Scaling Your 1-to-1 Service into a Digital Product with Angela Tan

Have you considered adding digital products to your business? In today’s episode, Angela Tan of The Systems RX joins us to share her journey to creating digital products! From failed to scaled products, Angela is sharing some of the most valuable tips she found in developing her systems and funnels shop!

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Guest Bio:

Angela is the founder of The Systems Rx based out of Tampa, Florida. She is a funnel tech and automation specialist offering both DFY services and DIY products in her education resource shop, The Funnel Pharmacy. As a mom of two littles, she’s grateful for her automated systems to keep her sane while juggling all the things. That’s why she’s passionate about educating online business owners on easy to implement automated sales, client management, and marketing systems, so they can run a sustainable and hands-off business.

Today’s episode is brought to you by DIY Template Shop! Grab the exact email, form, and workflow templates that I include inside the CRM Blueprint Course. Steal my templates and customize them to match your brand and process. Use the code PODCAST for 10% off.

Here are the highlights…

[1:01] Get to Know Angela

[2:40] Turning Her VIP Day Into a Digital Product

[4:07] The Journey of Angela’s

[5:32] Increasing the Value with the Price

[8:54] Maintaining Tech Tutorials

[10:48] What is a funnel? Why are they important?

[15:15] Mistakes Business Owners Make in Funnels

[17:30] Testing Your Funnels

[19:00] Easiest Funnel to Set Up

[20:00] Angela’s Mistake When Creating Digital Products

[21:48] Pre-selling Digital Products

[23:10] Advice for Digital Products

[25:18] Building an Email List with a Waitlist

Connect with Angela

Website: thesystemsrx.com

Instagram: instagram.com/thesystemsrx

Library: thesystemsrx.com/zapier-library

Review the Transcript:

Colie: Hello, hello, and welcome back to the Business First Creatives podcast. I am here with my automations friend, Angela Tan. Now, before we get started, I want to tell you guys, I’m not feeling great today, having a few health problems, but I refuse to reschedule this interview because Angela and I have rescheduled this interview four times.

And today you guys are going to get all of the goodness that she has to offer. Angela, good morning and welcome to the podcast.

Angela Tan: Good morning, Colie. thank you for having me. I’m so excited to finally be here. I guess this is the third time we’ve rescheduled and third time’s the charm, I guess.

Colie: it is. So let’s talk about your business. First of all, why don’t you tell the listening audience what you do, and that is going to push us into today’s topic.

Angela Tan: Yeah. So I am Angela. Um, I am the founder of The Systems RX and I’m based out of Tampa, Florida, and I kind of have two roles in my business. The first and main role is a done for you tech and automation And I specifically focus on setting up workflows that make it easy for people to learn about what you do, pay you and rave about you.

So anything in the realm of automated marketing, sales and client management systems. And my other role other from the done for you side is I’m also a systems educator and I love educating online entrepreneurs on easy to implement automated systems so they can run a system. Sustainable and hands off business while juggling any other roles that they have outside of a business owner like being an uber driver for your kids Without losing your sanity because I myself i’m a mom with two boys under five And I rely very heavily on my automated systems to keep me sane while juggling all of the things.

So

yeah

Colie: Very heavily on your automations, Angela. So at some point, and we’ll talk about a timeline, but you started transitioning from doing only done for you to opening and creating your digital products. So why don’t you tell me why you decided to create your first digital product and what it was?

Angela Tan: so I I had actually someone reach out to me asking me if I had a digital product for what I do in my done for you service. And I was like, actually, I don’t. And I had been wanting to create a digital product, but I never knew what that would be. And so that kind of like sparked an idea in my head. It’s like, Ooh, I can take my Signature process for building funnels and turn that into a DIY course for the people who can’t afford my 3, 000 VIP day.

And I looked at what I already had created for my VIP day clients, like so many, Checklists and things like that that I just duplicate in Google Drive whenever I sign a new BIP day client. I was like, I can just take this and turn it into a course now. Granted back. This was 2020 or 2021 like back then.

It wasn’t as robust as it is now. I’ve changed it a couple of times, but you got to start somewhere. Right? And yeah, that was kind of why I created it. Because someone asked if I would. if I had a digital product and I was like, that’s actually a really good idea and I’ve been wanting to create it. And when I asked my audience if it would be something they’d be interested in, they all pretty much said yes.

And that’s kind of how I got started.

Colie: Nice. And so this first digital product, do you still sell it? And what, actually, what was the original name? Is it still the same name?

Angela Tan: It is. What was the original name? The evergreen funnel tech checklist, which is so long. I hate it so much. I hate it so much. It like, Oh, it makes me cringe, but I didn’t want to spend too much time coming up with the perfect name and I just really wanted to get it out there. And that’s what I came up with.

And then that was in, December of 2020, I want to say, and then about a year later, I revamped it and I called it Funnel Tech 101 because I wanted to make it more, not just focus on evergreen. I want it to like, just be funnels in general. And Funnel Tech 101 seemed to be. The perfect name for it. And then about a year and a half later, I wanted to revamp it again, because as I’m like building more funnels, I’m learning more things.

I wanted to like revamp this stuff in the course. So now it is called the Funnel Formulary, because I wanted it to fit in with the SystemsRx like pharmacy branding and all of that. Um, and Yeah, so I’ve changed the name three times. The price has gone up from 27 originally, which is crazy, to 97 to 400.

It is the current price, so that’s been the evolution of my, my first course.

Colie: Okay, so that brings up a very important question because I think that when people, when it comes to creating anything, and I don’t think that it matters if it’s like a one to one service or if it’s a digital product or a course or anything like that, people feel Pushed to include more things when you raise your price.

So did you in fact include more when the price went from 27 to 97 to 400 or did it include less?

Angela Tan: It did include more. Um, but not in the sense of like bonuses, but in the core curriculum, because there’s so many different types of funnels out there. And then the 27 version, I only focused on a lead magnet funnel, like your traditional, like download a PDF type funnel thing. So when I revamped it the second time or the first time, I wanted it to include lead magnet and webinars.

So that more people could, you know, they can choose if they want a lead magnet funnel to build or a webinar funnel to build or both, but they have the resource to guide them through both funnels, you know, whenever they want to build those in their business. And then when I revamped it again, I decided to include a lead magnet funnel, webinar funnel, quiz funnel.

And an application funnel. So now there’s four different paths you can choose from, because I think you’re always creating funnels in your business. There’s just so many different types, and I really wanted it to be a resource that people can go back to over and over again to guide them through the funnel building process, no matter what stage of business they are in.

So I am definitely someone who includes more and more, but I did keep the bonuses. The same, I think I may have added like one or two things, but yeah, definitely added more to the curriculum. There’s way more videos. So many things.

Colie: Okay. So when it comes to like, including more in your course, what, what decision did you make in order to add in those new additional paths? Were they something that your audience was asking for?

Or was it just something that you decided that they needed?

Angela Tan: It was definitely something that they were asking for. I did send out like feedback forms regularly and I got a lot of requests for like, we’d love to see more. Funnels funnel types included in the course. That was one of the top feedbacks that I got. The other one is more like tech specific tutorials, which I had been hesitant to create because I didn’t want people to think that they have to use a specific software to build their funnels.

And I make it very clear on the sales page. Like this isn’t like a software specific course, like take the concepts. And like apply it to the software that you are using. Cause if you think about it, all email service providers have segments or tags or lists or whatever they want to call it. So like find that version in your email marketing software.

I didn’t want to like create a tech specific tech tutorial just for that. I might, may add that later on just as an added bonus, but in terms of adding the additional like funnel paths, that was definitely something that people were asking for. And I think those four pretty much encompass all the different funnel types that are out there.

And if there are additional ones, I may, may add them later on.

Colie: I mean, but when you start making these tech tutorials, I always say you don’t want to tell them a specific tech to use, but once you dive into making those tech tutorials, I don’t think anybody knows how much time and effort it takes to maintain them. So, for example, I started making things for my honey book course, and guys, that’s one tool, right?

Honey book. And right after I started making the videos, honey book started dropping a new feature every single day for 30 days. And it turns out that some of the videos that I made were obsolete. Like absolutely. It didn’t even look the same a week later. And so I got really frustrated and I had to stop making videos for a while until I was sure that they were, you know, done with like this burst of features.

And we’re all really grateful for features. But every time a tech company gives you a new feature, if someone has created videos are like a tech tutorial, step by step walkthrough, we have to go back and like edit and redo those tech tutorials because otherwise they don’t make sense. We’re telling you to click, you know, this first button.

And that button doesn’t even exist anymore. And so then the rest of the tutorial just makes absolutely no sense. So from a creator perspective, Angela, I am all about you not stepping into making tech tutorials.

Angela Tan: I get a lot of inquiries when people are deciding that like, should I buy this or not? And they’ll ask like, are there tutorials for ConvertKit? Cause that’s what I use. And like, that’s what I use now. And I could make them, but I’ll probably have to charge more for the course because that’s, That’s extra time and effort to have to like record these and ConvertKit gives you guys these tutorials for free.

So it feels like not right to charge for that stuff that you can get, you know, for free because you can just go on the internet on Google, YouTube, whatever. So

Colie: I mean, but let’s, I think we might want to take a step back because while I know what a funnel is, it might be that someone in the audience is like, okay, lead mags, six quizzes, like webinars, like I don’t get it. What bottom line, what’s a funnel. So Angela, why do you think that people need funnels?

And what does a funnel get me as a business owner?

Angela Tan: that’s a juicy question. So I always define funnels as a customer purchasing journey. Like if we leave business out of it, let’s look at your grocery store as a funnel. Like when you walk in. They have carts ready for you because they know like you’re gonna buy stuff right and they tend to put All the essentials that you need like milk, eggs, whatever, the very back of the store so that you can walk through all the other stuff in between to get to the very back.

So that is like their version of a customer purchasing journey is like you start in the beginning and you work your way back and then you know, you got to get to the cashier in the end to buy. All of your stuff. So I think every business has their own customer purchasing journey, the way the entry point could look way different.

Like we talked about, it could be a PDF. It could be an application that someone fills out that they want to work with you. Like they’re virtually raising their hand that they’re interested in working with you. It could be a quiz. It could be a webinar. There’s so many different entry points that you can choose from.

And then in between there is the nurturing. with the emails and whatnot where they try to sell you into their programs or their services and ultimately the goal is to convert you into a paying customer and having that all of that automated can free up so much of your time and energy where you just have to send people to the very top of that funnel wherever that entry point is.

And they work their way down on their own timeline and they’re getting everything that they need, you know, all on autopilot without you having to really lift a finger. And I think that’s where automated funnels are really nice. And I think every business owner should have one form of an automated funnel in their business to just nurture their leads on autopilot so that they don’t have to be doing that manually.

Yes.

Colie: I mean, I’ve never really thought, I mean, the grocery store analogy is absolutely brilliant. I’ve never thought about this, but what if every single person that walked down aisle 20 and was looking at the cereals, what if you had to answer a question every single time they walked down that aisle?

Like you would be wasting so much time on like this one particular part of their journey and not really ever getting a lot of people to the end. It also made me think of, you know, When you talk about grocery store placement, I know we’re getting way off topic guys, listening audience, I apologize, but like all those goodies at the front of the store, like the candy and the toys, all the things that when you take a toddler into a store, they’re always grabbing, Oh mommy, I need this.

I mean, All of those things are very well placed for you to just kind of dump them in your cart at the end. And that’s the same thing that we do when it comes to upsells and downsells and bump orders, and all of these things that again can be totally automated. But if you think about it, whatever you’re offering them at the end of purchasing, like your main product, it has to be something that is like a.

An automatic. Yes. Like, Oh yeah, that’s normally 200. It’s now only 50 and it goes well with this thing that I just bought. Yeah. Let me just, let me just add that 50 in and that 50, you know, depending on how many purchases you’re getting, it’s really going to add up in the end. And these people are getting it because you have an automated funnel.

that is capable of selling it to them.

Angela Tan: Yes. And the beauty of automating this customer purchasing journey, like people want things these days and they want them fast. Like think about Amazon Prime, like people don’t want to wait. So if you’re if they’re having to wait to like hear back from you. You’re giving them time to like think about other options or change their mind.

So having it all automated so that it’s getting to their inbox or their DMs or whatever, like instantly around the clock, it just helps speed up your sales process.

Colie: So you’re helping make this, this entire funnel like easily digestible for the average business owner. But if I asked you what the number one mistake is that you see a business owner make when they try to fumble through the funnels themselves, what do you think that is?

Angela Tan: I have, I have a top five list. I’m trying to pick one from

that top

Colie: I mean, you can give me your top five list. I’m all about

Angela Tan: Yeah. So one of them is not mobile optimizing your funnel assets.

They spent a lot of time designing a beautiful sales page on their desktop and they don’t check it on a mobile device. And you think about it, most people are accessing websites and stuff, LinkedIn bios on their phones.

And I’ve just seen way too many times, like, Sales page, like all wonky on mobile or like buttons that aren’t like fully in view on a mobile device, or even check out forms like. It’s like partially visible on the checkout or on a mobile device and you can’t hit submit like so many little things. So I think that’s one area that people could definitely just keep a mental note to check on a mobile device.

Another thing is formatting your emails to be easily. readable, digestible too. I’ve been writing really long emails lately and that’s a lot of work to put into my emails, but I have to format it so that some words like stand out or like chop it up so that it’s not just one plain long paragraph that is so hard to read.

If you’re putting in all that work, writing in emails for your funnels and there’s a lot of emails that can go into funnels, you want people to read them. You want people to open them and read them. And if people stop, Opening and reading your emails, then your conversions are going to tank. So I think formatting your emails, add some GIFs or whatever, GIFs, GIFs.

Add those in there, pictures, like, just to, you know, have some fun with it. The third mistake is not segmenting your leads and your funnels. If you don’t segment them, you don’t know who to target, especially I tend to over segment and people who have gone through my funnel and if they don’t purchase like I’ll tag them to at the end of my funnel and later on, I can retarget them with like a flash sale or something like that.

Just in case I’m in the mood to do that. What’s that 3 mistakes?

Colie: but I mean, those are really good. The one that you didn’t mention that I thought was going to be number one. And Hey, look at me. I did. I learned something new was just testing.

Angela Tan: well,

Colie: So many people throw their funnels up without testing them. And then when they don’t work, they’re like, Oh, well, it didn’t work.

And I’m like, did you test it? And they’re like, well, no. And I’m like, okay, no, you have to test it. Or, you know, some people make really silly mistakes, like testing it with an email that’s already. In the system and has that tag. And then of course, nothing else happens. That email is one that you’ve already used before.

And so it’s not going to behave like it would, if it was a brand new person who was opting into your webinar or your quiz or your, your, you know, your awesome PDF that you spent hours making.

Angela Tan: yes, or like in the testing process, like if you don’t test it, you don’t know if you’ve actually turned on an automation and I’ve seen so many times like a zap wasn’t turned on or like a convert kit automation wasn’t like turned to live and they’re testing and they’re like, why isn’t it working? It was like, because you forgot to turn it on.

That’s what and so yeah, testing is very important.

Colie: So out of the funnels that you are covering inside of your digital product shop, which one tends to be the easiest? Or like the lowest hanging fruit for someone to try if they really do want to start bringing in more people into their business. And they’re just not sure what that entry point should be.

Like which one is the easiest one for most people to set up?

Angela Tan: I would say the lead magnet. is the easiest one because it’s just one path. So you think about webinar funnels, you could get really complicated with it based on like who watched the webinar or who didn’t watch it. Quiz funnels are so many, depending on the result of outcomes, like most people have different offers associated with the different results.

So that can get really complicated really easily. So I would say the lead magnet one, and there are, um, Not to overcomplicate lead magnet funnels, but there are very various lead magnet options. Like you can have a PDF, you could have an, like an audio course, just so many different options. But at the end of the day, that’s just one thing at the top of your funnel and everyone else goes through the same path after that.

So I would say lead magnet funnel is the lowest hanging fruit.

Colie: All right. Let’s slightly like change our path to talk about you as a digital product creator. So what is the one thing that you did when you started creating your digital products that you wish you hadn’t?

Angela Tan: Oh, I didn’t create products that people didn’t ask for. I get a, I get a lot of ideas and I’m like, Ooh, that’s a good one. And I’ll launch it. And then like crickets, it’s like, well, nobody asked for it. So why did you like spend all that time creating a sales page, doing all this stuff for it? So now when I create digital products, I always make sure to like send out a survey or at least find a way to gauge interest before I spend the time creating the thing.

Cause I have definitely created a few products where I thought people would need them based on like how much I needed it and crickets. So yeah, I definitely recommend surveying your audience before spending all that effort into creating a digital product.

Colie: Have you ever thought about pre selling any of your digital products so that once a good number of people have bought it, you know that there’s interest and then you’re basically being like paid to create the product based on the people who have already purchased. I mean, I did that with both of my courses, both of my recent courses, like the Dubsado course and the HoneyBook course.

I did a pre sale. On both of them. Like, you know, Dubsado was years ago and HoneyBook was just recently. But I would pre sell it. And as you know, as long as enough people bought it, I was like, okay, this is something that people really want. And then I dove in and actually created the materials after I sold it.

And I was, you know, like, just so that, you know, this product is not created yet. It will be created, you know, and available to you on such and such date. Have you ever thought about doing that for your own products?

Angela Tan: I did it for the first time in November of last year. So not too long ago. I kind of had a weird relationship with pre selling because I’ve been burned once by a coach who pre sold a course that I purchased and then I ended up getting scammed. So I was like, Ooh, like, I don’t want people to like, I know I’m not going to scam people, but I was like, this just doesn’t feel right.

But I decided to give it a try because I’d never pre sold anything before. And it was funny enough, it was a course about how I went from a service provider to a digital product creator. And that was kind of my way of gauging interest. Cause I was like, there’s going to be a lot of resources in here.

I’m going to be putting a lot of effort recording podcast episodes and like creating the bonuses and whatnot. So let me see. If people actually want this and they did and they purchased it for the presale at the presale price. And I was like, Oh, okay, this is kind of nice. Like you are getting paid to create and it feels good to like, have your idea validated.

So I definitely will be willing to try pre selling more, especially for resources that have more content in them. cause yeah, being paid to create your digital product is so nice. Yes.

Colie: So nice. It is so nice. And then you can create an amazing funnel to continue to sell it on the back end to your new people. I mean, Angela, if somebody was like, again, if somebody wanted to jump in and create their first digital product, do you have any advice for them? Besides. surveying your audience and perhaps considering pre selling to gauge interest from your audience before you go forward.

Are there any other lessons learned that you have about creating digital products or moving from your services to like selling digital products?

Angela Tan: Yeah. I kind of have two. One, make sure you have an engaged audience before you start selling digital products. I have worked with a lot of service providers or coaches who didn’t really have an engaged audience, but they keep seeing the whole digital products like passive income thing and kind of fell into that trap.

And they spent all this time creating a digital product and at the end, nobody bought. So I say definitely have, um, And my second advice is to have an email list. I had never thought that I’d be someone who wouldn’t utilize email marketing, but it is where I generate the most of my digital product income is my email list.

Cause social media, social media is a whole different thing. thing. It’s just not consistent, but emails are just so consistent. So get an audience even better if you can have them onto an email list so that you can communicate with them regularly and know that, you know, you’re not fighting an algorithm to get their attention.

Yeah, I

Colie: Well, Angela, let me ask you a question about your email list, because when I had Liz Wilcox on, you know, she’s all about email. I was absolutely shocked to learn that when she launched her membership, her email list was less than a thousand. So when you’re telling people to have an email list, is there like a goal that they should have in terms of, because I know some people are like, Oh, well, I can’t do this until I have like thousands of people on my list.

And guys, I barely have over a thousand people on my email list. So my email list is not large by any. Any spectrum of the imagination. So, I mean, how many people should someone have on their email list before they dive into perhaps trying to sell these digital products?

Angela Tan: I don’t know that there’s a specific number. I had 25 people on my email list when I sold my first digital product. And those are just all waitlisters. I basically put a waitlist link onto my Instagram page. And I was like, if you’re interested in this course, like join the waitlist and that’s how they joined my email list.

And that’s how I got started. And I think one or two people from that 25. Um, so I think just start start building your email lists and the people who want to get your emails, I think, are the people who are interested in what you have to offer. so I don’t think that there’s a specific number. I will say there are a lot of ways to grow your email list.

such as bundles, summits, and whatnot, list swaps, like cool, like I could collaborate with you, you know, we could do a list swap and that’s one way that we can grow each other’s email lists as well. So there are so many different avenues you can go to growing your email list. So it doesn’t have to be this hard, complicated,

Colie: I totally agree. I mean, Angela. I, amazing. And if people, because I, I, I mean, email lists and funnels and all of it just seems really complicated, but you make it really easy. So if someone wants to come and learn more about your done for you services and your digital products, where can they find you on the internet?

Angela Tan: Yes. Please come find me on Instagram where I share videos of my babies. They are my marketing models at this point. I still need to hire them so I can save money on my taxes.

Colie: That point,

Angela Tan: yeah. So you can find me on Instagram. I share a lot of stuff there, or you can go to my website, the systems, rx. com, and you can find all sorts of free goodies and paid goodies on there in my digital shop, the funnel pharmacy.

Colie: Angela, thank you so much for joining me for this podcast episode. It has been amazing because of course I love hearing about funnels from other people, but everyone, if you do not have a lead magnet funnel in your business so that you offer your audience something that they can opt into, and then they get on your email list, I highly recommend that you do this. And Angela is a great person to show you how. All right. That’s it for this episode.

See you next time!