Episode 25: Build a Profitable and Loveable Offerings Ecosystem

Transcript

Welcome to meaningful work remarkable life. I’m your host Brook McCarthy, and I’m a business coach, trainer and speaker living and working on the unseeded lands of the cameras located here in Sydney, Australia. In this podcast, we explore the paradoxes inherent in working for love and money, magnifying your impact, and doing work you feel born to do, we explore the intersections of the meanings we bring to work, and the meanings we derive from work. So you launch a new offer, and it doesn’t sell and you are absolutely and totally gutted. Because you’ve convinced yourself that it’s the best idea ever. And if only people would give it a red hot go, they would appreciate just what an awesome idea it actually is. Today, we are talking about bold offers, we are talking about offering ecosystem, and how to make sure that your offering ecosystem makes sense. I’m also going to cover the biggest mistakes that I see people making the biggest misconceptions and preconceptions that business owners have that continue to endure and what to do about it. So let’s dive in. The first thing is that most business owners do not have a premium price offering and this is a really easy thing to fix, I think it’s an easy thing to fix. And in fact, it’s one of the most common things that I do with clients is I help them to take an existing offer and to elevate the positioning to elevate the experience to elevate the outcome to elevate the price. So a premium price offering and this will vary, I’m not going to give you a price for that, because it will vary drastically depending on you know, what, what your other offerings are priced at what industry you’re in, you know, industry, I think is less important than people, you know, tend to assume. But certainly, it depends on the prices of your other things. So it could look as simple as having a VIP upgrade on an existing server. So let me give you a quick example. When I first started running courses around Australia back in 2000, and I can’t remember if it was 11, or 12, I think it was 2012. I did this, you know, for several months, possibly a year or so before I considered Well, you know, maybe I just add a little VIP kind of upgrade. And what I did is I actually offered it after the fact. So after the first follow up email that I sent after the course, I would say if you’d like to talk to me, we can have a one to one session. And I think I priced it at something like $200 or something quite, you know, relatively small. But at the time, you know, it seemed like a lot for a single hour of my time. And of course the first person purchased. And I remember this experience vividly because she purchased an hour of my time. And we had that conversation, we had that coaching. And nothing that I said to her I hadn’t already said in detail over the course of you know, the full day, full day training course. So there was no new information. And there wasn’t even really a lot of customization. I remember at the time thinking, you know, like kind of walking away from the conversation thinking I don’t know if I added much value there. But but she was like, Ah, got it great, wonderful. I’m, I’m off to implement. Now, there was nothing stopping her from implementing, of course, after the course, there’s nothing different about that single hour of coaching that I offered her. But for one reason or another, she felt she needed that extra hour. And she felt empowered after that hour to go ahead and implement what she had learned. So it doesn’t have to be a big, complicated, new thing. So this is mistake number one not having a premium price offering. Now there’s a couple of reasons why this is an issue. The first one is hopefully clear and obvious, which is you’re leaving money on the table that there is, you know, an opportunity to make money that you’re not taking. And of course, the premium VIP option is not for all your clients, it might be for 2% of your clients. But the point is, if you don’t have it, people aren’t going to buy it. And this is really you know, can bring in some great profit without a huge amount of additional effort or resources on your part. But the bigger perhaps more important reason is that if you don’t have some kind of premium offering if you don’t have an opportunity for claims tends to go deeper with you to have some kind of deeper, bigger transformative experience, then it’s quite possible that they’re going to look elsewhere. And that would be a crying shame. Because oftentimes, these are potentially your best and most loyal clients, they’re people that you know, have stuck around and have bought from you over and over and over again. But they want more, they’re ready for the next step, they want to go deeper, they want to go further, they want to go faster. And if you don’t have that premium price offering, well, then it’s easy for them to just kind of drift off to find somebody else that does have that premium experience, and to leave your business, which again, is a crying shame, because these are oftentimes the best clients. And you’ve just kind of let them go. The second biggest mistake that people make, and this is kind of in keeping with the first one is that people tend to overstuff their premium offerings. And this is especially the case, if you’re a business owner who’s feeling a little unconfident or shaky about the price that you’re potentially charging for your theme. So what people tend to do, what I’ve seen owners do is they overcompensate by creating some megalithic programme that has, you know, 15 live calls and requires three and a half hours per week, from participants to do this, and do that and do that, you know, and it’s just stuffed with features that most people just get completely overwhelmed by. And, of course, you know, because they’re overwhelmed, they don’t engage, because they don’t engage, they don’t get value. And because they don’t get value, you know, it becomes your problem, it may not be your fault, and you may have excellent intentions, but it does become your problem. So mistake number three, and this kind of goes hand in glove with what I’ve just covered, is this perception, this this misconception that continues to ensure that we just have to sell something that’s cheap. And then we make it easy for people to buy. And nothing could be further from the truth in my experience. So it’s super, super common. And my God, if I had $1, for every business owner, I’ve had this conversation with that, you know, no, it doesn’t necessarily mean that just because you’ve got a $19 digital download that it’s just gonna fly off the shelf, and you’re gonna be able to sell it every day of the week. It just doesn’t work like that. Yeah. So, you know, I think that this is a fundamental misunderstanding, or rather an enduring misunderstanding, a widespread misunderstanding about the nature of business and the nature of online business specifically, is within even in the small world, small ish, I don’t know if it’s smallish. It’s a pretty, you know, sizable chunk. In this invisible sector of online business, we have different business models, right. And I guess one of the easiest ways to think about this, a starting point would be goods versus services, you have E commerce, you have, you know, businesses that sell products, and then you have businesses that sell services, this would be one of the most simplistic ways to start breaking it down. But the other thing that we’ve got is we’ve got certain businesses that are volume businesses, and certain businesses that are not.

And so a volume business has typically got an email list of 20,000 50,000 100,000 email addresses. They’ve got a further network of hundreds of affiliates, who are in effect doing their marketing and promotion and sales on their behalf in exchange for affiliate commission, of course. So this is a volume game. And it’s easy then to sell something that’s $19 or $9, or $100, or $27, and actually earn significant coin, because we’re dealing with a hell of a lot higher numbers, right? It’s much harder to do that if we’ve got an email list of 1000 or 5000. It’s much harder to sell something that’s low priced at volume, without there being a really smart strategy behind it. And you know, that’s the other thing of course, that is oftentimes misunderstood. And especially when we’re trying to reverse engineer you know, there’s so many of us, trying to reverse engineer other people’s success. It’s how we learn no shame. You know, this is how we learn. We first start by imitating we imitate others, we look at what other people are doing, we think, well, they look successful. I’ll just copy them. I’ll do what they’re doing. What we failed to see Of course, when we’re attempting to reverse engineers, we fail to understand or to see the entirety of the person’s business, we don’t understand their strategy. We don’t see their bank account, we don’t understand their financials. We’re not privy to, you know, even knowing whether or not they’re successful or not, we don’t know these things. We don’t know the strategy that sits behind, you know, somebody selling something, perhaps at a lower price point. So that’s the biggest misperception, I think, is that a lower price point is easy to sell, it’s not. And when you’re coming to market, especially, if you are pivoting, if you are starting, you know, a brand new business, or maybe you’re just sick to death of what you’re currently doing, and you’ve decided, you know, what, I’m going to burn this business to the ground, I’m going to start over with a brand new suite of offerings, you know, we still think we still believe that we’ll start by selling something small, something cheap, something low price, and that this will be easier. And then we’ll kind of add layers on top. Now, of course, this belief came from somewhere. And I like to give a little bit of context and history and background because it helps us kind of understand things better. I’m a huge fan of history. And the history of this is the ascension model. So the ascension model, which is taught by various business coaches and business people, is that, you know, first you give somebody something for free, in exchange for an email address, perhaps, and then you sell them something cheap. And then they’ll buy the next thing at $500. And the next thing at $2,000. On the next thing, you know, 5000, or 6000, the next thing at $20,000, they’re just gonna go up the ascension ladder, like nice, obedient shape. Now, of course, humans aren’t obedient. And we are not rational, either. We don’t like being told what to do, or at least I don’t. And we are complicated and disorganised and chaotic and erratic. So that idea of the ascension ladder, you know, I think it’s, it’s a simplistic idea, and maybe that’s why it’s appealing, but it’s a bit of a fantasy. I think that the better approach to this, I know that the better approach to this is to think about your offerings as an ecosystem. And what an ecosystem is, it is generative, and it is intimately interconnected. So everything is designed to weave in together, and to make sense together. And I think this is, you know, the missing piece of the puzzle is that business owners oftentimes, you know, it is very normal to grow your business in a haphazard way that is completely par for the course. But what we sometimes don’t do, which we can do and makes life a hell of a lot easier, and more profitable, is to regularly review what we’re selling and to ensure that those offerings make sense. And that we are culling that we are reviewing that we are refreshing, that we are repositioning, perhaps renaming. We are retiring, lots of reads here, we’re retiring. And we are, of course, perhaps introducing some things as well. So in that way, what we’re trying to do, one of the things we’re trying to do is to ensure that there are no dead ends in our business, so there is always another awesome offering. That leads neatly in from where the last offering ended, so to speak,

meaningful on so I

want to stop this episode just for two quick minutes to tell you about an awesome free resource that I have for you. It is a free video training short, sharp, filled with insights and value. It’s called The Future of premium group programmes, and it’s especially for consultants, coaches, and values based experts. It covers the seven key trends right now. And how these will impact your industry is especially if you sell or want to sell premium group programmes. We also look at how to have the audacity to own your expertise and elevate it and what you need to do to step up and start playing a bigger game. We also cover why your best clients are waiting for you to charge premium fees, and how to go ahead and make it your new reality to access this awesome free video training the future premium group programmes go to hustle and hard.com.au forward slash future or click on the link in the show notes. Okay, back to the episode. Now another thing That, I think is an easy mistake to make. And a really quick fix is the intro offer. The intro offer is the no brainer. Introduction into the business, this oftentimes looks like a diagnostic or an audit. It could also be some kind of digital download what has been all the rage lately, and certainly what I’ve enjoyed delivering is paid live workshops. But the purpose of this introductory offer is to give people a real taste of your business services or paid taste of your business services is not a free resource or a you know, a report or a white paper or a lead magnet. It is some kind of paid introductory offer, delivering value demonstrating expertise that leads neatly into the next offer. Now, oftentimes, what I see is that a couple of things happen either the business owner neglects to promote their introductory offer, and they have an introductory offer, but it’s kind of sitting on a shelf getting dusty, and they’re not paying enough marketing attention to it, they’re not giving it enough promotion. And then the other thing that happens is the introductory offer, the business owner kind of confuses the introductory offer with the bread and butter kind of offer. And the introductory offer or the bread and butter offer becomes way too cheap. They don’t have, you know, a way to migrate people through the business so that clients are, you know, consuming more, how do I kind of summarise this because I’m speaking generally here right away for clients to have a better, more well rounded experience of what the business offers. And that tends to be the kind of the bread and butter offering. Maybe sometimes you might like to call it the flagship offering. But it’s you know, it’s really where the 60 70% of revenue is coming from in any given business. So this is, you know, some of the biggest mistakes that I see business owners making the lack of premium priced offering the overstuffing of the premium priced offering that makes it a bit overwhelming for people and puts people off the assumption that you know, things we are going to go up this ascension ladder in a very obedient, neat kind of a fashion. Whereas we are not going to do that. And then the lack of introductory offer, or the lack of promoting the introductory offer, where you know if this is if this is where you’re getting the majority of your new clients, then that should have 80% of the marketing and advertising budget. Right. The other thing and this, I have to cover this before I move on to the next piece, I have to cover the fact that too many business owners stop themselves from starting because they think they’re just going to figure out the perfect offering suite before they sell anything. And they spend so much time developing the product developing, you know, the back end of the business developing this awesome client experience without actually bloody selling it to a paying client, who is the only person that can give you real, legitimate, valuable feedback. Yeah, the opinion of your paying client is the most important feedback that you can get. And you cannot get that feedback from them. If you are not selling because you’re stuck in perfectionism. So please go to market with one thing if you need to, if you want to just stick with one thing only for the rest of your years. Don’t let me stop you don’t let me or anyone else stop you. There is no right or wrong way to do this. But I do want to kind of showcase in this episode, some really common misunderstandings that could be holding you back from of course making excellent money.

Now finally, and this is maybe the biggest mistake I see of all, and that is that people only love their offerings when they’re selling them. And of course, this is understandable. It makes 100% sense, right? We love it when people say yes, we love it when clients buy we love it when we exceed our sales targets. We love it when the cash is pimping pinging into our business bank account into our you know, Stripe or PayPal. What a glorious sound. Yeah. But the problem then becomes is if we’ve launched something, maybe it’s the first time it’s launching or maybe it’s the 10th time it’s launching and we’re not making the sales that we expected to make. Then the business owner very quickly loses their love for Well, that particular offering and that is such a crying shame because it is our responsibility as business owners to communicate value and it is our responsibility as business owners to be the champions, this is our role, right, we have to champion our offerings, we have to understand them inside out and backwards, we have to speak highly of them, we have to hold the faith. And when people aren’t selling, when the market has changed, for one reason or another, when perhaps, during a launch, it’s raining as it is right now in Sydney, it’s torrential, it’s, there are so many variables in business, and people, business owners tend to be way too quick to jump to the conclusion that number one, nobody wants to buy this offering, it must be a shit offering. And number two, it must be because of the price, the amount of people that tell me this over and over and over again, it must be too high, the price is too high, my clients can’t afford it, nobody’s buying it, if they could afford it, they would have been buying it, etc, etc, etc. And it is almost never the case. So if a client has had a bad launch, for example, and we’re doing a launch audit, or maybe we’re midway through a launch, or we’re doing a launch audit, which is not unusual, then, you know, there are so many other things to look at that don’t conclude well, it must be the price, the price is too high. And those you know, pretty much almost always the problem is the traffic, the eyeballs, the attention, there is simply not enough eyeballs on your particular offer. If you’ve only got, you know, 1100 112 people looking at your sales page, well, how are you supposed to actually sell it, you know, in volume. This is one of the most common issues when it comes to low sales. It’s simply a lack of, you know, promoting the product, or lack of eyeballs or lack of exposure or lack of visibility. So one of the quickest and easiest ways that we can fix this as well, because I you know, I hear this conversation. Because sound a little bit jaded today. I’ve had this conversation a lot of times, and clients say to me, you know, I just haven’t made any money lately, like this quarter has been so much lower than previous quarters, or it’s, you know, it’s typically a lot higher. And I’m like, okay, great. Let’s have a look at the metrics. Let’s have a look at the numbers. What have you been promoting? Oh, I haven’t actually been promoting anything. I haven’t been launching anything. I haven’t been making any offers. I haven’t been giving people any incentive. I’ve barely been mentioning my offers. And I’ve done this myself, there’s been innumerable launches, where I have thought that I’m sending way more emails than I actually am. And when I sit down to do a bit of an audit or review of my activity, I go oh, here I was thinking I bombarded my list with emails. And it turned out that it was all good intentions and you know, far fewer emails than I thought I would be sending. So if we can make multiple offers regularly, and if we can put this in the calendar, put this in the diary, make sure it’s actually happening. Make sure that we’re not getting too you know, June or getting to December and going oh whoopsie I intended to do something but I didn’t then this is one of the easiest ways to increase our cash flow because people cannot buy if you are not making offers, people are far less likely to buy if you’re not making it easy for them to actually purchase if you are not directly asking and giving them some kind of an incentive some kind of urgency or scarcity to take that action and to purchase real quick before you go. If this episode has gotten you thinking gotten you excited or has you changing the way that you do business or life would you do me a super quick favour and write me a short review. Your Podcast review means so much to me and it helps other values based business owners just like you to find this show which is a fantastic gift to me.