00;00;03;23 – 00;00;32;20
Lauren Brollier Newton
Welcome to the abundant coach. I’m your host, Lauren Berlin. This is a weekly podcast about creating full spectrum success with a thriving coaching business, while making a profound difference in the world. Each week, you’ll discover insights, strategies, and inspiration to help you attract your ideal clients. Facilitate real transformation in their lives, and grow your coaching business while living your purpose with true freedom and fulfillment.
00;00;32;22 – 00;00;58;22
Lauren Brollier Newton
Well, welcome back to the abundant coach Lauren Newton here. Really excited to share with you the topic of today, which is digital products and how digital products can completely transform your business. Now we’re going to get into this, but I am not suggesting that every coach is ready for or should be thinking about a digital product, but I do want you to know the benefits, the challenges when you’re ready, when you’re not ready.
00;00;58;22 – 00;01;21;07
Lauren Brollier Newton
So that’s what we’re going to get into. But before we do, as always, I’d like to share with you a quote. So the quote is this. And actually it’s a it’s an anonymous writer. But I thought this was perfect. It says passive income is the ultimate form of leverage, allowing you to earn money while you sleep and have the freedom to focus on what matters to you.
00;01;21;10 – 00;01;41;12
Lauren Brollier Newton
So now, if you’re not familiar with the word leverage, the word leverage means that you take an asset and you’re able to leverage it and use it to your benefit again and again and again. And you don’t have to do the work again and again and again. So how leverage works in a digital product is you have this asset, a digital product.
00;01;41;14 – 00;02;01;09
Lauren Brollier Newton
You can sell it 24 hours a day, and you don’t have to be sitting at your desk and you’re making money on that digital product. A very common leverage able product that we don’t really think about as a as a leverage product is a book. You write a book once that book goes into the library, into the bookstore, into the Barnes and Noble.
00;02;01;11 – 00;02;18;08
Lauren Brollier Newton
I don’t even know if there are Barnes and Noble anymore. However, you go into the Barnes and Noble and you don’t have to write the book every time someone buys it. They’re buying that book over and over and over again. So a perfect example of this is a book like The Four Agreements. That book, I believe, was written in the early 90s, and it’s been on the bestseller list ever since then.
00;02;18;08 – 00;02;36;27
Lauren Brollier Newton
That’s leverage. I don’t have to do the effort again to get the return. So a digital product for coach is a beautiful form of leverage, but that doesn’t mean that everybody should do it or not. So this is really a beginner’s guide, how to use them to grow your coaching business and all that great stuff. Now here’s what I want to start with.
00;02;36;27 – 00;03;00;06
Lauren Brollier Newton
What is a digital product? So many of us coaches are using things online to support our to support our coaching business. For example, you might have your sessions on zoom, or you might have some meditations that your clients can listen to online, but you meet with sessions with that client live. I would not call those digital products how I’m talking about digital products.
00;03;00;06 – 00;03;24;00
Lauren Brollier Newton
Here is this is a product that is fully digital and doesn’t necessarily have any live support from you, the coach. It’s an online product. The person takes that course from you online with not a lot of live now. Many coaches have programs where there’s online elements to them, but there’s 1 to 1, or there’s a group or there’s something that actually happens live that could be a version of a digital product.
00;03;24;00 – 00;03;48;00
Lauren Brollier Newton
But today I’m talking strictly about that online product where there’s no live coaching time from you, although of course, you can do whatever you want and however you want to set it up. Why would you want this? The great thing about having a digital product is that you can record at one time. You can leverage it over and over and over again, meaning you can sell it forever, but you only had to do the work that one time.
00;03;48;00 – 00;04;14;23
Lauren Brollier Newton
Like we were just talking about. So why might a coach want to have a digital product like that? I’d like to start with a story. I got this, this really strong pull inside of me, like a strong spiritual cue when I was growing my coaching business. But I wanted to make a digital product. I wanted to make a digital product on a certain topic, and I called it the 21 Day Soul Connection Adventure.
00;04;14;25 – 00;04;34;22
Lauren Brollier Newton
And it was basically I was navigating with clients that a lot of clients didn’t know how to connect with the spiritual side of their nature, that, you know, that infinite side of themselves, that higher self. They didn’t know how to connect with source, if you want to call it that. And many of them had grown up in church and been like, I didn’t really personally find God there.
00;04;34;22 – 00;04;51;15
Lauren Brollier Newton
I don’t know how to get that feeling inside of me, like I’m connected to something. And so I wanted to make a very simple product that would help people do that. So in this 21 day Soul Connection adventure, it was 21 days of very short, five minute exercises that people could do to connect with that side of themselves.
00;04;51;18 – 00;05;13;01
Lauren Brollier Newton
Now, I didn’t create this product really from a strategic standpoint. For me, it was a soul standpoint. I just felt super called to create this product. And for me personally, I think those are the best products or services is when you just feel so passionate about it and so called to do that kind of thing. So that’s what, that’s what I did with the Soul Connection adventure.
00;05;13;03 – 00;05;28;01
Lauren Brollier Newton
But then I found that from a strategic standpoint, it was powerful to have a product like this. So let me tell you a little bit more about it so you can understand. So it was a 21 day Soul Connection adventure. People would watch one video a day. I think the longest video was ten minutes long and the shortest video was like four minutes long.
00;05;28;01 – 00;05;44;19
Lauren Brollier Newton
So there were 21 videos I gave myself. When I was recording this product, I gave myself a deadline. Like it has to be ready by January of the year. I was recording it because I was getting ready to make a cross-country move, and I was like, if I don’t record it now, I’m going to delay it till I delay it.
00;05;44;19 – 00;06;04;07
Lauren Brollier Newton
So actually, that whole product was recorded on Christmas Eve, December 24th. I think it was 20. It must have been 2021. That’s how passionate I felt about this. Literally. I was like, I’m not going out to dinner till six. So from like 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., I was just sitting at my desk recording videos. Now I share that part of it to share.
00;06;04;07 – 00;06;22;12
Lauren Brollier Newton
The cool thing about a digital product is it doesn’t have to be done in a studio with a green screen and fancy and graphics when you’re just getting started. I recorded all 21 of those episodes, so to speak, of those videos on zoom in my little home office, which back then was in a tiny 800 square foot, duplex.
00;06;22;14 – 00;06;44;25
Lauren Brollier Newton
So that’s a cool thing about a digital product. So I record this product and I decide to sell it for $39. So it was 21 days, 21 videos, and they got a guidebook that came with it, which I made on Canva, which, by the way, is free for everybody to use. So I sold it for $39. I realized over the course of making this digital product and selling it, that there were so many benefits to having it.
00;06;44;25 – 00;07;10;24
Lauren Brollier Newton
One, I could bring new people into my world by running Facebook ads to this digital product. I could write a short lead magnet which was about the soul connection, create a digital product, and then the free e-book would sell them into my $39 digital product. I could look at everybody who buys this online, and I could follow up with them and enroll them into higher ticket programs.
00;07;10;24 – 00;07;32;01
Lauren Brollier Newton
I could, go to a speaking engagement and say, hey, everybody who’s at the speaking engagement, I’m going to give you a deal. On the Soul Connection adventure, only, you know, $15 today or whatever it is, I could give it away for free as a bonus for signing up for something. So when you have an asset like that, you can use it in so many different and creative ways.
00;07;32;04 – 00;07;53;15
Lauren Brollier Newton
You could affiliate with someone and have them, sell your product for you or give away your product for free as part of a bonus to bring more people into your world. Like, there’s so many things that you can do with a digital product. Now, with that said, it all sounds fine and dandy, but what ends up happening with a low priced digital product like that is it’s not like it’s not taking a lot of effort.
00;07;53;15 – 00;08;10;20
Lauren Brollier Newton
So for example, I created the I created the videos that didn’t take that much effort. It took one day, but now I’m going to go sell it, try to sell this thing. So if I had the the benefit of having an email list that I could send out an email to my list and I could get 50 people to order it within an hour.
00;08;10;22 – 00;08;33;16
Lauren Brollier Newton
But if you don’t have that kind of an asset where you don’t have followers yet, you don’t have a list yet. It’s going to take you the same amount of effort to sell a low priced digital product as it would to sell your high ticket coaching. So now let’s get into what are the challenges of this one? If you don’t have a list, and if you don’t have a big social media following, you’re going to have to put a hell of a lot of effort into selling a low price product.
00;08;33;18 – 00;08;49;07
Lauren Brollier Newton
If I were you, I would recommend if you have a higher ticket coaching program, like a thousand or a couple thousand dollar coaching program or a VIP program, I would put all my effort into selling that, because you’re going to spend the same effort to sell a $10,000 product as you would a $39 product. So which one do you want to sell?
00;08;49;07 – 00;09;09;07
Lauren Brollier Newton
I would want to sell the $10,000 product. So if you’re new coach, you don’t have a new Allison. You don’t have social media. I personally would not take the time to make a digital product unless you have no interest in doing your high ticket coaching, because it’s going to take so much effort just to get a few sales to give you a, an idea.
00;09;09;07 – 00;09;29;23
Lauren Brollier Newton
I had a big list at the time I made this product. Maybe. I mean, it felt big to me. Maybe it’s not big to some of you, high power coaches out there, but there were probably, maybe, like, 5000 people on my list when I sold this product. Maybe a little bit less. So, I had a good amount of people to market to, and then I had like 2000 Facebook friends, and I knew how to run Facebook ads.
00;09;29;25 – 00;09;59;06
Lauren Brollier Newton
And so even with that, I think total I probably sold about 300 Soul Connection adventures. So let me, let me calculate that. So I made $11,700 on so connection adventure, which is great because I had to record it once and then just use my list and my social media and things like that to sell it. Not hard if I didn’t have a list, if I didn’t have social media, imagine how much blood, sweat, and tears I would have had to put in to make the $11,700.
00;09;59;09 – 00;10;21;15
Lauren Brollier Newton
So if I were a coach that was doing 1 to 1 coaching and small group coaching, I would put my focus on that because you’d make a lot more money for the same amount of effort. The other challenge with a digital product is you do have to have some level of willingness to tinker with technology. Now, the great thing is there’s online sites that do a lot of this for you.
00;10;21;15 – 00;10;43;26
Lauren Brollier Newton
There’s I think it’s called is it called think Ific. There’s, kajabi there’s Carta, which is what I personally used. And these are sites that are easily designed to have these member sites that have these online, products and programs. So that’s not that hard. There’s things designed to do that now. And yet those things all still have a learning curve.
00;10;43;28 – 00;11;00;14
Lauren Brollier Newton
So if you’re someone who has found yourself super frustrated with technology, super angry at technology, you got to get your head in the right space before you decide to make a digital product, because you are going to have to either do it yourself, or you’re going to have to hire someone to do it. And that takes an investment.
00;11;00;14 – 00;11;16;12
Lauren Brollier Newton
So I want you to be clear about that with yourself. Do I love technology? I’m someone who loves to tinker around with stuff. Now, that doesn’t mean I don’t get frustrated with it, but when it comes to like online stuff, I’m like, who let me tinker around, drag and drop? If that’s not you, then this might not be the first move you want to make.
00;11;16;12 – 00;11;31;13
Lauren Brollier Newton
If you’re wanting to scale your business, you might want to focus more, like I said, on your high ticket or your 1 to 1 or the things that are going to give you more, bang for your buck. Or if you’re already doing 1 to 1 but you’re trying to scale, how about move to group coaching first before you try to do the digital product?
00;11;31;13 – 00;11;52;16
Lauren Brollier Newton
If you’re someone who doesn’t love to tinker around with technology. Okay, so we talked about having a list, having an audience. We talked about the actual technology of it. Now what are you going to write for your content? Because you’re going to need content for digital product. What’s going to be your topic? One of the hardest challenges that I personally had is I’m a teacher at heart.
00;11;52;19 – 00;12;14;09
Lauren Brollier Newton
I am a teacher and therefore I want my students to have everything. So when I was writing the sole Connection of Venture, it was like, how do I not tell them everything about connecting to spirit, connecting to soul, connecting to God like how do I do it in short videos? Because I, I could have kept going. I could have had the 365 day Soul Connection adventure because I wanted to give them all the tips.
00;12;14;11 – 00;12;33;29
Lauren Brollier Newton
So on one end of the spectrum, if you’re like me and you’re a teacher at heart, you’re like, I want them to have everything. But the truth is, you can’t give them the whole farm, so to speak, for $39 or $297 or whatever your price point is going to be for your digital product. So you’ve got to decide what is going to make the client feel like they’re winning and they’re getting a ton of value.
00;12;34;01 – 00;13;01;04
Lauren Brollier Newton
But also realizing my client’s not going to have the bandwidth for, whoa, way too much stuff. And I’m not going to give all every tip I’ve ever known because it would be way too long and way too complicated of a program. So you just have to get right with that within yourself. On the other end of the spectrum, newer coaches, or sometimes those of you who are not newer coaches, but you experience that feeling of writer’s block or I don’t know where to start, that version is going to feel like I don’t even know where to start.
00;13;01;04 – 00;13;18;08
Lauren Brollier Newton
I don’t even know how to write one lesson. And so let me teach you how to how to write what you would write for digital product is really always start with a brain dump. Come up with a topic you would love. If you don’t know what topic you would love, just brainstorm. Okay, what are what are possible topics?
00;13;18;10 – 00;13;40;19
Lauren Brollier Newton
Because me as a life coach, I could have done overcoming struggle, starting a new career. Morning journaling processes, how to build deeper relationships. How to write a vision? Visioning 101. So connection adventure. I mean, there’s a million different topics I could have chosen. I chose the one that lit my soul on fire and created passion in me.
00;13;40;19 – 00;13;56;16
Lauren Brollier Newton
And and this idea of, you know, I’m going to just I’ll, I’ll stay up all Christmas Eve to write it because that’s how good I feel about it. So you want to pick something that’s passionate for you, but just know no matter what kind of coaching you do, there’s a thousand different topics you could choose. So pick the one you’re passionate about.
00;13;56;19 – 00;14;20;10
Lauren Brollier Newton
Then once you’ve got the topic, then go ahead and brainstorm every story, every quote, every tool, every idea that you could possibly have about that topic. And then start narrowing it down to the week. The lesson from there. So again, if you’re not someone who loves doing that, loves writing, content, curriculum, things like that, it might not be the time yet to create a digital product.
00;14;20;13 – 00;14;47;21
Lauren Brollier Newton
Now let’s talk about scaling a digital product. It’s easy to think, oh, if I build it, they will come. If I make this digital product, it’s just going to sell like hotcakes. And that could absolutely happen in an infinite universe with infinite possibilities and the power breathing. You of course, it could just go viral. And with that said, when you have a vision for something going viral, now we want to go, okay, if I were to bet on myself, what kind of action would I be taking to get that thing to go viral?
00;14;47;23 – 00;15;08;11
Lauren Brollier Newton
So you’re going to have to have a strategy of, how are you going to put this product in front of people? If you have a, like me, a 39, a 39, sorry dollar product and you want to make $100,000, I’ve got to sell 2564 of those, which means I have to probably have an audience ten times that size.
00;15;08;13 – 00;15;38;10
Lauren Brollier Newton
So how am I going to get this in front of 25,000 people? And that’s when you start to strategize with yourself. That kind of scale, if you already don’t have a big list, is going to require either some sort of social media something or other going viral, and then you building your list and followers from there, or it’s going to require paying for advertising, and paying for advertising is a whole thing, a whole ass thing all in of its own.
00;15;38;10 – 00;15;58;19
Lauren Brollier Newton
Okay? Because when you’re buying advertising, you can you can waste a lot of money if you don’t know the strategy for Facebook ads or Instagram ads or LinkedIn ads or whatever platform you’re going to use. Now, any time you hear me saying this is going to be challenging, that’s going to be challenging. It is not because I don’t believe that you can absolutely do it.
00;15;58;22 – 00;16;21;17
Lauren Brollier Newton
I do believe you can. I did it and I wasn’t coming out of here with an MBA from Harvard, okay? I was living in my parents basement and I had a teaching credential. So I wanted to share with you that I’m not saying it’s not possible, but I always want to be real with you because I don’t want you to create something with an expectation of this, you know, oh, 20,000 people are just going to buy it overnight without having a strategy to back it up.
00;16;21;17 – 00;16;39;19
Lauren Brollier Newton
So I’m always just wanting to be like, super transparent with you and real with you so that you can put some practical steps to it. If you have the dream of creating a digital product, you absolutely can. No doubt about that. And it can go really big. If you’d love that, I want you to really have the strategy to do it.
00;16;39;21 – 00;17;06;16
Lauren Brollier Newton
Let’s debrief here. Digital products. Power of them is you can leverage them. So if I had kept my own coaching business, I would have had soul connection adventure on a funnel running 24 hours a day. I would have probably done a free meditation to a video sales letter, which is a, video selling it. Speaking of, if you want to talk about video sales later, listen to my episode with John Benson that came out a while back.
00;17;06;16 – 00;17;24;19
Lauren Brollier Newton
He’s the founder of he’s the creator of the video sales center. But if I was doing it now, I would have had free meditation, Soul Connection, adventure. Video sales are selling them into Soul Connection adventure. And then a follow up call to say, hey, thanks so much for purchasing. I’d love to talk to you and hear about your why and your vision.
00;17;24;24 – 00;17;41;18
Lauren Brollier Newton
And then I would have enrolled him into a higher ticket program. That’s how I would have capsule connection adventure going. So you can see that that one Christmas Eve could have kept paying me back from years and years and years to come. And now that I’m talking about Soul Connection adventure, shoot, maybe we need to bring it to Brave Thinking Institute and, make it available to all of you.
00;17;41;21 – 00;18;03;21
Lauren Brollier Newton
But, so that’s the power of the digital product is the leverage. Now, when you’re going to actually create it, let’s remember you’re going to need an audience. So you’re either going to have to build that audience or use the audience. You have. You’re going to have to record the program, write the program, record the program, decide on the pricing, and then go out and get it in front of people.
00;18;03;24 – 00;18;28;25
Lauren Brollier Newton
That’s digital products in the making. So my advice to you, if you’re a beginning coach or an intermediate coach and you’re still kind of getting your business off the ground, do the other things first. Build an audience, get an email list going. Start serving lots of 1 to 1 clients or group clients that become your raving fans that bring their friends into your world.
00;18;28;28 – 00;18;46;16
Lauren Brollier Newton
Network. Do the kind of things that are going to build a solid foundation for your business. Then go digital. Now, the only time I would give different advice is if you just feel so much passion for digital and all you want to do is digital, you don’t want to work 1 to 1 with people. You don’t want to work in small groups.
00;18;46;16 – 00;19;10;08
Lauren Brollier Newton
You want to be a coach who has digital products only. Then go after it and put your whole heart and soul into it and invest in it and keep tweaking it until you’re selling out of that thing like hotcakes. And there’s lots of different ways that you can do that, but that is the only time where I would recommend a more beginning coach to to do a digital product is when your heart is just saying, all I want to do is digital.
00;19;10;15 – 00;19;33;12
Lauren Brollier Newton
I am an online coach. I don’t want to do a ton of live coaching. I want to sell and scale products online, then go after it and go after it with all your might. But don’t should yourself into a digital product just because you see a million other coaches online doing it. Oh, I want to say one more thing, and I think that I did say this, but I just want to make it 100% clear.
00;19;33;15 – 00;19;58;08
Lauren Brollier Newton
It takes as much effort with if you don’t have a huge following, you don’t have a huge list. It takes as much effort to sell a $39 product as it does to sell a $39,000 product, so that’s why you want to be careful about what you’re putting your time and energy to. I’ve talked to a lot of coaches who just hear so much noise, you know, outside and see things online, and we give them products that they can sell from between 900 and $97 to literally $30,000.
00;19;58;10 – 00;20;15;10
Lauren Brollier Newton
And so some of our beginning coaches, you know, just not having the experience under their belt, will come and they’ll ask me and they’ll say, I think I need a low ticket item before I can sell my $997 Dream Blend program. And my thing is $997 is a low ticket item. You don’t need to go lower ticket than that.
00;20;15;10 – 00;20;36;03
Lauren Brollier Newton
In other words, you don’t need they’ll say, oh, I think I need like a $27 or $97 product just to get people interested. That’s the wrong mentality because like I said, it takes as much effort in the beginning as to get someone interested in your $97 product as it does your 997. And for most people, the thing that’s really going to impact and change their life is the higher ticket program.
00;20;36;06 – 00;21;00;29
Lauren Brollier Newton
So I just want you to become aware when you’re thinking, oh, I need a lower priced product. If it’s not that you need a lower priced product, is it? You need to get better about talking about the product that you have. So that would be my advice. Now I want to share with each of you if you’re thinking about becoming a coach and you would love like a business in a box, the marketing, the business, the scripts, the programs done for you, we have that here at Brave Thinking Institute.
00;21;01;06 – 00;21;18;22
Lauren Brollier Newton
You can connect with us. You can just email podcast at Brave Thinking institute.com and we will help you get started. If you’re if you’re listening to this and feeling overwhelmed, like I have no idea how to do any of it, let us help you. If you’re already a certified coach, but you didn’t get the business training you were looking for, let us help you come.
00;21;18;29 – 00;21;36;21
Lauren Brollier Newton
We will support you all the way. If you’re brave thinking Institute coach, and you’re coming back because you got your certification, you’re listening to the podcast and you’re going, oh my gosh, I miss having that. After support that coaching. We’re here for you. And if you don’t resonate with any of it, keep listening to the podcast because we love you and we just want to give you the free content.
00;21;36;24 – 00;21;54;21
Lauren Brollier Newton
So digital products should you, shouldn’t you? Only if you feel passionate about it and you would love it, go for it. If you have a big enough list where you feel like it’s a no brainer, go for it. Otherwise, don’t should yourself into that. Start with something that’s going to make you more impact and more income. To start with, I love connecting with you each week.
00;21;54;23 – 00;22;04;23
Lauren Brollier Newton
I feel so blessed and privileged to get to connect with you in this way. Thank you for listening to The Abundant Coach, and I’ll see you on the next episode.
00;22;04;26 – 00;22;36;01
Lauren Brollier Newton
Thanks for joining me this week on The Abundant Coach. Visit our website at Brave Thinking institute.com/coach Certification where you can dive even deeper with additional resources and exciting opportunities. Be sure to subscribe to the show on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcast so you’ll never miss an episode. And while you’re at it, if you loved the show, please rate and review to find out how to jump start your abundant coaching career and more about my journey to seven figure coach, check out our free.
00;22;36;02 – 00;22;43;17
Lauren Brollier Newton
Meant to Be a Life Coach quiz available at bti.com/coach quiz. I’ll see you in the next episode.
