Introducing... Growing Steady! 🎉

Welcome to a new era of our Wandering Aimfully newsletter!

We're excited to be trying something new this year, and pouring even more intention and effort into making this an email you look forward to opening each and every week.

We combed through hundreds of your survey responses about your favorite parts of our newsletter so we could assemble the most valuable newsletter for online creators who want to grow a calm business.

(👆 A big claim, we know, but that's the intention at least!)

To do that, we're moving to a 3P's format with weekly advice on the three key areas of building a Calm Business™️—aka one that is 🔄 Predictable, 🤑 Profitable, and 🧘 Peaceful.

Every Growing Steady newsletter will have:

• 🔄 Predictable: 1 actionable tip for your systems or strategic planning

• 🤑 Profitable: 1 actionable tip for your audience or profit growth

• 🧘 Peaceful: 1 actionable tip for more happiness and fun on your journey

We'll also have a new once-a-month SPECIAL EDITION (ooooooh, ahhhhhh, secrets!) that will come out on the last Friday of every month, so keep an eye out for more on that starting in February!

Without further ado, let's kick things off and enter this new era together!

- Jason and Caroline

PREDICTABLE 🔄

3 must-haves to get into flow state

Try to answer this question honestly: Do you have intentional routines to get into “work mode” or is it more of a flip open the laptop at the dining table and hope work starts to happen?? 😬 👀

These next three items are going to be really simple, but oftentimes simple is the best way forward!

Must-have #1 🧹: A clutter-free workspace.

Cluttered space, cluttered mind, folks! Do yourself a favor and take the next 30 minutes to clean off your desk, tidy your table, do whatever is necessary to have a clutter-free environment to work in. If you need to declare desk bankruptcy (a term we just made up) and slide everything off your desk into a cardboard box to sort through this weekend, do it!

Must-have #2 🎧: A flow-zone playlist.

This advice is being written from a person (👨🏻‍🦲👋) who has written 5,000,000+ words, published 2 books, 400+ articles, etc… Find a go-to playlist that gets you in the FLOW-ZONE. For me, that’s Synthwave. I can turn that playlist on and 💥 the work starts flowing. Find a playlist or type of music that immediately snaps you into work-mode when you need it and queue it up daily.

Must-have #3 👨‍💻: A no-distraction to-do app.

Lean hard into an app or productivity tool that spurs you into action. It doesn’t matter how many features a tool has or how many productivity experts use it, use the tool that helps YOU get the job done. For me, it’s the native Apple Notes app. It’s not sexy, I can barely change formatting, but I can open a new note and churn through writing tasks and to-do lists without feeling distracted at all. For Caroline, it's Notion.

We humans are very good at building routines, but we’re also really great at sticking with mediocre/bad work habits. Take time this week to get these three ducks in a row and we guarantee your focus and output will increase!

​- Jason 👨🏻‍🦲​

PROFITABLE 🤑

Email migration = $2K annual savings!

It’s easy to think that profit only comes in the form of sales and increasing margins. But, profit also exists in reviewing your expenses and pruning things you no longer need.

We’re going to save 💸 $2,000 per year 💸 by making the switch to ConvertKit as our email provider and evaluating the other email apps we were paying for. That’s money we immediately save every month and takes zero ongoing effort from this point forward!

Our old email marketing “tech stack”:

• Drip: $246/month (main email marketing tool)

• RightMessage: $79/month (fancy email form tool)

• PlusThis: $49/month (countdown timer tool)

• Interact: $29/month (quiz growth tool)

• Total: $403/month or $4,836/year

Our new email stack:

• ​ConvertKit: $209/month (new email tool)

• ​CountdownHero: $67 once (new countdown timer tool)

• ​Interact: $29/month (same quiz tool)

• NEW Total: $244/month* or $2,928/year

*We added CountdownHero as a $6 monthly fee to show it spread out across the year. The links above are affiliate links and we get a small commission if you sign up through them. 😉🤝

It took us a week to redo our email forms, set up a new countdown timer tool for our sales pages and email funnel, and unhook some previous integrations from Drip, but we’re stoked to save $2,000 per year and have one less tool to use!

Maybe this is the sign you need this week to evaluate your business expenses? Feel free to go through our ETAC Exercise if you want some step-by-step help.

​- Jason 👨🏻‍🦲​

PEACEFUL 🧘

Defining your non-negotiables to prevent burnout

Maybe it’s the challenge of growing Teachery this year or just that new year energy, but every day right now I wake up excited to jump into work.

The danger of this unbridled motivation, however, is that I know if this intense focus and motivation is not balanced properly, it can lead to burnout, which is the #1 thing we’re trying to avoid by crafting a calm business.

So the question is, how do I channel this energy and intentionally pace myself for sustainability in the long term?

My answer is by defining my life non-negotiables.

I ask myself: What are the non-work things I will commit time to so that I don’t unintentionally sacrifice them in pursuit of my business goals?

For example, a big non-work goal for me this year is to get back into making art regularly. So my non-negotiable is one hour of art time on Sundays. I block it out on my schedule, and I protect that time like it’s sacred.

Just by setting that intention and making the time commitment, I’ve created more art in the past two weeks than basically the past two years, no joke.

When Sunday rolls around, my instinct might be to spend an extra hour or two hammering away at work projects. That’s considered fun for me right now. But again, I know that if I don’t intentionally cultivate the other areas of my life—my creativity, my relationships, my health—then this intense work focus is a fast pass to burnout.

My question for you this week is:

What are the non-work things YOU will commit to protecting this year? What time commitments will you make to yourself to balance out your work goals and keep your pace sustainable?

If you want to read more about non-negotiables and avoiding burnout, check out our Calm Business Encyclopedia article on this topic.

​- Caroline 👩🏻‍🦰​​