Designing digital products that work WITH your capacity, not against it - Rachel Shillcock

Website: https://rachilli.com

Instagram: https://instagram.com/rachilli 

00:00 Hey everyone, thank you so much for being here and thank you so much to Cat for having me here as well. I'm Rachel, but most people call me Rach or Racheli. And for the past 12 and a half years I've been running my own business while managing chronic illnesses that often make my energy wildly unpredictable. This talk is for anyone who has ever stared at their To Do List and wondered, how on earth am I supposed to get this digital product done when I can barely find the energy to do XYZ or anything else in my business at all? And I want to gently challenge the idea that creating and selling digital products has to be overwhelming, really high energy, or done in a certain way to count.  

00:41 Because the truth is, it really doesn't. I'm here to offer you another path and another idea another way of doing things, one that honours your energy, your rhythm and your real life. So as I said, I have been running my business for over 12 and a half years now and across that time I have run and worn many hats in that time, I've been a designer, a strategist, a mentor, tech Wrangler, and more recently, I've created my own seasonal business philosophy framework and I have trained as a coach. But more importantly, in the purpose of this talk that we're going to have today, I am someone who lives with multiple chronic illnesses, 6 at the minute, and hopefully not anymore i'm hoping I've filled my chronic illness bingo card.  

01:28 But the point is my energy is unpredictable. My capacity changes all the time. And honestly, I've learned the hard way what happens when I try to push through that i've deal, you know, dealt with burnout, I've dealt with all sorts of extra symptoms that come along with chronic illness when you try and push through. And so I, you know, to kind of add on top of that, despite my business being the most successful it's ever been, I also decided to take a day job, one that felt incredibly aligned for me as a person.  

01:59 And it has honestly been the most incredible decision for me as a human and also my business but that's a story for another time. But it does mean that my capacity has wildly changed from what it used to be. And look, I've built and launched digital products while running on fumes, chasing urgency, forcing visibility and thinking this is just what business takes. And I've also built offers from a place of ease, where it's rooted in reflection, my own piece, aligned with the season of business that I'm in, and shaped around what I could actually give, not what I thought I should be giving.  

02:36 And that second way, that is where the magic really lives. That's the lens I want to share with you today. A seasonal, human first approach to digital product creation. One that lets you build something beautiful without burning yourself out in the process. So let's be real for a moment. Most digital product advice out there, it assumes you've got endless and boundless energy, a clear calendar, and the capacity to pour everything you've got into one giant push. You've probably heard it before. Build a course, set it and forget it automate every single thing that you can.  

03:15 Show up and be visible everywhere, all the time. Go all in on live launches or add live elements to your programs. But here's the thing, we're not all working with the same resources. Some of us are navigating chronic illness like I do, where some days I can be like I am on the left feeling good enough to pop some makeup on, do my hair and have a photo shoot.  

03:40 Others my energy is so low all I can do is sit and rest like on the right hand side. Some of us might be parenting little ones or caring for loved ones, juggling other work or a day job. Some of us have seasons of low energy, brain fog, grief, burnout, or just plain old life is going to life starting to happen to us. And yet the advice that we're often given doesn't leave space for that. It expects consistency, drive and output no matter what. But business isn't a conveyor belt and we're not machines. But there's this baked in pressure to scale everything up to grow faster, earn more, build it once and sell it forever.  

04:26 But scaling at the cost of your well-being isn't success. It's just burnout with a better sales page. I've seen so many folks push themselves into products that felt completely out of sync with their lives because that's what the gurus said would work. But what if success looked more like sustainability than scaling? What if enough was allowed to be enough? And this push to create from a place of urgency rather than alignment? It creates a cycle. You force a product out, it doesn't land how you hoped, so you question yourself. And the price we pay for that is that we may experience burnout.  

05:09 We don't finish our ideas we have failed launches that were usually and actually just mistimed. But we end up with offers that we resent because we feel like they take too much from us and we're left with doubt. So much doubt. You finally land questioning your own ability, and you think the answer must be to try harder next time, to do something differently, but to do something the way that everyone else says, because I obviously didn't do it right. But what if the answer wasn't to push and instead was to pause? Just to listen? To maybe ground yourself and root yourself and your next offer in your real capacity, not someone else's blueprint.  

05:57 And that's what we're going to explore next. This is one of the biggest shifts I've had to make. And honestly, I still revisit this all the time. We're so used to seeing our limitations as barriers. We say things like, if I just had more energy, if I wasn't dealing with all this health stuff, if I could just stay consistent, then I'd be able to dot, dot, dot.  

06:21 But your capacity, it's not a block in the road. It is the road, it's showing you the direction you're able to go right now, and when you work with it instead of against it, things start to soften. Not because it magically gets easier, but because it finally fits and your capacity isn't a problem, it's a guide. One of the biggest gifts I ever gave myself in business was stopping the comparison spiral and I will say it does sometimes still happen. But to ask myself, what if I expected myself to need breaks? What if I built this knowing that my energy will sometimes be wobbly? And what if rest wasn't the thing that interrupted the work, but a part of the work itself? Being honest, we don't need more tips on how to push through.  

07:17 We need more reminders that we're allowed to build and create and do things differently. And that's exactly what we'll do in this next section, starting with how the seasons can help guide you into choosing the right kind of offer for right now, for you. So when we hear season, most of us think of the calendar. But your business has its own seasons, and so do you. You might be in a spring moment, planting seeds of something new or deep in a winter season where you need to rest and replenish and regenerate.  

07:50 You might be in a summer burst event, outward energy, or feeling the call of autumn to slow down and reassess. Or maybe sometimes you're in what I call the Evergreen season, a gentle, steady rhythm where nothing is dramatic, but things are still moving and you have that steady consistency and you dip in and out of all of the other seasons. But each season brings different energy to it and different kinds of digital products that work well within it so let's explore each of them now. So spring is about new beginnings.  

08:23 It's that moment where you feel a flicker of energy again, Enough to start, but maybe not go all in. This is the season for small experiments, playful ideas, soft launches, low stakes, low energy, high curiosity projects. Think things like creating email miniseries or low ticket offers maybe beta testing something quietly or repurposing something old in a new way. It's not necessarily about finishing what you create, but it's about beginning softly. Summer is your full energy season.  

09:01 You feel more outward facing your creative spark is bright you've got the spoons and the desire to show up. This is when visibility feels easier, when you're ready to launch something bigger or to go deeper with your work. Think launching things like group experiences or courses with big community spaces or big cohorts. Maybe doing live workshops or recorded audio series or bundled resources and tool kits. It's a beautiful time for connection, but you still get to build with boundaries. Because summer isn't an excuse to burn out autumn seasons, you know, they kind of invite us to reflect deeply.  

09:42 And it's a time for introspection and quietly powerful work. It's a time to reflect on what's working, what's not, and what we want to carry forward. And it's a great season to repackage, reframe or simplify existing offers. Think things like journaling bundles or ritual based tool kits, mini courses from recycled content, templates or checklists, soft launch guides or email sequences. All the things where you're still creating but with more care and with less chaos, as the summer can sometimes bring.  

 10:18 And then winter is often misunderstood. It's not a season where you have a lack of progress, but it is a sacred pause. This is the season for restoring your energy, for dreaming quietly or letting your audience come to you from all the work you've done in all of the other seasons. Think of things like gentle digital libraries you can create, or meditations, or audio reflections, maybe pre written email, sequences or things that you repurpose from other seasons. Winter work is powerful because it invites people inward, just like you. It's a season of stillness that seeds so much growth for later on. And then we have Evergreen seasons, which aren't flashy but are essential.  

11:06 This season is the one everyone wants to work up to because it's about consistency without chaos. It's about finally having a sustainable business that works for you through every season. You're not in a push, but you're not in a pause either. You're just gently moving forward, refining and maintaining what already exists and what you've already created. Think templates that sell year round, maybe a membership and the content that you put on there. Evergreen courses or other offers that are available all of the time self-serve and DIY offers.  

11:42 Automations, but with a human touch so you don't lose that humanity in it all. This is a beautiful place to be if you really crave stability and sustainability. So let's take a moment here. You've just seen the five seasons. You might already feel a gentle pull towards one of them. And I want you to trust whatever that intuitive pull is telling you and I want to ask, what season are you in right now? Spring with full of little sparks and the urge to start again. Summer, where you're ready to show up and share and connect.  

12:18 Autumn, where you maybe need to edit and step back a little bit and simplify. Winter where you're stepping into a season of deep rest and retreating, or Evergreen, where you're steady, rhythmic, gently moving forward. There's no wrong answer here. And you can go between the seasons every week, every couple of weeks, every month, every few months whatever feels most right for you and when you know, you will know when they change, but just notice what resonates and let it land with you.  

12:46 And as we move on to the next part of this session, keep that season in mind because it's going to help you guide how you shape your offers. And I want to let you in on something that changed everything for me and for a lot of my clients too. Creating and selling do not have to happen in the same season. That pressure to dream of an idea, build it, launch it, and show up for it and sell it all in one go that's the fast lane to burn out.  

13:11 And yet it's so common, right? You come up with something brilliant, and before the ideas even had time to root, you're already in Canva making sales page graphics. You're pushing yourself to get the thing out instead of letting it breathe. But when you let yourself separate those phases, when you go between building and sharing, and give those, you know, phases the space that they need, you honor both your creativity and your capacity.  

13:38 You can create in winter and sell it in spring, build quietly in autumn, and launch gently or wildly boldly in summer if you've got the capacity for it, and let your Evergreen products flow on in the background while you pause and replenish. This rhythm, though, it makes your business feel so much more sustainable because you're not trying to be everything in every season at once. So if you've been feeling stuck or behind, maybe it's not that you're off track.  

14:08 Maybe you're just in a different season than you thought. And that's perfectly allowed and OK. And this is the part that no one tells you when you start building digital products, you get to choose how you deliver what you create. There's no Gold Star for doing it the hardest way and often the high energy, high output formats that people recommend are not only exhausting to create, that overwhelming for your audience too. So let's reframe some of those heavier options and explore some softer, more sustainable alternatives.  

14:43 So we're going to look at some heavy lift options that are very much the kind we're always told to do versus some low lift alternatives that we could create instead. So first of all, we're always told do live group coaching programs, but why not make a self-paced toolkit with asynchronous feedback options instead? We're always told do a six week live course or a 12 week or a one year live Long live course year long, but why not do a two week or a four week email course with pre scheduled content because that can be just as powerful. And we're told do a high production video series private.  

15:21 You know, that's just the thing that we want to do everything's got to look amazing be super high production. But why not try a private podcast or a voice note series instead?  

15:34 We're told do live workshops and a big Q and A afterwards. But you could just pre record that class and send it out in email. Doesn't have to be live, we're told to do custom one-on-one services, but you could always offer a DIY template and a walkthrough or do a bit of a hybrid where there's a template you customize for people. We're told, again, do live launches, but you can always have Evergreen offers it just, you know, it just needs a different set of marketing for each offer.  

16:07 And then we're told do a full blown membership, but why not do a resource library or an asynchronous membership with resources that you update quarterly or monthly? We're told to drip feed on our learning platforms, but why not just have a simple Notion dashboard instead because sometimes that's all you need. And we've also been told like create community spaces where you're doing daily engagement, but why not just create a gentle community space on the, you know, the communications app that you're comfortable with it could be Slack, it could be heartbeat, it could be Facebook with weekly check insurance, just little prompts every week.  

16:48 And these aren't about doing less, They're about doing it differently. They're about finding the format that works and feels doable now, not in your imaginary more energy version of yourself. And here's the thing, lighter doesn't mean less valuable. It often means more accessible, more repeatable, more sustainable. And when you create offers that work with your energy, your people feel that. And they will often breathe a little easier too, because we're all overwhelmed in this online world nowadays. So something that we're always told is that we're taught to focus on what we're offering the modules, the features, the bonuses, the format.  

17:30 But the way you deliver your offer is just as important as the offer itself. It's one thing to create a beautiful course or tool kit, but it's another thing entirely to build it in a way that doesn't drain you dry. I've seen so many brilliant, heart LED business owners create something they're really proud of, but the delivery side just leaves them completely overwhelmed, burnt out, unavailable for their life, their people, their creativity, their business. And that's the hidden cost of doing things the way that we've been told we should. High availability, high visibility, high production, high pressure.  

18:08 But most of us, we don't need more complexity we don't need all of that. We just need more clarity and softness and space. So here's the thing I want you to remember. Small doesn't mean less valuable. A single voice note can shift someone's mindset. A5 email series can plant a seed that changes a business. A prerecorded template walkthrough can feel like a lovely, gentle virtual hug when someone's trying to figure it out alone. Lighter delivery doesn't mean you're doing less. It often means you're doing just enough, and that's more than OK. These aren't shortcuts. They're intentional choices, ones that let your offer hold you, not hollow you out.  

18:50 And often these small shifts are what feel truly sustainable in the offer for you and the people it's here to serve. So let's take a moment here. You've just been given a whole lot of permission to build more gently, to create more spaciously, to choose what feels true and not just what's trendy. So let your energy lead the way. This is where all of your best ideas will begin, in that deep rooted place where self-awareness and the understanding of your capacity and your energy meets your creativity.  

19:26 If you'd love a little extra support in matching your energy to your next digital product idea, I've created something I think you're going to love. It's called the Seasonal Product Planning Kit, and inside you will find about 30 ideas for each season, Spring, summer, autumn, Winter and Evergreen, all designed with your real life energy and capacity in mind. They're also tagged by energy type, how long it will take to create, roughly speaking, and the format so that you can just filter through and check off the ones that you want to explore further. So it's my way of saying you don't have to build it all at once and you definitely don't have to build it the way that you are told to all the time.  

20:04 Here's some ideas of how you can shift that so you can grab it for free at racheli dot com slash product hyphen Planning hyphen Kit. And I would love for you to explore that more. Thank you truly for being here and for giving yourself the time and space to hear these reminders. I hope something in today's talk landed gently in your body, and maybe it was a reframe that you need maybe it was permission you didn't know you were waiting for. Whatever it was, I invite you to take just one thing from today and let it settle. Remember, you don't have to do it all. You don't have to build it all right now, and you don't have to be on all the time.  

20:43 Your capacity is not something to push past, it's something to listen to. So take what you need from to day and leave the rest to bloom when you're ready. Thank you so much my loves and enjoy the rest of your day.