Episode 88: jillian leslie on ditching the tech headaches and selling digital products with ease

Monica Froese [00:00:01]:
Welcome to the Empowered Business Podcast where strategy needs action. I’m Monica Froese, and I’m here to help you create, sell, and scale digital products the smart way using AI and proven strategies to build a sustainable, profitable business. If you’re ready to turn your expertise into digital products that sell and eventually grow into a thriving digital shop, you’re in the right place. Each week, I break down real world tactics, unfiltered insights, and bold business moves. Because building a digital product business should be sustainable, scalable, and designed for long term success. Let’s ditch the fluff, leverage AI to work smarter, and turn your expertise into a thriving digital empire on your terms. Let’s get started. Welcome back to another episode of the Empowered Business Podcast.

Monica Froese [00:00:51]:
This week, I have another awesome interview for you. It’s with Jillian Leslie, and she is the founder of MiloTree. And in this episode, we talk about all of the ways that AI is changing the digital product landscape. Jillian has been in the digital product world for about as long as I have. I’ve known her for many, many years. And so her insight, I feel, is particularly valuable because she runs a software company, that helps people sell their digital product. So she sees a lot of trends. And so that’s what we’re gonna be talking about today.

Monica Froese [00:01:28]:
But before we jump in, I just wanna tell you a little bit about Jillian. Like I said, she is the founder of MiloTree, a software startup that helps online entrepreneurs sell digital products and grow their audiences with ease. She is also the host of the Blogger Genius podcast, where for the past six years, she has interviewed top online entrepreneurs, content creators, and industry experts. Jillian is passionate about empowering entrepreneurs to build thriving online businesses that give them the freedom and flexibility they desire. She lives in Austin, Texas with her husband and cofounder David and their daughter Lainie who will be attending Stanford in the fall. Alright. Let’s dive in and hear everything that Jillian has to share with us about the digital product line landscape in the age of AI. Jillian, welcome to the Empowered Business podcast.

Monica Froese [00:02:14]:
I’m so excited that you’re here to talk all about digital products.

Jillian Leslie [00:02:19]:
Oh, I’m so excited to talk about it as well with you. Like, I feel like we have a lot of catching up to do in terms of where the market is.

Monica Froese [00:02:27]:
For real. Like, Jillian and I have known each other for a long time. We’ve recorded podcast episodes in the past. But before we dive into that, I always like to ask everyone to tell us about themselves and their entrepreneur journey.

Jillian Leslie [00:02:38]:
Okay. So very briefly, my entrepreneurial journey started in 02/2009 when I built catch my party with my husband. So he does all the technical stuff, and I do all the marketing and front facing stuff. And we’ve grown our site into the largest party ideas site on the web. If you go to Pinterest, for example, and are looking for party ideas, chances are you’re gonna click on a pin that’s gonna lead you to our site. Anyway, when Facebook stopped driving us so much traffic when they started to turn down the spigot, what we noticed was Pinterest, without us doing anything, was driving us traffic. And we said, hey. How do we double down on this? So my husband built a pop up that is on catch my party.

Jillian Leslie [00:03:22]:
If you go right now, you’ll see it. And it just says super simple, follow us on Pinterest. It’s populated with our most recent pins, and it worked. And right now, I think we have over close to 2,000,000 followers on Pinterest. I haven’t looked recently. Anyway, we did it all organically. And we said, hey. If this works for us, maybe we could roll this out for other bloggers, other content creators who wanna grow their social media followers on Pinterest.

Jillian Leslie [00:03:47]:
And it worked for them too. And then they said, what about Instagram? What about YouTube? What about Facebook? What about TikTok? What about growing my email list? And so what we did was we’ve built out our pop up to do all of this. And what problem everybody now talks in terms of the problem they solve. We solve the problem of simple to use. Technology is a bear. I don’t care what anybody says. It is hard, and it’s hard for everybody. So if you think you’re the only one who struggles, I promise you everybody struggles.

Jillian Leslie [00:04:24]:
So we said, hey. If you could install this pop up on your WordPress site in two minutes and all of a sudden start growing your social media followers, awesome. And it worked. And it does work if you have traffic to your site. Then during the pandemic, I was hosting a group because I was lonely. And what I noticed was a bunch of bloggers had built big communities. Like, they had big Facebook groups or they had big newsletters or email lists, but they didn’t know how to monetize their groups. And so I said, just randomly, hey.

Jillian Leslie [00:04:58]:
Let me see if I could they wanted to start a membership. So David and I, my husband and I went off, and we started to, like, go ahead. We put this software with this software. It was so hard. And I turned to David, and I said, could we build this? Could we make it easier for people? Could we make the decisions on our side that would work for 95 of our users, and then they don’t have to do this? Could we do this? And we did. So we’ve built out MiloTree to not only include our pop up, but to allow bloggers, creators, coaches, online entrepreneurs to sell digital products simply. So you’ve got an ebook, which we’ll talk about where I recommend you start and upload the ebook to our site. We’ll deliver it directly to your customer.

Jillian Leslie [00:05:51]:
We integrate with Stripe, which is the best in class credit card processor. We give you AI generated sales pages with their own unique URL so you can share it everywhere and get sales. You could literally set this all up in under ten minutes, and that is the problem we solve. So you can sell membership and then, again, we’re not we you can sell a membership or subscription or anything. We’re not the membership platform. We say, go use Zoom. Go use a Facebook group. Go use the tools you want to use, but use us for payments, for sales pages because email and we can talk about how important email is today.

Jillian Leslie [00:06:36]:
We enable you to offer freebies that we, again, deliver to your subscriber. We integrate with all major email service providers. We don’t wanna be your email service provider, but we enable you to grow your business with ease.

Monica Froese [00:06:55]:
So

Jillian Leslie [00:06:55]:
that’s where we are today.

Monica Froese [00:06:57]:
The selling, collecting the money, and the delivering.

Jillian Leslie [00:07:01]:
And the sales pages that are AI generated.

Monica Froese [00:07:04]:
So the sales pages, the delivery, and taking the money

Jillian Leslie [00:07:09]:
And managing your customers. So somebody wants a refund. You do that through our platform.

Monica Froese [00:07:15]:
What I find so fascinating about people that I have on this podcast is how similar our journeys always are. We start as these bloggers, like I did. So mine started in 02/2013, and then we grew up on Pinterest. I use MiloTree. That Pinterest pop up, I still have it. If you go back through my old Pinterest courses, which are not published anymore, I recommend it MiloTree and it worked and it grew. My redefining mom following, I still get sales because I grew the following. And part of the reason I grew the following was from your pop up.

Monica Froese [00:07:44]:
So I was like, no doubt that works. And when I’m listening to you talk, I think the what we could equate people in my audience might understand is you’re offering a solution that I deem similar to Gumroad or SendOwl. Correct?

Jillian Leslie [00:07:59]:
Yep. Or ThriveCart.

Monica Froese [00:08:00]:
Or ThriveCart. But ThriveCart, we talked before we started recording that ThriveCart is it’s robust. There’s no doubt about that, but it’s cumbersome. And trust me, I’ve gone through honestly, I it’s not ThriveCart’s not all that intuitive. I it’s really not. So what’s that let’s start here so that just so I can level set and understand this. What would you say sets your platform apart from, like, Gumroad or SendOwl?

Jillian Leslie [00:08:29]:
Simplicity. And we and also, by the way, very robust help because you can get on a call with me, and I will help you and help you strategize and all of that. But really simple dashboard, like a help chatbot. And we had signed up for this chatbot years and years ago, and it was free. And so that’s why we put it on our site. And recently, I wanted to change the settings, and it was so hard. So I said, I can’t do this. Like, I can’t find the menus.

Jillian Leslie [00:09:02]:
I can’t be clicking everywhere. And what I realized was I wasn’t really using it. So we looked and did a search, and we found an unbelievably simple free chatbot that is stripped down, that we could install easily, that I can turn on easily. And guess what? I use it, and I upgrade it. And I said to myself, this is exactly what MiloTree is. And I’m like, we’re not a course platform, but I promise you don’t need a course platform. Like, I am saying you wanna grow your business. I hope that you are so successful that you need all these bells and whistles and that you outgrow us.

Jillian Leslie [00:09:49]:
But I promise you, that’s gonna be a long journey. And so far, nobody has outgrown our platform because what we are is easy. So people say to me customers say to me, oh my god. I have my tech guy. And if I wanna create a sales page or sell something, I need my tech guy to do it. But because of MiloTree, it was a woman with a podcast. She’s, oh my god. With MiloTree, I could just create a PDF in Canva for my episodes and then sell them.

Monica Froese [00:10:22]:
Alright. So the sales pages are hosted on your domain, or can it like, can you connect it like, Leadpages, I can connect to my, like, main domain. Can you do that with MiloTree?

Jillian Leslie [00:10:32]:
Here’s the interesting piece. So we give you the URL. Okay. And on our road map is this idea that, oh, there’ll be, like, a WordPress plugin and stuff, but I promise you, most people will not use it. Take our URL. You can customize the permalink, which is the front part of the URL, and it lives at MiloTreeCart.com. And then go use that link. Put it in your nav bar.

Jillian Leslie [00:10:57]:
Put it in a blog post. Put it everywhere. So it’s so funny because people say that exact same thing to me. And then to go, okay. For the, again, 3% of people who want to somehow embed that page on their blog, we’re, like, just use the URL.

Monica Froese [00:11:18]:
Okay. So let’s start here. I have so many questions for you. What type of customers are you attracting? Are these legacy bloggers?

Jillian Leslie [00:11:26]:
These are yes. So we are attracting food bloggers, craft bloggers, coaches, people who and online entrepreneurs who sell a whole host of random things because of the fact that we are simple, people love it. And here’s why. This is the big fallacy I see. I’d love your take on this. Building an online business, especially when you are selling products and services, it is all about trial and error. It is all about moving faster than you want. It is all about putting it out there and seeing what sticks.

Jillian Leslie [00:12:11]:
So people come to me and they go, no. I’ve tried selling digital products. It doesn’t work for me. And I go, really? Okay. Let’s unpack that. What does that mean? I’ve made an ebook. I created a checklist and a guide, and nobody purchased. And I go, great.

Jillian Leslie [00:12:29]:
Okay. That is called I call it an at bat. You went, you swung, and it didn’t work. Great. Have you gotten any feedback? Have you talked to people and said, what exactly are you struggling with? Have you thought about my, what I call, six purchasing triggers? Does your product fit into one of these things which makes your product go from a nice to have to a must have? Could it make somebody money or save somebody money or save somebody time or move somebody toward happiness, move them away from pain, raise their social status. Like, you’ve got to market that way so that somebody goes, oh, this is really gonna change my life. I will take out my credit card. I will purchase this.

Jillian Leslie [00:13:12]:
So how have you put all the pieces together? And then have you experimented with a variety of digital products? And said, okay. You don’t like this? Try this.

Monica Froese [00:13:23]:
And, essentially, what you’re telling me because trust me, I’ve taught thousands of people how to create digital products, and I’ve heard those exact same things. Oh, I launched a digital product. No one wants to buy a digital product from me, and I go through the same exact stuff You just said, we’re making it easy for you to try all these different things. We’re making it easy for you to do the trial and error because you are 100% right. The amount of times I have to kick my students’ butt to just put it up. It is trial and error. And I listen. I had to learn a decade ago, essentially.

Monica Froese [00:13:55]:
I have to move way faster in my business than I wanna move. Yes. I wanted everything to be we’re all perfectionists. Most entrepreneurs are, but we’re also scrappy. And if you get stuck in your perfectionism, nothing gets launched. And my ex would tell me this concept all the time because we grew up in the tech world. And he would say, Monica, MVP, minimum viable product. He tells that all the time.

Monica Froese [00:14:18]:
And I still tell my students that because do I put more like, my products at this point, we don’t launch at MVP status because we’re too far along. We’ve been doing it. We have an established audience. We have a whole system in place. But when you’re new, MVP, because you gotta figure out what works for your audience, and you’re usually growing your audience at the same time. Do you mind sharing? Because this is where we’re gonna get into the gold here. Do you mind sharing how many customers you have?

Jillian Leslie [00:14:43]:
Yeah. Gosh. I’d have to look. Couple thousand.

Monica Froese [00:14:46]:
Couple of them. Okay. So we are one of the things we really wanted to get into is two things. One, what are you seeing working now, and how is AI impacting that? Start with what types of products are you seeing selling right now?

Jillian Leslie [00:15:01]:
Okay. Where I see people start is first using MiloTree to grow their email list with freebies. And by the way, like, we have resources. So for example, I so AI is super helpful if you know what you’re doing and you know how to use it too. Ready for it? Create those tests faster. Create that those freebies faster. Do people want a checklist? Do they want a cheat sheet? Do they want this from me? Do they want a fifteen minute call with me? What is working in terms of getting people to grow your list? The money is in your list. The money is in your email.

Monica Froese [00:15:42]:
100%. Ninety % of the money we make comes from a direct correlation to our email list. That is So

Jillian Leslie [00:15:47]:
please listen to that. And by the way, it took me so long to really internalize that, to really see it in our data. AI. Awesome. Go use our chat GPT prompts. Create a cheat sheet in ten minutes. Get it out there. Secondly, what we’re seeing is people starting with the way that and I think you and I have talked about this in the past.

Jillian Leslie [00:16:10]:
Like, that there is a process to what I call growing your digital product empire. I promise you your ebook is not gonna buy you a second house. But the way that it works is you get your foot in the door, you learn you learn what your people want from you. By the way, it can make you hundreds, if not thousands of dollars. So do not skip that step because they’re easy to create. Do not start by creating a course. Don’t do this. Start with little bets, little bets that you can do over and over again.

Jillian Leslie [00:16:42]:
And with AI, keep creating stuff. Keep building. Keep searching for where you get product, market, fit, where the two pieces come together. I’m offering something. People wanna buy it from me. I say this a lot on my podcast. You are a miner mining for gold. And what are you looking for? You’re looking for gold specs.

Jillian Leslie [00:17:07]:
Yesterday, I was on a call with a customer, and he says to me, he, like, teaches people how to lose weight. He’s a dad with babies. Right? And he put on a bunch of weight, and now he’s figured out how to lose weight using, like, macros, and I don’t really know what macros are. However, he said he offers some sort of system. It was complicated. But he said people have said to him he’s in Europe. He goes, people have reached out to me on Instagram saying they will pay me €50 to personalize this program for them. And I go, wait a minute.

Jillian Leslie [00:17:40]:
Did you, like, offer this? Was this something you were selling? And he goes, no. I said, let’s find a way to work together. And he’s, I’ve got two customers who just automatically said they would pay me this. And I go, my friend, those are gold specs. People are are, what, throwing money at you even if it’s two people. That is a huge signal. Pay attention to that. And I say when you find those gold specs, dig deeper.

Jillian Leslie [00:18:06]:
So this is like you not going off and saying I’m gonna take six months and create a course and do all these videos and all these PDFs, and and then people will come and buy it. I have seen too many people have heartbreak. They put their course out there, and it’s cricket. So start with tiny, small tests and then continue to build. So I sell you an ebook. Great. People start buying it. Maybe I create a bundle where I’ve got some resources.

Jillian Leslie [00:18:35]:
Maybe I’ve got a video that’s attached to you could bundle on MiloTree super easily. Just upload different products. Then okay. Now maybe I’m gonna do a live workshop, an hour workshop. And then maybe I get 10 people. And then I’m gonna sell the recording of that workshop as maybe just like a mini teaching. And then maybe I do three workshops, and I bundle them as my mini course. I’ve already created the content, and people will be forgiving if I’m showing up live with other people.

Jillian Leslie [00:19:11]:
Like, it doesn’t have to be these perfectly perfect videos like you would with your course. And then you go, hey. You know what I’m gonna do? I’m gonna offer some coaching, and we’re just gonna meet on Zoom. And you can get payments through MiloTree and your sales page where you offer this. And then we’re gonna move on to a membership where we’re gonna meet. And I’m gonna say low key membership. Maybe we meet twice a month for an hour on Zoom, host it in a Slack channel, host it on Discord, host it in a Facebook group, use tools people know. The thought that you’re gonna get people to download an app on their phones to get into your membership group, no.

Jillian Leslie [00:19:57]:
Do not do this. So then maybe it’s a mastermind. Maybe it’s a retreat. Who knows? But the sky’s the limit. Now where is the money? The money is in the recurring revenue because you do not have to find cuss okay. And the money is in the upsells, meaning, hey. If you want this, I bet you want this.

Monica Froese [00:20:22]:
Do you do order bumps as well? So I consider the or you don’t do order

Jillian Leslie [00:20:25]:
So order bumps, like, first

Monica Froese [00:20:27]:
of all has different language. So for me, on a checkout cart, it’s okay. You’re checking out with the main product. The order bump is you toggle, like, the whole it I always say it’s you don’t need it to get the transformation of the product, but it’s a nice enhancement. So you add it onto the cart, but then for me, an upsell is now you put in your contact information, you put in your credit card, and then the upsells on the back end.

Jillian Leslie [00:20:48]:
Yeah. Upsells on the back end. Okay. So we haven’t done order bumps yet. It’s on our road map where it’s right there on the checkout page.

Monica Froese [00:20:55]:
Okay. Yeah. I’m a big fan of order bump. I will say, historically, for me and what I’ve seen with my students, order bumps convert in a much higher percentage than upsells, which makes sense. Right? Because it it honestly does from a marketing standpoint make sense, so I would accelerate that. Yeah. That’s

Jillian Leslie [00:21:10]:
good. That’s good. Absolutely. Yes. So we, though, offer on the thank you page, thanks for purchasing. Hey. Here hey. You just bought I would say you bought the mittens.

Jillian Leslie [00:21:21]:
Here’s the hat.

Monica Froese [00:21:22]:
Yeah. Okay. So you’re seeing a lot of people in your ecosystem essentially move through this ascension ladder of building these digital products, and and you’re making it simple for them. So there’s no one type of digital product that you’re seeing that’s selling the best or more.

Jillian Leslie [00:21:38]:
Oh, you mean ebook versus, like, digital art, that kind of thing?

Monica Froese [00:21:42]:
Yeah. Spreadsheets or website. No.

Jillian Leslie [00:21:45]:
Very specific to your niche. Okay. A lot of food bloggers create e cookbooks. And the way to make that successful is instead of it being like, hey. Here are my 10 best recipes. It’s, hey. Here are these 10 recipes that solve a problem. So here’s how to get dinner on the table in thirty minutes with these 10 recipes versus these are just 10 great recipes from my food blog, yummy yummy.

Jillian Leslie [00:22:21]:
Nobody cares about yummy yummy. What they care about is I’m having trouble getting food on the table in thirty minutes.

Monica Froese [00:22:29]:
Okay. So this really connects to the next thing when it comes to AI and how it’s disrupting digital products, essentially. At least, this is how I’m seeing it. Like you mentioned, your website. Traffic cut in half because what are people doing? They’re opening Chat GPT and saying, I need to make a piglet party. Like, I say that because I have a piglet birthday party with my daughter’s first birthday party. It’s a post in redefining mom. I used to get a ton of affiliate income off of it.

Monica Froese [00:22:54]:
But guess what? Peep like you said, people can now go to Chat GPT and find out their piglet party. So there’s this whole thing that I’m watching where it’s okay. Chat g p t can give us a bunch of information. So two things come out of my brain from this. One is I ask myself, okay, is this gonna invalidate info products? And I originally, it was like, it’s certainly gonna make them info products harder to sell because if you can just get the information from ChatGPT, why would I buy your product? And then I think of something like the digital shop experience, which is my course on how to take your all your digital products and put it into the shop model and create this cohesive shopping experience and create your marketing campaigns. And I’m like, so here’s the thing. ChatGPT can literally in detail, very clearly say, this is how you set up your Shopify store. These are the things you do.

Monica Froese [00:23:51]:
But it does not have the experience of someone like me as a course creator working with hundreds of shop owners that understands what actually makes people buy in the shop. It lacks that ability. So the simple, like, how to courses, I think, forget it. If it can how to out of check GBT, it’s going away. But then the next layer from that, I’m like, okay. So course creators definitely have, I wouldn’t say an uphill battle, but it, like, it it’s you’re going to have to uplevel. It you’re going to really have to be able to take your personal experience and layer it on what chat g p t can give you back.

Jillian Leslie [00:24:28]:
That’s exact that is exactly I didn’t I don’t mean to interrupt you, but that’s exactly it. Where I recommend people lean into, and this is hard for people, is what is your vibe? Who are you? Who do you attract to you? So I’m gonna say things like have opinions.

Monica Froese [00:24:51]:
Yeah. Okay. So this is okay. So the other thing I’ve been talking to my students a lot about, and this is really the basis of our new because we redid the Empowered Business Lab to be Empowered Business Lab AI. So that was our program on creating and selling and launching our digital products. Now a AI is on the scene. And we kept, I kept talking about this concept of usability tools. And the example I give is this.

Monica Froese [00:25:13]:
So I felt very called to create a divorce planner because even though I had an amicable divorce, and I talk about this a lot, it’s a very emotional time and there’s a lot of things. You just, you’re making decisions that are gonna impact the next ten, twenty years of your life, your kids’ lives. And it’s, and you’re in emotional turmoil. And even if you’re getting along with your ex, it’s like, you just don’t know which way is up. So I felt very called to come up with a resource to help particularly women who are, have young children going through divorce. Making sure they’re asking the right questions and thinking with their logical brain and not their emotional brain. And I started using ChatGPT to come up with the structure of what I want this planner to be. And it was great.

Monica Froese [00:25:55]:
It had great ideas. It helped me structure my ideas. It helped me come up with the flow. But I tell people all the time, it just shot me back a bunch of information. So let’s just say I’m the end customer, and it’s like, I’m getting a divorce. I go in there and chat to you, BTM, getting a divorce. Help me. What should I know? What do I have to ask? It will give you a lot of good ideas.

Monica Froese [00:26:13]:
It will, but it doesn’t make it usable. What makes it usable is someone who it went through it, had the emotions that went through it. Like, Chachi P is not giving me a hug. It didn’t cry in my mediation with me. It didn’t know. It cannot tell me the impact of two transitions in a week on my child and what that meant. And, like, it it cannot think like that. That’s the human touch.

Monica Froese [00:26:39]:
And so it’s like taking there’s Chat GPT can give us so much information, but it’s the human that will help you use that information and make it usable.

Jillian Leslie [00:26:51]:
That is it. It’s you being honest and saying, god. This part really sucked for me. Wow. We get on this call. We haven’t talked to each other in a couple of years.

Monica Froese [00:27:01]:
I know.

Jillian Leslie [00:27:02]:
And I immediately see your face, and I’m happy. And I’m like, oh my god. There’s my friend. So, like, how’s it going? And so that piece is invaluable.

Monica Froese [00:27:15]:
Because people I tell my students all the time. I’m like, at the end of the day, people still buy from people. The last podcast episode I did with with a coach, and she made a comment. She was like, I don’t think that ChatGPT is gonna invalidate my coaching. I think it makes my coaching better. It it helps her systematize all the information that she’s giving it about her clients, and it’s simply making her a better coach. It’s not replacing her because the thing is also if you wanna go get coach from ChattCPT, you have to know what you’re asking it. That kind of, like, is that’s why you need a coach because the coach is supposed to be the expert that’s help helping guide you.

Monica Froese [00:27:53]:
And if you don’t know what the proper things to ask Chatt GPT, you’re not gonna get the proper answers out of it.

Jillian Leslie [00:27:58]:
Here’s what I’m gonna say. That might work for some people, but remember this. You only need a thousand people. And if those thousand people spend a hundred dollars in a year buying your products, you’ve made a hundred thousand dollars. So you get those people who are like, I was just reading an article today, and people are using Chat GPT as their best friends, and that is gonna be a thing. But do you think yeah. Do you?

Monica Froese [00:28:29]:
Yeah. I do. And so it’s but that’s why I think, yeah, because the that same coach, she has the, her name’s Julie Chanel. You probably know our digital insiders and everything. And she she has this concept of AI being a second brain. Like, she puts everything in it and it knows so much about her. And so I started adopting that. But it’s funny because and we said this when I recorded the podcast with her.

Monica Froese [00:28:51]:
We’re it’s amazing for how it can help us because we feed it so much information about us, but you know what we still do? I’m dating. And so I’ll go on a date and I’ll be like, oh, this is how it went. And it will shoot something back, connecting like, hey, Monica, remember how this happened in your marriage or this happened here, and I will send it to my best friend still. You know what I mean? So it’s Absolutely. Oh my gosh. You’re really, it is improving my life. You are really helping me see things about myself that maybe I miss. But then it’s, like, I wanna go talk to my human friends about it.

Monica Froese [00:29:22]:
Look how accurate this is. This changes my perspective on it, and look at these patterns I’m falling into that I didn’t even recognize. But, like, I don’t wanna just talk to a robot about it. It’s Thank you for holding me with it.

Jillian Leslie [00:29:33]:
By the way, there will be people. There are people who just wanna talk to a robot. I’m human. I need, for example, like, I love my husband, and he is my best friend. However, he can fulfill everything, every one of my needs. I need girlfriends. I don’t need a ton, but I need my girlfriends that I go meet for coffee. And we can talk about really personal things.

Jillian Leslie [00:29:56]:
We can talk about anything, but I need that for my humanness. So that is the piece that I want everybody to think about. Not everybody’s like me or like you. That’s okay.

Monica Froese [00:30:09]:
Yeah. You

Jillian Leslie [00:30:10]:
don’t need every oh, no. Everybody’s gonna be using chat g p t. Probably at some point, they will for certain things, but there are other things that won’t necessarily go away. So, therefore, how do you set yourself up as human? Wow. That’s a whole thing. Right? And then I bet you if we were to stop recording and I were to go, hey, Monica. How’s it going? In dating, you’d be completely honest with me. And that’s what I love about you is I’m gonna get the straight answer from you.

Monica Froese [00:30:40]:
Yeah.

Jillian Leslie [00:30:40]:
I’m a straight shooter as well for people who listen to my podcast, the Blogger Genius Podcast, which you have been on many times. The feedback I get is I’m real. That if somebody says something like, when then I made a million dollars, then I’m gonna go, wait. Let’s back up. How did you make that million dollars? And people like that because I’m gonna ask the question that everybody’s thinking that might be a little uncomfortable to ask, but I’ll do it. Same. Right?

Monica Froese [00:31:09]:
Yes. We’re a lot alike at that.

Jillian Leslie [00:31:11]:
So therefore okay. That’s part of my brand. Now that’s part of who I am, so it’s not like I had to create this. But the more I do that consistently, the more people can see me and almost smell me and go, is she real? Is she straight? Can I trust her? That is my, what I call, special sauce. You too, Monica, because you are super honest about your divorce and about struggles you’ve been through to say, I wanna help you now through those struggles. I wanna help you. If I can make your path easier, that’s what I want. If I can make use you’re setting up your shop easier, that’s what I want for you.

Jillian Leslie [00:31:54]:
Yes. And that’s your authentic self and brand. Now a lot of people, especially food bloggers, let’s say, are people who could hide behind their businesses and maybe go, hey. I’m gonna put up a shop where I sell my tools that my how to tools. That is going to be, I believe, more special. So then you’ve got AI behind the scenes helping you think through things, structure things, put things out faster. But at the end of the day, it’s you and your vibe, but it’s not the Jillian show. It’s not the Monica show.

Jillian Leslie [00:32:31]:
It’s how Monica can help me.

Monica Froese [00:32:35]:
Yes. You hit the nail on the hood. That’s exactly it. Honestly, at the end of the day, the people who are resistant to using AI and I get why some people feel resistance, But the thing is that the people who are embracing it, especially in this digital world, are going to be able to move a lot faster. It’s one of those things that you quite honestly are gonna get left behind if you don’t embrace it. And I’m gonna argue in the next year or so, it will make you irrelevant. Exactly. And I refuse to be real.

Monica Froese [00:33:03]:
And honestly, the more I use it, the more I realize that we can choose to see things negatively or positively. And like, I would say, like, I my ex would say you’re a pessimist. I’m like, I’m a realist is what I am. But, like, somewhere in the mesh of I can be pessimistic to realistic. And realistically, this is in an optimistic way going to change so much of how we function that why would you wanna be left behind?

Jillian Leslie [00:33:31]:
Absolutely. Isn’t it that they say now I’m getting let’s see if I can it’s like you won’t be okay. The AI will not replace the person who knows how to use AI. It’s the person who doesn’t know how to use AI that’s going to be replaced.

Monica Froese [00:33:52]:
And I also tell people this. Okay. So the last house I had was built in the fifties, and there was a milk door. And one day my daughter goes, what is the store on the side of the house, mom? And I said, oh, the milk man used to come and leave fresh milk every day. And she goes, what? What are you talking about? Milk man used to leave fresh milk in the door. And I go, yeah, it was before there was, like, reliable refrigeration. So, like, milk would go bad. So there was a milk door and a milk man would come.

Monica Froese [00:34:16]:
That’s an obsolete job. Technology came around. The refrigerator came around and made jobs obsolete. Is AI gonna make some jobs obsolete? Yes. But it’s also creating innovation, which is what we’ve seen throughout the history like, industrialization. Hello? This is the online industrial revolution that we’re experiencing, essentially. Jobs are gonna become obsolete, so don’t ignore it because make sure that you are not obsolete because you have the skill.

Jillian Leslie [00:34:46]:
Your competitive advantage now is you. What can AI not replace? Monica and her experience and the way she communicates and the way she feels people will go, but I’m an introvert. That’s your vibe. Then put that out there. It’s a a way to work on yourself and go, if I want to grow a business, I might have to put myself out there in slightly uncomfortable ways. So you can’t just not talk to people, like, that vibe matters, but make that your vibe. Because other introverts are gonna go, oh my god. Monica gets tired at parties.

Jillian Leslie [00:35:25]:
I get tired at parties. Monica needs to reach out by the way, I’m an introvert as well. Jillian needs to recharge. I need to recharge.

Monica Froese [00:35:33]:
Do you find it funny that so this is hilarious to me because I’ve had to explain to a lot of people. Because I’m outgoing, they assume I’m an extrovert. And I’m like, an extrovert derives energy from people, and an introvert doesn’t. Like, we have to recharge. And even before this call, eve like, I adore you. But even before this call, I was like, ugh, I have to record a podcast episode. But while I’m doing it, I’m so jazzed by it. But what I need to know about myself is that after, I need to decompress because that it takes a lot of energy out of me, even though I love it when I’m doing it.

Monica Froese [00:36:08]:
And that honestly is a it’s one of my superpowers in the business. Because if I remind myself that when you’re doing it, you are so excited. You learn so much from these other people and you, and so I make my introvert itself doesn’t wanna doesn’t wanna podcast. It doesn’t. But my knowing that my skills and my, like, passion comes out when I do it and keeping that in mind is like a superpower.

Jillian Leslie [00:36:33]:
That’s it. So it’s go to chat g b t and say, what is my superpower? Who here’s who I am. How can I package this up to attract people to me who resonate? Think of this time as a time to take risks, as a time to put like, when I’m saying the way you find that connection in terms of starting to grow your digital product empire, you’ve gotta test a lot of you’ve gotta kiss a lot of frogs, and you gotta be embarrassed. What I’m gonna say is if you’re not slightly embarrassed when you launch a product, you’re in the wrong direction. You should be, like, provide value, but who cares about your colors or, you know, how amazingly beautiful your Canva document is? People, like, go, I’m gonna be value first. As long as you’re providing value, people will be forgiving on all the other stuff. Please push yourself to be embarrassed. We’re all in but here’s the thing.

Jillian Leslie [00:37:36]:
Nobody’s really thinking about you. I have a teen daughter, and it has been fascinating because watching her go, oh my god. I have a tiny little pimple. But to her, it’s enormous, and everybody’s looking at it. And I go, nobody’s looking at it because they’re so obsessed with their own pimple. They’re so obsessed with themselves. So know this. Even though I’m saying go be embarrassed, I promise you, nobody’s thinking about you.

Jillian Leslie [00:38:04]:
And it was funny. I had on my screen a picture of myself, like, a photo of myself. And my daughter walks by my computer, and I go, oh, I really hate this photo. And she goes, really? She goes, like, it looks fine to me. And then she goes, mom, nobody’s thinking about you. And it was like, oh my god. That’s so right. Like, we all fall into that trap.

Jillian Leslie [00:38:24]:
I am the star of my own movie, but you’re the star of your own movie. So you’re just like you have to be thinking about the fact shrink yourself down, get yourself out there, put out strong opinions about stuff. Like, for example, million different ways to lose weight. Right? But let’s say I’ve tried this, and I’m a big believer in this way. Put it out there. This is the way, and be confident. Again, like, you don’t want misinformation and things like that. But if you have a strategy

Monica Froese [00:38:57]:
Honestly, like, I I used to especially when I was married in in the business, I played things a lot safer. And then, now I just, I’ve really kinda let my personality fly. And one of the things I never thought I’d talk about is I had weight loss surgery. And people judge me for it. And it’s, I don’t care. Think what you want. I’m happy. I stopped living my life for a long time because I was uncomfortable with my weight.

Monica Froese [00:39:24]:
And now I am happy, and I do the thing. I zip line with my daughter in Hawaii, and I hike rainforest mountains that I never would have done before. And I sit comfortably on planes. And you know what? That’s what worked for me. And it like, it’s funny when you say things like that. Someone might even be listening to this right now, and they’re like, woah. Didn’t see that coming. And they have a certain kind of opinion about me for it.

Monica Froese [00:39:47]:
But it’s, you know what? Like, I’m not just here to talk about digital products. It’s like we’re well rounded people. And when someone’s able to be very forthcoming about their struggles and stuff, that’s what makes your audience connect with you. Listen, doing this entire business thing while going through a divorce and losing weight and, like, raising two small kids, it’s not it’s hard. Like, supporting other people’s livelihoods. It’s this is, like, hard work, and I think sometimes people there’s a lot of people out there just, oh my gosh. I woke up and I put an ebook on the Internet, and I made a million dollars.

Jillian Leslie [00:40:18]:
Exactly. Out of here. Totally. But here’s the thing. Monica, we all like, you just need a thousand people.

Monica Froese [00:40:26]:
Yeah. I love that, actually.

Jillian Leslie [00:40:28]:
What’d you say?

Monica Froese [00:40:29]:
I love that. I love that that’s what you said. A thousand people to pay you a hundred dollars, and you just made a hundred thousand dollars.

Jillian Leslie [00:40:34]:
Go collect them. Yeah. And by the way, I’m not saying you can have personal relationships with a thousand people, but you could have personal relationships with 50. And those 50 tell their friends, and you build this community. So that’s why email again is so personal. It can be so personal. Again, not that people I always say this. People don’t care about your dogs unless you do something related to dogs.

Jillian Leslie [00:41:00]:
So don’t think your dogs are that interesting to people who aren’t coming to you for your dogs. Like, you have to earn that so that they care. But if you’re putting out value and you’re saying, like, for you and me, I feel like authenticity is our brand, like, we’re gonna say it like it is, that people go, oh my god. I really relate to that. And by the way, other people who get really uncomfortable with that and want that sugar coated view of building a business, where I work so much harder than I had I if I were working in a corporate job, for example, as owner of my own business, as, like, founder of this, I promise you, I’m working more hours than most people.

Monica Froese [00:41:44]:
Yeah.

Jillian Leslie [00:41:44]:
So don’t think that I’m just, like, sitting on the beach with a margarita.

Monica Froese [00:41:50]:
No. Too. But no. I work very hard too.

Jillian Leslie [00:41:53]:
No. It’s okay. These are the honest things. So when I go, hey. Remember I go, your ebook’s not gonna buy you a second house, and it’s I promise you too. You’re probably not gonna find that product market fit right away. Be patient.

Monica Froese [00:42:08]:
And okay. It this reminds me of something too. And this, I will say, it’s definitely for years of experience of putting myself out there in uncomfortable ways like we’ve talked about. Right after my divorce, we did I did a photo shoot, and Haley made me a shirt that played off of my I don’t do failure, which I talk about all the time in the business. And it said, I don’t give a insert the word. And I sat on the stoop with my photographer with two middle fingers up doing it. And when I relaunched Read to Finding Mom, I made it our Facebook cover because honestly, that was the vibe I was going for because it was like, welcome to the new phase of motherhood. And we I was running ads and so too cold audience.

Monica Froese [00:42:46]:
So someone clicked through to the Facebook page to see who I’m all about. And she wrote, took the time to write us an email being like, I can’t believe you would put that up there. You just, you’re probably turning so many people off from buying from you just because of that picture. And I, that would have five, six, seven years ago, I would have been like, oh my gosh. And instead I’m like, then you’re not my people. I don’t know what to tell you. This is the vibe. This is my reinvention, and this is what my brand’s being built off of.

Monica Froese [00:43:12]:
And there are gonna be lots of people who resonate with it and lots of people who are like, and that’s fine. That’s how you make sales, actually.

Jillian Leslie [00:43:20]:
Exactly. Especially when think about it this way. AI is making information commoditized. Yes. It’s not valuable anymore. That secret whatever, you can get it it’s like we use like, information was gated. Yep. And it’s not gated anymore.

Monica Froese [00:43:43]:
Agreed. Or you had to search Google and p fill a bunch of stuff together on your own. And now ChatGPT is making it cohesive for you. So it’s really the personality. It our uniqueness is even just more important now at the end of the day.

Jillian Leslie [00:43:58]:
Yes. So I feel like this is hopefully, if you’re listening to this, you’re thinking about the fact, how can I lean into me? Which is weird because and think of ChatGPT as this engine that is giving me superpowers if I’m just willing to step into it.

Monica Froese [00:44:20]:
Agreed. This has been such a good conversation. See? And now I’m so happy that, like, before I got I’m like, yay. Yep. Spoke a clip. I got to record this podcast. Can you tell everyone how they can get started with MiloTree?

Jillian Leslie [00:44:32]:
Absolutely. We offer a really robust free plan. Go use MiloTree. Go set up your freebie. Go set up a digital product. Go add one of our social media pop ups to your site, all for free forever. No credit card. And then start testing.

Jillian Leslie [00:44:50]:
Start figuring it out. In fact, you can get my prompts to write an ebook super fast. It’s at MiloTree.com/ebookprompts. I’ve given you 10 prompts. Work through them. You’ll have an ebook in about two hours. Go add it to MiloTree and sell it. This is how, hopefully, I’m inspiring you to just get started.

Jillian Leslie [00:45:15]:
Get going. Start building. And remember, I guess one last thing. I have watched this happen, and I’m sure you have too. At a certain point, we learned Google. We learned keyword research. We learned how to go after low competition keywords. And I could sit there in the privacy of my own home and take some beautiful photos and traffic.

Jillian Leslie [00:45:37]:
I could figure out how to game Google and get traffic. And I didn’t have to put myself out there. I didn’t have to have an opinion about things. I could just do pretty work in the background, and Google would reward me, and then I could make passive income. Those days are over. The people who are willing to go, alright. It’s gonna get messy, and I’m willing to roll up my sleeves and get messy and try this. Those are the ones who I’m seeing win.

Jillian Leslie [00:46:06]:
Very much it’s a different mindset, and you I recommend you shift it to, woah. Here’s the thing. It’s now everybody is on a level playing field again. So you had domain authority and all of these things where Google would continue to reward you. Those days are over. It’s now the Wild West all over again. So I’m gonna say be that person who does this. Go.

Jillian Leslie [00:46:32]:
See what happens. What do you have to lose? So sign up. Go to MiloTree.com. Tell me what you think. I’m easy to reach. Email me, [email protected]. I’d love to hear from you, but really get going. And Monica is gonna be back on my podcast, the Blogger Genius podcast, so listen to uplifting episodes like this.

Monica Froese [00:46:56]:
We’ll make sure to link to everything. I’ve really enjoyed our conversation. This has been really fun. That’s a wrap on today’s episode, but your next step starts right now. If you’re serious about selling digital products and want the AI powered tools, expert strategy, and real human support to make it happen, then you need to check out the Empowered Business Society. Inside, you’ll get AI driven trainings to create and sell digital products faster, a private community for expert feedback and real time support, exclusive access to the Monica Memo podcast. And if you go pro, you’ll get monthly marketing shortcuts, live q and a’s, and 20% off of the empowered shop perpetually. Because smart business owners sell smarter, they don’t work harder.

Monica Froese [00:47:38]:
And the best part, you can get started for as little as $9. The best business growth happens when AI and real humans work together. Ready to make your next move? Join us inside of the Empowered Business Society. You can check us out at empoweredbusiness.co/society. See you in the next episode.