Speaker1: [00:00:04] You are listening to the Empowered Business podcast. I’m your host, Monica Fros, a mom of two and your secret weapon to creating a six figure digital product business. I’m on a mission to help 1000 women make one hundred thousand a year. That’s right. One hundred million dollars towards financial independence for women. As an online business expert, I am teaching you everything I know right here week after week, so you can join us on the journey to one hundred million dollars. Sound good? Then let’s jump in. Welcome back to the Empowered Business podcast. Today, we’re going to talk about trying new things, learning hard lessons and pivoting when something doesn’t work the way you want it to. Back in episode four, I shared with you how I decided to pivot my entire business in 2020 and retire all four of my courses on Pinterest, including my popular course on Pinterest advertising. To set the stage for today’s episode, I want to take you back to 2020 when I made this big decision to give you context around the next big shift that’s happening in our business today. Literally, the day this episode airs, we are announcing another big change to our business, which of course I am going to tell you all about. My hope is through sharing my own journey of the ups and downs of entrepreneurship, you will not only learn valuable lessons you can take away from your own business, but you will also feel less alone on the journey.

Speaker1: [00:01:42] Sometimes it’s easy to look around and think everyone else has it all figured out when in reality, no one does. Business is a constant cycle of pivots. Now, more than ever, the online space is moving at record speed, and if you are unwilling to adapt to the changes around you, you’re just going to get left behind. So let’s go back to 20 20 October 2020, to be exact. I sent an email to my community that was raw and heartfelt. Now I want to read some of it for you today, and I’ll also link to this in the show notes if you want to read the whole thing. But here’s what I said back in October of 2020 a lesson in profitability. In 2019, my business was super profitable. I was taking home more money both in payroll and profit from the business than I had ever made before in my life. It was truly beyond my wildest dreams. However, I was also burning the candle at both ends and had zero support, which means it wasn’t a scalable business. Bringing on Haley, who is my first full time employee, freed me up from working more than I should, but it didn’t solve the bigger issue in my business. Every month we started off with zero dollars in revenue, and here’s where I tell you about the beast I created that was never satiated.

Speaker1: [00:03:03] As my revenue grew, so did my expenses. Expenses became fixed, guaranteed every single month, but my revenue was not in order for me to continue making the same dollar amount month after month. I had to be actively selling almost all of the time. This wouldn’t have been the case if I had stuck with my focus on digital product funnels, but instead I put my focus on a program which is my promoted pins program, Pinterest advertising, and that program required a lot from me to make it work. Now here’s the problem with creating a course based off someone else’s business. My signature program from 2017 until late 2020 was about Pinterest advertising, a platform that changes all the time, and I have no control over it. Coupled with the fact advertising is a complicated topic that requires a ton of support from my students, it became a non scalable solution really fast. Last year, I was back to facing the reality of what I knew the entire year. Previous in 2019, which is the only way to build a scalable business, is with recurring revenue guaranteed revenue to support the fixed expenses every single month. Now that I came to terms with the fact that running a business based on someone else’s platform was not a recipe for long term success, I had no choice but to buckle down and decide exactly how I was going to pivot. So in late 2020, I birthed an entire new brand called Empowered Business.

Speaker1: [00:04:33] You know, kind of like the podcast you’re listening to right now, and we set out as a company to accomplish a new mission. We want to help one thousand women make one hundred thousand dollars through selling their knowledge and skills via digital products. This would result in one hundred million dollars in the hands of women and ultimately leads to our vision of empowering women to create financial freedom through six figure digital product businesses. We kicked off the launch of the Empowered Business brand on October 7th twenty 20 with the announcement of our new template membership called the Empowered Business Box. The box was the first product in our new product, Ascension Ladder, for the empowered business brand. Now, if the term product Ascension Ladder is new to you, it’s essentially a suite of products that build off of each other. In other words, our students would go on a journey through our product suite, so we mapped out three products that we wanted to launch about a year and a half to two year period. We started with the empowered business box, which was our low cost template membership. Then we move to the Empowered Business Lab, which is our signature product on creating, building, launching and selling profitable digital products and. We’ve had over 300 students already enroll in the lab in one. And then the third product on our Ascension ladder is the empowered business club.

Speaker1: [00:05:54] Now this will be our high end group coaching program for women interested in turning their digital products into full fledged six-figure businesses. And this will launch in the summer of twenty twenty two. Now, the box was a great place to start because it really addressed two major issues. The first being the lack of recurring revenue in our business. Remember what I said? Expenses became fixed, but revenue was not, and that is a stressful place to be as a business owner. The second thing it solved was it was a low cost membership that made it an easy entry point for our community members to get tips and tools from me in in an affordable way. Now, to my utter shock, the launch of the empowered business box went really well. The morning of October 7th, 2020, I dropped my oldest off at school and I was taking my sweet time drinking my Starbucks coffee when my phone started exploding with payment notifications. Haley had set the sales email to go out at 8:00 a.m. Eastern, and we opened 50 seats at the founding members price. Well, let me just tell you the seats sold out before Haley was even awake because she is three hours behind me on Pacific Time. So on top of that, we were also having deliverability issues with our email service provider. So my morning went from chill to stress fest in three point five seconds, when all of a sudden done.

Speaker1: [00:07:16] We welcomed over two hundred new customers into our membership that day. To say I was thrilled was an understatement. I mean, I literally had just blown up our biggest revenue generator at the same time and had no idea what to expect from this new membership. Hayley and I were thrilled. We thought, OK, we are on to something here. People want this. And look, now we have recurring revenue. Woo hoo. But I’m guessing, you know, there’s probably more to the story here, and you’d be correct because there is. The premise of the empowered business box was that every first Monday of the month, a new themed toolbox would drop inside your membership dashboard. So we’ve done all sorts of interesting themes over the last year, including your best year ever toolbox, a summer kickoff prep pack Christmas and July Blowout Sale. Grow your email list with a free challenge, the easy flash sale toolbox and so many more, which, by the way, if any of these tool boxes interest you, they are available for sale in our shop over at Monica Froyo Shop. Ok, so here’s the thing our community members loved these toolboxes. We’ve gotten amazing feedback on all of them. So are you asking what happened? Why didn’t it work? Because here’s what we learned. People join a membership for the content, but they stay for the community.

Speaker1: [00:08:37] Womp, womp. You see, we did realize pretty early on that we needed to add a community Facebook group, but to be totally honest, we didn’t have a plan to leverage it. At the same time that the box launched, I was very deep into content creation mode for our signature program, the Empowered Business Lab, and my attention was on serving those students in twenty twenty one and making that experience the best it could possibly be, which makes sense because it’s a higher level, more expensive program. It was nearly impossible to put my focus on growing the box membership. And while our retention for people sticking around in the membership is pretty good, we had a really tough time trying to grow it past two hundred and fifty people. This led us to August twenty twenty one. My team and I were sitting at our team retreat in Nashville and the topic of the membership came up. We all looked at each other and said there’s just something missing. I mean, the content is great. People really do love the tool boxes, but it’s lacking something. And we knew immediately what that was. It was lacking connection. It was very clear to all of us that if we want our membership to be the membership go to for all things digital products, then it need it a complete overhaul. So much so that the name empowered business box just didn’t fit it anymore.

Speaker1: [00:09:54] It was something different and bigger that we were craving to create an amazing experience and community, and that’s when we came up with the Empowered Business Society. The society is your go to community tools and support for confidently creating and selling your digital products. We know how overwhelming the world of online business and digital products can feel. One minute you’re on a roll, mapping out your business, then bam, you run into a roadblock and you have no idea how to get past it. You spend a few hours googling your specific situation. Probably look at YouTube on all of those helpful tutorials, but you’re either overwhelmed with options or can’t find exactly what you’re looking for. Please, we all know that’s happened to us before. Maybe you’ve wasted several hours of your precious work time not getting any further. Ran any roadblock, and now your toddler is knocking on your door, wanting to play Play-Doh on the floor at two p.m., which happens to me quite frequently. And here’s the thing you deserve to have a reliable community of online business peers to help you work through your roadblocks fast so you can move on to your next task. Does this sound familiar? Can you relate to this? Well, then please let me cordially invite you to join me and your fellow digital product creators inside of the Empowered Business Society. The society is our brand new private community dedicated to providing online business owners like you, the community strategy and support to launch, grow and scale your digital product, business and sales funnels.

Speaker1: [00:11:30] The society is your go to resource when you have a question, hit a roadblock. Don’t know what direction to take? Need a second set of eyes and need some simple motivation to keep going? Right? Because we all want to know that we are not in this alone. There is just honestly so much value in the society that I wish I had something like this when I was getting started. So let me run you through some of the things you’re going to get inside because it’s pretty awesome. So the very first thing is an active, private Facebook community. This is where you can ask all your pressing questions, meet and connect with other online business owners and get feedback on your products, funnels and anything else you need related to your digital product business. The second thing is our Xero to funnel formula. This is your onboarding guide to help you get started with digital products and sales funnels. Even if you’re brand new, there are two plus hours of video training to help you uncover your perfect digital product strategy, guides and templates to start growing your email list and make sales from your digital product. The third thing we’re offering is something Haley named for me. She’s dubbing it the Monaco memo, and this is exclusive access to my new private podcast feed, where you’ll get industry insights, digital product strategy, funnel tips and more.

Speaker1: [00:12:50] And I am committed to releasing at least one new episode per month, but the only way to get the Monaco memo and my unfiltered thoughts is to be inside of the Empowered Business Society. Now, the fourth thing we’re offering is the digital brief. This is monthly strategy sessions with Haley, the community lead for the society. She’s also my operations manager. She’s been with me for over two years, and she is truly amazing and knows just as much as I do at this point. She’s going to be doing things like student spotlights, going through software tutorials, answering all of your questions and also doing some strategy deep dives. Now the fifth thing we’re offering inside the society are monthly live Q&A with Moi. I’ve heard over the years that people love to pick my brain and get my unfiltered thoughts. I don’t hold back and I like to just tell it like it is. So if you want to grow a successful digital product business, then this is something you really don’t want to miss out on. The sixth thing is the society’s template vault. Oh, OK. Inside of this, we are giving you dozens of templates to help you fast track your digital product creation, your funnel creation and the promotion. The launching and the amplifying of your products. We have digital product templates for eBooks printables.

Speaker1: [00:14:08] We have guides for Canva. We have funnel template pages for lead pages and our mentor. We have checkout cart templates for thrive car promotional graphics that are plug and play and Canva, you name it. And we pretty much have a template for it. And the seventh thing we’re offering is the society’s tech vault. So inside our tech vault, you’ll get video tutorials for a variety of software used for creating and selling digital products. Things like Canva, ConvertKit, Lead Pages, Elementary Thrive Cart. Pretty much if you need it to create a digital product, we are going to have video tutorials for you. And this is going to help you get your next funnel up faster than ever before with step by step help. We are seriously just so excited for this change, and we are dedicated to making this the best community for all things digital products at an affordable price. You may be shocked to hear that we’re opening enrollment for only twenty nine dollars a month or two ninety seven for the entire year. What that is a crazy amount of value. It’s such an amazing price, plus a little birdie told me. If you sign up this week, there is something a little extra for you too. Ok, so I truly want you to succeed with digital products in my core. I believe that a rising tide lifts all boats. It is my mission to help as many women as possible achieve financial independence and creating a profitable digital product business is a great way to do that.

Speaker1: [00:15:37] If you are a current or past member of the empowered business box, you should have received a special email from us with information. How to join us in the society. If you did not receive that email, be sure to email us or send us a DM on Instagram. My handle is Monica froze, so we can hook you up with a very special offer. Ok, what do you think? Are you in? You can head on over to empowered business eco forward slash society right now to learn all about how to join us inside. And if you have any questions, you’ll notice that there is a chat button on the bottom right of the screen. Please, please, please feel free to chat with us. We’d love to answer any questions. And if you’re an Instagram type person again, we do answer all of our DMs and we’d love to talk to you over there. My handle is at Monica Fros, F R O C, and I hope to see you inside of the Empowered Business Society, and let’s build some profitable digital product businesses together. I’ll see you back here. Same time, same place next week, and I hope before that, I will see you inside of the Empowered Business Society again. Don’t forget to head on over and check us out over at empowered business Dako Ford Society.