How to Launch Your First Digital Product with Rene Morozowich

SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, create, product, talk, podcast, sales, clients, sell, email list, workbooks, work, digital products, content, overwhelm, video, give, put, template, audience, great

SPEAKERS
Alastair McDermott, Rene Morozowich

Alastair McDermott  00:01

Today we are going to talk about the process of how to launch digital products effectively even for beginners, we’re going to talk about how to validate your ideas without wasting months, and how to bring your first product to market.

Alastair McDermott  00:20

So before we get into today’s episode, I just want to tell you about my email list. I’ve been emailing daily authority tips, how to build your authority, a very short two minute tip on how to build your authority up in setting that every day if you go to the recognized authority.com You can find that and now let me welcome my guest Rene morozevich, let me this is a well, we have we have we’ve met in person we’ve spoken so many times, you were in my mastermind group, the authority labs. I feel like I know you so well. I’m delighted to my neck. Yeah, we go way back. And I’m delighted to have you on the show to be here. Let me ask you about digital courses. Because I think when everybody thinks about digital products courses seems to be the one that everybody brings up. What Why is it digital course is the place to go to?

Rene Morozowich  01:13

I don’t know, I don’t know if it’s kind of like a holdover. I was thinking about this before. Like, it’s some kind of holdover, you know, to maybe when, like online courses, you know, when education kind of went that way. But I’m not sure why. But for service providers, there are a ton of other options. And I don’t think that courses specifically are a great way to go at least to start with. So yeah, I’m not sure exactly why everybody’s like, Oh, of course, without thinking of all the other things that you could sell.

Alastair McDermott  01:42

Yeah. So you help people to create their first digital products, so that they can, part of it is about this additional income stream? And, you know, like, the dream for everybody is make money while you sleep, right?

Rene Morozowich  01:55

Yes, I don’t like to call it passive income. I don’t, that’s not exactly how it works. So kind of just get that out of your mind, too. But yeah, I guess making money while you sleep. Not that you don’t do anything during the day, you know, to prepare that product or to troubleshoot a product or to you know, continue to develop, develop it. But yes, you know, in theory, you could get a sale while you’re sleeping, or while you’re at the grocery store.

Alastair McDermott  02:19

So I’m really interested in, okay, so you help people create these digital products. And I’m really interested in all of the potential digital products that I could create. And I have been kicking the can down the road on doing like, I’ve been thinking people have asked me, Hey, you know, could you turn your book into a course or I’d like to have, you know, start your own business podcast course, or something like that, that I could have for sale. But it just seems like a lot of hassle. And I’m not sure if I, if I want to take the time to go and do that. And if it would be worthwhile. Can you talk to me a little bit about, you know, figuring out the validation part of the mix? Because I think that’s really important.

Rene Morozowich  02:58

Yeah, for sure. So you already have a great piece of the puzzle. So people are asking you for something, they know that you’re an expert in something they know that you can help them. And they’ve seen that in various ways, right? Like your book, your podcasts, other things. So they they’re coming to you saying like, Hey, can you help me do this? Can you give me a little bit more than you’re already giving me? So I think that that’s a great marker, you know, a great piece of validation there to have people asking you for something when people are just like, oh, you know, I want to create a course about whatever, like I did. And that’s great. And it’s a great kind of learning experience, but you’re probably not going to see the return that you want. In that you know, you’re going to spend months creating it. And you probably won’t get any sales or many sales at least. So you know, having people ask you is a great first step. Now with your course, specifically that they’re asking you about that I would think a great way to see if it is valid would be to run it live, right? So you could say like, Hey, we’re going to do this. In six weeks, we’re going to meet weekly, here are the parameters. And then you would prepare the lesson for the week, and then see where people are having trouble. So see what people are asking, see what you forgot to include, see what they actually don’t care about. And then you can create that course over the over the span of those six weeks or 12 weeks or whatever it is. And then you can see like, Okay, was it worth it? Did I like it? Did they like it? Were they successful? And then maybe you can take some of the materials or outlines or things that you’ve already created and turn that into something that you run evergreen instead of running live.

Alastair McDermott  04:42

Yeah, that’s a great idea. And what that would avoid me doing is procrastinating back to the you know, I tend to procrastinate around the content creation. One of the reasons why we’re recording this episode live is because it stops me from procrastinating about editing and all of that that comes with it. It’s you It’s live, it’s done. So so be it. Exactly.

Rene Morozowich  05:02

Yeah. And you don’t have to create everything upfront, right? So you don’t have to create a whole course, you’re getting that validation as you go, all you have to do is week one, you know, making an outline would be nice, but you know, week one, you show up, you’re ready. And then you kind of go from there. So yeah, having someone be on a zoom call, like, Yeah, you don’t want to let them down. But if it’s just you, in your house, you’re like, oh, client work. Oh, this other thing. Other things come up. So it’s, you know, I know, we’ve talked about this before, it is important, but not urgent. So it makes it a little bit more urgent, when somebody is there waiting for you to teach them something.

Alastair McDermott  05:36

Yeah, absolutely. That’s something I think about a lot about this, you know, in content creation is is the important, important versus urgent. If it’s, you know, a ringing telephone or a screaming child, the urgency, you have to go and drop what you’re doing to resolve that. But if it’s, you know, going to the gym, or creating content, writing a chapter of a book that’s never urgent or creating an online course, that’s never urgent. So okay, let’s dig into. Let’s dig it. Okay, maybe we should have a look at the overview first, because you talk to a lot of people about the different types of products, can you kind of give me the lay of the land? What else? What other options can people have? For? For for products, rather than just online courses?

Rene Morozowich  06:24

Yeah, okay. So if you are a service provider, and you’ve been working with clients for a while, you’ve probably developed some framework, some materials, you know, maybe videos, or audio or templates, or guides, things that you work with your clients, you go through with your clients, that you could package up, kind of take you out of it, put a little bit maybe more explanation in it, or some, you know, kind of guidance that you could sell. As, you know, we’ve talked about, like done with you done for you DIY. So kind of take yourself out of the equation, but things that you’ve already created video, audio templates, and guides workbooks. So I would look there first. And I’ve seen a lot of audio lately, actually, a lot of private podcasts. Have you? Have you seen this at all? Have you talked about this, like this huge uptick in private podcast and private audio courses?

Alastair McDermott  07:18

Yeah, and it’s something that I’ve been experimenting with a little bit, I actually created a private podcast, I took it down because I wasn’t happy with the provider. But the con as a concept, I think it’s a good concept. So for for the listener, the private podcast is where you can create a podcast that you can give access to either for people to pay for it, or maybe to opt in for an email with their email address, and they get access to this podcast that isn’t publicly available. So it’s an interesting one as well. And as a podcaster, I like I find that very easy to create a podcast, it’s, it’s, you know, that’s something I can do in a couple of days. So, yeah, I find that interesting.

Rene Morozowich  08:00

And it’s also the overwhelm. So the overwhelm of sitting down creating a course, with all that it entails, versus the overwhelm of sitting down and creating, you know, an audio podcast or private podcast, something like that audio course, whatever you want to call it, but it’s the same lack of overwhelm on the other side. So when I buy a course, and I sit down to do it, I’m like, Oh, my God, 500 modules, 57 workbooks, 800. Videos, it’s hard for me personally, to wade through all of that. So it’s hard for you and hard for me. But yeah, listening to a podcast on a walk and learning something that’s like, way easier, way easier. So I’m more likely to do it, I’m more likely to actually actually absorb some of that information. So I like to think about the overwhelm factor too. And maybe I’m more overwhelmed than other people are, but I kind of feel like we’re all, you know, we all want to learn and we all want to be a different place and, you know, make more and be more productive and all that stuff. So it can get overwhelming.

Alastair McDermott  09:02

Yeah. So when I think about digital courses, and online courses, like I would want to create something that is quite comprehensive, like that would be the way I would want it to be because it would like I would want to create something that I would want to pay for. So and if I was paying for something I would like to have, you know, the video modules. I don’t want it to be just basically a paid for YouTube video, I would want there to be, you know, downloadable printable workbooks or, you know, checklists and things like that. And so I know that if I was doing it myself, I would want to have to create those, those kinds of side assets or kind of complementary assets for it as well. And that just makes it bigger. So the other thing that I was thinking about with online courses is like, what’s the scope? Where do you stop? Like, what’s too big? What’s too small? How do you think about that? Yeah,

Rene Morozowich  09:54

so that’s common. It’s common for us for a number of reasons. One, we Are were jazzed about whatever it is we’re talking about, right? Like I’m jazzed to talk about digital products, you are jazzed to talk about specializing and creating content. And we have all of that inside of us. And anybody who shows interest, we’re like, Oh, my God, I’m going to tell you everything. Like, here’s everything I know. And if you’ve ever been on the receiving end of that, you know that you’re like, Wait, I don’t have this, this framework. I don’t have this, you know, this, this understanding that you do, I haven’t been doing it this long. It is too overwhelming for me. So I taught a course a couple years ago, and I did this whole speech on SEO. And at the end, somebody said, What is SEO? And I thought, Okay, wait. So you have to bring it back. Right? When you’re working with clients, one on one, you know, you have to bring it back, you have to, you know, you’re here, I don’t have much special room here in my video, but like, you’re here, they’re here. Like, you gotta bring it back. But you can give people small wins over time, right. So give them like, the first thing they need to know. And you can package that up, maybe two videos, maybe one workbook, right, whatever it is, and then let them get that win, let them learn and kind of progress to the next. If you want to call like milestones, like my brand is all about kind of like journeys and whatnot, like to the first milestone, and then build them the next thing, like you don’t need to build all the things to begin with, you can build them as you go. And I actually have heard some of this from some other people, that kind of breaking these up, can be better from a sales perspective, right? So you can bundle the things together, you can let people pick and choose what they’re interested in. And then you can see, okay, everybody’s really interested in this. I thought they would be interested in that. And then that informs your future products. So yeah, those are my thoughts. I get excited about CEA, you can already tell me, I’m talking faster, because I’m jazzed about it. Because I want to tell you everything that I know about this. So but again, like I have to bring it back, you have to bring it back, we got to meet its audience where they

Alastair McDermott  12:03

are. It’s this thing of where we create this kind of like firehose of deluge of information. Yeah,

12:09

we’re like, interested? Yeah.

Alastair McDermott  12:14

And so, okay, let’s see, let’s talk about real numbers, then, because I’m interested in like, there’s a limited amount of time that we have. So we have to be realistic about, okay, we have choices, and every choice that we make is an opportunity cost, we’re not going to do something, because we’ve chosen to do something else. And so if I choose to make an online course, however small, I’m choosing not to do something else. And so it needs to have a return on investment, whatever that looks like. So let’s talk about you know, pricing and things like that you’re talking about. Because a lot of people who are listening to this are doing high ticket customer services, like one on one services. And then they’re looking at, you know, people selling $5 ebooks and $7 courses and stuff like that, it’s pretty easy on Udemy, the price points are incredibly low. When I look at the online courses, can you talk to me a little bit about pricing and how to make it worth how to make it actually worth your while.

Rene Morozowich  13:16

Right. So there’s no specific like, here’s how to price your product. However, I would say that, if you want to figure out how to do it, that launching something smaller is going to let you go through the whole process at one time, so that you know what to expect for the future. So if it takes you three months to launch a template, that’s I don’t know, $47, maybe it’s a template with a video, you know, $47, whatever it is, that is going to be a better experience for you then taking two years to launch a $500 course that doesn’t sell. So maybe you’re not making a ton of money on that $47 product. But you understand you’ve done a complete cycle. Now, you know, next time, okay, I didn’t do this right, or Oh, I did that. Right. I’m going to do that again. So I think that it’s worth it to you know, we’ve talked about running before to like, why would you run a marathon first? Why wouldn’t you just run a 5k just kind of see how it works out for you. Because there’s so many things you don’t know, like, as a service provider, you’re used to jumping on a zoom call, right? And kind of wooing the person, and then you’re, they may be more likely to buy your high ticket service, but you’re not there whenever they’re reviewing your marketing materials for your $47 product. Because you can’t be there because that’s not worth your time. So you really have to look at Yeah, solving that one problem. Well, the important problem for that person. And again, just kind of going through that whole process once I think is is really helpful. And then you can you know, kind of go from there. So I really wanted people to To launch those first products so that they can continue to see if they like, and I guess,

Alastair McDermott  15:06

yeah, so let’s just there’s so many different aspects we can take. So now I’m a content creator. And I’ve gotten quite experienced with grading content, which is why we’re doing this live. And thank you for coming on and doing this live. And this will then be packaged up, it’s going to be already, it’s going to be on YouTube as a live video, it’s going to be on Facebook and LinkedIn where people can watch it. And so it’s very easy for me to create, like video content like this very quickly. But I know that for a lot of people creating video in particular is difficult because they don’t, you know, they don’t have the camera set up. They don’t have the light setup, they don’t have the microphone and all of that. So if somebody is starting out with that, where would you say like, would you say, look, start off with Canva and create a PDF? Or where would you go,

Rene Morozowich  15:51

I would look at where you’re most comfortable first. So if you love spreadsheets, and you have 50 spreadsheets that you’ve used with your clients, like look at that first, later, yeah, if you want to dive into video, or try it out, that’s totally fine. If you love audio, or you hate audio, or you love writing, or you hate writing, look at what you already liked to do, and start there. So I don’t think that saying like, everybody has to do a video product is great, because not everybody likes video, because what’ll happen is one you won’t want to do it. So two, you probably won’t do it. Or three, if you do it, it’s not going to be great, because that’s going to show through. And your audience is likely to see that or like, oh, you know, these, this isn’t that great of a product, because you’re not seeing that same enthusiasm in the product. So I would stick with what you what’s familiar to you what you like the best first. And then yeah, if you want to expand later, you totally can.

Alastair McDermott  16:50

Yeah, and one thing that I’d say about video and audio, is get some experience with doing it, where you’re doing it unpaid first, so that you’re doing it, you know, live, you know, create some YouTube videos, or do some live streams, basic get get some reps in, first on on, where you’re not actually charging people to access it before you get into charging for it, because that will help give you confidence as well. And it’ll it’ll give you a good understanding of the tech issues and all that kind of stuff. All right. So what else is important to think about when somebody is thinking about like somebody’s in my position, maybe they’re an expert, but they haven’t really created a lot of products? What would you advise them if they’re, if they’re thinking like, if they’re particularly they’re doing one on one services? And it’s high ticket, you know, maybe they’ve got, you know, some sort of independent consulting business, but they’re thinking about starting that, like, how do they figure out what’s right to do.

Rene Morozowich  17:46

So I would look at maybe who your audience is first. So I have a podcast episode about this, there’s three three types of audiences that I recommend for service providers, so it could be your peers. So you have, you know, set up your business over a number of years, and you want to sell that knowledge, those procedures, those processes to your peers. So that’s one area, maybe you have great connections, maybe you go to conferences, like you have kind of a built in audience for that. So that’s one group, the second group would be the DIY crowd. So people come to you, they want to work with you, they can’t afford you. Maybe they’re new in their business, or they’re bootstrapping whatever it is, they, they could benefit from learning from you. However, they just can’t afford your one on one to one on one on one services. So that’s another group. The third group of people are people who can’t afford you. They’re just not quite ready yet. So there’ll be ready soon. And maybe there’s something that you can sell them to help them get ready so that when they come to you, they’ve already opened their wallet, they’re really ready to go. And that puts you in a better position. So I would think about who is that group that you want to serve the most? And then what are their most important problems? And you can just ask them, right, you can just ask, anytime you have, let’s say you want to serve that DIY crowd. Anytime you get somebody who can’t afford you say, Okay, what what would you benefit from like, this is where the validation comes in.

Alastair McDermott  19:11

I love that and I was caught off guard because I literally just started to write that down. That’s, that’s something I do with my email list is I send an email to my list, probably once a quarter, where I do some sort of survey asking people what they want. What I have not done is really segment them into kind of like the the DIY market or maybe the slightly more affluent market or more advanced market, but maybe that kind of segmentation would be useful as well. Based based on this, the other thing I was thinking I was I was thinking about the let me see, I’ve lost my train of thought Sorry. Okay, so let’s let’s talk about creating cool versus and I found that in the past, I created a lot of content for my peers. But I wasn’t selling to my peers, I was creating content. And so how can I, how can I find out if that’s actually going to make money? Because my peers didn’t want to work with me. They didn’t want to hire me to build their websites. But they found it interesting the stuff that I was posting, and they were congratulating me for the great blog post, but they weren’t ever going to become my clients. So I found that working like peers was a bad idea. Can you talk to me a little bit more about how you think about that?

Rene Morozowich  20:29

Yeah. So I would say, if you’re going to sell to your peers, if you have something to sell, and you’re going to sell to them, that’s where that segmenting would come in, or creating a completely different website altogether, like a different brand, a place where, you know, it’s me selling to my peers versus me selling to my clients. So that’s an important distinction to make, you don’t want to just add all of that to one website, because when potential clients come, they’re confused that, you know, you’re trying to sell them something that doesn’t apply to them. So if you’re selling to di wires, or potential clients, yeah, you enroll that all into your existing website, but I would say have a separate place where you’re talking to your peers, specifically, so. But if you don’t want to sell to your peers, that’s fine. You know, maybe you don’t have something to sell, you can still talk about those things, and they can still congratulate you, I guess. But yeah, I would kind of mark them as a separate category of people that, you know, when your whatever launches that, yeah, maybe maybe you don’t sell or send them the messages, or maybe you do, that’s totally fine, too. But yeah, kind of understanding who your buyers are, I think, is important, you know, looking through what you’re doing, and who you want your buyers to be.

Alastair McDermott  21:44

So let’s talk about the next step, then, like what happens after validation. So you figure you’ve, okay, I’ve, I know that people are gonna want this, based on these conversations that I’ve had. And now I’m looking at, you know, a blank Google Doc or a blank sheet. Yeah. Like, how do we go from that to product? Well,

Rene Morozowich  22:02

I would say you probably don’t have just a blank Google Doc, you probably have something somewhere. So we talked about those templates and frameworks, and whatever, I would look through what you already have communications with past clients, if that’s something that you’re going to build. So yeah, that blank Doc is very intimidating. So go look and see what else you have already that you can kind of fold in pass social post pass emails, you know, things that you can kind of bring together, you know, will make it a little bit easier for you to start. I would also say earlier, so I say like earlier in the week, early in the month, early in the year, early in the day, those are all better times for you to work on this product, mapping out where you plan to go with the product. Accountability, you know, I would say like, if there’s something that you always do, you know, we talked about exercising, if there’s something that you always do like exercise? What, ask yourself, like, what makes it so that you do that every week? Or every day? Like? Is it because you put your clothes out? Is it because you have a buddy that you meet? Is it because you have a trainer? Who you’re paying? What what are the reasons that allow you to do that? And see if you can apply similar reasons, you know, to this product? You know, can you let your audience know that you’re working on this? Can you sell the first module ahead of time? You know, there are a lot of things that you can do to kind of like, help yourself along, instead of like, I’m gonna go bunker down for six months. Catch you later. And then you know, five months and five days you’re like, Oh, crap, I better get started.

Alastair McDermott  23:39

Yeah, kind of like forced to cancel accountability. Because you’ve you’ve you’ve said you’re working on it. Yeah, yeah, yes. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. I like that. One issue that I have, and maybe I’m jumping around a little bit here. But one thing you said just triggered, how do I know whether what I create should be free, as in free content, like, for example, this podcast or video wherever people are consuming this? Or whether something should actually be a paid product? How do I differentiate between those because I create a lot of products. And I create a lot of content. And some of that could be paid potentially. But I typically will just default to putting it out for free otherwise, some

Rene Morozowich  24:17

people put things out for free because they’re scared to put a price tag on it. Because then if people don’t buy it, then people take it personally, like, oh, they didn’t buy that. That means they don’t like me. And none of that is true. So like that whole thing. It’s a big, you know that that’s not a true thing. So I would say don’t be afraid to put a price tag on things but also don’t. Don’t tie yourself so much to some specific result. Right. So like if you’re trying to lose weight, you can’t just say like, I want to lose 10 pounds like you can only do the things to try to lose the the 10 pounds right? You can only change your diet so you can only do the things ahead of time. But the result is just a result, there are factors outside of your control. So don’t tie yourself too much to it. Like, I would say, give yourself kind of like a timeframe and a testing and kind of look at it as maybe a beta, like, here’s a beta, when you call it beta, everybody’s expectations are a little bit lower, you know. So I think there’s some some ways that you can look at it. And also just try it, like, just try it out. And don’t be afraid to market it. A lot of people launch and they’re like, a product. Like, you got to tell people about it, you have to market it, I just did a podcast episode about this, like ways that you can market your product. Don’t be afraid to market it. And then if it doesn’t sell, you can ask people like, Hey, why didn’t you buy this? And not like, Hey, why didn’t you buy this? But like, did this not solve an important problem for you? Was this not the right time for you see if you can get some of that feedback and validation again, and then you can pivot to something else.

Alastair McDermott  25:54

Right? Yeah, I love it. I like the, you know, control the controllables. And, you know, we can typically control the inputs, but not the outputs. So control the inputs that you can. And then the other thing is the selling and the marketing part. And let me ask you like, what does that look like? If it was let’s say you create new, you talked about templates earlier, let’s say you create a template that’s based on a spreadsheet, right? So somebody could potentially either, you know, make a copy of your Google spreadsheet if you made it available for them. Or you might give it to them as a PDF or something that they can then use themselves. But let’s say that’s, that’s your product? Like, what’s the process that you would actually go through to put that for sale? Like what tools would you use? How would you describe it you put on your website is another third party? How would you do that? Yeah,

Rene Morozowich  26:45

so the first thing I like to look at is what you’re already using. So if you’re already using something that you like, some software product that you like, that allows you to sell products, then I would start there, because that’s the easiest, then you don’t have to buy another piece of software, learn another piece of software, yes, you may not have investigated how to sell a product in the software that you’re already using. But the learning curve will probably be easier for you. So look at what you’re already doing. I would also say if what you already have does not work. Like let’s say you’re using an email marketing platform that doesn’t allow you to sell and your website doesn’t have any ecommerce capabilities, I would probably look at like a quicker third party type option like Gumroad, or lemon squeezy, or something like that. I had a client who looked at those, we actually set up products in all of those. And she found that it didn’t actually work for her. So she ended up creating a website and installed WooCommerce. She was familiar with that. And she can do some SEO and things like that. So it may be that you just have to try a product or two. Before you know, okay, this is the right one for me. And again, part of it is you’re trying to validate that people will buy this product. So that platform might not be it might not be the end of the world if you pick one and then change it later. That makes sense.

Alastair McDermott  28:08

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And so I have a lot of that infrastructure setup already. So I would probably set it up using one of those I like, I’ve got a Gumroad account, I do have an ebook on there before. Then the other the next question then is, you know, writing all of the marketing and sales because you know, you’ve got to, you’ve got some sort of template, and it does a job and you’re able to describe it to your client. But actually turning that into like a sales page. That’s, that’s daunting. Yeah.

Rene Morozowich  28:39

So what is it benefits? Not features, right? Not like this spreadsheet has 5000 rows? Like nobody cares about that? What does it do for me what is going to help me with so I would think about that. But also, with this kind of like beta philosophy, give it away to your the first 10 people that respond on your email list for free, Here’s a coupon first 10, who get this in exchange for your testimonial, and then you can see the words that they’re actually using. And then you can turn that into your marketing copy. And also, like the sales page doesn’t need at least Oh, so so long, right? Like, if it’s always an important problem in a half a page of sales copy. Like that’s probably better. And again, if you’re targeting those people, you’re segmenting your email list. You know, social media, like if you if you know that the the product is going to do well because people have asked you for it. You may not need to worry so much about that marketing copy.

Alastair McDermott  29:42

Yeah, that’s true. One other thing that you mentioned earlier is about pricing. I know you gave pricing of, you know, $500 for a course and $47 for a template and things like that. Yeah, yeah, like but but it is making stuff up. I mean, how can we try and And figure out like, what makes sense? Like, do we ask the market? Do we, you know, like, you could potentially vastly under or over price here. So like, how do you think about that?

Rene Morozowich  30:12

I think that So, in terms of underpricing, I think a lot of people do want to underprice. And you know that if you see something that looks really valuable, and it’s like $10, you’re like, Wait, that probably isn’t very good. So I would try not to underprice yourself. One way that you can do this is by having that small group of people, you might just need somebody to tell you like, hey, I want to charge $29 For this, and they’re like, no, like, you sometimes just need people to say, No, you need to charge more for that. But that may come with experience too, right? Like your first web project, my first web project, like we again had never done it before. And we now charge more than we used to. So the same with your product, you can charge more. And there are other ways you can do it, you can raise the price, you know, you can say like, Hey, for three months, this is going to be x and then you know, in the spring, it’s going to be why so get it now while it’s a lower price. Like you can experiment with pricing in a number of ways you can ask people, you can look at other related products. You know, there’s there’s just tons of things that you can look at. So I would try not to think about it too much, probably price it a little bit higher than you initially think. And test it out. You can always do sales, you can always lower it, there’s a lot of things you can do.

Alastair McDermott  31:32

Yeah, and I would be in that boat where I would be afraid of being you know, looking too cheap. Because, like there’s a certain you know, if you are selling expensive consulting type services, you don’t want your, your digital products to kind of to damage your brand, by being by being too cheap. Yes,

Rene Morozowich  31:54

but again, like if it’s just a template, if it’s one template to do one thing, it doesn’t need to be $500. Like it again, it could be small, it could be positioned small. But I have heard that before too. Yes, that like people don’t want to, you know, charge a lower amount, because they think it will take away from the product. But again, look at the audience to like, is it for di wires? You know, that’s just going to be a different price point.

Alastair McDermott  32:20

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. You talked about addressing real world problems. Can you dig into that a little bit for me.

Rene Morozowich  32:28

So I think that we think we know what other people’s problems are. Because maybe we have worked with clients. And we’re like, oh, every client that comes to me, does this thing terribly. Like I’m going to create a product and it’s going to fix it. So I interviewed Sara Dunn, I know you look Sarah on the podcast, and she did this. She was like everybody writes their blog post terribly if you’re gonna write a blog post, use this framework. And it didn’t, it didn’t sell she had a couple sales, but it didn’t sell. Because it wasn’t a problem that people thought was important. They were writing blog posts, they thought like, Okay, I’m writing blog posts. Like, that’s good. Like, I It’s better than not writing blog posts. The thought process wasn’t, I should optimize this blog posts. So she went to her audience, she asked them, they said they needed help with getting started. She was like, Yeah, I can create that. And that’s the product that she has. Now, she has a lot of funnels that lead into her other services. So asking people again, what their actual problems are, instead of assuming now we can use our assumptions to start with, we can say, hey, I think you might have this problem. Is that true? Or not? That’s a fine place to start, instead of like, Hey, what are your problems? Because that might be a little bit open ended. But I would say asking your audience, and this is why creating content, creating free content is so important. And building up that base, building up that authority building up that email list social numbers, like that way you have people to ask these questions to. Yeah,

Alastair McDermott  34:03

absolutely. I mean, if if you’re launching into an audience of 10 people, it doesn’t matter how good your product product is. Because, you know, odds are you will get zero sales, because you know, that you need people to be at a particular place in their journey at the right time for you as well. So that’s why a larger audience is definitely better. You talked about, you know, Sarah having other products there. And Sarah, somebody I’ve had on the show before, and I’ll link to her episode in the show notes. But that’s something that I’ve been thinking about is you know, having too many products and maybe overwhelming people. Can you talk a little bit about how you think about how the different products might fit together, and how we don’t how to avoid overwhelming our potential customers.

Rene Morozowich  34:50

Right? So we think that showcasing the products that you do have and allowing people to kind Have a filter, like what products might work for them? Is okay, like having 345 products, like I think is still okay. I don’t know that that is super overwhelming to people. Yeah, maybe when you have 20 products, maybe that would be a little bit much. But I think that you can use maybe bundles to your favor, like these products are related or these products are related. Or if they’re in some sort of email sequence, and they identify that they have this specific problem sending them to this bundle of three products or this, you know, this one specific product. So I think that there’s ways that you people aren’t just going to come to your website and look through your products. And that’s it. You have control over what you’re marketing to who and when. So if you’ve segmented your email list, and you know that this group of people is only going to be interested in these three products, you can just tell them about those products, they don’t even know the other ones exist, unless they go to your website and look at your and your stuff. So I don’t know that the overwhelm is as like is as we think it is where people are going to look at your all your products, and then be confused. Like there’s other ways they’re going to come about learning about them. Yeah,

Alastair McDermott  36:14

the other thing I think about that is that our audience is not as interested in us as we sometimes think that they are. And you know, even my biggest fan has not listened to every podcast episode, I’m pretty sure. And if you have Thank you, I doubt it. I doubt it. You know, and so people people check our stuff out when they see it, and it comes up in their feed, but it doesn’t come up all the time. And that’s okay, you know, so yeah, that’s, that’s the way I think about the overwhelm. Is that, you know, people are less likely to see it than we think they are, because we’re creating it all. And so it’s in our mind, oh, my God, you know, I, I posted a tweet about this six months ago, I wonder if this has been too repetitive? You know, no, it’s probably not being too repetitive. Correct? Yeah. Is there anything that I haven’t asked you about creating digital products that you think is really important?

Rene Morozowich  37:17

We talked a lot about my favorites, about the validation. And I would say I, we talked a little bit about this. But the ongoing marketing, I think, is really important. Because what I think happens is that people want to do this, they maybe finally get it together to do something,

37:33

they launch it, and then nothing, long time have nothing. Maybe it’s on their

Rene Morozowich  37:41

website, they never look at it again. And they never mentioned it again. So I definitely think having some kind of marketing plan. And a marketing plan sounds so, so formal, but really like your plan can be I’m going to send three tweets a week, or I’m going to write one blog post a month, or I’m going to guest on one podcast a quarter, like, it could be anything that you think you’ll be able to do, like one email a month, whatever it is, and it doesn’t have to just be like, here’s my product, here’s my product, you can talk about the problems, and the solutions, you know, all that good stuff. But I think having some kind of plan, and I would put a time limit on it, right? So like, I launch this product, I’m going to do this stuff for 30 days or so I’m sorry, for 90 days, and then I’m gonna look at it again. And then I’m gonna determine what I’m gonna do for the next 90 days or the next, you know, the remainder of the year, because I think that we need to break that time down into chunks, so that we can revisit, like, okay, so I have been doing one blog post a month, has it done anything? You know, we have to look at it and determine what to do going forward. It’s an experiment.

Alastair McDermott  38:50

Okay, let me try and summarize. So like to recap these things for myself. Okay, so first off, in starting out, we probably already have some sort of tool or framework or something that we can turn into our first products. So we probably need to do some sort of audit of our own content and frameworks and things that we do with our clients to see if there’s something there. Then the next thing we need to do is we need to validate it as a product by saying, Hey, would you be interested in something like this, or the opposite by going to our market or going to work our LinkedIn or our email list or former clients and just asking them, Hey, do you think something like this would be useful? Yeah. And that would

Rene Morozowich  39:28

be go ahead. I can come back if you want, if you want to come back to if you want to go the rest of the way.

Alastair McDermott  39:34

Now, let’s let’s dig into that. Okay. Yeah,

Rene Morozowich  39:37

I think you just have to be careful when you ask and how you ask. So you want to like don’t ask your mom, right? Because your mom’s not your client. So make sure you’re asking the right people. And you want to make sure you don’t put yourself in a position where they feel bad. And they’re like, Yeah, sure I buy that. And then when it comes time to buy it, nobody buys it. So kind of just like think about that stuff too. Like Maybe you want to kind of surround yourself with a group of people who will give you honest feedback. Or if you, you know, some people will do a pre sale. So they can say like, Hey, I’m thinking of creating this product, it’s for sale now. And if you don’t get, you know, 1015 20 sales, then you just don’t build it and you refund the money. So that’s kind of a way to validate to with like, actual like opening a wallet. So yeah,

Alastair McDermott  40:23

I really liked that. And, you know, if your setup, if you’ve got your system set up with something like Stripe, it’s very easy to go in and hit refund, if if you don’t get those. So it’s very easy to do that. And so that brings me to the next point that you were talking about, which is use the existing systems that you have already, if you’re already set up on Gumroad, or you’ve got WooCommerce installed, then and you’re familiar with those, just use what you’ve already got, rather than setting up something convoluted, create something fairly simple using the language of of your clients, the way they talk about your customers, and use their testimonials from those first pre orders that you got, and create a simple to start sales page with the product for sale. And then after you’ve launched it, remember to continue to market it. Right. So yeah, is that is that a recap of most of the things? Is there anything? Yeah, just

Rene Morozowich  41:15

one part like the actual creation process of, of allocating time and protecting that time. That way you actually do create it. So how whatever is going to work for you to actually sit down and do it, whether it’s telling a friend, whether it’s like, oh, my computer won’t open any of these sites until I work on my product for an hour. You know, whether it’s having a spreadsheet with like, I have a spreadsheet that each time you finish a task, the numbers change color, and you can see, you know, how close you are to your goal, whatever it is that that actually gets you to create the product that would just be in the creation process, and creating things that you actually like, right? Like they don’t force yourself to do video, if you don’t like video, or whatever it is.

Alastair McDermott  41:58

Oh, yeah, yeah. And that would be one of the other things. And I already said this earlier that, you know, I think if you’re gonna do something like on video, or audio, even the do some of that for free, first create some free content, just to get some practice and get used to being on camera or on audio. And, you know, putting yourself out there because it just makes it so much easier.

Rene Morozowich  42:20

Yeah, and we should be creating that free content anyway, you know, and that could be part of your ongoing marketing is I read a blog post, I read an email, like that’s all free content that leads into your paid content.

Alastair McDermott  42:31

Absolutely. And, you know, I mentioned at the start of this episode, I have an email list I send now sending every day or every weekday, I’m sending an email to my list. And so me talking about this now on this, on this podcast on this live is promoting that. But also, what I found is that, you know, that helps to build my list at creating that content, the process of being forced to create that content, because I’ve committed to it, I’ve committed to sending an email week daily. That’s setting out an expectation and accountability as well. And that really helps. And also, because you’ve got to come up with content every day, and you’ve got to think of ideas, you’re always looking around, you’re always looking for ideas, oh, that could be relevant to the thing that I talked about. So all of that feeds back plus helps to build that audience because then you don’t have a list of 10, you’ve got a list of 100 or 200. And you know, everybody starts at zero, so it’s okay, if you’re at zero now, you do need to start to build it up. Yeah,

Rene Morozowich  43:30

right. Right. I would say one thing that we didn’t really talk about is, I would recognize, you know, talk, think about your goals. Like Is your goal to grow your list is your goal to sell X number of products in a certain amount of time, or over the course of a year? And then actually recognize that you did it like it takes a lot of I think courage to put yourself out there in this specific way. We’re used to creating free content, we have that courage, we’re used to selling our high ticket one on one services, we have that courage. This is a different kind of courage. So recognize that you did it. You’ve been wanting to do it. When you do it. Don’t just be like, Oh, well, I didn’t get any sales. Like congratulate yourself that you did it. Like that should be something that we think about to not just like, oh, well, whatever, like, you know, one

Alastair McDermott  44:19

thing. One thing that I think is kind of tied into that is making the product evergreen. Can you talk a little bit about how you think about that? Because I think that’s important.

Rene Morozowich  44:30

Yes, so I guess it really depends on your content. It is nice to have an evergreen product, you should still look at it right like once a year, once every two years. But that will be definitely easier to sell then, hey, here’s a tutorial on how to use WordPress and then WordPress changes in three months. So I would think about what are kind of like the foundations of you know what you’re sharing with your client’s what you’re sharing with your peers, that kind of transcend, you know, any specific software or any specific version of something like that, like, you know, like Profit First, that’s kind of a framework, you can use this specific bank, you can use this specific spreadsheet, you know, you can do all this kind of specific things. But you know, the concepts. So if you kind of pull back and think about concepts, versus like, specific, how tos Does that answer your question?

Alastair McDermott  45:24

Yeah, it does. Yeah, it’s just something that what you were talking about there is, you know, you might not get sales right away. But I know that a lot of sales have things like books happen over time. And, you know, it can be a slow burn, but can also be very effective. So if you create something, and put it out there, and okay, do the marketing every so often. But also be prepared for the fact that it may not sell instantly. But if it’s a self serve thing, people will come along, and over time that drip feed can can actually turn into quite significant sales.

Rene Morozowich  46:01

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I think looking at that goal, so I think whatever you launch thing, like, Okay, I will be happy. If I get you know this in this amount of time, just not like, I’ll be happy if I get 10 sales, like because then you’re like, Okay, I just launched it where the sales, like, this is a product that will last like that’s the benefit of having a digital product. It’s something that can continue to sell over time. So yeah, think about it kind of in a in a in a bigger, bigger scale, I suppose. Also, I forgot to mention, so your ebooks are digital products already. So that is something I think we forget, you know, an ebook is a great digital product.

Alastair McDermott  46:42

Now, that brings up another topic, and I know we’re running out of time, so I won’t keep until I guess. But that does bring up an interesting point. So I have some ebooks, I have a bundle of of books that are all part of a series, the expert authority builder series. And so those books are all on Amazon. And some of them are available for free on Amazon. But one of the things about having those books up on Amazon is the lack of control. And I don’t know who I don’t have any contact information for people who bought those books, for example. How do you think about that, but the kind of the different platforms?

Rene Morozowich  47:16

Yeah, so I think Amazon is great. But I think you do have to have some kind of I think you do some sort of like opt in, like at the beginning, in the middle of the end, all three places, like at the end of each chapter, have something else that you can give to people I know I said like don’t overwhelm people. But I think if you, if you can give something else, I think it is nice. And then people will opt in, and then you can know who they are. So I do think that that is valuable. Just Just be careful that you’re not like and here’s 500 workbooks to go with this, you know, like maybe like it’s okay, I think that’s another kind of insecurity that we have is we we think like we have to offer so much more to justify charging X or to justify the fact that like, oh, you know that we’re a little bit insecure. Like, you don’t have to do that, like, you know, enough, you’re providing valuable information like, it’s okay, like, you don’t have to give everything away, it’s actually detrimental.

Alastair McDermott  48:17

I’m going to ask you some of the questions that I asked everybody at the end of the podcast, what is the number one tip that you would give somebody who wants to build their authority?

Rene Morozowich  48:26

I think Korea, you have to create some content, like you have to you have to write some things, you have to record some things, you have to share things like you, you know, you’re you’re learning and you’re sharing your teaching. Like I think you have to create that content in whatever form ongoing, not just like, oh, I wrote a couple blog posts three years ago. No, that’s not creating authority. Yeah,

Alastair McDermott  48:48

I agree. And even like, I think of it when you’re starting out as kind of documenting the journey or journaling, yeah. Even if you’re not that advanced, it’s okay to do that as well. Even if you know, you can, you can put your hand up and say, hey, you know, I’m not that experienced, but this is what I’ve learned about this thing. Yes,

Rene Morozowich  49:04

exactly. And you can change those things over time. So then when you learn even more, you can go back and update that old blog post, or do another video that’s like, Okay, well, at this point, I only knew X. But now I know why, like, you know, you can build upon what you already have.

Alastair McDermott  49:18

And this is kind of related. Is there a mistake or failure that you’ve experienced that you can tell us about what you learned from it made

Rene Morozowich  49:24

some all the mistakes? Yeah, so I’ve learned some products too. And yeah, mostly because I was just like, oh, I want to do this, or Oh, I think this is a problem that people have, but was not an important problem that people had. So you know, I think, you know, I spent more than I made, I didn’t market it on going so you know, those are just a few of many mistakes. But I think if you’re not making mistakes, that means you’re not doing anything. So I think you you need to be comfortable with doing something poorly at first, so that you can get good later. Are, we have to be okay with just like, it’s not going to be good right off the bat, like you’ve never done it, how would it be good. So you have to start it. And that’s what that’s why I think it’s good that your email list is smaller initially, because you can make all those mistakes with the people that really just like you the most. And then you get better and better, and then more people join. So then you’re really professional. So yeah,

Alastair McDermott  50:20

I agree. 100% Is there a business book or resource that’s been important for you?

Rene Morozowich  50:26

I love business books. I you know, really love Profit First and the 12 week year, those are my two big go twos that I have read over and over again, and continue to follow. So I think those are really great. Books.

Alastair McDermott  50:41

Awesome. And do you read fiction? Is there anything you love and recommend? Um,

Rene Morozowich  50:45

I don’t read a ton of fiction. I can’t even think of the last fiction book that I read. I watch TV, movies and things like that. I do watch TV, and movies, but where we, my son and I are watching Psych. I’ve already seen it, but he has not seen it. So we are watching that currently, and we’re watching my partner and I are watching bones. I don’t know that I would really recommend Psych is pretty good bones. A little bit less so but you know, not too gory? Not too, you know, you don’t have to think too much about it. Right. So yeah,

Alastair McDermott  51:19

and sometimes it’s nice to have that when when our work is quite kind of intensive, mentally intensive. It’s nice to have those, like I read a lot of science fiction, fantasy books that are totally kind of brain dead like bubblegum, you know, it’s just it’s, it’s easy. It’s easy going. But it’s because, you know, I think a lot when I’m working, so I don’t want to have to think when I’m not working. Yeah.

Rene Morozowich  51:42

And also like having a show with bones. There’s like 12 seasons, like 25 episodes per season. We don’t have to think about what should we watch tonight, and then you know, scroll through for half an hour trying to find something. We’re just like up next bones. Season Episode.

Alastair McDermott  51:56

Reducing the number of decisions is always good as well. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Awesome. Renee, where can people find you? If they want to learn more? Yeah.

Rene Morozowich  52:05

So you actually just got these T shirts made. So we’re streaming this it’s scenic route digital, right there. Scenic Route digital.com. And then you’ll find I have a couple lead magnets on there a couple like small questions, workbooks, that kind of stuff. If you’re interested. I do send two emails a month. I know everybody’s like send more emails, two emails a month I talk about I just share kind of like a little story. And then I recap the podcast episodes from that month, relatively short, little summary. So that’s,

Alastair McDermott  52:32

you have a show called your first digital product. Yeah, that’s

52:37

that would be great for me to tell people what the show is called.

Alastair McDermott  52:41

So if you’re in your podcast player right now, you can check it out at your first digital products. Exactly.

Rene Morozowich  52:45

Yeah, it’s why FDP dot show. Awesome.

Alastair McDermott  52:48

Rene merozoites thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank

Rene Morozowich  52:53

you. It was great to be here and it’s great to talk to you about this stuff.