How to Choose Your Next New Offer (Without Setting Yourself Up for Burnout)
It’s important to make sure that when you create a new offer, it’s a total “hell yes!” for you, as well as for your clients.
These are the kinds of offers that will get you to your goals without burning out along the way (because spending all your time and energy delivering offers that you’re not super jazzed about is a huge slog).
Whenever I help my clients create new offers (ones that create that “hell yes!” energy for them!), I always use the same framework.
There are three elements to this framework:
Your Schedule
Your Strengths
Your Scope
Where they intersect is where your next “hell yes!” offer is going to be.
In this post, I’ll walk you through this framework, so you can avoid wasting your time, money, and energy creating, launching, and delivering the wrong kind of offer.
You Don’t Necessarily Need to Make a Course
In the online business space, there’s this pervasive feeling that everyone needs to create a course, that a course is the best way to grow your business, and that a course will allow you to make money while you sleep.
But a lot of the time, there are better ways.
Many of my clients come to me thinking that they needed a course, and working together we were able to find other (easier) ways to make money from people who were already in their audience who just needed the right offer put in front of them.
And we did it in a way that didn’t even require a big launch! We just whipped up a really simple-yet-amazing offer that didn’t require an email sequence or a webinar, all because we focused on this framework.
1. Schedule
The very first thing to do is make sure you have the hours available that you can dedicate to creating and delivering this new offer, whatever it will end up being.
It could be two hours, five hours, or ten hours - but either way, it's really important to know, because you don't want to accidentally give yourself too short of a runway to create it, and then end up having to work more hours on top of an already busy schedule.
This is the quickest way to resentment or burnout, and we definitely want to avoid that.
First you need to look at the approximate number of hours that you have available to devote to your business every week (or over the course of a month if that’s easier to math out for you).
From that, you’ll subtract the time it takes you to do the work that you have already been paid to do, of course. (Because if you don't do this, you're going to get a really bad reputation and your business growth is going to suffer.)
Next, you’ll subtract your marketing efforts - sales calls, writing emails, etc. You know, CEO stuff.
Then, you’ll see if you can buy back any of your time – i.e. decide if there’s anything you can outsource to someone else, thereby giving you more time to create this new offer!
In my 3 Pillars to Scaling, the first pillar is to stabilize your pay, so you don't have to push pause on the money that you're making in order to grow your business to the next level.
I’ve got a whole podcast episode that goes into these pillars, but here’s the gist of the first pillar to get you started:
Of the work that you are committed to week after week, what of that can be outsourced? Chances are, it’s more than you think. Sometimes an outside pair of eyes like a business coach or an operations manager can help you see these (because sometimes we’re just too close to our businesses, you know?)
Examine the marketing tasks that are actually bringing in new clients. Which tasks are working? And which are things that you might be doing out of obligation, that aren't actually converting? These are tasks we can eliminate or delegate.
Get some extra money to help offset the cost of this delegation. Chances are, if you offer a service, and you've raised your rates over time, you might have clients at older rates. If so, maybe it’s time to bring them up to your current rates. This is especially good to do if they're a client that you know isn’t a perfect fit anymore, but you feel bad letting them go. You can just tell them, “hey, 30 days/two weeks from now, I'm going to raise your rate.” If they say, “No, thank you,” then you’ll have space for another client at your new full-priced rate.
Look at quick cash injections: outstanding invoices, quick projects, or anything else that can offset the cost of delegation. Don’t forget to follow up!
Once you’ve done this buyback of your time, you’ll have your schedule, and you’ll know exactly how many hours you can dedicate each week to building, launching, and delivering your new offer.
2. Strengths
Now that we know how much time you have to work with, let’s get into creating the actual offer!
Before we decide what we’re going to create, we need to consider your strengths.
It’s really important to think about how you shine, because if you don’t enjoy what you’re offering, you won’t want to sell it.
So start by asking yourself these questions:
How do you like to show up for people?
Do you like to be the leader? The teacher? Do you prefer being behind the scenes?
Are you an introvert or an extrovert?
Is community, and getting to know the people that you're serving really important?
There's no right or wrong for any of this. But it’s important to get a clear understanding of all these things so that you can create something that’s a true “hell yes!” for you, as well as for your clients.
For example, if you love deep connections with people, then having a digital download or a low-cost, self-serve course that serves tons of people won’t be for you. In that case, you might want to have a higher priced course, that brings in fewer people, and then has a community setting to it.
3. Scope
Once we’ve got an idea of your available time, and what your personal strengths are, it’s time to think about who you want to target with this offer, where they are in your customer journey, and what price region your offer would be in.
Let’s look at some examples:
You already have people in your orbit, at a mid-level price point, taking your $500 course with a community component and live coaching.
When you look at your schedule and your strengths, you see that you have five hours a week, and you love teaching and leading, and you really want a tight-knit community and to go deeper on some of the things you teach.
So then you have to ask yourself: Who do I want to serve?
Maybe you decide to take the people who've gone through your course and are ready for next level stuff. Then, you create a small group program, with an hour of coaching a week, and monthly trainings.
If you can do that in five (or fewer) hours, and give a ton of value, and it’s a bit further along in the customer journey, then that is going to be a higher-ticket offering.Conversely, maybe you already have something like that, and you want to help more entry level people, but you don't want to spend a ton of time with them.
In that case, you may want to create a lower cost course that gets customers primed and ready for your one to one work.
A good thing to keep in mind as you’re weighing your options is that, usually, for a lower price point, the person buying it is going to have to put in more of their own time. That’s the trade off.
The higher up the price ladder you go, chances are they’re going to get a quicker transformation with more of your time.
Lower priced offers cost you less time, and the more time you spend with your clients, the bigger the transformation.
Whatever type of offer you choose, before you invest tons of your own time, energy, and money in creating and launching it, think about what could be your MVP.
Focus on Your MVP (and don’t be a perfectionist)
In the spirit of saving yourself time and energy (we’re trying to level up without burning out, here), I recommend that however you decide to structure your offer, focus on making it an MVP – that is, a Minimum Viable Product.
A Minimum Viable Product is the absolute minimum of what you need to create in order to serve your clients or customers and deliver your high quality transformation.
This will save you from spending unnecessary hours and energy on details that are, like, nice and stuff, but not actually necessary to create the transformation you’re creating for your clients.
So ask yourself: What do you actually need in order to launch your group program or your course?
You likely don’t need to have every single training recorded or every module completed. You might need at least some stuff done, but when you’re launching something new, you can also just drip out the content of it, creating as you go along.
This is important because you might think this course is going to be epic, and it's totally going to serve the people already in your audience, but then you pre-launch it… and hear crickets.
That’s not to say that you have to poll your audience and only create offers based on what they say, but it's important that you not work yourself to death creating this massive behemoth of an offer, in case it doesn't land.
You deserve to spend your time on offers that you’re excited about – it’s your business after all! Plus, life is too short to spend time and energy on things you’re not jazzed about.
Now you can create that Next Big Thing that you’re passionate about, in a way that works with your schedule, so that you don’t burn out while working towards that next level of your business.
