How I Transitioned From Service Provider to Course & Digital Product Creator
“Scaling” to 6-figures and beyond, growing a team or even getting “booked out” were never my goals with this business. Rather, I started and continue to run this business to support my family, help people and fulfill my creative passions in the most sustainable and flexible way possible.
You may have heard me talk about how I run a Life-First Business where my life and all it’s messy circumstances take the front seat in any decisions I make about my business. And it’s that mission that lead me to transition from offering done-for-you services to selling 1:many offers like online courses and digital products.
In this blog post, I’m sharing the real behind the scenes of why, when and how I transitioned from service provider to digital product creator as well as some lessons learned in the process to help you if you aspire to do the same.
Disclosure: Some links are affiliate links. If you click through and pay for a product, I'll be compensated at no cost to you.
Starting a service provider business
Let’s start at the very beginning (🎶 it’s a very good place to start).
I opened my business in 2019 with a very young, high-needs baby in arms and a loving husband working away from home for months at a time after being downsized out of my job whilst on maternity leave. Previously, I’d already left behind my film career and dipped a toe or two into the digital marketing space as a freelancer helping local photographers and apartment rental agencies with their websites & graphic design needs. So it seemed fairly natural to start my business offering web design services.
With very little time on my hands, I knew I needed some training in how exactly to set up my business, how to structure my offers and, importantly, how to start getting clients. I enrolled in Paige Brunton’s Square Secrets, Ran Segal’s Flux Academy and in Danbee Shin’s Fast Track which helped enormously to speed up the start of my web designer business and set me up with both technical web design skills and broader marketing, sales, and business skills that I carry with me today.
My service packages were robust to start with and took anywhere from 6-8 weeks to complete. I was able to book a few clients within the first months of starting my business and worked on refining my design and delivery processes pretty much right away.
Streamling my services
With a few clients under my belt, I quickly realized that I couldn’t maintain that level of work and those sorts of long, drawn-out projects with the lifestyle I had at the time with a young baby struggling to sleep and no childcare.
So my fairly urgent priority then became streamlining my systems and processes to free up some of my time, speed up my delivery and allow me to book more clients without adding to my workload. At this stage, I tested out VIP Days which I modeled after Sarah Masci’s wonderful process that really helped implement this strategy quickly.
While I quite liked the flexibility of the VIP Day model, I still found it tricky to have so much wiggle room with deliverables and setting client expectations, which lead me to learn about and then implement productized services in the form of website audits and then template customizations once I launched my first Squarespace template.
Launching my first digital product
Loving how hands off my website audit was, I started thinking a lot about how to further streamline my business by packaging up my web design knowledge, and thus the idea to create and sell my first digital product was born.
I launched my first Squarespace template, which at the time was a kit with all sorts of other templates to help with your website launch in December 2020. Considering my audience at the time was under 500 people in total across my email list and social media, I’m pretty impressed with how well this launch went. I had 6 people pre-order the template which was enough to motivate me to sit down and create it!
Once it was complete and my beta purchasers had given me their stamp of approval, I set about launching it again at its full price. I also started to think seriously about how I could offer a done-for-you service using these resources I’d just created…
Which lead to me launching my One Week Website service, a highly productized service that lent on the Squarespace template I’d created but included done-for-you design customization, tech set-up, and post-launch support. This was a very popular offer and quickly was booked up within the first few months.
Recovering from burnout
While my One Week Website service and my Squarespace template were selling well, behind the scenes I was running on fumes… Which eventually lead to hitting a pretty horrible burnout that forced me to stop the service side of my business rather abruptly.
Thankfully, my templates were still chugging along and selling nicely on their own. So slowly, as I recovered from my burnout, I decided to move away from offering services entirely and pour my available time and energy into creating & selling digital products.
Growing my digital product business
The next few years were a sharp learning curve as I truly started to wrap my head around how to run a solely digital product based business. From creating products people actually wanted to buy, pricing them correctly, learning how to market & sell them, and all the rest that comes with this specific business model.
In 3 years I created & launched over 40+ digital products including design templates, copy templates, worksheets, spreadsheets, PDFs, Notion dashboards, workshops, courses, group programs, and even a membership that I ran with my biz bestie.
I learned which products worked best for my audience, which I enjoyed creating and selling most, how I like to sell, how to grow an engaged audience, how to create content to nurture people to buy and so much more.
I also discovered a whole lot of pitfalls and traps we can get ourselves into as digital product creators…
👉 For the first time ever I’m ready to turn around and teach you how to grow your own digital product business without all the trail and error that going it alone takes. So tune in to this free private podcast series to get started with your own digital product business today!
From quick cash to long-term community
Of course summit hosts want to earn money! I do too. For my recent Energy Savers audio summit, I knew I’d be opening doors to to my self-paced Simple Audio Summits course afterwards and I knew hosting a summit could help be grow my audience and prime my people for the launch.
But if I looked only at the short-term income, I would miss the long tail of value that comes from strong relationships.
Here is what you gain when you treat a summit as a relationship-building event:
Buyers who stay in my world for years, not weeks
Attendees and speakers who become affiliates
Collaborators for future projects
A network of people who mention my name in rooms I am not in
That compound effect is worth far more than squeezing every dollar out of one event.
Summits as conversation starters, not finish lines
I think of each summit as a big conversation starter.
It is my way of saying to the online business space, "Here is what I care about. Here is what I stand for. Who wants to talk about this with me?"
That simple mindset shift changes how I plan the event. I am not trying to dazzle people with fancy tech or endless bonuses. I am trying to:
Start real conversations
Create shared language around our values
Attract people who naturally align with my approach
Those people often become my best clients, students, and collaborators, because from day one we are on the same page.
How I design a win win win summit
My whole philosophy with collaborative events is that they need to be a win for everyone involved. I think of it as a win-win-win model.
There should be a win for me as the host, a win for the speakers, and a win for the attendees. If any one of those is missing, the event will not feel good long term, no matter how much money it makes.
A win for me as the host
For me, the win is measured more in relationships than in revenue.
Of course, I care about income. I am running a business, not an expensive hobby. I talk more about the money side of things in my article on How to monetize your online summit, where I break down monetisation strategies.
But inside each summit, I try to keep my priorities clear:
Relationships first
Revenue second
When I push too hard for fast cash, I risk burning trust. When I focus on creating a supportive, human event, the revenue tends to follow anyway, and I end up with a much stronger foundation.
A win for speakers
I want speakers to feel proud to be part of my events.
That means I try to:
Make the collaboration process easy and supportive
Give clear timelines and expectations
Highlight speakers as much as possible during the event
Pay them fairly when there is revenue sharing
These are people I genuinely admire. Showcasing their work is a joy, not just a marketing trick.
When speakers have a great experience, they are more likely to share the summit, say yes again in future, and think of me when someone asks for a host or collaborator who "gets it."
A win for attendees
Finally, I want every attendee, even those who only join at the free level, to leave feeling like it was worth their time.
My aim is that you walk away with:
More clarity on what you want and where you are heading
More connections with people who care about similar things
More confidence to take your next step
More sense of community and support
And since one of my other core values is accessibility, I also want people who are interested in these topics, no matter who they are.
When an event is set up this way, relationship marketing stops being a fluffy idea and turns into something very practical.
Why audio summits work so well for relationship marketing
I adore hosting audio-only summits. Recorded audio conversations make it easy for people to join while they walk, cook, commute, or do school pick-up. That relaxed format seems to create a different kind of energy.
Here is why audio summits fit so well with my relationship-first approach:
They feel like you are listening in on real chats, not formal lectures
Speakers often share more honest stories and behind-the-scenes details
Attendees can binge sessions and build momentum quickly
It is easier for many people to consume than video
In terms of relationship marketing, audio summits help me create a community of people with aligned values in a short space of time. They shortcut that "get to know you" phase, which then makes later offers feel natural instead of pushy.
What the data says
All of this is not just a gut feeling. I ran a large survey to see what hosts, speakers, and attendees are actually seeing with summits right now.
The results are pulled together in my State of Summits 2026 Report which breaks down what is working in 2026 for hosting, speaking at, and attending online summits, with real numbers from across the industry.
In that report, I also recorded a short video where I walk through the findings and share my take as someone who lives and breathes summits all the time.
If you have been hosting events for years and you have felt things shifting, or you are thinking about running your first summit and do not want to guess what works, theState of Summits 2026 Report gives a clear picture of where things are heading.
What stands out most to me from that survey is how important relationships, trust, and aligned values have become.
The data backs up what I have been feeling in my own business: people want to buy from people they know, like, and trust, and summits can play a big role in that.
How I bring relationship marketing into every summit
When I plan a summit now, I filter every decision through one simple question: "Will this help build real relationships?"
Here is what that looks like in practice for me:
I design the event as a starting point for deeper conversations, not as a one-off stunt
I give people plenty of ways to engage with me and with each other, not just consume content
I leave space for follow-up, like inviting people into my ongoing offers, such as my self-paced Simple Audio Summits course
Over time, this approach has built what I think of as a "circle of trust" around my work that includes:
Affiliates who share my offers because they believe in them
Past attendees who come back for new events
Speakers who refer me and introduce me to their own networks
Clients and students who stay and grow with me
All of that came from treating each summit as a relationship marketing tool first and a sales tool second.
Final thoughts: people first, profit next
The online business space will keep changing. Algorithms will shift, platforms will rise and fall, and new tactics will pop up every month.
What does not change is that we are still people, buying from and working with other people.
For me, relationship marketing is the most reliable path through all that noise, and virtual summits, especially audio summits, are one of my favourite ways to put it into practice.
If you decide to host your own summit, I invite you to play with this idea of a win win win event and see what happens when you put relationships at the centre. And if you want to ground your plans in real data, grab my State of Summits 2026 Report and see what is working for others too.
