We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Kathryn Roberts. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Kathryn below.

Kathryn, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard

There’s a very common teaching you’ll see amongst online business coaches, especially those coaches who are educating and mentoring other would-be coaches and service providers. That teaching is: wait until you have mastered selling your services before you start creating and selling digital products.

And I agree with that–to an extent.

One of the keys to successfully building a coaching or other service-based business is to master selling that service, and to work with your highest-achieving ideal clients to find out exactly what the people in your industry need from you. It makes everything easier from sales, to scaling to marketing when you know exactly what your people need from you.

But at the same time, relying solely on one stream of income puts a lot of pressure on you to ensure that money is consistently coming in from that one stream. That can be a lot to manage, especially if you’re new to online business, new to the services space.

Here’s why you shouldn’t be afraid of introducing digital products to your business, even if you’re just starting out. First, you need to know the RIGHT kind of digital product to create. And that product is one that is just one step above the content you create to market for free on social media, or the free opt-in you create to get people onto your email list. It’s a single-win-providing, easy-to-navigate, do-it-yourself product that is ONE piece of your 1:1 coaching or service work, and it’s meant to create one easy win that gets that purchaser excited to continue learning from and working with you at an even higher level.

And when do you sell it? Immediately after someone subscribes to your email list–and the way I teach it, you sell this right on the thank you page.

This is valuable to you in three ways. For one, while it won’t make you rich on your own, since these products tend to be priced in the $20-$70 range, it will still bring in some money that you can reinvest into your business, like for paid ads. And two–and this is why I love these products so much–it’s an asset that you create once, but sell over and over and over again, and will continue to sell as you funnel your subscribers onto your email list, because they’re ALL going to land on your thank-you page and see that offer.

The third reason why it’s valuable, so valuable, is that it’s an amazing nurture tool. The most challenging thing to do is get that first sale from someone from your audience, so giving them a hell-yes type offer, one that’s a no brainer that sends people scrambling for their credit cards, is key to allowing a new subscriber to get to know you at that paid level. Those who buy from you once are going to be significantly more likely to buy from you again, and buy from you at higher and higher ticket level.

So don’t be afraid to create that digital asset to sell, even when you’re just starting out. Yes, you do need to do your research to figure out what your ideal client needs from you (which is what I specialize in), but you are the expert here, and you also know the critical things your ideal client need to know about your industry. You can very easily create something small that you can successfully sell alongside your 1:1 coaching/paid service work, and speed up the process between nurturing your audience and asking for the bigger sale.

Kathryn, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m Kathryn Roberts, an Arizona-based Services Coach for coaches and creative service providers. I I teach my clients how to create coaching programs and/or done-for-you services that allow them to stand out in their industry, build a lasting foundation, and sell easily so they can make more money while also growing their business in a sustainable and scalable way.

I’ve been working in the online business space for over four years now, and in that time, I have seen how hard business owners, especially newer business owners, make it for themselves to make money. One of those misconceptions that even I bought into when I was just starting out was that you have to start out selling small, lower-ticket, before you have the audience, the experience, and the clout to start selling in a way that’s going to significantly impact your bank account.

But it’s simply not true.

You deciding that you’re going into business means that you have an experience and expertise that your potential clients do not have. Those things that you can do in your sleep? That’s something your potential client could never imagine trying to do on their own. And they’re not just going to go out and Google it either. That’s why they need you, and that’s why they get to invest in you, so that you can give them the shortest possible route from Island A, where they are, to Island B, where you are.

Through my work with my clients, I’ve been able to support them in crafting services that focus on transformations that showcase their unique spin that they bring to their industry, and have helped them gain the confidence to double, if not triple their rates for those services, and successfully make those sales.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

The biggest lesson I had to unlearn was that I didn’t need anyone’s permission to start charging more than $1000 for my services, even back in 2019 when I was brand new to coaching.

In 2017, when I started my first business, which was in the education space for fiction writers, I could not imagine charging more than a few hundred dollars for my services. The first thing I ever created to sell was an ebook priced at $7.98. My thought was that by charging low, I could get more people to buy from me–plus, I couldn’t even think about what I would charge that would go for any higher than that.

But in 2018, when I got into coaching, my own coach walked me through creating a service, a 3-month coaching package, that I could confidently charge $2000 for (and then very quickly learned that my services are valued at way more than that price).

And I also learned from that coach that it’s not “easier” to charge a low price like $7.98. If you can express the value and the transformation and the urgency for your offer, then you can confidently ask for the sale at ANY price. And I like to be able to charge for my services in a way that actually allows me to easily cover my expenses, so I can actually life that financially free life I wanted when I was still working in underpaying office jobs.

Alright – let’s talk about marketing or sales – do you have any fun stories about a risk you’ve taken or something else exciting on the sales and marketing side?

I used to be terrified about the idea of marketing myself on live video. It was one of those things where, the first time my coach suggested I try it, my first thought was a resounding, “Oh heck no. Nope. Not gonna happen. Hard pass.”

And then the other issue that I used as an excuse to stop me was, “How could I market myself consistently through live video when I don’t have nearly enough content to talk about on live video?”

But then my coach had me sit down and write out 15-20 topics that I could talk about on live video to market my business, and I just picked one of those topics and…started. Sure it was weird and a little uncomfortable during those first few lives, and not a lot of people showed up, but that was okay.

It meant that not a lot of people watched me mess up, and the less I cared about messing up when I did. Because it’s never going to be perfect and it doesn’t have to be.

The purpose of live video isn’t to be perfect. It’s to allow your audience and your ideal client to get to know you as a business owner. Your face, your voice, the way you speak, how you respond to questions. And if you lose your trail of thought or get distracted because your cat bit your foot while you were talking–true story!–then that just makes you look like a real person, and that’s who your ideal client wants to work with. A real person who is really smart and good at what they do, but who also has a personality and quirks.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://questfor47.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/kathryn.servicescoach
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kathryn.servicescoach
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathryn-roberts-6766717a/