I want to address some of the common fears and mindset blocks around launching digital products. I’m also going to be talking about ways in which you can overcome these fears so if you’re getting in your own way and holding yourself back from adding digital products to your design business then keep listening because this episode is for you!

I’ve worked with and spoken to enough online business owners to know that there can be some real mindset blocks in place around adding digital products into their business model and the ones I am going to be highlighting in this episode are the ones I hear the most.

More often than not, the only thing stopping us from doing the darn thing is ourselves. We put barriers in place that stop us from achieving our goals. I did it when I launched my own template shop expect my barrier wasn’t exactly a fear, it was time.

I’m going to be addressing the time management barrier in another episode as I know it’s also something that stops many people from doing things they want and also doing things that they know will move their business forward.

But for now, let’s dive into the most common fears and mindset blocks around creating and launching a digital product.

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Mindset Block Number 1 – Digital products will detract from my 1:1 services

So the first one is digital products would detract from my one-to-one services. This is a worry that I hear very often, and I just want to say that digital products are not going to affect your one-to-one services if you don’t want them to. 

Building digital products into your business model does not  mean that clients are going to stop coming to you for one-to-one work. What it means is that you are then able to serve your audience and your clients at different stages of their own business journey. 

So, for example, let’s take a client who is brand new to their business. They are a start-up and they don’t have a lot of funding behind them. They are also not quite clear on what it is they want to do so they are testing the waters and seeing what’s going to work and what’s not going to work.  The majority of new business owners are not at a stage where they are willing to invest or even can invest thousands into a full, fully custom brand and web design project. 

However, they do still need some level of help  for where they are currently at and this is where this your digital product comes in. 

If you can serve clients at different stages of their journey and you deliver an exceptional client experience, they are going to come back to you time and time again. It is far easier to sell to someone who’s already purchased from you than to sell to someone who hasn’t purchased from you before. 

Mindset Block Number 2 – It needs to be perfect

The second mindset block that I hear is that it needs to be perfect. Now I’m going to guess that you’ve heard of the saying done is better than perfect and that saying could not be more true right now. If you are waiting for your digital product to be perfect before you launch it, then you will never, ever launch it. 

I want you to think about your digital product as something that is going to continually be improved as time goes on. You don’t have to wait until it’s perfect. It doesn’t need to be perfect first time around. It just needs to be good enough. 

So rather than saying this is this needs to be perfect, say this needs to be good enough. At what point could this be good enough to put out there into the world? 

Launch it, put it out there, take on board the feedback, revise it and launch it again. The great thing about digital products is that they can be updated after they have been put out into the world. 

I’ve done exactly the same with my website templates. The templates that I worked on when I learnt my business back in 2019. Yes, they were good, but they weren’t amazing. They’re not as good as they are now. I’m actually in the process of launching some new templates and designing some new templates at the moment, and these templates are going to be even better than the ones I had previously because it’s all a continual learning curve is all improvement and we all improve as we go on. 

So rather than thinking that your product needs to be perfect, just think it needs to be good enough. 

It’s exactly the same with your one to one services. I’m going to guess at the price point that you’re charging for your services now is different to the price point that you were charging at the beginning, especially if you’ve been in business for a few years now. The reason why you increase your pricing is because you continually improve both within your area of expertise and as a business owner and therefore your pricing improves with it. 

This is no difference for your digital product. So, let’s reframe that particular mindset block rather than it needs to be perfect. It needs to be good enough. 

Mindset Block Number 3 – There are lots of people who are already doing this, why should I bother?

Something else that I hear really often is ‘there are lots of people who are already doing this. Why should I bother?’ 

It’s getting harder and harder to come up with a completely new idea that hasn’t been done before however, we as individuals and as business owners are all different. We have different views on how things should be done. We have different styles and personalties. Each and every one of us are going to attract different types of people to our businesses. 

For example, I’ve got a 12 month group programme, Expand Your Brand, which is all around marketing and building out digital products in your business. 

Yes, there are similar programmes out there but does that stop me from doing it? No! It doesn’t stop me because there are people that are going to want to learn from me and my experience.

The things that I teach inside of the program is going to be different to what others teach. The way I support my clients is going to be different from how others support their clients.

The fact that other people are doing similar things didn’t stop me from launching Expand Your Brand. It didn’t stop me from launching my website templates and it’s not going to stop me from launching other digital products because it’s what I’m passionate about and I know that I have something unique to offer.

You too have something unique to offer. Yes, you may share a similar audience with your competitors, but ultimately you have a different personality and you bring different experiences. There are so many differences between you and the next person that does something similar to you. 

Mindset block number 4 – The fear of failure

One more I want to touch upon is the fear of failure. And this is a really common one. What happens if I put all of this work into it and it doesn’t work out? 

Let me start by telling you that everyone is afraid of failing in some respect. The reality is that you won’t know unless you try. Think about when you started your own business. You may have experienced a similar feeling, but you’re here and you did it. You’re listening to this podcast because you have your own business.

I also like to go into it with the mindset that failure isn’t an option. Now, I’m not deluded enough to believe that everything that I do will be a success and let me tell you, I have done some things that haven’t been a success, and that’s OK. Every step taken in both life andin business is a lesson learnt. It’s something that you can take into the next phase. There are also ways to avoid failure as much as possible, and this essentially comes down to. 

• Doing your research – making sure that what it is you’re creating is something the audience are asking for.
• Taking action on what it is that you want to create – move past that fear of failure and take action on it.
• Learning from your mistakes – take those learnings as you move into the next phase of your business. 

So those are the four common fears and mindset blocks that I hear when it comes to creating and launching your digital products and adding digitial products into your business model.

Now I want to talk about how we can overcome those fears. 

Don’t compare yourself to others doing similar things

The first way to overcome these fears is to not compare yourself to others doing similar things. Imposter syndrome is something that many of us experience as a business owner, and it’s easier said than done. But the easiest way to overcome imposter syndrome is to not compare yourself to others doing similar things. 

If you’re finding yourself triggered by another business owner who is already doing something similar then you will need to remove yourself from their world, even if you just do it temporarily until you can get to a point where you are not being triggered by them, or until you got to the point where you have launched your digital product.

It’s also really important to remember that we are all individual, we are all at different stages of our business journey and we all have different lifestyles. So, for example, I am a mum of two children. I work four days a week, five hours a day on average. I also have a puppy who needs my attention so I don’t have the time to sit at my desk for eight hours a day, five days a week and to be totally honest, I don’t want to be doing that either. With this in mind, I can’t and shouldn’t compare my business to someone who I know doesn’t have children and has more space to work longer hours.  

Realise that you’ll never truly be ready

Another way to overcome the fears around launching your first digital product is to realise that you will never truly be ready. If you feel like launching a digital product is something that you really want to do, then jump in headfirst, launch the product, do the thing, get it out there. What’s the worst that can happen? 

Yes, there’s a few different things that going to want to have in place before launching a digital product, however, there are no hard and fast rules as to when is the best time. It all depends on what goals you have for your business. For some, it might be that they want to be earning a consistent income before launching a digital product or to have a certain amount of savings inside of the business so that they can scale back on client work for a short period of time.

Think about how this will benefit your business in the long-term

Creating and launching digital products can seem really overwhelming and I’ll be honest, it is a lot of upfront work. However, rather than focussing on the huge mountain in front of you, focus on what is on the other side. 

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that we all created our businesses to give ourselves more freedom. Digital products are not passive. Work is required in the immediate term to create them and ongoing work is required in order to consistently sell and improve them. 

The difference here, though, with digital products compared to one to one client work, is that you can be in control of your time. You can grab a coffee with a friend during the working day. You can take a day off the week during the week. If you’re feeling a bit run down or you just fancy a day off, you don’t have to worry about missing client deadlines. 

So rather than getting hung up on the work that is needed to get your product to market. Think about how you feel once it’s done and what you’re going to do with your free time. 

I really like this quote from Joseph Campbell…

“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.”

So really, thinking about how creating this product is going to benefit your business in the long run can help you massively when it comes to creating and launching it. 

Break your bigger to-do items into smaller steps

Something else is to break your bigger to do items down into smaller steps. Now, this might seem like a really obvious one, but when you’re sitting down and writing your list of things to do, you might write ‘create digital product’. If you’re writing this, it’s no wonder you’re feeling overwhelmed – that’s a huge item. What you need to do is to break each part of creating your product into smaller, more manageable steps and to take them one step at a time.

One of the things on your list may be to create the sales page. That’s still a larger item that you can break down further into outline the sales page, write sales copy and design the sales page. 

By ticking off these little smaller action steps on your list, it can really feel like you’re making progress into launching your product.

Invest in working with a mentor who has been there before you

Working with a mentor who’s been there before you is a sure fire way to learn from their mistakes and to have someone guide you and keep you accountable. 

I have worked with several service-based business owners who have launched, digital products, courses and programmes and the biggest thing that they take away from working together, alongside the support and the guidance they get from me, is accountability. It’s accountability to get it done. More often than not, they will tell me that if they hadn’t worked with me, they would never have launched their product or would have taken ages to get it done and another year would go by. Having that accountability, guidance and support from someone who has been there before you is really, really beneficial. 

Join Expand Your Brand

If one of your goals is to launch a digital product side to your service-based business, I’d love for you to check out Expand Your Brand. It’s a 12-month group program designed to support service providers as they grow their audience away from social media and launch their first (or next) digital product.