#173: 5 Criteria to Identify Your Best Offer

Gina Onativia: Welcome back to another edition of the Course Creation Incubator. Podcast I’m your host, Gina Onativia, here to get you stoked about your course, creation and your marketing and help you build up the course based business of your dreams. And guys. It is hiking season once again in San Diego. Now I live a little east of San Diego, so we have to wait till it starts to cool off in order to start hiking, and as soon as the Temps dip to the seventies. We are out in the mountains, skews my little New York accent there, and I love hiking. I’ve really grown to like it in the years that I’ve lived here, and I really wanna make it one my identity. And I feel like I’ve done that. So I’ve got my Merrell Hiking shoes. They’re trail runners. I freaking love these shoes. They make me wanna go to mountains and to run around all the time I’ve got my Deuter backpack which somebody was asking me the other day, she came up to me and said, Oh, do you love your Deuter backpack like? Do you have other dooter items and merchandise, and I tried to play it off like I was cool, even though I wasn’t. So more and more I’m trying to make it my identity. So I’ve got my Merrill trail runners. I absolutely freaking love these shoes. They make me wanna run into the mountains every other day. I’ve got my Deuter backpack. Which is this really lightweight backpack, and I put my bladder in there so I can drink water by 2 liter bladder. So I’m really owning it as an identity.

We’re making it a lifestyle as a family. Tristan has his own backpack now. He’s got his own trail runners. Alex has been doing this for years for decades and then finally, we’re now inviting the community, saying, Hey, if you’re in the area, if your kids want to hike now, we’re taking Tristan’s friends with us. I love it. And if, by the way, you’re in San Diego and you want to hike, hit me up, so identity, lifestyle, and community are all making it a passion, an addiction, a healthy addiction for me. And that’s what course creation’s about. We’ve talked about. I want you to have this identity as a course creator. As an online entrepreneur. I want you to embrace this lifestyle that can be. Maybe you’re not living the complete lifestyle you want to live yet. But it’s in the works. And then, finally, you’re welcoming a community, whether it’s students or a sounding board that can support you in terms of you being an entrepreneur. So, whatever it is, put yourself out there. I’m putting myself out there with hikes each and every weekend. That’s our goal hike once a weekend, and plus my trainer Amber every day every week that I see her ask you guys going hiking this weekend because she knows the weight training and hiking goes so well together. So hopefully. You’ve got your passion going there. And you’ve got your identity and your lifestyle and your community components locked in for your entrepreneurship.

So today I want to talk about a phone call I had. And it prompted me to do this workshop. And I love having strategy sessions. By the way, with different entrepreneurs. They inspire me every time I just did an episode talked about a strategy session in a different one that I did. You can book a strategy session with me. By the way, if you’re interested and done for you, or I’ve got Half Day VIP days. So I’ve got different packages depending on what you need. I also have a marketing package, so I’ll link to the show notes where you can book a strategy. Call with me totally free. We walk through what you’re working on, what your vision is for the future, and how I can help you get there. So, I did a strategy call this week with a very prolific creator. And that’s exactly who this episode is about today. If you’re a creator, you are a creator. By the way, if you’re listening to this because you’re putting out a course or content, or some kind of offer for your audience.

Ps. Your Creator. Okay. So I listened to this prolific creator this week. She was just a dynamo. She had so much energy, and she had workshops. She was working one-on-one she was consulting. She had coaching, she had a subscription. So, she had all these different offers and programs that she was putting out there. And nothing was wrong. In fact, she was prolific. She was making money, but she thought to herself, Well, should I be doing something over these other things? Is there a way to scale my business. So I don’t have to work as hard. And that’s where I come in. That’s part of what we do from our marketing standpoint is figure out. Okay, if you have all these different offers and packages, what’s the one to go with? What’s the one to scale? So that’s part of the fun that we’ve been having with some creators of late.

So today I thought we would talk about how to pick that priority offer like how to double down on that. And I consider this a continuation of the episode I did where I work through my VIP half day process, and we talked about how to build on success and how to build on that offer. But really, if you already have a lot of different offers and invites going on right now, how do you figure out the one. The program to really focus on? So think of it as a companion piece that goes a little bit deeper to that episode.  So it literally took 20-30 min on the phone with this prolific creator to go through this process, it’ll take even less with you because I zip through things on this podcast. But if you are thinking about, okay, should I be putting out all this content? Should I be doing more coaching and consulting? Should I be doing the group coaching? Should I be putting together mastermind, whatever it is, paid community? So maybe you have so many different offers out there. I want to give you 5 criteria on how to narrow it down.

Okay, so this is exactly what I did with this creator. Now, the first to consider is audience who your audience is, and you might have multiple audiences, and I’ll link to the show notes about some audience episodes that I’ve done in the past. But the cool thing is, you might be putting out different offers right now, but not even thinking about Ok, I’ve got 3 different audiences, or I’ve got 2 different audiences. In this case. This creator had 3 different audiences. She had students, she had corporate, and then she had the mass public overall. And then she had different offers, multiple offers for each, I mean. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s great, in fact. But I think what tends to happen is as we’re entrepreneurs as we’re experts, and people knock on your door and say, Hey, can you help me with this? We put out a course, or we put out a workshop, or we consult, or we do group coaching or coaching, or whatever it is to fulfill on that knock on the door. Then, all of a sudden, before you know it, you’ve got 5, 6, 7 offers or programs out there. And some of them are just hanging out. Some of them are active. So in this case same thing with this Creator, she had more than that hanging out and saying, Ok, well, what should I be really resuscitating or really focusing on versus just saying, Ok, that can sit in the background.

By the way, Becky. I talked about Becky before my online business manager. She said this to me, like, you know, it’s great to have courses. It’s great to have these passive income pieces that can just sit in the background, even if you’re not gonna double down on them like we’re gonna talk about in this episode like, Hey, this is what I really want you to focus on.

Why not have those pieces that have already been built out? You don’t have to do anything with them. Just make you money in the background on your website. So, nothing wrong with that. In fact, it’s a great thing. Now, thinking through your audiences is really helpful, because you want to know. Okay, who am I really focused on? I want you to think about. Was this the audience that I intended to serve? Is this an audience that I like to serve so for this creator, she said. You know corporate is just something I fell into. I’m not huge doubling down on them. That’s not where my heart lies. So it just kind of was an accidental audience.

That’s important for you to know when you’re thinking about your different audiences like. I have several different audiences. I have students, I have corporate. I have entrepreneurs, I have small businesses. I love them all. But for different reasons. So that’s number one thinking through. Well, who your audience? Who are you serving? Is this somebody that you intended to serve? Are they willing to pay the money? Things like that, again. I’ll link to some show notes or some episodes that I’ve done in the past. The second criteria I want you to think about when you’re thinking about, you know, what should you double down on? What should you focus on is demand? Now, I’ve talked about this on the podcast before. But I’m always looking at where the demand is, where, like I said before, where people knocking on your door. So this expert, what I love about her is that she had demand all over the place. She’s like, Oh, yeah, I’ve got 50 students in this program or doing one-on-ones with me 30 students in this workshop, whatever her numbers were. But the point was, she was. She had students or clients in everything she put out. She had, like magical pixie desks. So whatever she kind of sprinkled around, she could attract people, which is amazing.

Now, she didn’t have 1,000 people right, but what I took away from it was this creator knew what people wanted and she knew enough to put something out that people would respond to and trust me. I’ve talked about this on the podcast. Where I’ve put out stuff and got crickets where I thought, oh, people do want this, or maybe they did want it. But I get 2 people instead of 30 people that I thought I was gonna get. But she knew, and she knew enough to attract at least a small following for pretty much everything she put out there. So my question for you is people really interested in what you’re putting out? Not even just interested. Are they asking for it? Right? Asking for it to a point where they’re going to buy from you? Because there’s also asking. And then there’s the intent to buy. I had the ingredient grew on this podcast and that coaching. Podcast and she said she did that pantry, readiness course, and she was talking about how people were like, Oh, you put that out there and I’ll buy it from you. And then nobody bought it. It was like friends of friends. Right. Oh, that sounds interesting. That’s not demand. That’s people being nice. So demand is somebody saying, Hey, I’ve got 20 people who’d be willing to buy that from you or my coaching group would love that, and they would line up. I could guarantee X many spots, or putting together a wait list. And you know that 1020 people are ready to buy. That’s a demand or people buying a smaller program because they can’t get your bigger program yet. That’s a demand. So, I want you to think about that. And do you have that criteria is repeatable system that you can create that works for others that maybe works for self-paced that maybe works as a group. So in this case for this Creator, she’s been working with students. And I said, Okay, great. Do you have a repeatable system that you can. Maybe I’m thinking, course, right? I’m thinking, self-paced course in the background of my mind. And she’s like, Oh, no, it’s really, I work one on one with these kids. And I’m the magic. The magic is custom.

So it’s like, Okay, I don’t know if that is the opportunity, because she’s looking for leverage right? She’s looking to get help because she already works on one-to-one. She’s already maxed out on that. So to me. That’s not an offer that she should focus on because of her needs because of what she’s looking for. So, I don’t think that’s a repeatable system for her, for you, thinking what’s repeatable for you looking like a train, the trainer program. So, for example, if you have a program that really works, and you don’t necessarily have to teach it. That’s a repeatable system. That might be a really great program for you, or a way to scale. 

Okay, the next criteria is Price Point. So if you’re looking at making money right and scaling, I wanna know what’s an attractive price point. So $100 versus $1,000. I’ll sometimes like the $1,000 right? Because I know it’s fewer people I have to sell thousands from the $100 standpoint. So she had a $100 subscription, and then she had different workshops at different price points. Now my first instinct was to shy away from the subscription. But then I learned more about our subscription. So stay tuned for that but thinking through that for yourself. Like, if you have a $30 or $50, offer that you sell a couple of a quarter versus a $10,000 offer that you could sell a quarter. I want you to double down on that $10,000 offer, so I’m always interested to see what are people paying for. So there goes back to the demand. And then the price point that you’re charging.

And the fifth criteria, which I did last for a reason is “Love”. It comes down to love because you can have an incredible $25,000 package that you hate delivering. You could have a great audience demand repeatable system. Then you tell me that these people make you miserable. I had a client who was helping everyone on Linkedin, not everyone executives on Linkedin and particularly helping them update their Linkedin profiles. She was amazing at it. She’s like, Oh, they want me to run their Linkedin marketing. There’s a huge need for it in the market. And I said, Okay, let’s make money with this. She’s like, oh, but I hate doing it! I can’t stand it. It’s just not where my passion lies.

Well, then, forget it. That’s not your priority offer. So again, all these things could be in place. But if you don’t love doing it, or at least like it, then you’re not going to follow through. You’re not going to have the passion to want to do it. To move forward doesn’t matter if all the stars are aligned. Gosh! If you’re thinking you’re a prolific creator, and you have so much stuff.

So if I think about that fifth criteria, I think about Perry Maughmer, who I’ve had on the podcast and I’ve talked about before I’ll link to his excellent episode in the show notes. So Perry had multiple audiences. Perry had the demand, Perry had a repeatable system for results, and a variety of price points, and he came down to love for him, and he spent a year figuring out, Ok, who do I really want to serve? Who do I really love working with? And then figuring out how I want to deliver that to them. So he’s been on that journey, and now, and it took him almost a year. But it’s been a wonderful journey for him to figure that out.

So that’s why the love is so important. That’s why you need to figure out that last piece. and sometimes you gotta wait a little bit and sometimes you gotta test things out for it to fall into place. Don’t be afraid to test out different offers. I’ll link to some workshops I’ve done about offers, and then putting out an offer in a short time period, with the intent of testing it out and then evolving it. You’re not gonna know until you put that offer out whether it’s gonna work.

So hopefully, this criteria was helpful for you. If you’ve been juggling a lot of different offers or programs, and not quite sure what the future looks like or what you wanna focus on in the months to come. So I invite you to go through this checklist and figure out what really works for you. DM, me on Instagram, or send me a message on Linkedin. If you have any questions, I’m gonna have some really awesome guests coming up on the podcast. So make sure, you subscribed and leave me a review. I would love it to know.

And please leave me a review. I would love to know if any of these podcasts made an impression on you and made an impact on your life or your business. Or maybe you changed your identity or your lifestyle because of courses, because you became an online entrepreneur. And until next week. Go, create, be you, and be brilliant, and get it done.