Ep 015: How Abby Lawson Built a Digital Product Shop That Fits Her Life

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Welcome to the Shannon Acheson Show, real business talk for real life. I’m Shannon, creative business coach, digital product lover, and your strategy sidekick. I’ve built a business that fits my life, and now I help other women do the same. No hustle, no fluff, just smart, honest conversations about building a business that works for you. Let’s dive in.
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Hi and welcome to the show. I am so excited to have Abby Lawson here with me today and we are gonna talk all things business and I just hope it’s a really great conversation to inspire you and let’s get started. Abby, welcome to the show. I’m so glad that you’re here. Thank you so much for having me. It’s great to be here.
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Yeah, so okay, so sort of a little introduction. Tell us a bit about yourself and what you do online, just whatever introduction you’d like to give. Sure, so I have been sharing content online for a really long time. I started a blog called Just A Girl and Her Blog back in 2013, and that has kind of just grown and changed over the years. I now have a…
01:16
Second blog as well called Free Organizing Printables and we have a online shop at abbyorganizes.com where we sell like tools, templates and trainings to help you get organized. And so we’re on social media, we’re just about everywhere online. It’s all sprouted out of this like tiny little blog that I started.
01:38
It’s just a little creative project back in 2013 when I was at home with my kids and all kind of grown from there. Yeah, I think so what made you sort of decide to hit publish the first time? like I mean you sort of shared online you started out as an introvert you’d sort of it wasn’t in your comfort zone to be like out there and doing this sort of thing. So like what made you sort of hit publish initially on Just a Girl and Her Blog?
02:04
Sure, yeah. Well, like I mentioned, I was a stay at home mom with my two boys. They were about four and one at the time. And I loved it. I loved being home with them, but I needed some sort of creative outlet and something I did more for me. So I kind of floated the idea past my husband like, I’m about starting a blog. Like not one that anybody will ever read, but just one where I can, you know, do little projects and.
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have a reason to be creative and he thought that was a great idea. He helped me get like the technical side set up ah and I was really nervous about pushing publish actually. The only way I was able to make myself push publish on those first couple posts was to tell myself that nobody was ever going to read them so it didn’t matter. ah But so I published them and they’re still on the site. They’re terrible but I like leave them up there so I can look back and see kind of how far things have come since then. the
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hiding from everybody and not wanting anybody to read it didn’t last very long. ah And then I just started, I fell in love with it and started working a little harder at it and learning more and it grew from there. Yeah, no, that’s awesome. So in the early days it was just, it was like a creative outlet for yourself, right? That you just sort of thought, I’ll do something fun. And I didn’t follow any of the blogging advice. I didn’t really have a niche. I didn’t have a schedule.
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I just like posted about, I mean, I think that’s what we were all doing in 2013. Like we were just posting like whatever we were doing with our kids around our house, know, whatever was inspiring us that day, we kind of put up there and people read it. And at that time, like people were more, they would follow like your story and your life and like what you’re doing with your house. And so that was, it was kind of a way to create community as well.
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It was like the Wild West out there. there were no, nobody was teaching like how to blog. was just all of us moms out there trying to figure it out. It’s true, right? And I feel like too, like, I mean, I started in 2010. So, um, like Pinterest either wasn’t a thing or was barely a thing. Instagram wasn’t a thing. Like, like that was it. You went to people’s blogs and you read their story. There were no daily stories like on Instagram and stuff like that. And so if you want it, if you like somebody and you want it to follow.
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That’s what you did. You read their blog. Yep. And you like subscribe to their like RSS feed and yeah, you just follow along. So yeah, that’s how it all started. When was sort of the moment and you realized like, wow, this could be a business kind of thing. Like what happened to with that show? Yeah, there were kind of two pivotal moments, I think, and they kind of like dovetail into one another. So when I had been blogging about like nine months or so, I had my husband, Donnie, write a
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post about how he had taken our family paperless, uh not meaning that we had zero paper in our house, but meaning that all of our important documents and everything we kept in a digital filing cabinet called Evernote, uh rather than in a big physical filing cabinet that was overstuffed and unorganized. So he wrote a post about that and uh had some links in there, affiliate links to uh an ebook about
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where he learned about some paperless stuff and to an Amazon scanner that he used. so published a post just like I would publish any other posts and it almost immediately took off and we started getting affiliate income from selling those scanners and that ebook like crazy. Like we sold so much of that ebook that I made Donnie email the author and make sure it wasn’t a mistake. oh I was like.
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Oh my gosh. Where’s all this money coming from? Like, are you sure something’s not broken? it didn’t mess up, but it wasn’t. And so that was like my aha moment. Like, oh my gosh, like this stuff works. ah So from that kind of got my wheels turning, like this could be a thing that uh we do. Well, that I could grow this blog and that Donnie and I could do together. uh So.
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After that, he kind of planted the seed in my head like, nobody’s teaching this stuff. You should teach people how you are growing this blog and getting people to come to it and even making money from your site. So about uh exactly a year after I had started blogging, I started writing an ebook um called Building a Framework. And it taught people kind of the nuts and bolts of how to start a blog and grow it.
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which not many people were teaching back then. So we did pay what you want pricing so people could get it for as little as a dollar. Because I was like, is this valuable to people? Is anybody going to want it? Are people going to buy this ebook from me on the internet? It seemed so weird and foreign to me. So that was in 2014. again, that took off and tons of people bought it.
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That was our first foray into digital products and we’ve been creating them ever since and digital products have then ever since ah become kind of the backbone of our business. I don’t teach blogging and online business anymore. We just do the organizing side of things now, but still digital products are kind of our bread and butter. And it all started from uh that first post of like planting the seed that, you can make money from this. And then that first digital product that I put out there.
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letting people pay a dollar for it and it kind of like taking off. So it’s pretty crazy. and I’m assuming, I’m just gonna guess you don’t teach blogging and stuff anymore because it changes so much and so fast that it’s hard to keep up with teaching something like that. Like you’d have to update it all the time. It is and like blogging as it was in 2013 doesn’t really exist anymore. I just, I don’t know. I feel like as we…
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grow and like get use our creative brains online like our interests and our passions kind of change and I was just enjoying the organization side of things way more than kind of teaching people how to make money not that there’s anything wrong with that either but it was just like where my heart was at that time and so that’s what I’m doing these days. I love that that’s a good sort of note to put in there like you were doing okay like you were selling the framework book and stuff but like
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your heart was more led to something else, so you pivoted more to that. And I think that’s a really good point too, because I think sometimes we stick with something longer than we should because we feel like we should instead of going, no, I really love this other thing and I could do that instead. Yep. Yeah. And that’s what I love about online businesses that like, there are countless ways to make income and make money online. um And you can talk to
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50 different online entrepreneurs and they are making money and building their income 50 different ways. um So if something is not working for you or your heart’s not in anymore, is, there are plenty of other ways and things that you can pivot to to find something that’s like better in alignment with your gifts and your passions and what gives you energy as opposed to what drains you. I think sometimes in your life season too, Like, logging worked great for us. uh
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Well, as it was then, but like when our kids were little, but maybe now it’s something else, right? Like your kids are teenagers-ish. They are, 16 and 14 now. Wild. My oldest is 25, like the day we’re recording this. So I’m like, oh my goodness, like so weird. Yes, yep. So you guys, mentioned in your intro at the beginning that you have just a girl in her blog, you have a digital shop, you have a free printables. Freeorganizingprintables.com.
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That was kind of, I was bored. had it like this. And I was like, I wonder if I could, so this was, don’t, I think in 2022, I was like, I wonder if I could start a site now and grow it. like, with how much everything has changed. And so I like took a couple of weeks and made all these like free printables and like busted out like this site.
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It kind of like stands alone and it did. I mean it gets traffic and um we have ads on it so it’s sitting like after those couple weeks I didn’t do anything else with it. So it just sits there and earns ad income and it was just kind of an experiment for me to see if like do I still got it? Like can I still do it? And it worked. but in the meantime I mean there’s tons of like cute little printable resources that people can go grab so I just like leave it up there.
11:04
That’s perfect. See, so yeah. That’s awesome. So obviously you’ve tried a lot of different things, right? You did an ebook, you’ve done printables, you’ve done digital tools. Has there been anything that totally flopped that you were just like, well, that didn’t work? Oh yeah. I mean, we’ve had plenty of things that have not worked over the years. The one that stands out in my mind, I think it was like 2017 or 2018-ish, we started
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um a it was a printables shop like a digital shop on Shopify selling printables ah and that I mean It didn’t really work much at all We we were kind of following advice of somebody who presented themselves as I think more of an expert than they actually were and Didn’t have like the best strategy for it. So after a couple months, I mean We sold some but not anything
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close to what we were expecting to do from it. And it just ended up being more work and hassle than it was worth. So we shut it down. But I mean, fast forward to 2023 when we started our current shop, also on Shopify, also selling digital products. And we had learned more, we did better, we have better products, we have better strategies. And now I love the digital product shop. I think-
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some of those like failures like we had back then can come back around and like we learned from it, we got better at it and now we’re able to do a version that you know has worked and has been great for us. So, the failures even though they might be failures, they’re worth it a lot of times. they’re either this and I’m done and I’m not gonna do that anymore. I’m gonna do something else or a oh no I can learn from this and do it better, right? Like those are kind of your two options really.
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Sure, yeah. That’s awesome. That’s really awesome. um Okay, so we sort of touched on this, but what’s one sort of offer idea that took off faster than you thought it would? Sure, so, well, building a framework, I mentioned that was our very first one, but in kind of the organizing space where we are now, ah oh, this was like several years ago now, I just put out this little guide called Declutter Your House in a Weekend. I every year do one weekend where I go through every week,
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room of my house, clear out a ton of stuff and donate it. And it’s kind of like a reset for my house every weekend. I had a really specific strategy that I used to get through a ton of stuff in a very small amount of time. So I had talked about it a little bit on my blog and on social media and people were like, well, okay, but how do you do it? So I was like, fine. I wrote it all out. I made a couple printables to go with it and put it out in this guide. think I sold it for $7 or something at first. And it went,
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gangbusters. And I was like, what in the world? Like, this is just this like little guide of this thing that I do on a weekend. But I think that it was like proof that like you can take even a simple strategy. But if you are willing to like give people the nuts and bolts and take all of the like questioning and like unsure in this away from it and really give them like, here’s step one, here’s step two, do this exact thing and give them that shortcut. Like they are willing to
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buy it and follow your method because it’s worth it to them. They don’t have to reinvent the wheel. So again, I mean, we’ve had that for, oh, I don’t even know how long, many years. We have updated it and made it better, added some more tools over the years, and it’s still one of our best sellers in our shop. So yeah, you never know what’s gonna resonate with people.
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And that’s another thing too, right? Like take what people are asking for. They asked you for that. They wanted to know what you were doing. So it made sense to give them what they asked for, right? I think sometimes we look at that and go, no, that’s just too simple. I’m like, it’s way too simple. Well, and you have to remember too, like you don’t realize what you know, right? So that was just something that I had been doing. made sense in my brain for years, but for other people whose brains don’t quite work the same way, like the thought of,
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decluttering their entire house in one weekend is just overwhelming and they think, I could never do that. um like, if somebody, the thought of like me doing detailed tax accounting is terrifying and I can never dig into that. But like my sister-in-law who’s a CPA is like, ooh, I can teach you all about that in a couple of minutes. So like we all have our gifts and like these things that we know that can help other people who, even though they seem simple to us. um
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other people’s brains don’t necessarily work the same way. No, that’s so true. That’s so true. There’s a lot of things that we just do either automatically, like, because it just comes like that, or we’ve done it for so long. Like you said, you’ve been doing it and that worked for you, that it sort of was just, it was there and it was easy. Yeah. No, that’s awesome. I think, again, we also sort of touched on this too, but like, how did you figure out which income streams to focus on and sort of, I mean, you have ads, you have products, I…
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I don’t know how affiliates are or anything for you now. Like how do you decide what to focus on? Yeah. So I would say for us from the beginning, digital products always kind of felt like a natural fit. ah I was a teacher by education and by trade. like creating a lesson plan and like teaching whether that’s through writing. I mean, I was an English teacher, so I really liked to write. So teaching through writing or on video.
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came very naturally to me and it energizes me rather than drains my energy. So I think that is a really good indication of like what might be a good fit for you. uh Those women who are on Instagram and their stories every day showing all the new finds that they have and like modeling them and everything, they are adorable. A lot of them are making great livings doing that.
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that would drain me so fast. I could maybe do that for one day. And then like my energy would just be drained. But that probably energizes them. gives them energy to like interact with people in that way and to serve people in that capacity. you have to look at kind of where your gifts are, what energizes you and what feels like a natural fit because
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if you’re in this to make an income and make this your job, you’re gonna be in it for the long haul. So if you sign up for something that’s just gonna totally drain your energy, it’s not gonna be sustainable for a long time. I totally agree. That’s one of the things that I wanna make sure that comes across with the new sort of focus that I’m sharing is, yeah, it’s gotta fit what you’re doing. I’m looking backwards 15 years.
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15 years is a long time, So yeah, otherwise you might as well just go get a regular job somewhere. If it’s not something that you love, why do it? Yeah. Yeah. OK, so your whole brand centers around organization, even with the digital products and stuff. So what systems behind the scenes helps you to keep your business running smoothly? Sure.
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So we, this year, kind of did an overhaul of a lot of our systems. We switched over to ClickUp, which ended up uh kind of replacing a lot of the kind ragtag systems that we had been putting together. So uh it is our uh project manager. So we were able to get rid of Asana. It has like a chat feature. So we were able to get rid of Slack. uh It has notes in there so we can, you know, record our meetings and organize a lot of that kind of information.
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And so ClickUp has been kind of the central hub for our team, meaning just, our team is very small. It’s just me and my husband, Donnie, and we have a part-time assistant that works with us. So we are all in there and keep all of our projects and communications organized uh with that. Another thing that has been huge for us has been we help scout for like incoming customer service email.
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Which is great because I am easily overwhelmed by emails. I want to help everybody and like fix everybody’s problems. like, if I did that, that’s all I would do in my business. And so we learned a long time ago that I cannot see the emails unless it’s absolutely necessary. we have, oh since we have like so many different branches of our business, we have a lot of different email accounts. They all come into this one inbox. Our assistant is the first like line of defense and filters through them.
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And then anything she can’t answer, she usually passes on to Donnie. And it’s only like once it gets through both of them, if they can’t answer and fix it, then I see it in my inbox. So that keeps my anxiety down and it gives me my time to do the things that I enjoy and that I feel like I’m better at, which is creating the content and keeping the business running that way. So. No, that’s perfect.
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That is so good that you recognize that early on and then put things in place that help you to deal with that, obviously. That’s so good. I love that. em Okay, so what do you not do anymore, aside from email, that you feel essential? So anything else, I guess this kind of is answered by the email question, but if there’s anything else, is there anything else you sort of let go of that you don’t need to do?
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Yeah, I am not on the social media hamster reel anymore. I used to post, especially on Instagram, a ton and was working on growing my following there, but just the amount of time and effort that went into it was not equal to the benefits we were getting out of it. So I actually stepped back and took, oh gosh, I don’t even know, like nine months off of, I didn’t post at all on social media and just kind of reevaluated and was like,
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what do I want this to look like? Like I do wanna connect with people. I don’t wanna be cut off from my audience because they are important to me and I wanna have that interaction with them, but I cannot spend all of my time like chasing Instagram followers uh or like vanity metrics and not put my time into the things that are actually moving the needle for our business. So I took that break. I came back only within the past few months.
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and made it my goal, I post once a week. I syndicate the same posts to pretty much all of my social platforms. And that has allowed me to be present without it, know, taking over my life um completely. So, and again, that’s another one of those things. Like there are people who are, get so energized and whose like primary platform is Instagram or is TikTok or something like that.
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that is not the case for me. The older I get, the more introverted I get and the more I be behind the camera. So I am only putting in like minimal effort there and using my energy and my time on the other parts of our business where I know I can be like more effective at moving the needle. Right, and I think that’s, if the ROI is not there and you’re doing it for business purposes, that makes absolute sense if you’re not.
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Yeah, that totally makes sense. love that. Because there’s a lot of people who are like, no, no, you have to be on, you have to be doing it, you have to share all this. And then there are people who are like, no, I love it. And so this is like, it’s great for them. But then there’s other people and I’m totally with you on that. No, I’d rather repurpose it all. Like I’m present, I’m there. People can see what’s happening. I can connect with people if they message or whatever. But it’s not a constant because the ROI is just not there, right? Yes. And I mean, and I know it will be for some people like you can know this that way. But that is just not
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where my business is focused. so I’ve had to say, I’m not going to chase more followers. I’m not going to chase these metrics. And I’m going to be fine with that. Yeah, because it doesn’t matter if it’s not bringing you more traffic, more business. It’s just a number. Exactly. Yeah.
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So what does sort of simple look like for you now in the season? Like what does your day to day sort of look like with the business then? Yeah, I mean we are so like I mentioned my boys are 14 and 16 right now. So we are in the phase of like crazy like driving them around to activities and all their stuff like and they are they are why we wanted to have this business where my where my husband I both work in it full time. We have the flexibility to go off for the weekend to a hockey tournament or you know travel.
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with them on whatever activity that they’re doing. So that is our number one priority and so everything else in the business kind of revolves around how can we keep that flexibility for our family. like I mentioned, like cutting back on the things that I didn’t feel like moving into, like social media, there was a time in our business where I was posting a full-length YouTube video every week. I’m not doing that anymore. I focus.
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pretty much on the things that are close to my heart and that are giving me energy right now, which are, I have sent my Saturday email every week for probably, since 2014. So more than a decade, that has been kind of my solid weekly communication with my audience, so I do that. And I work on the products that are in our shop.
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And everything that kind of goes along with that. So when you like lead magnets uh or promotional stuff that goes along with that. And so that is the stuff that has to get done. And then anything else on top of that is just icing on the cake. in this, I mean, my oldest is gonna be off to college in two years and our lives will slow down drastically. And then our other one will go off in a couple of years after that. And so maybe when that happens,
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we will do more and we will pick up more things that way, but in this phase, that’s where our priorities and our focus are and we’re okay with that right now. That’s so good that you’ve been able to build it around your values and your family. That’s so perfect. That’s so good. So you’ve been online for over a decade, same as me. Jeez. Anyway, how has your approach to content creation changed over time?
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Like obviously you said you don’t do a full length YouTube video anymore, but like how has your, like how has it changed over time? It is crazy to like look back on how just like not only like my approach has changed because the internet has changed so much since 2013. yeah, like in 2013 I was posting a blog post, a written blog post like four to five times a week on whatever, you know, I felt like posting on.
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And then I moved into like around 2017 was like the YouTube era where I was doing a blog post plus a YouTube video like all the time and so and social media obviously was getting bigger and bigger during that time. also I was doing less blog content and dividing my time between the blog and social media. In by like 2020 I would say you know people
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kind of stopped, by then definitely people were not following blogs the way they used to and they would like come and read my story all the time. And so my focus kind of turned more toward SEO and setting up my blog to be searchable and kind of tweaking the article so that they could be found by Google. And then after a couple of years of that Google kind of pulled the plug. Yes, yes they did.
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stopped doing that and now have kind of slowed down in the sense that I’m not on that content hamster wheel anymore, either with like written blog posts or social media and more kind of just trying to be more intentional about what I put out there. Like I mentioned my Saturday email, we’re focused on our shop and the products and the way that we can serve people that way. I will post on
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the website occasionally, like if I have something that dovetails into the other stuff that we’re doing or that is just like on my heart to share, but um definitely like slow down more intentional uh content than just throwing whatever up there. Like we were doing back in the day. So what would you say is your favorite kind of content to make now? Like if you’re making content, is it printables for the shop and lead magnets? it?
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This is gonna sound super nerdy, but I am like in love with spreadsheets these days. Okay. I never thought that I would love spreadsheets because I have more of like a bookish brain than a mathy brain, but they are so fun. like, they feel like a puzzle like that I have to solve. Like how do I get, write all these formulas so that it shows up as this like beautiful chart that’s like super helpful. It does all these automatic calculations so that people can.
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keep track of their budget or track their habits or um build a reading habit or decorate, even decorate their and organize their house. I found ways to like put that kind of stuff into spreadsheets. uh so creatively like that is what I’ve been creating, like making the most of. um And it’s just been really fun. Like it’s, it was, I was new to spreadsheets. I had to learn from scratch and now I can do some like pretty cool and fancy things in there.
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And it’s just, it’s fun to learn something new and to see kind of how far you can push it and stretch it and uh create something that is really helpful for people to use in those various areas of their life. That’s so cool. love it. Oh my God. No, that’s so neat that I think it is one of those entrepreneurial things too, where you always feel like you want to and need to learn new things.
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Because you enjoy it, but also because it will be helpful for your people I think there’s like sort of a nice little dovetail there where where those two things go together for sure. Yes. Yeah Okay, so how do you balance then? Doing sort of helpful content quote-unquote and then and selling your products, right? Like how do you work those things together? Sure So I mean at this point I have like ten years of free content out there. So I don’t really feel like
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I owe the internet like tons of free content. Like I used to, because I have like tons of tools and templates and stuff that people are welcome to use. um They’re out there for them. But as far as like what to sell, would say I do have some, what you would call info products still, which are just me teaching, but for them,
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Most of my products, there’s some sort of like tool or template or something that even if it is an info product, kind of takes it to the next level and helps people get like hands on with it uh and apply it in their own life. So I would say that’s the biggest difference between my free stuff uh and the stuff that is paid is that I’m more…
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like tactile and helping people like work through the process, whether that is with a spreadsheet, whether it’s with like Canva templates or um even just like a workbook to help them like take the, break down the process and go through the entire thing step by step in a way that is methodical and will create that like shortcut for them. So that is kind of how I differentiate between the free and the paid. And how are you, so, um
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Are you promoting more of your freebies that lead into a funnel still? Are you promoting more the actual products on the front end kind of thing? What are you finding you’re sharing more when you are sharing? Sure, I do a little bit of both. All the products in our shop are fairly low priced, so they are really easy to send somebody straight to our $12 budget spreadsheet and say, is the thing.
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But we also have, I also have a budgeting guide that people can download that walks them through the process of how to set up their budget that will lead them into, if you’re looking for a tool to track it, we do have these spreadsheets. um So I play around and do a little bit of both, kind of depending on, people are always coming, new people are coming into my orbit, so um you wanna.
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If they come in at the top of that funnel, you want to introduce them to you and show them what you’re talking about and kind of prime the pump and help them go from, oh oh, like, is this something I even need to, yes, this is something I need and here’s why it’s important. So try to kind of get them through that process and meet people where they’re at and bring them down the funnel that way. Okay. Totally fair. So you’ve shared a little bit about
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you know, being an introvert and running a business online and some of the things that you’ve sort of done so that you don’t burn yourself out with, you know, extroverted things. like what has helped you the most to stay sort of grounded and not burnt out with everything? Yeah, I think just being really aware of uh what is, like I mentioned before, what gives me energy and what drains my energy. And then the beautiful thing about
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running your own business is that you can curtail what you’re doing um and how you choose to spend your time in the direction that you’re turning your ship um to meet those things that will give you energy and that you’re interested in. One of the reasons that Donnie and I have really intentionally kept a small team is because we love to be nimble and we love to be able to change our minds and kind of steer the ship another direction without
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feeling like, well, we have to pay these 10 people. But staying intentionally small allows us, if something’s not serving us anymore, uh we can move in a different direction that we feel like is giving us energy and is serving us. uh And so we have kind of kept our business that way on purpose so that we are not getting burnt out and we are not hating what we’re doing. um Because if we don’t…
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If we can’t show up for it, nobody else is going to, right? There’s not anybody else or a big corporation to fall back on. Right, right. That’s awesome. What is something most people don’t see behind the scenes of your work day? Well, I do like to work in my bed in my yoga pants. I don’t let people see that very much.
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Business wise, I would say that people would be surprised at how much time and effort goes into each piece of content that they see on the front end. I remember my neighbor asked, her husband was thinking of starting a blog to go along with his brick and mortar business, and she’s like, is it hard to start a blog? And I was like, well, I didn’t sleep for the first two years.
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After that, I work all the time, but also never. You know what I mean? So even one 30 second Instagram reel can represent hours and hours of work. One little freebie that we offer as part of our funnel represents hours and hours of work. um And so I just think that’s something that people from the outside… um
36:07
Like they see, they’re like, oh, you’re an influencer. That’s so dumb. You could just like take a quick selfie and then you’re done. Like, no. That is not like, that’s not how it works in it. Everything takes more time and intention behind the scenes than you would probably ever imagine it does. Yes. And then you have to connect everything, right? Yes.
36:30
put the shop up, you have to do the pictures, have to, right? Like, yeah. Yes, all the technical stuff to lead through and figure out. When somebody buys something, it has to fire off the correct email to them and a follow-up sequence to make sure they know how to use the product. all of these things, it all takes time and effort and learning the systems to make it all work together. Yeah, yeah, and then when you have multiple products, that’s multiple like…
36:58
email sequences and all the things, right? Yeah, I just ended up refreshing a lot of our opt-ins. And yeah, it was like we have all these products, so I had to make all these different opt-ins, which needed all these different email sequences, which needed all these different landing pages, and it just multiplies. Yes. So have you found that your audience has changed over time as you have changed things?
37:27
Yes, I mean, I, I know I do still have some like diehards that have been around since like the early days. But also like when I started, well, I talked about all those different phases that have gone through. Right. So, and when I started, I had like toddlers and now I have teenagers. And so like, I do feel like there are constantly people moving in and out of your orbit and they’ll
37:53
And some people were in my orbit, then they left, and then they came back. So I do feel like it’s kind of growing and changing all the time. um But I have always kind of, I call them the motivated mom crowd. Those have always been my people. The moms who love their kids and love their family and are motivated to kind of get things done and, you know.
38:21
create systems in their home and stuff like that. um I am type A. I think I probably ashramacked other type A people. And so that has kind of been my crowds since the beginning. yeah, there are always people coming and going from that. So that absolutely makes sense. I’ve got some people who have been around like when their name comes up in an email or something, I’m like, oh my gosh, you’ve been here a long time. um
38:50
What would you say to someone who feels like they’re late to the game starting a business online, like a digital business, like everything’s already done, what would you say to someone who’s just starting? Or pivoting maybe too? Yeah, I would say, I mean, it is a lot more crowded out there online than when I started in 2013. But there is also so much more opportunity out there than there was way back in the day. There are just like,
39:19
endless ways to figure out how to create a business around something that you are passionate about and love or knowledge that you have to share with other people. It might take a little bit. It might take a lot of trial and error and some failures to kind of figure out your angle or your niche or your platform that you are really going to thrive on.
39:49
I don’t think by any means the internet’s not full. We’re not done. There’s still room for innovation and creation and for your unique um spin and angle on things. And for the way that you resonate with and serve other people, different people will be attracted to your message than are attracted to someone else’s based on your life experiences and your personality traits and how you…
40:18
approach things. So it’s not full by any means. There’s tons of opportunity out there. Stick with it. Keep trying different stuff and you’ll find your thing. Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s the thing is you need to, you need to decide that you’re going to try something and that there is room for you and then be like, okay, I’m going to try this. And if that doesn’t work, okay, then I’ll pivot to something else. But yeah. Yeah. um
40:42
What is one thing you wish more creators knew before trying to scale? Like you said, you guys have deliberately kept things small. I used to think I wanted to run a bigger company and I’m like, no, you know what? I really don’t. Like I don’t want to manage that many people. And so like what’s one thing you wish more creators knew before they tried to scale? So the thing that I always try to keep in mind is like what you see from the outside of somebody else’s business is just like the very
41:11
tippy tippy top of the iceberg of everything that is going on underneath or behind the scenes. uh So what looks like, you know, uh a simple business that, oh yeah, I could do that. I could run that. Actually has like a lot of moving parts going on in the background and those moving parts are the things that like make it go. So it is worth it.
41:40
I think to invest in like the education and to learning from people who you admire and who you know are running a legit solid business um in order to kind of save yourselves from tearing out your hair and making all sorts of mistakes because there is always, always a lot more than meets the eye when it comes to um
42:08
how like setting up a successful business. So if you want to scale, whether you want to be a, you know, small family company that’s nimble and quick and can move on your feet, or whether you want to grow a team in a bigger business, both of those things, I think, will take that learning and you can do it slowly, you could do it by trial and error, or you could do it from, you know, learning from people who are already doing it.
42:38
and kind of get some of the shortcuts in there. Yeah. So masterminds, coaching courses, like different things from people who… That sort of thing. And you do have to be careful. Like I said, we have learned from some people that were not worth it to learn from. And we have learned from some amazingly, amazingly smart people who have grown our business by leaps and bounds. So do your due diligence and your research.
43:07
ah and don’t just buy the course that lots of people are recommending because they’re making affiliate money off of it. Do your own research and follow the person independently before you invest your heart and passion to. too that don’t have any skin in the I affiliates are great. I love affiliate programs, but yes, ask other people who don’t have any sort of skin in the game.
43:37
who aren’t gonna make money if they recommend it, right? Don’t. Yeah. That’s totally true. Okay. So, you’ve launched digital products, courses, planners, eBooks, all kinds of things. What advice would you give someone trying to choose their first offer? Okay. So I was thinking about oh this. is a hard one. Yeah, right? What do we tell them? So I think you…
44:04
look for a very unique and specific way to meet a need that your audience has, right? And then you kind of hone the method that you use for meeting that need to make it as specific and step-by-step, like boom, boom, as possible. Name the method, preferably something catchy that people will remember. And then up.
44:34
create the tools and the templates and whatever you can create to make it as easy as possible for people to duplicate your process. Like as foolproof as you possibly can so they can get like optimum results in the smallest amount of time. Because ultimately they’re not looking for like here’s 27 hours of content that you can watch. They want to learn from you so that they can achieve their.
45:02
goal or fix their pain point a lot faster than they could if they were going to do it on their own. So get really specific, meet a need, create a step-by-step process, name the process, and make it as easy for people as possible to follow that process. People like you said you’re a teacher, I’m a teacher at heart, I mean I homeschooled my kids, and I think people like to learn and information’s great but they need to be able to implement it and like apply it to their life, right?
45:32
So that, yeah, so the step-by-step is super important so that they can actually take action. And then I think something else that you said, this is actually just something I learned last year, was that make sure you name it. Like name what that process is so that in a way that people will remember it and associate it with you. So that, yeah, so like that’s a really, that’s Becomes like your calling card, yeah. I didn’t really put too much emphasis on names until like last year and I was like, oh my gosh, yeah, like that’s kind of like, I don’t know.
46:00
thought leadership or whatever, like it’s your method, it’s your thing that way, right? Yeah, well, and something like that can make selling a digital product really easy. Like one of the reasons, like I talked about declutter your house in the weekend, like that’s snappy. You know exactly what you’re getting, you’re getting a result really quick, and I’m gonna show you exactly like A to Z how to get there. So like naming that and like so people know what the exact result is gonna be.
46:30
It makes it sell itself. digital products, if you have something like that that sells itself, like it’s a gift to yourself, because it will sell over and over for years. As opposed to, I’ve created plenty of stuff that kind of didn’t fit that criteria that nobody was really excited about buying. And then it’s like pulling teeth to try to get people to buy it. So not everything you ever create is going to be like a winner.
46:58
But if you can find, if you can nail down those pieces and find those winners, they, it’s a lot easier to, they sell them. I mean, you have to put an effort, they more, it’s easier for them to kind of sell themselves and to grow exponentially than those things that are just kind of boring and nobody’s, nobody really cares about. And you have to work really hard to sell them. Yeah. And I think, I think the declutter your house on a weekend kind of thing is good, is.
47:26
awesome because you’re like you said it’s exactly what they get and it’s exactly the time frame they can get it and it’s a doable time frame it’s not like it’s like in three years yeah right like it’s a solid this is the start this is the end kind of thing so yeah and that’s not not to say that like you can’t have like a long transformation like oh no a lot of like deep long transformations are you know slow and steady for a long time absolutely works yeah um but yeah you just have to
47:56
package that kind differently. You do have to package it different for sure. Yeah. I mean, I signed up for a year long coaching thing. I knew it was going to be a year. I knew it was going to be a year of hard work. That’s different entirely. Yeah. No, that makes sense. So what is sort of next for you? What are you excited about building or exploring or doing? Or are you just sort of keeping things as they are till the boys are bigger?
48:24
Right? No, we’re always kind of like tinkering and trying new things kind of to see what works and what’s going to be the next thing. We’re dipping our toes into Etsy a little bit these days and just kind of seeing what’s out there. Like we’ve always sold our digital products on our own platforms, there, and we plan to continue to do that side of things, but also are interested in just kind of like the built-in traffic and organic. um
48:53
kind of stuff that comes along with Etsy and see if we can tap into that. So that’s kind of an experiment that we’re going to be trying here soon. I also, I have been doing like a lot of computer heavy work recently. And so I can only do so much of that until like my little creative tentacles start wanting to come out. So I will probably start, you know, making new spreadsheets or templates or something like that soon. Cause it has been, been a little while and every, every once in a while I just need to say, okay, stop.
49:23
I’m not doing the computer stuff for a little bit. need to use my creative brain and then I can come back to building an email funnel or something like that. So that’s probably coming soon and not too long too. That’s fair. Okay, so where can people connect with you or learn more if they want to organize their home or any of that? Sure. Well, I am all over the internet. you can find me on my blogs.
49:50
Just go on her blog.com and free organizing printables.com. You can visit our shop at abbyorganizes.com and ah I really my email list is like those are like my VIPs and I especially Heart them and communicate with them at least once a week on Saturday sometimes a little more than that but that’s kind of where I share like behind the scenes of what’s going on with us and Like more helpful tips and tricks and things like that and oh
50:18
If you go to justagirlandherblog.com/Shannon, you can get a free little organizing guide and get on that list. Aw, that’s awesome. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining me today. I loved having you. I’ll make sure all that gets put in the show notes too so that everybody can find those links really easily. um And yeah, thank you so much, Thank you for having me. It’s been fun. uh Thanks.
50:49
That’s it for today on the Shannon Acheson Show. If you found this helpful, follow the show and share it with a friend. And hey, if you’re not sure what kind of business actually fits your life, take the free quiz at shannonacheson.com. It’ll point you in the right direction. Thanks for listening. Talk again soon.