#240: Best Tips for Getting Started with Digital Products

What are the best tips for getting started with digital products?

I have digital product expert, Eden Fried, founder of the Rebel Boss Summit on the show today.

As you know, we, at MiloTree HQ, are all about enabling bloggers and creators to sell digital goods directly to their audiences with our new tool, MiloTreeCart. So this interview was right up my alley.

Eden and I talk about:

What digital products are
How to find an idea for a product
How find an audience to serve
How to promote your product
The power of joint ventures to grow your sales
And so much more!

If you are not selling products and services directly to your audience, you are missing out on a whole new income stream. This is important for your business!

Please listen to this episode. Then try out selling your first digital product on MiloTreeCart. It’s the easiest platform to test on.

Best Tips for Getting Started with Digital Products | The Blogger Genius Podcast with Jillian Leslie

Table of Contents

Show Notes:

Intro 0:04
Welcome to The Blogger Genius Podcast brought to you by MiloTree. Here’s your host, Jillian Leslie.

Jillian Leslie 0:11
Hello, my friends. Welcome back to the Blogger Genius Podcast. I’m your host Jillian Leslie. I’m super glad that you are here. I am a serial entrepreneur. I’ve been building businesses online since 2009. And I wanted to give you an update on our newest product called MiloTreeCart.

Jillian Leslie 0:29
So, this is a tool to help creators and bloggers sell digital products directly to their audiences. You can sell digital downloads like ecookbooks, templates, digital art, digital planners, you can sell workshops, memberships, coaching, and we give you free sales pages.

Jillian Leslie 0:51
So put up your products, put up your offer, go sell them. If you have an audience and you’re not selling to them. There is money to be made. So, head to milotreecart.com and get started go play around.

Jillian Leslie 1:06
For today’s episode it is all about digital products. I am interviewing Eden Fried. She runs a summit called rebelbosses.com which we’ll talk about and she teaches people how to get started selling digital products to their audiences. You see this all comes full circle.

Jillian Leslie 1:26
I really enjoyed this conversation. I learned a lot from Eden. I think her personal story is really interesting. So, without further delay, here is my interview with Eden Fried.

Jillian Leslie 1:29
Eden. Welcome to the Blogger Genius Podcast. It is so nice to connect with you.

Eden Fried 1:46
Awesome. I’m so glad to be here and excited for this conversation. Thanks for having me.

Jillian Leslie 1:53
I know nothing about your background. Will you explain how you got into digital products, the online space, what your background is and where you are today?

Getting Started Selling Digital Products

Eden Fried 2:06
Absolutely. Hit that rewind button back to 2016. I was actually enrolled to go to law school, I had taken the LSAT I had applied to I think 12 different schools got into every school I applied to pay the deposit to attend a school in New York.

Eden Fried 2:27
And that summer, I decided to take like a last hurrah before law school trip to Europe. My brother lived there, he was getting married, I went to his wedding. And my brother is actually a very successful entrepreneur and was at the time as well.

Eden Fried 2:43
And he did not like the idea of me going to law school. So, he kind of made it his mission during his wedding to send all of his very entrepreneurial friends over in my direction to sway me out of going to law school. And they succeeded.

Jillian Leslie 3:02
That’s so interesting.

Eden Fried 3:04
Yes. So, I was there. And my boyfriend at the time. He’s my husband now. I called him once I got Wi-Fi on my phone and I said, I’m actually not going to go to law school, I’m going to hit the pause button on that and try to see if I can start a blog and make money online for at least a year.

Eden Fried 3:24
And if at the end of the year, it doesn’t work out for me, then I can always go back to law school. I just deferred my admission. But a year later, I told the school I wasn’t coming and I just went all in, in my online business.

Jillian Leslie 3:36
So, tell me you’re thinking you go okay, I’m going to start a blog. What blog?

Eden Fried 3:42
That’s the question. I was wondering about, too. I had a million question marks in my head. My brother gave me this piece of advice that I remember vividly. And I hated him at the time for the advice, but it makes more sense now.

Eden Fried 3:55
He told me when I said what should I do? He said, just do something, do anything, literally anything. And at the time, I’m like, what does that mean? I don’t know. I have no idea what to do. So, I just made it my goal to literally try whatever I could to turn a profit.

Eden Fried 4:16
My brother’s background was in affiliate marketing. And so, I decided to try to make an affiliate marketing website where I would do a lot of research on different sorts of products out there. And I started with web hosting because I didn’t know a bit about like making websites at the time.

Eden Fried 4:34
So, I explored web hosting, becoming a web hosting affiliate. And I’m sure a lot of people listening are like, oh, there’s 1,000,001 of those people out there. And that’s true.

Eden Fried 4:43
But dipping my toe into the water that taught me a lot about writing blogs and SEO and even more of the technical aspects of just being a presence online and setting up a website that does bring in some traffic.

Eden Fried 4:58
From there I started to offer just like freelance services, some SEO Services purely based off of what I had learned on my own online and I did some web design, I dip my toe in the water on Upwork. I don’t even think there was a Fiverr then.

Eden Fried 5:17
If you’re not familiar with Upwork, it’s a similar sort of platform. I drastically undercharged for my services. I wouldn’t even tell you. I did a lot of freelance writing. I wrote for $10 an article like 1,000+ words.

Jillian Leslie 5:34
Which I hired you.

Eden Fried 5:37
I can’t believe I did that. I literally took my brother’s advice and just did anything I could. Somewhere along the way, I started documenting my journey of can I make money online. And I was one of those people that published some income reports.

Eden Fried 5:52
And I shared like how much money I was making, and exactly how I made the money and what my expenses were, I did start to make a little bit of money here and there from affiliate commissions. But somewhere along the way, I had created a Facebook group to talk about this journey, and at the same time is that I created a Pinterest account.

Eden Fried 6:12
And unlike a lot of women out there, I had never used Pinterest. Like I’d never browsed like home decor, shoes or anything. That wasn’t my thing. But I did start using Pinterest to promote my blog content. And I grew a following really quickly on Pinterest. And I got a lot of traffic very quickly from Pinterest.

Creating a Pinterest Course as a Digital Product

Eden Fried 6:35
And I had this new Facebook group where I was documenting all of the things that I was doing, and people were following along and I had shared what I was doing on Pinterest, and people wanted me to make a course for it. So, I made a course for how I grew my Pinterest account.

Eden Fried 6:50
And when I say course, it was like a teeny tiny like recorded it from the audio on my computer at the time, nothing fancy at all. I think I started charging $18 for it. Very quickly, I got tons of customers.

Eden Fried 7:08
I didn’t really do anything special to be completely honest, there wasn’t a major launch or anything because I just truly was putting, here’s what I did on Pinterest into this course in asterisks or in air quotes. And people were buying it. And eventually that made its first $500 and its first $1,000 and $2,000.

Eden Fried 7:28
And I realized there is something to this, it was much more enjoyable than affiliate marketing. The gratification of it was much more fulfilling. I like teaching and before I was going to be a lawyer, I was actually going to be a teacher among the other hats that I don’t still wear anymore. But it was very fulfilling.

Eden Fried 7:49
And I thought you know what, this is more my thing, this feels better to me, this feels easier, I could see a future with this. And I double down on creating what we call now digital products and creating courses and eBooks and things like that. And now I teach other people how to do that same thing.

Eden Fried 8:08
But to do it fast and simple without all of the hoops to jump through essentially. So yes, that is what I do.

What is Emergent Business Building?

Jillian Leslie 8:16
I love that. I love that story. Because I am a big proponent in something I call emergent business building, which is it emerges. I use this example. I live in Austin and people be like, “Oh, Austin is cool.” And it’s cool for this reason. There will be a strip mall that is dilapidated, and you’d never want to go there.

Jillian Leslie 8:41
And all of a sudden you drive by, and you go, “Oh my God, there’s a coffee place in this strip mall. And it looks kind of cool.” And then all of a sudden people start going to the coffee place next to the tire store next to the who knows what, like the Goodwill.

Jillian Leslie 8:55
And then all of a sudden, you go wait a minute. “Wow, cool. Now there’s a used record store next to the coffee place.” And you still have the tire store or whatever.

Jillian Leslie 8:59
And then all of a sudden, you’re like, “Whoa, the sushi restaurant, a cool sushi restaurant is right there as well.” And then the succulent store shows up. And it just kind of emerges.

Jillian Leslie 9:23
And I feel like the most successful online entrepreneurs I speak to build their businesses that way. They look for where the traction is. I say you’re like a miner and you’re out in the hills mining for gold and when you started your journey you didn’t know where the gold was.

Jillian Leslie 9:43
And then because you ended up on Pinterest and because you were getting traffic and you put it together you saw this opportunity you experimented maybe you didn’t know your Pinterest scores would work. And then it did and then you leaned into it.

Jillian Leslie 9:56
So, I love that idea and I think that we get so caught up yesterday I was coaching somebody to help them set up a paid workshop using MiloTreeCart, our product. And she says to me, “Okay, so we’re going to do this workshop, when should we do it again?”

Jillian Leslie 10:12
And I turned to her and I go, “I don’t know, you have to do it first to figure out whether people like it, whether you like it, whether people come say that was awesome. What else? Where could this lead?”

Jillian Leslie 10:27
But she so needed that structure to say, oh, Jill says to do this four times a year, and I will do it. And I go, “No, no, this is all about exploring, and see where it leads you.”

Eden Fried 10:43
And that was part of the reason why that advice that my brother had given me right at the beginning of just do something, do anything, it was frustrating at the time. But looking back on it, I really believe that’s the only thing I could have done.

Eden Fried 10:56
Nobody can tell you, hey, this is the recipe for success for you. You have to try and fail at a million things until you find something that is successful for you. And honestly, that won’t necessarily be successful all the time forever.

Eden Fried 11:10
You find the next thing after that one stops working. And you have to be okay with that, though. You know, it’s an ongoing journey.

What is a Digital Product?

Jillian Leslie 11:18
And let’s talk about digital. When we say digital you and I digital products we know what we’re talking about. When somebody says to you, “Eden what’s a digital product?” What do you say?

Eden Fried 11:28
A digital product, in my opinion is anything that you can sell online. And that could be truly in any format. It could be an eBook, it can be an online course, it can be printables, it can be like virtual stickers, or it could be presets on your phone.

Eden Fried 11:48
If you’re into photography, anything like that. Anything that is digital in exchange for dollars, or whatever currency you’re selling, it counts as a digital product.

Jillian Leslie 12:00
So, would you say a free webinar is that a digital product?

Eden Fried 12:05
Absolutely. Yes. That would be an example of a digital product that if it’s free, obviously, you’re not making money off of it. But it’s still a product and maybe one day down the line, you start charging for it. Essentially anything you don’t have to ship in the mail, anything you don’t have to put a stamp on. That’s a digital product,

Jillian Leslie 12:20
And some other ones because of course, I’m leaning into this, I’m like a big fan. Anybody who listens to these paid workshops, because you can set it up super quick, and you can test, and you can show up live with your audience.

Jillian Leslie 12:31
Memberships, another good one, things like apps, like any kind of SAS; any kind of music, digital art, there are so many things go to Etsy and take a look around a lot of that is digital products. Wedding invitations, those things.

Eden Fried 12:50
Yes, exactly.

Jillian Leslie 12:52
Big thing. So Okay. When you coach people and say, go make a digital product, and they go, “Sounds great. Where do I start?” What do you say?

Eden Fried 13:05
Honestly, back up a step even before that, and say, a lot of people do it backwards. I’m going to tell you what people do and tell you how to do it differently.

Start With Who You Want to Serve!

Eden Fried 13:19
A lot of people are like, “Hey, this sounds really great. It sounds like I could make a lot of money from digital products. Let me just make something and sell and see how it goes.”

Eden Fried 13:30
And then the worst case scenario happens. And they make whatever it is that they have in their mind, and nobody buys it. So, where I recommend that people start is the very beginning. It starts with who do you want to serve? Who do you want your audience to be?

Eden Fried 13:47
And as a business owner, you get to decide who your audience is, which is kind of cool. It’s unlike getting a nine to five job working for somebody else. They decide who your customers are, and who you answer to. You get to decide who your audience is, but your audience should decide what your product is. That’s what I believe.

Jillian Leslie 14:05
I like that. I just want to stop for one second and say yes, you think you know who your audience is. But our first site that we started in 2009 still big deal Catch My Party. My husband and I built the site. My husband at the time was working at MySpace. I was a writer in Hollywood writing teen girl comedies.

How We Stumbled Onto Our Catch My Party Audience

Jillian Leslie 14:25
We were like, we know our audience, our audience is teen girls, and we’re going to create Catch My Party as a social photo sharing site for girls to share photos of their sweet sixteens. It was like payday there was this MTV show called My Super Sweet 16.

Jillian Leslie 14:25
So, we’re like sweet 16’s, Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, quinceaneras, seniors, proms the whole thing. And I’m a 30-something year old woman, not a mom yet. Stalking teen girls on the internet saying, “Hey, want to put your party photos up on my site?” And nobody did.

Jillian Leslie 15:00
Then weirdly one day I look at our site, and mom with an Etsy shop, put up party photos on our site with a link to her Etsy shop. And they’re beautiful. And then the next day, another mom and I was not a mom yet. So I’m like, I don’t get this.

Jillian Leslie 15:18
Another mom with an Etsy shop who was selling party supplies, put their photos up on our site. And my husband and I stepped back and went, “Oh no, we’re attracting the wrong audience. Oh, shoot, no teen girls want to go put party photos up on a site like My Little Pony Parties.”

Jillian Leslie 15:42
And we thought to ourselves, we should delete these accounts. And then thank God we stepped back. We thought about it. And we said, wait a second, maybe this is our audience. And it is. If you are a mom planning parties going to Pinterest, you will end up on my site.

Jillian Leslie 15:59
So no teen girls put party photos up on our site. And tons of moms put party photos up on our site, especially moms with Etsy shops. So, you think you know who your audience is. But I just had to say, you think you know that you can choose your audience but be open to the fact that you might be wrong.

Advice: Be Agile as an Entrepreneur

Eden Fried 16:17
Yes, I love that. And that just goes to show that you have to be agile, in everything that you’re doing online, it’s kind of like expect the unexpected, I always say don’t be so married to what you’re doing, because it can change tomorrow.

Eden Fried 16:32
And sometimes that’s the most exciting change. Even if you’re like, “Oh, I thought I was going to do this.” Sometimes the most beautiful things in business come from just taking a big step back or big jump back and looking from a point of not being so closely tied to something.

Advertisement 16:53
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Take the Quiz to Find Out What Digital Product to Create!

If you go to milotree.com/quiz, you can take this three minute quiz kind of looks at your personality and tells you whether you should start with a digital download, a paid workshop, a one-on-one coaching offer. I think it’s fun, it’s super easy.

Advertisement 17:21
And hopefully it will get the wheels turning. So head to milotree.com/quiz, download it, take it and then start building your digital product empire. And now back to the show.

Jillian Leslie 17:38
Back to what you recommend. So, you say you pick your audience, I put an asterisk next to that, and say most of the time, but then you need to be open. And then what do you say?

Get to Know Your Audience’s Struggles

Eden Fried 17:51
Then you need to spend some time really getting to know your people, what are they struggling with? What are they saying? How are they describing whatever their pain point is.

Eden Fried 18:00
And after really getting to know these people that are hanging out around you, you’re going to realize, they’re struggling with this and filling that gap is where the product comes in.

Eden Fried 18:13
A lot of people are like, hey, I want to make a product, I want to make money and they just make the product and go and then later find out oh, nobody wants to buy this from me. Instead, you’re starting from here is what people are asking for.

Eden Fried 18:24
If they’re suffering, if they’re struggling, if they’re uncomfortable with something and you come up with an answer to that problem, most likely, it’s going to be an easier sell. So, you basically take that answer, you solve their problem, and you put that solution into a product format.

How to Create an Audience

Jillian Leslie 18:44
I want to pause you for one second. I hear this a lot. Go ask your audience what they want from you and then make it. What if you don’t have an audience? What if you put stuff out on social media and nobody responds? So how do you then find your people?

Jillian Leslie 19:01
How do you find these problems if people aren’t like raising their hand and telling you or emailing you going, “Hey, I have this problem. And I would like you to make this product to solve it.” What do you do?

Eden Fried 19:15
A lot of times and this isn’t an answer for everyone, but a lot of times the customers that you’re working with are earlier versions of yourself. And I find that to be true in business, especially in a lot of beginner businesses you’re creating a business around you six months ago or you a year ago.

Eden Fried 19:34
And so, something that you can do if that is you is take a step back and say what would have helped me or what was I struggling with? And honestly, if you’ve been in business for a little bit at least you’ve probably already created products.

Find Your First Products in Your Google Drive

Eden Fried 19:48
These are my most fun times working with people is let’s go into your Google Drive. Let’s see what things you’ve made. Because oftentimes, people have made things that they use on a daily basis, or weekly basis, or whatever it may be, and those can be products, and they made those because they were solving a problem for themselves.

Jillian Leslie 20:08
Can you give me an example?

Eden Fried 20:12
Something as simple I’ll give myself as an example, when I was launching a product, I created a task list, I created a task list of what I needed to do from A to Z to get my product out there. And it was just honestly from memory of like, I need to do this and this and this.

Eden Fried 20:32
I made that into a spreadsheet where I can literally check off the boxes and assign due dates to myself, I essentially took that and made it even bigger and better and started selling that, because that’s something that I use to help make my launch process easier.

Eden Fried 20:48
And something unrelated to business, something that I did for myself, as well is when I left college, and I didn’t have a lot of money coming in, I wanted to track the money coming in and the money coming out and I made a spreadsheet for myself, I just monitored my expenses. And that’s something that you could sell online.

Eden Fried 21:08
I remember way back when I used to go and download desktop screen savers for myself, this is maybe I’m dating myself here. But that’s something I used to enjoy doing changing my screensaver, if they even still call it that, I used to sometimes spend $1 on those, sometimes I spend $2 on those. Those are examples.

Eden Fried 21:31
And that’s not really a dire need of I was struggling and I was suffering but it’s a want, I paid because I wanted to have that. And that’s another example of something that you may have, maybe you took an amazing picture. Or maybe you sent a template for I mentioned editing photos earlier something like that.

Eden Fried 21:50
Maybe you could sell something like that as well. So, there are things that we do to simplify things in our lives or eliminate a problem or enhance an experience that we’ve already done for ourselves that other people want and are willing to pay for.

Jillian Leslie 22:09
Do you recommend people start with a digital download, let’s say because these seem to all be digital downloads?

Eden Fried 22:18
A lot of the customers that I work with are people who have the goal one day of selling a course and want to create kind of a funnel to that course. And so, they are interested in selling more of the downloads, my recommendation for like, where to start is what’s going to be a quick win for you, and what’s going to be a quick win for your customers.

Eden Fried 22:41
Because, honestly, the idea of creating a digital product for a lot of folks is overwhelming, and the overwhelm of how to do it, where to start. What tools do I need? How do I later market it? How do I sell it? What kind of cart do I use? Those are big questions that are overwhelming for a lot of people.

Eden Fried 23:02
When I say quick win for me and balancing that with quick win for your people, the quick win for you, meaning what’s going to be easiest for you to get out there. Because I think time kills all dreams, in a sense, you just want to get things out there fast.

Eden Fried 23:20
And a quick win for your people what’s going to be something that helps them reach their goal or solve their problem as speedily as possible.

Jillian Leslie 23:27
Let’s say, I’ve got those spreadsheets, and I’ve got some, let’s say it’s like a budgeting spreadsheet like you. And I think to myself, Okay, I should go sell this. What does that mean? What do I do? First, though, thank God for Canva. Because Canva has some amazing templates. And you can make a digital product pretty easily. So, what am I doing now?

Launching a Product Can Grow Your Audience

Eden Fried 23:58
A lot of people say, oh, I need x number of people in my audience before I launch something. And maybe I’m the anomaly here, but I kind of call BS on that strategy. Because I really believe that the act of launching a product is often what grows your audience.

Eden Fried 24:19
And so, you can both grow your audience and convert that audience into customers in tandem at the same time. You were mentioning paid workshops and webinars, things like that.

Eden Fried 24:30
That strategy of promoting is essentially what lures people into you and lure is a terrible word that sounds salesy and sleazy, but you’re basically magnetizing these people over with something that they need something that they want, it’s going to help them.

Offer a Freebie or Host a Webinar to Grow Your List

Eden Fried 24:46
So, I recommend that whether you have an audience or not you develop or plan to develop a system that’s going to offer something for free, and on the back end, you’re going to be selling your product.

Jillian Leslie 25:00
Like a Tripwire.

Eden Fried 25:01
So, it could be a Tripwire. A Tripwire, that’s even more on the back end. But I’m thinking like, I host summits. And that’s a grand scale example of what I’m talking about. But I got started just hosting webinars, totally for free, and on the back end of my webinars, I sold a product.

Eden Fried 25:18
And in the very beginning, I would sell a very inexpensive product, because that’s the only product that I had at the time. And that’s something that you can do as well, you’re basically teaching something for 30, 45 minutes, an hour however long you feel comfortable.

Eden Fried 25:32
And at the end, you’re saying, hey, by the way, I have this, it can further your knowledge, I can help you with XYZ. And here’s the link to buy it.

Jillian Leslie 25:42
Can you give me an example? What was that first thing where you’re doing a webinar? First of all, talk about the product, how were you getting people to the webinar to then sell the product?

Eden Fried 25:57
When I mentioned my Pinterest course, when I realized that was working, I just kind of doubled down on that and said, “Let’s see how far I can take this.” And so, I had a Facebook group. This was back in the day when Facebook groups were very different than they are now.

Eden Fried 26:12
My experience in Facebook groups right now is not as successful in terms of business. But that’s where I started to promote a lot of workshops that I was hosting, in my niche Pinterest, it was a great platform for me as well to promote free workshops.

Eden Fried 26:30
And then also, at the same time, I had already been growing my email list. But those were people that had never bought anything from me, because I didn’t have a product. I started promoting these workshops to people that were already in my audience that had never purchased from me before. So, I was kind of doing all of those things.

Using Joint Ventures to Sell Your Product and Grow Your List

Eden Fried 26:48
But then I know the big question mark is okay, after you do this for your own audience where do you go from there? You burn through your own audience they’ve already bought from you or not, what do you do from there? I just started offering joint venture opportunities to anybody I had befriended online who had a similar audience that I had.

Eden Fried 27:10
And so, I would say, “Hey, I have this product, I have this webinar, it converts at X percent. If you partner with me, I’m going to give you that this percentage of anybody who buys on your workshop.” That’s how I grew in the beginning stages. And now I do virtual summits, which is kind of an extreme sale.

Jillian Leslie 27:31
Can you explain for people who don’t know, what is a virtual summit? When is your Summit all that stuff because I’m going to be talking about it.

Eden Fried 27:39
So, virtual summits just think conference, summit may be a fancy word for it. But it’s a conference that happens online and happens over the course of minus four days long, and some of them are shorter or longer, typically, within the course of a week. It’s totally free to attend.

Eden Fried 27:55
And there are upgrade options that can accelerate your experience and enhance your experience as a summit attendee. And over the course of that four day period, you have access to 30 to 35 speakers who are teaching you on a particular topic.

Starting a Virtual Summit

Eden Fried 28:10
So my summit, the Rebel Boss Summit is all about creating and launching a digital product, exactly what we’re talking about now, with experts teaching you on lots of different topics that fall under that umbrella with the sole goal of helping you turn your idea into a product that people will sell, and that you can profit from online,

Jillian Leslie 28:30
Just share what is the URL so people can go find it and come.

Eden Fried 28:36
Rebelbosses.com is the URL to sign up.

Jillian Leslie 28:39
And when is it happening?

Eden Fried 28:41
September 19th to the 22nd. This is 2022. In case anybody is listening to this way into the future, but we do offer it multiple times a year.

Jillian Leslie 28:52
Because Pinterest is not driving the same level of traffic because Facebook groups are not as engaged or engaging as they used to be. What do you recommend people do today?

Jillian Leslie 29:04
Let’s say they don’t have an audience, are they going to be dancing on TikTok? Are they going to be posting on Instagram? How are they getting the word out that they’ve got something to sell?

Eden Fried 29:17
Everybody’s niche is different. And what works for me may not work for you and vice versa. And anybody who says this is a solution for everybody, I would question that. What I will say is my strategy, if I could go back and do it again, I would do the same strategy of hosting joint venture workshops with people to grow my audience.

Eden Fried 29:37
Essentially, it grows your email list at the same time and your email list is in your control, not in Mark Zuckerberg control or anybody else’s control. You own that and as long as you nurture your list, you have that under your belt.

Eden Fried 29:51
So, that strategy of coupling digital products sales with webinars with affiliate marketing and with networking and relationships, that’s a really powerful tool that definitely still works today.

Make Selling Personal

Jillian Leslie 30:05
And I was just talking to these women yesterday about their workshop. And one thing I said is at the beginning of your business, be willing to go door by door, meaning you have this person who’s in your universe, maybe you follow her, she follows you, and you’re kind of friends or whatever, and you have a solution that you think can help her.

Jillian Leslie 30:32
You reach out to her personally, and say, I’ve got this thing that I think will help you meaning if you need to go sale by sale, do it.

Eden Fried 30:42
I totally agree.

Jillian Leslie 30:43
Don’t be above that, don’t think, well, I just blast it out to my email list of 100 people, and 50 of them are going to buy this. No. It’s like, oh, wait, I know, Karen likes this or Kristen or Sarah, I’m going to reach out to them personally and sell it.

Eden Fried 30:59
You’re reminding me of something that I used to do. I don’t do this anymore. But I absolutely would if I had the manpower to do it. But I had a smaller email list at the time. I don’t remember what email marketing tool I was using in those days, but I could see who clicked on my links, just like you still can now.

Eden Fried 31:18
And I had a small email list. And I started selling and I looked at who clicked each link and this was a very small amount of people because there was barely anyone on my list. And I sent them personal emails.

Eden Fried 31:29
And I said, “Hey, I saw you clicked on this link. Maybe this is creepy. But I just wanted to ask do you have any questions? Or how can I help you?” And honestly, those people ended up buying not all of them but a lot of them ended up buying because of that personal touch. And like I said, I can’t do that anymore.

Eden Fried 31:48
Because this scale has become more extreme. And it’s not something in my power. And you can automate some of those. But like you said, there’s no shame in doing that this is how you build your tribe of customers.

Eden Fried 32:00
And once they buy, they then love you. They love your content, and they go be your people to champion you elsewhere. And it’s kind of like a ripple effect.

Jillian Leslie 32:08
Absolutely. One thing I want to talk about, though, is selling. So we build products, predominantly for female creators. And we see that women use technology differently than tech bros.

Helping Women Get Comfortable Selling

Jillian Leslie 32:25
But I would say that the problem that I also want to solve is helping women sell so you said it, you said the word. “Oh, I don’t want to be salesy.”

Jillian Leslie 32:37
And you know what I am reclaiming the word salesy and I am telling everybody to go be salesy, because if you’re a woman, your version of salesy is probably not even aggressive enough.

Eden Fried 32:51
I agree with you.

Jillian Leslie 32:53
You’re nodding.

Eden Fried 32:54
Yes, I am. I agree with you.

Jillian Leslie 32:56
You can reclaim it too. I think that we need permission because here’s the thing. If I have a solution that I think could help you, I need to make sure you know that. I know that if you buy it, it will help you it will make your life better. I’m not trying to pull a fast one. I’m not trying to trick you like haha, I got her to buy sucker.

Jillian Leslie 33:23
No, it’s kind of like this, I have this lipstick. And it’s really good. And I promise you, if you bought this lipstick, you would like it. Like, I want to hook you up and go no, no, don’t buy the other one, buy this, I promise you’ll like it. And chances are you would. So, it’s that kind of thing. I want to be your girlfriend hooking you up with something.

Jillian Leslie 33:45
Now it’s a win-win, because this is the product I’m selling. But all of a sudden when selling a service, it changes your whole perspective on being salesy or being aggressive or asking for the sale or reaching out directly. And this is something that I’m trying to say over and over again.

Eden Fried 34:05
It’s something that I found and I work almost exclusively with women is that it’s an exercise, it’s a muscle that we don’t exercise enough to sell because we have been conditioned throughout our entire lives to cross our legs and to take up the smallest amount of space possible and to kind of like whisper and be quiet and don’t ruffle feathers.

Jillian Leslie 34:27
And we are helpers. We’re naturally helpers. Your children are not paying you for putting snacks in a snack bag.

Eden Fried 34:35
Unfortunately.

Jillian Leslie 34:37
I know but meaning we do a lot of stuff for free.

Eden Fried 34:41
I know. Exactly. And we need to be more confident and speak louder and take up more space because like you said, selling is not a bad thing. I totally agree with you and it’s it’s something that we all can do better at and should constantly work towards getting better at.

Jillian Leslie 34:58
One last thing, too, is I think as women, we can get super busy working on our businesses and have nothing to show for it. Because we’re really good. Like you were saying at the beginning, hey, I’ve got this idea for a product, I’m not even going to test it. I think people will want it; I’m going to spend three years working on my product.

Don’t Build a Course

Jillian Leslie 35:24
And I have a thing about courses, which is, I think, for most people, they’re a waste of time to create. I think it makes you feel good, like you’re working on your business. And then when you finally come out and try to sell it, and it is the sticks, the calculation doesn’t make sense.

Jillian Leslie 35:43
So, what do you think about that idea? How do you push people to launch it to do it to sell it to be uncomfortable?

Eden Fried 35:53
Today is better than tomorrow. That’s honestly the motto when I launched my first course that Pinterest course. I mentioned earlier that I didn’t do anything fancy that I launched using my regular computer, I recorded my modules and everything in the regular camera on my computer with terrible audio.

Eden Fried 36:11
I know you got used to my microphone here. I didn’t have a microphone. It wasn’t the greatest quality. I’m not going to lie; the content was good. But the quality itself in terms of audio and visual, wasn’t superb. It still taught the lesson. And it still made money. And later on, I could recreate it and make it better.

Eden Fried 36:33
There was one person that complain, there was one person that complained and said, “Hey, go get a microphone.” But they weren’t complaining, like the content was bad. They were just saying, by the way, it was hard to hear I had to have you on full volume to hear what you were saying. But that’s fine.

Eden Fried 36:46
And I always tell people, if somebody is looking at your product, they’ve already bought it.

Jillian Leslie 36:51
I like that.

Eden Fried 36:52
So, you don’t need to spend 100 years in Canva making it perfect. They have already bought it. They’re consuming it. And they’re learning what they need to learn from it. They’re using it however it’s meant to be used. So, why spend 100 years making it beautiful.

Practice B- Work

Jillian Leslie 37:07
Absolutely, I think that is it. And I talk about this, which is going to B- work. Like a recovering perfectionist. That’s like blasphemy to me. However, the truth of the matter is B- I’m not saying do average level work, a B- is a pretty good grade. It is above average. And it is doable.

Jillian Leslie 37:32
You think it’s A+ work. Not everybody thinks it’s A+ work. So, to spend the time going from B- to A+, those are those three years you’re working on your product. And those are three years that you could be building that sales muscle, creating a bunch of things, testing things, building your audience.

Jillian Leslie 37:57
And it’s funny, I was just reading this newsletter today. And it was saying that idea, like you go for a job interview and you dress up and all this stuff, and you do a really good job. And then right at the end, when you’re saying goodbye, you spill your coffee on your shirt, and you’re so mortified.

Jillian Leslie 38:14
But the truth of the matter is, if you handle it with grace, you are more apt to get the job because you look human. And they watch you as you squirm. And we relate to people who are human who are fallible.

Jillian Leslie 38:32
So, it’s that idea of like people buy from people, people show up for people. And the more you can let them in to see you as a human, the more success you have.

Eden Fried 38:47
Absolutely, and that is why I’ve never edited any footage in any of my courses.

Jillian Leslie 38:52
Really, is that true?

Eden Fried 38:53
It is true. I say hmm and aah, I stumble over my words, but I like to practice what I preach and I have no time and no energy to edit out those imperfections that make me who I am. And if you don’t like it, then it’s not for you. But it does the job and that’s fine with me fine with most of my customers.

Jillian Leslie 39:13
I love that. Eden, if people want to learn more about you, sign up again. We can sign up again for your summit. All that good stuff. Where would you send them?

Eden Fried 39:25
So, my main website is edenfried.com I’m on Instagram.

Jillian Leslie 39:30
Spell it.

Eden Fried 39:30
Fried, Fried is spelled like fried. So E-D-E-N F-R-I-E-D.com.

Jillian Leslie 39:36
And it’s Eden, E-D-E-N.

Eden Fried 39:38
Eden like Garden of Eden. And I’m on Instagram @edenfried and the summit is hosted at rebelbosses.com. You can go get your free ticket there. Or if the tickets aren’t open yet you can sign up for the waitlist. But yeah, I hope to see everybody there.

Jillian Leslie 39:57
And start building digital. I’m a huge fan of digital products. So, I’m excited. I’m excited for it. Well, Eden, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Eden Fried 40:07
Thanks for having me.

Jillian Leslie 40:09
I hope you guys liked this episode, I really enjoyed talking to Eden. My biggest takeaway was how creative she was selling her products, especially at the beginning and doing joint venture workshops and webinars and affiliate marketing. And really networking.

Jillian Leslie 40:28
I think there is so much power when we can come together and find ways where it’s a win-win for everybody. And before I go, I just want to recap how selling digital products works on the internet. First thing you need is an audience. These are the people who will buy from you. If you do not have an audience, spend time building one.

Jillian Leslie 40:51
Now if you do have an audience, chances are you have an idea of what your audience is struggling with. Well come up with a quick easy product idea, say a paid workshop, a digital download, go to MiloTree Cart, add your product, create your free sales page, put this in front of your audience and see if this is something they will buy from you.

Jillian Leslie 41:13
If they buy, you’re on to something. If not, no problem. Come up with another idea and test it eventually you will have success. Good luck. If you have any questions about how this works. Just reach out to me at jillian@milotree.com and I will see you here again next week.

Other Blogger Genius Podcast episodes to listen to:

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