Episode #081: The 120-Day Hiatus: Thriving Without Constant Content Creation
The 120-Day Hiatus: Thriving Without Constant Content Creation
Today's episode answer's the age old question:
Can you build a business without creating NEW core content every week...
I have determined it's not as simple as yes or no, so, I recorded a full podcast episode on this topic for you...
During the show we're gonna dive DEEP into some exciting things including...
The (4) key things we shifted our focus to in order to still generate new list growth, audience engagement, and a revenue increase during my time away from creating new podcasts.
The (2) things that we DID NOT DO to keep the momentum of the "content free time" and not replace it with activities that wouldn't create real growth.
A breakdown of some key stats; including how much revenue we've generated during our content break, how many people we've added to our list, and how much action our OLD episodes got while I was away.
Tune in to discover how stepping back from creating continuous content could unlock new growth avenues for your business and hear about the marketing strategies that kept the engine running.
If you're feeling stuck on the content creation hamster wheel, this episode is for you!
Links Mentioned
Full Transcript
Zach Spuckler [00:00:00]:
This is Not Your Average Online Marketing Podcast, episode number 81. And in this episode, we're talking about how I took a 4 month break from creating core content for my business and still continue to generate sales, growth, and business. So if you're feeling burnt out on content or you just wanna know what to focus on to really get the wheels moving in your business, this episode is for you, so stay tuned. Hey. Hey. Hey, not so average marketer. Welcome to another episode of the podcast. And I am really excited for this week's episode. 1st and foremost, because it's been about 4 months, just over a 120 days since we've released a podcast episode, and I was really excited to record this episode.
Zach Spuckler [00:00:47]:
And I think that's the biggest thing for me. To be honest, we have around 250 episodes of the podcast backlogged. And starting if I'm really honest, a couple years ago, I just wasn't as inspired by the podcast. It felt like a heavy task every week. It felt like new content I had to create, and we'll talk more about that today and some of the things that I'm doing to make it a little easier to record podcast content. But we essentially haven't created any new core published content in our business since about a 120 days ago. And just to really clarify what I mean by that, that means we haven't published a blog. We haven't published a podcast.
Zach Spuckler [00:01:34]:
We haven't published a YouTube video. We're still sending emails, and I post on social from time to time, which I'm also gonna talk about today. But, really, there's no, like, living core owned content that we've created for the internet, since about 4 months ago. And the reason I wanted to record this episode was, number 1, I have taken a nice break from the podcast, and that's given me the space to, like, breathe, honestly, not worry about creating content, get to focus on developing my launches and some of my strategies and working really closely with clients and students and people in our membership. But here's the reality. I think that in the online space, we hear a lot like, you know, content is king or, like, just get your content out every week. And I was just in a space mentally, to be honest, where I'm like, I don't wanna create new content. I'm just not feeling the creationist vibe.
Zach Spuckler [00:02:35]:
You know? And I know that sounds silly. I've been doing this for almost 10 years. It'll be 10 years in February 2025 since we formed our LLC. And there are ebbs and flows in business, and there is the good with the bad. But I wanted to talk to you about what we focused on during a time where content creation and just to be really clear, I'm talking about content that you create and own, blogs, podcasts, YouTube videos. And I know you don't own YouTube videos, but I'm talking about stuff that you publish it, it goes on the Internet, maybe it gets traffic from Google or you drive traffic to it. We didn't do that for about a 120 days. Our last podcast was back on April 26, which if you're listening to this on the day that we released this podcast, is just over a 120 days ago.
Zach Spuckler [00:03:26]:
And I wanted to share with you some quick stats just to give you context. So first things first, we in that time period, over the last 121 days, we had 33140 downloads of the podcast. So one thing to be aware of is that even though we haven't been creating the podcast, people Ads still been listening to some of it. We recommend it to people in our programs. We have episodes that we backlogged and put into email sequences. So we're still getting some downloads of the podcast, but prior to taking the break, we could get 500 or I'm sorry, 5000 to 6000 downloads a month of our podcast compared to less than that over the span of 4 months. So we definitely saw a slowdown there. The other fun stat is that even though we weren't creating content, we had 2633 net growth to our email list.
Zach Spuckler [00:04:23]:
So what I mean by that is you'll hear more about this in today's episode, but we still market to our email list. We're still emailing our list. To me, email is one of my nonnegotiables. And so we were still emailing our list, which means people unsubscribe. So we lose anywhere from 50 to a 150 people a week depending on how frequently I email, but we netted just over 2600 new subscribers, which was pretty cool. Because I think a lot of times we equate creating content with growing our email list or content that people will share, and that grows our email list. But even though we weren't creating a ton of content, we still had over 2600 net growth to our email list. Our email list is now sitting just over 18,000 people.
Zach Spuckler [00:05:10]:
Compared to when we started, it was around 15500. Okay? So here's the really big one, and I wanna share this with a little asterisk, which is we have done a lot of foundational work. We have lots of places that we generate revenue and growth from. But over the last 120 days, we have generated a $187,000 in revenue. Now it's actually slightly more than that, but I didn't wanna get bogged down in the 100s of dollars and cents side of things. But about a $187,000 in revenue has been generated over the last 120 days. And that's without a podcast, without a blog post, just really leaning into the audience that we built and tool systems and processes that continue to grow our audience even if I'm not publishing content. So what I wanna talk to you about today, is not, oh my gosh.
Zach Spuckler [00:06:06]:
Here's how to make a $187k in a 120 days with no content. Right? Here's how to triple your email list and never publish a blog. I think there's value in content. I also mentioned earlier that we have over 250 episodes just kinda like sitting there. I think it's like 200 and 30 maybe, but we have content. Right? So I do want to acknowledge that there's a level of content has been created in our business. And because we've had, you know, several 1,000 downloads of our podcast, even when we're not publishing the podcast, we know that our existing content drives views and engagement. Right? So I want to acknowledge that I know that having, like, a content library has been helpful to us.
Zach Spuckler [00:06:54]:
But like I said, in the grand scheme of things, over 4 months, we got about half as many downloads as we get in 1 month when we publish the podcast every week. So all of this to say, you can see good growth of your list and your revenue even if you're not seeing massive growth of your website traffic or your podcast downloads. And so what I wanna get into today, if you're game, I hope you are, is 4 things that we focused really aggressively on and 2 things that we decided not to focus on at all during our season of content hibernation, if you will. So first things first, let's get into the things that we focused on to still generate revenue growth, and really great engagement of our our audience during this period. So first is email marketing. I am a huge advocate of emailing your list. I have a a friend of mine, his name is Cody Burch, and he emails his list every day. And that's where I aspire to be because he always writes really good story driven content based Email, and they they really are really good.
Zach Spuckler [00:08:06]:
But, you know, we try to email our list at least once a week. So my rule of thumb was, hey. If I'm gonna step back from the podcast because I don't wanna, like, come up with content angles and things to talk about, I'm still gonna write email at least once a week. And typically, I talk about story and experiential content when I send my emails. So for example, if you've been following me, on my email list, which I hope you have. If not, you should get on there. But if you've been following me on my email list, you know that I recently went to London to see Taylor Swift's The Eras Tour live, which was incredible, by the way. Totally life changing.
Zach Spuckler [00:08:44]:
But I wrote an email about being in London, about being excited for the Eras Tour. I sent an email after I came back showing my outfit that I wore with, like, my custom jacket and, you know, the people I was with. Like, I think it's really great to let people into our lives. And we are far and away I actually had a good conversation with a friend in London about this. We're not an influencer business. Right? We're not having, like, you know, a big brand sponsor us to, like, go to London for a week. Right? They're not paying for our trip, and then we're creating content for them. But in some ways, we are influencers because in most cases, people are emulating who you are and how you show up.
Zach Spuckler [00:09:29]:
Now does that mean that you need to be a big bro marketer and, like, rent a private jet in a Lambo and, like, drive down the streets of Miami? No. But people connect with people and they connect with people's stories. So when I'm sending out an email to my list, I always include, like, a personal experience or a story that I can share when I'm sending my weekly email. If I'm doing a promotion, I may be more tactical or focused or outcome driven, but I like to let people behind the curtain share what I'm doing, share where I'm coming from, share what I'm working on, and people seem to really connect with that. The second thing that I wanna note about the email marketing is that every email has an opportunity to pay me when I'm sending my weekly email. And so for us, this really is our Facebook and Instagram ads boot camp. That's like our core offer. We do it live 3 to 4 times a year, but we always have it available on evergreen TheAdsBootcamp.com.
Zach Spuckler [00:10:25]:
And we have a $25 product. And so, basically, in every email, I would do one of 2 things. I would either talk about how we were using what we teach in the boot camp in our business as a whole and how it tied into the story of the week, or if there wasn't a natural connection point, I would do what's called a super signature. This was not created by me. This was created a long time ago by Dean Jackson, but you've probably seen it. It's where people, like, write an email, you know, their weekly email, and then it's like, PS. Here's 3 ways you can work with me. Listen to my podcast, buy my $25 boot camp, or click here to inquire about working with me 1 on 1.
Zach Spuckler [00:11:01]:
So I'm either weaving an offer into my story, or if I'm just telling a story and building connection and and relationships with my audience, then I'll just add a super signature with different ways that they can work with us. Right? So that's a beautiful bridge into the second thing that we focused on because email marketing is great, but you've always gotta be getting new people onto your email list. And so we, during the last essentially 4 months, have been running Facebook ads pretty consistently. The first I'll be totally honest. The first 30ish days after we ended the podcast, I was coming off a launch. I was planning out a quarter. I was working with my team. So we weren't spending as aggressively.
Zach Spuckler [00:11:48]:
But starting about May early May, May 6th, May 8th, you know, a couple weeks after we had taken a like, really made the decision to step away from the podcast, we started spending at least $500 a week on lead generation ads. Now please hear me. This is not me saying you need to go out and spend $500 a week on list building ads. I'm just giving you the numbers because I'm a numbers nerd and I like to share them. But right now, we spend about $5,000 a month on Facebook ads. We spend up to, $100, $1200 a week just growing the list. And so I have a freebie running right now directly related to Facebook ads that's just running all the time as a Facebook ad, and it's growing my email list. Then I spend 50 to a $100 a week on sales retargeting ads.
Zach Spuckler [00:12:40]:
So when you opt into our freebie, you're ultimately gonna be offered the Facebook Ads boot camp. And if you look at the sales page or the tripwire page, you are going to get a retargeting ad to remind you to buy the boot camp. So those are the 2 core ads that we're running. And then because I'm in a bit of a content pause, I haven't been doing a ton of, like, engagement ads or, like, engagement ads or, like, Instagram ads or Facebook ads for my podcast or my content, because I haven't been creating a lot of content. But, also, when I create content, including this week's episode, I'll also market those with a small ads budget to engage my audience. Now the Facebook ads, I just wanna touch on this. You know, I think if you're not creating content, you really should consider running Facebook ads. And the reason that we have Facebook ads going all the time is we pretty much I don't wanna say every day because there's been a couple gaps and that has to do with our advertising strategy, but we average over a week at least 1 to 2 sales a day.
Zach Spuckler [00:13:49]:
So just to clarify, we may go a day where we don't see a sale, but typically then the next day we'll see, like, 2 or 3 sales. So we average a sale every single day essentially for the last 4 months. And that can be of our boot camp. That could be of our membership, but we're consistently generating sales. And so that the the backbone of that is that we're always driving new people onto our list from Facebook ads. And then the third thing that we've been focusing on over the last several months is our automated sequences and sales pages. So when you opt into our freebie, the thank you page is an offer to buy the boot camp for $25, and so we call that a tripwire. The minute you opt into our list and are made an offer to buy something, that's a tripwire.
Zach Spuckler [00:14:40]:
And then if you buy it, then you go into a sequence that promotes our membership. If you don't buy it, you go into a sequence that re promotes that boot camp through email. And so part of what we've done over the last 4 months is just really looked at those sequences in emails. We worked with a sales specialist who looked at our email flow and our content flow, who gave us some intel, which actually boosted our membership take rate on the back of the boot camp. We've been selling more boot camps. But one thing to be thinking about is if you wanna step back from your content, that's totally fine, I think. But you also need to have something in place that acts like content. Right? So for us, that was our weekly email, but Social new subscribers are going through these automated sequences.
Zach Spuckler [00:15:28]:
So at no point in time does somebody come into our email list and not get made an offer. Right? So this will be a little, word salad y in a sense, but think about it like this. If we're promoting our low ticket offer on day 3 of our email sequence, If we run ads for 3 days, now someone is getting made an offer via email on that day 3. If we keep running ads, now someone is hitting day 3 every single day. And for us, it's more like day 3, 5, 7, 10, 11, and 12 of our sequence are all offering a product. So think about it like this. Every single day that we are running an ad after, you know, the first couple days, somebody is being offered one of our products every single day. Right? And, you know, I think a lot of people have heard this philosophy before, but I love when people say it.
Zach Spuckler [00:16:22]:
They're like, just always be selling. Right? If you wanna make sales every day, you gotta always be offering your products. And so we use automated sequences to do that. Okay? So that's the third thing that we focused on was dialing in those automated sequences. So super quick recap. We are using email marketing at least once a week to promote to our list, kind of what's going on, what I'm working on, and then inviting them to buy something. We're using Facebook ads to make sure that that audience is growing all the time. And then we're using automated sequences so that when people join our list, they're made an offer.
Zach Spuckler [00:16:55]:
If they don't buy that offer, they go into our general list where we're gonna communicate with them on a weekly basis and build a deeper relationship, which brings us to the 4th thing that we focused on, which was intentional promotions and launches. So we actually launched a couple of times during the last 120 days, and that's part of where our revenue growth came from. The first thing that we did was our Facebook and Instagram ads boot camp live in April, May. It was the last week of April into the 1st week of May. And side note, we're gonna be repeating that challenge live September 23rd through 27th. So mark your calendars. We'll be rolling out information in a couple of weeks on how to sign up for the live version. But we did our live Facebook and Instagram ads boot camp, which was so fun.
Zach Spuckler [00:17:43]:
We had so many new things that we tested. Most of them worked pretty dang well. I was really just pleased and tickled with the whole thing, to be completely honest. But that is our core launch for our membership. So we launched our membership. We also, did a challenge launch program. So we haven't updated our challenge launch program in at least two and a half, if not 3 years. And so we completely rebuilt that program from the ground up, and we launched it using a wait list style promotion, which I will talk more about, in the next few episodes because it was a really cool strategy, that we learned from a friend of mine, Kate McKibbon over at Hello Funnels.
Zach Spuckler [00:18:26]:
But we did a a wait list promotion. We generated about 18 k on that. We did a couple affiliate promos. So I was in a summit called, low ticket live with a friend of mine, Lizzie Goddard. I promoted a AI software that I really believe in from a friend of mine, Menekse Stewart, called, Marketing Magic, though she's rebranding that. So I will share more details on the rebrand. But we promoted that software. We promoted that summit, because they're people, products, and presentations that I actually believe in.
Zach Spuckler [00:18:57]:
So we did some of that. We also, had an event when I was in London, UK. So we sent Email, we ran Facebook ads, we did all the things to incentivize people to come join us in London. Right? And so I wanted to take a second here because I think this is a really important point is that I don't think content creation is bad or has to be hard. But but for me, the weight of content creation of, like, knowing I have to record a podcast, I have to create content was actually pulling me away from doing some of those intentional promotions and launches. It's like my creative energy was being spent talking for, you know, hours to a to a podcast microphone. And then when it would come time to create, you know, content for a paid offer, I was like, I just don't have it in me. Right? And so looking at this list over the last 4 months that we've done a big live challenge launch, We did a small internal wait list launch.
Zach Spuckler [00:20:00]:
We did a couple affiliate promos. We had an event. I traveled. I look back and I think, gosh. That was I would have never had the capacity for that on top of the podcast. Now I would say we actually have a program that I'll be sharing more about. Not my program. A program that I joined, that's been really great in the sense that it's helping us kind of pull content ideas on an ongoing basis.
Zach Spuckler [00:20:26]:
So we're now building a library, and maybe library is not even the right word, but, like, in its simplest form, it's it's a it's a running list. It's growing all the time of content and topic ideas that I can speak on. So now when I go to record a podcast episode, I don't have to use that creative energy to come up with the idea. I can go to my content bank, pull the idea that I wanna use for the week, talk for 20 minutes, and kinda move on. Right? For me, the hardest part about recording podcast, and this is just me personally, is that waffling on the front end of, like, what am I gonna record today? Right? And so we're working on batching and planning more efficiently. So those are the 4 big things we focused on, Facebook ads with automated sequences, regular email marketing, and intentional promotions and launches. I did wanna have a little section of this show where I talk about the things we didn't focus on because I think sometimes it's easy to think that there's other little things that well, did you do this? Did you do that? For us, I wanna make it super clear. We did not focus on social media.
Zach Spuckler [00:21:31]:
I won't sit here and say we never post on social media. We didn't use social media. We advertised for all of our promotions, and that included taking 1 or 2 Instagram or Facebook posts and amplifying them. But, honestly, if you look at my Instagram, unless I post today, but over the last 120 days, we averaged one post per 10 days. So not even weekly. I wasn't even posting on Instagram weekly. Facebook, I don't do a ton with my page, but I do admittedly use my profile. So I probably got 1 or 2 sales from my Facebook groups, you know, from my membership group or from posting about the UK event on my timeline.
Zach Spuckler [00:22:14]:
But the big thing is that we posted as I was inspired, not in a way that was required. And I think that that is such a big takeaway is that because we leaned on Facebook ads and automated sequences and email marketing, we built a relationship that when I was doing something, you know, whether it was my boot camp or my challenge program wait list promotion, I could just email my list. Right? And if I felt like it, I'd post on Facebook and Instagram, but I didn't feel like it was a requirement to me on social media. So I just wanted to touch on that. Like, we didn't focus on social media. There was no social media plan. There was no social media buffer. We had a social media person create some content for us that we posted, and it was good.
Zach Spuckler [00:23:01]:
But was it a core part of our strategy? No. The second thing that we didn't focus on was, I'm gonna say, like, new offers. Right? So I would be lying if I said we didn't launch anything new because I had mentioned in here that one of the intentional promos that we did was a wait list promo for an upgraded version of our challenge program. But but but but that was not a new concept. It was not a new niche or or content silo. Like, we had over 2,000 customers of our old challenge program, and it was just due for a reboot and a refresh. So, admittedly, we built a brand new offer, but it was on an offer that we already knew sold. Right? So I I know that that's kind of like, yeah, but she made a new offer, and I just want to acknowledge that, yeah, I did, but I wasn't, like, testing new offers.
Zach Spuckler [00:23:57]:
I already knew my challenge launch offer would stick. I already knew people would want it. I already knew it was due for a refresh. So this wasn't like a, boy, I hope this new idea works. This was like a, what's the most efficient way to update and capitalize on the updating of this program? We also, repeated promotions. So our Facebook and Instagram ads boot camp, we didn't refine. Right? And not refine. Maybe that's not the right word.
Zach Spuckler [00:24:25]:
We did refine. We did make some minor changes, but we didn't rebuild from the ground up. Right? So maybe I should say we refined. We didn't rebuild. So we used similar presentations, similar content. Right? Really, our relaunch of our boot camp in April, May was a rebrand. Like, we updated our slide decks. We updated our design.
Zach Spuckler [00:24:47]:
We updated our process. But the core content and the core methodology and the sales page, all exactly the same. So something to think about is if you're gonna pause content creation, give yourself the grace to also lean into what's already working if you have that already. And then, like I said, what that really means is that our focus was on refining and growing our offers, not on making new stuff. So to just be in this season of not having to make stuff was really nice. And I'm not saying that you have to do it. I'm not saying you don't have to do it. You may not even be at the point in your business yet where you're ready to take a content hiatus, but we were.
Zach Spuckler [00:25:26]:
And so my goal with this episode isn't for you to be like, oh, yeah. I need to take 4 months off of content creation. It's just to encourage you that, one, if you're someone who fears the content creation hamster wheel, one, not everything you publish generates sales. Right? Let's just have that candid conversation. Not everything you publish, blog, podcast, YouTube is going to generate a sale. Right? But for us, if we are always growing our list with ads, have our sequences, market to our email list, and then do intentional promos where it makes sense, our revenue continues to grow. Our revenue continues to sustain itself, and we can do things like bring on people as employees and pay our contractors well. Right? And 2, the other thing I hope you take away from this is that it's not all about content all the time.
Zach Spuckler [00:26:22]:
You don't have to be on social media. You don't have to create something new all the time. Again, I'm speaking more to, admittedly, someone who's like, I've created some content, maybe 20, 30, 50 blogs or podcasts, and you're like, I'm just, I don't know where to focus, and I feel like I'm just yelling into the abyss. I get that. I was feeling that way, and that's why I step back. Right? Now if you're someone who's brand new and you're like, oh, man. I don't have any content. Right? Just like a little side note is that maybe this is your invitation that, yeah, content's important.
Zach Spuckler [00:26:55]:
Create content, blogs, podcasts, YouTube, etcetera, but don't put so much weight on it that you forget the stuff that moves the needle is growing the list, talking to the list, and converting the list with offers. And can content blogs, podcast, YouTube drive more people to those channels? Absolutely. But that is a long game. Right? I have over 200 podcast episodes. And like I told you, over the last 4 months, we had 33 100 downloads. Now I'm not saying that that's bad. Like, it's Social not worth it. That's a great number.
Zach Spuckler [00:27:26]:
Right? But when I know that on average, I can double that number, with 4 episodes a month, 4 to 5, you know, it just shows you, like, yeah, content has a shelf life. Yeah. Content can be evergreen and continue to drive people to engage with you. But there's also this element of, like, it's not world altering, life changing if you don't have your content locked in, if you don't have a killer SEO plan, if you're not going viral on social Media. Like, you've gotta have other ways to bring people in, and for us that's Facebook ads. So I just wanna wrap up here. Again, super quick recap. We haven't recorded a podcast until today, Monday, August 26th, which is 4 months since April 26th.
Zach Spuckler [00:28:14]:
And we've been able to do that by focusing on Facebook ads, automated sequences, email marketing, and intentional promos and launches. We've moved away from stressing about the requirement of social media and trying to create new offers. Anything we create, we want to enhance or improve. What we've already proven works over the last several years. And by doing that, we've been able to generate, over a $187,000 in revenue, gain over 2600 subscribers, and we didn't have to publish every week to do it. So if you would like a transcript of this show, you can head over to heartsoulhustle.com/nyap081. Again, that's heartsoulhustle.com/nyap081 for Not Your Average Podcast, episode number 81. We'll have a transcript, some show notes, breakdowns, links to the resources that I mentioned in this episode, but I wanna leave you with this.
Zach Spuckler [00:29:09]:
If you're in a season where content feels heavy, content does not equal cash. Cash equals cash. What are the high impact cash generating activities you can lean into if content just isn't the vibe right now? You know? If if that's where you're at, that's okay. I wanna give you permission to know it's okay to not be on a content creation hamster wheel all the time. So I hope you got tremendous value from this episode. As always, feel free to tag me on Instagram, @zachspuckler. I love hearing from you guys either in the stories or in the DMs. Love hearing from you guys.
Zach Spuckler [00:29:42]:
I hope you got mad value. And hopefully, I will see you next week because we are bringing more episodes back. We're back, baby. And, if you wanna enjoy that, keep tuning in. More content coming your way and have an incredible rest of your week.
