#180: 3 Big Questions to Prioritize What’s Next in Your Business

Welcome back to another edition of the Course Creation Incubator podcast. I’m your host, Gina Onativia here to help you build up the online based business of your dreams, whether it’s your course, a coaching program, or some other online program. We’re here to build up your online marketing. We’re getting it done together. And I’m so proud of you, by the way, because you’re listening to this podcast and you’re here to take action and it’s awesome to be back.

If you listen to last episode, that was our relaunch after taking a six month hiatus. And thank you. Thank you for all of you who emailed me and deemed me. I loved reading your comments and just knowing what the podcast meant to you. So thank you so much. Love hearing your comments about the podcast. Please keep them coming and let me know if you want to hear an episode in the future or if you want to hear something on a particular topic.

Now, this episode was inspired by meeting an old friend, literally bumping into an old friend at this park where my husband Alex and I walk Churro each and every day. So Churro is our puppy that we got in August. He is huge now, by the way. The shelter said he would be about 40 lbs. He’s about 70 now. And I think they just tell you whatever you need to hear, right.

To walk out of the shelter. And he’s huge and full of energy. And we need to walk him every day, twice a day. And we’re in this park. And to me saying, Gina and I turn around and it’s my friend Stephanie, who I haven’t seen in years and years. I knew her when we were members of this incredible wine club here in San Diego.

We used to love going to this wine bar, and Stephanie was one of the highlights, her absolute highlights. So she is a mother of, I think three for now. She married a man who already had kids and plus she has two of her own and she was asking who I coach. Hey, what kind of clients and students do you take on?

So we chatted a little bit and it turns out she’s a coach for moms who don’t want to drink, who want to give up drinking, want to raise their kids sober. I thought, this is such a cool niche, right? And it’s so needed out there for moms who really want to embrace a different kind of lifestyle. And Stephanie was telling me because I asked her, how do you market right now?

Because she’s interested in scaling her coaching business and she mentioned to me that she put out this big video series and that it was frustrating because it was really great content, but it didn’t really move the needle for her. And it got me thinking, How do you know that a video series is going to work like that? How do you know if you should say yes?

Because I think it was her and her partner who came up with this idea together. How do you know that this is the right thing to move forward on in terms of your business? And I thought today we would talk about three questions that I always use when I’m betting something in my business that I’ve been asking my clients and my students.

And I asked Stephanie this as well in terms of how to decide how to move forward, because let’s be honest, we are creators by nature. If you are listening right now and you are an entrepreneur, even part time or a business owner, you are probably a very prolific creator. You can write a book, right? You can record songs.

If you wanted to do that, you can definitely build a course. And as entrepreneurs and business owners, sometimes we have shiny objects. Indra Right. That comes up or opportunities that come up that you don’t want to say no to. But is it really the right decision for you and even though you’re great at it or it’s easy to create the content, maybe it’s not the best decision.

I’ve talked about this in the past where I’m a prolific content creator. I learned it when I worked for Tony Robbins, and it’s been throughout my career. It’s been something constant and it comes very easily for me. But just because I’m a consistent content creator doesn’t mean I should be creating content every day. I was working with another client and we were talking about lead magnets and opt ins, and I said, Oh, do you have a specific lead magnet on this?

And she said, No, but I can whip that up in an afternoon. Now, that’s not necessarily the right thing to do, right, just because your thoughts about it. Does it mean I want you doing this every day? So I want to walk through three questions today, like I mentioned, to help you make a decision to help you realize what you want to focus on.

So you’re really building up your online based business and you’re not willy nilly trying to figure out what’s next. Before we dive in, I do want to mention that this episode is brought to you by my new concept to customer coaching and audit. This is the coaching package I’m offering right now because some of you said to me like, Hey Gina, how do I get your eyes on something?

How can you review it and then give me feedback and then give me a roadmap so I can figure out how I’m putting the course together and then ultimately marketing it. That’s this package if you’re interested in getting some coaching for me coursecreationboutique.com/audit. I’m only taking one client a quarter. So an application process and then I’ll let you know if we’re going to move forward together.

If you’re looking for something a little more self-paced, but you still get my eyes on it. We have the six week accelerator where you’re building up your course in six weeks. Really awesome program. All link to that in the show notes as well. All right. Let’s get to those three questions. And the first one is my favorite. I talk about this on the podcast.

What do you want to get out of this? Number one. We’re vetting any opportunity. So going back to my friend Stephanie, right. And maybe looking at that video series or the next way she wants to market or another way to question this is what’s your outcome? Right? And this is my go to clarity question because we have great ideas all the time, but this question forces you to think, okay, what’s really behind it?

It’s also a great get to clarity. Question When I have clients or students asking me about something they should do, I’m not quite sure where they’re trying to go yet, right? I’m not quite sure of their intention. So it’s an awesome question to get context and intention and purpose to see where you want to go next. Okay, so I’ll walk through the three questions and I’m going to walk through a couple of examples.

So that’s question number one, what do you want to get out of this or what’s your outcome? The second question I want you to ask, and I’m borrowing this from my friend and my mentor, Bo Eason, former NFL player, incredible storyteller. A link to his episode in the show notes. Bo likes to ask, Will this make the boat go faster?

Will bling make the boat go faster? Now, typically when Bo teaches this, he’s talking about what maybe you’re consuming day in and day out. So will that glass of wine make the boat go faster? Will attending that networking event make the boat go faster, etc.? Maybe we will. Taking that certification. I’m just filling in the blanks here, right?

I love to apply this question to bigger initiatives for our business. So if someone says to me, I want to start a podcast, we’ll get to that in a minute, by the way, or I want to start putting out videos week to week. My question is, does that make the boat go faster? What does that mean? It means does it get to your dream faster?

And that’s what Bo really works with. Right Dreams. Does it put your dream front and center and get you there faster? I got a download from Beau yesterday saying, Where are your dreams? Just reminding us, are they front and center or are you remembering them? Who’s holding you accountable to them? And are you doing the things that make the boat go faster and get you there?

So if the dream is making enough income and revenue that you can go part-time and your 9 to 5, that’s the dream. We’ll make whatever you want to do, make the boat go faster to that dream. Some of you want to get paid as content creator, as a course creator, to get paid for your expertise. Maybe your course coach or consultant, and you’re getting paid for that one on one custom time, but you really want to get paid for your expertise out there from the masses.

So if you’re putting out a podcast or videos or heck even a course, will it make the boat go faster to that dream? Which leads me to the last question How does this ultimately make money for your business? Bottom line, you’re listening to this podcast. We’re not talking about just putting content out there for free and ultimately not making money.

We are talking about selling on this podcast. We are talking about building a true online business. Now, we talked about this in the last episode where I had to press pause on this podcast. I was in recovery and putting out this podcast was definitely not the best use of my time and resources. At the time it didn’t make sense because that was the season I was in.

So I want to make sure that this outcome and by the way, doesn’t have to be a podcast, could be a partnership opportunity, Whatever it is that it helps you build your business, it helps you make money. So starting a podcast can be a big endeavor. So we’ve cut down to every other week because we’re thinking we want to get that great traffic in audience.

However, we want to leverage my time and my team’s resources so it makes sense to do a different version of that. All right. We’ve got our three questions now. What’s your outcome? Does it make the boat go faster, get to your dreams faster? And then how does it make money for your business and your bottom line? So let’s walk through a few examples for my client who want to launch a podcast.

What’s the outcome? To establish his expertise in a powerful way, A strong entry point to his business because he was launching a new business. People are getting to know him in a different kind of way. Podcasts are really powerful way to do that. When you’re in someone’s ear every other week or every week, does it make the dream go faster?

Yes, I would say so, because he wanted to build up this business. His dream was to build this new business, grow his audience. It still is. And to make revenue that can then lead to different kind of leads for him. So he’s a low target course that he could sell to off of the podcast. And by the way, this is the answer to the third question, the money question.

So he does make him money because he knows he has a natural next step to that low ticket course. And by the way, he had some prerecorded TV shows that he could recycle into podcast episodes. So that was a bonus that he knew he had this existing content. Let’s go through one more example. I had a student come up to me, this was a few weeks ago and say, Hey, I just filled out this course.

I sold it to 18 people. I’m thrilled. Now, am I ready to build the next course? Now I’ve talked about this on this podcast. I don’t want you immediately jumping into the next course, but let’s go through it in terms of these questions. Question one What are you hoping to get out of this? What’s your outcome? When I asked her this turns out a few students had asked for this next program and she felt kind of obligated to build it for them.

They were saying, Hey, it would be great if you built out this program. You could do it live. And she felt like she felt the push right. But if we go to the next question, does it make the boat go faster? She wants to leave her full time job and get into courses at least part time. She might do coaching and then courses and put together a full time consultant schedule, so she had to make a certain amount of revenue.

I would rather her focus on selling and selling that course again and again, maybe different variants versus spending her time building another course. Like she put all this blood, sweat and tears into this course. Now I want her to reap the benefits of it. Does it support the business? Now to that next question. How does it make money?

And eventually it’ll make her money. But in the immediate, it makes sense for her to stick with that current course. Right? So there’s a decision right there. So for my client doing the podcast, the answer is yes. Questions. Check out for the student who wants to go immediately into the next course. Not so much. I would say, wait on that and she might put it in the future.

But right now is not the time. And if you’re listening right now and you’re not selling anything yet, I want you to put out the offer. I want you to put out whatever offer makes sense for you, even if it’s a low price point, make the invite. Don’t focus on putting out all this great content. I would rather you make an offer and sell to a handful of people, then swing for the fences with a new video series.

Going back to our friend Stephanie, before you create one more creative piece, I want you to have something to sell. And by the way, some of you said, Well, Gina, how am I going to know if I don’t test it? Well, sometimes you don’t know. Sometimes you do have to test, but as much as possible, put out a contained test or a smaller one.

So instead of doing a five part video series, go live once and see what kind of reaction you get. See how you market it so you put yourself out there. All right. To wrap this up, and I’ve been on my soapbox since Awesome again to be back. I do want you putting yourself out there in a big way.

I want you building your audience, making offers, figure out your next best offer if you need help, think about applying for my concept to customer package so we can work together and until the next episode, make sure you’re subscribed. Go create, be you and be brilliant and get it done.