207: Behind The Scenes Live Coaching For Digital Product Revenue Growth (Session #1)
For the first time ever, I'm pulling back the curtain and sharing a real, unfiltered coaching session on the podcast. This isn't a polished interview or a carefully edited presentation—it's actual coaching happening in real time.
In this first session, you'll meet Abby from The Content Experiment, a fractional marketing director who helps coaches and online businesses with their marketing strategy. Despite her expertise, Abby has been struggling to generate consistent revenue from her own digital products.
What you'll discover in this episode:
The surprising reason many service providers (even marketing experts!) struggle to sell their digital products
Why Abby was giving away valuable intellectual property for free instead of monetizing it
The simple tech stack change that's already creating momentum in her business
Our specific strategies for growing her email list by 50% over the next six months
The accountability system that's helping her commit 10 hours weekly to product revenue growth
This is just the beginning of a six-month journey I'll be sharing with you. Each month, we'll check in with Abby to see what's working, what challenges she's facing, and the real results she's achieving.
If you've been wondering what it's really like to work with a coach on transforming your digital product revenue, or if you're a service provider looking to create more sustainable income beyond client work, this episode will feel like it was made just for you.
Many thanks to Abby for opening up and sharing her journey with us!
Mentioned in this episode:
Where to learn more about Abby and her offers: Website and LinkedIn
Abby’s free gift: Ask Your Audience Challenge
Episode Highlights:
[00:01:00] Introducing the six-month coaching experiment with Abby from The Content Experiment and setting expectations for transparency throughout the journey
[00:03:00] Abby explains her business model as a fractional marketing director, her product offerings, and why she needs accountability to grow her digital product revenue
[00:05:52] The catalyst for change: Abby shares how client unpredictability impacted her income and why diversification through digital products is crucial
[00:09:00] Dr. Destiny identifies that Abby has been giving away too much valuable content for free and needs proper funnel structures
[00:16:00] Strategic discussion on restructuring Abby's offers in Thrivecart to create effective tripwires and upsells
From Service Provider to Digital Product Creator: A Six-Month Journey
In the ever-evolving landscape of online business, many entrepreneurs find themselves at a crossroads: continue relying solely on client service work or diversify their income through digital products. This transition isn't just about creating new revenue streams—it's about building sustainability, scalability, and freedom into your business model.
On a recent episode of the Creators MBA podcast, I launched an exciting new experiment—a six-month live coaching journey with Abby from The Content Experiment. Together, we're documenting her transformation from primarily service-based work to establishing consistent digital product revenue. This transparent coaching relationship offers valuable insights for anyone looking to make a similar shift in their business.
The Catalyst for Change: When Client Work Becomes Unpredictable
For many service providers like Abby, the wake-up call comes when client work becomes unpredictable. As a fractional marketing director specializing in podcasts and YouTube channels, Abby faces a unique challenge: her work depends on clients completing their part first. She can't record podcasts or film videos for them—they must create the content before she can implement her expertise.
This dependency created a significant financial vulnerability. Abby shared a pivotal moment when a client decided to "skip a month" of their retainer because they hadn't completed their work. Despite having a contract in place, this situation ultimately led to terminating the relationship, resulting in a loss of thousands in monthly revenue.
"I can't rely solely on one-to-one clients for my livelihood," Abby explained. "I'm the only income in my house and always have been. I have to do something different."
This realization is common among service providers. No matter how excellent your service or how tight your contracts, client work inherently carries unpredictability. Digital products offer a path to more stable, scalable income that isn't dependent on client timelines or availability.
The Hidden Problem: Giving Away Your Expertise for Free
One of the most significant revelations in our coaching conversation was Abby's tendency to give away her valuable intellectual property for free—a pattern many experts fall into without realizing it.
Abby had created multiple high-value digital products, including her popular "Ask Your Audience Challenge" and a comprehensive 90-day content plan delivered via private podcast feed. Despite the latter being priced at $47 (which is already a steal for the value provided), she had given it away to over 500 people through summits and bundles.
"I gave it away because I don't think anybody's going to buy it," Abby admitted. "I want to justify the fact that I put it together, that I took the time to create it."
This mindset is surprisingly common among experts. We create valuable resources and then undermine our own worth by giving them away, often because:
We doubt people will pay for our expertise
We want to feel our creation effort was worthwhile
We prioritize list building over monetization
We lack confidence in our digital product sales ability
The truth is that properly valuing your intellectual property isn't just good for your bottom line—it signals to your audience that your content is worth investing in. When everything is free, potential buyers may question the quality or depth of what you're offering.
Restructuring for Revenue: The Technical Side of Digital Product Sales
Having identified the mindset challenges, we moved on to practical implementation. Abby had been using an unnecessarily complex and expensive tech stack: a Shopify store with approximately 10 digital products, coupled with Zapier integrations that required hiring outside help to configure.
"I'm having to pay all this extra to let people have my stuff for free," Abby realized.
We developed a more streamlined approach using Thrivecart for her digital product sales, which offers several advantages:
Simplified Customer Journey: Instead of maintaining an entire e-commerce store for just 10 products, Abby can create targeted sales funnels for each offer.
Strategic Tripwires and Upsells: When someone opts in for a lead magnet or "free" offer from a summit or bundle, they immediately see a relevant paid offer, with additional order bumps and upsells.
Cost Reduction: Eliminating unnecessary tools and subscriptions reduces overhead while actually increasing sales potential.
Focused Marketing: Rather than hoping visitors find the right product in a store, each marketing effort drives traffic to a specific, optimized funnel.
This restructuring isn't just about technology—it's about creating intentional pathways for potential customers that maximize both value delivery and revenue generation.
The Growth Strategy: List Building with Purpose
A crucial element of digital product success is building an email list of engaged prospects. As Abby noted, "When you're in service-based work, you can rely on word of mouth, but selling digital products requires focusing on list growth."
We established a goal of 50% list growth over our six-month coaching period, with several strategies in play:
Strategic Participation in Bundles and Summits: Rather than giving away full-fledged paid products, Abby will offer valuable lead magnets that funnel into tripwire offers.
Email Marketing Consistency: Continuing her weekly newsletter while incorporating strategic promotions and flash sales.
Podcast Relaunch: Leveraging her content expertise through her own podcast, which will document this journey and drive list growth.
Signature Offer Development: Creating a unique, high-value offering based on her specialized knowledge that positions her as the go-to expert in her field.
What makes this approach different is the intentionality behind it. Instead of growing a list just to have numbers, each new subscriber enters a carefully crafted journey designed to convert them into customers at the appropriate point.
The Accountability Factor: Why Coaching Makes the Difference
Perhaps the most powerful insight from our conversation was Abby's recognition that knowledge alone wasn't enough—she needed accountability and an outside perspective to implement what she already knew.
"The piece that has been missing was the accountability," Abby shared. "I need somebody to help me make sure that I get it done and to talk through some of the things that need to happen because I can't see what I need to see inside of my own business."
This is something I see regularly with intelligent, capable entrepreneurs. We often know what we should be doing, but implementation falters because:
We're too close to our own businesses to see objectively
We prioritize client work over our own business development
We lack structured accountability for our growth goals
We need validation that our strategies are sound
Abby has committed to spending 10 hours weekly on implementing these changes—a significant investment that demonstrates her seriousness about transformation. Our monthly podcast check-ins will provide public accountability while giving listeners insights into the real challenges and victories of building digital product revenue.
Your Turn: Applying These Insights to Your Business
If Abby's situation resonates with you, consider these action steps to begin your own transition toward more sustainable digital product revenue:
Audit Your Free Content: Are you giving away intellectual property that should be monetized? Look for opportunities to transform free resources into paid offers or proper lead magnets that funnel into paid offers.
Simplify Your Tech Stack: Evaluate whether your current tools are optimized for digital product sales. Often, less is more when it comes to creating effective sales funnels.
Create Intentional Customer Journeys: Map out specific pathways for potential customers, from initial discovery through various purchase opportunities.
Commit to List Building: Set concrete goals for growing your email list and develop a strategy that focuses on quality as well as quantity.
Find Accountability: Whether through coaching, mastermind groups, or business partnerships, establish regular accountability for your digital product goals.
The journey from service provider to digital product creator isn't always easy, but the rewards—greater income stability, scalability, and business freedom—make it worthwhile. Over the next six months, we'll document Abby's progress, sharing both challenges and wins so you can learn alongside us.
I believe in the power of digital products to transform service-based businesses, and I'm excited to guide Abby through this process. As she said in our conversation, "I finally feel like there's some momentum happening behind all of this." Sometimes, that initial momentum is exactly what we need to create lasting change in our businesses.
Stay tuned for next month's update as we continue this six-month experiment in building digital product revenue!
Pin this and save for later
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Welcome to the Creators MBA podcast, your go to resource for mastering the art and science of digital product entrepreneurship. My name is Dr. Destini Copp and I help business owners generate consistent revenue from their digital product business without the need to be glued to their desks, constantly live launching.
or worrying about the social media algorithms. I hope you enjoy our episode today.
Hi there, Destini here. Today I want to talk about getting laser focused on activities that truly move the needle in your business. Maybe you see a new platform that has launched and you're maybe I should go check that out.
Or somebody contacts you to participate in their bundle and you're thinking, Okay. Maybe this is something I should do. Or you get inspired by somebody else's success story. And start thinking, Okay, maybe I should start
[00:01:00] doing this.
And I'm going to be totally transparent with you. I have been here recently, and I was super excited about launching the Newsletter Profit Club app on Product Hunt. And to be honest with you, I still am interested in doing that. But after I started really digging into this and, looking at people who have done this before, I was like, okay, I know what's required.
For it to be successful, to have a successful product hunt launch. I knew what was going to be required here. It would require me to do a launch team for my email list. I'd probably have to go out and do some podcast episodes to get some visibility there. I might even have to run some paid ads to get, visibility to the app and just to the launch in general. Very
[00:02:00] similar to what I had to do when I launched my book. Getting together that book launch team. Was a lot of work then I asked myself The million dollar question, how much revenue would this actually generate? The honest answer was, I don't know.
That uncertainty was enough for me to put it on the back burner. Another example. As some of you know, I recently attended the Newsletter Marketing Summit. It was a live event. I went down to Austin, Texas. It was a great event. I was really excited about it. And I came back and I thought, you know what?
It would be really cool for me to do my own virtual summit featuring some of those big names in the newsletter space. I would love to interview them. I'd probably learn a lot through the process, but again, how much money would it make? And the people I'd
[00:03:00] interview. Probably wouldn't share it with their audience.
So it wouldn't be a lead generator for me unless I ran ads to it. So I was like, you know what? I'm probably not going to make a lot of money. It's really just. To be fun on my part to do it. So I put it on the back burner. So here's the revenue Reality check and here's what I've learned every business decision You make needs to pass the revenue reality check So before diving in to any new initiative ask yourself.
Will this directly? generate revenue And if so, how much and how soon? Will it indirectly lead to revenue or reducing cost? What's that conversion path? What's the timeline there? And is the potential return worth the investment of time, energy,
[00:04:00] and resources? This doesn't mean that you should only pursue activities with immediate financial returns.
We know that some things out there are going to build long term value, but you need to be crystal clear about your expectations and realistic about these outcomes. Let's talk about what actually moves the needle in my business and what I have decided to focus on. For me, the revenue drivers are very clear.
The first is my email list. Nothing beats optimizing what already works. If you have something that's working in your business double down on it. For me, my email list is my moneymaker. It's where Almost all of my revenue come from, comes from. So anything that I can do to move the needle there
[00:05:00] is going to pay off this might be refining my newsletters, creating effective flash sale emails, and optimizing promotional sequences. When somebody gets onto my email list, getting my offers in front of them sooner and more often.
When I invest time here I definitely see direct returns. The other place is growing my email list. The bigger the email list, the bigger potential for revenue. And I will say that the newer people coming on to my email list, I have found that they are more likely to buy sooner.
So the email list growth is very important and Converting them or putting offers in front of them sooner has definitely worked for me. So a couple of areas that has been working for me are paid ads. So getting people
[00:06:00] who may not have known about me getting the visibility and getting them on my email list and getting my offers in front of them definitely has worked.
Participating in summits is still working for me. Actually like summits more so than bundles because I feel like the leads I'm getting. From a summit are more likely to convert when I'm in a summit, I'm doing a workshop, some type of training, some type of presentation.
So they're seeing that they're getting to know me better. And when they sign up for my email list they have that connection the other thing that has been working. Not as much as Facebook ads, but it's definitely been working is strategic newsletter advertising and people who have an email list that has my ideal customer on it.
Now, once somebody joins my email list, converting them to my paid
[00:07:00] offers is critical. So, I'm going to put more emphasis on this going forward in 2025. Live trainings outperform almost everything else that I'm doing. But, I don't necessarily need them for somebody to convert into my
main offer. Getting targeted email sequences with bonuses that appeal to my ideal customer are definitely helping also direct response ads can work too. Somebody sees my ad. And almost immediately signs up for one of my offers. That's definitely something I'm going to be focusing on.
And I know that all of that is going to convert into revenue very, very quickly. So when evaluating all the opportunities that come across my desk I use what I call this
[00:08:00] Opportunity cost framework. So the first question I asked myself, what is the time investment?
How many hours were this required? Because a lot of events, maybe somebody contacts me for a summit, and depending on what they're asking, I'm going to have to invest some time in that, especially if it's creating a new presentation or if they're asking for something, special so I always have to kind of think about how many hours will this require me?
Also, the financial investment, you know, what is the direct cost? To participate in something like this, and then the energy investment, how much mental and emotional bandwidth will this require of me? The alternative, what else could I be doing with these resources? If I invest into something, maybe if I, invest into speaking at this event or participating
[00:09:00] in this event, What else could I be doing?
When you're participating in a bundle or summit, there's going to be things that you have to do, which is promoting to your MLS. So that's taking up valuable real estate in your promotional calendar. Should you want to promote that or would you rather be promoting one of your own offers?
So that's what I always ask myself. And then the revenue projection. What is the realistic revenue expectation coming out of that particular activity and then the timelines to results. So how long before I see returns from this investment? And I think that's very important too.
If it's going to take a year for you to actually see returns from that, it might not be worth your time. This opportunity cost framework helps me make decisions that align with my revenue goals rather than just following what Seems
[00:10:00] exciting or something I would love to do, but I don't necessarily have time to do like the newsletter virtual summit.
I would love to do something like that. But I just don't know that I'm actually going to get revenue from it. So let's talk about some steps to find what I call these needle movers in your business. So here's what you can identify what truly moves the needle in your business. Number one, you need to know your revenue sources.
Do a deep dive into your finances. Where exactly is your money coming from? A lot of times, the 80 20 rule is going to apply here, meaning 80 percent of your revenue comes from 20 percent of your activities. And then I want you to analyze your time allocation. So track how you spend your working hours.
For at least two weeks
[00:11:00] and then I want you to compare this with your revenue sources Are you spending most of your time on activities that generate little to no? Revenue then that's something you might want to address And then run some small experiments.
So before committing to major initiatives, run a small test to really figure out their potential can you do a mini version of that summit? I was thinking about, with that newsletter marketing summit, maybe what I do is just ask some of them to be On my Creators MBA podcast.
That might be, a way to get my itch out of there. That might be a way to learn a little bit more. It would benefit my audience. And that would be a way to test and see
the next thing you would want to do before committing to a major initiative is run a small experience. So
[00:12:00] going back to my example with that newsletter virtual summit that I was talking about earlier, maybe what I could do there would be just to invite some of them to be on my Creators MBA podcast.
That way I could. Bring them on, learn a little bit more. It would be valuable for my audience. So I'd have that content too. And that would be a way for me to do those interviews without doing a full blown virtual summit and then really establish some clear success metrics. So for every activity, for every marketing campaign that you work on to find what success.
looks like. For example, for me, let's say that I am doing a live kind of webinar or live training. One way to define success there would be, I want to get
[00:13:00] 30 new members from this training. Building brand awareness is just too vague, right? But if you want to go a little bit deeper, generating 500 new email subscribers.
With a 5 percent conversion rate to my product. or sign up for my membership. That is specific and it's measurable. The other thing you can do is schedule regular revenue reviews. I like to do these monthly, definitely do them at least quarterly, but look monthly if you can and figure out, okay, this is moving the needle for me.
This is where my revenue's coming from and that's where you can double down and put more of your effort in that area. I feel your pain. It's hard to say no. I say no every single day and it pains me every time but that's. Something we have to do.
[00:14:00] Remember that every time you say yes to something that doesn't move your needle, you are saying no to something that could.
I have had to decline podcast interviews. speaking engagements, collaboration opportunities that wouldn't necessarily directly serve my revenue goals. It is not easy, but I had to stay laser focused on my plan and what I needed to focus on. So here's some of my final thoughts .
Getting laser focused On what moves the needle isn't about working harder. It is about working smarter. You're directing your energy to what truly matters in your business. It's also about being intentional with your most precious resources, which are your time and
[00:15:00] attention. I want to challenge you to take an honest look.
At your business activities, what is actually moving the needle for you or what's just keeping you busy? The answers might surprise you and they're definitely going to transform your business. And I just want you to know that success isn't about doing more things. It's about doing. the right things. So what activities are moving the needle in your business?
If you found this valuable, please share it with a fellow entrepreneur who might need this reminder until next time. Bye for now.
Thanks for listening all the way to the end. I hope you enjoyed this episode today. If you love the show, I'd appreciate a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast platform. Have a great rest of your day and bye for now.