Feminist Founders Subscriber-Only Podcast

Welcome to the Feminist Founders audio series event. This is a bonus for paid subscribers of the feminist Founders's newsletter. So if you're here, thank you so much for your support. I am so excited to bring to you in this series, some incredible thought leaders who are going to share insights about doing business differently in a way that honors equity and social justice. I hope that you learned so much from this. Let's dig in.
Becky Mollenkamp: Hey, hey, today's guest is Jason Zook. He is one half of wandering aimfully along with his wife Caroline Zook, who's also amazing, probably just a little more amazing than Jason, let's face it. He is showing up as our token male for this series, and I invited him because I am a member of Wandering Aimfully and have been for many years, I think at least 5 or 6 at this point, and I strongly recommend their community for new business owners or folks who are new to trying to sell products or courses online, service-based folks who want to sell products and courses online, because I have seen from the inside of their community, Jason and Caroline walk their talk when it comes to values and values that are very much human-centric, not leading with money. In fact, what brought me into their community to begin with was an email they sent years ago about “how much is enough?” How much is enough money? Because everything doesn't have to be about more and more and more, and that sold me and since I've been inside of their community, I can see that they deeply care about honoring those people first-values, which is really what we're talking about today in this episode, values. So I hope that you enjoy getting to know Jason Zook. If you're interested in their community, I am an affiliate. It doesn't mean that it costs you anymore, it just gives me a little reward for introducing you to them. So I'm gonna share that link in the show notes. I never miss one of their monthly calls because they're fun, and I always learn something. So I hope you'll check that out. But first, take some time to listen to Jason and learn about their community values and why values matter so much, and I think you'll discover why I very much recommend their community because of the effort they put into values.
Becky Mollenkamp: Thanks for doing this, Jason. I really appreciate it. I know, because I've asked you to do things in the past that you all don't always say yes to these sorts of things that you get asked to do a lot of summits and podcasts and all the things, and you don't always say yes. And so I would love to know what made you decide to say yes this time and I'm wondering, and I may be leading the witness a bit here, if it has something to do with values alignment?
Jason Zook: I definitely think a big part of saying yes is the fact that, you know, you are in our wandering game play community which we so appreciate and love, and so we definitely try to support those folks more than we do strangers on the internet who send us random emails or requests or, you know, hey, join the summit or be on my podcast or any of that stuff. Um, so it's definitely part of it. The other part of it is we run two businesses and so there's only 2 of us, we don't have a team, uh, we hire out freelancers for various tasks, mostly just development stuff and we don't have a lot of extra time to spend saying yes to things, and thankfully our businesses operate in a way where we make enough money because we have enough based goals that we have been using for 8 years now, and those businesses run well enough and are profitable enough that we don't have to, you know, say yes to a lot of things to reach other audiences. So I think that's, that's a big part of it. Um, and then I think the third answer is probably just this seemed fun and we just say no to so many things, so I was like, I'll just say yes, and, you know, I'm here to do it because Caroline is basically carrying the workload of a bunch of social media content because we're getting back on social media for the first time in almost 3 years. So I take, you know, this work on, it's not that much work, uh, while she does that of the work, but if it was just one of us running this business, it probably would have been a no because I wouldn't have had the time to free up because I would have been working on the social media content. So I hope that makes sense.
Becky Mollenkamp: All right, you mentioned fun, that this sounded fun, so I am now going to steer us towards values because fun is one of your company's values. You guys are all about unboring coaching and having fun then is part of what that means. And so I wanted to see how you guys arrived at your current set of values. So if you can give me a little a quick rundown, the cliffs version of how you came to the place where you guys have now clearly defined values that really inform everything about your business.
Jason Zook: Sure, so I definitely have to give Caroline a lot of credit here because her specialty is branding and then branding values are a big part of that process. And before we started working on wandering and fleas, so this is pre 2018. In running my own stuff, I don't think I really ever wrote down any values, but there were always some things just like treat people like human beings and, you know, it's all an experiment and do it differently, um, and even like this just trying to have fun, just trying to stand out from everybody else and also in in everyday work, as mundane as everything can be, just trying to make everything as enjoyable as possible, even though answering like customer support emails, it's not enjoyable, but just trying to make it fun. And so when we came together to work on Way and combine our two business. Caroline really led the charge of, hey, like, let's create some values that do two things. One, they become a filter that you put every decision through, so it's like, oh, we're gonna, you know, create this new product. Well, does this match our values in that, um, you know, it's a fun product or that it's a, a really helpful product or that it's, you know, something that stands out from everybody else, you know, all the other things that, that could fall into that. And then the other reason to have the values is it becomes kind of a matchmaking, for lack of a better term, for potential customers or even just uh email subscribers, people wanting to stick around and and follow you on different platforms. And that's, you know, things like curiosity and things like enough things like fun and just trying to have simple relatable things that everybody is already thinking about in their day to day lives, maybe, but then when you see it in business, it becomes one of those things where you go, oh, I, I really like that they talk about that because Another business in the same space, let's just call it like, you know, online business coaching that person is very dry, you know, it's just like their stuff is very straightforward. I don't feel anything when I look at it Wandering Aimfully stuff, it has a certain texture, it has a certain vibe, it has a certain, you know, thoughtfulness to it, um, and it also I think makes people feel a bit safer when they're making a purchase because they know what they're gonna get from those people. So I would say that definitely Caroline led the charge. We sat down together and really kind of like went through the values that matter to us and as you know, we try and kind of keep those front and center throughout all the things that we do so that at every moment everyone can kind of see here's what we stand for. And if you don't stand for those things or those things don't jive with you, then you can, you know, obviously, you know, not be a part of our community, but we've never really had that problem and it has been a great way to have it be a magnet to attract the right type of audience for our business.
Becky Mollenkamp: Thank you for giving credit where credit is due to Caroline, but I know that you also get involved in all of these things. You talked about how you two created your values and combined your businesses and over time sort of came to this place, this place of shared understanding about values and have been really explicit about it. Before we talk about how you use them inside of your community, I know you've hinted at it some, but before we get more into that, I'm wondering if you can talk about how you use your values to inform the decisions you make for your business. As an example, you just mentioned that you're getting back onto social media after being off of it for 3 years. I'm wondering what role your values played and deciding to leave social media and now I'm coming back to them. Do you have some sort of, cause I know you guys love systems and matrixes and formulas and things like that that you can use over time. Have you developed some sort of system or process that you use for evaluating the decisions you're making you're in your business against or with your values and how those things play together?
Jason Zook: I think when it comes to decision making, especially, you know, it would be fun to say, oh yeah, we have this cool matrix that like, you know, we put every decision through and you know our values are listed there and if it doesn't match up, you know, it doesn't get, it doesn't happen and I think that's all well and good in like a fictional world, you know, kind of like a well polished Instagram post type of world, but in the reality is, you know, you write down your values and you sit down and you really think those things through. in a moment, but then as business goes on day to day, you do lose sight of some of those things and you don't necessarily remember all of them, which is why I think we can all get led into continuing to feel like we have to post on social media or use certain apps or be a part of certain groups or even operate a certain type of business for a period longer than we probably should have because it didn't actually match our values. So I think what really happens for us and back in 2021 when we stopped posting on Instagram. For a wondering in the business, we essentially just noticed that more and more every time we posted, even though we were starting to have a couple reels get a lot of attention, it just felt kind of soulless and it also the process of making those reels wasn't very fun anymore, and we started to just go, this is not authentic at all, and I know that's a crazy buzzword, obviously, but it's like behind the scenes, we're not happy posting these things, but in the post we're being happy and in the comments for being happy and it's like, that's incongruent to our values and so you kind of, I feel like we talk about this a lot, um, you know, with, with our business and different things that happened, but it's like the hot stove moment and I think that that happens with your values as well, where you set these values at some point and then you do things that might go slightly against the values or what have you. And you end up hitting a hot stove with your, you're doing something that's not in alignment with those original values. So that's definitely what happened with us, with social media back then, uh, now having a 2.5 year, almost 3 year break before posting again. We also, as a recording, haven't posted yet, so I don't know, something wild could change, but we are feeling like we've got better systems and processes in place to kind of monitor and really get ahead of like batch creation, um, have a better understanding of like why we're posting content because I think before we were just kind of doing it to keep up and now we're kind of doing it with the intention of, no, we really want to um grow our email list or we want to diversify our different uh platforms on where we're reaching people because we got very minimalistic in our reach for the past couple of years, and it was fine because our revenue went up, but it also made us realize like, oh this is kind of dangerous, you know, if something changes we're not platform diversified, which can be a little bit scary in any aspect of of life, business, money, etc. So yeah, as we come back to Instagram, I think we, we haven't done this yet. We've really been trying to figure out the how do we get on a content creation schedule and publishing and what do we want to be doing. But as we start to sit down to start publishing again, I think we'll definitely have a conversation of, OK, you know, what does this look like, you know, what, what does this feel like? What does it mean to post authentically, you know, are we gonna be checking DMs or comments or any of those things, and maybe we're not, maybe kind of some of the things that we draw lines in the sand for are, you know, our values are to create inspirational content that can inspire people to take action in their businesses in different ways, but it's not within our values to sit on a platform and engage in conversations because that could just lead to a lot of different negative feelings that we don't want those platforms to give us. So we get to kind of make those decisions and I think that's on everybody to decide how you want to interact in the, you know, on these platforms. So yeah, I think that's a big part of it for how we decide these things and I think the truth of it is going back to you, you set these values when you do sit down and be intentional about making that happen, but then you kind of go through the course of day to day, week to week, month to month, year to year, and until something really gets out of alignment, you realize, oh, I kind of got off kilter with with these values I set up were supposed to help me avoid and now I need the course correct and so I need to, you know, I've had that hot st moment, I need to change something. And then when you come back around, you kind of reevaluate your values if you will. And I think that's the process that we're really about to get into a little bit more. We haven't really sat down and thought that through too much, but as you know we do think those things through all the time and um it's definitely just something that's on our radar next step.
Becky Mollenkamp: This might be a good time, or maybe I should have done it sooner, to clarify, what are your values? And are they the same for you and Caroline as they are for
Wandering Ainslie for your business and for the community, so are, I guess basically I'm asking, do you have a set of personal values, a business set of values, and a community set of values, or are all of those wrapped up into one set of values and then have they evolved or do you anticipate that they will evolve over time?
Jason Zook: I would say we very much so have shared values, both between myself and Caroline, but also between us as humans. And in our businesses. And I think that's a natural evolution as Caroline and I have been together for 14 years now, so that just kind of tends to happen. Uh, and then we've been running a business together now for 6 years, but we've been working alongside each other for 10 years. So I think there's a lot of blending that goes on there when we share so much back and forth and I think that really helps us run two businesses together. Um, it's one thing to have one business with your partner, but it's nothing to run two businesses of two different types. So the, the values really do help to kind of be similar. Um, the ones that really stand out across kind of our, our lives, but then also in our businesses are doing it differently. So just trying to dig when other people are zagging, having fun, which mentioned already a couple times, but that's when we come back to a lot, especially when things get really frustrating or difficult or, you know, things just get kind of overwhelming. We really try and come back to that value and be like, OK, but like, this is all made up, like we're doing all this ourselves like we need to make this fun. How do we come back to that? Uh, transparency, so that one, you know, if it were up to me. I would love if, you know, we could all just like share our finances, um, wholeheartedly share every single tactic that we use in business to share every single thing that we explore, um, just because I think it would make conversations a lot easier and I think the connection between humans would be a lot less fraught with, you know, all the things that we know it's fraught with, but I also understand why that doesn't happen because there is such a gap between um different types of people income wise or privilege wise or even location-wise, which leads me to inclusivity. So to answer your question kind of amidst all these values, I would say this is the one that has definitely stepped up in our list of values that wasn't really something we thought about 10 years ago. I don't know that too many people, um, speaking from my own experience in the online business space we're thinking so much about this 10 years ago, but I do think it has become very prevalent and very necessary because everybody is different and everybody does have different circumstances and different backgrounds and different neurodivergent, um, you know, things. They have to deal with. And so we really do try to, you know, be inclusive with a lot of those things. Also race, gender, that stuff as well. Uh, and then moving on to the last couple here owning your weird. I wrote an entire book called On Your Weird, but I think this is something we just love for other people to understand about themselves is the things that make them weird or the things that are gonna make them stand out. So if you're selling notion planners, um, the things that make you weird and if you want to talk about how your notion planners, um, you know, are around dragons and cats. So and there's some type of weird way you mix all that together, then wonderful, do that because it's gonna make you stand out from all the people who sell ocean planners, so I think that stuff, we think that stuff really matters. Uh, and then being human. I think you definitely can attest to this, you know, you've been in our business sphere for a long time, and it has probably, I hope, never felt like we have outsourced anything to, um, you know, cheaper customer support or uh AI-driven responses, um, not that those things are necessarily bad or evil, but I just think that for us, we always, or as long as we can, want to be the people who you hear from us, you get directly to us as a paying customer, or even on our email list we respond to every single email, um, and that matters to us because in a very crowded online business space that's only getting even more crowded and fast-paced, those things tend to stand out, and then the last one is enough, and I think this this value has also kind of come up more recently in the past few years for us. And that's really just this transition in 2016 I wrote an article um about my kind of first thoughts of, you know, enoughness, especially as it relates to money, but also just as it relates to like how much work we do in a day and how much, you know, we focus on red and all of that. Um, and it has really evolved a lot into everything that we talk about because we have become so much happier in our lives, having goals that feel achievable for us, um, and it's not necessarily just a number we plucked out of the blue like making $1 million a year, we don't need that. And while that would be awesome, sure, um, it also can lead to a ton of burnout and a ton of, um, you know, negativity and a kind of comparison, and when you don't hit those numbers, you can feel really down about yourself and I'll never forget, you know, having a multi six-figure year, you know, back in like, I think it was 2016 when this all got set up, and I was disappointed and it was like, well why? it's because I said some stupid arbitrary goal based on nothing other than just the number I saw other people setting as their number, and that was really stupid. So that enough mindset has really helped us in so many different facets. And so I think, yeah, all of those values, doing things differently, having fun, transparency, inclusivity, owning your weird, being human enough, there are probably a couple more in there, but those are the ones that I think really about and that we use both in life and the business.
Becky Mollenkamp: I’m really glad that you mentioned the enough value because that is the value that brought me into your sphere and made me join your membership and continue now to be a proud and happy member and an affiliate for you all because I do love your program so much and it was an email, I won't forget it, that was an email you sent out about your exploration of enough and how much is enough. And it was like, oh, somebody's speaking to exactly where my head is at. And I just think that's so powerful as we're talking about values because leading with your values, being explicit with your values, talking about them all the places all the time, it attracts people who share those values. And when they see themselves inside of it, they say, finally somebody's speaking to me and it makes a, makes them want to be a part of what you're doing, and I can attest to that because it worked for me. And so I love that you mentioned that and thank you for sharing your values. And what I noticed too is as you're going through your values, some of those field perfectly aligned with the values that you share and I guess I should be clear. I don't know if you guys call them values or something else, community agreements, something like that. But the start of every one of your group coaching calls that you have every month. You start the same, sharing through your values, and the and the values that we are agreeing to as a community being inside of wandering aimfully. And it sounds like a line up fairly well with what you're talking about there, but I know some of them are worded differently. I know that every time you do that, people in the community in the chat are saying like thank you for doing this every time. This is so powerful. We don't see other people doing this. This makes me really feel like you get it, or this is why I'm in your community. So, as we're starting to wrap this up, I want to know about that experience because I'm trying to recall, I do not think you always did that, cause I've been part of your community now for 3 or 4 years, and I'm trying to remember at the beginning of those group calls. I don't feel like you guys started with the values that explicitly and then began adding them in and now it is a standard at the beginning of every call to review them again and again. So I'm wondering what made you decide to do that, to bring those into those calls in that way and what you think about the power of being that explicit and that consistent, repetitive even in sharing them with your community. Why is that so important to you all?
Jason Zook: You are definitely correct. We did not have what we easily just call our community values, very simple that we talk about at the beginning of every coaching session and this actually stemmed from a negative situation, which typically is how some of these things end up happening, um, but we had a um a member who is no longer a member and was only a member for a very short time, um, and just to give context, we have had 1700 people join our Welimited program and its various iterations, but that's a, that's a good amount of people and you know, you think about that people in like a a big conference hall, uh, you know, there's, there's a lot of people to kind of manage and take care of and to worry about. Uh, and we had one person who joined and this was a couple of years ago, uh, who just started being very negative to people and it really made us feel uncomfortable and it was the first time where we felt like we had someone who did not match our values. And even though those values were talked about, you know, in our copy and in our sales page and our emails, it wasn't like super clear when you join a sla community or when you were in our coaching sessions and so Caroline actually had the idea of like we should start every coaching session going over our our values because, you know, 1700 people. You know, a lot of people don't have emails, a lot of people aren't in Slack, um, but the majority of attention that we have is in our monthly coaching session, so that's what we're seeing, you know, the most amount of people interacting and so they felt like the right place to do that. So yeah, we started doing that, I think like 3 years ago, and it started with a kind of a longer version because we hadn't talked about them before in that that frame, so it would take like, you know, almost 10 minutes at a time to go through them and to really explain what we were doing. And nowadays, as you've seen it because you're in our program, it's about, you know, 2 minutes maybe or less, and then what we did is we just created a community values page that we just always say if you want to read these uh in full, you can go here. We also have our harm repair process which is just a simple survey uh that someone can fill out if they feel like they've been harmed in some way by something we've said or something someone in the community has said, and, and really these things just stemmed out of that negative situation and thankfully, the negative situation went away very quickly and it was nothing, I mean, in the grand scheme of life, it was not a big deal at all, but it, it really created the ripple effect of making those values more well known, um, and you're right, we, we do see that a lot, you know, in the coaching sessions and probably after a couple of years now people are are more used to it and they know it's coming, so they're maybe less um communicative in the chat that they appreciate it, but we know it's appreciated and so we're happy to keep doing it. And we also just think it, it sets the tone every coaching session for, um, you know, the next two hours of being together, maybe 3 hours on a Zoom call, it's just to make sure that everybody is, you know, you know, it's OK to have vulnerability, it's OK to be honest, to be transparent, it's OK to ask questions in my field, you know, quote unquote dumb, uh, and, and all those things are things we want to appreciate about everybody and have a safe safe safe space for. And so yeah, that's how that came about and we'll continue to do those community values in our coaching sessions as just even um you know, something for existing members to remember because people come and go and we have people come back around. Years later and so it's a good reminder at all times and it's a very easy thing to do. And like you said, it very much attracts people as well who are looking to be in a space that feels like it's in alignment with their own values.
Becky Mollenkamp: Thank you, Jason. This has been really helpful and I can and want to attest to the fact that you guys do really walk the talk with the values, um, unlike really any other community I've been a part of or seen, it's so well considered and communicated and it's just really clear that you and Caroline are living into your values whether people are watching or not. So thank you for doing that and for sharing about it here, to wrap up, I would love it if you could share a last bit of advice or a journaling prompt or a thought exercise or something like that for people who are inspired with what you're doing with values and want to do better themselves that either coming up with their values, using them or communicating and sharing them, most especially for those people who are running groups or community programs.
Jason Zook: You are very welcome and thank you for the thoughtful questions and the lovely comments, very much appreciated. And I guess if I was to give one takeaway for someone listening to this, it would definitely be to step back and kind of put yourself in the shoes of if you were a part of your community or if you are part of your program or if you were coming to your website for the very first time, what, what would make you feel really good? What would make you feel really comfortable? And what, what would make you feel like, ah, these are my people or this is my person or this is my group, this is the community I want to be a part of and write down what those specific things are that would stand out to you because the values that we share might not be that important to you uh as you're listening to me talk about our values, but I think everybody knows in their kind of gut they have their own intuition of what would really make them feel comfortable and would make them feel like they were a part of a community that valued inclusivity and other people and people from all different walks of life and and all those different things. And also, what are the things that, that just you want people to know that uh how do you stand out, you know, like our idea of enough or our idea of owning our weird or doing things differently. Um, what are those? And then I would also say, you know, last thing, those to me feel very much like the uh kind of check the the business boxes if you will, and, and then I would say like, you know, what are the personal things? Because as you know, and I could have probably asked you this, um, you know, with a response and you would give me the answer, like, you know about me, I love cinnamon rolls. Like it's just a thing I talk about all the time, and that's not necessarily a quote unquote value, but it is something that people resonate with and they find interesting and it sticks with them in their brain and and that's a lot of what you're trying to do with these values is stick in someone's brain beyond all the competition of everybody that's in the same space doing the same thing. So I would just say, what are some of those little personal things that you really love, little rituals or uh things that bring you a ton of joy that other people might also, uh, you know, enjoy and, and want to talk about and, and share uh being a part of the community. So, yeah, I think those are the final things for folks to think about and, and the other thing, the last thing which is we don't overthink it, you know, it's, it's very easy to get in our own heads about all this stuff, like what are the perfect values? What are the ones that are gonna resonate the most and and all that and I just think that's a kind of a waste of time. It's more important to say just what do you want people to know? What do you want them to feel? How do you want them to, you know, feel like it's an accepting place if they're going to be a part of your community program, etc. um, and just make those things very clear and I think everything else will work out in its own way.
Becky Mollenkamp: Thank you so much for participating in this, Jason. I really appreciate it. How can people learn more about you and about Wandering Aimfully? I'm gonna share a link since I am an affiliate so people if they're interested in signing up for Wandering Aimfully I will share my link, but if you can let people know a little more about wandering Wandering Aimfully, and what's involved in that or the best place to connect with you?
Jason Zook: As usual, people are pretty smart and sluethy these days. If you search Wandering Aimfully on any of your favorite social apps, except for TikTok, we're not on TikTok, but we're back posting on Instagram. We post on YouTube fairly consistently, I think maybe by the time this comes out we'll have been posting consistently. And we have a podcast and a newsletter both called Growing Steady you can find that at wanderingaimfully.com. All the links are there, and you can learn more about what we do and of course if you want to join WAIM Unlimited, feel free to use Becky's link, we're happy to have people come through our awesome members. We don't use any Facebook ads or anything like that to grow our community so the only growth we have is our organic growth and our member-led growth. So we love doing that because it makes our community strong and thriving, and that's it. So everyone can check it out at wanderingamimly.com. Thanks.
Becky Mollenkamp: Thank you, Jason again for being part of this, for being the token man in the series. I'm sure that's not something that happens often for men to get to be the only man. And so I hope you enjoyed it, and I hope you enjoyed listening to Jason, everyone. Again, check out Wandering Aimfully. The link is in the show notes. If you're interested in joining. It's perfect for anyone who's new to business and or who has a service-based business and is new to the idea of trying to build out courses and online products to sell. And that is it for today. Your next episode will drop in your private podcast feed tomorrow, and as always, thank you so much for being a paid subscriber to Feminist founders, it means the world to me.