The path from a single online course to a digital product-based business

What do you want your business to look like? For me, I know my business is very much a lifestyle business. It brings me so much joy and I love working in it. But I'm also in it because it's creating the lifestyle that I want.

I'm going to share a little bit about my journey and how I was able to go from essentially all client-based work to launching that first course to replacing all of that service-based income with digital product income and then I'll walk you through a couple of simple steps that you can go through to intentionally design your digital product-based business – even if it feels like it's a distant dream.

It helps to have that big vision in mind so that you know what you're working towards. It won't happen overnight and that's okay, but at least, you know what that vision is and you know that it is possible for you.

 

My journey to a digital product-based business

I was originally running a marketing agency. I was building out a consulting business and growing my team and then I realized that I didn't want an agency. I enjoyed doing the marketing and I didn't enjoy managing a team of marketers and being a manager rather than an actual marketer.

That was the first warning sign to me that maybe what I'm doing right now isn't aligned and I started noticing I had a lot of people who wanted us to manage their Facebook ads for them but they didn't really have the budget for ads management or they didn't really even have much of a budget for their ads.

So I thought, wouldn't it be nice if these people could just DIY their Facebook ads and instead of paying a management fee on top of the money they were spending on the ads, they could put all of that money into their ads and see a much bigger return? That was where the idea for my very first course “Facebook Ads That Flourish” came from. I worked on that while I was also working part-time as a digital marketing coordinator at this point.

I was working with clients in my business and I decided to start creating and launching this course. I launched it for the very first time in late 2017 right before I got onto a plane to go to Europe for two and a half months which was a really tight deadline. But it was great because I actually had this deadline that I had to work towards. I couldn't delay it any further, even if I wanted to. There were lots of late nights and weekends, but I eventually made it happen.

Then in 2018, I launched it again, maybe two more times the same course and both of those times it brought in a few thousand dollars. Maybe around the $10,000 mark. It was never a huge launch but that was okay. It was supplemental income over and above the client work that I was doing.

In 2018, I decided also to launch a membership. I learned a lot from running a membership and realized, wow, this was not aligned with what I wanted in my business. But that membership went well while I had it and then I also launched another mini-course in 2018.

In 2019, I thought of adding another bigger course. This one was a course about Instagram marketing for business owners and this launch didn't go as well as my Facebook ads that flourish Launch because it didn't have a clear outcome. There also weren't any real selling points to this course over and above any of the other Instagram marketing courses that were out there.

I didn't have any testimonials for that course. But anyway, I persevered and at this point, I had two signature courses and a membership and I was still working with clients.

 

My goal

My goal at that time was to build up a library of digital products and I thought that if I kept creating all of these digital products, eventually all of their income would add up and I'd be making enough to fire my clients. I'd grown my client base to the point where I could quit my part-time job and I spent half of that year travelling around Europe and half of the year in New Zealand with my family. So it was pretty cool.

I was living the laptop lifestyle that I started my business for, but I was also feeling really scattered in so many different directions because I had all of these products, all of these clients and I was really busy.

But at the same time because all of my different digital products were very different, nobody knew what I specialized in and they didn't really know why they would want to work with me rather than the person who was the Facebook ads expert or the Instagram expert or the email marketing expert.

I eventually decided at the end of 2019 to pivot into launching. I suppose it wasn't a huge pivot because launching is still marketing.

But I knew I needed to pick that one niche and launching things was probably my favourite thing to do in business. So when I niched down into launching, I killed all of those courses. I retired them all. I killed the membership, the mini-course. I retired my two signature courses.

Because I realized that the more courses, the more products don't necessarily mean more money in a digital product and rather than having a library of courses that people could pick and choose from, I started to question how could I design a business that had only a couple of core products that complimented each other.  A few courses that would help somebody to reach the big end goal which was an online business that was profitable and felt good.

 

Low-hanging fruit

I know that podcasting has been a huge tool in growing my business, nurturing my audience, selling products, and bringing clients in.

When I was working with clients that I knew was the low-hanging fruit and I knew people needed that support because I had friends asking me, Hey, Steph, how did you launch your podcast? I had clients asking me, I had people reaching out, emailing me, asking me how I started my podcast.

So I thought, okay, let's create something here that will solve that problem but the first iteration of it was a group program. The launch for that didn't go well. I took on board people's feedback, pivoted the product and turned it into a self-paced podcast launch plan and that went absolutely amazing.

It sold way more than I would ever have imagined. Like I was happy that I could just make maybe two or $3,000 in sales from that one each month and I think it sold about $350,000 worth in one month. That made a huge difference in my business because for the first time I now had consistent cash flow.

And I had this money that I could invest into working with a copywriter, bringing onboard a VA, and growing my team. So that really started to cement that I was onto something good.

 

Digital Product Creators Vault

The next product I launched was the digital product creators vault, which was a $27 product. It was a mini course back in the time when tiny offers were $27 products.

We're going really crazy on Facebook ads and I jumped on board of that trend and I created this product. It's a great product. I believe it delivers so much value but unfortunately, because it was a $27 product, people simply just weren't logging in. They weren't completing it and that's why I retired that one.

 

Launch Magic

This was now late 2020 that I launched Launch Magic, it is the Launch framework. Once you've created that digital product or once you've got that idea for that digital product you want to create and you're ready to launch it, whether or not you've created the digital product yet, Launch Magic is the framework for launching that digital product profitably and successfully over and over again.

 

Boost your Brand's Superfans

Then earlier this year I created and launched Boost your Brand's Superfans, which I realized was the missing piece in the journey to building that profitable online business because it's the piece where you are growing your audience and it teaches how to grow your audience between launches.

Each of these products would move you closer to the end goal of that profitable online business. You didn't have to have all of them, but they would solve various problems that you might encounter along the journey towards reaching that goal. So that has been my journey from that first online course back in 2017 to now several courses and programs.

 

How to start designing your digital product-based business

 

Step 1: Think about what is the ultimate end goal that you are helping your audience to achieve

Now it's that long-term vision for them. Short term goal would be to help my audience make $10,000 a month from courses but the long-term vision would be that they could turn that into a seven-figure business where that gives them the freedom they want. They can have a team and they can take time off if they haven't been able to take time off in a while.

So thinking about what is that longer-term vision? For example, if you are a weight loss nutritionist, maybe the end goal isn't that they lose weight but the end goal is that they successfully keep it off for five years.

To me, it's not just that you have that successful podcast launch or your profitable digital product launch, it's that you build an online business, that business that gives you that freedom, that income, that impact that you dream of and that's not something I can teach in just one course or one group program. That's something that takes several different programs to achieve.

 

Step 2: Think about what are those smaller problems that need solving

Think about what are those smaller problems that need solving or those smaller transformations that they need to achieve along the way.

If we go back to my example about building that online business of your dreams, some of the smaller transformations could be that you launch a podcast that you grow your audience, that you create a digital product that you launch the first time, and then you launch it again.

Each of those things is a smaller outcome that you are achieving on that journey to that bigger goal and transformations present an opportunity for you to solve them and you can solve it in a digital product format.

Maybe you want to solve it in a one-on-one format. It can be a program, it can be free content. There are so many different opportunities to solve all of these different product problems and some of them might make more sense to solve in a one-on-one situation. Others might be so small that it makes sense to solve them with your free content or somewhere in between.

 

Step 3: Map out the journey

Which problem or transformation are we addressing first? What is that first problem or that first transformation that they are going to encounter on the way to that overall longer-term vision.

You can generally have a bunch of different price points. You'll want to have a range of price points that somebody can work with you at and the smaller problems or transformations, will generally command a lower price point.

Now, when I talked earlier in this episode about the digital product creator's volt, a $27 product. The transformation in creating that digital product is not commensurate with a $27 investment and the amount of work that somebody needed to put in to get the outcome, which was creating that digital product, they needed a bit more accountability than just $27 skin in the game.

But if they had gone and spent $5,000, for example, on a course on how to create a digital product, they would have taken action because now they have skin in the game.

So remember that your price points are going to be a little bit more commensurate with the size of the problem that you're solving or the size of the transformation you're helping them to achieve and the amount of work that they need to put in to achieve it. There will be a range of offerings that you will eventually build out and you don't need to do them all at once and you don't need to have as many as you think you do.

It doesn't need to be a massive library. It's taken me about three years to build out mine and I still only have three courses and it's still evolving, it might evolve, it might change, I might add more but let's just start one at a time.

If you try to do them all at once, it gets overwhelming and you end up doing none of them.

 

Step 4: Build out and launch each of these offerings

Build out and launch each of these offerings and it doesn't have to be that you create one, launch it, then create the next one, and launch that one. You can do what I did. I launched Launch Magic three times before I created and launched Boost your Brand's Superfans. You don't have to do them sequentially. You can relaunch the same one over and over again before you move on to the next one. I would actually recommend that, because once you have created something and you've launched it once you now have all of the assets, your second launch becomes so much easier. You have the assets and know how to market them in a way that's better and more effective than the first one.

And that's really what underpins what I teach inside Launch Magic because I don't believe that you should only launch something once. I think you are leaving so much money on the table. If you only launch it that one time and the Launch Magic framework is designed to be one that you can repeat over and over and over again.

So then when you are building out all of this, I want you to remember that it's important to design it around your life. What you want your business to look like? For me, I know my business is very much a lifestyle business. It brings me so much joy and I love working in it. But I'm also in it because it's creating the lifestyle that I want.

It's not that I'm sacrificing and working really hard now so that I can have the lifestyle I want in 10 years' time. It's that I'm creating the lifestyle I want right now, as well as in 10 years' time.

So remember to design your business around your life. If you want to take a month off every year. Build that into your business if you want to fire all of your clients, great design it so that you are slowly getting towards that goal, and build it all into your dream business design.

 

Let's recap

The first thing I want to say is that it wasn't all built in a day for me and it probably won't be for you. This is going to take time but having that vision in mind can really help you to connect back to what you're working towards that can help to create that motivation when you're feeling a little bit de-motivated or too busy to create a digital product, or you can't quite see where launching a podcast is going to fit into your bigger vision. It can help to connect back to it and that will create the motivation that you need.

So the steps to work through and designing that business is what is that ultimate goal that you are helping them to achieve? Identify that ultimate goal. Step two, identify those smaller problems that need solving all those smaller transformations they need to achieve along the way. Step three, map out the journey you need to take this person on, and then Step four, start building out and launching those different offerings.

 

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