Are Digital Products Still Working? A Deep Dive with Monica Froese

Jaclyn Mellone: Welcome to Go-To Gal episode number 204. As always, I’m your host, Jaclyn Mellone. And as you can probably tell, my mic has not arrived yet. So my mic broke. If you missed last week’s episode, and we’re just going to blame the supply chain on this. I know it’s like a running joke of blaming the supply chain on things that you can’t really blame the supply chain for, but why not? But this may actually be a supply chain thing, or maybe it’s just hard to ship things this time of year thing. But my Amazon order, which was supposed to come in two days was delayed and delayed and delayed. So hopefully, for next week, I will have my new mic. Thanks for bearing with these intros being a little bit less than stellar audio quality than typical. But the good news is the interview was recorded with my mic, so you’re going to hear that difference once we switch over after I read the bio of our guest today. 

So today’s episode really is about tackling a question that I know has been brought up to me that I’ve thought about, that I’ve talked with many, many people behind the scenes with. Okay, it is time to bring this to the podcast. That’s always my sign that we should be talking about something on the podcast when I’m talking about something in real life. And what is that? It’s what’s going on with digital products? So something that was a really innovative idea. A couple of years ago, we are now seeing these low-priced digital products everywhere. And I fall into this category too. I have a low-priced digital product. So it’s like, okay, is this, did we miss the boat on this? Is there still an opportunity there? Where do these offers fit into things as we’re rounding out 2021 heading into 2022? Has the ship sailed? Is this still a viable business model? Let’s dive into this. 

So that’s exactly what our guest Monica Froese is here to talk about. And I’m really excited to get her perspective, her insight, her projection, and what’s working, what’s not working. And to tell you that some of the things she shared really surprised me, and I so appreciate her bluntness and honesty with some things too that I think may surprise you. And it’s just very refreshing. I love having conversations like this, especially on a topic that I’ve been pondering about myself. So if this is something, if you have one of these low-priced digital products, if you’ve been thinking about creating one, this episode is definitely for you. 

So let me formally introduce you to our guest today, Monica Froese. And we’ll just jump right on in. Monica is a digital product coach for women business owners and host of the popular podcast, Empowered Business. She has an MBA degree in Finance and Marketing and runs two brands: Redefining Mom, a site for helping women thrive in both motherhood and business, and Empowered Business where she’s committed to empowering 1000 women to earn a hundred thousand through digital products. She spent 11 years working for a Fortune 100 company running multi-million dollar marketing campaigns with large brands like Microsoft and HP. Now, she provides online marketing education to small businesses that are looking to build a profitable revenue stream through digital products through her online courses and podcast. All right, let’s get to it. Here is my conversation with Monica.

Monica, I’m so excited to have you here today. 

Monica Froese: I’m so excited to be here. I have listened to your show from the beginning, so I feel like this is a big moment to be here. 

Jaclyn Mellone: Oh, well, it’s a big benefit to have you here. I know I’m like, okay, you’re not that far away. The logistics of recording in person, I’m like, we’ll hang out in person another time. But whenever I see podcasts that are recorded in person, I’m just always so jealous of that. I’m like, oh, that looks like so much fun. You get to actually be in the same room together.

Monica Froese: It does look fun. My husband and I were talking about doing an episode together. But I was like, should you be in your office on zoom when we do it? How do you logistically record with someone? 

Jaclyn Mellone: I feel like these are the things that I should know as someone that teaches about podcasting. It’s very complicated. I don’t focus on those parts of things. Early, early on in the All Up In Your Lady Business days, I had one of my best friends from growing up on as a guest, and then we had Jessica on the other end of Zoom, or maybe it was even Skype back then. And literally, she sat next to me and we passed the mic.

Monica Froese: Well, that’s one way to do it. Definitely not how it’s supposed to be done but we pulled it up for one episode. Alright, before we get totally off on a tangent which we already have, take us back to when you were growing up. What were you the go-to gal for back then? So when I was thinking about this, I was thinking about how I was voted Most Opinionated, senior year of high school. And I was really upset because I wanted to get molded to have the best car. I was very upset about this. But looking back, it was probably very accurate that I was the most opinionated. Who would have thought? So I thought maybe that was the thing I was known for. But actually, what I really think I was known for as a kid and probably still today amongst my friends and families, I have a photographic memory. And it’s a very interesting thing, especially with trivia. So I only have to go to a place one time to be able to drive it. I could drive to Florida. I can go to Disney world from my house. And I haven’t done it in a car probably for 10-ish years, and I would have almost no problem doing it. Yes, it’s really weird. And when we play trivia, I remember one time particularly, I was playing with my sister. I think her husband was playing with us and one of the trivia questions was, the infamous Super Bowl with Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake. In my brain quickly, it was like, well, I was sitting on my sister’s couch when she still lived here, and it was the year she graduated so it was 2004. And because I can piece all that I can envision where I was sitting and I can link together dates. When I was in corporate, they thought they would be talking about a policy and I was in corporate for 11 years. I’d be like, oh yes, that happened on August 1st of 2008. I have the email still. And they’d all look at me like, what is wrong with you? I’m like, photographic memory, I can’t help it. Dates and contextual clues, I’m just very different. 

Jaclyn Mellone: That’s amazing. Okay, this is potentially a tangent. I’m just going to ask you briefly and then we’re going to go on, but this is something I was actually Googling about this week. Do you actually see it? When you say photographic memory, I don’t know if those are with your eyes open or closed. But do you actually see images? 

Monica Froese: Yes. I can see myself sitting on the couch watching that moment of the Super Bowl. When I think there’s a particular turn when we drove to Disney every year when I was a kid. I didn’t fly until I was 16 or 17. And there’s a detour in West Virginia that gets you there faster. And I can see the turnoff on the throughway to that, and I haven’t taken at least a decade. It’s really weird. 

Jaclyn Mellone: So it’s interesting because I’m definitely not that way with most things, although I can remember what I was wearing or what my best friend was wearing. I can identify some of those things, but it’s interesting because I don’t know how to describe this, which is why I was Googling it, but I don’t see the images. There’s like a thing, like a whole Reddit with people that don’t see it. And I’m like, is this me? And I don’t even know. 

Monica Froese: You can describe it, but you can’t visualize it. 

Jaclyn Mellone: It’s weird sense like I don’t actually see it but I have a sense of, oh, it was that shirt with the rainbow stripes on it. But I don’t actually see the shirt. 

Monica Froese: Okay, yes, I can see it. Having a photographic memory is very interesting. And even when I would take tests, I could tell you the answer to the question on what page it was on or if it was highlighted. I was, oh, yes, that was highlighted pink on page three of my notes. So one of the things I would do, the reason I had really good grades in school and really what saved me and my master’s program was I would take these really complex things that I struggled with and I would type them out. So I was memorizing it as I was typing it, but then I would print it out and start highlighting it. And I would read through it and highlight differently, keywords every time. And that’s how I studied. And that photographic memory paid off. 

Jaclyn Mellone: Yes. Flashcards, I needed everything on flashcards, and it was the repetition that allowed me to memorize things for things that you need memorization. And then stories, I remember stories. So when you say that, it’s more word or verbal or story-based for me versus the actual visual of it. 

Monica Froese: Yes, because flashcards didn’t work well for me because they were never in the same order. So the way I could remember, and that’s how I could pinpoint it, when I was on a test. Even though you can’t predict obviously the order of questions on a test, but I could pinpoint where it was in my notes.

Jaclyn Mellone: Ooh, okay. I’m so fascinated by all of this stuff and learning styles, and how our brains work. But that’s not what we’re talking about today. So fast forward to now, tell us what do you do and who do you help? 

Monica Froese: Now, I help women build six-figure digital product businesses. And that all goes to my bigger mission of helping women achieve financial independence. It’s a huge passion of mine to create equity in wealth distribution. So that’s what my whole life is around. When I started in the online space, I started with a working mom blog called Redefining Mom, which still exists but we don’t actively work on it right now. And that’s when I discovered my love of digital products. I launched my first digital product, I feel like before anyone called it a digital product. It wasn’t a buzzword in the industry when it was happening, and I feel like it was pretty accidental. I always say the summation of what a digital product is, is actually quite simple. It is a solution to someone’s problem.

The digital product is the solution. You are solving someone’s problem. So for me, back then, I had quit my corporate career in early 2016 because I had built a brand around women’s right to work like working moms, very passionate about that. And they’re like, whoa, working mom girl just quit her job. What is going on here? Wait a minute, I’m going to build a business because I want to do things on my terms. I was sick of corporate politics. And everyone was asking me how I quit my job, and how I was building a brand. And that felt like a really big topic to tackle. And I really didn’t know how to because I was still figuring out for myself. And so I said, well, wait a minute here, let’s back this up. And the real thing is everyone needs a plan. Most of the moms who followed me, their families relied on their paychecks. My family relied on my paycheck too. It wasn’t like I could just pull the cord. I got student loans that had to get paid, mortgages needed to get paid, car payments needed to get paid. So really, the thing that I had to do to quit corporate was we needed a really solid family budget. We needed, particularly, the ability to project out our family finances so that we could understand what was the impact of not having a paycheck now, but in 12 months from now. 

We want to project for different things that could come up. So the very first digital product that I launched, which I still sell today and has made us multiple six figures, about as passive as passive can get, I’m not a fan of Ashley’s saying anything’s passive. Everything has work associated with it. But as passive as it can be is the family budget spreadsheet. I sell it for $17. And that was really the beginning, because it was born out of a need that people who followed me had, and I didn’t even realize that really what I was doing was giving them the solution to the problem that they were asking me. And then after that, I’ve just done all of the digital products that you could possibly think of. They come in a lot of different forms. So the family budget spreadsheets, a digital template.

Now we have website templates. We have lots of different spreadsheets we sell. Also, you could have eBooks. I’ve done that. I have digital courses, pair it with group coaching. We have a membership. Really, the possibilities are endless. Printables are a big one. We don’t have as many printables as we used to as I moved away from the mom’s side of things and into the entrepreneurship side of things. But digital products are amazing because you create them once and you can sell them over and over again, so high profit margin. And again, that doesn’t mean that there’s no work. There’s customer service work that goes in. Do you know how many people type their email address wrong and think you scammed them? That’s the thing, especially with the volume. 

Jaclyn Mellone: Goes to their PayPal email and they’re looking at the other email. Oh yes. Even with the family budget spreadsheet, even though we don’t actively market it, we have some really good Pinterest pins that we put up back in the day when Pinterest was still a heyday of free traffic, and that makes us passive sales. But my team certainly gets help emails about this formula not working, or I didn’t get my spreadsheet because I typed my email wrong, or whatever it might be. And that’s something you still have to support when you sell a digital product, but it’s not like you have overhead costs.

Monica Froese: Overhead costs to create it, I should say, besides your time, and of course there could be overhead costs with marketing it depending how it is. But compared to a physical product where you have to source it, where you have to have a warehouse for it, you have to ship it. It’s amazing. I have many friends that sell physical products and we talked about this a lot. And also, how you compare physical products with digital products. I’m fascinated by the tangibleness of physical products to actually tangibly take something that you create and see it and use it. That’s so cool. And then I’m like, but I really like my profit margins. 

Jaclyn Mellone: So true, it’s so true. Oh my goodness. I have so many questions for you. So to start things off, I feel like let’s talk about the elephant in the room. The elephant that I don’t see. Back to our visualizing pictures, I don’t see the pink elephant. I can’t picture it.

Monica Froese:  I see the pink elephant.

Jaclyn Mellone: I can’t see the pink elephant. Oh, okay, so back to the segment of the elephant which I think is, when we first talked about digital products on this podcast, I don’t remember if it was a year or a year and a half ago, it was a thing but it was nowhere near as popular as it is right now. Now, digital products have been around for a long time. To your point, you started your first one years ago. But I think there’s a bunch of us that, especially if we buy them, which I’m raising my hand. I love buying a good digital product and Facebook knows this about me so they’re going to show me all of the ads for the digital products. I’m going to click on them and see what other people are doing. They got my number. So literally, I’m going to see a lot of these ads. There’s a lot of people out there doing this. I’m just going to leave this really open because I don’t want to even lead you in this in any way.  

Where do you think this is all going? Do you think that there’s going to be a, like I was making a joke to you before. I saw one, literally someone was selling everything you would need for marketing for $7. I’m like, one, this is completely ridiculous. Two, I feel like we’re almost at the point where things are going to go back to being freebies because we’re charging so little.  What do you see about just where this fits into the industry right now? Is this a trend? Is this a staying power? What are your thoughts on this whole thing?

Monica Froese:  I don’t think it’s a trend, and I definitely think it’s the wave of the future that has staying power because it’s not like less people are going to be coming on the internet, only more people will be coming on the internet. And I do think that it’s going to be really interesting to see how it evolves. For example, my daughter who’s nine and in fourth grade, we don’t give her devices. And it’s worked for us so far, and now it seems like her homework requires devices, which is a little irritating when you’ve gotten this far and didn’t have to give her devices. So we let her use my iPad in the common area. My iPad has a keyboard and she sits down and says, mom, can I speak to Google? Because we have Google Home throughout our whole house. I’m like, well, there’s a keyboard, just type in what you’re searching. No, I just need to talk to Google. And on the browser, she presses the microphone and speaks to Google. And I thought, I have never ever done that before. I’ve spoken to her before, but I have never, on the browser, hit the microphone and spoke what I want it. And I sat there and looked at her and like, okay, now this is going to change things. Because at the end of the day, when you go back to what I said about what a digital product is, which is a solution to a problem, well, where do we go in search for problems? We go to search engines. Well, there’s a thing. 

Now, when you think about it, okay, but if Google is just going to speak back your answers, how are you going to get someone to your website? And so what does that look like? So perhaps the medium of selling digital products and how they’re sold, our goal is going to change. There’s little doubt in my mind about that. I take a very stable approach to business. I am not about the hype. Okay, for example, every year I’ve been in business, the sky has been falling on Facebook ads. Every single year, the sky is falling. And yet every single year, I make lots of money on Facebook ads. And so I just take this very stable approach. You have to be willing to adapt. But I don’t believe in all the gimmicky things. So when I watch people out there, come into the digital product world and do things like, here is a digital product that really you should charge a fair amount for the knowledge, and I’m going to give it to you for seven. That raises a lot of red flags to me. What’s going to happen on the backend once I get into this? What are they really after? And also, I believe in integrity with what you provide. A big thing for me is I can not take someone’s money and not give what I said I was going to give. So if I’m selling a course and it’s ever-evolving information, one of the things I learned the hard way when I taught Pinterest advertising for four years was I followed what everyone was saying to do.

This was my awakening that you really have to do things. You can’t always look at the people in the grooves out there because they might not align with your values. So one of the things, when I started selling my Pinterest advertising course was a lifetime access and a free Facebook group that went with the course. Well, guess what, advertising when done right, if I’m taking your money, you better bet my course was updated. And what did that mean? Well, you paid me once, but you could get support perpetually in this Facebook group. And that’s actually not, I don’t recommend it.

Jaclyn Mellone: No, I don’t either. I’m so with you. Oh my gosh. 

Monica Froese: So what happened was I was in this cycle of burnout because someone would have paid me once two years ago and could have still been heavily utilizing my brain for their campaigns, but they weren’t paying me more money. So now I had to support all these students. Now, I need help in the business. And I had to keep the help in the business, I had to keep updating the course to launch it. And then I was at the whim of Pinterest changing and it was a really bad business model. So that’s like an example of where it was a losing business model which I pivoted and changed, but that didn’t make the digital product irrelevant, or digital products irrelevant. It just means the way we sell them is going to have to evolve. 

I think that was a bad model. And I tell my students all the time, anytime you’re going to be involved, someone’s going to get your time and your support. It needs to be either time-bound or an ongoing fee, period. Do not offer yourself for free perpetually ever. That is not a winning business model. 

Jaclyn Mellone: Amen. Oh, okay, so those are very good boundaries for us all to have just ever in your business. Will you just define, is there a price range for digital products? At what point is it a course, or are courses digital products? 

Monica Froese: I think courses are digital products. Okay, so the way I teach, and I think what resonates with a lot of people and it takes the overwhelm out of getting started, if I really liked the concept of a product ascension ladder. So when someone’s new to digital products, they’re usually very overwhelmed. Either they think they don’t know anything that anyone would pay the money for, which is popular, or it’s the other way around. They think they know too much on their topic and how the heck do they distill it down to something that would cost $27? And so, the way I teach is, what you want to be doing is to be building your audience and getting paid for it because it’s a real lose. It all started, it stems from my history with blogging because I started as a blogger. And as a blogger, you’re taught to put out a bunch of free content and get all this traffic. And then once you get the traffic, I don’t know, then you’re going to figure out how to monetize or you’re going to put on display ads. And then just send the traffic away and make pennies on the display ad clicks that did not make sense to me . With a corporate marketing background I was like, wait, I’m putting a lot of effort in but I’m not really feeling that I’m getting a nice payoff. Something’s up here.

When you think about it, the whole point, if you’re new to building digital products, I tell my students all the time, think of the one problem in relation to your topic that you can solve with your first product, that you can charge $47 or less. Let that be the beginning of your product ascension ladder. I would not recommend in most cases that that would be a digital course. It could be a series of a few videos if that’s the best medium. But the three, or I should say four main digital products that my students typically would start with are ebook, printable, digital template, or a few videos if it was required. I’ve had entry levels go as high as $247 for courses, but once you get out of that, then you’re talking about more like the top of your product ascension ladder. So the idea here is, especially if this seems very overwhelming, is that when you start to attract an audience, you want them to be able to pay you money, period. Otherwise, you’re going to do a lot of work for free and then get very frustrated when you realize that you’ve poured a year of your time into something that has made you a few pennies, which I heard over and over again. 

Monica Froese: But then as you attract these people to you, it comes out very naturally what they need next. And plus, since you know about your topic, you know what the next thing is you can solve. And that’s where the product ascension ladder comes in. Okay, so here’s the thing. These low-priced offers, I’m not saying you can’t be profitable on them. But I’m saying if you want to be profitable in the sense of multiple six figures profitable, you’re talking about a lot of ad spend to hit volume. And that, you’ll churn through your audience eventually and you will burn out. I always talk about strategy versus tactics. Going the low digital product route, and that’s all you do, in my opinion is like a tactic but it’s not a long-term strategy. Eventually you’re going to have to have something on the backend to offer. And so we focus very much on that product ascension ladder so I need to first get people to understand we are not working for free. That taking money, because women struggle with this a lot, in my community that selling is bad. Especially bloggers, they’re so used to giving everything away for free. And I’m like, listen up, simple economics. There is no business if money doesn’t exchange hands. And here’s the thing, you’re not telling anyone they have to pay you money. They can say, no. Everyone has the autonomy to say no. No, don’t be sleazy with your marketing tactics either. You have to get paid for that initial work. And own what you know, and know that it’s worthy of getting someone who’ll pay you money. Then you’re going to know what’s next. If you’re doing a good job, and this is why integrity I think is so important. Even in the lower products, if you care about them and you care about actually making a transformation for the person, then it’s going to be so much easier to understand what they need next from you. And that’s when you start building an actual business. 

This is the other thing I tell my students. New customers or I should say existing customers are way cheaper than acquiring new customers. And it’s actually really silly when you think about it to go for volume on these tiny digital products, and that’s it. Like are you kidding me? How can that be it? That can’t be a business model because acquisition costs on different marketing channels just go up. That’s why people always say to the sky is falling on Facebook ads. But it’s like, no, it’s not. Not if you understand the bigger vision of your business. So that’s my dissertation. 

Jaclyn Mellone: So good. Okay, you definitely have, my wheels are turning. Now, you mentioned Facebook ads and paid advertising for this. And it’s interesting to me because I know in the early days, you being a blogger in so much of your list growth I believe came from Pinterest for a while, and all of this. You’ve mentioned that there are still some pins out there, but is Pinterest still a big part of your strategy? Would you say for most people with a digital product, Facebook ads should be their main focus in terms of where to put it? Or is there still an organic play here if you will on Pinterest? 

Monica Froese: So I think there’s always going to be a platform that wherever you are, when you start digital products, there’s a couple of things at play. There’s, where are your people hanging out, to begin with? Now, I would argue with the breadth of Facebook and Instagram, 2 billion-plus people, your people are likely there. Just period, they are. and Zuck knows so much about us, that if you’re going to pay to play, you can find your people on Facebook and Instagram. So at this point, it’s still a pretty viable option. Now, the next thing is that there’s always going to be a platform that it’s their heyday to send free traffic. Right now, TikTok, it’s where it’s at for a lot of people. You can get a ton of visibility on TikTok. But that will go away, it’ll become saturated. The monetization model will kick in. So here’s the thing with Pinterest. When I started it, when I really started investing heavily in my blog and my time and my energy, I hit the heyday, I call of Pinterest. We’re free traffic galore. But even then the reason I got into Pinterest advertising, when everyone was scoffing at me, like, why are you running promoted pins, is what they call them, when we get all this traffic for free. And I said, because of the writings on the wall. And I was right because two years after I started teaching it, they went public. And I could have written, and I also came from a publicly-traded company after 11 years. 

So, to me, these things are just very obvious, but I get that everyone has the corporate business background that I have. But to me, the writing was on the wall that they were going to go the way of Facebook in terms of monetization and that the free traffic would dry up. But the thing about Pinterest, it’s different from Facebook. Whereas Facebook doesn’t have the longevity of content. You have to constantly pretty much be paying or organically getting back in front of people. Those pins I put up got indexed and it’s a search engine. If you have a good pin and it got indexed years ago, and here’s the thing too, my stuff on Redefining Mom, Pinterest treats it seasonally. So different search terms, trends, and actually they have a trend stool, it’s trendsetpinterest.com, which was created when they went public for advertisers to understand when your topics were being searched. Because if you really think about this logically, which I like to do, the more searches there are for your topic, the more ad spots there are to buy. Because that’s where ads get placed. And yes, they do get placed in the home feed. I don’t even know if they call it the home feed or smart feed now, or whatever they want to call it. But essentially, if there’s more search around your topic, it’s a great time to promote it so they were trying to give advertisers. But it also really helped to understand why sometimes my budget spreadsheet makes thousands of dollars a month and sometimes it’s like trickling in. It’s because of those search topics, they trend. 

And so, Pinterest is like every platform out there. They’re out to make money. They’re not here to serve you as a content creator. They’re there to keep their lights on and keep their investors happy, whether that is a private investor or if it’s publicly traded. And so you have to learn. If you want to have an online business, you have to learn to leverage these platforms for yourself and not just like, I see a lot of bloggers who are just still stuck in the free traffic. They want free traffic. It’s like, you were lucky when you hit the free traffic. They don’t owe you the free traffic. I think maybe that’s just one of my very practical ways of looking at a business that has served me well. I could have gotten upset when my free traffic from Pinterest dried up. And I could have called it a day and said, well, now I’m not going to have a business, but I probably didn’t deserve to have a business. So for me, it was okay. But now, where are my people and how do I go to reach my people? That’s what it really comes down to. 

Jaclyn Mellone: Yes, and I so appreciate your transparency with this because it’d be really easy for you to be like, oh, I still make all this money from Pinterest which clearly there’s still a play for some people using Pinterest. It’s not like it’s obsolete or anything, but you’re acknowledging that things have changed with it. And giving that context of, well, I’m able to do this because I did that. Then people are probably still able to have some success there, but it’s going to be different. And it’s not going to be the same free growth as it used to be. Just like with Instagram, although it’s interesting because they have added on five additional platforms to Instagram. They have made it five social media platforms. They’ve also opened up new ways for accounts to grow that haven’t existed in a while because a lot of my growth on Instagram was in 2015 and 2016. It was a lot easier to grow if you’re putting in the effort we’re in recent years, it really hasn’t been. Reels, I think changed that. So, us giving context that as our strategies are things have changed, I think is just really important in terms of staying in integrity. So I appreciate you taking that full context.

Monica Froese: You’re welcome. And that’s one of the reasons I had four different Pinterest courses. That was actually their own essential letter. With organic marketing on Pinterest, affiliate marketing on Pinterest, then how to have a converting funnel because you need a converting funnel if you’re going to run paid ads. Because I would have so many people come to me, they want to try and pay to get clicks to their website, to then send people off their website to display ads. I’m like, whoa, this is a lose, lose situation. You actually need a converting mechanism. And they’re like, what’s that? So then I had to develop that course. And so, I had this four-course of Pinterest courses. But when the pandemic hit and I was really feeling a disconnect, I was burned out teaching ads. I just was. It was a bad model I had with the free support. It was just really. And I was disconnected from my bigger mission of helping women. It was all this stuff that was happening. But the other writing on the wall was it just wasn’t the same. I could keep up on the promoted pin stuff because they’ll always take your money. All these platforms will always take your money. If they have an advertising system, there’s always a way to leverage it. So I wasn’t concerned that I could keep that relevant, but the organic side of things, just isn’t what it was. And I wasn’t going to keep selling. And we got to the point where after the last update I did on it, I was like, this is it. The course promises are no longer valid, and so we’re just not going to sell it anymore. 

Jaclyn Mellone: Wow. Okay, we could spend a whole episode on this. I’m like, I’m going to keep us on topic here. But it’s true. As things change, our business evolves and yes, I give you a lot of props for that. The one thing I’ll share for anyone that has something like this, my friend and one of our past guests, Amanda Bond, teaches Facebook ads. She did so much of her course. Anything related to the ads platform and written content, such as updates with screenshots and written out so as changes happened, she didn’t have to re-record the video. She could go in or have a team member redo those screenshots, or just retype. And I’m like, oh, that’s so brilliant that you don’t have to redo the videos every time.

Monica Froese: Are you in her new version? 

Jaclyn Mellone: I’m not, no. 

Monica Froese: I am. Yes, because Amanda has very high integrity as well. 

Jaclyn Mellone: Oh my gosh. Off the charts. 

Monica Froese: Yes, how she approaches things. And I appreciate people like that. I don’t want anyone to tell me something’s a get rich scheme because nothing is. Everything takes work, and that’s why I hate the term passive. And so I have to qualify it and I’m like, okay. So yes, I do get spreadsheet sales because of those pins that I put up. But you can’t really replicate exactly how I did that. But you can find other mediums to get similar results. Here’s the thing, my budget spreadsheets’ not obsolete because Pinterest does it. If I wanted to launch it today, is it less valid than it was five years ago? Absolutely not. I just could not get the traction on it the same way I did five years ago. And those are very different things. 

Jaclyn Mellone: Those are. Okay, so let’s talk about, for someone listening, maybe they have a digital product already, or maybe they’re thinking about it. You had mentioned once you have that it’s going to be clear what the next step is. Is it okay if someone doesn’t know what the next step is? Is that what you were hitting to get there? Or if we do have it, can we then backtrack and create a front end offer for it? Is there a right or wrong way to do this? 

Monica Froese: There isn’t, and that’s beauty. When I alluded to the Pinterest advertising course, to teach paid advertising, that is such a meaty topic. So that course, I had to copyright it. I still have to copyright it. When you put it in a Google Doc, it was 800 pages, and I didn’t even include all the videos. It was the media. When I say it was a media course, it was a media course. So here’s the thing, after teaching it for two years and I realized it was so hard to watch people come in and throw money at a non-converting offer that I was like, I got to fill this gap. And that gap had to go before the signature course. So it was like, I actually did my signature course and then backed in. And the other thing I did was I wanted an entry-level to that course so there was, okay, you need a converting funnel. So that is like the rung below, but then there’s also someone who just wants it like the 10,000 ft view of ads. They weren’t really sure if Pinterest ads could work for them, so I called it the primer starter kit. A $37 product and it was like, listen, here are the basics of how to get started. It gave them enough to get started and get a feel if it could work for them. And if they want it to go further, then I gave him a coupon code to come to the program. 

I developed the higher-end program first. So there’s really no wrong way to do it in terms of teaching it. For me, I start at the bottom of the product ladder because I do think having done it all different ways with different, I’ve done many different product essential ladders. At the end of the day, I do think it is easier when you start at the bottom. And you build-up, but there is no linear journey to anything in business so you might start with your smaller offer. And then there might be such a demand as you get these pain customers for something higher end, and you might jump and do that. And then you might come back down and fill in as I did with the sales funnel course for Pinterest in between. So everyone’s journey is going to be different. And I do notice having run courses for as long as I have, students definitely want there to be a definitive only way. There must be a right answer and they get a little frustrated when I have to tell them that I can’t make the decisions for their business because I’m not always going to be there. So they have to learn how to trust themselves. And there’s rarely one way to do anything. So I can give you input, I can give you best practices. I can give you very solid information about what has and hasn’t worked. But at the end of the day, you’ve got to make up your mind for what’s best for you, for your life, for your business, for your customers. And that’s going to look different for everyone  

Jaclyn Mellone: It’s so true. I know people, they want the five-step process. It’s going to be the only way. Some things can be broken down but yes, there’s no one right way. And a lot of times there is all this context and all of this other stuff. I think as a market, we’re getting smarter and I do think the next wave will be more aware of that. I just don’t know when that wave is coming and there are obviously people that are already there. But as a whole, I think the online marketing, online business world still really, really holds this belief that there is some big secret they don’t know. And there is some way that all of the successful people are doing things. And if they just go by that one course, that’s going to tell them all of the steps to do exactly the right thing to get exactly the right place.

Monica Froese: You know what it is? I’m sure you know many six, seven, or even eight-figure entrepreneurs. I can’t think of two that have taken the same linear path to get there. It’s not a thing. Digital products in general are very powerful for a lot of reasons. But in the step-by-step, oftentimes like my students, they need the step-by-step just to get momentum to get started. So you follow the process that someone lays out for you. As you grow, you’re going to realize, okay, you know what, well, that part didn’t work as well for me so I’m going to replace it with this. And you have to critically think. But I do think that I don’t worry so much about the people who come in and try to disrupt the market in very icky ways, because in my opinion, I only want to work with people who want to stay in integrity too. So I still think that there’s longevity to integrity if you stick with integrity. 

Jaclyn Mellone: I agree. I agree. We have to believe that. Oh, that’s true. I do. I agree. And I think time will only lean more into that as people become more aware of things. For sure. I agree. It’s interesting, I probably have a couple of digital products, but the one that’s the most popular, the one that I’ve had the most success in promoting the most is called the podcast, Plug-n-Pitch system. Oh, plugnpitch.com. But it’s for helping people pitch themselves to be a guest on podcasts. It’s the templates. It does have training in there too, but mostly the template formula that you were talking about. Now, it’s interesting because I haven’t done ads for it. I think we’ve had about, I want to say 600 students, I don’t know. Off the top of my head, but over the past, I don’t know, not quite two years, probably a year and a half, we’ve launched it live a couple of times. I’ve run it live before with all these things. But I didn’t plan it perfectly to go into something else. And that’s what’s held me back from doing ads quite honestly, and we’re actually planning on rebranding it to be more of a client attraction system. So it’s the same exact thing. I’m not changing it. Having it be so obvious that it’s like, okay, the people that want to be guests on podcasts, like my warm audience, they want it. But going out to a cold audience, they don’t necessarily know the way yet. So it’s like, oh, you need to get in front of new audiences to attract those higher-paying clients. Or where are you going to find your next client? Here’s a way. Do that by being a podcast guest. Here’s our templates kind of an angle. So switching it up a little bit to be able to go more to cold people. So I guess one of the things that gave me a lot of clarity was running it live. It’s almost like a challenge. With you saying, okay, you’re going to launch this. You’re going to get feedback. That’s going to give you the next thing. How do you recommend they get that feedback? Should they run it live as I did? Is there a simpler way? Because sometimes people buy it. I don’t sell a ton of them, but we get anywhere between three and I think the most I’ve gotten in a month passively is 11. So they’re trickling in, but not big numbers and I’m not really communicating with those new people as much. Maybe I should be, but it hasn’t been a priority. So yes, how do you figure out what they want? 

Monica Froese: Well, okay. So I love running live rounds of higher-priced things. So I don’t teach to run it on that first rung of the product ascension ladder because that’s a lot of work. But we are very heavily focused on it. The email follow-up is huge. Even on the small products, that email, because usually now when you have your product extension letter and you’re actually going to be moving them up the product ascension ladder. Once it’s in place, those emails will be geared towards the next logical step for them to take within your business. And like the know, like, trust factor really building up that trust. I do it now, our podcasts, we would reiterate, hear these episodes. If you’re here, listen to this. All that kind of stuff. If it’s your very first time, your very first product, we send a ton of follow-ups asking for feedback, but also it will start naturally coming out. If you’re missing something, people are going to tell you. Or if something’s unclear, people are going to tell you. They do. But those also lead to really great conversations. And I will say there’s an aversion. And I had this aversion, this is so funny. I had a coach early on who is an extrovert and I’m an introvert. I think you’re an extrovert, right? 

Jaclyn Mellone: Yes, I’m an extrovert, but I need a lot of alone time. So I might be wondering if there’s such a thing as omnivert or whatever. I’m definitely leaning more extroverted, but I am the least extroverted person in my family. If that means anything to you. I only go for a walk by myself and everyone’s like, can we come with you? And I’m like, no, I just want to be alone. So I’m like, I need people and I crave that, but I also really need the balance of the alone time. 

Monica Froese: I can sit here and talk to you, and this is great. I can definitely be outgoing, but I am like, please. If I have a day of all calls, I actually have to space them out because then I was not very nice to my children at night. I was like, do not ask me more questions, do not talk to me. So I definitely need alone time for recharge as well. But I had a very extroverted coach and my husband’s very extroverted too. And this was like 2016 or 2017 when I was just emerging with my digital products and she pushed me to do 15-minute calls with my customers. And I was like, this is awful. I just want to work behind the computer screen. Why are you making me do this? And I thought, well, you’re an extrovert. And really scoffed at her. But I’ll tell you, I did those calls in the early days, and so most people I talk to are still customers. They buy almost everything I put out. And I have launched, we haven’t officially edited up, but it’s got to be upwards of 75 products. And I’m talking about everything. We just have a ton of products and even stripped down our Shopify store. I think we have 40 some in there now, but that doesn’t include our courses, it doesn’t include our membership. We have a lot. I have people because I got on those calls in the early days that they will buy everything I put out. It really grew that know, like, trust factor. But also, I got to really understand how they were leveraging our products. And people do like to talk about themselves, so if you put it out there, you will get feedback. It just naturally comes out. If you can’t get people to talk to you, maybe you need to go back to the drawing board of what you put out. Because it’s suspicious to me if you can’t get anyone to talk to you. If you’ve sold 20 plus, you should be able to get some people to engage with you via email. I’m to the point now where my audience is, and this is definitely very different from anyone starting new. But we just get so many emails. It’s just about categorizing what we’re hearing. And that’s basically where the majority of our new products are going to come from. A need born out of what we’re hearing. And as you do build your ascension ladder and like we do live training, we do webinars, we do pay challenges, we do all that stuff for the front end marketing too. Tons of stuff comes out of that. People asking, and actually, that’s really great content for overcoming objections on your sales pages by the way.

Jaclyn Mellone: Ooh, love that. 

Monica Froese: Marketing is definitely a learned skill that you just get better at the more you do it. I don’t think I was a good marketer when I started at all. I think the sales pages overwhelmed me. I thought, what do you mean overcoming objections with frequently asked questions, can I just be literal? What’s your return policy? That’s a literal question. But you just get better. The more you can talk to your audience, the better you’ll be at marketing. 

Jaclyn Mellone: That’s the best advice right there. It really is. The better you talk to them, you understand them, their wants, their needs, and all the things. So you have 75 products, oh my God. So now, and I realize you are not going out there and telling other people to have 75 products. But I’m curious because you have a shop and you have a little bit of a different model, what is your ascension model? Because I could see, okay, you’re bringing someone in with a low ticket. You’re bumping up to the higher ticket. But where do all of these other things fit in? Are you marketing those too warm? Take us a little bit behind the scenes with how your own business works.

Monica Froese: Yes, because I’ve been doing this for so long and because I actually do what I teach, I do have a lot of products. And so I do things. And my students asked me this too because they’re like, what do you mean I don’t? Do I need a Shopify store? And I need to build funnels. I need this. Because they see the front end of what I have and they assume they need all of that too. And I’m like, no, no, no. Remember, I am 75 products deep actively selling and six years into this. So no, you’re not going to have exactly what I have. My product ascension ladder on the empowered business side starts with a 10,000 ft view product of how to get started with digital products. Then we move people into our membership, which is $29 a month. And then from there, we have a signature course called The Lab, which is like the A to Z handheld roadmap where that’s where I’m showing up to answer the questions. So that is our core ascension ladder. And there are supplements to the essential ladder because within that, then we have templates that you can get with order bumps and stuff like that. So I would say that there are probably quick, probably eight-ish products that fit in that core essential ladder on that side of the business. But remember, I started with Redefined Mom, and we have a ton of products over there too. So the thing is funnel is just a fancy word for the customer journey. And all it means is how you take someone who knows nothing about you and you create an optimized buying journey so that they know, like and trust you and pay you money in a very integrity way. Funnels do not have to be like a gross thing, they’re actually very effective. But they’re very effective for bringing in people into your world that don’t know you. So what happens is, for me, since I have two sides of my business and lots of products, I would have people who are like, I really want to buy this and this and this. And I’m like, well, go check out 45 times through 45 funnels. Not an effective way. 

So my shop, the way I view my shop is for my warm audience. It’s a very easy way for people to go, add things to their cart, and checkout in a normal kind of e-com shopping experience way. But I’m telling you right now because I’m really good at my statistics or my data. I’m very data-driven. My shop is not getting cold people to it who are just like, oh, I don’t know her, but I’m going to add a bunch of stuff to this cart and check out. That’s not happening. Providing an optimized experience because I actually have an audience now. So it’s not necessary for the way I teach, because I very much focused on that initial, how are you bringing someone in that doesn’t know you? And then they do know you and they pay from you, now you have to build out that ascension ladder. So you’re still a ways off from really needing a shopfront in my opinion. So that’s how I handle it. 

Jaclyn Mellone: Okay, thank you for breaking that down for us. And I think it does, it makes it feel much more approachable. Okay, we can start here, we go here. And sometimes, yes, we look at other people’s businesses and try to model based on what we see. And it doesn’t work because you don’t see what’s going on behind the scenes. So yes, conversations like this, I feel like peeling back the curtain or just pure gold of like, don’t just look at what someone successful is doing and try to copy it because… 

Monica Froese: If you went to my site and went to my shop, and you knew that I teach digital products, I sell digital products and I do well with it. And if you’ve thought like, oh, this is how she does it. Look at the shop. All of our digital products are here. If I showed you how our money breaks down to the back end, our shop is not paying my team. That is not happening. And so, you would be following a model that isn’t going to win in my opinion. 

Jaclyn Mellone: Yes, so thank you for sharing all of those. Oh my gosh. I can just keep talking to you for hours on this, but I know we need to wrap up. Is there anything else you want to add about digital products and things people should consider before we wrap up?

Monica Froese: If I am in tune with what I hear the biggest objection is that people really don’t think that they know enough or they’re an expert enough to create a product. Really, a digital product is an information product. It’s taking what you know and putting it into either a tangible way to use it like a template, a printable, or teaching step-by-step in a course, whatever it might be. I say this all the time because my students always feel like they need to be the foremost expert in a topic to put out a product. And I say, listen, I actually give this on my free training. I give this as an example. I said you don’t need to be the LeBron James of your topic to be successful. Imagine this, if LeBron said, I’m going to teach you how to play basketball, I’d be like, no way I’m showing up and shooting baskets in front of this guy. I’m going to look like a fool. Now, if my high school basketball coach was like, hey, do you want me to teach you some basics? It’ll be way less intimidating. People actually want to learn from someone that’s just one or two steps ahead of them. They’re not looking for that foremost expert. Most people want to buy from someone who’s relatable on the topic.  And like my students ask me all the time if I still build my sales funnels, I say, yes. I can do it in my sleep. I’m really good at it actually. And that’s what I’m teaching you. And yes, there are aspects of it that my team now helps me with. But I actually do the thing I teach because I’m not on some different planet where I’m like, so I’m going to teach you this thing that I figured out five years ago. It’s not really relevant anymore. People don’t want to learn from that. People want to learn from someone who’s actually in the trenches and understands what’s going on. 

Jaclyn Mellone: So good. All right. How can we stay in touch with you, Monica? 

Monica Froese: Well, we created a special link for you. So how is everything now? I pretty much centralized everything under monicafroese.com. So you can find everything there. But we also created a special link which is monicafroese.com/gotogal. And that has our free digital product training. It has a link to our podcast, which is the Empowered Business Podcast. And also our Instagram, which is @monica.froese. And I always say, I actually answer the DMs usually with a toddler jumping on me at night. But it happens, just give me 24 hours.

Jaclyn Mellone: Amazing. Alright, thank you so much. I’m so inspired by this conversation. And think you helped pull a lot of the pieces together too. And also just the reassurance of, okay, this is not going anywhere and we didn’t miss the boat on anything. We may just have to think about things differently. And yes, I’m excited. You got my wheels turning for sharp, so thank you so much. 

Monica Froese: Thanks for having me. 

Jaclyn Mellone: Can I just say, thank you so much for listening? I don’t think I’m saying it enough, but I love that you are here. If you enjoyed today’s episode, or if you’ve been getting value from this podcast, can you do me a quick favor? Head on over to iTunes and leave a rating and review. When you leave a rating and review, it basically tells iTunes that they need to spread the word and tell more people about this podcast, and I am on a mission to get the word out. I’m so grateful for your support. We want to make sure to shout you out too. So if you do leave a rating and review, keep your eyes and ears open. We will be either shouting out in the podcast or on Instagram Stories.