yeah.

[00:14:58] Caroline: And I am in hindsight, I can see I had a little bit of a chip on my shoulder of like, I wanted to prove that I can do that, too. But in doing that, I was just trying to play by those rules, and it just didn't make me feel good. It didn't.

[00:15:12] Jason: Yeah.

[00:15:12] Caroline: I didn't like it. But I wanted to share that because I do think there's something to be gained from like holding up a mirror to yourself and going, where is my ego not allowing me to let go of something and in not letting go, is that actually detrimental to my happiness?

[00:15:30] Jason: And it goes back to the parallel that I was bringing up earlier where, let's say you work with clients and you want to create digital products, or maybe you work digital products, and you want to work with clients, and you just find yourself experimenting in that space and realizing that it doesn't mesh with you. And unfortunately, I think that there are people, and I think this is a perfect example of that. I am, through whatever way that my brain works, more well suited to work on Teachery.

[00:15:56] Caroline: Mm-hmm.

[00:15:57] Jason: I'm okay with the imperfections of it. I'm okay with the I can't have everything I want. I'm okay... Our developers don't work as quickly as I want them to in some respects, because I just understand I don't know how to do that. They're doing a complex thing. I'm going to get what I'm going to get and that's okay.

[00:16:14] Caroline: They're also just very comfortable in that environment charting your own path. 

[00:16:17] Jason: Yeah.

[00:16:18] Caroline: You don't give a flying F how other people do things.

[00:16:21] Jason: I don't care how things are set up. Yeah.

[00:16:23] Caroline: But again, I think going back to now, investigating the framing that I'm bringing to the table is like I want to prove myself. And so, when you are in a position where you're trying to prove yourself, unconsciously, you're comparing yourself to other people, which means that you're playing their game.

[00:16:37] Jason: Yeah.

[00:16:37] Caroline: Which means that you're abiding by the rules of that game. You don't spend any time comparing or abiding by the rules, so you get to make up your own rules.

[00:16:45] Jason: Yeah.

[00:16:45] Caroline: And so, I can now look back and see if I was trying to prove something, that's why I was so stuck in this box of we need to do it this way and we need to do it right. And I need to read all the SaaS newsletters so that I know what the big boys are doing so we can do it. And it's like I look back and I'm like, what a silly pursuit.

[00:17:03] Jason: Yeah.

[00:17:04] Caroline: But that's the way our brains work sometimes. And that's fine.

[00:17:06] Jason: Yeah.

[00:17:07] Caroline: You have to learn those lessons. But again, I think you are so comfortable forging your own path in that type of industry because you're not playing their game. You don't have anything to prove.

[00:17:16] Jason: Exactly. Which is going to get us to the big crux of the decision that we have made with Teachery and that we have experimented with the past couple months and that we are moving forward with, which is a big change that no other course platform that I've seen is taking the risk of doing this. And so, I'm very excited to see how this goes. And it's maybe the most excited to work on Teachery that I've been since 2020 when you did the redesign.

[00:17:37] Caroline: Which makes me so happy for you.

[00:17:39] Jason: Yeah.

[00:17:39] Caroline: And now I can see that by holding on to the reins, me holding onto the reins for so long because I fought you a little bit on this change for a second there, I was on board, but I fought you a little bit on it. But again, that was when I was still holding onto the reins.

[00:17:53] Jason: Yeah.

[00:17:53] Caroline: And so, when I was able to let go...

[00:17:55] Jason: Get back inside the covered wagon.

[00:17:56] Caroline: And when I got in the back of the covered wagon, and got to kick up my feet, I see you take the reins, I surrender to you being able to do you. And you're the happiest I've seen you in that arena, and that makes me really happy.

[00:18:09] Jason: Yeah.

[00:18:09] Caroline: And so, it's like I just think the lesson there is let people...

[00:18:14] Jason: Cook.

[00:18:14] Caroline: ...cook. You got to let them cook.

[00:18:14] Jason: Just let them cook. All right, so let's talk about what's been going on, the big picture, and maybe zoom the lens out just a little bit to catch everybody up. So one of the goals that we have had for years with Teachery, and I don't remember the exact year that this hit me in my brain.

[00:18:30] Caroline: Mm-hmm.

[00:18:30] Jason: But it was that there are plenty of ways to think about "retirement", and the most conventional way is you save up enough money over time, 30, 40 years, you invest it, it compounds, and you have this nest egg of money that by a certain year you can stop working. You have this money to live off of. And that is retirement. And that never really made sense to us because it just, it just felt, again, probably just so out of our control. It just felt like is the stock market going to be around in 20 years? I don't know. I mean, I trust all these smart people do it. All of that to say that Teachery felt like our retirement fund. It felt like this piece of software that we could grow and eventually sell. And the plan was always five, ten years out, whatever that looked like. And we would get it to a place where, just as an example, these are not the numbers Teachery makes. And we've said the numbers, and we'll say the numbers through the rest of this. But just as an example, let's say Teachery were to get to $1 million per year in revenue. You would hope that someone would buy it for three to five X of that, giving you $3 to $5 million. You walk away with that money, that is your retirement. You pretty much never have to work again. You're financially set for life. That's great in theory. And we see that story play out a lot with software companies, and it's a beautiful story to read, and it seems amazing. And I've listened to so many podcasts in the past few years of people who've done this, but it's really hard. And it's really hard when Teachery has always been the second business.

[00:20:01] Caroline: Mm-hmm.

[00:20:01] Jason: It has never been the thing. I think if I would have spent all of my effort in the past 10 years only working on Teachery, I do believe we would have a business that was a million dollars in annual revenue, and we could sell it. Now, do I think I would have been absolutely miserable and probably hated that work for the past 10 years? Absolutely, yes.

[00:20:19] Caroline: Exactly.

[00:20:20] Jason: So we just...

[00:20:21] Caroline: Which, by the way, that part has never made sense to me in terms of like... I actually read a post about this a day or two ago about this retirement idea where you... Oh, I know what it was. It was a post of someone talking about the fire movement or whatever.

[00:20:35] Jason: Yeah.

[00:20:35] Caroline: And they were just talking about how they worked so hard and worked for so long to save up all this money so that they could then have flexibility and freedom. And then they went and got flexibility and freedom. And all their friends were still working. All their friends had kids. Their body was starting to break down. And so, they basically front loaded the work to be able to have flexibility and enjoy life when it was the worst years to enjoy it.

[00:21:00] Jason: Yeah.

[00:21:00] Caroline: And you and I both have read "Die with Zero", and he talks about that in there, which I think was a wakeup call for me, too, which is kind of the way that we have just never resonated with this idea of the whole purpose is to enjoy the journey. So we have never resonated with the idea of put your happiness aside for this concentrated amount of time so that you can delay it and enjoy it later to have maximum money, maximum flexibility, maximum freedom. And I know you're not talking about exactly the same thing, but when you talk about what you were saying about like, if you had gone totally all in on trying to grow Teachery to a million dollars of your business, what would you have had to sacrifice to do that?

[00:21:39] Jason: Yeah. Absolutely. And so, the last point is on just the entire idea of building a software company to a place or any business to a place where it makes enough money that someone wants to buy for a few multiples. It's just hard. It is hard to grow a software SaaS company. The monthly recurring revenue, it is a difficult challenge and it's twice as difficult when, again, it's not your only business. So what has changed for us this year, and this was really for me, which was, is there another way to get to that same goal? Which I always love thinking this way.

[00:22:11] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:22:11] Jason: This is just like my MO and how I look at the world, which is like, "Oh, that's how the direction everyone's going and trying to get to this destination. Well, here's another road that we can take. Like what if we go that way? What's going to happen?" And the big question was, what if Teachery was essentially the first online course platform to offer a lifetime deal and lifetime pricing and you just pay once for Teachery. Now, obviously this pay once thing has been around in lots of other places. It's been around for us because that's what I came up with, with BuyMyFuture in 2015. And my whole hypothesis was, if I know the amount of money that I will potentially make from a customer, what you would call lifetime value, if I can get that upfront from somebody, then I don't have to play the game of constantly selling to them. And in the software world, I don't have to play the game of every month convincing someone, "Hey, Teachery is worth paying for."

[00:23:02] Caroline: Mm-hmm.

[00:23:02] Jason: "Hey, you don't want to cancel because there's going to be new features coming." If someone just pays for it upfront in one fee, then they don't have to think about paying for it.

[00:23:09] Caroline: Mm-hmm.

[00:23:10] Jason: And I think it really is a great exchange of value for both. So I want to give some numbers. We're going to get into a bunch of numbers because I love numbers. But really the concept here is shifting Teachery to a lifetime model course platform and not feature limiting based on you buying the lifetime deal and you get like a crappier version of Teachery, which is what some people do.

[00:23:30] Caroline: Mm-hmm.

[00:23:30] Jason: And anybody who's bought anything on AppSumo knows this is exactly what you get when you pay $49 for a software that's $79 a month. You get 30 credits to use, and then you got to pay for more. But the background is that I wanted to share was, so in coming up with a lifetime price, it's really important to look at the lifetime value. So from January 1st, 2020, to January 1st, 2024, our lifetime value of a customer was $559. Okay. If you go back...

[00:24:00] Caroline: That's basically, what? Like a year?

[00:24:03] Jason: Yeah, it's more than a year.

[00:24:04] Caroline: Okay.

[00:24:04] Jason: I think it's like 14 months or something like that.

[00:24:06] Caroline: Mm-hmm.

[00:24:06] Jason: Of a monthly $49 charge.

[00:24:08] Caroline: Mm-hmm.

[00:24:09] Jason: If you go back a couple years, January 2017 or 2018 to 2020, the customer lifetime value was $785.

[00:24:17] Caroline: Mm-hmm.

[00:24:17] Jason: So we actually had a larger lifetime value. The pricing of Teachery has never changed. It has always been $49 a month, $470 a year for 10 years. This is a sign to me, and this is what I was looking at earlier this year, that people are having a bit of subscription fatigue for software, and people are more willing to cancel things, they're not as willing to stay on for as long.

[00:24:40] Caroline: Yeah, I mean, it's several things, right? It could be not keeping up with features. It could be bigger players coming in and offering things in the shift in the market. But I do think you're right with that comes this saturation of, and people are talking about it, right? Monthly subscription fatigue.

[00:24:56] Jason: Yeah, exactly. And I think that as I started to look at this and what really spurred this thought the most was at the peak, I think our highest ever monthly recurring revenue was probably two or three months after COVID began, when everybody was just like, "All my business is going to be online." I think we got up to $15,000 in monthly recurring revenue. And it has just tapered down from there to a place where at the beginning of this year, we dipped under $10,000 recurring revenue for the first time in eight years.

[00:25:24] Caroline: Mm-hmm.

[00:25:24] Jason: We had never been under that threshold. And there wasn't really any singular reason that we could pinpoint why that was. We have a question that goes out after someone cancels, and it's just always a mix of different things. But in my heart of hearts, I think if I'm just being totally honest, it's that the Kajabis, the Teachables, the Podias, they have 10 times the features that Teachery does.

[00:25:46] Caroline: Right.

[00:25:46] Jason: Now, does a person actually need those features? I could be on a soapbox about that all damn day long.

[00:25:51] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:25:51] Jason: But I'm willing to plant a flag in the sand and say, okay, that's fine.

[00:25:56] Caroline: Well, you can also see how if someone is feeling subscription fatigue at every turn, when they put in their credit card to pay for a monthly thing, the psychology is going to tell them that they need to get the most...

[00:26:08] Jason: The maximum. Yeah.

[00:26:09] Caroline: ...features for the price.

[00:26:10] Jason: Yeah.

[00:26:11] Caroline: Even if they don't use those features. And so, you can see how someone is going to choose an all-in-one platform, even if they don't really need it, because their brain is telling them you get more for your buck.

[00:26:21] Jason: Yeah. So going back to the SaaS bros that you mentioned earlier, almost everybody in this industry will tell you that you get your monthly recurring revenue up, and then it's a set it and forget it kind of game. It just keeps going up and to the right. And yes, when you zoom out the chart on a lot of these businesses, the trend is always going up. But if you zoom in, you start to see that every month that you're losing customers, you're gaining customers, you're losing customers. You're not just gaining customers constantly. This isn't the way of the world, especially in a monthly recurring model. But what I love, and I mentioned this earlier, is that when you move to lifetime pricing, you're no longer having to convince someone every single month that your business is worth paying for. All you have to do is convince them once. And I think that that, to me, is just a much more interesting proposition for both parties. Like, hey, I don't want to constantly be selling to you and proving to you that we're good enough and that we match up to all these other platforms. I just want to be a platform that, in a lot of respects, is good enough that you're willing to say, "Yeah, okay, I'll pay $550." It's historically, for the past four years, what our average customer has been paying for the platform. That's worth it to me. So I'm willing to pay for that. Go ahead.

[00:27:30] Caroline: Do we have a section in here about risks and downsides?

[00:27:34] Jason: No, not really. But we can come back to that.

[00:27:37] Caroline: Well, that feels pretty par for the course, Jason.

[00:27:39] Jason: Well, yeah, we can go back to that.

[00:27:40] Caroline: Well, because I want to play devil's advocate here because I'm just along for... I'm in the back of the wagon now.

[00:27:44] Jason: Okay, sure. Well, do you want me to go through the experiment...

[00:27:47] Caroline: Yeah, it's up to you.

[00:27:47] Jason: ...of we started?

[00:27:48] Caroline: Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure.

[00:27:49] Jason: Okay. Are you going to remember your risks and...

[00:27:51] Caroline: Keyword risks.

[00:27:52] Jason: Okay, fantastic. Okay. So we decided to experiment. Well, we had a lifetime plan. That's not true. We had a lifetime plan back in 2016, and it was a $900 plan.

[00:28:05] Caroline: Mm-hmm.

[00:28:05] Jason: And this was back when there were like four or five course platforms.

[00:28:07] Caroline: Which you do see a lot. And this was when Teachery was relatively new first three years. You do see more lifetime plans happen in the first couple years in the startup. Right?

[00:28:15] Jason: Yeah.

[00:28:15] Caroline: It's like a good way to get a cash injection.

[00:28:17] Jason: Totally.

[00:28:18] Caroline: And get some good early customers.

[00:28:19] Jason: Yeah. So we had that plan for a little while. We retired it because, again, got on the SaaS train and we're very much trying to play that game, but we decided this year it was time to experiment again and to roll that out. And I will say that, and we had many conversations about this and there was a lot of trepidation and well, we charge $900 for it, like eight years ago. If we charge less, is that going to look bad? And I just think that this is the nature of owning your own business, is being willing to go, I don't really care if it looks bad.

[00:28:46] Caroline: I didn't think about that at all.

[00:28:48] Jason: Oh, yeah, I thought about it a ton.

[00:28:49] Caroline: Because I was like, who's going to remember what we charged for it 10 years ago?

[00:28:53] Jason: Well, no, and probably no one will. But it's in my mind I think about it and I'm like, are we devaluing the products? Like whatever.

[00:29:01] Caroline: Got it. You just meant, yeah, you were wondering.

[00:29:02] Jason: Yeah. So what we did is to figure out what...

[00:29:04] Caroline: Which I think... Sorry to interrupt you, but I think that's a really good lesson, which is like, 10 years ago, the market is completely different. So in your mind, are we devaluing the product? The market tells you what the value of our product is.

[00:29:16] Jason: Exactly. And 100% that is why I finally got to the place where I was like, oh, I actually, I don't care what the prices that we end up going with, even if it's lower than our average customer lifetime value, if people are converting at a clip, that feels sustainable and feels like we're going to have a healthy business.

[00:29:35] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:29:36] Jason: So I remember we had conversations where I was like, I don't know how low we're going to go with the experimentation of our price for this.

[00:29:42] Caroline: Right.

[00:29:42] Jason: But I'm willing to go as low as we kind of feel is right.

[00:29:47] Caroline: Because what you were trying to share with me is because if you bring the price down to a price point where you're actually getting a multiple of sales on a daily basis, even if it's less than lifetime value, your marketing lift is so low that it's a net gain overall for the business.

[00:30:06] Jason: Exactly. Yeah.

[00:30:07] Caroline: Which, it was hard for me to wrap my head around that because I was like, well, just to use hard numbers. Like let's say...

[00:30:13] Jason: Well, we can give the numbers because I'm not going to be able to think.

[00:30:14] Caroline: I know, but I just want to make it super easy. So let's say you get one sale at a $1,000.

[00:30:20] Jason: Right.

[00:30:20] Caroline: But you get four sales at $400.

[00:30:22] Jason: At $400. Yeah.

[00:30:24] Caroline: So that's $1,600 on a daily revenue basis versus $1,000. And you just have to figure out that math.

[00:30:31] Jason: Exactly. And if it's the same amount of "effort and cost"...

[00:30:34] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:30:34] Jason: ...I put it in quotes because it's no cost to us. We do have affiliates, which you do have to factor that in. But in the beginning, we didn't have affiliates for this in the experiment.

[00:30:42] Caroline: And theoretically, if it's showing you that you're getting one sale versus four sales with the same traffic...

[00:30:47] Jason: Exactly.

[00:30:48] Caroline: ...you're then seeing like, oh, this price is so attractive that, like I said, it's a lower lift.

[00:30:53] Jason: Yeah. Okay. So we started the summer with a lifetime deal rollout that was very quiet. We put a banner up on the top of our homepage, our pricing page, our features page, and then we made a lifetime deal page that those all linked to. And we started the price at $600 was the first price that we offered. And then every two weeks, I would just change the price in the backend, and I would lower it by $50. So it was $550, it was $500, it was $450, and it was $400. And shockingly enough, the lowest amount of sales was the $400 price.

[00:31:27] Caroline: So interesting.

[00:31:28] Jason: The highest amount of sales was, I actually think $500 was the most. And we had 24 signups during that time very quietly, over the course of six weeks or four weeks or something like that, I can't remember. Maybe I changed it every week. I think I changed it every single week.

[00:31:45] Caroline: Every week. Yeah.

[00:31:46] Jason: And what I did was I went back, and I looked at our lifetime value for the past couple of years, saw that $559 number, saw that our best price was $500, but $550 was pretty good as well. Was shocked that $400 had the least amount of sales. And what was great is because we didn't announce this, because we didn't talk about it, all it was, was our daily traffic that's very consistent and not a ton of traffic coming to the homepage of Teachery and all these other pages. So it was a very fair test I think in there's not a spike of traffic. We're not mentioning this, no one's talking about, there's no affiliates for it. It's just who's coming to the website knowing about Teachery or not and then deciding to take us up on the software. So in that first experiment, which is always great, we ended up netting $12,000 in added revenue in an experiment. So we basically doubled our monthly revenue through the experiment. Fantastic. You love to do that. That's always fun. So we took it down and then we kind of just were going back and forth trying to figure out, decide what price we were going to go with. On July 11th, we brought it back up, or I think it was actually middle of July. We ended up with 11 signups in July. So this is arguably the slowest time of the year for any software businesses. Always the summer, definitely in July, but we still added $6,000 in additional revenue through the lifetime plan. And just to keep in mind, we do still have our monthly and annual customers paying and not all of them are just changing because we're just giving the optionality of keeping those plans as well. So then August was really the first full month. And so, this was the first month where we had it up. Affiliates started the second week. It was put back across everything except for the homepage is the only page we haven't put it back onto. And that's just because I wanted to see how much of a difference does it make. We had 45 sales of the lifetime plan, which was $24,000 in additional added revenue. Of those sales, 50% of them came from referrals. So it's about $3,000 in commissions that we have to pay out. So it nets us $21,000 in added revenue. 36% of signups still went through the free trial, so they would see the deal or whatever, but they would still sign up for a trial, which I think is great because you want people to make sure it's the right fit.

[00:33:56] Caroline: Definitely.

[00:33:57] Jason: And 11% of the sales. So that would be like 12 or 13 people were previously canceled customers who, for some reason or another, came back to Teachery.

[00:34:07] Caroline: Potentially tried out an all-in-one platform, realized that they were paying a lot of money for features they didn't use.

[00:34:12] Jason: Yeah.

[00:34:12] Caroline: And thought, "Hey, this is the best deal for me."

[00:34:14] Jason: Which I love seeing that because...

[00:34:16] Caroline: Yup.

[00:34:16] Jason: ...capturing a canceled customer is like one of the hardest things you can possibly do, which tells me my intuition is corrective. Let's stand out from all the other platforms by offering this really awesome deal that benefits both parties.

[00:34:27] Caroline: Totally.

[00:34:27] Jason: So during this time, we did see our monthly recurring revenue continue to decrease. We're at $8,800 in monthly recurring revenue, but it's not drastically down. I mean, I think it dropped about, I think 15 customers canceled their monthly or yearly plan and bought the lifetime plan, which is totally fine. We're happy for people to do that, but I just love that in those three months we added 80 people to Teachery as customers. We have not had 80 new customers in a three-month span. And that's not three full months, that's two partial months and one full month.

[00:35:04] Caroline: Totally.

[00:35:04] Jason: Which is absolutely fantastic. And so, I think that this, to me, this experiment was a screaming success for a lot of reasons. Number one, we did not promote this. So this does not exist...

[00:35:18] Caroline: You're kind of hearing about it first publicly right now.

[00:35:21] Jason: Exactly. Yeah. We told our Wandering Aimfully members, which is who the affiliates were. I honestly think it was probably like five of them who ended up landing sales for us.

[00:35:29] Caroline: Yup.

[00:35:30] Jason: And that makes me feel really good that we got 45 sales in a month without any promotion with basically like five affiliates pushing it. What could it look like if we actually do a little bit of marketing or promotion? Which would be amazing for Teachery because that's never happened.

[00:35:43] Caroline: Yup.

[00:35:43] Jason: All right. If we keep moving forward on the August pace, I love playing these projection numbers, because they're just totally pie in the sky...

[00:35:51] Caroline: It's just to get you motivated.

[00:35:52] Jason: Exactly. Teachery would make $300,000 in the next year in added revenue.

[00:35:58] Caroline: Which was our goal. It was like to take it from 10 to 30 a month.

[00:36:01] Jason: Yeah.

[00:36:01] Caroline: So that's kind of tripling.

[00:36:03] Jason: And if you account the same amount of affiliate sales, we would basically have like 60,000 of that, that would come off for affiliates. 

[00:36:10] Caroline: So $240 net.

[00:36:11] Jason: $240 net just in the lifetime deal. And if our monthly recurring revenue continues to drop a little bit, but kind of stays around the same, you have no idea if it'll taper off completely or what have you, but that would be an extra $100,000 as well. So if the lifetime deal stays up, we keep some of those monthly and yearly customers. We go from what has been our yearly revenue of $120,000 to $150,000 for the past four years, every year, to $400,000 per year. So we are tripling our revenue, giving people a better deal. And it just feels to me like such an exciting way to stand out from the rest of all these other platforms. I have a couple more points, but do you want to go over any risks and analyses as you're riding in the back of the wagon?

[00:36:53] Caroline: Well, I'm just riding in the back of the wagon here, and I'm saying, hey, you're making this all sound like it's, why didn't you do this sooner? This sounds like a win-win, but I think it is important to... Because this was always what my thing was when you brought this idea to me, I was like, this is all well and good, and I want to experiment with it. And I was on board, but I was like I'm the more cautious one, right?

[00:37:16] Jason: Yeah.

[00:37:16] Caroline: You're the gas and I'm the break. So I was like, okay, let's go into it clear-eyed and think about what the pitfalls of this could be. So the biggest, most glaring one and why SaaS companies don't try to rely on lifetime is because you are getting all the revenue from a customer upfront and then you're having to provide ongoing support for those customers forever.

[00:37:37] Jason: Yup.

[00:37:38] Caroline: So how, Jason Zook, do you plan to account for that?

[00:37:43] Jason: Well, the good news is, and I want to come back to keyword 10 years.

[00:37:47] Caroline: Okay.

[00:37:47] Jason: So keyword 10 years. The good news is, is that support requests per customer are pretty low. The help docs that we revamped when we switched over from Intercom to Gleap, as we talked about this summer, that was a big task. Those do a really good job of helping customers figure things out. I think our onboarding email sequence for new customers and our trial sequence, it really helps lead people to don't ask a question through the chat first. Go try and find the answer.

[00:38:11] Caroline: Which we did tighten up this year.

[00:38:13] Jason: Which we tighten up a ton.

[00:38:14] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:38:14] Jason: And I can see it.

[00:38:15] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:38:15] Jason: There are always going to be customers who don't read, don't click, they just send in a message. And I just very kindly say, "Hey, here's the help doc that does this. Next time you have a question, feel free to search that first. And if you don't find it, definitely send a message. I'm here to help."

[00:38:28] Caroline: Yeah. I think this is also the support issue is also something that you see is less of an issue when you have a lifetime for $550 versus like an AppSumo...

[00:38:40] Jason: Absolutely.

[00:38:40] Caroline: ...of $40 or whatever the low is.

[00:38:41] Jason: For sure. And so, I think to fully answer your question is, I do understand the customer support will be a thing that it will eventually come out of our pocket, because if a customer is around for five years and they're not paying anything more that we're losing money on them for what have you. But...

[00:39:04] Caroline: If you think about it on like a customer-rated basis.

[00:39:05] Jason: Exactly.

[00:39:05] Caroline: But if you have a revenue mechanism that continues to work...

[00:39:09] Jason: Exactly.

[00:39:09] Caroline: ...that's just the cost of doing business.

[00:39:10] Jason: Totally.

[00:39:11] Caroline: So it's a potentially a downside if you think about a customer only in the timeframe in which they became a customer, but if you just think about it on the grand scheme of, I'm still paying for the support in this month of a customer that I got five years ago, then that's fine.

[00:39:26] Jason: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:39:27] Caroline: As long as the math works out, right?

[00:39:28] Jason: Yeah.

[00:39:29] Caroline: Okay.

[00:39:29] Jason: All right. Any other risks and assessments you want to go?

[00:39:32] Caroline: You tell me. You tell me.

[00:39:33] Jason: Yeah.

[00:39:34] Caroline: Any other risks that you can think of?

[00:39:35] Jason: Yeah, I mean, there's tons and I think that there is obviously a thing in the back of my mind that says like, "Oh, well, if we release a whole new way of building courses, that's a big investment for us. Where are we going to get that money from?" And we saw that in 2020, we spent $100,000 to rebuild Teachery almost completely. And it wasn't even a rebuild, it was just a redesign and like reconfiguring everything. And I think we basically planned like the next couple of years are going to pay us back for that essentially. And that's what it did and that's how it worked out. And I think the same thing is going to happen moving forward. And what I see is the beauty of this model is no matter what as a business, you're always trying to get customers at all times. And if you run a client business where you only need two to three clients a month, the reality is you're not going to keep those clients forever. So eventually, one of them is going to go away, you're going to have to get a new one.

[00:40:34] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:40:34] Jason: So we're just always, no matter what business you're in, you're in the "I need customers" business to sustain this thing. And I think for Teachery, the shift here is now going from I'm going to have to play this game where I'm convincing people to sign up and I'm convincing them to stay to, I just like convincing them to sign up.

[00:40:50] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:40:50] Jason: The fact that that's all I have to do...

[00:40:52] Caroline: And keep them happy.

[00:40:53] Jason: And keep them happy for sure. Yeah.

[00:40:55] Caroline: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

[00:40:55] Jason: But the fact that our customer support requests are so low per customer and that the platform itself does a good job of its promise of being customizable and easy to set up and easy to get going. There are so many things we can do better. And I'll talk about in a minute some of the things that I'm really looking forward to, but I see this...

[00:41:12] Caroline: Which is so fun because now you have cash to do them.

[00:41:14] Jason: Well, exactly. But I see this as such an amazing opportunity to really delight our customers in a way that we haven't been able to before, where when someone's paying for something every single month, they're not exactly like thanking you when new features come out, they're more like, "Yeah, you should have done that. I'm paying you every month."

[00:41:31] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:41:31] Jason: With a lifetime customer, I know that in six months when we release...

[00:41:36] Caroline: It weirdly feels like gravy.

[00:41:36] Jason: Exactly. They're going to say, "Oh, wow, this is amazing. I get this feature." That's going to incentivize them to then talk about Teachery.

[00:41:43] Caroline: It's a mindset shift. I mean, which is what has worked so well with WAIM as well.

[00:41:47] Jason: 100%. And so, I think this is just a different way of looking at business and looking at a way to make money. And we have seen it with WAIM workout with our lifetime pricing model. And I believe in my heart of hearts that it will work out with Teachery. Coming back to the 10 years keyword, unless you have any other risks you want to talk about, which you can think about while I say my 10 years thing.

[00:42:05] Caroline: Go ahead.

[00:42:07] Jason: Going all the way back to the beginning of this conversation, I said the goal with Teachery that we put in our minds is this is our retirement fund. We will sell Teachery for a multiple once it gets up to this healthy monthly recurring or annual revenue, and someone will want to buy it, and we'll have this nest egg of money. Well, now I look at it, and this was the entire idea of the shift of lifetime deal is, well, if I work on Teachery, we work on Teachery for the next 10 years and the business can make $400,000 a year, that's our nest egg right there.

[00:42:34] Caroline: Right.

[00:42:35] Jason: We just literally put that money aside as much as possible and that provides us the retirement that we were "looking for". But we...

[00:42:41] Caroline: Which goes back to your whole thing of a different way of getting to the same result.

[00:42:45] Jason: Exactly, exactly.

[00:42:46] Caroline: You don't have to do, go looking for a buyer and you don't have to have a fucking data room. What the hell's a data room? I don't care.

[00:42:53] Jason: It puts us in control. And I think that's the thing that I really love about lifetime pricing is that I feel like we're more in control of the growth of our business. We're not at the whim of a customer to decide every single month if we're good enough for them, and then we're not at a whim a few years down the road for some bigger business with a lot more money to decide that we're good enough to be paying to be bought.

[00:43:13] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:43:14] Jason: And so, I like the fact that we basically get to choose ourselves and say, here's a unique way that we can sell this software, and it's a win-win for you. It's a win-win for us. I'm happier to be working on Teachery in this aspect, and I am excited about the future of if we can get 50 new customers per month, I think that's very doable with this lifetime model. If you would have asked me last year if I thought we could get 50 new customers a month just selling our monthly plan, I would have laughed and said not possible. I want it to be a thing, but I don't even see how it's a reality. This shows me that I think it's truly a reality that we can look forward to.

[00:43:51] Caroline: Yeah. And I think this is such a big lesson just about experimentation, and I do think that one way that I know that I tend to hold you back is sometimes we're a great balance. I just want to say that, when we know this about ourselves.

[00:44:06] Jason: Yeah. I'm all accelerator, you're all brakes.

[00:44:08] Caroline: You're all accelerator and I'm all brakes. And that serves us really well. But I have enough humility to go, hey, sometimes I see that my fear holds you back. My risk aversion...

[00:44:21] Jason: Mm-hmm.

[00:44:22] Caroline: ...it prevents you from forging your own path you're so good at. And I just love when you don't listen to me and you go do that stuff, and then I'm like, "Oh, yeah, I love him so much because he makes me more adventurous."

[00:44:35] Jason: Yeah.

[00:44:37] Caroline: But if you're the type like me, who you want to think of every downside and you want to potentially prevent against, well, what does it look like if you did ever want to stop doing Teachery or stop building in features? Do you disappoint people? My brain's doing all of that, and you're so much more comfortable with living in the unknown space of let future me solve that problem.

[00:44:58] Jason: Yeah.

[00:44:58] Caroline: I don't need to... Now me doesn't need to solve that problem. Do I believe that I'm always going to do right by my customers? Yes.

[00:45:05] Jason: Exactly.

[00:45:05] Caroline: Do I believe in my ability to continue to deliver in value that people pay for? Yes. Then that's all you really need to be secure in...

[00:45:12] Jason: Yeah.

[00:45:12] Caroline: ...and you can let the rest unfold. And it's a lesson that I continually have to learn, but I think it's very fun, and I do give myself a little bit of credit. Before I took my hands off the reins, we came to a decision on this experiment, and we both were all in on it.

[00:45:27] Jason: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

[00:45:28] Caroline: So it wasn't like I let my hands off the reins and you were like, "Finally, I get to do this thing that I've wanted to do."

[00:45:32] Jason: Yeah.

[00:45:32] Caroline: I came there on my own, too. But it has been fun to see you, now that I'm in the back of the covered wagon to see you just let those horses ride, baby.

[00:45:41] Jason: Me and the horses. They're manes, my mane. All of our manes.

[00:45:44] Caroline: Oh, they're blowing in the wind.

[00:45:45] Jason: Because we both have beautiful hair.

[00:45:46] Caroline: And you know what? And we're speeding up and that breeze has come through that covered wagon, and I'm under the covers and I'm just fucking with my iPad just doing...

[00:45:54] Jason: Okay, last couple things I wanted to touch on. One of the really awesome benefits of doing this lifetime pricing is that it has improved cash flow immediately so much.

[00:46:04] Caroline: Right.

[00:46:05] Jason: And improved cash flow means we can pay for a designer, again...

[00:46:09] Caroline: Yup.

[00:46:09] Jason: ...to be cranking out features and...

[00:46:11] Caroline: Which then frees up my time.

[00:46:12] Jason: Exactly. And it frees up the cash flow to be able to pay our developers more to get more work done.

[00:46:18] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:46:18] Jason: So I'm very excited because there are some immediate features that have been on the blocks for a while that you have not had the time to design.

[00:46:24] Caroline: Yup.

[00:46:25] Jason: We haven't had the development hours to slot in, and those are going to slot in quickly. Free preview of courses is coming, so you'll literally be able to toggle which lessons you want open for anyone to see. The rest will be locked behind a paywall that can be through a Teachery payment page or an external payment page, someone buys, and then the lessons open up and it's all these other course platforms. I've been doing this forever. It's just something we just haven't had the time to do, but now we're going to do it, so I'm excited. The other thing that I'm really excited for is a new course template, and we dabbled...

[00:46:58] Caroline: What if I just put a one hand back on a reign.

[00:47:01] Jason: And we'll see if you're going to do this design or if I'm just going to have our design...

[00:47:05] Caroline: I mean, I can do the design, but I'm going to have a lot of opinions about it.

[00:47:07] Jason: Yeah. Well, I might not be able to hear you from the front of the wagon.

[00:47:10] Caroline: That's actually where I shine is my opinions.

[00:47:12] Jason: Yeah, a lot of people shine with their opinions. But yeah, I'm actually just really excited because what we want to do is modernize the course editor interface to be more Notion style. For those of you who use Notion, the more of the drag and drop kind of building blocks, you can add things in very easily. You can click into edit anything without having to click in to go to a page, just making it much more friendly. And I've already talked with our developer about how we would make this happen. He's very excited about the opportunity of building something...

[00:47:42] Caroline: I am also giving myself credit that this originated from a lot of the strategy work that I did in the first quarter this year...

[00:47:48] Jason: Yeah.

[00:47:48] Caroline: ...of talking to our customers. And what if it's the simplicity of Squarespace meets the buildability of Notion?

[00:47:55] Jason: Yeah.

[00:47:55] Caroline: And what does that look like? And so, again, not to like bring it all back, but I say that out loud to remind myself that I can be humble and say that I was in the way in a lot of things, but I also want to give myself credit that the foundation work that was done by going all in on Teachery, I think really did set the stage for a lot of these things.

[00:48:14] Jason: For sure. And I think it got me excited. And then this lifetime deal experiment got me even more excited to...

[00:48:21] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:48:21] Jason: ...get back into really wanting to work on features and not just like coast and have the platform be what it is. So that new template, it will definitely take quite a long time. And we're talking like six to nine months because it is a huge undertaking to build something like that with the size of team that we have.

[00:48:37] Caroline: Time flies when you're over 35, baby.

[00:48:37] Jason: It sure does. But I am really, really excited because I think that is going to be a game changer for a lot of course builders out there. If Notion tomorrow said, "Hey, you can set up a course in Notion and put it behind a paywall."

[00:48:54] Caroline: Well... dabbling.

[00:48:55] Jason: Yeah, I think that's really cool. But I do think that...

[00:48:59] Caroline: Yeah. They're never going to be a course platform so yeah.

[00:49:00] Jason: It's just not what they're interested in doing. So it doesn't really phase me. It's just like with Squarespace release courses, like everyone got so scared and it's like, show me...

[00:49:06] Caroline: It's not their core business. Yeah.

[00:49:07] Jason: Exactly. Show me people who like their entire... They changed everything. There's just not that many. So anyway, very excited about the small, immediate features that are coming in the next couple months. The bigger feature of the new template, having the extra cash flow to be able to pay a designer. Going to use some of that cash flow to, I think, invest in some marketing stuff because I'm a little too tired to get into a bunch of different marketing efforts. Frankly, I just don't care, and I'm not interested in doing it.

[00:49:36] Caroline: And you got to try that to know that.

[00:49:38] Jason: Yeah, but I am interested to earmark a couple thousand dollars per month to experiment now that we have some extra cash to play with. So all those things lead to Teachery having a lot more coming to it, and very excited about being able to have additional customers, because the other thing that happens when you have more customers joining is you get a lot more feedback on what could be better.

[00:50:00] Caroline: You do. Totally.

[00:50:01] Jason: And so, when you're only getting a handful...

[00:50:02] Caroline: It's a virtue cycle.

[00:50:02] Jason: ...of customers per month...

[00:50:03] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:50:04] Jason: ...like under 10, you're not hearing much. When you get 50 customers per month, it's not a ton more.

[00:50:09] Caroline: Not to mention, when you're getting those monthly customers and the lifetime value is what it is, you're catering to people who are going to be gone in six months regardless. Do you know what I mean?

[00:50:18] Jason: Yeah, yeah, for sure. And I do think, again, it is better to charge $550 lifetime than it is to charge $99 because...

[00:50:24] Caroline: Yes.

[00:50:24] Jason: ...you're going to get a customer who's a little more discerning, they care a little bit more. They're not just looking for things to be free and cheap and solve all their problems.

[00:50:32] Caroline: Yup.

[00:50:32] Jason: So this I see as a really great way for us to stand out from all other course platforms and not blend in. I think it's a really good example for all of you listening to this, to think about your own business and what you could do differently.

[00:50:45] Caroline: Think outside the box.

[00:50:46] Jason: Just to zig when everyone else is zagging.

[00:50:48] Caroline: Totally.

[00:50:48] Jason: And yeah, I am actually excited because we have just never done consistent marketing for Teachery. Now that we have a lifetime deal that people seem pretty excited about and willing to pay for with zero marketing, what does a little bit of marketing look like?

[00:51:02] Caroline: And this is what we, funny enough, this is what we teach inside WAIM in the Un-boring Business Roadmap, is like when you want to improve your business, go back to the foundation, then you figure out this offer. And if you can figure out the offer that sells, that is when you can then layer in the marketing. Right?

[00:51:20] Jason: Yeah.

[00:51:20] Caroline: Because if you keep trying to throw marketing at something where the core offer is could be better, and there's a gap there, you're throwing gasoline on a fire that is not even lit.

[00:51:32] Jason: Yeah, there's nothing even any embers. It's just...

[00:51:33] Caroline: Exactly. So it's like you really want to spark the fire and then throw gas on the fire. And so, I feel like, without realizing it, you're following the Un-boring Business Roadmap to achieve it.

[00:51:43] Jason: Yeah. Also, I will put this out there, to anybody who listens this far into the episode. I am on the active lookout for people who can help people build courses on Teachery because we are getting more requests now that we're having more people say, "Hey, do you have anybody who can help me move my course over from Teachable or what have you?"

[00:51:58] Caroline: Mm-hmm.

[00:51:58] Jason: Some of it's building from scratch. Some of it's moving from platforms. If you're somebody who does that, I would love to hear from you. Please send me an email jason@teachery.co specifically for that. I'm not necessarily saying I'm going to be hiring anybody, but there could be some freelance work or hourly work that easily gets sent your way. Just would love to know if you're interested in that if you currently build courses on Teachery or if it's just something you want to get good at and make some extra money, definitely see that as a possibility in the future for people.

[00:52:24] Caroline: Cool.

[00:52:25] Jason: All right, well, that's the...

[00:52:26] Caroline: How'd you like your episode?

[00:52:26] Jason: That's the update on Teachery.

[00:52:28] Caroline: Did you have fun telling everybody about your experiment?

[00:52:29] Jason: I got to talk about all my numbers.

[00:52:31] Caroline: Yeah, I bet you love numbers.

[00:52:33] Jason: I got to talk about my knees.

[00:52:33] Caroline: And your knees.

[00:52:34] Jason: I got to talk about all the things that are going on, and we will see how this continues to go.

[00:52:39] Caroline: I even got to talk a lot about my feelings, so I feel like everybody wins.

[00:52:41] Jason: Yeah. It's a win for everybody all around.

[00:52:43] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:52:43] Jason: All right, that's it for this episode. We'll be back next week.

[00:52:46] Caroline: See you next time.