Episode #068: The Missing Episodes: Behind the Scenes of our 10-Week Hiatus and Business Growth
Where the heck has the podcast been for 10-weeks?!
In today's episode, titled "The Missing Episodes," we're diving into a big question that many of you have been asking: Where has the podcast been for the past 10 weeks?
But don't worry, we have an exciting answer that you're going to love.
In this episode we’ll take a closer look at how (and why) the podcast was able to take a hiatus for ten weeks, yet still experience business growth in the meantime.
It's all about consistency and taking action, even when you feel inconsistent. Whether you're in a season of busyness, exhaustion, or simply struggling to produce content, this episode will guide you on creating consistency in your business and finding success.
Join us as Zach shares his personal journey, including his travels through Europe and Bali, and the important decisions he made during this time. Discover how prioritizing self-investment, making strategic business choices, and focusing on a single offer led to remarkable results.
If you've ever wondered how to navigate challenging seasons while maintaining momentum in your business, this episode is a must-listen.
So, get ready to gain insights and inspiration as we explore "The Missing Episodes”
Links Mentioned:
Full Transcript:
Zach Spuckler [00:00:00]:
This is not your average online marketing podcast episode number 68. And in this episode, we're talking about where has the podcast been for 10 weeks? It's a really big question with a hopefully exciting answer. And if you're a loyal listener, you'll love it, and if you're not, that's okay. You're gonna learn How we were able to essentially not create content for our podcast for 10 weeks straight, and still grow our business. So if you're in a season of busy, or tired or content has just fallen to the back seat? This episode is gonna walk you through how to create consistency in your business even when you feel inconsistent. So We're gonna call it a peek at the missing episodes, but really it's about consistency and action. So let's get into it. Hey.
Zach Spuckler [00:00:44]:
Hey. Hey, not so average marketers. Welcome back to the podcast. Now this is crazy because I'm dropping this podcast End of day, November 2nd. And the last time that I did a podcast was August 17th, and I was actually out of the country traveling Europe when that episode Dropped. And I had this grand vision for how everything was gonna go while I was out of the country and how flawless all the podcast drops were gonna be. And The simple reality is that I have just had a lot going on personally, professionally, client wise, non client wise, business wise, launch wise that My podcast has just fallen to the back seat. Right? And I wanted to talk to you today.
Zach Spuckler [00:01:26]:
I I know it's like I actually have a good friend who likes to say, like, if you leave social Later, you leave your podcast. Don't come back and do an episode where you're like, I'm back, and here's why you know, where I've been and why you should care. And I know it's, like, Counterintuitive because you should just kinda resume creating content when you can, but I wanted to actually record an episode on this because I came to realize that while I wasn't able to record a lot of podcasts, and I'll talk about what I was doing during this time, I was still able to grow our business. I was still able to really enjoy my life. I was still able to make some big dynamic Business decisions. And so I wanted to share some of those with you through the lens of, like, feeling like well, we'll talk about how I was feeling in a minute, but through the lens of, like, not feeling consistent in addition to other feelings. So over the last 10 weeks, I've I've traveled a lot. So in August through early September, my husband and I traveled through Paris, London, Scotland.
Zach Spuckler [00:02:32]:
We hit up some of these suburbs around the Greater London area, and we just spent 3 weeks Traveling Europe. It was phenomenal. Traveling the UK and Paris. And then about a month after coming back, I had to go to California for 3 days. And then about 2 weeks after that, I got on a plane and went to Bali. I was only in Bali for 5 days, but it Actually takes 9 days of travel and transit to get there. Maybe 8, 8 to 9 depending on how flights go. But during that time, I traveled a lot.
Zach Spuckler [00:03:03]:
Right? And if I had to be completely honest, I would say that I put a priority on Investing in myself, investing in my relationships, investing in my, you know, freedom capacity. Right? And When I say that, I don't want you to be like, Oh, wow. So this guy like, you know, hustles for all this time, builds up the podcast, and then just disappears. Right? I was just in a season of my my life in business where, frankly, I had created so much content in the last year. I was launching things. I was doing things, and I was just like, It wasn't working the way I wanted it to work. Right? So the other thing that I did during this period was I was doing a live workshop of our challenge launch system. We were charging, like, $300 for a weekend to work with me.
Zach Spuckler [00:03:47]:
We were selling tickets to it. And about halfway through our promotion, I said, you know what? This isn't aligned. I met with my coach, who I'm working with right now, and I was like, you know what? This just it feels like extra work. It feels like extra energy. It feels like it's gonna eat into our launch. And she asked me a really great question that I wanted to share with you guys, and I'm gonna butcher it. But the the the core of this question will be there. She said, Zach, what is it costing you to do this thing from your next promotion, from your next launch? Right? So, really, the question is, What is it costing you to make this decision that you're making right now? What is that gonna cost you? And I started really taking that question to heart.
Zach Spuckler [00:04:28]:
And so Even though we had sold spots to this, live training, we ended up refunding everybody, canceling the live training. This was gonna be the 1st weekend of October, we canceled it. And I have a coaching program that I've been running for 3 years. It's called The Incubator, and we enroll people quarterly. And in September, I made the decision to discontinue that program. We've been running it 3 years, we take about 10 to 12 businesses every quarter. It's about $2,000 per person, 25100 in some of our later cohorts. But we were like, you know what? This is not serving the big vision of the business.
Zach Spuckler [00:05:08]:
Right? And so if you're listening to this and you were in my coaching program in the past or Just recently, please know I love my coaching program. It was one of my favorite things that I did. But when I looked at the time commitment that was going into it and the timing of our live calls, and the 1 on 1 calls that I was doing with it. I was like, what is this taking me away from? And When I got really clear on those questions, both for that live promotion and for my coaching program, the answer became abundantly clear That all of this stuff I was doing, these one off workshops and my coaching program and, you know, all just all of these Things. Right? If you followed me for any period of time, you know I've probably launched 20, 30 plus offers over the last 7 years around podcasts, memberships. You know? I was like, but the reality is I'm not against a multi offer business. In fact, I love multi offer businesses. But for me, what was happening was all of my offers were kind of Growing the heads of the hydra.
Zach Spuckler [00:06:04]:
Right? You cut one off, another one grows back. And so when I looked back at my business in the last, you know, 3 3 months, I kind of said, well, this is cool because I've got the coaching and the membership, and I've got, you know, low ticket offers, and I've got live workshops, and I've got this, and I've got And suddenly, I was like, you know what? This is a lot. This is stressing me out. It's just stressing me out. Like, just to be honest, I was like, there's so much happening. Right? So what I decided to do was table the coaching program, table the live workshop for the challenge, and I launched my membership in October with our 5 day Facebook ads workshop. And we ended up doing over $25,000 in sales of the membership and the paid boot camp that leads to it. We do a $10 boot camp into a $49 a month offer.
Zach Spuckler [00:06:50]:
Of course, there's annuals and upsells, but we did 25 k in sales with 15 k of that being in profit after Affiliate payouts, expenses, advertising expenses. So I was pretty happy with that. And that to me was really this kind of Picture of, oh, wow. If I really give my focus everything, if I'm not trying to launch all the time, I came into that launch ridiculously rested, Ridiculously focused, and we crushed it. I'll be sharing more about that launch probably later in the podcast, but we ended up Converting 16% of people that joined our boot camp into members of our membership, 16%, which was a pretty good launch conversion rate. I was very happy with that. So all of this kind of happened over the course of August, September into October. Mid October, I launched my membership, And then I went to Bali for a few days.
Zach Spuckler [00:07:48]:
And I came back from Bali. I was jet lagged as you can believe. Like, I spent 5 days there and three and a half days traveling, in both coming and going. And then after being home for 2 days, I tested positive for COVID. And this is like the tail end of it. I'm finally like, this is the 1st day. I'm literally recording this on November 2nd, but this is the 1st day I was able to, like, get out of bed, without much issue, not have to take a nap in the middle of the day, you know, not feel like I need to take, Aleve or DayQuil. Like, I've just coasted through this day pretty well.
Zach Spuckler [00:08:23]:
It's definitely starting to hit me as the days get later, like, later in the day. Is, like, for the last 2 weeks between traveling, Bali, COVID, and jet lag, I've been basically useless. I'm not creating a ton of content. I'm not doing a ton of stuff for the business. And so I share all of this with you because, number 1, I know we're curious creatures, and you guys kinda wanna know what I've been up to when I haven't talked about it on the podcast in a while. But, 2, because while all of this was happening, I did something important. And that is that I made sure I had some non negotiables. Right? So for me, the non negotiables were number 1, I was gonna keep emailing my list at least once a week.
Zach Spuckler [00:09:08]:
Whether it was spontaneous, whether it was planned, whether it was for the launch, I was gonna email my list at least once a week. Because here's the thing, my podcast, I love it. It's great. Not everybody on my list sees it, but 40 to 50% of my list opens my emails. Right? And so I know that even if I can't be top of mind on Instagram, and the podcast, and Facebook, and, You know, doing all these things, what I can do is email once a week. Right? The second thing I made sure That was a total nonnegotiable during this period of time was ads. So you guys know me. I am a huge advocate of Facebook ads.
Zach Spuckler [00:09:44]:
You've listened to this podcast or you found this podcast through the boot camp, you know about the boot camp. If you don't, go to the ads bootcamp.com, which is our $25 program, one time on how to run ads through your email list on autopilot every single day. Right? The ads boot camp .com, which is how we also launch our membership. We do the ads boot camp live couple times a year. But I knew That no matter what happened during this time, when I was gallivanting through Europe or laying in bed sick, my ads were still running for me. And that to me was key because even if I'm not consistently publishing a podcast and, like, I can own that. Like, I was not continuously publishing podcasts. Right? You can go look at the dates and see I took a 10 week break.
Zach Spuckler [00:10:29]:
Right? But and this is the big one. My list was always growing via ads, and my list was consistently being communicated to via emails. Right? The other 2 things that I made nonnegotiable were continuing to sell our $25 Facebook ads boot camp, because, you know, this is maybe a shocker to you, maybe not. If you buy our boot camp, we have an email sequence that promotes our membership at the end because the membership is like an extension of the boot camp. It's if you wanna learn additional ad strategies, and get coaching and support, then you can join our membership for $50 a month. Right? And so we knew, hey. Hey. If we keep promoting that $25 boot camp, we're gonna keep getting people to spend $49 a month on the membership.
Zach Spuckler [00:11:11]:
If they spend $49 a month and stay for 6 months, we've now turned a $25 sale into a $300 customer. So we made sure that we were consistently retargeting ads to our $25 ads boot camp. So if you were if you looked at the boot camp sales page or spoiler alert, if you look at the boot camp sales page from listening to this episode? You will probably get a Facebook ad from me that promotes the boot camp, right, if you don't buy it. So you're gonna continue to see promotion for the boot camp. Now the other thing is that we launched. And I said, at least once a quarter, I wanna do some sort of launch promotion, something for the membership. Right? So we launched our membership in October with a 5 day, boot camp, and I talked a little bit about that. That was a $10 5 doll $10 Boot camp.
Zach Spuckler [00:12:01]:
It was $10 to sign up to join us live, and then we teach the class live every single day for 5 days, and then we sell our membership at the end. And what ended up happening was we had 682 people pay to be in the boot camp. 107 of them moved into the membership. And, over wanna make sure I give you the right number here. I'm actually creeping on my stats right now. About 20% of people went annual. So we had a really good annual take rate because we had a really good promotion. So And the thing is, I share all this not because it's like, well, look at all this stuff I've done.
Zach Spuckler [00:12:39]:
I'm sharing this because I want you to understand, like, even though I wasn't doing a podcast and I was Traveling the world, and I was, you know, in bed with COVID and jet lag, and, you know, I I discontinued my program, and I cut stuff from my business. The reality is I'm still growing because I'm consistently promoting. I'm consistently running ads. I'm consistently sending emails. And then when the time is right and I've got the mental and physical capacity for it, I'm also launching. Now I wanna talk briefly about some of the things I'm kind of letting go of that I kind of came across during this 10 week hiatus, if you will. And, that is I have listened to a lot of podcasters, whether they be, you know, podcasting on YouTube or on their, you know, iTunes, Apple, Spotify, whatever. And I constantly hear people who've been doing this for years.
Zach Spuckler [00:13:32]:
For context, we started our podcast, under a different name Back in 2016, we have, like, I wanna say somewhere around, like, a, 210 episodes, like, in the archives because we rebranded to not your average, Not your average online marketing podcast. But before we were that, we were the heart, soul, and hustle podcast. We had over a 150 episodes. And so I have a lot of people that I know who are podcasters, friends who are podcasters, people that I follow online who have a podcast. And a lot of times they say things like I've been podcasting for 5 years, and I've never missed a week, or I've been doing this for for 18 years. And while sometimes I forget to do this or that, I never forget to record my podcast. Right? I have 1 friend who has sent an email every single day to his list for, like, the past 2 years plus, which has been crazy to watch. Right? And when I was in Bali, I mentioned that I had gone to Bali.
Zach Spuckler [00:14:26]:
I went to speak at a retreat, And the person running the retreat offered me to participate as well. And I said, hey. Look. If I'm speaking, I I I wanna respect that. But If you're like, hey. I'm totally game, to to let you be part of this. I'm totally game. And so we did some really cool Stuff we did, you know, some excursions, some laying out by the pool.
Zach Spuckler [00:14:47]:
We did a sound healing. But the biggest thing is that we did that stuck with me was a Water purification ceremony. And I'm gonna totally botch this. Please feel free to look it up. But the the very Oversimplified, I know it is, version of this is that you kind of go into these pools, in a natural spring in a temple, And the water runs over you, and you kind of visualize or imagine yourself kind of releasing what doesn't serve you. And I can I can I can honestly say, like, you know, I'm not a very woo woo person? Like, I'm a little woo. I call myself woo adjacent. Like, I'm not carrying around crystals.
Zach Spuckler [00:15:27]:
I'm not, you know, manifesting every day, but, like, My gratitude journal. I have a crystal in my office. Like, I'm not against it. It's just not my core makeup of my business or my goal setting. Right? So when I went to Volley and did this, I I would be lying if I didn't say I was a little bit, like, nervous or maybe even skeptical, but skeptical is not quite the word I'm looking for because I'm always open and receptive. But like, I was hoping that it would be like this, like, you know, you always have high hopes. That it'd be like this transcendent, crazy, like just can't even explain an experience. Right? And I got to chat with the person who was leading our ceremony, on the drive to the temple.
Zach Spuckler [00:16:07]:
And she said, you know, the biggest issue that happens is that People set these big expectations for what this will be for them. And then when it doesn't achieve that, when it doesn't hit that pinnacle of, like, Transcendental Ascension. They they don't they don't feel like they got anything out of it. And she said, what you get out of it is what you need out of it. And if that's a feeling, great. And if that's an experience, great. And so when I thought about that, I I really thought about what I needed to release. And for me, the biggest thing is, like, shame.
Zach Spuckler [00:16:41]:
Like, if I'm just completely point blank honest, like, I went to a retreat in California, and we talked about how, the root of a lot of our issues is shame, like, shame around how people perceive us, How we perceive ourself? And the reality is that in my life, I I carry more shame than I I care to admit. You know, I carry shame when my launches aren't bigger. I carry shame when my membership churn is too high. I carry shame around my weight. You know, I lost weight. I gained it. I lost weight. I gained it.
Zach Spuckler [00:17:11]:
I yo yo, and I I carry shame around that. And I really carry shame around Not posting a podcast every week. Like like, I'm just not as consistent as other people. How is anyone gonna trust me? Right? And that's the story that I tell myself. Do we deliver in our membership? Absolutely. Do we show up? Do we do our calls? Do we do all this stuff? Totally. But I've created this story that if I'm not posting a podcast Every single week that I'm not good enough. And so I can't sit here and say that as the water swept over me, I released that completely, and I have no shame anymore.
Zach Spuckler [00:17:47]:
Right? Like, wouldn't that be great? But I can tell you it's something that I brought awareness to. I also think by extension, I'm releasing some of these expectations, of what I need to have and what others expect of me. What other people expect outside of what I've kind of guaranteed within my offers, that's not on me. What I expect of myself, If I don't hit it, it doesn't make me a bad person. Right? And, again, I sit here saying this not from a place of, like, I've overcome all of this, and I wouldn't even say it's coming from a place of, like, Wounding. It's just a place of like, wow, what a great experience this was. Even if it's not my jam, my MO, to go there, try this, Sit with it and think, you know what? These are the things that I need to work on. Right? And, I also, you know, am letting go of, like, physical stuff.
Zach Spuckler [00:18:33]:
Right? So my coaching programs, my some of my funnels, some of our low ticket products, we're, like, shutting them down. We're, like, finding dead links and turning them off. Right? And that's really what I'm letting go of. Know, I'm letting go of this expectation that because another podcaster says they've been doing this for 5 years and I met and never missed a week, and I miss 10 weeks means I can't be as successful. Right? Does it mean I need to probably be more consistent with the podcast? Maybe, if that's what I want. But I'm also acknowledging that I email consistently. I run ads consistently. I promote consistently.
Zach Spuckler [00:19:03]:
I launch consistently. And so this has also been a really great opportunity for me to realize that We all have flaws. We all have missteps. We all have things we wish we did better, and I amplify what I'm doing poorly. That's Probably a quality that I have. I amplify what isn't working instead of amplifying in my head. Right? Instead of amplifying, like, Wow. We had this great launch, and we had these killer ads running, and our funnels were booming, and our while we were in Europe, I didn't work a lot.
Zach Spuckler [00:19:30]:
Like, I don't focus on that. No. I focus on You miss 10 weeks of podcasts, and you're not consistent enough. Right? So for me, it's this realization that I need to be more focused on what serves me and not necessarily focused on what other people say should serve me. Right? So I have this, like, personal thing Where when I let go of something, so, you know, these expectations, this shame, these products and funnels, if I'm letting go of something, I'm Particularly making space for something else. Right? And point blank, some of this space is just space, you know, for the sake of space. Like, I don't want to work 80 hours a week. So if I'm taking stuff off my plate, some of that will just become free time.
Zach Spuckler [00:20:13]:
Right? Or I'll bring a team in to help me. But in terms of what I'm taking on to kind of counterbalance what I'm letting go of, like, I think of this as like, I'm in a season in my business where I'm trying to grow. And so if I'm letting go of something, if I'm opening my hand to release, I'm opening my hand to receive, but that that reception, that receiving is gonna require action. And so into 2024, number 1, we're focusing on a year end list building blitz. So right now, it's a little slower than I would like it be, and I know some of you are gonna roll your eyes a little bit when I say how it's going. We're adding about 50 people to our list a day. I'd really like to get that closer to 2,000 People in the month of November, 2,000 people in the month of December. So there's plenty of time to scale up.
Zach Spuckler [00:20:58]:
It's only November 2nd, but that's something that we've made space for. Because I don't have to launch my coaching program, because I don't have to, you know, promote these low ticket things, because I'm not doing a big Black Friday, Cyber Monday promotion or product, I've made room for this blitz. I also talked about this briefly throughout, but, like, we're we're choosing 1 big focus. We've made space to really focus on our membership. Right? Our boot camp and our membership, those are our 2 offers. They're directly connected and we're using them to grow. I'm also gonna be focused on content creation and development. So my goal is, how can I create more content, develop more content, whether it be the podcast, you know, and I say that a little tongue in cheek because, And I do wanna get back to podcasting consistently, but also content on Facebook, Instagram, you know, blogs, like, how can I create and develop more content? And, really, what I'm taking on is planning.
Zach Spuckler [00:21:50]:
My team and I are pretty decent at planning. My, my right hand, Jessica, she is Amazing at this, at at keeping me in line with my planning. And we plan pretty well, and then we adjust as we go. But next year, I'd like to look more at, like, planning content for the year and planning out, you know, what we kinda see working throughout the year with the membership, in tandem with the podcast, in tandem with The blogs in tandem with the ads. Right? So we're just looking more at content creation and content development. So Just to do a quick recap, I know that this is more of a behind the scenes personal episode, but I still like to do recaps. You know, over the last 10 weeks, you know, I haven't released a podcast, and I've, in that time, gone to London London, Paris, Scotland, Bali. I discontinued my coaching program.
Zach Spuckler [00:22:36]:
I added A 1000 new people to our email list. I got jet lag and COVID. We relaunched our membership. And even though I wasn't releasing podcasts, I was making it non negotiable that I promote, Run ads, launch at least once a quarter, and email my list at least once a week. And in doing all that, I realized, especially when I was in Bali for our retreat, that I needed to kinda release the shame that I carry around who I am in my business. I need to release a lot of expectations, and I needed to release products from my business for personal and professional reasons. Right? And In 2024, as we go into 2024, I'm taking on more content creation and development, creating podcasts, blogs, you know, YouTube videos, like whatever feels aligned for me. I'm not Finalizing or promising anything at this point, but just bringing that more to the forefront, having a big focus on the membership and then our year end list building blitz.
Zach Spuckler [00:23:30]:
You might have even seen the ads for our, 2024 course creator planner, floating around the Internet, and we're using those to grow our list about 50 people a day. So I hope you got mad value from this episode, even though it was more, kind of what's going on and what I've been learning and more personal than I typically am on the podcast. I just hope you got value from it. It's that there's some one little thing in here that you can take something away from. Right? If you got value, please come follow me over on Instagram. I'm at zachspuckler, at zachspuckler. Our old Instagram got shut down with, like, 95 100 followers. Another episode for another day.
Zach Spuckler [00:24:10]:
So if you could come give us a follow, we'd super appreciate that. And feel free to tag me or even DM me just like a takeaway from the episode. I love hearing from you guys when you listen to an episode and it's really helped you. And finally, and I know this is, like, way too many calls to action for a podcast, but I'd love if you could leave a review. We are really pushing to get more reviews of our podcast. So if you enjoyed this, whether you're on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, like, please leave us a review. We love hearing from you guys. We love knowing that you're enjoying it.
Zach Spuckler [00:24:40]:
And, yeah, that's all I've got for you. So get out there. And if I could leave you with one Encouraging note, it would be this. Consistency is about consistent action, Not about showing up at 11 AM every Tuesday. So if you miss a podcast, you miss a blog post, you miss a strategy, you miss something, keep going. The people who win are the people who are consistent over 10 years, not 10 weeks. And so I'm not defining my business by the last 10 weeks. I'm not defining my life By the last 10 weeks, but I am choosing what I loved from the last 10 weeks, what I wanna continue from the last 10 weeks, and what I wanna let go of.
Zach Spuckler [00:25:20]:
So ask yourself that. What do I need to let go of? What do I need to take on? And where do I wanna be in 5, 10, 15, 20 years? Right? Big question. A lot to think about. So get out there, Go crush your marketing, and as always, stay not so average.
