207: Behind The Scenes Live Coaching For Digital Product Revenue Growth (Session #1)

Foreign 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, Abby. I am super excited for our conversations today. You and I were chatting earlier. I've never done this before. You've never done this before. We are basically going to go live with our coaching. You have some things that you are wanting to work on in terms of your digital product revenue. I am helping you with that. We're going to be completely transparent with everybody. This is going to be a six month experiment which kind of goes in line with your business and what you do, the content experiment. So we're going to be doing this for six months. Every single month we're going to come on the Creators MBA podcast and we're going to talk about how things are going. But I really want to take a second and set the stage for everybody here. I'd love for you to share with us and tell us a little bit more about you, your business and some of the challenges that you have had that has led us to where we are today.

Yeah. Well, thank you for having me and I'm equally excited and nervous about this experiment. We'll see how it goes. I think that this will really help with the accountability that I feel like I need. My business is the Content experiment and I have a podcast by the same name which I am relaunching as part of what you and I are doing together. I am a fractional marketing director for online businesses, mostly coaches. I call myself a B2B 2B because I work with business owners who help support other business owners mostly. And, you know, it's, I don't know, interesting. I'll say that I say this, but I do. My area of focus is marketing content strategy and that's where I feel like I'm really struggling in my own business, which is kind of why I'm here and which we'll talk about a little bit more. Mostly I work with clients who have podcasts and YouTube channels to help them with their strategy and also do some of the implementation, like behind the scenes implementation, which I think is a little bit different than most fractional marketing directors do. My assistant helps with the implementation piece because I don't want to do it, but it needs to get done right and then on the product side. So what you and I are going to be working on. Together I create products around podcasting and visibility and content strategy and then also using AI to help support your marketing efforts. And I reached out to you. Well, I joined your membership, the newsletter membership last December, in December of 2024. And then I joined the product membership in must have been January of 2025. The way you have things laid out is so easy. I love the private podcast feed. And I was like, this is, this is what I need. However, the big piece that has been missing for me since I joined my first course, which was not yours, I paid for a course in December of 2023 to help me put together a Shopify store, failed miserably at it. I put together the store, just haven't sold enough or much at all. The piece that was missing was the accountability. And that's why I signed up for the coaching, because I need accountability. I need somebody to help me, you know, make sure that I get it done and to kind of talk through some of the things that need to happen. Because I can't see what I need to see inside of my own business. That's where I struggle the most. Did I answer your whole question?

Yeah, you answered everything perfectly. And I do want to comment on something that you said. You said, I work in business, I work in marketing, but I need help with marketing. But we all need help in our businesses, every single one of us, because I think it's difficult for us because we're so in the day to day weeds of it. It's easy for me to go out and analyze somebody else's business and say, okay, it's very clear to me what you need to be doing. But sometimes when I'm looking at my own stuff, I'm like, I don't know where to go on that. You're not alone there. I just want you to know that definitely not alone. Most of your revenue comes from service work.

99.999% of it. Yeah.

Like most of us, you have digital products and you want to increase that part of your revenue. We're trying to figure out what is the best way to do that and how should you go about doing that. So let's walk through. Ideally, because we're going to be working on this for the next six months. Tell us about the results you would like to see and in a little bit more outside of. I just need accountability because I do think it's more than that because you're, you're kind of putting yourself down. But I, I see your drive you're very driven. I think it's, can I get money from my digital products? How can I get that recurring revenue from my digital products? And that's what we're going to dig into and figure out.

Yeah, I love the one to one client work that I do. I don't see myself ever stopping that because I like to actually do the things, you know, I like to support other business owners. I like to build the relationships. However, because of the nature of the work that I do with clients, helping them with podcasts and with YouTube channels, I can't do the work until the client has done the work. I'm not going to record a podcast for them, I'm not going to film a YouTube video for them. They have to do the work first. And that doesn't always happen. And usually even though we have a contract that pushes back on me and my revenue, I had a situation last year where the client was telling me I don't have it done for this month. So we're just going to skip the month. When you're on a regular retainer contract, it doesn't work like that. So I pushed back. I ended up letting the client go because I can't work in that kind of environment. That was a big financial hit for me. I mean, that was a couple thousand dollars in revenue every month. And I knew way before this, but that was kind of like the catalyst too. I have to do something different. I can't rely solely on one to one clients for my livelihood. I'm the only income in my house, always have been. And so I have to do something different. The goal, the big overarching goal is to have. I need to see sales from these digital products. I love to create them. I love putting myself out there and sharing them. You and I have been working together for a few weeks and you have helped me realize that I'm giving away too much for free. I need to start getting paid for that intellectual property. A big goal for me, like an end goal, is a significant portion of my revenue to come from digital products or some combination of not one to one work. Maybe that's workshops in the future, maybe like paid workshops. Maybe that's some sort of membership, you know, kind of modeling it after how you have your business working. We have some numbers we talked about and you said the first thing I need to do is list growth. I'm all on board for that. And I think we talked about having a, maybe a 50% list growth from my starting point by the end of this six months. Together and because I've never focused on list growth because I've only done one to one work. So who needs a list when you're, you know, know, working onetoone with people and getting referrals And I see that.

All the time, people who are in service based work, you know, one of my business best friends, she does, she builds websites in the vacation rental industry and she's gotten most of her referrals over the years by word of mouth. So she hasn't focused on list growth. But when you are selling digital products, you and I talked about this, right? That email list is where those sales are going to come from. So we definitely need to focus on that. And I, I love that you were like, yeah, I agree, we're going to double down and you know, participate in some bundles and summits and other may, maybe even paid ads in the future. So I love that. So I want to kind of hone in and kind of talk about if you're willing to expand upon it a little bit more. I know we looked at all of the offers that you have and what you were giving away and some of your lead magnets and I did think that you were giving away too much for free. And I definitely want to protect our intellectual property. So walk me through how that made you feel in, you know, what changes are you making there?

I mean, it's true. I mean I know I'm giving away too much for free. I have one particular I'm going to use air quotes freebie that I've been offering for free and it's by far been my biggest list growth generator. And that's the ask your audience challenge. I've always offered it for free. It's, I've done it live, I've run it live a couple of times too. And it's, I mean grown my list by a ton. And then I, then I have another product that I spent so much time putting together. I'm paying for hello Audio for a private podcast feed and I have given it away for free to over 500 people and I am supposed to be selling it. And I say supposed to be because that's the price tag that's on it for $47, which is a steal for $47. And, and that's a 90 day content plan walking you through how to, how to put it together. And yeah, I mean it, it kills me that I have given it away to so many people, so many people have opted into that for free because I don't, I guess I don't Think anybody's gonna buy it. And I want a, I want to justify the fact that I put it together, that I took the time to put it together. So that's why I gave it away at a summit. And I'm embarrassed to say that right before you and I started working together, I pitched it or another a bundle. And so it's going to be in a bundle this spring. So. And I feel really crummy about that now. I want to go back and say, never mind. But no step that I've taken since, since then is really, and through your coaching, we looking at what are the products that I have, what are the things that I've been giving away for free and. Cause I've been offering everything as one offs. I, everything has been a one off. It's been in a Shopify store. Like I want people to go to Shopify and buy multiple things. And I'm not. There was no funnel. There's no funnel or anything set up. There's no, there were no order bumps, there were no upsells, nothing. So just yesterday, the day before, like yesterday from recording this, I, I, last week I went through and I created the email sequences and the, and decided on how I was going to restructure things and then loaded everything up and, and it's currently working because people, one of those freebies is in a bundle right now. And so people are opting into it and getting into that sequence.

So that's awesome.

Yeah.

You know, I want to just clarify a little bit for the audience because I think your mindset and kind of how you've had ever since things set up is a lot of what I see out there. So you're not the only one that's doing it. And how I like people to set up things, these offers, these, you know, really, really, really valuable. And we'll call them paid offers. Right. Because you, you could be selling them for sure even though you're giving them away for free. I like for them to have them set up like a lead magnet. Even though it's a paid offer, certainly a very valuable offer. Set it up like a lead magnet. So when people in that bundle or that summit, they go to opt in, they put in their name and the email address. Then on the next page you have your Tripwire offer and then you can take them on, you know, have the order bump and have maybe some upsell. So you're taking them on a very, very structured journey. But you're also getting paid for all of your intellectual property, which is so, so Important.

Mm, yes. And as I move forward with this, I, I can let go of the Shopify shop, which is not inexpensive to set up and then to maintain. And I'm having to pay for using Shopify. I was having to pay for Zapier, so which every time I had to hire somebody to set it up for me and I never can seem to get it to work. So I'm having to pay all this extra to let people have my stuff for free versus using ThriveCart, which is a, you know, I don't know if it's still a one time payment. When I bought it, it was. And then being able to do the order bumps and upsells through that, which really simplifies things, which is key for me too, is making sure things are super simple.

And remind me, Abby, I don't remember exactly how many products you had in your Shopify store. Was it like 10 or 10?

About 10.

Yeah.

There's about 10.

Yeah. So I mean, for those of you who are listening, I generally don't recommend a Shopify store unless you have a lot of digital products. Like a lot for the most part. With like her portfolio 10 digital products, you can sell those through funnels, right? We can set up free gifts and drive people on a specific customer journey. There way to sell those type of offers. Well, I am super excited to work with you over the next six months on this. What do you feel like is your next step? I know you're working on those funnels. What is the kind of the next thing you're going to do?

So I have set up one of my funnels and so ideally I have five that I've outlined. So I would like to have at least three set up by the end of March so that in April I can start looking at how they're performing and kind of hone it, Hone some of the, the offers and the emails and things like that. I do have one question though.

Yeah, let's go.

What is it? So one of my ask your audience challenge offer can potentially drive to two separate paid offers. So in, in an upsell, how do I structure that? In Thrive cart, if I'm driving people to two potential different paid products as upsells, would I duplicate the ask your audience challenge and then just decide based on which summit or bundle that I was submitting it to that would determine which one I send them to or how do you recommend doing that?

So let me ask you a couple questions. As I understand it, the audience challenge will be the tripwire, correct?

The ask Your audience challenge is quote, unquote, free thing that I'm giving away. There's a monetary value. That's the free.

Okay.

Bonus or whatever that I'm giving for the summit. And then the core offer would be either the 90 day content plan or the offer that I have, which is the AI content idea generator. So those would be the paid offers. Does that make sense?

Yeah. Yeah. So you, what you would do in that case in ThriveCart, you would set up a product, a different product for each of those Tripwire type offers. What are you using for the opt in page for the audience challenge? Are you using lead Pages?

You're using ThriveCart for that right now.

You're using ThriveCart for THAT right now. So I would want that to. I would prefer that that is set up like on a opt in page.

Okay.

In the bundle or the summit, they go to that landing page, opt in and then from there they put their name and their email and then from there it transfers over to the Tripwire page.

Gotcha. Okay.

Yeah. So you would set up two different ones for that. That'd be a really good test to see too, which one converts better.

Yeah. Okay. Okay, good. Yeah, so I guess that's, that's on my to do list is to get that set up too. Other things that I have on, like my action plan, and I'm sorry, I'm going to butcher this. I can't remember which of the two memberships, because I'm in two of your memberships. I can't remember which one talks about this. In one of the workshops you did, we went through using AI, you walked us through creating the signature slash perfect offer. And so I've gone through that whole process. I've honed in on what I want to do because I think that my. And this would be, you know, one to one work that I would be doing potentially in a quarterly basis instead of an ongoing retainer and kind of changing the way I work with clients. So I need to, I want to finish honing that in and get that up on my website and really simplify the offers I have on my website because I think. Well, I. Not that I think I know right now they're really. It's kind of confusing because so much of my client base has been through referrals. So I just haven't really paid much attention to what's on my website. So that's on my, on my list too. And then to also start relaunch my own podcast and I'm going to be Talking about all of this on my podcast too. Those are kind of the top three things, I guess on my, my to do list. And of course, you know, in the process, send out my weekly newsletters using your teachings. Send that on every. Send that every Friday. And I think that one thing that you and I talked about too was starting a, like some flash sales, which I'll start doing in April of 2025. Start doing flash sales of some of my products to get people into my ecosystem and my funnels and all of that fun.

I definitely want to. If you're, you know, interested in and willing to do it, it'd be nice to kind of dig into some of the newsletters too and look at the monetization, strateg strategy and figure out what we could do there to improvement. I'm super excited about Perfect Offer and you're talking about the Digital Product Lab where we had the workshop in there about the Perfect offer. So I'm excited to dig into that with you over the next few months. And yeah, you got your hands full.

I do. I have a lot. And you know, I mean, I'm committed to doing this and I'm. I told you before when we first talked about doing this like 10 hours a week, I'm committed to spending 10 hours a week working on this. And I spent quite a bit of time over the weekend working on this too. So yeah, this is. I'm excited. I finally feel like there's some momentum happening behind, behind all of this. So I'm excited.

And for those of you who are listening, Abby is in the newsletter Profit Club and the Digital Product Growth Lab. But you also have the VIP coaching, which is the office hours I do on Wednesday where you can we all do that via Voxer. So just wanted to kind of throw that out there and set the stage so everybody was aware. Well, thank you so much and I'm super excited again to be working with and seeing what we can do with your digital product income stream, if you would.

Yeah. Thank you.

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.