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Will digital programs still sell in the age of AI?

In this episode, I share my honest take after $145M+ in this industry.

If you notice selling your digital programs is harder than ever, and wonder how to adapt to the new era, this is for you.

Key Takeaways

• Why information by itself is no longer valuable (and what people want instead)
• Where to focus to remain relevant in 2026+
• How to adapt fast and ride the wave

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READ THE EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Emily Hirsh:

I know that so many of you guys are trying to do everything yourselves, and it is killing you, arguably, no entrepreneur should be building their funnel. No entrepreneur should be writing all their email copy and be solely responsible for that, with systems and with AI today, you can become more efficient, you can deliver more efficiently.

Embodied CEOs don’t chase trends. They pave the way they lead from within. Move by purpose, unshaken by noise. When you are the source, you do not need permission.

Hello you guys and welcome back to the podcast. I hope you guys are having a great week. We are in February. I think we’re in February. The last time I recorded

well updates because I share all the personal stuff with you guys on here. And last time I recorded, I was sharing about my injury and. I dropping out of a competition and hoping that I got to go to the big competition while I ended up having to drop out.

But I’m fine. I I made the decision two days before I went in and saw my

chiropractor, but really, he’s like a sports medicine specialist. And I went in and I was like, all

i’m prepared for you to tell me that I can’t compete if that’s what you’re gonna tell me today. And he’s okay we’ll stress test it.

And I was like I also can’t even hang from a pull up rig right now. And he’s oh yeah, you’re not competing. That would just, there’s, requirements in that competition where I’d have to use my arm that way. And he’s it’s just not worth it. Like it’s just a matter of if, it is not a matter of if, it’s when you hurt yourself, when you push that.

And so I, just came to the realization.

I am in this for the long game. I love the sport, and I wanna just be able to train again, and I don’t wanna do something that is going to risk hurting me more. And then I got over it and I was like, all right, it’s just one competition. It’s just one weekend.

And I just wanna get back to training. So I’m actually going today to get an MRI on my shoulder, which is, I’ve never had an MRI. I am somebody who. Stays pretty far away from all like Western medicine. So I never go to anywhere like this. It’s just an imaging center, but I’m like, I don’t know. I’ve never had an MRI, I don’t even know what to expect.

I don’t go to doctors. I don’t do that really. So I am choosing to get an MRI because I wanna know fully just what I’m dealing with. My shoulder’s getting way better. It’s improving a ton. Like the pain is a lot less, but my team wants to make sure that there’s no like capsule damage. So an MRI is the only way to actually know.

So that’s what I’m doing today and I am feeling good. Also the last week I’ll share something that I think is really helpful for us entrepreneurs and people like me. I. Made a decision that I was gonna stop rushing around everywhere, and I’ve had periods of time where I do a good job with this and I don’t overpack my schedule, like I tend to fall into this habit, of always, not just being late, but like always packing my day to where it makes me late or it makes me rushing from one thing to the next, whether that’s.

From the podcast studio to my house for a meeting, to the gym home in time for soccer practice, right? And every time feeling like I’m just barely making it. it’s almost like an addiction to like the chaos that can create the speed at which you’re going about your day.

But what does that do to your nervous system? It makes your nervous system feel like we’re constantly, like on the run. so I decided I’m not doing that. And after the live event, I had my reset weekend that I talked about on here. And since then I have been doing such a good job being ahead of time.

You guys like recording the podcast, early approving things. My team needs early. I’ve been early home in time to get my daughter to soccer practice early. Sometimes we are late because of me, and it feels so good. So I’m gonna keep this up. Because it could be easy to fall out of it. And it’s interesting we have so much going on in the business.

I have so much happening in the business. I’m still training a ton, like nothing’s actually lessened really in my life. However, I have started to look at my days every single day and gone what is actually possible and what is not possible. And then I just am real with what’s possible and what’s the most important thing.

And then. Holding myself accountable to doing things more ahead of time. So if you know me, I struggle with this, you should be very proud. I had a webinar this last week and all my slides were done the day before you guys, big growth, which I’ve talked about on here, like this is the only way I know I’m gonna be able to get to the next level because my state is so much more calm and grounded.

And I’m able to make decisions and think about things and just be the CEO that I need to be the person that I need to be, to get to that next level. So it feels really good. I just got this book called, I think it’s called The Elimination of Hurry. I might be getting it wrong, something like that.

And. My friend happened to recommend it to me and I was like, that’s so crazy. ’cause that’s a focus of mine. And so it’s really about this. Like we hurry around, we pack things like even to the extent of go to an appointment 10 minutes early, get there early and just sit there, like actually just sit in your car without checking your phone at the stoplights.

We’ve lost that. And it’s really powerful when you claim it back. So there’s my little personal note for the beginning of the episode. And now let’s get into the content of today, which is, I am, I wanna talk about the shift that I really feel is coming to. Offers today in the digital world, and especially if you sell a course, if you sell a program, if you sell a coaching if you sell anything in that container, I think that there’s a lot of changes coming and I’ve been talking about this with my mastermind and shifts that they’re all making or some of them are making, and in my own business.

So I’m gonna kind of share. The huge revelation I had after, now I can talk about it after my like weekend reset. And I sat down and was working through some things for the business, just like brainstorming and all these puzzle pieces clicked together and it was totally clear what we needed to do. And once I’m clear, we move we move very fast.

Speed is super critical. And so we’ve already implemented the changes. So the core of what I see happening across the board is information is no longer valuable. It is not valuable, and it used to be. When I started in this world online 10 years ago, you could sell courses and you could sell information.

And while people weren’t just buying the information, they were buying the system, they were buying the method put into a easy to consume format. Today, there’s two things. One, information isn’t valuable anymore because it’s. Overly accessible. We can go find information so easily in so many different places from YouTube to chat, to podcast, to books.

Like it’s, there’s too much information. But the other thing is people are continually overwhelmed at a max rate, and I think. Part of it. I’ve been thinking about this ’cause I’m like, 10 years ago, did people not stack their schedule like they do today? Like I think that humans have just done that for a really long time, but I think the pace at which things are now demanded of us has increased.

So when you think about business in general, the amount of things that you have to do today to be successful in business, especially online. And the pace at which you have to execute it has drastically increased from what it used to be, which creates the overwhelm and creates that feeling of I cannot keep up constantly like I have too much to do, too many things that I could do and I’m overwhelmed.

I’m overloaded. I’m at max capacity, and somebody like that. No way are they going to want more information, let alone pay for it. Okay, so information is overly available. Too much information. It’s actually noise. Second, people have zero, not, I don’t even wanna say time, ’cause I think they could make time, zero capacity to consume the information.

They are so overwhelmed, they need people. They need somebody to take things off their plate. That’s the only answer. When you think about a entrepreneur who’s also a parent who’s also trying to have a healthy life, it’s like there are so many, only so many things you can do in a day. And so for most people, the answer is you have to get some things off your plate.

You have to stop trying to do it all. You can absolutely have it all. You cannot do it all. So with this in mind. It comes to question things like coaching containers and digital products and selling access to information, even coaching, even anything that requires somebody to have to do a decent amount of work.

And my claim is implementation over information is the future with products. And not only that. Speed. You have to figure out how can I get somebody to the result that I’m trying to get them, that I’m promising I’m gonna get them in the fastest way possible? And a lot of times that’s some sort of personalized custom.

Done for you work. So I had this real, I’ve had this realization. I’ve been sitting with this for a while. I’ve been sitting with shifting even language around from coaches advisors or strategists and focusing on implementation. And I’ve been playing with what that looks like. And here’s the insider business struggle that I’ve had.

In order for us to do everything for somebody, we have to charge a lot of money, right? ’cause it’s a lot of manpower. So then you get people who say, I want, of course everyone wants the full done for you. Everyone wants the highest level package. Everyone wants the, VIP experience. They can’t always afford it, or they’re not at that level yet.

They’re not ready for that. So how do you help those people? No, you don’t have to help everyone. But if you. Out price your service or your product to be so high that only someone you know in the 1% can make it. It’s just a, it’s just a different business model. And so this has been my struggle for a long time is how do I help the people who are not ready to pay five, $6,000 a month, which is your seven figure business, really at that point, and.

I think also what you think you have to do, because it’s been so overly taught in this world, is programs coaching, group coaching. Digital products, digital content programs, and they’re scalable. And I was just having this conversation with my mastermind because I shared with them the inside of kind of what I have massively like realized in my own company.

And it made two of them who have some service and then we’re building out Coaching program side of their business. Pause because they’re like, I thought that’s what I had to do in order to scale my business and that I had to have some sort of digital product, digital program, digital course and we really have been fed.

I say we like, I think that maybe because there’s validity to it, right? You can scale a business with a coaching program where you have. A lot of people in one container, and you’re able to streamline the delivery, right? It is more streamlined than done for you. But what I’m getting to is I think that there is a better way as we are able to get more efficient in our companies with AI and processes and streamline and in general, just have a streamlined system that you can deliver.

High touch, high valuable services in an efficient, profitable way as a business, and I don’t even know the term that I wanna use for this, but I think it’s one-to-one, but large volume, scalable way, so basically I sat down and looked at our offers and this is going to, how it will impact you guys, and I realized no matter how good I make my program.

I went even as far as building the AI tool, that is our Ignite program and it’s cool, it’s awesome. Like it writes your copy for you. It makes your messaging strategy for you. It creates ad, video scripts. It does a lot for you as a software, as a platform. my intention behind that was make it easier.

Use ai, use our processes, create something proprietary that we can make it easier. And even with that, it still requires energy, effort, capacity of the person who buys it, and I think more than they realize they have. I think people buy things with good intentions of I’m gonna have a lot of time. And then they realize they don’t because it still requires somebody to answer a bunch of questions to get the copy that is meant to get them 80, 85% there to finish it, to get it in a landing page to figure out the tech.

We have tech calls, but still, it’s still a lot. And I continually have talked to entrepreneurs who are like, I. I’m so overwhelmed I can’t do this all by myself, but there’s yet so much things that I have to do. I have to build the funnels, I have to do the tech, I have to write the copy, I have to write emails.

Strategy is just a part of it. Implementation is a huge part, and so I realized no matter how good I make my programs, it’s still going to be an objection for people because they know that they don’t have the time. And they don’t wanna do it themselves. Not only they don’t want to do it themselves, they literally do not have the capacity to do it themselves, but they also don’t have the budget to pay for done for you.

So they’re in a really tough spot. And so I was like, what if we just made everything done for you? What if we made different levels of done for you and like for our team to write and create a funnel? We can do it 10 times faster than somebody trying to do it on their own because we do hundreds of them, because my copywriters write good copy every single day for opt-in pages, sales pages, emails, and my tech team can build a funnel using all of our tools and knowing how to do it so much faster.

So what if we could make it so efficient on our end that I could charge the price of a program and do it all for them? And as soon as I realized that, I’m like, that’s how we’re, that’s what we’re shifting to everything too. And I go back like I’m sharing this also as a behind the scenes because of course I want you guys to know that this is now an opportunity is working with us in a done for you capacity, regardless of what level you’re at.

So I’m gonna talk about that in a second. But I go back to 2019 when I created my first program. And it was just mostly a digital product. And I go back to then, and I think about the influence that was on me, which was a lot of ClickFunnels, and I was in the Inner Circle Mastermind and people doing digital products.

And I have, and have always had a very successful service. I’m really good at service. We’re really good at our programs too, but. I already had, a service making multiple millions of dollars a year, and I launched the program and that has been, it iterated, let’s see, 1, 2, 3, 4 to five times now.

It’s great. Like it’s a good program and it started out as just information and then we added more like I feel like we kept adding more like done for you components. Like we’ll write your ad copy, we’ll, audit things, giving you more feedback, making it more hands on to this last time, being a full on platform that actually does things for people.

But I think that if I go back, I would never say it’s a mistake. Because I had to learn these lessons. But I look at when I split the company like that, and I split myself now into for the last seven years-ish having a service and a program. And so what that does for the company is you’ve got two departments for delivery.

You have two marketing needs. Like we, we are constantly balancing what we have to market and I just like finally had this realization of like, why don’t we just go back to all done for you and let’s make it so that the base level done for you is so affordable that it’s less than or equal to what somebody would pay for a program and let’s make it so efficient and so good on our end that we can offer that profitably.

And so that’s what we did. We built out three levels, activate, scale, and dominate. And activate is all the way at the beginning of, you haven’t validated your offer yet, but instead of you coming in and consuming material, there is a little bit of material, but done for you. Is your sales page done for you?

Is your launch emails to launch your offer done for you is social content to launch that offer and then supporting you in implementing it? So there’s still, I don’t even know if I would call it coaching ’cause it’s really a one-on-one implementation support. So there still is an element of that, but all of those things that are heavy are now done for you in the next level scale, which is replacing Ignite.

It’s now done for you in terms of all the funnel work. So a lead gen and a trip wire funnel, a. Live launch, like webinar funnel, your sales page, all of your emails, your social posts for your launch, and even setting up and launching your ads. And then we’re gonna hand them to you and you’re gonna optimize them with our support from there.

So all of that upfront lifting, that takes a lot of energy, a lot of capacity, and no entrepreneur is good at it because like even I’m not gonna build my funnels, I’m not gonna write my copy like. I would have to learn how to be an expert at that. And that is what I see holding people back so much. So we switched it to now done for you and then dominate is equivalent to our elite package.

It’s like everything done for you. Very custom, multiple funnels, all the funnel work VIP kind of package. But the two, the first two levels are to cater to somebody. Activate is, has not really sold your offer, haven’t validated your offer before, need to validate it without paid ads. Scale is, I’ve sold my offer.

I now need to scale it with an actual funnel lead gen funnel, live launch, and start using paid ads or figure out paid ads. All of it done for you. And so we made the shift. And we made the shift really quick. And it’s a matter of, we had it all. We already did this for our clients. I just didn’t have it packaged this way.

But I just continually see entrepreneurs held way back because they’re trying to do everything themselves, but they’re in a tough place because they don’t have the budget to pay a done for you agency at the level of. Five, $6,000 a month. So number one, that’s the only way we’re working with companies moving forward.

And it feels so good. Like I, I feel for my company. I’m like, I wish I thought of this a long time ago. But you know what, like you have to go on the journey. And I want you guys to also see this I launched the Ignite Platform maybe four months ago. And again, it’s a great product. It is a great product.

It does what it promises that it’s going to do. We still have one-on-one components in it. We do their strategy. It’s just the implementation of it. The entrepreneur has to do it because of the way it was set up, the price that it was, and. I launched it four months ago. What I want you to see is that the moment that I was clear that something had to shift, I’m not afraid to change it.

I’m not afraid to come on here and say I’m shifting this for the best. Like I felt like I couldn’t continue pitching Ignite, knowing it was no longer in alignment with what I wanted, where I wanted to take the company. And again, I can’t say it enough. It’s not a bad product. Like we have a incredible retention rate of people in our Ignite Program, and all those people will continue to serve the monthly support because it’s going to be the same as activate and scale.

You go into this monthly implementation support where you can go on tech calls, you can go on ads calls, you can go on strategy calls. It’s just that upfront implementation has changed from the platform. Doing it for you to us doing it for you. But anyways. I’m not afraid to quote fail. I don’t think I failed.

But it was like, okay, this is clearly not fully what it needs to be to take us to where I wanna go. And I had the clarity of a better way to serve people. And as soon as I had that, like we made the change in a week and a half and. That is something I want you to understand because I think that I’ve talked with and coached entrepreneurs who are like, I’m afraid of what people will think because of this.

Or I’m afraid of I’m committed to this, so I’m gonna force this longer when they already have the clarity of the direction. So it’s like you’re just delaying the inevitable if you have that clarity. As soon as we have clarity, we move. And as soon as I got that clarity, it was like it just all came into place.

And I’m like, holy shit, this is the eight figure business. And I go back to 2019 and I’m like, why did I ever move away from done for you? But here’s also the thing with systems and with AI today, you can become more efficient, you can deliver more efficiently. And so here’s what I think as founders where we are going with this is There’s going to be like a pricing, adjustment, I think in the online space. That’s a prediction that I have because I think that we have gotten to this place where people are charging a lot for coaching. Programs and products and for information and for access to information, and I don’t think people value that anymore.

And I think you’re going to have to charge a reasonable amount for implementation. And then as a business, you’re going to have figure out how to deliver that profitably with really great systems.

We’re gonna see the people who are offering implementation at a reasonable cost do really well and the people charging. A lot for programs and coaching are gonna have an adjustment. That’s just my prediction. It might make some people mad and obviously there are exceptions to the rule. Like I think of one of my clients who sells a program right now teaching and type two diabetes.

And I think hers will do well for a long time still. I think her audience, and I think that the lack of saturation in that industry, it’s gonna do well. So I’m not saying this is like nothing is ever black and white. But I am seeing more and I’m helping clients with this in the health space, in B2B space, like how can you position your offer and shift and evolve your offer to be implementation over information and the least amount of coaching and work on the client, the better.

So number one, that’s how we switched our offers. So if you’re like, this sounds amazing. I know that so many of you guys are trying to do everything yourselves, and it is killing you, and it is massively preventing your success and your progress and your momentum because you’re trying to be the copywriter, the designer, the tech va, the content creator.

The strategist, all the things, and I truly believe that I have made it now possible for you to get support at the price of what you would pay for a program and have it done for you, which will accelerate so fast. Like our team, we can build a funnel and an entire, marketing strategy in a week or less for a client.

And what I see in programs is that takes ’em two months because. They get so. Busy with other things and then they get, they get tripped up on something. And even with as much support, like our Ignite program is also, is honestly one of the best out there. Like we have six calls a week between Tech Ads strategy.

It’s a great program. It still requires that work from the person going through it. So if you’re interested in any of this, if you go to helpmystrategy.com, you’ll see now that page, it has the three levels. the ways that we work with businesses, it is so clear. It is so simple. And if you wanna explore that, definitely book a call.

We’ve got some like founding member pricing happening right now since I just announced this. And would love to be able to support you and take a huge weight off your shoulders. And then the other thing is, depending on your offer, just thinking about how can I create more implementation, but also how do I make it easier?

And faster for somebody to get the result. How do I bring that speed? Because I think that’s what we’re up against. I think that we are up against a reality that people want results faster and easier. And I’m gonna say something, I know that people are gonna say if the client’s not willing to do the work, then they’re not my ideal client.

and here’s where I agree and disagree with that. I want the client doing the work that matters the most. So for example, when you come into one of our activator scale, the only thing that I say that you’re really responsible for is, of course, approving the things we send you. But I want you to create content.

And so I have a little training on that to make it as easy as possible. But I want your energy. Instead of going into figuring out tech and integrating your funnel and setting up tags and writing copy, I want you to do the work that actually moves the needle that only you can do, which is creating content.

And so we support you with that. But that is one thing we give you as this is gonna help your results. Can you do this? So yes, I want people who are willing to show up. Who are willing to do the work, but do the, doing that in the most impactful way. I would not say, oh, someone’s not a fit, because they’re not willing to build their funnel.

Like arguably, no entrepreneur should be building their funnel. No entrepreneur should be writing all their email copy and be solely responsible for that, unless they love it or they’re really good at it. But every entrepreneur should be in charge of approving, being the visionary, being the collaborator.

Creating content that others can’t create for them, connecting with their ideal customer. Like for sure, I want people who wanna do the work you’re not gonna just hand us over, join this and we’re gonna do it all for you and build your business. We’re gonna do it for you, but you also have to show up.

So I agree with that statement, but how can you make sure that people are showing up in the most impactful and effective way to getting their result? And how can you make that easier for them? And if they have to be sifting through information or doing things that somebody else could be doing, then it’s not really the best offer.

So would love to support you in one of our new evolved offers. And, I feel really good about this. Like from a CEO standpoint, I feel like it’s just so simple. It’s clear. It puts my company is just back to done for you. We do done for you at every level. Of business and I’m really clear, if you are at the level of business where you have not really sold your offer, you’re not ready for paid ads yet.

We gotta validate your offer. So we put you in this category. If you’ve sold your offer even just a few times and you need to leverage now scaling and getting more leads and getting more traffic, you’re ready for bigger strategy of lead generation and the live launch. And the thing is, I have done this so many times with business owners at all different levels, that I know exactly what every business owner needs at what level they’re at, and.

One problem I see is someone goes, oh, I haven’t sold my offer yet. I’m gonna jump over here and skip these things because I see that’s what most everybody else is doing, but all the people doing that have already sold their offer. So there’s just like a big gap in kind of what you need at what stage of business.

And because we’ve done this so many times, Iams, it’s so good what we have. And I, as I say that, I’m like, you know what? Six, seven years. Six or seven years ago. Yeah, I know. Six, seven. I cannot say that without thinking that because of my dang kids, I could not have offered this yet because we didn’t have the experience at delivering to the hundreds of companies that we have in our programs and doing a great job with that and refining it.

so everything happens exactly how it’s supposed to, but it’s a cool journey and it was a very big realization for me, and it just feels so easy. And I’m so excited to impact so many and take away that overwhelm and get them results, but take away the overwhelm and get them results faster than they’ve been able to do it.

All right everybody, thank you so much for tuning in and I will talk to you next time.