165: Minimalist Business Model: No Live Launches Needed

Welcome to the Creators MBA Podcast, your go to resource for mastering the art and science of digital product entrepreneurship. My name is Dr. Destiny Kopp and I help business owners generate consistent revenue from their digital product business without the need to be glued to their desks, constantly live launching or worrying about the social media algorithms. I hope you enjoy our episode today. Hi Destiny here and in this episode I am super excited to talk about my proven framework that I have used time and time again to build out an online business where I can generate consistent revenue from my digital products without being glued to my desk constantly live launching or worrying about the social media algorithms is my minimalistic business model that doesn't require a strong social media presence. So if you are looking for a strategy where you can work when you want to work and on your own terms, this episode is for you. But before I get into all of the details there, I want to first tell you a story. I have always been very protective of my time. So. So years ago I left the corporate world because I was sick of being chained to my desk, leaving very early in the morning, dropping off my kids at daycare, working to about six in Atlanta, coming home through that traffic, making dinner, putting my kids to bed. And then I was so exhausted I was climbing into bed myself. I have said this, I was like, you know what, this is enough. I quit my six figure corporate marketing job, which was quite frankly was a ton of money back then, in the early 2000s, and then started teaching online at the university level. So this was back in the dark ages, around 2005, when no one knew about online courses and I would have people that would even ask me, can eat? Can your students even learn by taking an online course? But let me tell you, I absolutely loved it. And the reason why I loved it because everything was asynchronous. And I'll tell you what I mean by that. That means that students could participate in the online course when it was convenient for them. So they could go in, they could participate in the discussions, they would submit their assignments. If they had a question, they would post it in the Q and A forum so they could do that when it was convenient for them. So if they wanted to do that at midnight, they could do that at midnight. And then I could participate in it as a university marketing professor, I could participate in that online course when it was convenient for me. So I would come in, you know, the next morning when I started working, maybe it was 9 o', clock, I would go into my discussion threads, I might even grade. So everything was asynchronous. So I didn't have to be at a meeting or doing a lecture at a specific time. And that was, was heaven for me because I had freedom, right? I did this for many years and I worked online at the university level in many different jobs with them. But eventually I wanted more. I had always wanted to start my own business. I always wanted to be on my own boss. So I left there and took the plunge. But initially I didn't have the freedom that I wanted and I had enjoyed when I was teaching online, you know, at the university level. I had offered courses, I put together courses and programs and they had asynchronous aspects, meaning I had to be on a call at a specific date and time or I had to meet a client and be there at, you know, 3:00pm on Thursday or I even had my days filled with client work. So initially I was doing some client work and I had, you know, set up these courses and these programs that I was running and they were just, it was, it was really just not what I wanted to do is not what I had envisioned. And I quickly realized that that was not the business model that I had left my full time job for. That's when I completely revamped my business. I went all in on digital products. So I got rid of any service work that I was doing. I revamped the, the programs that I have so if they had synchronous elements, meaning I had to be there at 1pm on a Monday for a zoom call or be there on Zoom. I got rid of all of that and really focused on mastering the business model I have today to get that consistent revenue without the need to be glued to my desk. So if you look at my calendar today, it is almost completely empty. And that's the way I want it. And I've designed it that way. I don't do, I don't constantly live launch. Now we do have events that we run, right? I'm running right now. I'm running a free bundle in my personal brand, my Destiny Cop.com brand. It's called the Funnel Cure. So I'm running that, but it doesn't have any synchronous elements. We also run summits in my hobby school rant. But none of that has any synchronous elements. Everything is pre recorded. We schedule everything. So we're not doing any live launching. And I certainly don't worry about the social media algorithms because I do very, very little on social media. Maybe I'll do more in the future. But right now I'm just not doing that much on social media. So today I want to talk about these three pieces, pillars of this framework and how I have set up this business model. And you can, you know, kind of go through this with me and see if any of this you would want to incorporate in your own business strategy. Now, there are these three pillars that I'm talking about. First is automated sales funnels, then asynchronous digital products that you're selling, and then leveraging diverse traffic sources. So these are the three pillars, but really the center of all of this is your email list, because that is very important. So I kind of consider, you know, we have these three pillars, but your email list is also tied in here because that's one of the key elements of having this business model where you basically can work when and where you want to. Now, the first thing I just want to mention is that this business model, and I call it my Freedom Formula business model, it is not about cutting quarters. It is not about kind of, you know, setting everything up and forgetting about it, because it's certainly not that. And you are working hard, right? It's not like you're not working, but you're definitely working smarter, not harder. And you're not working on somebody else's calendar. You're deciding what you want to be working on that day and filling up your calendar with what except excites you in what you want to be working on. Okay, so let's talk a little bit more detail about these three pillars. Now, one of these three pillars that I mentioned was automated sales funnels. And they really are a key part of this Freedom Formula framework that I'm talking about. Now, I'm sure a lot of you know what they are, but if somebody doesn't know what an automated sales funnel is. So basically what happens here, here you might have a lead magnet. Somebody signs up for your lead magnet, and then on the next page you might have a tripwire offer, which is, you know, just a special offer that you're offering them that's related to your lead magnet. They click to purchase that. On the checkout page, you might even have an order bump. And then once they enter their name and their email address, and you might even have some upsells, cross sells or downsells from that. And I do believe that almost all online business owners should have this tripwire type sales funnel set up in their business. So when somebody signs up for your lead magnet, whether they come to your website or maybe you're speaking at A virtual summit and you have a lead magnet that you're giving out there, or you're a guest on somebody else's podcast and they're allowing you to promote your lead magnet there. You have this tripwire sales funnel that is set up. Now another type of automated sales funnel that you can set up is basically like an evergreen sales funnel. So if you have like a higher price course, let's say that you have a course that is $1,000 for something like that, you might have them going, you might be promoting a webinar. So they sign up for your webinar, they go through your webinar. At the end of your webinar, you, you're pitching your online course. And I should have mentioned that this is all recorded. So this is a recorded webinar. At the end of that you're pitching your online course. If they purchase it, they'll automatically go into your course or you may have some follow up sales emails until your cart closes. So there's different type of automated sales funnels that you can set up in your business. But the key here is it is you. You basically set it up once and it runs on the back end in your business. Now you might have to go in, you're going to look at your data, make sure everything is converting the way it should. But for the most part you're setting them up and you're letting them run in your business. Now the tools that you'll have for something like this would be like an email service provider like Convertkit. You might even have some landing page builders. We use leadpages for our lead magnets and our sales pages. And depending on how you have your automated sales funnel set up, you might even need some type of webinar type system in there. But again, pretty easy to set up, pretty easy to handle, and they run in the back end of your business there. Now the next pillar that I want to talk about are asynchronous digital products and programs. Now keep in mind, I'm also talking about programs here. So it doesn't all have to be digital products and I'll give you some examples here. So in my business I have a lot of low cost digital products that we sell in these sales funnels. I also have some Shopify stores. So low cost digital products in the Shopify store that we promote via email and we also promote via SEO and Pinterest. So lots of ways that you can sell these asynchronous digital products. Now like I said, it doesn't all have to Be Digital products as an example. In my business I have a one on one coaching program, but it is all asynchronous. So we do it via Voxer. So my clients can post their questions. I don't care if they post them at 3am on a Friday. They can post them on anytime that that question comes up. Because people work at all different hours, right? And I have people, you know, that are in different time zones than me. So they're not all in the eastern time zone like I am. So I'm in the New York, Atlanta eastern time zone. They might be in a totally different time zone. So they can post their question in Voxer at any time that that question comes to their mind and I will respond within 24 hours during the business week. And if they post it on the weekend, I'll respond when I come back to work on Monday. And they know that. So they're not expecting a question from me at 3am on a Friday night. When they post that question, they know that I'll get back to them when I come back to work either the next day or next on on Monday if they post it over the weekend. So all of that is asynchronous. The other thing that is synchronous about that program is they get a weekly marketing audit. So if they to get a review of a sales page, review of an email or a landing page for a lead magnet, they can post their information by a certain time and I will get back to them within the designated time frame. So I'll do a recording and then send it back to them again. It is all asynchronous. So I'm not having to be on a coaching call at 2pm on a Thursday afternoon. So. So the other thing that I love about Voxer is it gives me time to formulate my answers to their questions. So if I need to go do a little bit more research or if I need to look something up, I have the opportunity to do that, right? So if I was on a zoom call and somebody asked me a question, I'd have to come up with an answer right then and there. So there's a lot of benefits to an asynchronous business model like this. And you can do this in even like a membership, right? You could set up a membership so it has these asynchronous elements. So if you wanted to DO Q&As for your members, you could have them send in their questions. So you could have a form where they send in your questions and you could have like a private podcast feed where you answered the individual questions. So that's one way to do that. Or you could just do a zoom call and answer the questions there. So there's a lot of ways that you can set up these asynchronous business models, even in courses and memberships. So doesn't mean that you can't do a call at Monday at 1pm if that's what you want to do. But I just want you to know that there's other ways to set this up. Now, the other pillar that I want to talk about here, and I think this is one of the most important aspects of this, is driving traffic to your business. Now you might be driving traffic to a lead magnet. You might be driving traffic directly to a sales page. So like in our Shopify store, we might do some Pinterest ads where we are driving track traffic directly to a collections or a specific product on that page. But you are driving traffic into your business. Most of the time you're going to be driving traffic to a lead magnet because that's going to be one of the best ways to get that lead into your business. And I want to talk about some ways that you can do that. And I do think that it is changing in terms of ways that you can advertise your business. And I'm very excited about some of the new opportunities that I've actually learned about here recently. And I'm going to be testing out in my own business. So what are paid ads? And this could be paid sponsorships or paid ads. Now all of you know about Facebook and Instagram ads and maybe even Google Ads. So I'm not going to go into those. You already know that those exist, sense. Another thing that we're exploring are Pinterest ads like I mentioned. And that's driving traffic to our Shopify store. So that's an option for you. Also some of the things that I have recently learned about is that you can place ads in like other people's newsletters. So if there is a newsletter out there that serves and has subscribers that are your perfect audience members, there are platforms out there. One of them is called Passion Fruit. And I will put that spelling because it's not spelled like what you would think it would be spelled. It's actually Passion and then F, R O O T. I'll put that in the show notes just so you have it. So you can go onto that website and you can find newsletters that have your perfect audience who are subscribed to them and you can Place an ad in that newsletter. And I know that some people are getting some really good cost per, you know, leads doing that. So that's one way that you can drive new email signups. The other thing is, is just sponsoring people's events. So one of the things that I've been doing this year is sponsoring, sponsoring and doing like VIP sessions with other people's events or like contributing to their digital back swag. So I've been paid to actually participate in that. So it's paid sponsorships, but it's a really good way to get new email signups. You can also speak at virtual events, so you can speak at somebody's summit or you can be a guest on their podcast. And I'm sure a lot of you have either done that or you're familiar with doing that. Now, if you are speaking at somebody's summit and they have an opportunity for you to purchase like a VIP spot, or if you're participating in a bundle and you have the opportunity to purchase a VIP spot, that is a really good way to make sure that your information is up there front and center so you can get the most out of speaking at that particular event. Now, SEO and Pinterest, obviously those are a good way to drive traffic to your website. Content marketing is another great way. So blogging, podcasting, what I'm doing here, or even YouTube channels are a way to drive traffic into your business. But one thing I would say here is that combining efforts, so most successful businesses are using a mix of all of these. Like I said, I have focused on SEO and Pinterest and content marketing. I've also in the past done a lot of speaking at virtual events and podcasting. And this year I am really focusing on doing some of those sponsorship and some of those paid ads. So going to like passion fruit and finding email newsletters that are that basically serve the target audience that I'm going after in placing an ad there to get them to sign up for my email list. So tons of opportunities there to leverage traffic resources to grow your email list, which I said was really at the heart of this Freedom formula framework. Now, if you have any questions on how to get started with putting together a digital product business that consistently generates revenue for you without the need to be glued to your desk or worrying about the social media algorithms, let me know, contact me on Voxer at Destiny Cop. I would love to learn a little bit more about you and your business and help you get started doing this. Bye for now. Thanks for listening all the way to the end. I hope you enjoyed this episode today. If you love the show, I'd appreciate a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast platform. Have a great rest of your day and bye for now.