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In this episode, Sonia Lakhany shares how attorneys can monetize their knowledge by creating digital products that generate leveraged income beyond the billable hour. Drawing on over 15 years of trademark law experience and her course Two Weeks to Trademarks, Sonia explains how lawyers can package their expertise into guides, templates, courses, and resources that serve both clients and other professionals.
She discusses how digital products can create scalable revenue streams, the importance of market research before building a product, and practical strategies for validating demand through content and audience feedback. Sonia also provides insight into pricing, audience targeting, and choosing the right tools to build and deliver online products successfully.
3:00 Moving beyond the billable hour with leveraged income
6:46 Ethics considerations and setting up a separate entity
9:36 Types of digital products attorneys can create
13:18 How to price digital products based on value
18:11 Building an audience and identifying your buyer
24:38 Validating demand before creating the product
31:05 Tech tools to create and deliver digital products
42:18 Marketing strategies and lessons learned
Creators and Guests
Host
Tyson Mutrux
Tyson is the founder of Mutrux Firm Injury Lawyers and the co-founder of Maximum Lawyer.
What is Maximum Lawyer?
Maximum Lawyer is the podcast for law firm owners who want to scale with intention and build a business that works for their life.
Hosted by Tyson Mutrux, each weekly episode features candid conversations with law firm owners, business experts, and industry leaders sharing real strategies and lessons learned in the trenches.
If you're ready to grow your firm with less stress and more support, this is your next must listen. Subscribe today.
Sonia Lakhany 00:00:00 I'm excited to present to you unbelievable brilliance. Let's monetize your knowledge through digital products and make a little passive income. So hi, I'm Sonia Lakhani. I have been practicing trademark law for over 15 years now under my own practice, and over the last eight in change of those years, I've been teaching trademark law through a course that I created called Two Weeks to Trademarks. And like the title suggests, you can in fact become fluent and proficient in practicing trademark law, if you should. So on to offer it to your clients. So it is absolutely doable. One of the coolest things about trademarks I can't take credit for this part is that you can practice trademarks from absolutely anywhere in the world, and not only can you be anywhere, but so can your clients. Oh, because it's a federal practice area and so the world is your oyster. And that is why trademarks is such a lucrative practice, and why our community of lawyers enjoys so much of the business out there, and there's a spike in entrepreneurship right now.
Sonia Lakhany 00:01:03 There has been for years. So if you have any questions at all being business transactional, attorney or not happy to answer. And so along the way, as I've been teaching and practicing and practicing and teaching, like any good trademark lawyers should, I decided that there needs to be a brand around this, right? Because I had the one course, but I had lots of others that came along the way. And so I thought, you know what? Let's try to think of a brand name that really encompasses this concept of we didn't learn how to practice law in law school. Does anybody feel that way? Okay, let's try this. Raise your hand if you learned how to practice law in law school. Yeah. Okay. So see, nobody did. And did anybody pay upwards through either student loans or cold hard cash. Did anybody pay upwards of over $100,000 for that law degree? Boom. Anybody still paying it off? That's what I thought. Yeah. No fun. Go see Chelsea about that.
Sonia Lakhany 00:02:02 She'll get you right. Okay. But that being said, I just think we all really should have learned a thing or two about how to do our jobs. You know, kind of like how they do in med school. So anyway, that's what I started out to do. And here we are. So before I dive into the material, I would love it if we picked a way to stay connected. Here's three choices. You can add me on LinkedIn. I'm Sonya Lakhani, you can add me on Instagram. If you're an Instagram person. I'm at Trademark lawyer lady. Follow me. I'll follow you back. And if all else fails, I have a huge Facebook group for it's called Trademark Attorneys Slash Lawyers. But despite what the name suggests, we welcome trademark attorneys from any level we recommend or accept attorneys of any level. And so if you're even a little bit curious at all, come join. There's no obligation to get involved in trademarks. You can be a fly on the wall. We've got family attorneys, immigration attorneys crim because we talk about a lot of the things that we've talked about here at Max Lawson.
Sonia Lakhany 00:03:00 Right. Just how to optimize and be better at what we do. So come join our discussions in terms of what I'm going to cover today. We're going to talk about some basics in terms of getting started with digital products. So things like thinking beyond the billable hour and of course those fun bar ethics issues. Right. We got to think about those. And then we're going to get right into the meat of this sandwich. We're going to talk about what you can create, who your audience could be, how to get from idea to product, recommended tools that I that I use. I'll give you my whole tech stack so you have a place to start. We'll talk about, you know, the obvious one who's going to buy it and how. And then a few hard one lessons, and I'll leave you with some resources that have helped me. So off the top, we've talked a lot about the billable hour the last couple of days and how it is meeting it's slow decline, and that could not be more true for the era of digital products.
Sonia Lakhany 00:03:54 So this is a form of leveraged income versus trading. Time for money. So the idea is that you put in a little bit of effort upfront for a payoff later. Right. And so for those of us, raise your hand if you are a burst working season's kind of person, you can go hard and then you want to take a step back, go hard. Right. Anybody? Yeah. Those of you who had your hands up probably have some form of ADHD, I imagine anybody. Yeah. We can we can go really hard and then we need a break. And this whole ten, eight, 8 to 10 hour days, day after day, with no end in sight is like, really not for us. And so digital products are fun for that. that being said, I have to make sure I give you the very clear disclaimer. And those of you I've had drinks and lunch and stuff with, we've talked about this. Digital products are not passive from the start, and they don't always stay that way across the way right there, things break.
Sonia Lakhany 00:04:49 First of all, it takes quite a bit to set it up a lot of front loaded labor. But then, oh, then there's a payoff because you will be out with your friends or with your family on vacation, and then you'll see a little deposit. Come in. Ching, another ching ching ching ching. And you're like, oh, that was it's kind of like a slot machine in a way. Right. So it is fun and it's it can be a very lucrative business. And so in terms of the necessary coverage of bar ethics issues, I'm just going to say this set it up as a separate entity. You do not want any co-mingling allegation. We just let's just not. Right. So of course you do have to adhere to the same professional conduct standards that you would have to as you're practicing law because the the license follows you around town. Right. So don't do anything in your digital products business or promise anything or sell anything that you wouldn't want the bar to see. Right.
Sonia Lakhany 00:05:42 It's all one thing. in terms of permissibility, to even do this, make sure you just check with your local jurisdiction. Shout out to Florida for having the craziest wonky rules I've ever seen. I'm not a member of the Florida Bar and I never will be for that reason. That being said, also, do any of you raise your hands? Have an audience where other attorneys may be interested in what your knowledge is? A few of you. Okay, so those of you who have that in terms of an audience that other attorneys might be interested, you may look at providing CLE credit for a webinar you provide or course or something like that. And so formal education has the honor of ABA approval, which is really hard to get. You guys, it was a big deal last year. And so we have a partnership with the ABA to be able to provide CLE credit in almost any state under the regulations they have, which is, you know, certain things are just not creditable things like marketing and business development, but we have found some ways around it.
Sonia Lakhany 00:06:46 But for the most part, anything that you've taken a CLE on or that you'd want to teach for other attorneys, we can probably figure out a way to get credit for it, so I'm happy to open my DMs at any point. My email for questions on that or anything else that I talk about. So you have found lots of ways to connect with me and I'll give you them again before we end. And so just a word on Sealy credit though, that it is a very tedious process. And so I do recommend teaming up with somebody, even if it's not for all. We're happy to sponsor it and collab or co-host it, but even if not, it just really know that it needs to be worth it. It's a very expensive endeavor, and Foyle's main audience is attorney, so it makes sense for us financially to take that on. But if if not, and you don't need to be 50 states wide, maybe not. Right? So okay, in terms of what you could possibly teach a couple questions I get a lot.
Sonia Lakhany 00:07:40 Do I have to teach legal content? I'm an attorney, that's all I know. That's not true. A lot of you guys are good at a lot of things. There's a couple of you that are good at fashion. You guys are cute outfits the last couple of days. I see you guys. Some of you. I was thinking of you when I said that. Some of you, I'm sure, are great cooks. Right. Jordan mentioned he does a majority of the cooking during the the wedding game show. So you have a lot of talents. There is a story somewhere floating around on the internet about a mom who has a really picky eater as a child, and she's like, I have just finally landed the perfect lunch menu for the week that I can swap around and the kid will eat all of them. And I managed to, you know, the whole trick of like, grinding broccoli into the pasta sauce to sneak in vegetables. And so she's made upwards of hundreds and lots of commas and zeros on this, a couple of guides and PDFs.
Sonia Lakhany 00:08:35 So it sounds like a gimmick. And I promise you, it's not because fall has made an insane amount of revenue from courses and workbooks. So I understand that the material is a little different, but the the principle remains the same. So no, you don't have to just teach legal content. You can talk about anything that you're an expert in, because if there are people that want to learn from you, they will buy it, right? So it it depends. But you'd be surprised at the kinds of things that can be monetized. And so I do wonder about this because you're here in this session. But it's also the only session left. So show of hands. Are you listening right now. Because raise your hand if you are interested in someday having a digital product. Raise your hand. Hands remain high. If you already have something to the tune of something online. Okay, not as many, but a few. Okay. So write course workbooks if you guys want to shout out. Like what all are you selling? Course PDFs.
Sonia Lakhany 00:09:36 Guides of any checklists? Okay, now raise your hand if you think you could probably drum up a checklist or a guide or something in your world. Yeah, either for current clients. Potential clients, potential clients that become current clients because your guide was so helpful that they wanted to work with you, right? Or maybe the timing wasn't right and now it is. Or what we see this a lot is that somebody will see what you're doing and want to work with you. Maybe budget doesn't allow, but they've got some money to spend. Right. I'm not a designer girl really, but Louis Vuitton, as I understand it, has trunks and big suitcases and they also have keychains. They're like, you want to come spend money with us? We got something for you. Right? So there's something for everybody in terms of what you can share with your knowledge. And you can start small. It can even be a free download, right? We've heard the words lead magnet before. Lots of content happening around here.
Sonia Lakhany 00:10:30 So you got some choices. In terms of choices, here is a small list, but not exhaustive of what you could create. As I understand it, you are getting the replay of all of these sessions and I believe also all of the slides. So please don't feel pressured to write any of this down. You're more than welcome to take a screenshot. I don't mind at all. And I'm also happy to send the deck immediately today, rather than if nobody wants to wait. But I do think you would get all the materials, which is nice because I missed a couple. So. So you could choose from something like a template, PDF, full course, mini course, even a tutorial on a specific topic. Right. So this is something that a lot of people don't think about, but you could hone in on a specific process on anything that you find yourself repeating, teaching to your clients that you wish clients would able to be able to, to know before they came to work with you.
Sonia Lakhany 00:11:23 So there's a lot of ways to adapt this concept of digital products, and almost all of them are monetizable in some way. So the most popular one for attorneys tends to be contract templates or templates of any kind. Hands up if that's something you're thinking about in your own. Yeah. So because we have the benefit of a little bit longer of a session, thank you to the team at Maxwell for giving me a little bit of a bracket and you stayed. Talia. And so let's take some real examples. Somebody want to shout out, what are you thinking about creating and how can we how can we fine tune it a little bit? Anybody who's thinking about doing contract templates, okay, who's thinking about doing like a guide of some sort or a checklist? Okay, I love that. Okay. So those of you who didn't hear, she's talking about creating a guide to be able to onboard your paralegal and support staff. So it just shortcuts the time from hire to getting your revenue back on that higher.
Sonia Lakhany 00:12:20 Right. So and that is something that you're thinking to market to other attorneys. Okay. Yeah. Exactly. And so when people talk about the idea of digital products, they're like, well I'm not going to make 100 grand from that may be true. Sure. But also maybe not yet. Right. And it depends how much the thing is. Right. So how do you have a price point in mind for what you're having gotten the. Okay. Let's get just basic guidelines, right. So first of all, what? You don't need to know everything about a certain topic in order to have the right to create a digital product. So limiting beliefs. Let's take that right off the table. You need to know some amount more than the person who's going to buy it. That's what you need. And the more you know beyond the person who's going to buy it, the more you get to charge. That's just how it works. And so under for Elle, for example, we have a whole store and we're going to talk about the tools and all the tech in like two slides, because that's the meat of this sandwich.
Sonia Lakhany 00:13:18 Everyone wants to know the how eventually. Right. So we have an array of things on our store. Majority of them speak to learning trademarks in some capacity, although we are looking to expand, which is why I went with a name that could encompass beyond trademarks. Right? And so, for example, we have a tutorial of a very specific topic how to withdraw as an attorney on an existing trademark application. Client doesn't want to pursue it anymore. They stop responding, so they stopped paying. Who knows? Right. But you got to get out. And so that's a very specific process. It's very explainable. Right. And so I did a screen share using loom. And I, I found the templates that we need in order to send the, the emails that we send to the client. Basically there's a two and a half month ish lead time beyond before the next deadline basically. And so there's a series of emails that you want to send to your client to be like going, going, gone, like.
Sonia Lakhany 00:14:16 And if they still don't respond, you're good to leave, right. Or to withdraw. And so I packaged up the emails that we sent, and I recorded myself physically going through the USPTO process and doing the withdrawal on a on a fake client. Right. That tutorial I believe we it sells for $97. That what I just mentioned right. That little kit and it's very specific 97 bucks. It sells decently well. Right. Because when you got to get out you got to get out. And sometimes. Often we see two in the morning sales. I'm like, oh let's see what you did. Okay. I'm glad. We glad we could help. Right on the other end of the spectrum, we have, for example, two weeks of trademarks, which is the signature course that I have, and that is around $3,000 because you're learning an entire practice area with no prior knowledge. Right? The course assumes you know nothing about you don't even know what a trademark is. And so to go from zero to oh wow in two weeks or less because you could binge it, right? I mean, we've seen people do it in a weekend, even if you've got 30 hours to spare, you know, you could binge watch it.
Sonia Lakhany 00:15:21 You could be filing trademarks by Monday. Now, that's a big jump from the attorney who knows zero to a whole new practice area. So it warrants a higher price point. So yes, there is money to be made, but it has a lot to do with what you're teaching, who's buying it. And it's not because attorneys are our audience. It's because of the jump in knowledge we're providing. Right. So you could apply that mentality to whatever topic you have in mind. Or hopefully, maybe it helps you select because don't all of us have lots of ideas on what we could sell, right? So maybe this helps you rank them that hey, there is a jump in knowledge on hopefully all of these. Which one of these ideas would be the biggest jump for my buyer? And that's what the one you should probably pursue. So speaking of who's going to buy your product, it does not necessarily have to be your clients because you're like, well, I'm already they already bought my legal services.
Sonia Lakhany 00:16:18 I don't want to, you know, pitch them for more. Okay. Maybe they're not it, right? They could be potential clients. Like I said, they could be people that come across their social media and, like I said, are not ready to buy in that moment or that's just too big and they're not even ready to schedule a consult because that's too big, too. And if you've been applying some of what we've been learning, hopefully you're not charging for consults. And that's why maybe someone isn't ready, because even that is too much of an expense. But they'll buy a guide. They'll buy a checklist to start to learn who you are. Right. And so, a digital product can be free. It can be a lead magnet, as we've mentioned, that can end up being monetized because they end up hiring you. Or you can see that a lot of people are downloading it, and then you start charging a price for it, and now you've monetized it. and it can really be anyone who can benefit from what you teach.
Sonia Lakhany 00:17:08 So you're not limited in just your legal knowledge and you're not limited to just clients. the recommendation I would give you in terms of how to cultivate this audience is to either you have two choices. Either you go where the people are that need your services. So just like our exhibitors in the back, right, we have everybody from, get staffed up who provides VA to the Pennywise, accounting and everybody else in between. They know where their people are, their customers are or ideal customers are law firm owners. So they set up a table in a room full of law firm owners. Right. So they go where their people are, or you create a space or a community for them. When I first started teaching trademarks, I had been practicing at that time for a little over 7 or 8 years. You know, there was a happy medium that had to take place before you were allowed to start teaching something, and so no space existed. None of this did. And so when people used to ask me how I learned how to practice trademarks, my answer then and now still is that there was no course, there was no formal and there was no Sonya.
Sonia Lakhany 00:18:11 I learned by making a bunch of mistakes and getting yelled at by all the partners I worked for before I eventually resigned and started my own practice. And so because no space existed, I created one. And that's how that Facebook group that I mentioned was born. There was no one to, you know, the proverbial like going down the hall and asking questions. Right? It's lonely as a solo, and especially in a practice that was as niche as mine. I had nobody, right. There was just it's very, very difficult. And so you're not you're not, limited from being able to create the space, the slack group, the discord channel, whatever you want to do to create a place for those people to gather. So this is always fun. It's to give actual ideas, right? Because I'm a tangible ideas kind of girl. Don't want to just give you a bunch of fun stuff and then leave so you can screenshot this if you want to. It's part of the slides, but here are just some examples of what different attorneys and different practice areas could do.
Sonia Lakhany 00:19:09 So one of the ones that I really like a lot out of this list is the first one, which is the court day survival kit, right? So those of you who are in practice areas that require a hearing, a court, you know, anything, any kind of court date, anything. Right. So example practice area fits for this one. Our crim family law and immigration. So what what should a client know before their I don't know custody hearing right. Parents stress they're like we're getting divorced I don't know what's going to happen. It's game day, you know, and I just don't. I don't know what I'm going to need. I need a pep talk. Maybe. Maybe I need a little some pointers on parking and how this. So why not record a video of yourself giving the speech that you give? Hey, this is what you need. Hey, you got this. Okay, just keep in mind X, Y, and Z is going to happen. And don't park here even though it says because that's going to run out on the meter.
Sonia Lakhany 00:20:02 And whatever you have to say about the thing, say it. Give an example, give a little checklist. And now you've got a small little digital product that can be sold to not only your current clients, right, or your potential clients. And so they can fall into that bucket of, well, I have a court date coming up. I can't afford this person. I really like their content. Oh, oh, they have a $29 court day survival kit. Let me get that. And I understand that $29 is not a lot of money, but you put it together once. This is the essence of being an IP attorney. This is we practice what we preach. IP is all about creating it once and reaping the benefits later, right. In any capacity. And so you can think of this as meal prepping. Right. So anytime you're making a dish, make double and then freeze it. And then on a rainy day, you'll be really happy that the past you thought of, the future you.
Sonia Lakhany 00:20:52 And so that it really does function a lot like that. So going from idea to product, this will be fun. So you'll notice that the creation of the product is not until number six. And there is a reason for that. I was asked to speak on this because I've been doing it for quite a while now, and I have made all the mistakes you can think of. I still make them. I've learned a lot. And this is the this is the best example in this space for me of just do it like this, trust me, because the other ways will get you frustrated and it'll be a waste. And so I didn't put name at the first because I'm a trademark lawyer. That really is what you need to do is choose a hopefully protectable name for it. that's step one, right? So you can start with court day survival kit. There's nothing wrong with that. That's not a trademark phrase. And that's okay. It doesn't have to be right. But you need to call it something.
Sonia Lakhany 00:21:50 The better and more unique it is, the better it'll be, right. But don't get hung up on any one of these steps. uncle chat can always be helpful. You can feed it. You know the names you have in mind and ask it to spit out fun things and give it prompts. So when I've been playing around with our product names, I really enjoy, witty puns and plays on words, as you can tell with for L, for example. And so there's something called the assignment of a trademark application. Basically, it just means that you're transferring the ownership of one trademark to between one company and another one. In the trademark world, that's called an assignment. And so that product that teaches the process of assigning a trademark with a template and so on is called. We understood the assignment. I just thought it'd be fun. And it sells very well, right? So as you're thinking about these, these things, it's fun to come up with names if that's your jam. But don't get caught in it.
Sonia Lakhany 00:22:44 Just pick a name and move on to step two, which is the separate entity. You must just trust me. Separate entity ane bank account stripe is sort of the favored payment processor in this space, although I don't know, maybe there's other ones I'm a big fan of, like picking one and just rolling with it until it becomes a problem. And then we go from there, you know? the thing I like about it being a separate entity is that you can do all the fun bells and whistles with promotion and marketing that you really can't do sometimes as an attorney. So, for example, you can very easily share revenue and split and things like that with someone who's also, for example, promoting your digital product on their website. If you guys decide to do a webinar together because, you know, it's a really sort of a happy connection. So I know, for example, in family law. I believe that I've heard therapists are a really good referral source, aka like also a good collaboration partner.
Sonia Lakhany 00:23:42 And so maybe you guys team up to teach a webinar or create a guide of some sort or whatever you're thinking about. Well, now you can say, hey, here's a 6040 split or this is what we're going to do, and you can just have so much more monetary fun when you're a separate entity and it's being handled by that, you don't want the income from your digital products to get co-mingled into your law firm revenue and trust. And could you imagine? There's no way. So no. So step two. Step three is you got to figure out who's going to buy this thing. And there's a really good reason for that because it leads directly into number four, which is you got to start creating content around this. The only way to figure out if anyone's going to buy it is to test, which means to put out a free video, a social media post, and not just one like several. And as you're able to see what people are clicking on what they're downloading. So that's where the free lead magnet might be some some insight.
Sonia Lakhany 00:24:38 Right. Because here's the thing. If you've made a bunch of videos about court day survival and what you need and hey, are you nervous? And nobody ever clicks on these videos if they're not clicking on it for free, they're certainly not going to buy it, right? And so this is the best way to conquer what I know of fear is hands up. If this is a fear for you in this topic is what if I go through all the trouble of recording as something and then I do this and I edit it and I upload it, and I choose a graphic and and nobody buys it. Does anybody have that limitation? Okay. Is that Tyson Racing okay. If Tyson has that fear I'm sure a lot of you guys have that fear too, right? And so this is how you avoid that happening is you test the market first. Now if people are clicking on let's just let's go with the court day survival kit example. And if a bunch of people are clicking on the video about, you know, preparing your nerves and how to sleep the night before and how to, you know, how to manage your emotions going into that day and things to keep in mind, then that's something you should take into account and say, hey, people want more of that.
Sonia Lakhany 00:25:45 Because once you create the content, you're able to set up what we like to call like pre-sale or early access. You send the buzz going right anytime we've seen anything big happen. I love borrowing, by the way, from regular e-commerce and regular retail because they're light years ahead of us in terms of marketing and sales practices. And so anytime there's a big thing coming, don't we get it coming soon? Presale even restaurants coming soon this fall, a new location of whatever in your city. You got to create a buzz for it. Because again, if people are not signing up for early access just to be on the list when you announce it and they're not clicking on any video about it that you've made to gauge interest, they're not going to buy it. But the other way is also very helpful. And so this is where you have to have a lot of humility because we don't know everything. And one of the things we really don't know for certain is what your audience member truly wants. They have to tell you, and you have to let them tell you.
Sonia Lakhany 00:26:44 And that if I could. I mean, I have a lot of lessons. I made a list of them at the end, but if I that's a big one. And if I could leave you with something that is probably rule number one. And it's the biggest one is let the market tell you what it is they want from you. Right. So put content out. Put videos out. Social test. Now another way around this that only a slide can only talk about so much is if you have people in mind that you think could be a buyer for your product, get on zoom with them. Start asking questions. Go to lunch with them. I did so much research when I first started teaching trademark to other attorneys, because people would message me on LinkedIn and go, do you have a course? I'm like, well, what would you want me to teach on how to do trademarks? Well, what part of it? Oh, all of it. And I'm like, okay, help! Help me.
Sonia Lakhany 00:27:31 Help you. Right. So as you get down and you start asking questions, I realize that there are a couple of major areas people want help with. And then I started teaching it, and I created the curriculum to directly mirror the things that people wanted. Right. This isn't rocket science, but it's a really, really big way to make sure that this ends up going positively for you, rather than not negatively. No one wants to waste a bunch of time and money because all of you, I think, have law practices, and so there is no worse feeling than putting a bunch of time into creating something and being like, I could have billed for that or gotten another client or or not done that at all and watched a Netflix show. So my goal here in this is to help you if you want to, to do it where it's a win the first time. Right. I would say of all of the products I've created over the years, I maybe have failed twice and we've launched a ton.
Sonia Lakhany 00:28:23 Every single one of them has been a win because of the strategies that the mirroring strategy. Right. And one time I was wrong. And if you're curious, I can tell you the story. But it was a mentorship. But it was like a monthly membership that included like two calls with myself and one of my instructors under foral, and nobody ever showed up to the calls. And you want to know why? Because the membership was $39 a month. We just didn't think that that that would happen. I was like, of course, if you have access to two trademark attorneys that are experts in their field and we're on zoom for an hour, twice a month and it's 39 bucks a month, wouldn't you be there the entire time? Every time no one ever showed up, $39, $39. And that's the thing, right? Is that at some point it's not about collecting revenue. Anybody else would have let that ride as long as they could have. Right. But we didn't feel right. We were like, we got to shut this down.
Sonia Lakhany 00:29:17 This is a fail. So we could rework it. We could not. But that's not the point of this story. The point of this story is that if you do this right and you listen to your buyer, right, and if you don't want to do the whole create content. See what people click on. Because that's a little bit of a longer strategy. Just make a list right now. Open a document, get your notes out and say, who are five people that I think would buy this and get on the phone with them next week. Email them, see if they'll give you some other time. Ask them questions. Ask Uncle Chat to give you questions. Right. So an example prompt for just to try. It could say I'm an estate planning attorney. I'm looking to create this for so-and-so. And this this would be my audience. Someone has agreed who is also an estate planning attorney. And that's my, you know, my sample audience. They've agreed to get on the phone with me.
Sonia Lakhany 00:30:06 I'd like to ask them market research questions. What do you recommend I ask them? What questions should I ask someone that would be a potential buyer for this digital product I'm trying to create? And like the previous speaker mentioned, context is everything. Give it as much as you can, right? you could even upload a sample product that you've done. Maybe you've downloaded a PDF or something, and you really liked what they did and you want to adapt it for your world. Upload it and say, I'm a criminal attorney. I want to adapt this PDF from a completely different business into what I do. Right. So there's a lot of ways around this, but once you've done the adequate amount of market research, then and only then do you create the product you see there. So that's how we avoid the wastage of time and energy. And I put a couple of tools right there. But there's a whole tool slide. So we'll get to that which is right here. Okay. So this is everyone's favorite because it's the tech stack right.
Sonia Lakhany 00:31:05 And if I can give you a place to start my job here is done. This is the exact stack we use at Fornell. And you're welcome to rip it off because, well, it got us this far. Is it the best? No. I hate half the list, actually, and I wouldn't have done it that way. But nobody, you know, Claudio didn't ask me if I liked their software or not. So anyway, so zoom, we all know loom. Some of you may not be familiar with. And if you are, I have something, a feature of it that you'll be absolutely very impressed by. So for those of you who don't know, is a screen recording software. So basically you can show yourself walking through clicking and whatever and you can voice over it. You can also have your camera going if you should so choose. But you don't have to. And then it creates a shareable link that you don't have to upload anyone and just lives forever. What it also does is it makes it really the new version or the new feature.
Sonia Lakhany 00:31:59 As of like 6 to 9 months ago. It makes it super easy to edit the video. Hands up if that's a pain point for you. None of us are video editors, right? So you've have you ever given a talk or a webinar and you're like, I would love to circulate that, but I got to edit out the Q&A and the this and the UMS. No one has time for that. So Lou makes it super easy and I promise I don't work for Lou. But basically if you get on and you say start and you're like, hi, blah blah blah, and you're like, I fumbled my words. You go something like cut, pause button, you just restart, right? Just like you would anywhere that you're recording. What loom will do? Is there AI feature will transcribe it as we go. Okay, nothing cool there. You can literally select the text that doesn't belong because you messed it up or whatever. And that's the joy of of using something like cut or like a hard stop and then pausing.
Sonia Lakhany 00:32:49 So you have the the video space so it doesn't seem choppy. You can select it and just hit delete and it stitches the video. And then once you play the video again, it's just in the program. I was like, this is amazing. So I love Zoom and Loom for stuff like that, especially recording a really specific process like I mentioned. But you can teach a whole course using those. my slides were already submitted yesterday, by yesterday, long before that. And so, somebody mentioned a program called descript which blows loom out of the water. And so I owe it to you to pass that on because it's it was just told to me yesterday and it sounds like loom on steroids. And so I am going to go check it out after this. But lume is what I've been using and it's what got us this far. Canva. Everybody knows. Anybody not familiar with Canva. Just curious. No. Yeah. See, we all know the graphics creators and the templates. I recommend the Pro version because you can upload your brand colors.
Sonia Lakhany 00:33:46 So all the hex codes that you use that are very specific shade of yellow or orange or whatever, you can feed it into there. The Pro version, once you find a template or a graphic or a PDF style that you really like with one button, it applies your branding colors all over again. So none of us are graphic designers, myself included. We don't need to be wasting time on that. And another takeaway I'll give you that has really, I think, solidified for me the last couple of days is that not doing yourself? Doing it yourself is number one. Okay. So someone else has to do it, right? Things like that. But it also it could be something else meaning AI, an automation, a tool. And so if one click of a button in Canva can do it. You don't even need to outsource it to a VA, right? So think about that always as how can I use not just in this context of digital products, but in anything is if a if AI can do it, that's even cheaper and more reliable than a VA.
Sonia Lakhany 00:34:43 But VA comes before you. So under no circumstances should anyone in this room be playing with Canva. Number three. So Shopify, a lot of you have heard of it. Most retailer websites e-commerce that you visit are hosted on Shopify. That's where they get all their templates. a pro tip there is that. So Shopify is language for a template is called a theme, right? And I'm condensing years and years of messing these things up in a very short amount of time. So I'm hoping this this helps you guys. So when you select a theme, meaning a template for your website, you want to keep in mind that you are a digital products business. You're not a high end fashion retailer, right? Because Shopify is built for all retailers. Specifically ones that have physical items. And so when you're choosing themes, you don't want to choose a theme that is really editorial, graphic heavy because you're not going to have a lot of graphics, you're going to have a title graphic for the product, maybe a photograph of what's included or like a couple of testimonials, but you don't want a theme that has, that's built for retail, right? And so you'll know what I'm talking about once you get there.
Sonia Lakhany 00:35:51 But you can browse themes for free, and you can start picking one and typing on to it also for free. So Shopify doesn't start charging you until you actually select it and move forward. So playing around is is totally free. and it's I recommend Shopify just because it is the easiest. It's the iPhone of hosting a store online. To me it's just plug and play. Very intuitive. all the apps that you'd want to use all plug in to it. It's they have a whole app store. so it's there's a lot, a lot to choose from. Honourable mentions for hosting your product go to Sam cart and Gumroad. These are two that are lesser known in the sense Sam card has gotten pretty big. they're all built to do the same thing. At the end of the day, I will say that if you only have just the one PDF, look at something like Gumroad or Sam cart, because you're not having to do a whole store and do all this, and you might not want to go that hard at the beginning, right? So that's an option too.
Sonia Lakhany 00:36:50 When we first started, we didn't have Shopify either. We we moved to Shopify 3 or 4 years ago. So up till then we sold from a landing page. And you can do that too. Right. There's nothing wrong with that. Clavijo is the email platform that syncs with Shopify, so it's really cool if you envision yourself having two or more ish, you know, products where you have a whole thing going. Claudia will immediately pull and sync the data from Shopify, every single transaction and everything about the transaction, the buyer, where they're located, what they had for breakfast, what they viewed before they bought this, all of their pixel and tech stuff that I. It's an insane amount of information, plus what they bought when they bought it, all of that. And so for retargeting purposes, and if you ever wanted to email a certain segment. So let's say, for example, you know, you want to email of your clientele, right. So if you're going to launch the Court Day survival kit and you're like, okay, who has a court date coming up that that would be, you know, a good audience for this.
Sonia Lakhany 00:37:50 So maybe you pull that from your case management software and you say, okay, this is the segment of people that we want to market toward. And then you send them an email and then half of them buy it. Now Claudio has the data on all these people, and you can start to see trends and say, oh, okay. So these are all of the buyers were men of my clientele that I emailed it to. That tells us something, right? Is that men in your world for this product are the buyers. And so you can obviously use that information to optimize your product, make it better, maybe market it only to those people so that you get more sales and you know the drill. So moving on. Kajaani is what we host. Our course on Kajaani is like Netflix. the idea is that you upload your videos, you can upload syllabus, PDF companion. All of our courses come with templates and guides and fun little stuff to help you out as you go. Right. Like a true course should.
Sonia Lakhany 00:38:43 And Kajaani is what we use to host it. And so the idea is that as soon as someone enrolls and buys through Shopify, they immediately get their own personalized login link with a password and everything. And then they log in and it's their Netflix. And so our students and I, when I say students, I mean attorneys. But our attorneys, when they log into their for Al-Shabaab, every single one of them can see their own courses that they've purchased from us. So it all lives in one place. honorable mentions go to think ethic is another one. I've not used it, but it's popular in the space. there are a few others. Teachable, I believe is another one that's fairly popular with any of these. If you Google software for blank, you're going to get like 1600 options, right? So I would go with the ones that are industry leaders. I don't recommend going with newbies on some of this stuff. If you're also a newbie to digital products, because you don't know what you don't know, and so you don't know if the you know, the features you need are going to be there.
Sonia Lakhany 00:39:41 And so I like to go with, people who are established. so that's Zapier. I'm sure many of you have heard about it, but that's just a way to connect it all, especially for a lot of these programs that don't natively talk to each other. So in the example that I just gave, if you're going to use Shopify once the transaction takes place on Shopify, how do we fulfill that order? How do we make sure that the person gets access? Well, if you're just doing a PDF, Shopify has an absolutely free digital download. That's what it's called, the digital download widget. And all you do is you upload the PDF that is the product into the product page within Shopify. And so as soon as someone buys it. It's available right there for download, and then they get a copy of it as soon as they check out. Very easy. Well, what if you have a course like we do? We have lots of them. So we want you to get access like I mentioned.
Sonia Lakhany 00:40:34 Well, Shopify and KGB don't talk to each other. How do we make them talk to each other? And so we build zaps on the back end to say, once every time a purchase is made for this product, send them a link that gives them access to that product name in KGB. Right. So these are all the things that I learned the hard way. There was a time and a place you guys years ago when we first started selling these, and as soon as someone would enroll, I was at my computer the entire time. And so I would go in, I had KGB open and I had Shopify open, and I'd be like, Grant, okay, let me search this person's email address. Grant. That's embarrassing. But, you know, it's the kind of stuff that you do when someone's paid for a product. You got to make sure they get access, right. So I didn't know this stuff was possible until you learn and learn. So Zapier is what connects it all.
Sonia Lakhany 00:41:19 You could apply Zapier to things that are outside of this world. Zapier has so many automations for literally any program, and so it's a fun little exploration. Stripe, as I mentioned, is for payment processing. And of course, we all know about GoDaddy in terms of domain ownership. But anytime you're thinking about what your product could be called, you obviously want to check if the domain is available. That's not a trademark, I just have to give you that. But it is a step toward trademarking it. Okay, where and how to sell. So you need a website and social media as soon as possible on this, right? So it depends if the the content of your digital product is going to be related to your law practice, and if it's legal knowledge that you're going to be doing, then great. You already have probably what you need. If you're going to be the the parent that teaches, you know, or has a digital product about picky eater recipes, well, then you might need a different website and a different social account, so that's okay too.
Sonia Lakhany 00:42:18 Either way, we are in an era where people want to have something a little bit to binge on before they pay you. That's just kind of how it works. And so, one, it's helpful to have a place to start posting videos like a daily tip on, you know, and so if we're going with the court day survival kit, so starting tomorrow, you say, hey, if you're going to court, you want to keep in mind X, y and z, okay. And by the way, the parking is a little weird. So make sure you bring quarters for the meter or whatever. Right. That's one video. The next day you say, hey, if you're going to court and get it out, hey, make sure that you fill out this this way. Make sure you bring a black pen because the court doesn't accept blue ink or whatever. Right? And as you're making these little videos, you get to do the thing that I mentioned, which is see the analytics.
Sonia Lakhany 00:43:01 So who's clicking on it? Lots of people. Even in Instagram, for example, you can see the arrow button on the back end. You can see how many people have shared it to so people are forwarding it. That's good insight right? So website and social as soon as possible. Your priority here should be, even if people are using your digital product at first for free, right? You're just testing it. It forwarding it to people. Hey, can you improve on this? Give me some feedback. Is this what you'd be looking for? If you were to, you know, buy a court day survival kit guide. Ask for reviews. Ask for testimonials. Because what do we all know, right? It's the same stuff as our law firm is. People see social proof. And so when I first started teaching courses, that was what we did is can you give me a testimonial? Can you give me a review? You get five and now that's added to the website. And so then when someone clicks on a video and ends up on the sales page, they're like, oh, well.
Sonia Lakhany 00:43:53 Ten other attorneys said it was an amazing course. So if I'm on the fence, that's going to put me over and I'll probably buy it right, versus if there's just mute silence, would you rather go to a restaurant tonight in Nashville that has 100,000 reviews or two? Right. So we all know how that works. like I said, consider offering it for free or a discount at first trade. Two weeks to trade marks in the very beginning was 7.97. It is not that anymore. That was years ago, right? But I wanted to choose a price point that felt fair for what I was doing. But that also kept in mind that I'd never taught before. Right. And I didn't know if I would be good at it. And so it's okay to work your way up, and especially as it gets better and you improve it along the way. The course itself looks so different back then than it does now, and so you can use testimonials and feedback to improve your products too. how many of you are Instagram users? Anybody? Okay.
Sonia Lakhany 00:44:49 Keep your hand up. If you've ever watched a reel, which is their version of a video and it's like a recipe or a comment, this word below and I'll send you the thing. Yeah, okay. That program is called Many Chat. Yeah. You're welcome. I couldn't figure it out. You're welcome. There's a couple others, but that's the leader. So basically you can set up many chat. If your plan is to market via Instagram. You can set up many chat to do exactly that. Hey, if you're going to court, hey, I'm an estate planning attorney I want to talk to you about. I have a free guide that teaches you all about just comment guide below right into their inbox and so you can game this a million different ways. some of those ways include asking for their name so you can it's a little bot that you can create and say, sure. Hey, thanks for asking for that. I got your comment just real quick as we're getting to know each other.
Sonia Lakhany 00:45:39 Right. And this is like in the messages, this is AI is hey, what's your name? Sonia. Oh that's awesome Sonia, what state do you live in? Right. So my recommendation to you would be to do like two. If you're asking somebody a million questions before you give them a free guide, I that would annoy me to be honest. Right. And I've seen it. I've just closed out of it. I'm like, I'm not doing this with you. Like, you want my email. You want this? My pain points. Somebody asked me what my pain points were. I was like for a free guide. Leave me alone. Like it. Just give me the guy you know. So ask like 1 to 2 fair questions that would help you and then move on. My recommendation would be name and email. That's really all you need, right? That's it. And so hey, I'd be happy to email that over to you. What's your email? Blah blah blah.
Sonia Lakhany 00:46:20 Gets right. And now they've added to your email list. You and again you I can't underestimate. I can't overstate the importance of data here is that if no one's commenting the word on one post, but they're commenting a bunch on this other one, that's what people want, right? So use that data in favor of what you're going to keep creating and pouring into. And that's how you can take one PDF. That is what it started as. And it can end up as a whole course because you realize there was a demand for it, right? So that's how we do a lot of our stuff. Back into the business I've talked a lot about, you know, support obviously. Shout out to Joey Vitale, who is not here because I think he's in Italy, but he owns a company called Sky breaker. They are awesome as well as some of the options here. But also Upwork is great if you haven't used it before, it's completely free to create a job post of any kind that people apply to.
Sonia Lakhany 00:47:14 So I'm a big fan. I don't work for any of these people. I'd just like to shout out people who are doing well. Hard won lessons and I'm almost at time. This is so great. This rarely happened, so I'm really proud. Okay, number one, get out of your own way. Just start. Please. Just create a video, do a sketch, make a Google doc, reach out to one person who might buy your product. Just start there. Right. Because that'll alleviate the fear of is this worth it or not? Is this worth my time? Right? but if I hadn't taken the plunge of just creating one outline one time and just to see what would happen, we wouldn't have fall. And so I really do speak to you from experience is it is one night that I had a glass of wine. I said, you know what? 6 or 7 people have reached out to me on LinkedIn. They want to know how I learned trademarks, and I don't have a way.
Sonia Lakhany 00:48:04 And they're like, well, if you ever teach a course, if you ever know of any resources, please let me know. And I'm like, I will be the resource. Let's just try it. Created an outline, put it up, emailed it to those five people. Obviously all five of them enrolled at 7.97 in 2017. And here we are. And we've had hundreds of attorneys take two weeks to trademarks hundreds. And their results have been absolutely insane. I get regular messages of, I just had my first $100,000 month, 50 K month. I'm just like, these numbers are not real. And if I hadn't just done it back then, we wouldn't be here and I wouldn't have been able to teach hundreds of attorneys to have their own financial success in return. So there is something to this. Do not overthink it. This is something that I really have a lot of trouble with is because, right, we're all a lot of us are over thinkers. And so we're like, well, what if what if I can't figure out how to connect this program in that one? I just shouldn't know.
Sonia Lakhany 00:48:57 It's just to you can figure it out. You got yourself this far, right? You can figure it out. You can ask someone you can hire for the answer. you are capable of solving problems. You wouldn't be sitting here if you were not. like I said, pre-sell the product before you create it, please, or at least test the interest in it. Your first buyers, like I mentioned in my example, are buying you and not the product itself. It's not about a court day survival kit because some of you are probably thinking, well, somebody or there's got to be some billboard guy who's already doing that. Yeah, but that you're you and that's them, right. And this room alone has multiple family law attorneys, multiple immigration, multiple crim. We all do it a little bit differently. So, people do want to hear from you specifically rather than also just getting the court day survival knowledge. Right. It's about getting that knowledge from you specifically, which is what this whole field is about.
Sonia Lakhany 00:49:52 and lastly, your second and subsequent versions will always be better than the first version, but you can't be, you know, your law firm website probably doesn't look the same as it did on day one. You keep improving it and optimizing it and saying, oh, we should put that on there And it's okay. You can make revisions to stuff and and it will be okay. Because if you don't at least start with a rough draft, you'll never have a final draft. So with that, I do have, I think, a few more minutes. I just left some resources if anyone's interested. These are some people that I'm sure you've heard of. I love their content. I've learned a lot from them, and I've adapted a lot of it to what I do. So if it helps you. And lastly, everyone's doing the QR thing so you don't have to be on trend. But one thing is cool about mine is that as a thank you for being here till the very end. Yes, you can join our email list for tips and tricks.
Sonia Lakhany 00:50:48 And I'm not. I don't have an offer around this. There is not a paid class on this on your website. I don't I'm not charging for this. This is something that has brought me so much revenue and joy that I'm just now. I need everyone to know about this. And so not only if you sign up for our list, will you get onto our our emails and newsletters and stuff like that? But I am offering anyone who wants one just send us a message. if you want a 15 30 minute call on really diving into how you're going to do it, I'll do it for free. And I never get on the phone for free ever. But I'm happy to. the the few people I've talked to have seen some cool results. And, you know, if if it helps you, why not? So that's an incentive. but yeah, that's hopefully helpful in some way or not. Did anybody get anything out of this? So you feel like you can do that. Okay.
Sonia Lakhany 00:51:41 Good. Great. So let's stay connected. I think they gave me a couple minutes for questions. if anybody has one. But I'm here until the very, very end. I don't leave till tomorrow. So if you find me, see me, come find me, and I will workshop with you right now if you want to. So I hope this was helpful, and I really do appreciate your engagement and staying till the very end, because it's not easy to wrap this thing up on your own. So thanks guys.