242 - Why we're ending WAIM Unlimited (part 2)

[0:00:06] 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.

[0:00:30] Jason: All right, cinnamon rollers, that's you. Let's get into the show. Well, this is part two of our...

[0:00:41] Caroline: Dois. Part dois.

[0:00:42] Jason: Dois

[0:00:43] Caroline: Part dois.

[0:00:44] Jason: Parte dois of our episode here.

[0:00:46] Caroline: Parte dois.

[0:00:49] Jason: Well, I was saying point two. That was fine.

[0:00:52] Caroline: You were like, I did it on purpose.

[0:00:53] Jason: Yeah.

[0:00:54] Caroline: It's 0.2.

[0:00:55] Jason: Remember we told that lady at the post office yesterday that we wanted 2.80 in stamp? And she...

[0:01:00] Caroline: Yeah. What was she trying to get us?

[0:01:01] Jason: She was just getting us... We really wanted us to say 2 euros and 80, but because we said dois pontos oitenta...

[0:01:09] Caroline: Anyway.

[0:01:09] Jason: ...she did not like it, and she gave us 2.80 cents.

[0:01:12] Caroline: But guess what? The post office went a million times better than you thought it would.

[0:01:16] Jason: Well, yeah, but you can speak a lot more Portuguese. And so, that really helped because this woman does not want to speak any English, which is fine.

[0:01:20] Caroline: She likes that. She likes that.

[0:01:23] Jason: We live in her country. But boy...

[0:01:24] Caroline: What we realize, in case you're curious, is we've reached the point in our Portuguese journey where we actually cannot be left alone because Jason can listen and comprehend much better than I can.

[0:01:38] Jason: Which we've learned is a trauma response to my childhood. Because in movies, I can always guess what's going to happen first. Because you read this like I process things faster.

[0:01:46] Caroline: Yeah, you process things faster because of trauma. So that's cool super...

[0:01:50] Jason: Cool Superpower.

[0:01:50] Caroline: Cool superpower. And then I can speak a little bit better. And so, as a team, we are unstoppable.

[0:01:59] Jason: Right. Our two powers combined make ... Portuguese speaker.

[0:02:02] Caroline: But what will happen? This is what will happen. We will go to a counter of something. I will confidently have an intro...

[0:02:09] Jason: Say the phrase. Yeah.

[0:02:10] Caroline: ...say the phrase, say the thing, communicate. And then the person will then say something complicated back.

[0:02:15] Jason: Right.

[0:02:16] Caroline: I will turn to you, and I will go...

[0:02:19] Jason: My interpreter is here to...

[0:02:21] Caroline: Yeah. And I'll look at you like... And then I'll repeat a couple of words like did I get that? And you'll be like, no, no, no. She's saying da, da, da, da, da.

[0:02:26] Jason: Yeah.

[0:02:26] Caroline: And then I will turn back to that person, and I will then communicate. And so, that's what's happening.

[0:02:31] Jason: Yeah. It's a nice little triangle of learning language and speaking.

[0:02:33] Caroline: And so, we can't go anywhere solo.

[0:02:35] Jason: Yeah. All right. Let's get into the pramble and then into this episode, because we want to get into part two here, for those of you who've been on the edge of your seats. First of all, if you hear half of us are getting over a cold.

[0:02:47] Caroline: I know, and I do apologize because my voice is a little huskier than normal and kind of like...

[0:02:51] Jason: But maybe that's good for the podcast.

[0:02:53] Caroline: I know. Yeah. No, it's more vocal fry. So I apologize. But yeah, I'm on the tail end of it. Thankfully, it was just a little cold.

[0:03:02] Jason: Hence, why we had the solo episode last week from me. Yeah.

[0:03:04] Caroline: Yeah. I did listen to the beginning of that.

[0:03:06] Jason: Oh, only the beginning, though. Couldn't make it all 11 minutes.

[0:03:09] Caroline: I think I did listen to it all, actually.

[0:03:11] Jason: What were you doing then? Something else.

[0:03:13] Caroline: Yeah, I was multitasking, but I was just like, Jason, when he does these things, he truly does not tell me. Like when you sent the email during our launch, that was like, don't tell Caroline I'm doing this. He tells me two weeks later, he's like, oh, I did that. And I love how every time in the thing, you're like, I hope Caroline doesn't get mad at me for this. I'm like, I'm never mad at you. I'm just like, what are you doing? 

[0:03:32] Jason: No.

[0:03:33] Caroline: You're just out here... That's what I love about you, you're just doing weird stuff. But that was cool of you, and...

[0:03:38] Jason: Yeah. People really, I think enjoyed that. And I've seen other podcasters, and funny enough, we used to do little minisodes at the very beginning of this podcast, because we were doing much even longer episodes. But yeah, I think it's always good to break those patterns and you find a reason to throw that out there. But I do think we're also in such a really interesting transition period with our businesses.

[0:04:01] Caroline: Completely.

[0:04:01] Jason: As we're going to talk on this episode with WAIM and then also with a ton of stuff I'm working on with Teachery.

[0:04:05] Caroline: Hence why I think the podcast has taken on... And we don't do seasons anymore, but if I had to say, every year is a season.

[0:04:12] Jason: Yeah.

[0:04:13] Caroline: I think the podcast this year, you may have noticed, is so much less educational content and so much more behind the scenes content.

[0:04:20] Jason: Mm-hmm.

[0:04:20] Caroline: And it's because there's a lot more to talk about behind the scenes because things are shifting and moving, and that's what it's always been about. But when things are much calmer and more, I guess, stable, that's when we do more of the educational episodes.

[0:04:35] Jason: Well, when we do love to talk about what's shifting in us. That is a favorite around here. Can I get to the most important pramble top that's on this list?

[0:04:42] Caroline: Of course. Please.

[0:04:44] Jason: I finally own an e-bike.

[0:04:45] Caroline: Wow.

[0:04:46] Jason: And I know that for those of you who've been listening...

[0:04:46] Jason: You're an e-bike dad.

[0:04:48] Jason: It's like once a year, I get a toy.

[0:04:50] Caroline: Yes.

[0:04:50] Jason: So last year was the Ninja CREAMi.

[0:04:51] Caroline: And we've talked about this, how your toys are very expensive. And I'm like, maybe I'll buy this 11-euro pack of pens. This is my toy.

[0:04:57] Jason: But you have to agree, I used found money for my toy this year.

[0:05:01] Caroline: Yes. You did.

[0:05:03] Jason: So my toy this year is an e-bike, which if we're just being 1,000% honest with everybody listening to this, it's a tiny motorcycle. It's a tiny electric motorcycle.

[0:05:10] Caroline: We can't keep saying this because it really makes me uncomfortable. So I just need...

[0:05:13] Jason: Okay. I also don't want to own a motorcycle.

[0:05:16] Caroline: I just need to keep believing that it is just a bike with a motor. But it does look a lot like a little tiny motorcycle.

[0:05:24] Jason: Yeah. But like a little...

[0:05:25] Caroline: It's got quite a bit of power to it.

[0:05:26] Jason: It does. Yeah. It can go 37 miles per hour, which is pretty great because that's how fast you want to go. But also, it's only 37 miles per hour. Come on.

[0:05:34] Caroline: I'm so scared. You're my favorite person on this earth, and I don't want anything would happen to you.

[0:05:37] Jason: I know. But look how much fun I have when I'm zipping around and I'm like an elephant on a tricycle on this thing. I'm so big for it.

[0:05:42] Caroline: I'm taking this as a parenting lesson, and...

[0:05:44] Jason: Yeah. You got to let your kid be a peacock. They got to fly.

[0:05:47] Caroline: And letting go of the fear of what could happen.

[0:05:50] Jason: Yeah.

[0:05:50] Caroline: And just knowing that you are wearing a helmet and that you are in control of your body and in control of these toys and that you're not going to do anything stupid.

[0:06:00] Jason: Of course. It is very fun. Also, as I was saying, I used found money, so I won the Fantasy Football League that I'm in. And so, this was the cash prize amount that I was allowed to spend for an e-bike.

[0:06:10] Caroline: This is such like heterosexual male behavior. You're like, I won this money in fantasy football. And I turned around and used it to buy a motorcycle.

[0:06:20] Jason: Yeah. But also, it's a tiny little e-bike like... Yeah.

[0:06:24] Caroline: Right. It's just a bike.

[0:06:25] Jason: It weighs 60 pounds. It's literally like, it's tiny. But it is very fun. I've been zipping around the neighborhood a little bit. It's been raining the past few days, and I've wanted to ride it, but it's been... I don't want to ride in the rain. It wouldn't be safe.

[0:06:35] Caroline: And wouldn't ride in the rain. Yup.

[0:06:37] Jason: Wouldn't be safe.

[0:06:38] Caroline: That's right.

[0:06:38] Jason: But it can handle our gigantic hill that we live by, which is a huge pro because I did a lot of research with ChatGPT because I'm a larger person who weighs 230 plus pounds or 110 kilos, for those of you who are in Europe. E-bikes are not meant to carry people of my weight uphills. So I watched a lot of videos of e-bikes. You'd know, you came down and I was...

[0:06:57] Caroline: Oh, my God, for like a month it was just always e-bikes on the TV.

[0:07:01] Jason: There's one channel that has this big hill test and almost to a T, every single day they're like, "If you're over like 220 pounds, this probably isn't the bike for you." And so, every time I'm waiting, I'm like, what's the bike for me? What's the bike for me? There just never was one.

[0:07:13] Caroline: ... the big guys.

[0:07:14] Jason: Yeah. But this bike I actually found a video of a guy on YouTube who was heavier than I was, and he was like, this thing can actually take you uphills.

[0:07:20] Caroline: And you already tested out on truly, like...

[0:07:22] Jason: It's a huge hill.

[0:07:23] Caroline: ...a huge hill that is from our house down to the beach. And you got up.

[0:07:28] Jason: It carried me. Yeah, yeah. It carried me up 19 miles an hour. I was cruising up that hill.

[0:07:30] Caroline: I still can't believe you went down that hill because that scares me.

[0:07:32] Jason: Yeah, yeah, had to really ride the brakes. Had to ride the brakes quite a bit. Yeah. But hey...

[0:07:37] Caroline: Speaking of riding the brakes down the hill, tell the people...

[0:07:42] Jason: Our stroller journey.

[0:07:43] Caroline: We are now in the thick of trying to buy baby gear, and oh, my God, what a journey, all of you.

[0:07:50] Jason: Well, yeah, I think all the parents out there, especially like the parents of the past five to eight years, as direct to consumer shopping has just like exploded on the internet. No. Boy, there's a million options. Everybody has all their different opinions about what's best.

[0:08:04] Caroline: Everybody. You really have to. It's like such a good exercise in just media titration because you can get overwhelmed so easily. You can get into optimizing mode so easily. And the hilarious part about buying gear for a baby and for being new parents is you have no fucking idea what you're going to want, what you're going to need.

[0:08:25] Jason: Well, yeah...

[0:08:25] Caroline: You have no idea what kind of baby you're going to get.

[0:08:26] Jason: And also, where you live...

[0:08:27] Caroline: You have no idea what they want, what they like.

[0:08:29] Jason: But where you live is so different.

[0:08:30] Caroline: Where you live.

[0:08:30] Jason: Like we're watching these videos from the Snuggle Bugz, from the Magic Beans, all these different YouTube channels that are now popping up and they're showing where they're walking the strollers, and we're like...

[0:08:39] Caroline: And it's like a suburban subdivision in America.

[0:08:40] Jason: Guys, we have cobblestone sidewalks and the road down to the beach that we have was like paved 30 years ago and there's gravel all over it.

[0:08:50] Caroline: Right. So you got to be discerning. But I think so far, I mean, stroller is one of the biggest ones because I think it's something that's it's a pretty hefty price tag. It's something you're going to use all the time. So I feel like we started with like a good one where it's like once you get past that...

[0:09:04] Jason: Yeah.

[0:09:04] Caroline: ...you figure out what your vibe is.

[0:09:07] Jason: But I think we have found what we believe is the best setup. And then funny enough, one of the last videos that we watched about strollers, this guy who's been selling strollers for 20 years, was like, here's my ideal for almost all people. You have a stroller that's like a off road stroller, if you will. So it's like bigger wheels, like a little bit of suspension.

[0:09:25] Caroline: A jogging stroller.

[0:09:27] Jason: It's really a jogging stroller is the way to describe them. And then you have a travel stroller, which is like much smaller, much more compact.

[0:09:32] Caroline: So that's going to be our approach, which makes sense because like we said, sea gravel, sea hills, sea whatever. And so, we basically are thinking like, we have a more all-terrain for around our house.

[0:09:42] Jason: Yeah.

[0:09:43] Caroline: And then when we want to go into the city center or to a doctor's appointment or shopping for errands or whatever, we have like a smaller, low-profile thing. Anyway, you don't want to know all of this. It's just like...

[0:09:51] Jason: Well, no, I actually...

[0:09:53] Caroline: Listen, if you had kids so long ago, you're like, oh, my gosh, if you are child free, you're like, not important to me. But if you have...

[0:10:01] Jason: There's a sliver of the pie chart.

[0:10:02] Caroline: There's a sliver of the pie chart who, if you're in this phase of life, you're like, whoa, yes, we just went through this, and what a saga.

[0:10:07] Jason: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think for us, we just want... It's kind of like the Apple ecosystem for our kid's stroller. So it's like I want to be able to plug them all in together...

[0:10:18] Caroline: Oh, yeah, that was really important to us.

[0:10:19] Jason: ...and not have adapters and other things. So as we watch the videos, I was like, yeah, we're just going to stay in one brand family for the strollers so that the bassinet can plug into the big stroller, the travel stroller.

[0:10:29] Caroline: Yeah, they got us, they captured us.

[0:10:30] Jason: The car seat can plug into both. I want it to be easy because you want to remove as much friction as possible.

[0:10:36] Caroline: And also, I don't want opinions on if you hate it, if you love it, like I don't...

[0:10:41] Jason: Yeah.

[0:10:41] Caroline: Because I think with all of these things and parenting choices in general, in a weird way, it parallels like business, which is everyone's different, every business is different, everyone's goals are different. And so, you just have to let people experiment and find out in their own way. Which is why I think, yes, it's like give me the... I'll watch the video that's like, oh, actually something that turned out to be a real headache was like, the way that this one folds down and I had to lean down, and I hurt my back all the time.

[0:11:10] Jason: Right.

[0:11:10] Caroline: It's like, sure, that's an objective truth that I can take into consideration. But it's like, it doesn't have a cup holder for my phone. And I love to have my phone by me when I do that. It's like, I don't care. I don't care about that.

[0:11:20] Jason: Yeah, exactly. I can just wear a fanny packet with my phone in my pocket.

[0:11:23] Caroline: So all of that is to say we have started that saga and we're trying to do it a little bit at a time and we're trying not to go crazy. We're really trying to look at our list and stick with the essentials and then the stuff that we can wait to buy, we'll wait to buy.

[0:11:37] Jason: Yeah.

[0:11:37] Caroline: And funny enough, because all of our friends and family have been like, "Are you going to do a registry? How do you do that International?" And so, I worked with Lovable, the AI no code app that we love, to create a one-page website that has a functionality where basically people can send just money, but they can claim a gift.

[0:11:57] Jason: Yeah.

[0:11:58] Caroline: So I created my own little international baby registry.

[0:12:00] Jason: It's kind of a thing that doesn't really exist because I don't think too many people have this issue. It's a very small TAM, as they say in the business world.

[0:12:06] Caroline: TAM, total addressable market.

[0:12:07] Jason: Yeah, there's not a lot of people like us in this situation. But yeah, I think it'll be a fun way for people to be able to literally just Venmo us money for it. Be like, hey, I bought you all the little baby burp cloths, and congratulations.

[0:12:17] Caroline: And also, I thought I would always be this person because like we eloped. We didn't have a wedding. People didn't buy us wedding gifts and stuff. I mean, some people sent money or whatever. But I was like, I don't think we'll be those people who have a baby registry. I can't. It's fine. No, the amount of stuff that you need, I'm like, I am not going to turn down this support because it is so much stuff.

[0:12:34] Jason: Exactly. And I think in the difference between a wedding and having a baby is like people buying things for the baby. It's actually like stuff that you'll use.

[0:12:42] Caroline: True.

[0:12:42] Jason: And they'll feel like, oh, this is really helpful. As opposed to like wedding registry gifts, it's like...

[0:12:44] Caroline: Do I need a salad tong? I don't.

[0:12:46] Jason: Yeah, it's like, I don't think anybody really cares of buying you a set of plates. Like it's not really a matter. All right. Those are the pramble tops. Let's get into this part two of our big business transition. Just to catch you back up, if you did not listen to part one, what we are doing is after basically six years of selling Wandering Aimfully unlimited, WAIM Unlimited, our Un-boring Coaching Program, we are going to do one final sale here in June-ish of 2025, end of May, beginning of June, somewhere in there, dates are not fully locked in. This is going to be the last time we ever sell WAIM Unlimited as it sits. And the reason we are doing that is because, A, we are going to take some parental leave, which the next episode of the podcast we're going to talk about our plans for that, so you can tune in for that. And we know we're not going to be available to do monthly coaching and it's going to be just harder once we have a kiddo to be able to be locked into a schedule and to be showing up. And also, as we mentioned, we have done 60 plus coaching sessions for our members. And honestly, we just are getting kind of bored of doing that.

[0:13:48] Caroline: We're ready for something new. We also did the episode all about how do you know it's time for a pivot? And so, that also outlines like the four or five main reasons for us making this big change. And it is a big change.

[0:14:02] Jason: Yeah. And it is a little bit scary, and it is a little bit like anytime you're going from something that has been working and just for full transparency, WAIM has generated over $2 million in revenue since we started. So this is definitely walking away from a way of selling our business that has been profitable and has worked well. And you might be thinking to yourself, that's absolutely ludicrous. Why would you step away from that? And we have those same thoughts. And I think the thing that we will say is that in the past three launches of WAIM Unlimited, we have seen the trending down of people's interest in necessarily purchasing. And we think that that stems from a lot of different things which we talked about in the previous episodes. But we want to give one more opportunity for people to buy in because as we've been saying kind of like internally, it's like the last chance to get like our BuyOurFuture, which is what we used to sell, logo.

[0:14:51] Caroline: Which I think one of the questions addresses that more directly. So we'll save that for then. But I think that was a good recap of catching people up to speed and just understanding what this bigger pivot is. And what we are pivoting to is something that we don't know yet. It is, right now, we're in this experimentation phase where we are coming back to Instagram, we are experimenting with more evergreen selling of our lower priced products. We are going to see how that goes. And ultimately, we have some ideas about what we might want to do with some of these AI apps that we have ideas about. But it's just, it's a new frontier, it's a new era for us and we don't have it all figured out, which is why we think that it's a great time to tune into the podcast because this is the most interesting thing to share as entrepreneurs. Because most of us are usually in this messy middle phase, as Jason talked about on his minisode, because I listened to it all 11 minutes of it.

[0:15:49] Jason: Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh.

[0:15:50] Caroline: And it's the irony is that most of us are existing in this figuring it out place most of the time. And yet the people who have the microphones who are coming to you, telling you the advice are the people who have already figured out the blueprint. And certainly, when we had figured out the WAIM Unlimited puzzle, like we would be in that category too. But our whole thing with Wandering Aimfully from the beginning has been to show you both right?

[0:16:14] Jason: Yeah.

[0:16:14] Caroline: So it's like we show you the messy middle of the buildup, and then once we figure it out, it's like, here's what worked for us. And it's always been really important to us to build a business that evolves with our evolving interests. And right now, our evolving interests are on the cutting edge of what's happening with AI. And that's why you're going to see so much more content about that from us. That's why you're going to hear us talk about it more on the podcast and speak... That aligns really well with this idea of the messy middle, because AI is this messy middle, frontier space. And I think if you look at it through a black and white lens, you would think like, whoa, whoa, whoa, you guys have always been about enough and calm business. And isn't that totally the antithesis of this new cutting-edge technology that feels like it's at the edge of technology and moving so fast? And it's like, for us, we exist in the gray area of no. I think, if anything, people who have a calm enough mindset need to be creating content about AI so that there is a balanced voice out there of, how can I...

[0:17:19] Jason: Yeah. It's not just trying to maximize everything and... Yeah.

[0:17:21] Caroline: Exactly. There's plenty of people out there talking about AI to maximize everything and lower costs as much as possible and replace humans and all this stuff. And we just want to be this other voice that's like, hey, listen, this is like a scary new world that we're all living in, but there are some amazing things it can do and some amazing ways that it can empower you to do more with your business and to live more of your life. And we want to be the voices trying to figure that out for you.

[0:17:47] Jason: Cool. All right. So we have four questions that we want to go over and answer here. And some may take maybe a little bit longer than others, but these were the four that stood out. So the first one, how do you want to frame this first question? Because there's a little bit of context to it.

[0:18:00] Caroline: Yeah. So I think the first question is really, when it comes down to it, it's like, let's talk about the money of it all. Because this question comes from a WAIMer. And basically, they were saying, okay, you have been really open about the fact that WAIM Unlimited has been a very profitable and lucrative offer for you, but how are you navigating, how you're going to make money on the other side of not offering that anymore? And are you looking at your enough number and going how are you going to sell these products to build up to that? Or are you just diving in and you don't know how it's going to land? And they were saying, I'm guessing you feel safe to do that because you trust your entrepreneurial instincts and you know that you'll figure it out. You know that you have a substantial email list, so you have an audience to sell to. You want the space and freedom to play and figure out what's next, and then you have robust savings and cash flow to support the pivot. And I was like, well, we couldn't have answered that better ourselves. Because those are all the reasons why we're not sweating so much. But they were just saying that super curious about the mindset around the money piece and how are we going to make up that money?

[0:19:08] Jason: Yeah. So I think the first thing is, and as they had surmised in their message to us the last launch, we're hoping is a decent cash injection, because anytime you're selling something for the last time, you're going to get people who've been on the fence forever to finally jump on board. And so, I do think we are going to get definitely more buyers than we had in our first launch of this year and probably the two launches last year as well.

[0:19:32] Caroline: I mean, maybe something a curveball in that is obviously we're in a very, very volatile economic place right now.

[0:19:38] Jason: Yeah.

[0:19:39] Caroline: And so, that's the X factor of who knows how much that will play a role. But all things being equal, you're right, the added sort of real built in, baked in scarcity of this is going away, I think, obviously always moves sales. So we are predicting some sort of bulk cash injection. And the way that our payment plans work with WAIM Unlimited, that will basically give us a runway of predictable monthly recurring revenue until those payments run out.

[0:20:10] Jason: Yeah.

[0:20:10] Caroline: So that does give us like a year to kind of...

[0:20:14] Jason: Yeah, more than that. I mean, if we look at it right now, again, just like full transparency, I think we're at like 27,000 in recurring revenue for WAIM at the moment. My internal goal is I would really love to get us up over 30, maybe in like 32, 33 range after this next launch. Like that would be my hope. And then we have a big dip coming in July based on our 2023 launches.

[0:20:35] Caroline: Previous launches. Yup.

[0:20:38] Jason: That did really well. And so, that's going to dip us back down in like the probably like mid-20s range for recurring monthly revenue. But then that'll stay about there and then only every three or four months it'll drop like by a thousand or two. And so, I actually feel really good that we'll stay above the 20 some odd thousand dollars in recurring revenue through all of 2026, which is really helpful because that does give us the baseline revenue...

[0:21:04] Caroline: Time to figure it out.

[0:21:05] Jason: Exactly. And so, it's like if we made absolutely no more money, yes, it would be cutting it close, and we wouldn't have profitability every month, like just with affiliate expenses and the expenses of running the business. And also, we're planning on hiring someone to help in the short term, which we'll talk about in the next episode.

[0:21:21] Caroline: This is always, by the way, why we've always loved payment plans. I know people, a lot of coaches out there don't like payment plans because they're like, you miss out on revenue because people cancel or whatever. But we've had such a low cancellation rate that we would much rather take the sort of predictable spread-out cash flow than the upfront cash. And so...

[0:21:42] Jason: Yeah, just it really helps you to know because we've been in the phase of running businesses before where it's like you don't know where the money's coming the next month.

[0:21:49] Caroline: Yeah.

[0:21:49] Jason: But when you have a revenue chart that shows you, you have expected recurring revenue next month that is this based on last month, you can feel really confident in that.

[0:21:58] Caroline: Totally.

[0:21:58] Jason: I think the other thing here is so what we've talked about as just a very loose idea for 2026 business plan is build apps with Lovable or build tools, sell them and then I really want to do some type of unique, like sell them to customers as like a founding price to get the app, like a one-time payment and then sell the app itself to someone who wants to run it, who has a built-in customer base. The app is already working, and they can then grow it from there. And I think it would just be really interesting if we had the ability to do three to six of those in 2026. If you averaged selling them for somewhere between $20,000 and $50,000 per app, that's not a ton of money for a built app that has some customers built in. That basically replaces our WAIM revenue that we make now.

[0:22:46] Caroline: Right.

[0:22:46] Jason: It's a very different way of the revenue coming in. But I think that, that could be very fun. Now, that could not work, and people might not be interested. And so, I think the big question here is then, how do we feel safe in making money?

[0:22:59] Caroline: Yeah. So I want to address the first point that they said because again, this is a very neat outline of why, yes, we're like nervous, but it doesn't keep me up at night. And it's because, number one, you trust your entrepreneurial instincts and know that everything is figureoutable. Yes, we have built WAIM from $0 in recurring revenue up to at its highest, I think 38...

[0:23:21] Jason: 37, 38, yeah.

[0:23:22] Caroline: Okay. So it's like that builds confidence in being able to build something up from the ground up. But also, something Jason and I talk about a lot is we have billable skills. So if we absolutely had to, this is like when you play worst case scenario and you're like, oh, my God, what if the whole business crumbles? And it's like, okay, if I had to, I have so many skills. I can build Framer websites, I can do design work, I can do branding work. I can build Canva slides for people. There are so many skills that I have that I feel confident that I could charge money for. And I'm talking like thousands of dollars...

[0:23:57] Jason: Yeah, for sure.

[0:23:58] Caroline: ...in client work. And so, those skills have been built up over a decade. And I feel confident in that. You can do... You have people asking you for consulting and coaching work all the time, one on one. You could go back to speaking, even though I know you won't do that.

[0:24:13] Jason: Yeah. I mean, I could definitely help people with building SaaS apps and figuring out like, how to find developers, how to get things going, what your plan is, like architecting, like all of that stuff. And honestly, I think if I had to choose at this very moment, if I was like, you just had to pick a different business to run.

[0:24:29] Caroline: Yeah.

[0:24:29] Jason: I would say like building Framer websites in a day, like the VIP Day, but for Framer websites, because I could run all of the client part of it and like the brief and the deliverables and the whatever, you could do all the design and crank it out. We can pass it along to the client. So I always work with the client. You never have to work with the client, which is your least favorite thing, which I'm totally fine to do. I don't mind at all. And I think we could crank out 7 to 15 of those a month. And even just at like a 2 to $4,000 per website, we make perfectly good money.

[0:25:03] Caroline: Exactly. So it's like you play those scenarios out so that you go, okay, I have a plan C. And so, that's what helps us not to be so nervous about it. And then yeah, the truth is we have built up an audience over time that we're not starting from scratch in that regard. So I know if we did tomorrow, just like we did on Black Friday, a one-week launch of Calm Launch Formula, we would make tens of thousands of dollars. And so again, this is what you get from years of putting in the effort to have a newsletter every single week so that people can stay connected to you. We're building back up the Instagram. Eventually we'll go back to YouTube. And so, this is why we always tell people, audience is like so important because it really does give you the flexibility to have something to sell and to have a group of people who are listening.

[0:25:53] Jason: Yeah. All right. I think that answers that question. Let's move on to the next one. And...

[0:25:57] Caroline: And well, I just... And I did want to say we do have savings.

[0:26:00] Jason: Yeah, we do have some savings for sure.

[0:26:01] Caroline: If we didn't have savings, I think this would be a different conversation, but because WAIM Unlimited has done so well for us, when it was doing the most well for us, we were socking money away every single month.

[0:26:11] Jason: Yeah. And I think just to put that into like fully quantitated amounts, we could live off of our savings for six months if we had zero revenue come in whatsoever.

[0:26:19] Caroline: Right.

[0:26:19] Jason: Now granted...

[0:26:20] Caroline: With an expensive lifestyle, to be honest.

[0:26:22] Jason: Yeah. I mean...

[0:26:22] Caroline: Comparatively.

[0:26:23] Jason: Yeah, comparatively. And I think that obviously the first thing we would do if that happened is we would cut back on everything. Like we would try and reduce costs for everything. But I think for a lot of people like you, you think of the worst-case scenario when you're running a business where you have some recurring revenue, it's very unlikely that it's going to drop to zero. Now, if you work a 9 to 5 job and you get laid off from your job, there's a very realistic chance that your revenue goes to zero. So that's a very different scenario to be in. But I think we've built a business in a way where it's not going to necessarily just drop to zero out of the blue. And so, that does give you confidence that you have money coming in. You're not going to have to just automatically pull from the savings. And yeah, there's been time in the past six years, we've had to pull from savings here and there. You just have expenses that pop up out of nowhere. You have random things that overlap in different times. Or you have billing schedules that one month only had four Fridays and the other one had five. And like, you're like, wait, why did I make $6,000 less this month? What happened? And it's like, it's just the way that those things happen.

[0:27:20] Caroline: Yeah. And the last thing I'll say is just like about the mindset of it all is like, you have to be comfortable going back to being a beginner, and you have to want the growth that comes from doing something new more than you fear the discomfort of going back to starting over again.

[0:27:40] Jason: Exactly.

[0:27:40] Caroline: And for us, we like starting over. It helps us grow. It helps us do fun things. It helps make the story of our lives richer. And so, it's like, yeah, we arrived at this place where we were coasting for long enough that, oh, my gosh, the calmness felt amazing. But you always have to be balancing that with, oh, I'm not growing. And so, we're excited to be in a growth phase again.

[0:28:04] Jason: All right. And the next question. I've always thought your coaching sessions were the most valuable part. Why did you decide to stop doing them? And I think we answered this in the first episode about this, but I think it's worth just bringing up and I think I mentioned this in that episode, too, is when you do something 60 plus times, there's a reality of you get bored of it. And so, for us, these monthly coaching sessions, we've done 60 plus of them, it's just very difficult to get excited to continue to do that. That is five plus years, every month doing a thing.

[0:28:35] Caroline: And we've even remixed it, right?

[0:28:37] Jason: Yeah.

[0:28:37] Caroline: We've been like, okay, let's do case studies. Okay. Now, let's just do Teachery. Okay. Now, let's do really bite size, more specific outcomes. And so, we've tried to mix it up in such a way, but when you arrive at 60, like that number, you also feel like you're grasping for straws of different things. And I told Jason this morning that a revelation that I sort of had is this is another reason why having a program that was so broad, and it was just like calm online business in general. And this is even before we narrowed in on digital products. So we have people who have client businesses, we have people who have... Even some people who trickled in that brick-and-mortar businesses.

[0:29:15] Jason: Yeah.

[0:29:15] Caroline: And there's plenty for them to get value from inside WAIM Unlimited. But the state of the online industry now is that so many tools are popping up, so many different marketing channels are popping up, marketing tactics are popping up. And I was finding it really hard to create coaching sessions that were valuable enough for everyone dependent on like what tools they use and what they need in their business. And so, you end up having to dilute things down into this very broad business advice type of thing. And it always just felt, yeah, like I said, diluted to me.

[0:29:50] Jason: Well, and it's kind of weird because it's like on one hand you can think about it like with all these new tools, it gives you a lot of opportunity to teach people all the tools. So it's like, hey, you can build a website with Framer, you can build it with Squarespace, you can build it with Canva, you can build it with Wix, you can build it with whatever, right? Like you can do all that. But then you're doing a disservice to your audience because you're like, you're not actually telling them what's the thing that's going to help them get to the result the fastest. You're just giving them a bunch of options.

[0:30:12] Caroline: Right. And you're not going deep on any one thing. And maybe that would be a totally fine way to do if you wanted to be the go-to person where it's like evaluate all these tools in the website space. But to do that for websites...

[0:30:23] Jason: Email marketing, yeah.

[0:30:24] Caroline: ...and email marketing and productivity tools and all this stuff.

[0:30:27] Jason: Social media tools, yeah.

[0:30:28] Caroline: And that was the playground that we gave ourselves by being so broad.

[0:30:31] Jason: Yeah.

[0:30:31] Caroline: And so, it just became this problem that we were always having to navigate of how specific do we go and how broad do we go? And the last part, I think is just as you can tell, we are in a big season of our interests are shifting, our identities are shifting, we're becoming new parents. And just the idea of coaching is like, I always love to coach from a place of, hey, we figured out some stuff and so we want to share that with you. And I just want to take a step back from that and be okay with being in a place of figuring stuff out again.

[0:31:04] Jason: So you want to be parent coaches? You want to teach a lot of parents?

[0:31:06] Caroline: Yes. We should pivot to parenting coaches. Don't we sound like we know we're talking about?

[0:31:10] Jason: Our friend, Matt D'Avella sent me a text and he was like, "Hey, when's the calm parenting course coming out?"

[0:31:14] Caroline: Yeah.

[0:31:15] Jason: And I was like, I thought we were going to learn that from you, my guy. I don't know. What's up? Okay. Next question. You've always talked about building a calm business. Is this pivot part of that philosophy?

[0:31:24] Caroline: I love this question.

[0:31:26] Jason: I mean, I think the actual answer is no. It's actually going to make our business not very calm and very... Not like stressful is not, I don't think the right word. But it's going to be more challenging. It's going to be more difficult than what it has been the past couple years because it's been very simple, the formula the past couple of years.

[0:31:44] Caroline: Well, certainly we're losing quite a bit in the predictable category if we define calm business as predictable, profitable, and peaceful. Well, now that I say it out loud, we're losing quite a bit of stock in the predictable category, the profitable category, and the peaceful category. However, the thing I wrote a newsletter about this, maybe at the top of the year or maybe at the end of last year, which was what we should have been doing all along is adding a fourth P to the calm business mix, which was purposeful.

[0:32:11] Jason: Mm-hmm.

[0:32:11] Caroline: Because there's this very important fourth piece, which I think shows up in everything we do with Wandering Aimfully. I mean, it's a core part of the ethos. We always talk about building a business that authentically suits the life that you want to live, right? That's where I think the purpose piece comes in. And when you lose your purpose or when that purpose does not feel aligned any longer, that is no longer going to create a calm business for you because you're always going to feel like sort of out of alignment. And so, for us, that is the thing where it's like, technically, in my mind, that's how this fits into the calm business ethos. We are looking for version two of what our calm business is going to look like, but it's going to be a little bit uncalm to get there.

[0:32:55] Jason: I think of this like a bar chart of these four P's, if you will. So predictable, profitable, peaceful, purposeful.

[0:33:00] Caroline: Yeah.

[0:33:01] Jason: And so, at any time, as a business owner, one of the bars is higher and you're trying to bring the other bars up to also be that high.

[0:33:08] Caroline: Yeah, your business is only as calm as your lowest bar.

[0:33:11] Jason: Yeah. And so, I think for us with Wandering Aimfully, we got the profitability bar up, we got the predictability bar up and we got the...

[0:33:19] Caroline: Peaceful bar up.

[0:33:19] Jason: The peaceful bar up. And they were all pretty much even and they were like all the way at the top. But I would say like the purposeful bar at the beginning of Wandering Aimfully was pretty high but then just slowly started to go down because you just... It just wears over you all the time.

[0:33:33] Caroline: Yeah. And when I say purpose, like we always had purpose with it. But I think in just to define that term, it's really just a catch all term that I'm also using to mean like aligned. Aligned with your personal interests, your personal passions, your personal values and what you want to spend your time doing.

[0:33:48] Jason: Yeah. And again, I was never a professional athlete, but I know a couple people who played at a level bigger than I did. And then obviously you watch people who are professional athletes, and you see people go through this like love of the game, if you will. It's like the easiest phrase. But then you fall out of love of the game and like you do it for a long enough period of time that you just, you don't love it anymore. And I remember when I stopped playing league basketball at the local gym and it just like I didn't love it anymore. Like I actually, I did not look forward to what it was like doing it. And I wouldn't say we're at that point with WAIM, but I think what we're trying to do now is avoid getting to a place where we don't enjoy running the business. And I think if we kept going for three or four more years, it would start to be a business that we resented and like the purposefulness, like the bar would go under the x-axis.

[0:34:37] Caroline: Yeah, we're paying attention to those like early signs and we're pivoting early rather than later.

[0:34:41] Jason: Exactly. Because what we also want to do too and just be totally honest about is like we have an audience of customers who have paid us and what we don't want to do is like all of them lose interest in what we're doing because we've lost interest in what we're doing, and then we pivot to something else, like, oh, I don't really care what you're doing anymore. But if we pivot now, we bring them along on the journey with us. And that's a lot of you listening to this and you get to be a part of that process.

[0:35:02] Caroline: Totally.

[0:35:03] Jason: All right. Last question.

[0:35:04] Caroline: Last question, if I'm someone who's been thinking about joining WAIM for years and just haven't yet, what would you say to me now? Because it's going to be a little bit interesting. We haven't sat down to have like a real deep conversation about this yet, but the positioning of WAIM for this final launch is going to be quite different because we've always centered the offer around coaching.

[0:35:22] Jason: The live monthly coaching. Yeah.

[0:35:23] Caroline: The live monthly coaching being our core feature. We're not going to be doing that anymore. And so, I think the positioning of WAIM Unlimited in this last launch becomes much more about accessing this incredibly deep library of business resources that you can always go back to. And then like you said, it's a little bit of going back to the BuyOurFuture offer, which is an investment in getting whatever we create in the future, especially as we pivot into more of these AI tools, and creating software is a part of that promise is that if you join WAIM Unlimited in this last time, you will get those software tools. Even if we sell them, we have talked about, we will try to negotiate deals where at the very least for a prolonged period of time, you would be able to access that tool for free as a WAIMer.

[0:36:13] Jason: Yeah, I definitely think the positioning of this one, like you said, it's more about you're buying access to all the previous resources, all the future resources, and then obviously we are going to have the community around for a year and a half in Slack at a bare minimum towards the end of 2026.

[0:36:24] Caroline: At least. We haven't even decided what happens after that, but at least a year and a half.

[0:36:28] Jason: Yeah. And so, I do think that there is a reality of you're getting access to a lot of helpful content, you're getting access to our roadmap to Calm Launch Formula, all these other things that we're still building and putting into WAIM. And I think that it's actually, it's kind of one of those things where if you've been on the fence, this is like the last moment you're going to have a chance to buy no matter what. So it's like, well, I was eventually going to buy at some point like this is my last-ditch effort to do that. And so, yeah, I think that obviously there's still so much value in there. And we hear from people all the time. Like we had someone who emailed us the other day. They were like, I just went through the Calm Launch Formula prompts for my next launch, and I am truly blown away. I didn't give myself enough time. I only have four weeks from my launch, but I never could have gotten done everything that I've gotten done. And this is worth the price of WAIM Unlimited alone. Like just this alone. And so, I think it's like things like that, like I believe people will find so much value in like very specific parts of WAIM but then you'll have access to it forever and you'll be able to always go into like, oh, I need to get better at my like email funnels and like setting up emails. Great. You have the email power playbooks coaching session that will still be valuable, no matter how email marketing changes in the next five years, the principles are still going to be the same.

[0:37:38] Caroline: See my previous point about always trying to make the coaching sessions evergreen and broad because they all still apply.

[0:37:42] Jason: Yeah. And I do think we are going to have some coaching sessions coming up this year that are going to be really helpful for building apps with Lovable doing that. And that's going to change because the interface of that app is going to change pretty drastically. But like I think the principles will be the same using and setting up like ManyChat through Instagram and figuring that out. And even if that's not building like a full six, seven figure business through Instagram, like a lot of people promise you, if it's still just helping you make one to $2,000 a month, that's still really valuable. Like that's still very helpful. So I think those things are going to be really worth joining WAIM and getting access to for years to come. But yeah, it really is getting into the like hey, you're opting into... We are going to build apps in 2026. That's our goal. And so, you're going to get those all for free. And if one of them becomes something like a Teachery where it's that valuable and it can help you generate revenue for your business, it's worth the investment because you're just never going to have to pay for it.

[0:38:36] Caroline: For sure. So those are a couple follow ups to our big pivot that we are making. And again, hope you're enjoying the behind the scenes of us figuring it out in real time and it's going to be interesting one way or the other.

[0:38:50] Jason: Well yeah. And it's also going to be like a little bit of a long cliffhanger because we're going to be podcasting up until end of July, August-ish, somewhere in there.

[0:38:59] Caroline: Yeah.

[0:38:59] Jason: Then we're going to take a break until December, so you won't hear from us. But in that whole time, we're going to be obviously raising a newborn baby, but with the free time that we do have between all the ... and apps...

[0:39:09] Caroline: We're going to be chatting about what does this look like.

[0:39:10] Jason: ...we're going to be thinking about all this stuff. And so, I feel like we're going to come back with a little bit of a vengeance and some plans of action.

[0:39:16] Caroline: ... our stuff. We think that we also could come back absolutely...

[0:39:19] Jason: We could be very tired.

[0:39:21] Caroline: ...demolished from the newborn that we got.

[0:39:23] Jason: We're not actually selling WAIM Unlimited anymore. We're selling unlimited WAIM. It's a brand-new offer. And so, because we don't have the brain power to do anything else. Okay. That's it for this episode. Tune in next week as you hear us talk about our paternity leave, maternity leave, parental leave plans.

[0:39:40] Caroline: You got it on the third one.

[0:39:40] Jason: ... hard to get the parental leave part.

[0:39:43] Caroline: I like how your brain went, okay, don't say maternity leave, because I want to include myself.

[0:39:48] Jason: Right.

[0:39:48] Caroline: So you said paternity leave.

[0:39:50] Jason: But I meant parental, and then... Yeah, you had to figure it out. All right. Next week, I'm going to grab my e-bike. Okay. Bye.