The Hard Reality of Pivoting From Services to Courses or Digital Products
Raise your hand if you’ve been personally victimized by the idea that the only way to really grow your service-based business the way you want to is by pivoting to courses or digital products. Don’t worry, we’ll wait.
It’s a resounding message in the online business world, and it’s an idea that gets circulated through so many service-providers’ brains a hundred times or more. They fall in love with those sexy phrases associated with pivoting to courses, like “passive income”, “work less while making more”, “make money while you sleep”, etc.
They seduce you with the idea of being able to bank $20k or more *snaps* just like that overnight. All you have to do, apparently, is set up some elaborate funnels and be well on your way to millionaire status.
We hate to break it to you, but… it’s a myth, a total sham. We know this because we did it. We pivoted from services to courses and digital products. And even though our business today is thriving, it wasn’t without an extremely tough and stressful battle.
Keep reading to learn the very hard reality of pivoting from services to courses or digital products.
You Need an Existing Audience
Don’t let anyone tell you that you don’t already need a sizable audience. You do-- unless you’re already rolling in enough Bejamins to drop hundreds of dollars on paid ads. You aren’t going to be able to just create a course, tell your 300-subscriber list and your 750 followers on Instagram about it, and then watch the sales pile in. Unless you have an extremely engaged warm audience and you’re a sales copywriting expert (or can hire one), you won’t achieve the sexy results you thought you would.
Pivoting to Courses or Digital Products Takes WORK
You know that one Rihanna song that instantly became a trend to use when describing your work life? Yeah, take it literally because that’s what you’ll be doing almost 24/7 when you make the pivot-- work, work, work, work, work, work.
Working to post consistently on Instagram and trying all the strategies in the book to grow your followers and engagement.
Working to create freebies, blog posts, and Pinterest Pins to drive traffic and engagement to your website and email list.
Working to get in front of everyone everywhere, even places you never needed to be with just your 1:1 services.
Working to perfect your paid ads campaigns, but then barely breaking even (if at all) with the amount you’re dishing out versus what you’re actually pocketing. And unless you want to be working over 40 hours per week to make all of this happen, you’ll also have to think about outsourcing for an extra pair of hands in your business (read: even more money spent).
We Know All of This Because We Did It
It’s true. Back in the day, we offered 1:1 services and we, too, fell in love with the passive income approach to courses and digital products. Fast forward to now and, yeah, it’s worked out for us in the long run, but it could have been very very different. We’d already started the process of growing our list, following, and generating revenue from things other than our services before we even thought of creating courses. Heck, before we even became business partners!
There were blog posts being written every single day, anywhere from 500 to 3,000+ words, non-stop posting on Instagram, we created a Facebook group and were actively pushing people to join, offering countless freebies, grew our affiliate income, etc. Not to mention that we were able to combine our audiences once we partnered up, so that was already an advantage that not many service providers get.
This was also a different time. (Yes, even though this was only circa 2015.) Courses and digital products hadn’t completely blown up the way they are now, so the market wasn’t nearly as saturated as it is today. Thanks to COVID and the even larger take-off of ambitious people looking for ways to make money from home, courses are everywhere you turn. Because of this, you basically need the advantage of already having a large audience to sell to before you even think about offering a course.
Replace 2,400 Product Sales with 12 High-Ticket Signature Clients on Autopilot™
Before you turn to the overwhelming workload of pivoting to courses or digital products, have you thought about the much less time-consuming and costly methods of growing your service-based business? Methods like..
Organizing your business and refining your systems
Implementing automation techniques to free up time
Designing your work week to actually flow with your life
Removing yourself from over 50% of your daily tasks
Raising your rates so you can work less but make more
All of these things (and more) are how you unlock a High-Ticket Signature Service on Autopilot™ without sacrificing your sanity and personal life by falling down the rabbit hole of creating courses or digital products. The income you would bring in from courses, plus the amount of money wasted from all the hours trying to market yourself to sell those courses in the first place, can be attained with just a handful of these high-ticket clients. And we’ll be teaching how to do it inside of The Incubator.
We vet everyone before they invest a penny to make sure your business and goals align with The Incubator to yield you the best results, so go ahead and fill out this quick application, not only so we can chat more, but so you can receive the invite to our advanced invite-only training where we’ll teach you how to double your income while working 20 hours a week or less!
