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What if a tiny $7 digital product that you created in two hours on a Saturday morning in Canva ended up being the thing that helped you quit your 9-to-five job and start your own six-f figureure business. You think that
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sounds crazy, right? I bet you do.
And I would have too until it happened to me. And I didn't have a rich husband, no rich parents, no trust fund.
All I had was my laptop, Wi-Fi, and a dream of
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finally getting out of my 9-to-F5. So, this is my story of how that tiny $7 product completely changed my life.
And my hope for you watching this video is that you'll realize that you can build your own version of this life, too, and
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skip the mistakes I made along the way. Life before my digital product business, well, it looked good on paper.
I had a good job. I'd climb that corporate ladder like I was in the desert and the top of the ladder was the only place I would find water.
But on the inside, my
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job had drained the life out of me. I was constantly anxious.
I had no energy. I never felt like I could be my full self at work.
And towards the end, I was crying almost daily just at the thought of what I'd find every day I went into
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the office. and I was putting so much of myself into it that I never had time for myself or for my family.
And even though I'd climb the ladder, I still wasn't earning enough to live the life I truly wanted, especially not in London because it's expensive as hell here. My salary
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was good, but my husband and I still found ourselves slipping into debt as we tried to save for our wedding. And like I mentioned, we had no rich parents.
This was all on us. And then 2 years ago, something really crazy happened and
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I remember it so clearly. I was on my way to a meeting and I spent 2 weeks preparing for this like 12 hours days.
This was a big meeting. I had jumped on the central line which is a tube in London.
One minute I was stuck under someone's armpit because that's how
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packed the train gets. And the next minute I felt like I couldn't breathe.
Literally a moment later everything went black. And by the time I came around, I'd basically had a panic attack and passed out.
Like, this had never happened to me before. And the first thing I thought was, "Oh my gosh, I
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can't get to my meeting. [laughter] I wasn't thinking about my safety or my health.
I was literally thinking about my meeting and my company that I felt like I was letting down, right?" And not long after, my manager literally asked me over message, "Oh, can you just send
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us the documents?" And in that moment, I realized, wow, that was all that mattered, right? I didn't matter.
My safety didn't matter. It was the documents that mattered.
And it was in that moment I knew I had to find a way
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to get out of my 9 to5. And I had actually tried a lot of side hustles before.
I'd lost money just a year before. When I tried drop shipping, I'd spent loads of money on a Shopify website and Facebook ads, and I never sold a damn thing.
A year before that, I
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lost over $5,000 on trading. Really ashamed to admit that.
I'd also tried Amazon FBA. I tried working on Fiverr.
All of them were a dead end. And it wasn't just digital side hustles.
I tried physical product businesses, too.
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I tried starting my own hair extensions business. I looked into a jewelry business and every single one of them flogged.
And it was then that I realized that I actually didn't have the time or the energy to do anything physical. I was already so burnt out from my 9 to5.
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And then the digital side hustles that I had tried were just so complicated and felt so risky. But because I am a Capricorn and because I knew my life couldn't just be eat, work, sleep, repeat, I just kept digging.
I kept
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trying to find other ways to make money. And then I came across digital products.
Now, at this point, I remember feeling so excited. Like, I don't know why, but I knew this was it.
It ticked every single box. I could do it from home.
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Nothing physical, no inventory, no shipping. There was basically zero risk.
All I needed was a laptop, Wi-Fi, and some time. Okay, so I went down a huge rabbit hole.
And long story short, I found that people were selling digital
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products on Etsy, and it seemed perfect. I could set up my Etsy shop without a website.
I didn't have to promote on social media because Etsy would basically bring all the customers to you for free because they were already on the Etsy platform, right? And it felt
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like Etsy was it. I felt like I'd finally found it.
So, I started my Etsy business. I started creating my very first product, which was this one.
It was wall art. Never do that again.
I spent weeks creating these products,
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putting them on Etsy, and I thought I was about to get rich. I wasn't.
Okay. My products sat on Etsy for over six months without getting a single sale.
I was devastated. I did give up and I went
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back to pretty much accepting that I was just going to be in my 9-to-f5 prison forever. But 6 months later, I found myself back in Canva because I just knew I had to give it another chance.
And instead of going for the generic
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products that I'd been selling previously, I started creating digital planners. Now, this was the time when everyone was saying, "I'm making 20K a month selling digital planners." And so, I thought, "Okay, let me try it." So, I started listing my digital planners.
And
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it was slow, but slowly slowly I made my first sale. Okay, it was a $7 planner and it gave me the confidence to start experimenting.
I made different type of planners and the one that really took off was a self-care journal made
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especially for black women. That's when I started to get crazy sales.
And it was at that point that I finally knew that I had proof. I could create something in Canva.
This one had taken me two hours and people would actually buy it from me. I was shocked and I caught the bug.
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I started making tons of products on Etsy because that's what you have to do on Etsy. You have to keep making products, but every month it was getting better and better.
And it was so crazy to me because I wasn't a designer. I had never owned a business before.
and I had invested very little money into it and
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all really I was paying for was my Canva subscription and I was able to make 17K within 4 months selling on Etsy and I thought yeah this is it. This is the thing that's going to make me 10K months but it didn't quite work out that way.
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In fact, something happened that was absolutely devastating and it's something that I don't see anybody else talking about online. People will tell you how much money they make on Etsy, but they will leave out the part where other sellers just start copying your
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product. And yes, I know because it happened to me multiple times.
There are people copying my product like for like. People also don't tell you that Etsy is only great for a certain amount of time.
If you find a winning product, it's only
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a matter of time before someone else copies it. And once they do, everybody starts creating the same product and then you get into a price war.
People start slashing the price. And that's when I had to start cutting my prices.
Now, by this time, I'd found a second
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winning product. This was my PLR digital planner, and I was selling it at the time for around $22.
Now, I was one of the first people doing PLR on Etsy, and this is where you give someone the rights to resell your product, but not as PLR, as another product on Etsy,
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right? and I was charging $22 and it was doing so well.
But then everyone else started creating really cheap versions and very poor quality might I add, of the same product. And so before I knew it, people were selling their PLR
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products for like 99. And there was just no money left in it at all.
So I went from having a best-selling product, my digital PLR planner for $22 and it went right down to 99. And it broke my heart.
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Like I almost gave up on my dream. I almost gave up on digital products entirely.
But then I realized, wait, I have proof that this works. I had designed a product and it sold.
The product itself wasn't the problem. My
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skill set wasn't the problem. It wasn't the fact that I couldn't do this.
It was the fact that I was on the wrong platform. And if that's where you are right now, if you've tried Etsy and you've either had some success or haven't had any success and it just feels really, really tough, I want you
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to know it's not you, [laughter] it's probably the platform. And it was the moment that I realized that I need my own site, that I needed to not have to compete with thousands of other sellers selling the exact same thing as me on
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the exact same page. I knew that I needed to be able to create my own experience for my customers.
I needed to have my own data. I need to do my own email marketing.
These were the things that I was learning and I knew they were
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only possible if I actually took this business into my own hands and started selling on my own platform. And so my first website was born on Shopify.
I still have it until this day. And making that change was the best thing I ever
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did. And keep in mind, I'm still at my 9 to5 at this point, okay?
Um, and as soon as I moved my products to Shopify, I started promoting them on Tik Tok and I was also doing a little bit of Pinterest. I was making on average
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$4,000 a month at this point. But then I started to run into another problem because I started to get so burnt out from marketing on social media.
Tik Tok was my main source of traffic and my real sales spikes only came from my
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lives which was exhausting and as an introvert it filled me with anxiety. Instagram was also taking ages for me to see any traction.
And I had a very real fear that at any moment my colleagues, my manager, whoever, someone at work
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would find out about what I was doing because my face was on social media and my career would just blow up. I wasn't ready to leave my 9 to5 yet.
And so very quickly after moving off of Etsy, I realized I needed another way to promote
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my digital product and get traffic to my pages without burning out on social media. And then one day I logged into Pinterest and I saw that my numbers have been going up, right?
I was starting to get clicks through my Pinterest marketing and I thought, you know what?
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I'm going to go allin on Pinterest. It was great because I didn't need to show my face.
I didn't need to post every day. I didn't need to dance on Tik Tok or do any stupid little trends.
All I needed to do was post pins and make sure
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that I had the right keywords and create nice looking pins that actually attracted people to click on it, right? And it would literally drive a ton of people to my digital product landing page where people buy.
And so I went all in. Pinterest was the thing that really
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opened up the next stage of this journey for me. And after going allin for just over three months, I was finally making more money in my digital product business than I was in my 9-to-f5.
And that was the moment I thought, "Oh my gosh, wow." Like, this could really
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work. But I was still scared.
Okay, I'd overcome all the problems on Etsy. I'd overcome the marketing challenges, but I just still didn't have the guts to quit my 9 to5.
So, for a good 6 months, I was juggling everything. And I also started
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my YouTube channel at this time. So I was just completely burnt out.
I knew I had to make a choice. Like something had to give.
I either had to go allin on this digital product journey, trust God and trust the process or I was going to
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keep trying to juggle them both and stay extremely unhappy and burnt out. And so, and I prayed to God and I said, "Okay, if it's time to quit my 9 to-5 that I'd spent 15 years building, I needed a sign." And then God made the decision
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for me because I got a phone call on Friday the 30th of May, 2025 at 100 p.m. I remember it clear as day.
It was 2 hours after my manager had cancelled our onetoone out of the blue. And even
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though I'd kind of been expecting this day, something deep inside told me that like this day was coming. I honestly thought it would be me that made that choice.
I thought it would be me sending in my resignation. I'd even put a date in my calendar, guys.
I literally had a
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date that said send resignation written on it. I'm a Capricorn.
I'm a planner. But they beat me to it.
And this phone call, it was really emotional. I'd been at the company for over seven years.
I was a director. I had given so much to this company.
And so much of my identity
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was tied up in this corporate job that I actually hated. And so after 10 minutes on this call, I was basically told, you know, I had the choice on whether I wanted to take redundancy or not.
But they told me that I had 2 weeks to let them know. And I was in shock.
I
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literally didn't say anything on this call at all. 10 minutes of them speaking at me and then they were like, "Are you okay?" And I was just like, "Is this call done?
Can I log off?" And they were like, "Yeah, you can log off. You can take some time to think." Okay.
And this
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was a Friday. It was my sister's birthday.
Bless her. And I just knew like I was not going to let this ruin her birthday.
So, we went out and we had a good time. And if you met me on that day, you would have seen me laughing and dancing.
But inside my heart really felt
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like it was breaking. And two days later, that Monday morning, I had already made my decision.
Like I did not need two weeks. I sent my email and I said basically, "Peace out." And that was it.
I'm out. And my career was over in a blink.
And it felt very scary, very
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scary. But it was also one of the most freeing moments of my entire life.
I felt like it was the answer to the prayer that I'd been praying for years. And I knew one thing.
I wasn't ever applying for a job again. No matter what
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it took, I was going to make this work. I knew I was never putting my finances, my safety, or my happiness in the hands of any other company or any other person that wasn't myself.
I knew this was the start of a new life for me. And so,
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seven months later, fast forward to right now, I can't even explain how much my life has changed since that tiny $7 Canva template. It's literally night and day.
Last month, I hit my first 18K month, the biggest month of my business
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yet. I no longer wake up stressed and anxious.
I don't even set alarms anymore. And back in my 9 toive job, I had zero control over my time.
I couldn't even book a vacation without waiting for approval, which just never sat right with me. But now I work when I
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want. I don't work Fridays ever.
I travel when I want. I see my family more.
I'm more of a present wife and I love what I do. And I feel insanely blessed and grateful to be able to help other people get the same results I did.
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And usually in way less time. And I hope I don't jinx this, but literally tomorrow we will be getting the keys to our brand new house.
Now, I won't feed you any when I say this doesn't happen working 2 hours a day. Not at the
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start, okay? I work hard, especially now that I also have my YouTube channel.
But here's the thing, it's work that I actually enjoy. I wake up excited to do it.
And yeah, I still get pretty tired, but it's the kind of tired that feels
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good because I'm building something that matters to me. Like, it's that kind of tired.
And back in my 9 to5, it didn't matter how much work I did, how many extra projects I took on that weren't my job, how much I helped do my manager's job, I still got paid the same. And I
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would get passed over for promotions that I should have got. I had to shrink myself to make other people feel comfortable.
And I had to code switch. That was probably the worst of it all.
And work with people that I would never have even spoke to in real life. Now
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think about it. Your income at your 9 to5 is literally capped.
No matter what you do. That's just the reality of it.
Now my income isn't tied to my hours anymore. My income is never capped.
It's not about how long I sit at a desk. I
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get to choose when I work. I get to choose when I want to go harder and when I want to make more money and also when I want to take a step back.
I let my AIS and my systems do the work for me. And honestly, even if one day I made a bit
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less in this business than I did in my old job. I had a six-f figureure job, okay?
I'd still be fine with it because I genuinely enjoy what I do. I don't have to get on the train every day.
Like, I feel free. And there are times when I'm helping my students and I feel
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like I could do it for free. I mean, I can't because bills and my new mortgage need to be paid, but you know what I mean.
I enjoy it that much. And I have gone from feeling drained all the time, finishing work, and wanting to just cry
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the whole way home, never having energy, never really being able to cook what I want for dinner because I was so burned out. waking up, going to work, counting down the hours, coming home, crashing out, and then doing it all over again, and pretty much living for the weekend
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before. But I never even enjoyed the weekend because Sunday was always here so quickly, and then I had anxiety about the week again.
I've gone from all of that to waking up and actually looking forward to my day. Every day is different.
I get to help people. I get
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to have an impact. I get to feel excited again.
And I never used to see myself as a creative person before. But now I get to be creative because I can build a business that's completely mine.
It's just me. I'm the only one in this business.
It's a oneperson business that
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nobody can ever take away from me. And something that I never realized until recently, I no longer pray to God to change my job or give me more financial security.
I don't pray those prayers anymore. You might be watching this and thinking, "Okay, it's great for you,
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Relle, but that could never be me." And I used to like think that exact same way, too. I thought starting a business was for really smart people or people with rich parents or people with rich partners that could actually invest in them and their business or even those
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people with loads of fancy LinkedIn connections. Okay, but look at my story.
I didn't start with anything fancy. I had no design experience, no business experience, no audience.
I built everything through Pinterest in YouTube. I had zero people waiting for my product
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when I started. I had no audience.
Okay? I had no one ready to buy.
I just had a laptop. I just had Wi-Fi.
And I just had a dream to quit my 9 to5. The other thing I had a crazy amount of determination because I kept going
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through the Etsy drama, through not knowing how to market my product on social media, through juggling my 9 to5, through being made redundant. I had a lot of low points.
But I kept going because I knew I wanted a life of
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freedom and flexibility. I wanted to be at home for my future kids.
I wanted to wake up and think, "Oh god, like thank you. Is this really my life?
And I can honestly say I do wake up with that feeling now, but only because I actually
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took the first step. And so if there's even the tiniest part of you wondering if there's more to life, wondering if you could try something like this, then this is your sign.
Start small. My first sale was $7.
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I started scared. I started very unsure.
I started without knowing all the steps. God, I started without a plan.
And you actually have way more opportunity than I did because you can learn from all the free content I put out here on YouTube.
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No one was doing this when I started. I give you the step by step.
So, a year from now, you could be making your own video like this, telling your own story about how everything changed in your life. This doesn't have to just be my story.
It could 100% be you. You just
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have to believe in yourself enough to start. And not just to start actually, but to keep going.
And the best part is it will literally take you 10 minutes to get your plan. Whether you're just started, whether you've created digital products in the past that haven't sold,
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whether you've taken a break and don't know how to pick it back up, or even if you've gone full-time in your online business and it just isn't working out the way you hoped, I built a free tool to give you a success plan no matter what stage you're at. Okay?
I built it to give you a clear, practical plan
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based on everything that helped me get to a consistent six-figure digital product business. All you need to do is click the link below, pop in your email address, answer a few quick questions, and it will generate your custom game plan, okay?
Built from my strategies,
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the ones that have actually worked in the last few years and my experience, okay? The exact step that I used to get here.
I created this so you don't have to waste any more time. No more wondering if there's more to life.
No more ignoring that little voice telling
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you that you're meant for more. So, here's the one thing I ask in return.
Hit the subscribe button, hit the like button, and then check out this video on your screen next for the exact five steps to start your digital product business today. Okay, don't forget to
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grab your game plan below and I will see you in the next video. Bye.