Hey Reader,

As one of my 214 closest friends, can I ask a personal favor?

If you're one of the 35 loyal people that listen to our podcast every week (shoutout) would you be willing to write us a review on Apple or Spotify?

Do you have plans this afternoon at 1pm est?

We're offering a free masterclass "How to Fix an Offer that's not Selling" this afternoon (Thursday), and we'd love to have you join in you're available.

Messy Musings

When a business owner with an 8-figure business tells you to change your strategy...it lives in your brain for a bit.

Over the past year we've had the honor of getting to know Sam, she attended the first ever book club in The Breakroom, she's been on our podcast, and (I think) I can even say we've become friends.

At Craft + Commerce last week we got lunch with her and her team, and when we were talking about podcasts she gave us this 👆 piece of advice in passing.

But it stuck with me.

I wanted to immediately disregard it, because the whole premise for having a podcast was to 'have conversations with cool people' - and boy did that deliver (more cool people to come 🤫).

But...

We're running a business, and it's important to balance cool connections, and showing potential customers that we (personally) know what we're talking about.

So that brings me back to yesterday. We dropped episode 19, our first solo episode since the re-launch of our podcast. It was our recap of Craft + Commerce. And 14 hours after it went live we got this message:

​Barrett gave potentially the most moving keynote at Craft & Commerce, he owns Presence Based Coaching a coach certification company we've definitely talked about doing, and just someone we look up to in the coaching space.

In under a week that's two people that we look up to signaling that we shouldn't be sleeping on solo episodes.

But...in the wise words of Marie Kondo - if you get something new, you have to get rid of something - I'm applying this to weekly calendar commitments.

Each week I have 2 long form commitments - podcast interviews, and this email. Each one takes a couple of hours. And I love them both 😭.

We're running a business after all...

Strictly looking at numbers, we have a lot of conversations about our podcast interviews. Especially in the current "how to ___" format. I can see they're helping people build better businesses. And it's making us visible & giving us face time with relationships we really value.

The email is 🦗 <-- crickets (if you're an email strategist, you can put down your pitchforks, I fully realize it's a skill issue)

Also - I have a theory that people are burning out on too many emails right now because of how many people are using AI to write "good enough" emails, so they're getting swamped with so many newsletters that they just give up on reading them all together. I know a few people (myself included) have gone on pretty big un-sub sprees recently. *Not statistically fact checked, just themes in personal conversations I've been having.

The Experiment:

Starting next week we're going to experiment with doing 2 podcasts per week. Basically replacing this email's Messy Musings & Needle Mover as a conversation between Jo & I on the podcast & keeping the "how to" interviews with experts on Tuesdays (we have 3 interviews scheduled next week ⏲️,📘,📋).

There's still some things to figure out, and you'll still be getting emails, but the "original creation" will be on the podcast and the email will be a breakdown or summary rather than the original first thought.

I also sneakily think this might take even less time on a weekly basis. Because our 36 min solo episode that went up this week took me ~90 mins to record, edit, package, & schedule - where as weekly emails take me 2-3 hrs most weeks.

My question for you: what's a "favorite" marketing task you do each week that's not performing but you keep doing it?

This Week's Needle Mover

"You charge how much for a photo session??"

Almost a decade later I can still mentally picture the forest, flowing creek, foot bridge, and dirt path we were hiking on when my brother innocently reacted to how much Jo was charging as a photographer for her sessions.

If people can't understand why investing in your services is a good investment, it's really hard for them to want to pay your rates.

By the time we fully shut down our branding photography business in early 2025 our average session was $3k for 4-5hrs of shooting. For a small business that's a lot of money - until we started talking ROI.

• For a realtor, if they sell 1 house at the Indiana (where we live) average of ~$250k their 3% commission is $7.5k, if it's the national average of $400k their commission is $12k... if our photos help them get one more client/sale that's a 2.5-4x return on their investment.
• For an esthetician, the average ticket/cart price in 2026 is ~$150 or it takes 20 'average' customers to pay off our photo session. And if they're going to use the photos for 3 months (conservatively) thats 7 new booking/month based on the photos to make it a good investment (history showed our photos could book way more than that, and the case studies really helped).
• For a web designer selling $3-5k websites - one extra client pays for a branding session.

Or if your offer is more about freeing up time, help them do "calendar math":

• On average how much time do you spend each week trying to create content for socials?
• How much time would it free up if you had 150+ photos & b-roll for your VA to pull from so you don't have to be "camera ready" every. single. day.?

Instead of just talking about what's included in your offers, making it personal to your potential customers puts it much easier for them to make a purchasing decision.

This Week on the Podcast

We just got back from Craft & Commerce, Kit's conference that happens in Boise every year. We met a ton of cool people, didn't sleep enough, learned a bunch, and so much more.

On the pod this week we separately prepared answers to 5 questions, and reflected on the conference:

1. What was the coolest experience?
2. What did you have the most conversations about?
3. What's the coolest feature or demo?
4. What's living rent-free in your brain?
5. What will you be applying first?

I went much deeper into my thoughts about podcasts in the conversations because I was surprised how often it came up in conversations while we were there.

Hands down the people was the best part of going, and if you're looking for a conference to attend next year I'd recommend C+C even if you're not a Kit user, there was actually shockingly little time focus on Kit as a platform - they've just created really good "rooms" for creators to be in.

​

​Listen on Apple Podcasts / Listen on Spotify / Watch on YouTube​

See you next week!

Lyndon

Before you go: Do you think it's a good idea to add a second podcast per week?