The Savvy Seller with Kristen Doyle

155. Behind the Scenes: 5 Things I'm Testing in My Business Right Now

• Kristen Doyle, TPT seller, SEO coach, and web designer

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I’m taking you behind the scenes to share five things I’m testing in my business right now—no fluff, no perfect outcomes, just honest experimentation. From swapping out boring freebies for engaging quiz funnels to using AI and automations to streamline my workflow, I’m giving you a peek into what’s working (and what’s still a work in progress).

If you’ve been feeling stuck or unsure how to evolve your business, this episode is for you. These strategies are helping me build a more efficient and authentic business, and they might be just what you need to shake things up, too!

01:34 - Quiz funnels as a new lead magnet

03:48 - Extended email nurture sequences

05:20 -  Why I’m working to eliminate content switching (and what that even means!)

07:52 - AI and workflow automations I’m creating to work more efficiently

11:00 - Embracing “messy” and authentic content 

Links & Resources:

Show Notes: https://kristendoyle.co/episode155 

Tired of constantly hustling to sell your digital products? Check out my free 19-minute training where I show you how to turn all those products you already have into a profitable, automated business. 

 

Get more freedom and less stress ➡️ watch now at kristendoyle.co/training 

Check out my Everything Page at https://kristendoyle.co/everything

Kristen:

Last week, I shared three trends I'm noticing in online business right now. But it is one thing to spot the trends, and it's another thing altogether to actually do something about them. So today, I am sharing a little behind the scenes peek at five things I am experimenting with in my own business right now. Some of them are going great. Some of them I'm still figuring out, and chances are at least one of them might totally flop. But that is the beauty of experimenting in your business. You test, you learn, you adapt, you try again. So if you have been feeling stuck in some routines that aren't really working for you, or maybe last week's episode left you wondering how to actually implement changes based on some of those shifts we've been seeing in online business lately, then today's episode is for you. Are you a digital product or course creator, selling on platforms like Teachers Pay Teachers, Etsy, or your own website? Ready to grow your business, but not into the kind of constant hustle that leads straight to burnout? Then you're in the right place. Welcome to The Savvy Seller. I'm Kristen Doyle, and I'm here to give you no-fluff tools and strategies that move the needle for your business without burning you out in the process—things like SEO, no stress marketing, email list building, automations, and so much more. Let's get started, y'all. Okay, so the first thing that I am testing right now is ditching the traditional PDF freebie for something way more fun and interactive—quiz funnels. If you haven't heard of a quiz funnel, well, let's be real, you've seen them. If you don't realize what's going on, you've definitely seen them. I am so over the whole download another PDF thing, right? And honestly, so is everyone else. We probably all have 47 PDFs sitting in our downloads folder that we never actually read, and another 100 that got emailed to us and we didn't even download. But quizzes are just more fun, right? When we see a quiz come across our news feed somewhere, or we see a quiz in our inbox, we get excited about taking them because we want to learn something about ourselves or about whatever that topic is. And all the experts I've been talking to about what's working for email marketing right now says quiz funnels are converting really, really well these days. Here's what I really love about it, though. Instead of giving everybody the same PDF download with the same generic 10 ways to grow your business, whatever it is, list, people can get personalized results based on how they actually answer the questions. Now, I don't wanna sound all super markety, but the strategic piece of this that I'm so excited about is that I can actually see how people are answering and give them automatically the content that actually helps them with their specific situation. So like, if one person is struggling with getting traffic to their website, versus another person has tons of traffic but can't get it to convert, they're totally different problems, and these two people need totally different solutions. So they can actually get different recommendations at the end of the quiz. So that is how I'm working to get people onto my email list right now, but once they're there, I need to actually nurture them properly. And this one is directly responding to the trend I mentioned last week about how people are needing way more touch points before they ever buy anything from you. So one thing that I am implementing in both my businesses is building out much longer more detailed nurture content for those brand new people who join my email list. Instead of throwing new subscribers straight into my regular weekly emails I send out, which kind of assume that this person already knows me, I am creating this nurture content to kind of bridge between just downloading the freebie or just taking that quiz in the quiz funnel to really learning about who I am, how I work, what I believe, so that those people aren't then totally lost when they start getting my regular emails that maybe reference things I've been talking about for years, as if you should know, because those emails are really meant for people who've been around longer. I'm basically creating that get to know you time frame in my email marketing that people really need before they're ready to start investing in something that you're selling. Because let's be real, if someone finds you through a Facebook ad or a post they see on their feed, or maybe they sign up for your lead magnet from a Pinterest pin, those people need way more time to trust you than somebody who's been following you for months or even years. Now, I just shared that I am creating a lot of content. I am creating a quiz, which requires lots of questions and answers, and it requires those customized responses for the end depending on how you answer. I'm also creating these nurture emails. And creating all this content efficiently requires me to work with my brain, not against it. Now I have talked about this a little bit in an episode a couple weeks ago about how I'm planning out my week with chat GPT, but this is something I am really trying to focus in on right now. It's probably going to be super relatable if you're somebody who feels like you're scattered and pulled in a million directions all the time. See, what I am trying out is really working hard to eliminate content switching. That's when we switch gears between tasks. And what I have discovered is that as much as my brain wants to switch gears between tasks, I'm really bad at it, like terrible at it. See what happens is it drains my mental energy and I forget stuff constantly. I don't know if I should even say I'm terrible at it. I actually can switch tasks. It's just not efficient for me. I don't do my best work when I'm switching tasks. So a perfect example, I used to sit down and outline a bunch of podcast episodes all in one because the outlining felt like one task to me. So I sat down and I would outline a ton of podcast episodes, and then I would record them later on, on different days. But the problem is, I would sit down to record and be like, Wait, what was I thinking when I wrote that bullet point? What was the story I was gonna tell here? And I can't remember, and I'm having to almost re-plan the entire episode before I can record. So now I create my outline and I record right away, while all those thoughts are fresh in my head. It is really helping so much, because I am doing way less mental gymnastics. My episode outlines don't need to be as detailed, because I'm recording immediately, so all the ideas are still fresh. Just needs to be enough, really, to guide me through and make sure I don't get totally off track or forget something important. And I think it's turning out to be way better episodes as well. So it's really all about working until either I finish a task completely or I find like a natural stopping point for the day. Because what I find is, if I break big projects up and I do an hour now and an hour this afternoon, I just lose track of where I was and what I was thinking, and it takes me longer to get back in the swing of things. So instead, I will work all morning on one project, and if I finish it, great, and if I don't, I'm gonna come back and work on it some more after I some more after I eat lunch. The goal being to get to a point that I feel either finished or I'm at a really good, natural stopping point for the day on whatever that project was. Now one other way I am trying to work more efficiently is experimenting with some automations. Now this is where I am getting really nerdy with AI and workflow automations, but in a way that still keeps my brain and my personality and my ideas at the heart of everything that I'm doing. So one thing I did is I set up this automation where I can instantly start recording a voice memo on my phone. I don't have to go unlock my phone and go find my voice memos app and hit the start button. I have one button. I can instantly start recording that voice memo. I can share all of my thoughts, whatever they may be. Maybe it's a to do list, maybe it's an idea for something, maybe I'm mapping out a podcast episode while I'm on a walk or driving around or sitting in the car rider pickup line. But I can instantly record that voice memo, and then I can send it straight to Make, which is what I'm using for automations now, I used to use Zapier, but I have switched over to Make for a lot of reasons, one of them is it's a lot cheaper. Once I get it into Make, I can run that voice memo through some prompts that process whatever I said, and I can have it show up wherever I need it. So I can have it create a to do list in my Notion app. I can have it make a Google Doc, with an outline for an episode, or with plans for a product I want to create. Whatever I need to do with it, I can set that all up in Make. It is so great for capturing ideas when I'm not at my computer, and I don't know about you, but that is when I have almost all my best ideas anyway. When I'm sitting at my computer, I'm usually doing the work, not brainstorming the ideas. So it's when I'm sitting around in the car rider line, or I'm driving by myself, or taking a walk, or whatever, that is when I get the really good ideas, because my brain is free to think about things. And so now I can record those ideas, capture them so I don't forget, and get those things onto my computer where they can actually get done. Now I have to share, I am also definitely automating all those little routine tasks, like when someone joins my membership, they automatically get tagged in Kit and added to my community platform, those sorts of things that don't need my brainpower. And honestly, it's the exact same steps every single time. So they really don't even need me to do the input, but they were taking up mental space, and they were creating more to do list items for me to do. What I really love about this whole approach right now is that I'm able to use AI and automation tools without losing the me part out of my content. So I'm letting automations handle the things that don't need me, and I am using my ideas, my creativity, my voice, and just letting the tools help me capture that, process it, and put it into my to do list, or wherever I need to store that information for when I'm ready to do the work. All of these behind the scenes changes are also kind of changing how I'm trying to show up publicly. So the last thing I'm experimenting with, actually, I've been experimenting with this for a while now. It is really more about mindset and how I'm presenting myself and my business to the world. Instead of waiting until I have the perfect results and a finished case study and all of those things, I am embracing doing it messy, and I am trying to share stuff while I'm still figuring it out. This episode is a perfect example of that. I am telling you about experiments that I am running in my business right now, not about something I have perfected and proven and I know it's gonna work for you. This, to me, honestly feels way more authentic, and people seem to connect with it better than the super polished, here's my foolproof system for five ways to XYZ, content. So I'm just really embracing the whole idea that done and messy is so much better than perfect, but never finished and never published. Especially right now, when, like I said in the last episode, people really are craving that authenticity over the overly polished, perfect stuff that you kind of wonder if it was just created by AI. Alright, so here is what I want you to do with all of this. Pick one of these things that I'm experimenting with that feels relevant to your business or to where you are in your life right now. So maybe, if you are trying to build your email list, then try something interactive, like a quiz instead of making one more PDF. If you're feeling super scattered all the time, start with the task switching thing, or stop with the task switching thing. Start working on how you can minimize that context switching. If you're always having ideas and forget about them, then set up some automation so that you can voice record those. Or even if you can't set up the automation yet, go ahead and start voice recording. Because, if you have an iPhone, Voice Memos now automatically transcribes, so you can grab that transcript, copy it and paste it wherever you want, even without an automation. Whatever it is, give it a real test. Try it for a month. Don't expect it to be perfect right away. I am still tweaking all of these things as I go, and I will tell you, setting up my automations was quite the exercise in testing, finding errors and fixing them. So don't expect it all to be perfect right away. That's just part of the process is testing and tweaking as you go. And then start with just one. Like I said, don't try to overhaul everything all at one time. I know I'm sharing five things I'm experimenting with right now, but they didn't all start on the same day, either. These are things that I have started over time, and I'm just still working on experimenting with each one as we go. So I mentioned my quiz funnel experiment, and I would love for you to be part of it. I have created a quiz that helps you figure out what your next steps are, what you should be focused on the most right now, to grow your own digital product seller business. It takes just a couple of minutes and you're going to get personalized recommendations based on your answers. You'll find the link in the show notes, or you can just head to kristendoyle.co/quiz. I'll talk to you soon.