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- [00:00]
Abigail Pugh
Foreign. You're listening to an episode of the Abigail Pugh Podcast with you guessed it, Abigail Pugh. I'm an introverted mama who took my online business from zero to seven figures in 15 months, selling my own digital products on social media. And guess what? I did it all with my 3 year old daughter no less than 3ft away from me at all times. Now I'm bringing you everything I've learned about building a wildly profitable online business that supports your life while allowing you to truly live it. Get ready for raw, honest conversations with entrepreneurs making thousands per month selling their own digital products and people just like you who ditch self doubt to create the life they've always wanted. If you're ready to make more money, have more impact and still have time for the things that matter most, you're in the right place. Grab your sneakers, head out on your hot girl walk and let's dive in. Today's guest is someone that I 30 thoroughly Internet stocked when I first found her. This was sometime last year when I was building out what is now my rich girl community. But I just remember immediately being drawn to her content and binging her podcast. Vix is a learning psychology expert who helps people like you and me design gap free communities and offers that engage your clients and motivate them to actually take action, which in turn helps them get way better results and gets you better reviews. She's also an ex teacher and has been running her own online business for eight years teaching over 8,000 people. She also has the cutest accent ever. So without further ado, Vix, welcome to the show.
- [01:36]
Vix Meldrew
Yay. Thank you so much for having me. I am so excited to chat with you. I know that you are the community building queen, so we're going to have so much to talk about today. But yeah, thank you for having me.
- [01:46]
Abigail Pugh
Oh my gosh, absolutely. And it's so funny. I feel like I get so many questions about like building a community and it's funny, I don't really ever have like to technical answers because I think for me from the beginning it was more so just about sharing my journey and it wasn't technically a strategy when I first got started it was more so just like hey, I. I don't really know what I'm doing so I'm just going to show up every day and talk about what I'm going through. And then it turned out that other people were going through that too. So it's always so funny to me when people are like how did you build a community? I'm Like I showed up in my pajamas and what I usually wear as my kind of weird self and people related to that, I don't know. So, um, I love that. But Vix is definitely more strategic when it comes to community building, which is why I wanted to have her on the podcast. But I'd love to kind of just hear a little bit about how you got into this space. I feel like there's not a lot of people out there who have been in this space for eight years. Like I had a floral design business right when I got out of college, but I wouldn't say that I've been in this space for eight years. So tell us a little bit about how you got started, why you got started, all the fun stuff.
- [02:49]
Vix Meldrew
Yeah, so actually I really resonate what you said there around how you kind of built your community by accident because that is very much my background as well. I was a primary school teacher. So in the UK, that is teaching from the ages of like 4 to 11 for. For years and years. And when it, I think it was 2014, I was going through really tough time, tough time teaching, bad mental health, really awful relationship. And I turned to blogging and I started a lifestyle blog because I was obsessed with like the UK blogging scene and fashion bloggers and lifestyle bloggers. So I started my own little blog and started building a community through this lifesty. My kind of posts were a bit like, humorous, a bit tongue in cheek, very kind of pop culture focused. And then when that relationship ended, it pivoted into like a London sex and dating blog. And then it took off. I won awards. I was named MTV Influencer to Watch in 2017. Oh cool. I started working with brands. I started doing like lifestyle brands, dating brands. And it kind of snowballed from there. I was building an email list, I was building an Instagram community, a blogging community, a Twitter community. We all from just kind of like you said, just being me, just talking about my life, just talking about my journey. I also had a situation where I lost both my parents with within 18 months of each other. So I was also blogging about mental health and grief and going through these relationships and like coming into your 30s and finding yourself single, talking about like work life balance because as a teacher I was working like 70 hours a week. And then, you know, I always tell the story of like how I bought my blog was basically scheduling blog posts whilst I walked to the train station and then writing the next day's blog post whilst I was on the train to my teaching job.
- [04:34]
Abigail Pugh
Making it happen.
- [04:35]
Vix Meldrew
Making it happen, you know, making it happen. Yeah. And then on the weekends, rather than marking my books, I would be writing blog posts and doing my sponsor posts and going to brand events and things like that. So I very much built my community right at the beginning from just being myself, just talking about my life, talking about my journey. And then I actually left teaching in 2018 to become a full time content creator. I was earning enough from brand partnerships and from my blog sponsorships and Instagram sponsorships to replace my teaching salary. And it wasn't before long where, and I think people meant this in a really nice way. They were like, you're not the stereotypical influencer and you're just like, oh, sorry, what are you trying to.
- [05:15]
Abigail Pugh
You're saying, what do you mean that?
- [05:18]
Vix Meldrew
And I didn't have like hundreds of thousands of followers. I wasn't this like fashion influencer. I was just, I was just me, very down to earth, very like girl next door type vibes. So a lot of people like, how are you doing this? How are you working massive brands? You don't have a massive platform, you've built this massive community. Like, how? So I started teaching other bloggers, like how to do affiliate marketing, how to get sponsorships, how to do so and so. And I loved that because I was always a teacher at heart and I was like, really felt like I was in my teaching groove. So that kind of evolved over those couple of years. And I launched my first membership in 2019. We enrolled 100 founding members in 58 minutes. Like, it was such an achievement.
- [05:58]
Abigail Pugh
What a thrill. It was such a thrill.
- [06:00]
Vix Meldrew
I remember I was at lunch with my sister and my now husband, then boyfriend. We were just sat around, I was like another person, another person. By the end of that lunch, a hundred people, founding members, had enrolled and we scaled that membership to 1200 active members in about a year. It was helped, obviously by everything that was going on in the world in 2020 because membership boomed, everybody needed community, everybody together. And because of that, the membership pivoted. It used to be about, here's how to become a content creator. And now it pivoted to here's how to have an online business. Because you've got all of this time and you know you're, you can't have a business in real life at the moment, like come online. So that's how it really grew. And then it kind of pivoted and changed as we went. And then it kind of got to like the end of 2021 and I was Just a bit over it. I was just a bit over. I was teaching Instagram strategy and Instagram education, and here's how to grow your Instagram. And my Instagram is going, going really quickly at the time. And I just kept feeling this pull around teaching. And I was like, there's something else. Like, I'm really good at creating courses. I'm really good at creating memberships. I had a live group program that has 350 people and 300 of them turned up live. I was like, this is what I'm really good at. I want to teach more people how to teach online, how to run courses and programs and memberships so they can diversify their revenue and so they can serve their communities in this way. And that's kind of brought you up to date with where we are now, really. I've spent the last three, two and a half, three years. Yeah, teaching coaches, service providers, experts, content creators, how to launch courses, programs and memberships, but also how to teach them, how to deliver them in a way that's really engaging, how to communities within them of people who rave about you and who love everything you teach. And that's where we are. That's where we are up to date.
- [07:49]
Abigail Pugh
I love it. So, okay, you built that community. You had 1200 active people inside of them, like a paying membership community, whatever you want to call it. How did you kind of close that? I'm so curious. Did you just kind of say, hey, it's done, it's over?
- [08:03]
Vix Meldrew
Honestly, I don't know what I was doing. That was six figure revenue and I let it go. I had faith that I could rebuild something else and I could rebuild it in a way, you know, because this is what happens whenever you have a course, a program or a membership or a mastermind that's really like long and ongoing. It kind of always changes and evolves and then it gets to a place where you're like, oh my gosh, this is so complicated now. And, you know, it wasn't what it was when it first started. It just kind of got point where I was like, it's just come to a place now where it's. It's not as profitable as I'd like it to be. It's not as easy to run as I'd like it to be. I'd like to do something different. So, yeah, I just, I can't remember exactly, but I think I told the members we were going to do a launch at the beginning of the January, and I just turned around to the members and I Said, I'm not going to do a launch. In fact, I'm going to close the membership like 30 days notice. It's going to close at the end of this month. I had to explain that I was going in like a different direction and that I wanted to focus on other things and if they wanted to kind of follow me over to like the new thing, and if that was what they wanted to learn more about, then of course they were welcome. And it was really, really scary. Very, very positive kind of feedback. Very like, oh, we're gonna miss it. Like, it's so good. Like, I've been a member since day one, I'm gonna miss it. Obviously there was some negativity as well from people who were like, disappointed and were like, no, like what I. I love, you know, and I see the place that it was coming from. So that was a really tricky time. And yeah, I completely let go of a six figure revenue stream to build something from scratch. Crazy times.
- [09:32]
Abigail Pugh
I just think it really speaks to the importance too of making sure that you are passionate about your business. Because I've heard some people online, it always kind of irks me when they're like, it doesn't matter if you're passionate about, like, if it's, it's a profitable thing, then just keep doing it. And I'm like, there's only so long that you can do that. Like you truly you, yes, you have to have the discipline and it's not all about like motivation or the thrill. And sometimes it's boring, but you still have to be passionate about what you do. So I love that you kind of just knew this wasn't, you know, what you wanted anymore because it shows up in your teaching and it shows up in you showing up. Like, I tell this to people all the time with content creation. Like, people can tell when you create content when you're on your period and you hate life. Like, I can feel it. I can feel the negative and the low energy and there's nothing wrong with having that energy. But like, maybe don't record a talking head video during that point of your cycle. Like, we can feel the energy. So, okay, before we dive into community building and the technicalities of that, because I know a lot of my audience, they want reoccurring revenue, they want a community, they want a subscription style thing. And I encourage them to have that in their business. I think it's a great way to diversify. But I'd love to kind of talk to you about how to find out what type of offer is best for you Because I get a lot of questions when people are first selling digital products and they're like, I don't know what to do, Should I do a course first? Should I do a PDF? Should I do a live training? And. And I know that in this space like teaching people how to teach is not common. Like people don't really teach that. So I'd love to kind of hear how people can a kind of figure out what their best like secret sauce. I don't know what to say, what their best product should be first for a digital product and then some ways that like they can get better results for their students. Cause I know that's something you're really good at.
- [11:19]
Vix Meldrew
Yeah, okay. Okay. I love diving into this topic. So one of my favorite things to help my clients with is deciding, are you launching a course? Are you launching a membership? Are you launching a product? Should this be a program and how to tell the difference? And one of the key things that it comes down to is with everything when you're creating digital products and courses, I always say start with the transformation. So I'll dig into how you can figure out what that is in a sec. But start with the transformation. The kind of first point means is it a one time transformation or is it an ongoing transformation? So some examples would be growing your community on Instagram is an ongoing transformation. It's something that business owners need to do daily, weekly, monthly. So then it lends itself better to a membership or to a program where people have continued access to trainings and updates and new skills and new techniques and things to learn. If the transformation is more kind of like finite. So for example, baby led weaning. So your baby's just turned six months. Here's how to wean them. Those people only need to learn that for that first kind of like to two months whilst the baby is weaned and then they're kind of going into that next phase, that next part of the thing around like meal planning with a toddler and you know, that kind of thing that would lend itself better to a digital product or course because it's a real finite transformation. So a big mistake that I see people doing when they want to launch a membership or they want to launch more of a program is they launch it based on something that is isn't a daily, weekly, monthly thing to work on. And I think this is also the benefit of hindsight with having a membership and all of the things that you air quote do wrong and also air quote do right is that how my membership first started, it was a daily, weekly, monthly. It was about growing your community on Instagram. And then I started making it a bit more finite about here's how to launch your product on, you know, launch your product. And that was kind of just a bit more like they, once they launched it, it's launched. It's not something they do daily, weekly, monthly. Right? So that, that's where I tell people to start is, is figure out like, is it an ongoing transformation? Is it a finite transformation? But then the question is, especially for people who haven't even kind of got to that stage yet, is like, but what should my topic be? What should I even teach in the first place so I can then figure out if it's ongoing or finite? And to that I say, you need to have a blend of what you're passionate about, what you have actual true experience in and what people want to pay for. Because sometimes we have two out of three and it's just, it ain't gonna work. It has to be three out of three. So if, if you have something that you're really good at and passionate about and you've got loads of experience in, but no one wants to buy it, it's never going to get off the ground. Yeah, if you've got something that you've got loads of experience in and loads of people want to buy it, but you're not passionate about it, you're going to resent it, it's going to drain you, you're going to want to close it. If you're. What's the last one? If it's something loads of people want to pay for and you love it and you're passionate about it, but you've got no experience with it, your sales are going to be so icky.
- [14:24]
Abigail Pugh
I think that's the one I see the most that I'm the most like, frustrated. I think the culture of master resell rights MRR has kind of convinced people that it's okay to do that. And again, I never have any ill will or hate towards anyone that is providing for their family. Like, I think you got to do what's best for you. But I do think it's wildly important to make sure that it's something you have experience in. And when people come to me only having those two out of three, I usually tell them, just document your journey. Like, don't sell anything yet. Document your journey of what you are trying to learn and then become the expert in front of them. So I would say that's the only One where I'm like, if you don't have that one yet, if you don't have the experience, document the experience for them. So that when you're done, they're like, or not done. But like when you've been documenting for six months, they trust you, they know that you've gone through this, they've seen you gone through it and get this experience. And then they're like, okay, great, I wanna, I wanna learn this from this person. I feel like that's exactly what you did. You didn't have the experience teaching people how to do all of this. And you weren't necessarily starting out trying to get that. You just started blogging. And then after a few years of blogging, you were like, wow, people wanna learn this from me and I have a ton of experience, I should create a product on it. So that is like the natural flow that I think it should be, if you only have those two out of 300%.
- [15:38]
Vix Meldrew
And also to add to that as well, is that so many people want to skip along, they want to kind of go from I'm really passionate about this to let me launch a product on it and miss that middle bit that we're saying here is kind of embodiment piece. But the bit that they also skip is actually working with people on it for free or at low cost. So when I was, I was a blogger then I was creating digital products and courses about being a blogger. But in between, I worked with about 50 people on free coaching calls to see if I could test out my experience, my strategies, my framework worked. Then I worked with about 50 more people at 50 pounds a session doing the same thing again to create more results, get more testimonials, you know, get more experience. Before I even then launched a digital product, of course, even when I had a six figure membership where people would pay me £500 plus for a consultation hour to help them with their building their platforms. When I made that pivot to, oh, I want to help people launch courses and programs, I still did four months of helping people for free. I reached out to my community and said, hey, I'm making this pivot behind the scenes. I'm going to be pivoting from teaching about Instagram to teaching you about launching your courses and products. I think it's something that I've got loads of experience in that I'm really good at, but I don't have any experience in actually teaching it yet. Who wants to work with me for free? And I did low cost offers, I did free I worked with free clients to prove my frameworks worked. And the reason why that that piece is so important is when you come to selling and launching, if you've got cold hard receipts of these are all the people I've worked with, these are all the people I've helped, these are all the people that have got results, your sales will absolutely fly. But in 2025, where people are so untrusting of digital products, courses, programs, memberships, so burnt by previous experiences, trust is the biggest thing they're looking for. And how do they find somebody they can trust? It's somebody who walks the walk. It's somebody who's got the experience. So it's so important that 2025 and beyond, we're not skipping that bit around, putting those reps in and getting that experience.
- [17:43]
Abigail Pugh
Yeah, absolutely. And that's what I did. I did low cost one on ones in the beginning and I didn't have a lot of free time. Like, my daughter was just, what was she, just over two and my husband was healing from strokes. So I was like, okay, I can't do free stuff because I literally didn't have the time for it. And so I think I did like 47 and then $97 one on ones and I only did like 10 of them. But honestly, the way I was able to, number one, hear the way my ideal client was talking, it was really helpful and it was really helpful to see, oh, they need even more basic information than I thought. Because sometimes too we are so, we are so like involved in our topic and what we're doing that we forget that people are all new to this. So people didn't even know that, like, you could create what they needed on Canva. And I was like, everybody knows that. And on the one on one she was like, no, I, I didn't know that. And so it helped me so much. So even if you can't do free, even if you're like, okay, I don't have the capacity to do free, do low cost one on ones if you can. If it, if it like relates to your topic. If you're someone that's like a homesteader and you're selling a cookbook, you probably don't need to do one on ones with people to create that digital product. But if it's something where it is, they're like learning how to do something, I would say do the one on ones. Listen to your ideal clotting. Like, you will learn so much from just the words that come out of their mouth and what they say. Than you would from any other type of market research. So I love that. Now if somebody came to you right now, 20, 25, they're like, hey, I want to build a community. And I don't really know where to start, what to add into it. And by community, I mean like a paid community, right? So like rich girl community. It's a paid community. And I was very, very strategic of what I wanted to offer in there. And like I said, I binged your podcast Jihad. I don't remember. I feel like you have some different podcasts, right? Like you have like private ones and then public. I don't remember which one it was, but I remember you saying you really talking about, like, what to include in it. That was helpful for them every week, but not something that would like, take you out, like so much pouring into it that A, people can't even consume all of that. And B, it's a lot for you. And so I would love to hear from you. If someone is trying to start a community or a subscription from scratch, like, what do they need to be considering? How much should they give people every week? Like, how do you think about that? What's your thought process on that?
- [20:01]
Vix Meldrew
So I always teach this analogy, and I call it my chicken nugget analogy. And my chicken nugget analogy is if you spend $5 on a box of nine chicken nuggets and you eat every single one, it's the best $5 you've ever spent. If you buy a box of chicken nuggets for $5, but there's a hundred chicken nuggets and you can only eat nine of them, it ends up being the worst money you've ever spent. And that's what I relate back to communities, is that we're very generous, giving, impact led people. So we believe more stuff. More trainings, more resources, more materials, more calls, more support, more challenges, more threads, you know, all of that kind of stuff. We think more equals more value, but what happens is, is when we overstuff these things and our members can't possibly use every training, every feature, every call, every challenge, our membership then looks like a waste of money. And that's when retention dips and we lose members and they leave because they're not utilizing everything. So my biggest tip for anybody looking to start a paid community is keep it as simple as possible. Don't overstuff it. Don't add too much stuff in, don't have a billion calls, don't have, you know, et cetera, et cetera.
- [21:17]
Abigail Pugh
The.
- [21:17]
Vix Meldrew
The kind of most Successful memberships are the most streamlined and are the ones that are kept the most simple. So yeah, that would be my biggest tip.
- [21:26]
Abigail Pugh
I love that. And I feel like I went a little astray from that. And sometimes I'll tell people when they're like, ah, I don't know where to start. And I just tell them, start with what you need the most help with. Because my community has. So mine is focused on. Mine's very specific, which I also wanted it to be specific. It's helping people who are selling digital products on Instagram grow and make more sales. Right? Because I think there's sometimes a disconnect with Instagram growth. Like, people teach it, but then they never teach you how to make a sale from it. And I'm like, you can't just grow. You have to also make sales from the people that are growing. Right. And so for me, mine has weekly Q and A calls, but they can pre submit because I know a lot of people can't make it live. But if they are like someone that loves the live aspect, they can come once a week. And then there's weekly prompts that focus on growth and selling. Those drop once a Monday and then there's like a feed as well. Right? Which I feel like that's pretty common for a community. Like, I want them to be able to show up and ask questions and ask for other people's opinions. And then once a month I have trainings from guest experts. So it's not me. I wanted to add one other thing in so that as people had questions, I could be like, oh, hey, okay, I'm gonna have, you know Shannon McKinstry, she's coming this week and doing a training because I know people love her and I love her. I think she's great and I like the way she teaches something that I don't really have a framework per se. And so I'm able to bring her in. And sometimes people will come to me and be like, oh my gosh, like, I can only do this one thing. And I tell them, like, I priced it in a way that even if you can only participate in one thing, it's still worth the price, right? Like one Q&A per month for 50 bucks. Like, I'd say that's worth it if you have like a burning question. Like, my one on ones were 4 97. Like I don't even offer those anymore. And so that's how I've kind of like tweaked it a little. But I also feel like each thing inside my Community helps in a different way. And it's not necessarily all stuff they have to put effort into, if that makes sense. Like they can watch a replay, they can show up to the Q and A and listen. But like the prompts, I guess are the main thing that they actually have to like implement. So yeah, I'm wondering, do you have anything that I should change in my community? I'm speaking to the expert here.
- [23:28]
Vix Meldrew
No, I think if, in my expert opinion, I think that sounds like the kind of proposition is very simple, right? It's like monthly Q and A, regular guest, experts, weekly prompts, chat, like very, very simple. What was interesting when I had my membership is that mine started very simple. It was monthly group coaching, a monthly like co working, monthly training would drop with like resources. But a year in it was a monthly challenge, a weekly this, daily this, a new pack of this templates. And it had gone so far and it was so interesting because I got really analytical in my membership and I was always looking at the numbers and the trends and listening to clients and doing client feedback. And there was just this point and it was literally the tipping point where when I we redesigned the website so I had the website like the member portal, whole custom built, everything, you know, 1200 members and we just lost so many members. And I was like, well, what's happened? Like, I haven't changed. Like we've had this blow up, we've got this new branding and when I looked at it from the outside as I was navigating through this like custom portal I'd had built, I was like, there is so much stuff in here, hours. This would take people months to get through. Now they're overwhelmed. I've overwhelmed them. And so having it where it is, that thing of like, like you said, it's very simple proposition. There's different ways to access the same transformation means that if you're a prompt person, you can do prompts. If you're a coaching person, you can come to a coaching. If you're a learning person, you can watch the trainings, you can do all of them, you can just do one of them and it's still worth the value. That's like a good balance, I feel. But what I see so much in this space is people kind of go the route that I did and just start stuffing in like extra resources, extra trainings, extra calls, extra challenges. And it comes from a place of wanting to give value. It's almost a bit of a paradox because you think doing it is going to help your members stay longer. And help you attract more members. But actually the opposite happens.
- [25:28]
Abigail Pugh
So I was actually just talking to a friend about communities and the challenges, and I was telling her, I'm like, I didn't include challenges in any of my sales pages nowhere. Because I want to surprise and delight them with some challenges. And I have one that's coming up and it'll be really fun. And I think it'll be really fun to get new people in as well, because they can only join the challenge if they're in the community. But I didn't want it to feel like something they had to do every month because even me, like, I don't want to do a challenge every month. Every once in a while do I challenge myself to like, okay, I'm gonna post 30 days in a row, one reel a day and one thread. Like, things like that, where I'm like, okay, I need to get back in the habit of posting daily. Um, not necessarily, like, when I do challenges, it's not necessarily for the result. The result is like a byproduct. But challenges for me are more just like, okay, I need to be more disciplined again and here's how I'm gonna do it. But I'm like, I don't wanna do that every month. Like, that's, that's a lot. So I didn't include challenges in there. And I almost did at first. I almost did like monthly challenges. And I was like, wait, that's a lot for me and that's also a lot for them. Like, that's, that's a lot of information to try and do. And I think I could do a better job at my welcome email as well. Like my sequence of emails when they come in to let them know that, like, don't feel like you have to jump into everything at once. There is a purpose for everything, but you might not be ready for one thing. But then since it is a low ticket thing, letting them know that, like, this is worth this alone and just kind of like reiterating that. But it's been a really fun learning process for me. I think one of the things I love about it the most is just getting to work with the same people for so long. It was, I was selling one off digital products and I never got to, like, talk to some of these people again, right? They'd, you know, come back and update me and be excited. And it was like, how are things going? Like, I'd love to help. And, um, I just, I love having a community. It's so much fun. So thank you so Much for being on the show. I'd love for you to just share one piece of advice for anyone who is new to selling digital products. I did a poll the other day, and it's funny, I always think, like, okay, a lot of my audience already has a digital product and they just want to sell more. And I did a poll and it was like, no, like, 70% were like, I want to sell digital products. I have no idea what to sell. And so I was like, oh, I need to cater to those people more because I sometimes forget, again, I get caught up in, like, where I'm at in my journey, which is I have the digital products. I'm just selling them. And so if someone is new to digital products or they've been kind of lingering on the outside and they don't know what to sell. One piece of advice for. I feel like you already gave so many nuggets on this, but one piece of advice for really just picking something and running with it.
- [28:00]
Vix Meldrew
Yeah. So the best piece of advice you'll ever hear in your business around building and growing digital products is specificity. And I know you touched on this earlier as well. Like, I want you to get so specific about the person that you love to help. I want you to get so specific about what you really love to help them with. And as we touched on earlier, what you've actually got experience of helping people with. And for some of you, that might just be the content you're creating for free right now. Right? So you might just be creating content around your passion that's helping people because it's content based on your journey. Then you. You've kind of done that. Like, that where your kind of experience is coming in and your passion is coming in and you're kind of free content. So. So really specific about who you help, really specific about who you teach. Get really specific about the results. Like, what results have you generated for yourself? Have you grown a community by X numbers? Have you helped this many people with this thing? Have you, you know, gotten your child to sleep in 12 minutes? Like, whatever it is? Like, what is the measurable kind of result that you've created for yourself and that you're creating for others in your content? And all of that will come together and that will be your offer. Right? So let me get like, I'm. Because I'm in, like, baby mode at the moment. I've got like a month old. I always use these examples. But, like, say if your passion is around baby sleep, like, you nailed it with your kids, maybe you've trained to be like a baby sleep coach. And like you, you're just so passionate about baby sleep and you're creating loads of content about baby sleep. Think about what results have you got for yourself? What results have you, you got your clients like less night wakings. Okay, cool. There's a digital product, how to have your one year old have less night waking so you and your husband can watch Severance tonight. Bring it back to that. So be as specific as possible around your passion, around your area of expertise. And then the last thing is, what are people asking? Go to your comment section, go to your DMs, go to your email inbox. What questions are people asking generally around your topic, but also specifically to you because that highlights to you what people want to learn from you.
- [30:05]
Abigail Pugh
If you're not getting those questions yet, go to. I don't, I don't, I don't like to say competitors because I feel like we're all in this together. Like there's so many people who are considered my competitors. I'm like, I text them almost every day, like we're really good friends. But go to your competitors or people that do something similar to you. See what people are asking in the comments. Do not go and copy their content. That's not what I'm saying to do. I'm saying go look at the comments and see what people are saying, hey, I need help with this or wow, that was so helpful. And then see how you can put your own spin on the topic that they were talking about. And I think it's such a good point to specificity. Your digital product needs to solve one problem, right? Especially with low ticket digital products. I think sometimes we compare that to like an online course. An online course, yes, it does have one specific outcome, but they're going to learn a lot in an online course. And your digital product can teach them how to solve one problem. Like I think it should. I think sometimes when they do too many things, people are confused. And I've gotten so much feedback from people because I did a lot of like live trainings when I was first starting out because I love them. I think they're a lot of fun and they're not hard for me to set up. Like, and I, I do really well live, like off the cuff. I'm really good when it comes to teaching. And so I leaned into that and I got so much feedback from people saying like, thank you for teaching me one step at a time. Like, I was not ready to learn everything on Instagram. I just needed to perfect my reels or I just needed to perfect my stories first. And now that I have a handle on this, I can add one more thing in. And I'm actually working on like a core curriculum for my, for my rich girl community to have like step by step of Instagram. So, like setting it up right, getting, like getting everything in place and then learning reels and then learning stories, right? Because I think again, sometimes we're like, well, I'm solving this problem, but I need to include everything. And it's like, no. When you're creating a digital product, your job as the creator is to make it as simple as possible. You don't need to give them all the information they need to know what's going to help them. Not all the fluff that you're like, well, maybe they should know this. I'm like, no. Is it gonna help them? Then take it out. Like if it's not helpful and it's not like to the point. And if you guys have any of my digital products, you know that like, I am not fluff. There is no fluff in there. It is very much to the point. Do this, do this. If you want to try this, go ahead and try that. Things like that. It is not, it's not broad, it is very specific.
- [32:20]
Vix Meldrew
So yeah, and add to that before we hack up. But this is why I think you're, you've. I love watching your journey and I've loved how you've built your offer ecosystem with all of the offers that you had before where you had rich girl stories, rich girl reels, like those different specific things that people could build up over time. So for those people in your community that are listening as well, like, that's a very strategic way to approach digital products. If you create one low ticket digital product that solves 12 problems, you are cannibalizing the sales of 12 digital products that solve one problem each. Or creating a, you know, a larger product like a membership or a program or a course that you can charge like a higher ticket for that can solve like other problems as well. So I made that mistake. Like my first digital product was like £9. My first membership was £9. And I stuffed so much in. And then the transition into them being able to bring in other offers or charge a higher ticket when everything was stuffed into these super, super low ticket offers, it's really hard to transition. So think about the business that you want to have, not just tomorrow, but in a year's time, five years time, 10 years time, where maybe you've got a suite of offers or maybe you have higher ticket offers or maybe there's lots of things that you could teach and just try not to teach it all in one product.
- [33:45]
Abigail Pugh
Yes. That is the perfect way to end this episode. Thank you so much for coming on today. Where can people find you? Where can they find that podcast that I listen to about? Is that still available about like launching a community? I found it so helpful just to hear your story too. I learn so much better from storytelling and I retain information so much better when I hear someone explaining kind of what they went through.
- [34:08]
Vix Meldrew
Yeah. So my website is vic speldrew.com I've got a stuffy nose. So that was Vic Meldrew. Oh my gosh. Like, and I'm also on Instagram @fretteldrew and I hang out quite a lot on threads. I have a podcast that's called Rave Results and there is an episode on there called how to Kill a Membership and that is my story of how I grew and then killed my memberships. There's so much insight in there around essentially don't do what I did, like listen from my story. But my podcast also has lots of other episodes on there around building like courses programs and those kind of digital offers. How to teach them really well, how to get client results, how to deliver a good experience and strategies and things in there. So you can find that on Spotify and Apple and then. Yeah, just my website. If I've got a free training or a new private podcast, it will be on my website.
- [34:59]
Abigail Pugh
I love it. Well, thank you so much for joining and if you guys enjoyed this episode or any of my previous episodes, please hit pause and go leave a review. I never really realized how important those reviews are and I never asked for them. So I would appreciate if you could go leave a review and I will see you guys next week. Thank you so much for hanging out with me and my guests today. If you learned anything from our episode, I would love it if you could share it over on your Instagram stories and tag me at Abigail Pugh until next time. Love you. Mean it.