I made my first MRR sale in August of 2023.

In my first 8 weeks selling digital MRR courses, I made $8,000.

Up until that point, my husband was running DoorDash over 50 hours per week just to barely survive.

And yet within just 4 months of making that first sale, our income from MRR sales surpassed $60,000.

Up to this point in my life, I'd never sold a digital product.

That kind of income shift is life changing.

Our 2nd month we decided to celebrate with a spontaneous vacation getaway to the Ozarks to catch some fall foliage and make some fun family memories.

Something like this was absolutely unimaginable just a few weeks before.

But maybe I'm getting ahead of myself...

I've always been someone who's just crazy enough to believe that there's got to be MORE to life than the 8-5 "rat race" of school and work.

But the last decade wasn't exactly a fairy tale. It was filled with...

soul-sucking dead end jobs...

too much month and not enough money...

credit cards, student debt, stressful "bill juggling"...

We got fed up with the "rat race" 7 years ago, so we decided to take the entrepreneurial leap.

And when we left corporate America to build that first business, Money wasn’t the goal!

FREEDOM has always been the goal.

-Freedom to use our time the way we see fit.

-Freedom to buy the food that we believe will serve our family best.

-Freedom to get the healthcare that WE choose (not what our insurance company is willing to pay for.)

-Freedom from the stress of unexpected expenses.

We had started our first business with that dream in mind...

...but we learned that with a small business it's easy to build your own set of "golden handcuffs"...

...where you can't get off the "machine" you created because you depend on the money (even if the machine is no longer serving your goals and dreams).

You can call yourself an “entrepreneur” but often, in reality, you're just an employee of your own company and your “boss” is your clients who expect you to be there at a certain time and deliver a certain amount of work for what they pay you.

Now to be fair, the wedding business we started solved some of our frustrations with corporate work:

We were in charge.

Our schedule during the week was flexible.

But our weekends were filled up with events...

...and we were selling away our time day by day, event by event, as far into the future as we could see.

“Freedom my a**”.

Life sure has a way of being ironic. 🙄

After working our butts off to push that business through a VERY hard wedding season in 2020, where we almost went under...

...we were finally ready to move on to our next opportunity.

...especially one that could give us back the location and time freedom that attracted us to the idea of entrepreneurship in the first place.

So when the opportunity came to sell that business in 2022 for a 6-figure sum, we jumped on it.

But, we still didn't know what to build next.

Fast forward a year to August 2023, just 5 months ago...

...between paying off debts, a 10th anniversary cruise, and living expenses, we'd burned through the last of the money we got from the sale of our photobooth business.

I personally felt like I was reaching the breaking point, emotionally, and in so many way:

* We were down to just $17 in the bank

* Late on our mortgage for the 3rd month in a row.

* Maybe worst of all, we were forced to visit a food bank for the first time in our lives JUST to give our children something to eat.

I don't know if that time was truly rock bottom, but it sure as hell felt that way.

But I'm a fighter, and something in me KNEW that the dream we have held close to our hearts was still possible.

The dream of…

- 2 present parents at home

- homeschooling

- traveling multiple times a year

- making money without having to trade all our time for it

- having more than enough to live generously and invest

Our last 7 years of entrepreneurship had at least taught me all about all the business models that did NOT check all those boxes for me.

In that time we'd researched and/or tried our hand at:

-Local Service-based businesses

-Network marketing

-Digital marketing as a service for small businesses

-UGC (user generated content…where you create videos of products for brands and get paid for it)

-Affiliate Marketing (Legendary anyone?)

But I'd also started delving into the world of digital products.

(WTH is that?)

Digital products are essentially goods or services that are delivered electronically. They can be anything from downloadable files like e-books and guides to online courses, software, or even subscription-based services. Unlike physical products, they're intangible and can be easily distributed online.

The beauty of digital products lies in their scalability – you create them once and can sell them repeatedly.

Basically, the “work” you do to make money after your product is created is in building a trustworthy reputation, getting in front of the people who are lookingfor a solution to a problem your product solves, and then leading them to a purchase.

That whole process requires skills in and an understanding of Digital Marketing and sales, which my husband and I have a decade of experience in.

The lightbulb went off…

What if I created digital resources that could help make digital marketing Stupid Simple for a total beginner?

I looked at my husband and said, “ I HAVE to create digital products… I KNOW this is the answer!”

Two days later, as if by some sorcery, I came across someone I knew on Instagram talking about Master Resell Rights.

[Hang in there…this is where things really blew up…]

“This is a DONE FOR YOU Digital Product… Ready to go!”

As soon as I heard her say “this is a done for you digital product” I was sold!

This acquaintance of mine was sharing all about this digital marketing course that she purchased for her daughter (who she homeschools) because she was interested in learning about Digital Marketing.

This course came with a license that was attached to it called “Master Resell Rights” which allows the purchaser to resell that product as their own and keep 100% of the sale if someone buys from them.

I wanted to get a sneak peak of the modules and the people who created the course because… If I am going to sell something, I need to know that the product is Koala-tea (quality)... ya feel?

After going full ADHD hyperfocus mode and boring a tunnel through the internet, I felt confident that this course was something I could be proud to sell to start my digital product brand, Stupid Simple Co.

I purchased the next day, and got to work immediately.

From Aug 7- Sept 8 I had made $5,000 just reselling the course.

The next month I did close to the same... $5,000.

But October really threw us for a loop… $26,000

November….. $24,000

I had built a community of over 100 people who were interested in building their own digital marketing business.

I had grown an email subscriber list of over 4,000 people.

I had a BUSINESS! YAY!

But something started to feel… off!

I started noticing all the people who were walking around defeated.

I started noticing that some people were making bank and others were trying their hardest and not making anything.

I started listening closely and hearing people complaining that it was taking “too long”.

I saw people complaining that it was way harder than they thought.

I saw people giving up and calling it a scam after a few weeks of posting on instagram with no traction.

Was I actually scamming people? That wasn’t why I started this!

I started because I wanted to equip people with the relevant skills they’d need to build an online brand and build a digital business that could set them FREE! And the tools inside really could help them do that. I was proof.

So, Why did I feel ICKY?

I surveyed my email audience of 4k+ people and decided that I needed to hear from them what their biggest hurdle was, what their long-term vision was, and what their experience had been so far…

Here’s the general consensus:

-They needed something more simple, actionable, and step-by-step

-They wanted to replace or surpass their current income

-The training in the course they had gotten was amazing but overwhelming and they didn’t know what to do first

-They were hoping for a true “business in a box”, but what they actually got was more work

-They wanted something quicker and easier

And that’s when I began to realize the ugly truth about MRR that people don’t wanna say because they’ll make less money if they do…

3 "Ugly Truths" About about Master Resell Rights…

#1. Master Resell Rights is NOT a done-for-you business.

If it’s a “business in a box”, it’s Ikea style. All the pieces are there. All the necessary tools. Even the damn istructions.

But if YOU aren’t willing to take the time, read the instructions, and use the proper tools to do the work of assembly, you will just have a box full of pieces.

What the internet did was sell thousands of people on the idea that, because these courses had Master Resell Rights attached, it would be easy.

And I mean, I get why people thought that.

I made $5,000 in my first 31 days as a stay at home, homeshhooling mom. Yes.

BUT…

Here’s what it took:

- money we definitely did not have (Glad we kept a credit card in the chest unused so we could start this business)

- time I didn’t think I had while I was solo parenting and my hubby doordashed 50+ hours a week just to pay the electricity.

- energy I didn’t have left over at the end of the day but somehow had to muster up anyways

- staying up til 2 am building my systems, going through training, and creating content.

It took (and still takes) a LOT of work and strategy and effort and desire and vision…..

#2: This is not passive income. Period!

You will work for it.

You will have to learn skills around technologies and strategies you’ve never even thought of before.

You will have to be intentional to schedule TIME and RESOURCES to give to your business.

Building a digital business isn’t passive, but it is highly leveraged. You will make more money for the amount of time put in as time goes on. It will compound…

Your skills, your authority, your following, your sales…

But it will take consistent and persistent effort. Ain’t nothin’ passive about it.

I can’t “do-it-for-you”. No one can.

I mean… I could… but I’d be charging a hell of a lot more to do that than what the course is worth.

I’d be giving you fish instead of teaching you how to catch your own.

If someone sold you on the idea of “passive income”, at least I can rest easy now knowing…. it wasn’t me.

#3: Reselling a course is NOT a great “first step” to making money online…

…IF you do not want to teach people digital marketing or how to make money online.

(Yikes! I may have just shot myself in the foot on this one.)

The courses themselves have everything you need to help guide you through the process of establishing YOUR OWN brand and products.

The Master Resell Rights are just a perk of the course..

But more often than not, they become a distraction.

See… I PERSONALLY wanted to teach people digital marketing and business principles.

So creating a brand around that niche and reselling courses and products that helped people in those areas was a no-brainer for me.

But what if you…

+ Want to help people learn how to make their own Sourdough starter from scratch

+ Want to provide homeschooling resources to homeschool parents

+ Want to teach people how to crochet a blanket for their baby/grandbaby

+ Want to teach people how to travel with a family for nearly free by collecting points on a credit card all without accumulating debt

+ Want to help people survive dinnertime by providing recipes with 5-ingredients that takes less than 30 minutes to cook (*ok if this is actually you, send me a DM and I will be your first customer)

+ Want to help sweet-toothed people on a weightloss journey with treats that help them meet their protein goals

Well then…

It wouldn’t make very much sense to spend your energy and time building systems to sell a course on digital marketing when you could have used the materials inside the course to build out the systems for your OWN brand and product.

Would it?

So does this make MRR a SCAM?

If you want to make a “sh** ton” of money and you want it to be quick and easy… My dear… That is a scam!

If having to show up and embrace the hard work and effort of entrepreneurialism makes MRR a SCAM in your opinion, then I’m going to save you time, effort, and struggle right now by telling you that entrepreneurship isn’t the path for you.

You should just continue on with the career path you are on or spend your energy finding a job that suits you better to make life less miserable for you.

And there is NO SHAME in that. Truly.

If reading this helped you realize that maybe your job doesn’t suck so bad and entrepreneurialism just isn’t worth the risk to you, then I consider this article a WIN!

But if the thought of another 5 years… or heck… ONE year is unbearable to you, and you have thought about learning how to make money online with digital products…

Let me tell you this…

You will absolutely thank yourself later for all the…

-lunch break work sessions

-late evenings and lack of sleep

-trial and error

-committment

It won’t be easy, but it can be simple.

And after helping over 100 people and surveying over 4k…

I truly believe I have found the most simple and straightforward course that walks you step-by-step through creating nand launching your own digital product business.

Yes… it comes with Master Resell Rights.

Also Yes… reselling the course is 100% optional!

I want to see you THRIVE. I wanna see you equipped with the tools to create the life you know is possible and do the work that lights your soul on fire and serves the world.

That is exactly what the Simply Passive course does so well.

XO,

Shelbye