Ep 183 - How to Build Your Digital Product Empire With Virtual Assistants

Get ready to turn your entrepreneurial aspirations into a thriving digital product empire! With the guidance of Jillian Leslie, a seasoned online business maven, we delve into the importance of pairing personal passion with business strategy, and how embracing the long game sets you up for lasting success. Find out how Jillian has harnessed the power of virtual assistants to scale her ventures like Catch My Party, and learn how strategic delegation can amplify your growth without sacrificing authenticity or your brand's unique voice.

This episode is a treasure trove of practical advice for managing virtual teams. Discover why burdening a single assistant with a multitude of tasks can hinder your progress, and how cultivating a specialized squad can lead to more efficient and effective results. We'll talk about keeping communication crystal clear and why it's essential to maintain your brand’s consistency across all fronts, regardless of who's handling the daily grind. Plus, we tackle the concept of 'B minus work'—why launching imperfect products might just be the smartest move for your business.

Wrap up your day with a chuckle as we explore the lighter side of entrepreneurship—from the wardrobe quirks of remote work to setting your own hours. Jillian's insights and experiences offer a wealth of knowledge for anyone striving for a fulfilling online presence, making this conversation an invaluable resource for your journey. Tune in and arm yourself with the confidence, creativity, and support strategies you need to navigate the online business world and build your own empire with the help of virtual assistants.


Learn more about Jillian Leslie here:

https://www.instagram.com/milotree/

https://www.tiktok.com/@milotreecart

https://www.facebook.com/milotreeapp

Are you in need of any assistance? Are you tired and running out of time? It's time to start looking for a virtual assistant! Learn how to get your freedom and life back by visiting Smartvirtualassistants.com

Be part of our Facebook community page for entrepreneurs who want to become a master delegator. 

Do you want to learn how to hire a virtual assistant? Access our free training. 

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

Hey there, master Delegators, happy New Year. I hope your year is off to a great start. Welcome to another episode of the Master Delegator Podcast, where we talk all things business and help you experience freedom and flexibility through the power of effective delegation. Today we've got a super awesome topic how to launch your digital product empire with help from your virtual assistants. And guess what? We've got a special guest who really knows her stuff. She helps start Catch my Party, the Milo Tree pop-up app and Milo Tree Card All big deals in the online world. Our guest is not just a business whiz. She also runs the Blogger Genius Podcast and for the last four years, she's been chatting with successful online entrepreneurs, experts and content creators to learn their secrets. Great Jillian Leslie, who began her online journey in 2009. She is a pro at bringing people together online. Now her goal is to empower other creators to build successful online businesses by selling their knowledge directly to their audiences, so they can change their lives and have the freedom they crave. So stick around, master Delegators. Jillian is here to spill the beans on how to keep good relationships with your virtual assistants and create your own digital business empire. Hi, jillian, I am so excited to see you again today.

Speaker 2: 1:38

Thank you for having me. By the way, the last time we were talking you were on my podcast, the Blogger Genius Podcast, so it's so nice to be now on your podcast.

Speaker 1: 1:46

Yes, exactly, and I'm so thankful that you allowed me to be a guest on your podcast, because I actually received a few leads from your podcast. So thank you so much for letting me on your podcast and I hope to do the same for you as well. So I know I have introduced you already, but I want to know more about you personally. Who you are, you know I want to know about, I want our audience to know about. Who is Jillian behind the scenes?

Speaker 2: 2:22

Who is Jillian behind the scenes? What gets me up in the morning is helping predominantly female entrepreneurs make money and change their lives. For me, when I had my daughter, everything shifted and all my priorities shifted and I had to find a lifestyle that would fit me. So my husband and I left our jobs and started working together and we created a site called Catch my Party, which we've grown into the largest party ideas site on the web, and it was a real moment of saying whoa. It felt a little bit, and I think that we, as online creators, entrepreneurs the reason why we do this is because we're kind of moving through our lives and, all of a sudden, the sweater that we wear every day starts to get a little too small, a little too itchy, and we need to take it off and it's like, okay, what can I do instead? Where I can have the flexibility that I need in my life to feel excited, where I can help people solve problems in whatever it is that I know about and do it in my way. And what I love about what we all do is we have flexibility. It doesn't necessarily mean that we don't work as many hours. In fact, I'd argue we probably work more, but not having that boss, not being able to be creative, I think, and being able to own your own time and to make potentially more money than you ever made in your nine to five, your desk job like the sky's the limit, and I think that is so exciting. So if I can help other online entrepreneurs fast track that, because I've learned so much I've learned from me, learned from my mistakes, and hopefully I can share with you the ways that we see people who are, let's say, using my low-treat card, which is a payment software. I can share how they're doing it, oh my God, and get you further faster. That's all I want to do. That's really my MO.

Speaker 1: 4:31

Wow, I love that. And us entrepreneurs, we're not really just all about making more money. We're not just all about leaving our nine to five job to be able to make more money. I mean, I'm sure at the beginning we're all like that. We're like you know what I'm tired of answering to my boss and getting only this much, this much every month. We're thinking of how we can get more so that we can do more. But eventually, as we grow our business, our personal mission I don't want to generalize all entrepreneurs right, but most people that I have spoke with, as they grow their business, they change their personal mission to something else which is similar to you helping other people so that they can also have freedom and flexibility in their life. And if you are the type of entrepreneur that doesn't do that yet, maybe you will get there. If your focus is all about making profits or having more revenue for your business, I feel like to me personally, if that is the focus all the time, we will not be able to achieve that, because there is always there should be always a bigger reason as to why we're doing our business.

Speaker 2: 6:01

Well, what I always say is, if you think this is a get-wick-rich scheme, you're wrong. Like this is, you've got to dig in and be in it for the long haul, because anything that you're doing will take longer, cost more and be more complicated than you could imagine. In fact, we were talking about this before you pressed record that you go well, I'm just going to run Facebook ads or whatever it is, and then you go dissect that. Or I'm going to create an email funnel, email sales funnel. Okay, go do that, and what you discover is it's not like I'm just going to put this up in a day, it's like I've got to think it through, I've got to break it down, I've got to maybe pay for software, maybe pay for a VA to help me. So you've got to be a long-term thinker to be in this game.

Speaker 1: 6:52

Exactly, exactly. So you are my first guess for this year and you know, as we were chatting before recording this episode, you told me that you are so ready for 2024 and then I asked you why would you mind sharing? You know, you know what happened in 2023 because I had the same experience. You know 2023 was one of my challenging year and I'm so ready to get over 2023. So tell me about the challenges you experienced in 2023 and how you were able to overcome those challenges.

Speaker 2: 7:30

So we built a tool called my Literary Cart, which I've mentioned, and what it is is it is the easiest payment tool to sell digital products. So 2023 was all about validating that product, meaning selling it to people. Right now, we sell it for a lifetime deal of 349 like seriously, we're only offering this to our first thousand customers and then we're going to a traditional monthly fee. But the reason why we wanted to do this was so that we could say hey, we're gonna lean into you, we're gonna give you this software at a discount and that way you know that we, we want to reward you for believing in us. Plus, anybody who purchases right now gets on an hour-long coaching call with me. Why? Because if I can set you up for success, you will become my evangelist, right? If you see that we're the real deal, that our payment tool will work and you can sell an e-book, any kind of digital download, you could start a workshop. You could. You could host a workshop, start a membership, do coaching, create a course. And again, are the reason what. What makes us different is we are easy. So if you hate technology, we are for you because our product is simple and we give you tons of marketing materials. We give you fill in the blank sales pages that we're rolling out right now with AI, so that you could just tell me what product you're selling and I'll give you a full sales page that you can edit. But believe me, it'll get you 80% of the way there. So how did we come up with all these ideas? By me getting on calls with people who purchase our product, so therefore it's a win-win. I help you find success, you give me ideas. You say to me you know it would be great if I can add an image here, or I could. This or this is confusing. So 2023 has all been about how do we continue to tweak our product to make it as useful as it can be? Some of our best ideas came from these calls, came from somebody saying what about this? And me saying, oh my god, I hadn't even thought of that. And then going to my partner slash husband and going what about this? So there is something to getting very close to your customer that is so valuable because you hear it from the horse's mouth. You know what they're struggling with, you know so, for example, I got on three calls back to back of people who bought my literary cart and literally they were three women online entrepreneurs, and every single one said some variation of I hate technology. Technology is so hard, technology hates me. And it was this messaging that made me say because our, what we try to solve is this idea that technology is hard. But they weren't saying it as technology. They were saying like I hate it, I batted it, it gives me a headache. And what it said to me was lean into that language. That's what people are saying they are struggling with. So, instead of being like we're the easiest platform to use, it was like if you hate technology, this is for you. If you hate learning a new piece of software, this is for you. And we only got that by getting close to our customer. So, 2023, 2023, 20 yes, 2023 was all about figuring that out and it's slow going because you are getting on call after call, you are listening, you are iterating, you are pivoting and now I'm really excited because I believe we have product market fit. We've seen people have tremendous success with our platform and, like we are like, now it's all about okay, how do we scale this? How do we get in front of the right people where this solution is the perfect solution for them?

Speaker 1: 11:30

I love that. You know. I love that you're all about serving your clients, or your customers even better. You know, and I love that you have the time, or you took the time, to really listen to them and you know how to connect to them as well through, you know, different messaging on, maybe your social media platforms or on your website. So I love that. And so you have three online businesses and you have a podcast, and we only have 24 hours a day. How do you balance your life?

Speaker 2: 12:17

so I have a virtual team. So my for catch my party, my assistant lives in Lisbon and for I also for my low tree cart and our pop-up app, I have a virtual assistant like head of marketing who lives in Mexico, and right now I have two women from the Philippines helping me as well. And then I also will hire people for for certain specific jobs, but that's kind of my core team and I work with my husband and what I would say is that I've been able to do this by being very intentional about who I bring on my team. So the people who have been like people have been with me for a very, very long time and I think the reason for that is because what you see is what you get like I'm gonna be completely like. What I say before I hire somebody is I'm gonna be complete like. I think I'm a very nice person. So when I say I'm gonna be completely honest with you, it's not like and I'm gonna be mean and say mean things not at all, but I'm not gonna be around the bush. So if there's a job to be done, I'm gonna spell it out for you. I'm gonna say I am open for questions. I will have videos to show you the standard operating procedure and I will then say how's it going. So what I do when I bring somebody on, I say I give a there, I find figure out a very specific task. I do not hire somebody to beat everything, to say well you know, we're gonna have more needs and then you're gonna maybe do social media. I don't do that. What I do is in my business. I see a very small problem, something I need. So, for example, somebody takes my images for my podcast and posts them on social media, but specifically, they posted here, they posted here, they posted here, and that was the job. What I will say. And I will record a video and say here's what I want you to do, here's what the job entails. And I will walk you through, recording my screen, how I want this done. And the reason I do a video is because that way they can go back to it and back to it and back to it, rather than either I write it out or I tell them over a Zoom call. I don't want that. I want it to be like this is. And, by the way, I don't say in the video hey, marie, here's how I do this. I record it one time because I know, if, ultimately, marie leaves, that I need to be able to repurpose this video. So I'll go okay, today I'm gonna explain how I would like to do this. I'm gonna go back to Instagram. This is my. I tell what the goal is and then I go through the steps and then I always say come back to me with questions. And I hire somebody for two weeks and say, at the end of two weeks, we're gonna talk and I'm gonna say how is it for you? And I'll give you my assessment of how it is for me. And if we both agree, we continue on. And we still are just doing. This small task shows up and because I like this person's work for task number one, I'll go do you have more time to do task number two? So you prove to me that you are a hard worker and that you listen and that you can follow direction and that maybe even you have ideas, like if you find something, like you say you're like I work for this other person, she does it this way. What do you think I'm so open to that? Like I'm not like you know. I'm like, hey, give me your ideas, I might take them, I might not, but I love that and if you can prove that you are awesome, I will give you more and more work and that's how I do it. So I kind of step it up, but with very specific tasks. You're not my social media manager, because I don't know what that is. You might manage my Instagram and my Pinterest and that's like what the job is, but I'm not gonna just go well, we're gonna work for 30 hours a week and I'll fill your time, because what does that mean? That's where I have found communication to be so valuable and for it to be this two-way street.

Speaker 1: 17:07

I love that and you know I have met so many entrepreneurs and I'm the one currently doing sales for my business, and so business owners, you know they come to me and they tell me about, you know their pain points and what they wanted for a virtual assistant. So some business owners they would say I want just one virtual assistant who can do everything for me, and some business owners would say I want multiple virtual assistants with different skillset. And so I feel like we do. You're leaning more towards the latter part, so tell me more about that, why you wanted it that way, why you didn't want to assign different tasks to your virtual assistant.

Speaker 2: 17:53

Because I think that running it's very much what we talked about previously. When I go, okay, I'm gonna create a sales funnel, right, and you go, what does that mean? Okay, how do we break this down? So for me to expect that I'm gonna hire somebody and go, you just create my sales funnel, Like I'm gonna kind of just give that to you. I promise you that will not. I don't know, it could turn out terrific, but in general, they don't know your business like you know your business. They don't know your messaging like you know your messaging. So I'm gonna say, you have to put in the work upfront to get the results you want. So, exactly like you said, like, hey, I just want a VA who's gonna like handle everything. What is everything? Well, I don't wanna think about what everything is. It'll like come to me at certain tasks and like, this person's gonna be a mind reader. I guess that's it, To assume that somebody can read your mind and know exactly how you want to handle emails or handle whatever. Like you've gotta think it through and that is hard. In the past, for example, I hired somebody to handle Facebook ads right. She was gonna make the ads, optimize the ads, the whole thing and what I realized was she didn't know our business like we know our business. So her messaging was like she's very talented at Facebook ads, but you've got to live and breathe our business in order to be good at Facebook ads for us. So you can't. You want to go? Well, I'm just gonna outsource this, but I don't think it's that easy. And, Kristi, what do you think? Do you think that what I'm saying is correct?

Speaker 1: 19:40

Well, that's actually the reason why the business model of my agency, smartvac, is kind of different as compared to other agencies, because we provide a team of virtual assistants with different skillset. Because my belief is that if us business owners, we don't expect ourselves to do everything for a business, then we shouldn't expect our VA to do everything for a business as well, because they have their own strengths and weaknesses and they are passionate about some specific tasks. So we cannot expect a social media VA to work on website development, because those two are very you know very different specialties yeah, very different. And so, yeah, I am more leaning towards, you know, having a virtual assistant for specific things and, plus, I don't want to put my card onto just one person. If something happens to that one person, I wanted to have that assurance that I have somebody else that I can rely on in terms of support. But I also understand those other business owners who only want just one dedicated virtual assistant, and that is because they don't have the budget to pay for multiple virtual assistants.

Speaker 2: 21:04

Right, but then I think, though I think you have to go down that path with that VA Like, you can't just assume, hey, you go learn web design. Yes, yes, it's like you've got to know. So back to the idea of, like, being a social media manager. Well, there are a whole host of ways to post on TikTok or Instagram or wherever, and so you've got to figure out what is the way you want to do it and then get that person on board, because if you say, hey, you just go handle this, who knows what they're going to do? So you do have to have a lot of different knowledge. You might not have to go as deep, especially as this person is then learning your business and what works, and things like that, but that's where being in conversation with them is super useful. So, let's say, they are going off to write blog posts, right? Well, they might have a new strategy that they've learned that is helpful to come back and teach you and tell you about, but at the beginning, you need to know more than they do, or you have a certain way of figuring out how do you want to do blog posts, and I think that when you are an online entrepreneur, you are going to wear multiple hats. It's just the nature of unless you're like a billionaire, you can just hire people and just be the face of it. But in reality it's so funny because when we started catching my party right, we've grown into the largest party ideas site and I had an assistant at the time and she said to me you know what? I didn't realize because I'd be invited to speak at all these conferences and whatever. Go to parties. She's like at the end of the day, you're sweeping the floors. I mean, I'm not physically sweeping the floors of my online business, but like the idea that at the end of the day, I'm tagging stuff, I'm doing the crap work that has to get done that even she can't do, I'm in the back end and I'm whatever, I'm mucking around, that like that work has to get done and I'm doing it. So it's not again like online business is not glamorous. You look on Instagram and it looks glamorous. It is not glamorous.

Speaker 1: 23:17

Exactly. Yeah, it's not like your Mark Zuckerberg, right? Or Elon Musk, or we're not billionaires yet. But yeah, that's exactly what I say. To those business owners who want just one dedicated virtual assistant. I say that if you want a dedicated virtual assistant, then that virtual assistant needs to grow with you. You know you got to train that virtual assistant. You cannot expect your VA to read your mind and know exactly how you want a thing done.

Speaker 2: 23:45

So, yeah, and one thing, too, that I have learned so much, especially helping people sell digital products, and this is how I think about online business building. It is all about putting out things like having a hypothesis and then doing tests to test whether this is right and is this working and is this product selling? Is this what my audience wants? Because if you see what somebody else is doing and you think, well, this will work for me. It might not work for you, but something else will work for you. So the whole idea is to be testing, testing, testing. And if you have a VA, testing with your VA meaning getting that person on your team to say, okay, we're going to run a bunch of tests, we're going to try this and try this. So, for example, people will come to me and say, yeah, I tried selling digital products. Like I set up, I created a course and it didn't sell. So or I wrote an ebook and it didn't sell, so digital products don't work for me. And I say, no, these digital products didn't work for you. But the goal is to create digital products faster, to put them out there, to see where you get traction and then build off of that and when people take that advice. So I teach this thing called B minus work, because we're all perfectionists and we all don't want to be judged, and so we work too hard on creating these things for our business, where we think this is going to turn me into a millionaire. And I will tell you, I promise you that your ebook is not going to make you a millionaire, but it is a stepping stone to that place, because if people buy your ebook I'm not saying your ebook cannot do well for you, make you thousands of dollars, but when you ultimately find that connection of, oh my God, this is what my people want from me, this is the problem I can solve for them and they purchase from you, then what else can you sell them? What else can? How can you take them on a deeper journey with you? And in this world with AI, ultimately, information is infinite. All I'm going to do is go to my AI best friend and say, hey, here's a photo of what's in my fridge. You know I'm lactose intolerant. What can I make for dinner? And you're not necessarily going to go to Pinterest and find a recipe, right, it's just like it wouldn't make as much sense Like. Ultimately, we will get the information. However, if there is somebody who blogs about being lactose intolerant and has a blog of recipes and stuff, but I connect with her or him, then they become into my universe as a human. So I believe the best way to compete against AI is to show up as a human, to show up as somebody people can connect to, because that's where you're going to build your business in the future, by competing against AI that is infinite, that has exactly information. So that's the thing that I continue to tell people you've got to step outside of your business and be a person who's got foibles and weirdness and whatever but, that's like what makes you special and relatable and that's where people connect with you.

Speaker 1: 27:34

I totally can relate to that. I believe that authenticity and being real is the best marketing approach nowadays. Like at the beginning of my business probably during the first year of my business I was so scared showing up online, you know, because you know, I'm not really from the States, I have an accent and sometimes I mess up my grammar and all that kind of stuff, you know. So I was like afraid of showing up, but I was able to overcome that. How I just did it? I did it consistently, to the point where I was confident now to talk to people and I don't even think about my flaws anymore, you know, because my flaws, they're what makes me unique, you know Exactly. Like sometimes when I'm with my friends I say things that is not even funny to me and they all laugh. I was like it's not funny. It's like no, christy, the way how you said it, it's funny. It's just who you are You're a funny person.

Speaker 2: 28:25

I was like, okay, cool, so tell me the idea that not everybody's going to connect with you Like somebody might be like whoa, she's got an accent. I can't understand her or what I believe me I can. Yeah, I mean, I think we have like a very charming accent, but my point is that's okay. It's okay to not please everybody. It's about pleasing a very specific type of person who goes Christy's so charming and she's so funny and whatever. That's who you want to attract to you. And the way you do that is by putting yourself out authentically and not worrying that somehow you're not as perfect. Nobody's perfect and that's what's charming.

Speaker 1: 29:08

Exactly, you got to find your own tribe. You got to find your own people. Not everybody's going to like you, and so what's big? It's big. The internet is big, exactly, yeah, and not all negative things are bad for you. You know negative things or negative feedback can also be used to improve yourself and to be more passionate about what you're doing. You know you can let it. You know fire you up. It's either you can you let it fire you up or you let it give you more passion to do what you do. You know if that makes sense.

Speaker 2: 29:45

Absolutely so. It's interesting, just to share. So I, of course, get to see the back end of my luxury cart and where people are having the most success. And lo and behold, yes, they are selling ebooks and all of that, and that is a definite way. I would recommend somebody start and get their feet wet and you can now use chat GPT and, in fact, if any, I have an ebook that I sell, but I will give it away for free to anybody who reaches out to me at Jillian at MiloTreecom, and what it is is it is an ebook that will show you how to use chat GPT to write your own ebook in under three hours, with all of the prompts, and it will lead you through the entire process. I love it so. So it's now possible to create digital products super duper easily. Where people are making the most money is online memberships showing up live with people solving a problem for them, whether it be weight loss, whether it be mindset, whether it be parenting, whether it be money managing something like that, building communities and then monetizing those communities, because that is recurring revenue. I can get you into my membership and keep you there for a while by being real, being helpful. All of that, I will make a lot of money to coaching right, what do I know that I take for granted that might help somebody else. And remember I only need to be one or two steps ahead of where this other person is in their journey. But if I can again be human, be real, be helpful, people are making money that way. And the third way is doing online workshops, which is kind of like a small version of your membership but a great way to test it, which is I'm going to cook in my, let's say it's so funny because the more real, the better Like people are like oh my kitchen's not nice. And I'm like trust me, if you show up with real value and feel a sense of connection, people are not going to judge your kitchen. So teaching something, talking about something in a very short, like one hour session on Zoom, is where people are making the most money like bang for your buck. So those are the three things that I would aspire to, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't be selling my templates and I wouldn't be selling my printables or my ebook or any of my digital downloads. Courses are interesting. Everybody wants to create a course. However, I say do not create your course unless you have pre-sold it three times. So you can go to your friends and be like I'm going to create a course, would you buy it? And they'll all go, yeah, we'll totally buy it. Or you could post on Facebook and be like would you buy my course? Everybody's going to say, oh, of course I'll buy your course. No, get their credit card. Get their credit card. If you can get their credit card. Go make your course, but make it shorter, make it less perfect than you think and work with the people who pre-sell your course to optimize it, like how I am getting on calls with people for my Loji card because you think you know and you don't necessarily know.

Speaker 1: 33:34

Yeah, exactly, I love that. So when launching a digital product at one point, at what point should we hire a virtual assistant?

Speaker 2: 33:42

Ooh, that's a very good question. It depends on really what it is. What I would recommend is going through the process yourself. This is that idea of like you've got to learn, right, you've got to, you've got to figure it out yourself. So, let's say you're going to create templates In fact, I've done this before which is, let's say, I hire somebody who knows Canva better than I do. What I might do is sketch out what I want, or maybe do something crappy in Canva and be like this is what I want. Now let's go take this printable. So let's say I'm a kids activity blogger, right? And I decide I'm going to create kids activities for different holidays. So Valentine's Day, let's say, is coming up and I go look and, by the way, go do research, see what other people are doing and having success with, and then say how can I make this my own? How can I make it better? What would I want that would make it better? But borrow from people, do not reinvent the wheel. And so you will sketch out what you want and then you'll say hey, va, what do you think about this? Maybe they have better canvas skills than you do. You say, can you create this? And then you go OK, what other holidays could I roll this out for? So it could be St Patrick's Day, it could be Easter, it could be, who knows, like July 4th, whatever it is, so that you're working with that VA rather than saying to the VA, hey, va, you go figure this out, you come up with a master plan and duplicate. And that's what's so helpful about VA's, especially at the beginning. You come up with the template and then you say so that I don't have to spend all those hours doing St Patrick's Day and Easter and whatever you say, you go do this, but the first one, you need to do a lot of the heavy lifting. Right and if you can then say let's now offer 20 different kids activity printables. Wow, it's kind of like the VA is rocket fuel. But I wouldn't again. I would work with the VA or do it yourself where you come up with the first one. So you do a paid workshop, right? Or you say I'm going to teach this specific thing for an hour on Zoom. Well, you've got to. Really, maybe your VA is great at ideating with you. I recommend just even using chat GPT to kind of talk it through with chat GPT to get ideas. But you have to do the first conception of what this looks like. Don't leave that. Don't think that your VA again is a mind reader. But you do it and it's successful. And, by the way, while you're doing something the first time, write down what you're doing, like in a notebook, in pencil, or go OK. So first thing I need to do break it down into different tasks, do start to record the process, even if you don't yet know what the process is going to be. You'll be like, ok, well, what I know I need to do is I need to come up with this concept and I know I'm going to need to promote this like my workshop, and then I know I'm going to need a tool like my electric car with our sales pages. Ok, I know I'm going to need this sales page in some way to collect money and I know I'm going to need to be emailing these people, but anyway, at my electric cart, one thing we do is we have all of these steps laid out for you, because what we discovered was people were like yeah, I want to do this, but I don't know how. So we've created launch calendars where, say, do this on day one, do this on day two, do this on day three, and here are templates for the email to send. Go, send this email on this day. Go, post this on social media on this day. Go, show up live on this day, and then we can walk you through the whole process. But it's exactly that same thing the first time. By the way, how did I do this? Because I was leading paid workshops and I'd write down exactly what I did. Be somebody who makes note of processes, because the more you do that, the more success you will have Hiring a VA, which is like rocket fuel, so that you can say go, rinse and repeat this.

Speaker 1: 38:12

Right, I love that and it's really important. I agree with what you said it's really important that you make a plan first before hiring a virtual assistant and then don't expect your VA to be the business owner.

Speaker 2: 38:29

You know what I mean.

Speaker 1: 38:30

Like don't expect your VA to be the strategies, to be the business coach, because you didn't hire them for that. You hired your VA to support you with the task that you cannot do yourself, whether you can't do it because you don't know how to do it or because you don't have the time to do it. So I think that is very, very important to be able to distinguish what is your virtual assistant responsibility as compared to a business coach, to you as the business owner and to other strategies. So do you want to add more to that before we? No well.

Speaker 2: 39:02

I think that to think about your VA as rocket fuel, as somebody who can rinse and repeat, and to hopefully follow what the tasks are that you outlined, I think you're so right, which is you can't take yourself out of your business. There is a task you hate and that you can give to your VA, but you have to go through that task at some point in the beginning and outline that task. Then you can give it to your VA Exactly. I don't think. But I like that idea, like do not think. Like how we hired this Facebook expert and thought she'll know what she does, what she's doing and realized very quickly that she does know what she's doing in terms of Facebook ads. But Facebook ads have to work because it's your business, your advertising, and that was such a powerful lesson for us.

Speaker 1: 40:00

Exactly so. As we wrap up, what advice can you give to a content creator or to an entrepreneur who's wanting to launch a digital project while at the same time experiencing freedom and flexibility? Move?

Speaker 2: 40:19

quickly, move quickly and test and assume that a lot of your tests will fail. I mean, I hope they don't, but know that just because you've got a hypothesis of what will work, you've now got to go test that to see if it works and get feedback and iterate. So this idea of being a perfectionist and thinking you're going to go off, create the perfect product and then sell it and it's going to magically work it's messier than that and so therefore, the first time when you're putting this out there, make it much more raw, rough than you think, because that product needs to kind of go through this process of getting shaped and morphed and it's like a puzzle piece, right, and you don't exactly know how it's going to fit in. But it will. But you've got to go. Oh, I got to shape this piece in a certain way in terms of, say, the language that I'm using to communicate the value. Or I need to adjust my product because it's solving half of the problem but not the full problem. Or my product is I think it's going to connect to moms, but no, no, no, it's going to connect to, like, gen Z's who aren't married. You know what I mean. So it's kind of like you've got to be out there iterating, changing, adjusting, pivoting and find that to be your superpower. That's what I would say. That's how you find product market fit. You do not find it on the first try, do not make things perfect, move faster than you think and talk to people.

Speaker 1: 42:04

Right, you can plan everything in your business, but be prepared to also change that plan, you know, as the need arises. You know, because sometimes we plan based on just what we see currently and we try our best to anticipate what's going to happen in the future. But we can only anticipate as much, you know.

Speaker 2: 42:26

So I would say one last thing. I see too many people do this. I'm going to go create a course because again I've asked my friends and three of them said they would buy it and I'm going to go off for six months and record all the sessions, create all the downloads, work on using some sort of expensive course platform and I have now worked really hard For six months. I come back and I try to sell this course and it is crickets or I sell for and I have spent six months of hard work like I'm not lazy. I am working hard, but I am not. I'm off in my own little world in my mind, thinking this course is going to make me a million dollars. Wait till people see what I've created and it doesn't work like that. So if I can say to you, if you're that person right now working on your course, I go no, no. Here here's what to do. Go, try and pre-sell it. Give it to at a discount, right? Instead of your $500 course, give it, sell it to people for $250. And say I'm giving you a big discount and work with them. Go do a one hour live paid workshop where you're talking about what you ultimately want to put in your course. See, what resonates with people Like this is where it's like get down and dirty rather than hey, I'm, beautifully, I set up my recording studio, I got the big camera ready, I've got the lights, I'm recording these sessions like, please don't do that, go use your iPhone, go show up, live with people, make it messy, but that's how you find success faster.

Speaker 1: 44:07

Exactly, and I love what you said about moving quickly, because at the time you're planning your course, at that moment there might be a need for that course, but after six months or a year the economy changes and the need of the business owners they change all the time. So you got to move quickly. It doesn't have to be perfect. I love what people say done is better than perfection, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 44:36

It's a trap and it will burn you out. So get out there, get on calls with people, start DMing people. Like really, that is my message for 2024 is connect, because we are so isolated that we think we know and we don't know, and it's uncomfortable. But go push yourself to be uncomfortable in 2024.

Speaker 1: 44:59

Exactly, and that's how I love about interviewing people on a podcast like this, and that's why I'm happy that you're here, because I learned from people like you because I'm not expert in digital products, and so I love how we're able to share best practices and learn from one another. It's not like we know everything. We should strip off ourself of pride and entitlement, believing that we know everything and we're the best. We're not really.

Speaker 2: 45:31

No, we're making it up as we go along, we are.

Speaker 1: 45:33

Exactly yeah, so where can people find you online, jillian?

Speaker 2: 45:37

Okay, so email me at Jillian at MyLowTreecom if you want me to send you my ebook on how you can write an ebook in three hours. Two, find me at MyLowTreecom. You can learn all about my Low Tree Cart Again. We're selling it for a lifetime deal of $349. Buy it now and own it forever. You will have your easy software to sell digital downloads, paid workshops, championships, coaching and courses. This is simple, plus over 100 marketing materials like launch calendars to say, do this on day one, do this on day two and by day 10, you will have a workshop all set up, everything like that. Please follow me on Instagram at MyLowTree Super easy, and I'm doing some fun stuff there where I'm really trying to show up and be real and have messy hair, you know, and just be like this is who I am on a Thursday.

Speaker 1: 46:42

Yes, I love it. I love it. You know what it's so funny? Because you may, I mean, you can see me, jillian, but if you're listening to this podcast episode on Spotify or iTunes and if you're now watching it on YouTube, I may look like right now I look like I'm prepared, I'm wearing, I'm wearing a nice blouse, but I'm actually wearing a pajama down below.

Speaker 2: 47:04

I get it, I get it, I totally get it, I get it.

Speaker 1: 47:09

I think this is what I love about owning your own business, you know, being able to wear what you want, being able to just have the freedom to to to work on times where you feel like you got to work, you know, and don't work on times where you feel like you don't want to work. I love the freedom that this gift is, you know, giving us, you know, and I and I believe our business is a gift, you know, and and we have to steward it really really well. Well, thank you so much for your time today, Jillian. I learned a lot from you and I'm sure our audience are going to be learning a lot from this episode as well.

Speaker 2: 47:47

Well, thank you so much for having me. I've had a great time Me too, thank you.