🪺 (Re)Building Your Business Around Your Capacity — with Jen Carrington

Amelia Hruby [00:00:00]:
Welcome to Off the Grid, a podcast for small business owners who want to leave social media without losing all their clients. Hello, and welcome to Off the Grid, a podcast about leaving social media without losing all your clients. I'm Amelia Hruby. I am the founder of Softer Sounds Podcast Studio. And here on this show, I am your fellow traveler and guide in our journey of creating and running successful, sustainable businesses with no or minimal social media presence.

Amelia Hruby [00:00:49]:
If you're new to the show, welcome. I'm so happy this is your first episode. I really think you're gonna love it. And I want to invite you to download our free Leaving Social Media Toolkit. The toolkit includes the three tools that I use to leave social media and launch a business without it, including the very popular list of 100 ways to share your work without social media. You'll find it at offthegrid.fun/toolkit or at the link in the show notes. Again, it's totally free. Go grab it and then enjoy this episode. And of course, if you are a longtime listener, welcome back. I'm so happy that you're here because today I am talking to one of my favorite online business people. That feels like a really diminishing way to talk about Jen's work. So let me tell you all about Jen Carrington before we dive in.

Amelia Hruby [00:01:40]:
Jen is a business guide here to support you in building and running a simple and spacious business so that you can bring more freedom, ease, and intentional growth into your work and life. She lives in Manchester, UK where she is also a mom, a human who lives with chronic illness, and the breadwinner for her family. She also hosts not one, but two wonderful podcasts, maybe more. I feel like you've had a lot of podcasts. She sends a weekly newsletter, and she does so much more. When I launched Softer Sounds, everybody I knew was like, "You need to check out Jen's work. It's gonna support you in growing this business softly and slowly," which I've always endeavored to do. So welcome, Jen. I am so thrilled to have you here on Off the Grid today.

Jen Carrington [00:02:25]:
I feel emotional. Thank you so much for that delightful introduction.

Amelia Hruby [00:02:29]:
Such a treat to meet people you admire on the Internet and then be like, "Oh my gosh. You're real. We can have a conversation."

Jen Carrington [00:02:35]:
I'm the same though. Off the Grid, I was telling you, is my favorite business podcast right now. You've been in my ears every week, so I'm loving everything that you do and I'm honored to be here.

Amelia Hruby [00:02:44]:
I'm not gonna assume that every listener knows as much about your work as I do and have over the past few years. So could you take us in by telling us a bit about your business journey, particularly how you transitioned from running a business that involved a lot of one on one service work and delivery to running a business that has a much more flexible asynchronous model now?

Jen Carrington [00:03:08]:
Yeah. So I started my business in 2015. When I started my business, it was predominantly one on one coaching, mentoring services, whatever phrase you want to use there. And from 2015 to 2022, I was predominantly a one on one business owner in the sense that my business model was always at least 80% one on one income. And I was doing 15 to 20 client calls a week for many years, and then I was always doing around 15 to 20, then it got down to maybe around, like, eight to 10. A lot of my business hours were mostly spent on calls with my incredible clients diving deep one on one and then obviously podcasting and doing a newsletter. I would occasionally have small courses or little programs that I'd run, but nothing that was taking up more than 20% of my annual income.

Jen Carrington [00:03:59]:
Had my son in 2020, same old business, brand new me, could not go on anymore as it was. I knew something had to change, but I also knew the following things. I have relatively a small sized audience. My email list is around 3,000 people. Some people may hear that and think that's a huge audience. Some people may hear that and think that's a tiny audience. I think in the grand scheme of online business world, that's not a huge audience. I don't have the type of business where I could make six figures a year from a digital product. That's just not the type of business I have. And number two, I actually I adore my client work. I never stopped loving my client work. I never stopped loving diving deep with my clients. I just could no longer do 10 calls a week. My health got more complicated, and I had a child. So I had to sit with this question of, what do I wanna do? What do I want my business to look like when I've been doing the same thing for almost a decade? And this is my zone of genius.

Jen Carrington [00:04:53]:
It's petrifying when you the what you do is no longer sustainable for you to do. That's a very scary question, and it's a massive identity shift. And the answer I came to was the biggest problem for me was too many calls in the calendar and too many times in my schedule where I had to be well enough to show up at a certain time. That was the problem. I have enough capacity a week to deliver the work, but doing it all on one on one calls every single week, was not aligned with my health capacity. And number two, I needed flexibility for when in the day I would choose to work and could work.

Jen Carrington [00:05:29]:
So I decided I have all this experience of diving deep with so many clients for so many years, and I'm basically only able to go on this beautiful journey one client at a time. And my prices are a place where not everyone can afford to work with me one on one. So the question became two things. How can I diversify my income streams? So I wanted to move to what I call a hybrid business model. So nowadays, 60% to 70% of my income is one to many income now, and about 30 to 40% of my income is still client work. So I built out a flagship group program. I asked myself, how can I replicate and also do something fresh with a one to many products? I didn't wanna just create a course and leave people in the course and not go on a journey with them. So I was like, how can I create something that's as close to the intimacy of a one on one container, but it's not me delivering on calls all the time? My mantra was, how can I download my brain so that I'm no longer having the same conversations over and over again? Because when all your magic lives inside your brain, then you can order deliver it one person, one hour at a time.

Jen Carrington [00:06:38]:
So I created this flagship group program, Culture's Influence Patience Business. I downloaded my brain into those coaching modules in there and workshops and resources. But also the members inside get to submit questions to office hours, and there's a Slack channel. So they're still getting my one on one support, but it's all asynchronously delivered. But then the other huge thing I did was I radically changed my one to one containers. So in the past, the offer that I sold for many years was a six month container, and I would offer 12 calls, a call every two weeks with a client email support in between. Now the problem that happened was 12 calls were never used in a six month window. If a client misses a call or reschedules a call, and I'm the most flexible person in the world because I wanna meet someone else's humanity as much as I would hope they would meet mine.

Jen Carrington [00:07:26]:
6 month packages were sometimes extending into 12 month packages and 18 month packages and also so I tried to cut it down to 10 calls. I tried to cut it down to 8 calls. What I learned was the problem for me was having too many calls in the schedule, which is not sustainable. And so now, the way I still work one on one with clients. It's still a big chunk of my energy a week, but, like 80% of my client work is now delivered asynchronously. So my clients now get a call with me once a quarter, but then every week, we're sending voice notes to each other back and forth. If you'd have told me this five years ago, I would have laughed in your face. I would have said, "How on earth can that be just as valuable as a call?" I'm telling you, for me, anyway, my clients' feedback is asynchronous delivery changes the game for everyone, especially with time zones and people's schedules and routines.

Jen Carrington [00:08:13]:
So to answer your question, I built a one to many container, because my flagship group program is £1800, I do have sliding scale tiers, but it's not a lower ticket, one to many offer, it's a higher ticket, one to many offer that can make a solid chunk of my income every year, and I radically evolve my one to one container. And ultimately, the through line between it all is, like, 80% of my work is delivered asynchronously. Therefore, I've been able to stay in the game with these challenging health senses of mine.

Amelia Hruby [00:08:43]:
Thank you for sharing that journey with us. Did you notice a shift in your clientele when you changed your service delivery model? Did it bring new people in and other people left, or was it actually, everybody was just really onboard to try it out and they loved going through this shift with you?

Jen Carrington [00:09:01]:
That's a really interesting question because my client capacity is much smaller now. I take on a lot less clients a year. I can't compare it because I'm getting booked up still at this stage in my business, and there's been no major pushback, but I'm booking significantly less amount of clients than I did a few years ago because the containers changed. I would guess that, yes, some people will be turned off by the asynchronous delivery because I've had people ask questions such as how does it work? How is that the same as a call? People have questions, and I find that just for me, I do my discovery chats on Voxer so people can get a feel for it. I talk about it a lot.

Jen Carrington [00:09:42]:
My biggest encouragement for anyone who wants to make a nontraditional decision in your business is just talk to your audience about it a lot. Bring them along for the journey with you. With my group program because I feel like the industry standard with group programs is that everything's delivered in a live group call, and that was just a hell no for me. There's been zero pushback there. Some of the biggest feedback I get from people is that they like that it's delivered asynchronously because they can work through it at their own pace.

Jen Carrington [00:10:11]:
But I'm sure for some people, they only wanna work with someone when it's a lot of calls involved, and that's okay. But, honestly, the feedback I get from people is they really love it. I have a lot of clients and a lot of people who have been scared to implement it in their business because the norm is to have phone calls. The norm is to have calls. So but because I take on less clients now, I don't know if just the fact that I take on a smaller client workload has maybe balanced out it repelling some people that it's more asynchronous. I still have calls in the package. It's just less calls in the package.

Amelia Hruby [00:10:43]:
I really appreciate you answering this question and taking us a step deeper in because I also have fears around moving to an asynchronous model and it's nice to hear that it's working.

Jen Carrington [00:10:56]:
I will say if this brings you comfort and any listeners comfort when I think of my very close business friends, a lot of them have also been making the change to more asynchronous delivery over the years, whether they are a coach or my friends who are designers or offer different services, and it has not caused any major disruption to the health of their business. I think sometimes it's just confidently telling people this is how I work and this is how I deliver my work.

Jen Carrington [00:11:25]:
I'm really passionate about talking about asynchronous delivery because I think it allows us to put our humanness on the table more in the business. I don't know about you, Amelia, but for me, having a lot of calls in my schedule genuinely makes me feel very stressed out and very anxious and very overwhelmed. I love having calls with my clients. Basically, the way my calendar works now is one month per quarter, I have one day a week of two calls. So at eight months of the year, there are zero client calls in my schedule, but I'm diving deep with clients in Voxer. And then the first month of every quarter, I have one day a week with up to two calls a day, like, one day a week. And so I've spaced it out so that I have lots of time throughout the year of nothing in my schedule, and then I have this one month for quota where I'm in call mode, if that makes sense.

Amelia Hruby [00:12:11]:
Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. And I think my follow-up question is, when you're in Voxer so much, do you ever get the Voxer overwhelmed? Because sometimes I get overwhelmed by having a ton of voice messages to listen to. So I'm just curious, how do you navigate that on that end of the asynchronous model?

Jen Carrington [00:12:28]:
Yeah. So that is where I think boundaries are golden. So I only work Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. My clients know this, and also I have boundaries for my clients of Voxer and for my self on Voxer. So what I mean by that is I ask clients to keep voice notes, like, one voice note three to four minutes in length. Sometimes they'll send me a five to six minute voice note. That's absolutely fine. It's just to make sure I'm not receiving six five-minute voice notes in a row.

Jen Carrington [00:12:55]:
And I also ask a client if it's kind of a bit more in-depth voice note, if they can bullet point exactly what they're asking for through the voice note so I know kind of what they're really highlighting they'd like my support with. So that makes a big difference. And, also, I'm incredibly boundaried in my workday when I check-in with Voxer. So on my workdays, first thing I do in the morning is check-in with Voxer for the day, and then I sign out of Voxer for the rest of the day. And then just before I sign off for the day, I check-in with Voxer one last time. So for me, having this massive gap in between my morning check-in and my afternoon check-in for deep work makes a difference. I don't work every day of the week, so I work less days than I don't work. I'm only working very part time hours.

Jen Carrington [00:13:38]:
And also being very clear with the client how to use Voxer, and also not being afraid to gently reset the boundary. If someone's sending me multiple 10 minute long voice notes every day of the week, I will just remind them, like, "Hey. Listen. This is the best way to use asynchronous support together." So I think, yes, asynchronous delivery could become very overwhelming, so we've gotta set boundaries for the client. But also, I don't wanna be in Voxer all day long. I'm in Voxer in the morning, once in the afternoon. A part from that, I'm not unless a client's going through something and I wanna just keep my eye out throughout the day so I can go through something with them, if I know it's a bit more time sensitive.

Jen Carrington [00:14:15]:
A part from that, I'm not checking Voxer, and that definitely helps. I've never had a week where I'm like, "I can't cope. This is too much." But also, I'm very boundaried of how many clients I take on at one time as well. But, yeah, being clear with our boundaries from the get go, I think, is the most important thing. For for them and ourselves as well.

Amelia Hruby [00:14:35]:
Yeah. That's really helpful. Thank you. I definitely struggle with boundaries sometimes with clients. I'm sure many people listening can relate, and I admire your boundaries that you have in place. I will say for me, even something as simple as I finally set up all of the settings on my phone to have a nights and weekend mode. And so every day at, like, 4 o'clock and then all weekend long, like, Voxer is blocked from notifications on my phone. So I can be on there with clients during the day, but if they're sending me something in the evening or on a weekend, I don't see it until I'm back in my work hours.

Amelia Hruby [00:15:14]:
And that was even a big shift for me because I prefer to use Voxer on my phone than on my computer, but it was hard to ignore if I saw something come through during a not work time. And so I've also enjoyed just putting in place some of those systems that can help me be more supported and consistent in my boundaries as I've been moving some things to a more asynchronous model.

Jen Carrington [00:15:36]:
Yeah. And I will say that the only reason I am so boundaried now is because I was not boundaried for years, Amelia. I am telling you, I facilitated my own burnout for many years in my business by not having boundaries. And the heart of that is two things. I really like to meet people where they're at. I like to honor their humanness. I like to be as flexible as I can for someone. But also, I've been very afraid to ever piss someone off. So it's, learning the consequences of abandoning myself over and over again in my business has now made me pretty, extremely boundered because I wanna stay in the game. I would like to keep making this living for myself. Things cost money. I think burnout takes us out of the game more than anything else does because if we're the vessel through which our work comes into the world, the vessel has to be clear enough for the work to flow through. And I've seen burnout take out clients. I've seen it take out business friends of mine. Boundaries are golden in my opinion.

Jen Carrington [00:16:37]:
But also recognizing for anyone listening who's like, "Wow, that sounds like it took a lot of burnout and a lot of courage to get to this point now." And, also, clients love it. Clients regularly say to me, "Thank you for modeling these boundaries to me, Jen, because now I feel safer to do the same with my own clients." So if that's the gift of all the years I burnt myself out that I'm now so passionate about, I'll just take it.

Amelia Hruby [00:16:59]:
Something I've always taken from your work and how you show up is a really deep sense of permission, like the permission that you have granted yourself at this stage in your business to run it in a way that supports you so deeply and that by modeling that, it allows more of us to grant ourselves permission to do the same. And I'm just really grateful for that, especially I think because some of the things that you talk about, working in a very limited schedule, being able to support yourself and your family by doing so. I appreciate that you share that and you're actually doing it because I think we see claims like that made a lot in the online business space. And then when you go a little deeper, you're like, "Wait, this person is actually working all the time, or this person is actually, like, not making any money doing this thing that they say is supporting their whole life and their family." You know what I mean? I feel like there's a lot of, I don't want to call it lying. How do I want to say this?

Jen Carrington [00:17:57]:
Smoke and mirrors, maybe?

Amelia Hruby [00:17:59]:
Smoke and mirrors. That's great. There's a lot of smoke and mirrors around this, and it's just so nice to talk to you and hear how it's like actually working in your business and in your life.

Jen Carrington [00:18:11]:
I was actually having brunch with a very close business friend yesterday. She was sharing that she recently received feedback from another business friend. They were like, "Why don't you brag more? We're in very similar places in our business. We make a similar amount of money. We both work very part time hours. We're both parents to young children." And feedback from her friend was like, "Why aren't you bragging more about what you've built and what you've done? And you act so chill." And she was like, "You're the same, Jen. Like, we're not the kind of people who use numbers in our marketing to try and persuade people to buy from us."

Jen Carrington [00:18:43]:
And we were both saying we probably could, quote unquote, brag more, but who are you attracting by bragging? I don't wanna attract the type of energy into my business where if you're selling on, like, "This is how much money I make" or, like, "Look how amazing my business is" that's such surface level conversations about business. And I think that only taps into people's anxiety around growth as fast as they can get it. And my question always is when someone's bragging about top numbers, I always go beneath to be like, "Yeah. But what's really going on here?" Because like you said, a lot of it is smoke and mirrors, and I don't blame people because people are told, like, brag about your success so that you can make sales.

Jen Carrington [00:19:22]:
And I guess this is not the question you asked, but the thing me and my friend took away was, like, we we were able to run our businesses without having to involve ourselves in the more manipulative sides of marketing, which is what it made me think when you said that. Because it's like, yeah, you can back it up but I hope that I back it up gently and humanly instead of screaming from the rooftops, because that just feels gross to me.

Amelia Hruby [00:19:43]:
I feel a real kinship with how you share, and I'm sure I have learned from how you share in this way of being very transparent and open around, "This is how many people are on my mailing list, this is how much money I've made for the past few years." But it's not using that as marketing, It's using that more as a way of inviting all of us into thinking about how we do business and what's possible, and what's working or not working. And I think that's important because so often, that's really obscured.

Amelia Hruby [00:20:14]:
Or if you're not familiar with business, how do you know how much you think you should make or any of these things? And if we're not sharing, no one's gonna know. But if it is how we are selling purely through that sort of lifestyle or income claim marketing, I think that's where it starts to feel manipulative or challenging. And like you said, it attracts people who may be mired in their own anxiety and struggles with money or time or things, and that's not necessarily the community we wanna, like, build our business on.

Jen Carrington [00:20:45]:
Yeah. And nothing has served my business journey more than honest conversations about business. You know what I mean? I could read someone's 10 ways to 10 X your revenue blog post or whatever. And I'm like, "Great. Fine." But I've told you, I've listened to the Nicole Antonette episodes on your podcast multiple times because, I mean, I've loved Nicole's work for years, and I love your work. And just listening to business owners have honest conversations about the realities of being a business owner, and the highs and the lows and the joys, that supports my entrepreneurial spirit so much more than very black and white marketing could, where it's like, "If you do X, you will achieve Y," which has never just never proven to be true for me. Marketing is so much more of an experiment than a sure science in my experience.

Amelia Hruby [00:21:29]:
Speaking of these honest conversations in business, I wanted to ask you about a newsletter that you recently wrote called "Dear small business owner, it's okay to have fluctuating income." And in the newsletter, you share kind of your annual income for the past 10 years since you've been in business for 10 years now and how it has fluctuated over that time and how you were able to not freak out about it necessarily. So I'm curious, could you share a little bit with listeners, like, how you think about income in your business and how it shifts from year to year and how you kind of developed the sort of regulation around that fluctuation?

Jen Carrington [00:22:13]:
Fluctuating income, I feel like we do not talk about this enough. You know when you see someone share, like, I had this amazing year in my business, and then you just assume that that's what they're making every year from then on? But the truth is fluctuating income is the norm as a business owner. I don't know anyone who doesn't have ups and downs, highs and lows. And I look at my own business journey, and I look and I share very straight up top five numbers in this post. And I almost didn't hit publish on this. And the reason I almost didn't hit publish on it was for two opposite reasons.

Jen Carrington [00:22:48]:
My husband had to coach me through this. I was like, number one, is it just weird to share these numbers? I don't wanna be bragging about numbers. I don't want to share these numbers. I don't want it to be unhelpful to share concrete numbers. And then on the flip side, I was like, are people gonna judge me? Are people gonna assume that I earn more than this or less than this? And I got in my head about it. And then Alex, my husband, said to me, he was like, "Jen, you can't share this advice about sharing these numbers. You cannot say to people it's okay to have fluctuating income. The gift is you being transparent." And he was like, "and I know you well enough to know you're comfortable being transparent."

Jen Carrington [00:23:19]:
And number two, I said to myself, well, what's the purpose of me sharing this? And I wanted someone to feel how I've always needed to feel and it was very inspired by listening to you and Nicole talk about enough and you both share your enough numbers because I linked to the podcast episode in that post. I was like, I want someone to read this and just feel less alone if their revenue is more or less this year than it was the year before. Because if I look at my revenue, I think I shared everything back to 2017 because, honestly, I can't remember my numbers before that at this point. And I'm assuming most of your listeners in America are still talking dollars. My revenue over those years has fluctuated. The lowest was 54k, and the highest was a 115k.

Jen Carrington [00:24:02]:
The 54k year was an especially low year because it was my maternity leave year. On the whole, my income tends to sit somewhere in dollars around the 100k mark, sometimes a little bit more, sometimes a little bit less. But it fluctuates. Sometimes it fluctuates by 10 grand. Sometimes it fluctuates by 20 grand. There was one year in there where it was basically half because I took on less clients because I had a baby. And this year, for example, the tax year in the UK, it runs from the start of April to the end of March. So I was coming up to the last of the tax year here in the UK, and I looked at my numbers, and my numbers have come in 15k less in dollars than it did the previous tax year.

Jen Carrington [00:24:43]:
And I thought, oh, like, am I failing? Is my business falling apart? Like, what's going on? And I was like, no, I made enough money. I made more than enough money. Everything's fine. Cash flow just happened to look different over the past year than it did the year before, and that's normal. I don't know what's gonna happen this next tax year. I trust that it'll be enough to sustain my life because that's the pattern it's followed and that's the action I take to support that. But the truth is some years are gonna be higher, some years are gonna be lower. Sometimes they're higher or lower for a choice that you make and sometimes the business slows down.

Jen Carrington [00:25:17]:
And all of it is normal and all of it is fine. And I just wish we talked about it more because then it would make us all feel less alone. When we're like, "Oh, my income has gone down. How do I feel about that?" Or, "Oh, my income's gone up." The years where I've made more money, the more important question for me is do I wanna make more money? Do I need to make more money? I'm all here for honest conversations about money because this is the conversations I have with my business friends in private, and they're the most meaningful conversations.

Amelia Hruby [00:25:44]:
I agree that it's so important to be transparent around money, not only when we are making the most money that we've made, but also when we are living in those experiences of having just enough or less than enough even and being willing to share from each of those points. I also really appreciate the sense of knowing our enough numbers, asking if we want to make more. That's something Nicole and I talked about, not just taking that for granted, not just being like, "Well, of course, I wanna make more money," but, like, do I want to make more money? I think that is something I've asked myself many times in my own business of, if this is exactly how I make money, do I want more of this work? And I maybe I don't. And maybe I wanna make more money, but not by doing more this work, or maybe I just don't wanna make more money and it's okay. And I wanna do less and I wanna step back for any reason.

Amelia Hruby [00:26:41]:
Of course, having a child is one reason that we wanna step back from business, but also because you're tired, because you wanna go on a great trip, because you just did enough last year and you wanna do a little less this year. I think the more we can normalize making these choices, the more we can all feel like we can lead those simple and spacious businesses that you talked about. And then I also appreciate that you shared it's not always our choice. Sometimes there's just a lull in the market, or you are delivering your offer in a way that's not as popular anymore, and we need to reconfigure it. Or there are so many reasons that your revenue or your income can decline. And I appreciate you kind of sharing those numbers over time so we can see, like, okay, wow, like, there is a lot of fluctuation here and that has been okay and didn't mean that you, like, panicked and closed up shop the first time the numbers went down.

Jen Carrington [00:27:38]:
And if anyone wants to look at this piece, it's on the website so you can see it, the really interesting thing for me is my income has not grown that much over the past five/six years. I've stuck at what my enough number is, but the thing I don't think I went into depth in this post about is the way I make that money has really changed. The growth I have been obsessed with in my own business for the first few years is radically evolving.

Jen Carrington [00:28:02]:
What I was talking about at the beginning when you asked me that question, Amelia, of moving from a one to one business model to a hybrid business model, sometimes the evolutions we wanna make in our business isn't changing the number, but changing the way we make that number or how we feel making that number. And that is the kind of growth I don't see many people talking about. The growth seems to always be the assumption that everyone wants to double their income. But I think sometimes it's "how do I want to spend my life minutes working in my business to make the money that I need to make and want to make to sustain my life?" And that has been the most beautiful question for me because by answering it, I've fallen back in love with my business, but also been able to stay in the arena of it.

Jen Carrington [00:28:42]:
I would have not been able to stay in the arena of my business if I hadn't have made the changes I had to make and were they scary to make? Yeah. And sometimes I'm like, oh, it was so much easier when I was just booking up clients and not having to do these big launches every year. And I'm laughing at myself because I launch a very gentle way. But it was an easier business but I forget, like, "No, but Jenn you used to do all those discovery calls and booking all those clients." So every business model has its pros and its cons, but growth doesn't always have to look like revenue growth. It can look like an internal shift as well if that's what someone's desiring. And it could be both as well. You can wanna radically evolve your business model and increase your income, and anything anyone wants gets to be true for them, I think.

Amelia Hruby [00:29:22]:
I appreciate that reminder so much that there are many kinds of growth, not simply revenue growth. What a novel and profound concept.

Amelia Hruby [00:29:36]:
Hi there, Off the Grid listeners. Amelia here, interrupting this episode because I need to talk to you about email. Chances are you're listening to this podcast because you want to find ways to connect with clients and share your passion without relying on the algorithm. I think that email marketing or an email newsletter is one of the very best ways to do that. But I see so many business owners making a very simple mistake. It's one I've made myself and luckily for us, it's easy to correct.

Amelia Hruby [00:30:12]:
That mistake is setting up your email list without setting up a welcome email. Why a welcome email, you might ask? Well, it builds trust with your subscribers from the very moment they sign up for your list and it also tends to have the highest open and click rate of any email you'll ever send. So if you are one of my very favorite people who does not have a welcome email set up or if you wish your welcome email was like a little better or a lot better, please let me introduce you to Holly Wielkoszewski of Daypack Digital. You might recall Holly's name from a podcast episode we did on email marketing back in August 2023. Since then, she has launched a self paced mini course called Write a Winning Welcome Email, where she'll support you to write your welcome email with easy to follow steps and plenty of encouragement and maybe the best thing about it is it's only $49.

Amelia Hruby [00:31:16]:
In Write a Winning Welcome Email, Holly's created three bite sized modules that teach you how to build trust with your subscribers from the very beginning. Each module includes a video lesson with Holly, a downloadable worksheet, brainstorming guide or bonus resource and a specific call to action to help you move forward. With Holly's guidance, I'm confident you'll have all the ingredients you need to create a welcome email that will usher new connections onto your email list and turn your subscribers into loyal supporters. Head to daypackdigital.com or the link in the show notes to learn more. I hope that by the time I join your mailing list, it's got an amazing welcome email waiting for me with Holly's help. Now let's get back into the episode.

Amelia Hruby [00:31:59]:
I want to ask you about your marketing because you just talked about how you launch very gently. I've heard you say that you're definitely on the chill end of the marketing spectrum, and yet you do launch your program multiple times a year. And you are very consistent with your newsletter practice and your podcast practice. So I'm curious, could you tell us a little bit about what's happening in your marketing ecosystem right now, and how did you choose those different pieces and formats as where you're showing up?

Jen Carrington [00:32:38]:
Yeah. So my marketing philosophy has always been what I like to call sowing seeds and putting my lights on. So basically, the way I market in my business is all year round, I'm sowing seeds. I'm sowing seeds through my weekly newsletter. I'm sowing seeds through my podcast. I'm sowing seeds for resources I share. I show up and I create content consistently and show up and be of value and give people sneak peeks to what I offer. And then a few times a year, I put my lights on.

Jen Carrington [00:33:03]:
So I launched my flagship group program. I do three enrollments a year. So for, like, 10 days, every four months, I'm kind of talking about that program every single day. So I put my lights on for that. A few times a year, I put my lights on and say, "Hey. I'm booking up my next one on one capacity. And then if I launch over small offers, I put my lights on for that. So most of the time, I'm just sowing seeds, and then I put my lights on, and my avenues for sowing seeds, it's funny. The specifics of what they may look like will be unique to the season I'm in, but the buckets have kind of stayed the same for the past 10 years.

Jen Carrington [00:33:37]:
I've always had a podcast. I have multiple podcasts. I had my first podcast, which was called Make It Happen, which ran from 2015 to maybe 2017. I've had little mini podcasts in the interim. I run a podcast with my dear friend, Sara Tasker, called Letters from a Hopeful Creative. We kind of stole the dish format where people send us in letters and we talk about it on the show. So right now I have a weekly, weekly-ish solo podcast called Your Simple & Spacious Business, and then Sara and I kind of record Letters episodes whenever we have capacity to do so.

Jen Carrington [00:34:09]:
I have my weekly newsletter, which has actually recently had a big evolution because it used to just be called a weekly letter, and I would kind of just write this essay to my email list every month. But last year, I started my Substack, which is called Conversations I Have with Myself, and it kind of got to this place where I was like, wait, what belongs on the Substack and what belongs on the newsletter? So I decided to switch things up with my newsletter. It's now called The Simple and Spacious Digest. And every week, I share one thing that's bringing me ease, one thing that's bringing me joy, and one thing I'm focusing on for intentional growth in my business. So it's a bit more of like a classic digest newsletter. And then I have my Substack where I share a bit more, like, personal behind the scenes. Also my solo podcast, I recently started a Substack just for that so I could have written interviews with fellow business owners.

Jen Carrington [00:34:55]:
And then I have opt-ins. So I have my deep dive kit, which is my main opt-in. And then there's the social media of it all. I would call myself social media lite. I think I posted on my grid for the first time in five months a few weeks ago. I sometimes share on stories. Like, I've definitely benefited from having the social media presence over the years, but it's never been a top priority for me mainly because I just don't wanna hang out on social media that much. It's not fun for me. I'm introverted. I like longer form content. Longer form content has always been what moved the needle for me. I'm not gonna dance on a reel or even make a reel because I can't be bothered, and I'm not on any of the social media platforms.

Jen Carrington [00:35:35]:
So podcasts, newsletter, I do have a blog. My whole journey started with a blog that I started in 2013. I do not update that blog ever really. However, this year my blog was just like wilting. It was having no love and there's like no SEO being fed into my website. So this year, actually, something I've been doing is every month creating a free mini workshop for my newsletter list, and then I put that on the blog. And my goal is that at the end of 2024, I will have 12 mini workshops on my blog that I can be pushing out to Pinterest and building the SEO up just so that my blog's got a bit of life back into it, delighting my newsletter list, feeding the blog a little bit. I think that is all my marketing channels.

Jen Carrington [00:36:17]:
And then obviously, the most important marketing channel is word-of-mouth. Word-of-mouth has sustained my business. My content and my word-of-mouth is what has sustained my business for the past decade. But, yeah, mostly a lot of podcasting, a lot of newslettering. That is what I've always focused on. It's just the format of it has evolved as as my intuition and my creative curiosity has led me to different places.

Amelia Hruby [00:36:40]:
Yeah. I love that. It's the sense that the places you're showing up are consistent. You're on your website, you're on email, you're on podcast, and then you let the format and the frequency flux depending on the period of your life or what's happening or what you want to do. And that's really supportive for people to hear, I hope, because it's just reminding me that I think in our marketing, we can be guided by what feels most aligned with how we like to share. So if you like to speak to people or speak by yourself in solo episodes or if you like to do a lot of writing and that's where you're most comfortable, if you feel most comfortable writing letters to people in an email form or if you like to create content for your blog.

Amelia Hruby [00:37:26]:
I also appreciate hearing from you that you are doing a little bit at least of all of those things, which is then bringing people into your ecosystem in these different ways, whether it be through Pinterest or SEO or podcast listeners or word-of-mouth when people hear about you through word-of-mouth like I did. There's a whole lot of ways for them to get to know you and trust you and want to work with you because you have been creating and sharing in these different forms.

Jen Carrington [00:37:56]:
Content and word-of-mouth have sustained my business, and it's really interesting to me actually. Like, nothing has changed in a decade for me. It's still a podcast. It's still a newsletter. It's still a blog in some format. It's funny, in this online world where it feels like everything is shifting and there's always like the hot new platform that we've got to get used to. I don't know about you, Amelia, but like, I'm listening to people's podcasts. I'm reading their newsletters. I'm reading their blog. The way that I'm keeping up with the people that I wanna buy from is the same as it was 10 years ago too. It's just that we're keeping our platforms fresh, I guess, or trying new things.

Jen Carrington [00:38:28]:
But I'm a big believer in if we show up and use our voice and share our stories and share our ideas and give people sneak peeks of whatever experience we facilitate inside our containers. I'm a big believer in let people get a feel for that for free, whether it's getting used to your voice or getting used to your teaching style, and build a relationship with people, and then put your lights on and let people know how to buy from you. That marketing approach has served me very, very well over the years, and it feels very gentle and very human too. And for that, I'm grateful because I don't think I would have been able to have been as consistent as I have been with my marketing if I felt like I had to be someone I wasn't to do so. That would make me wanna run away and hide.

Amelia Hruby [00:39:08]:
Yeah. Absolutely. And I think that's what makes business sustainable. I say a lot on this podcast we're creating successful sustainable businesses, but I really feel like in this conversation, we're unpacking what that sustainability looks and feels like. So it's about aligning your business model with your capacity energetically. Like, what can you do and show up for for the long term, which I really appreciated how you shared that. And then also aligning your marketing with what feels good and authentic for you to share in ways that you're happy to continue showing up online and or in the world and sharing your work. And I think that those are two really important keys of sustainable business.

Jen Carrington [00:39:49]:
For sure.

Amelia Hruby [00:39:51]:
I wanna ask you more about "putting the lights" on because I love this phrase. And I sometimes feel like I've seen people think that they're putting the lights on, and then when I ask them how they put the lights on, they're like, "Well, I put a sales page on my website." And I'm like, "Well, I don't know that that's gonna, like, suddenly bring all these clients your way." So could you unpack that a little more for us? Like, what does putting the lights on mean for you, and how do you do that in your business?

Jen Carrington [00:40:20]:
Well, this is actually a perfect time in my business year to ask me this because I did a launch in January, but I haven't really been putting my lights on all that much for Q1. But heading into Q2, there's gonna be a lot of putting my lights on coming. So if it helps, I'll give some tangible examples. So there's three things coming for me in Q2 where I will be actively putting my lights on. Number one I'm launching a digital product shop. All my offers are higher ticket. And I have a small audience, so it makes sense for that to be the way to stabilize my income, but I kinda just feel crappy that someone has to pay quite a lot of money to feel supported by me and my business. I don't know about you, Amelia, but when I discover someone's business, if there's, like, a £50 digital product I can just test the waters with, that's good for me just to see if I like that person's vibe. If they have a book or something like that.

Jen Carrington [00:41:07]:
So digital product shop is coming first, and the way I will put my lights on for that is I will email my newsletter list. I've gonna have a five day 20% off discount code to celebrate. And I'll send an email, and I'll say, "Hey. Here's my digital product shop. Look at what's available. Here's your 20% off discount code." I probably will also share that on social media. Like on Instagram, I'll just stick stick up a story. Honestly, I don't think I'm feeding the algorithm enough or my audience on there enough for it to even be worth it at this point, but I'll still probably just do it. Probably share about it on my Substack. So when I say putting my lights on, that's the simplest version of it where I'm kind of just sending out an email or two to say, "Hey. This is this thing I have available."

Jen Carrington [00:41:45]:
I'll also be putting my lights on when I do my next enrollment for my flagship group program, Your Simple & Spacious Business. That will look a little more in-depth. I'll do what in the industry, I guess, we call a pre-marketing window. For the Simple & Spacious Business, because it's higher ticket, I tend to do a six week lead up if I have the capacity to follow through on that. Some launches, I haven't had the capacity to do so. But for six weeks, I'll kind of start to let my email community know, "Hey. The next enrollment's coming. Here's some sneak peeks. Here's some behind the scenes. Here's some resources I've made for you. Join the wait list if you wanna get the early bird offers." I'll do all that in the lead up. Then over a 10 day launch window, I'll be sending, like, seven emails over that time with different sneak peeks, different ideas. So that's the extreme version of me putting my lights on because I'm in a launch.

Jen Carrington [00:42:33]:
And then the middle ground is, I'm also gonna be putting my lights on for my remaining one on one capacity for the rest of the year. What that'll look like is sending an email to my newsletter list. Tends to what I do when I'm putting my lights on for one on one is I share a lot of testimonials because I think that's the best way to get a feel for what it's like to work with me. I invite people to book a discovery chat on Voxer if they want to. So it's kind of like an email to say that my digital product shop is open with a discount code, putting my lights on for one on one, sharing testimonials, inviting people to connect, doing a full launch where I'm doing a whole lead up window, and then launch emails throughout the launch, and also shouting out my podcast.

Jen Carrington [00:43:11]:
And so the email is the main vehicle for it, but I'm also still mentioning things in my podcast and my Substack on social media. That is what I mean by putting my lights on. Just putting up sales page up, that's just like screwing the the light into the wall, but you're not actually switching the light on. And also, if someone's listening to this and they're thinking, "Jen, I do not wanna send all these emails. I don't wanna take up all this space." I feel you. Like, I do not mind it that much anymore because, like I'm British, so this is really hard for me to say, but, like, I know I'm good at what I do, and I know that my offers are supportive for people. So I'm confident showing up and taking up space and selling because I'm selling without sleaze. There's nothing ever manipulative or pushy in my marketing. I probably lean out too much with it and just be so chill and like, "Hey, if it's the right time for you, don't worry about it." I lead with value.

Jen Carrington [00:44:02]:
My goal when I'm in a launch or when I'm selling is I want someone to walk away from that email feeling amazing whether or not they're ever gonna buy from me. So I give a lot of value, a lot of sneak peeks, a lot of resources, or if they can just learn from the way I'm selling so they can borrow it and tweak it for themselves. My goal is always delight someone no matter what they decide their next step to be. But tell people what I'm selling. Tell people why it's awesome. Tell people what's available because I've got bills to pay. I've got a child to feed, a room to keep over our head. But selling doesn't have to feel sleazy. Selling just gets to feel like a beautiful invitation. But you've gotta make the invitation. You can't just plug the light into the wall but not turn it on, would be my encouragement.

Amelia Hruby [00:44:44]:
Yeah. I love that. So putting your lights on is really about sharing, not simply coming up with the offer. And I think as well what's occurring to me now is that really works for you because you are sowing seeds at all of the times when you don't have your lights on. So another thing that I will often see in people's marketing is they might put their lights on and do a whole launch, but they're doing it to a list that they have done it to before and where there are not a lot of new people who have joined since they last did the launch.

Amelia Hruby [00:45:16]:
And that's not to say that some people won't decide now is the right time for them and join now. But if you're not bringing new people in to learn about you and be introduced to your work, over time, you will eventually max out on all the original people who were there and wanted to buy your thing. And so we have to be both sowing the seeds and putting the lights on as you're saying. Like, it requires both pieces of that.

Jen Carrington [00:45:41]:
And there's also nothing worse than when you get an email from someone in your inbox and they're selling, and you kind of forget you ever subscribed to their newsletter because they haven't sent anything out in a year, But now they obviously need to generate some cash. And, like, no shade to that because sometimes you just need some revenue. But sowing seeds is both to welcome people in, but also to keep nurturing those people when they come in because also you want programs with low churn. My group program is basically 0% churn rate. I very rarely have a client project that ends abruptly. Not only do you want to be selling your containers and reaching your enough number, but you also wanna be attracting "hell yes" clients and customers. That's a big part of it. And I really believe that the more I show up and be of value and share who I am and share what it's like to work with me, therefore, I'm only gonna attract in the right people into my containers as well.

Jen Carrington [00:46:33]:
So sowing seeds is great for supporting the business to thrive, but it also it allows us to sell with humanness and ease and alignment because people know who we are. People know before we even say to them "Hey, this thing is available" if we're the right fit for them, then it's just supporting them to decide, is the time right for them to make that investment? So I am very passionate about this approach to marketing, and I believe in it because it's supported my business for so many years, but I've seen it support so many of my clients too.

Jen Carrington [00:47:00]:
And if you ever get stuck, just say to yourself, "sow seeds, put my lights on." Like, how am I sowing seeds and how am I putting my lights on? I really don't think we can go too far wrong. And it doesn't have to look like a weekly newsletter and a weekly podcast. If all that feels sustainable for you is a monthly newsletter or an biweekly podcast or a quarterly newsletter and a biweekly podcast, like, it doesn't have to be outside of your capacity. Only commit to what feels sustainable for you, but don't expect putting your lights on to work if you're not also sowing seeds. And don't expect sowing seeds to be enough to sell. You've gotta put your lights on too.

Amelia Hruby [00:47:34]:
Yeah. Definitely not falling into that habit of just nurturing your audience forever and never directly selling them anything or, only ever selling in a PS or something like that. That's not gonna make you that sustainable income either.

Jen Carrington [00:47:49]:
No. For sure. The PS is good now and again, but the PS is probably not gonna bring it in audiences. I wish it would. Wouldn't that just be delightful just to PS our way through business growth?

Amelia Hruby [00:48:00]:
Oh my gosh. That would be the dream if you didn't ever have to sell anything, you just PSed your way through it. If only, if only. Well, Jen, I have loved this conversation. I know I could talk to you about business for absolutely ever, but I'm feeling like we're coming to a place where I feel complete. I'm curious, is there anything else that you would like to share with Off the Grid listeners or say about your approach to business or marketing today?

Jen Carrington [00:48:30]:
I think just my biggest encouragement for anyone listening is don't stay stuck in a business that isn't working best for you. That is the biggest journey I've been on the past few years, is I had a business that was thriving, it was making the amount of money I needed to make, I was working with incredible people, and it was breaking me. It was going against the realities of my health and the realities of motherhood, and I had to gently fight for my needs in my business. And it has been the most beautiful experience and now that my business is truly aligned with my capacity, I feel like I could keep doing this for many, many more years to come, and I'm more fulfilled, and I'm more joyful in the business.

Jen Carrington [00:49:06]:
So I just want to encourage anyone, don't stay stuck in a business that may look impressive on paper or may make sense on paper. If something in your body is saying this isn't sustainable for me, this isn't joyful for me, this isn't healthy for me, find a way to bring fresh intention to your business model. There's always a way forward. We don't have to stay stuck. There's always a way forward. We might just have to make difficult decisions to move forward. We might not be able to get everything we want all at once. But just don't stay stuck in a business that isn't working best for you because life is just too damn short, and I don't believe we can do our best work when we're sacrificing our humanness in the process either.

Amelia Hruby [00:49:45]:
Thank you. I know that I needed to hear that, so I'm sure other people did as well. And I really appreciate you offering that encouragement and living out that model for us. I'm just so grateful. Thank you so much, Jen, for being on Off the Grid today. Thank you, listeners, for tuning in. You could find all of the links to Jen's work in the show notes. And until next week, I will see you off the grid and on the Interweb.

Amelia Hruby [00:50:53]:
Thanks for listening to Off the Grid. Don't forget to grab your free Leaving Social Media Toolkit at offthegrid.fun/toolkit. This podcast is a Softer Sounds production. Our music is by Melissa Kaitlyn Carter of Making Audio Magic, and our logo is by n'Atelier Studio. I'm your host, Amelia Hruby, and until next time, I'll see you off the grid and on the Interweb.