Ask Steph: Should I focus on 1:1 offers until I’m more experienced?

Today I am answering a question from a new online business owner who is wondering if her offers are meeting the needs of her audience and whether she should be rethinking her strategy. In today's episode, I offer some suggestions on how to approach this dilemma
– How drilling down on ‘the why' behind our feelings of insecurity can be so enlightening in delivering greater clarity on offer outcomes
– Why small group format courses can hold so much benefit to developing and refining your offers
– The proof is in the purchase…the only way to know if your offer will sell is to give it a go!
– How your 1:1 clients can provide valuable direction in course creation through outcome-oriented coaching strategies
– Remember – the best offers solve a problem or deliver a transformation!

Have a question you’d like me to answer on the show? Write in with your question at https://stephtaylor.co/asksteph

 

Today is another Ask Steph episode. So onto today's question that was submitted anonymously, and the question reads. 

As a newbie in starting a business and what I'm offering in that business coaching, I'm left wondering what kind of offers I can make at this particular juncture. Since I'm unsure, whether my offers will give them a certain intended outcome. In listening to your most recent podcast episode, the idea of knowing how to test an offer sounds important. 

 

‘The why' behind our feelings of insecurity.

I know I say this in every episode but I really want to start with the sentence, “I'm unsure whether my offers will give them a certain intended outcome. “

Why are you feeling unsure? Where is this feeling coming from? Where are you worried that your offers won't give them the outcome? Is it because you’re insecure in your own ability to deliver that outcome? You're not questioning. You have that self-doubt of can I really do this?If you have that doubt, that's very normal. 

Is it because you have never helped anybody to achieve this outcome before in any kind of capacity one-on-one in a job before you started your business? Even people you maybe have worked with for free in learning how to become a coach, have you never helped anybody to achieve this outcome? 

Because that's a very different scenario. Both of those are very different scenarios now. I do want to clarify that in the first scenario if you're doubting, whether you are able to give them that outcome. I want you to know that it's nearly impossible to have a hundred percent certainty, that your costs will give somebody an outcome. 

This is very, very, very particular to courses or any kind of digital product where you are not doing it for them, essentially, even coaching when you're not doing something for them. You can't guarantee that they will get an outcome because ultimately you can give them the best tools, resources, and support. You can really set them up for success. 

But you can't guarantee that they will take action. That is on them. Now, it's really important to develop some kind of framework or process that you can take them through in any of your offers, especially in your course. A framework or a process that if implemented well they take that action will work. 

And if you don't have this framework yet, or you don't know what this framework will be yet. Then yes, it can absolutely be helpful to work with people in a one-on-one capacity until you do have that framework or that process. However, it really helps to have clarity on what the outcome is going to be so that you can work with that person, even in a one-on-one capacity, you can work with that person in the direction of that outcome rather than it just being sort of coaching where each week they're giving you the challenges. And you're coaching them through those challenges, but they're not working in a particular direction. 

 

Why small group format courses can hold so much benefit to developing and refining your offers

The other option that I don't know if you've considered is to deliver your course for the first time in a small group format. And this will allow you to give a lot more support. A lot more handholding, and a lot more tailoring of the content than you would in a larger course. So you can use this as an approach to really develop and refine that framework or that process that you're taking them through. 

So that when you launch it again, you can launch it as a course. And, you know, roughly what kind of content and what kind of support you need to give for them to get the best results for them to achieve that outcome. 

 

The proof is in the purchase

So the very first thing I want to know is what do your clients say about your market research. Did they tell you they wanted one-on-one support? What kind of outcomes did they tell you that they wanted? That is going to give you much more feedback as to what kind of offer to create and what kind of outcome to deliver. 

Now I do want to say that I don't consider market research to be a form of testing your offer. That's because it's very easy for somebody to say yes, I would buy that. And it's easier for them to say that than it is to dig deep and explain to you why they wouldn't want to buy that, or why it's not a priority to them. 

 

How your 1:1 clients can provide valuable direction in course creation through outcome-oriented coaching strategies

Now when you say, I wonder now if I should have been providing an offer for a one-to-one to help me develop the course further. 

Let's unpack that a bit. All the people who sign up for one-to-one coaching in your space are the same people who would buy an online course from you. A huge part of creating a course or any kind of offer is having empathy for where your clients, your students, and whatever you want to call them, having empathy for where they are right now. And this is really challenging. 

Because you are the expert in what you do. You're really good at what you do. You don't know all of the things that they don't know. You might assume that they already know something really basic and they don't. You might assume that they don't know something and they do. So while coaching one-on-one with somebody might help you to better understand where they are right now. 

It might also be giving you a false insight. It might be giving you an insight into somebody who's not the right person for the course that you want to launch. And it might also overwhelm you because if you have five one-on-one clients and you're using all five of them as research for your course and they all come to you with their different challenges, different barriers, obstacles, hurdles, dreams, desires. 

Now suddenly you don't know which to include and which not to include in your course. And you feel like your costs have to solve all of these different challenges. It has to deliver all of these different transformations. And then suddenly you end up with a cost that is going down so many different rabbit holes. And it's taking you forever to create because you're trying to cover absolutely everything. So, if you do use one-on-one coaching as a way to develop the content for your course or the framework for your course, I would strongly suggest making it outcome-oriented. 

 

The best offers solve a problem or deliver a transformation!

The last point that I want to make is the easiest way to figure out what that outcome will be or what product you're going to develop, what coaching offer you're going to develop, whatever it is, the easiest way to figure this out is audience research. 

The best offers solve a problem or deliver a transformation regardless of whether it's a course, coaching, an ebook, or anything regardless of what it is. So pick a problem, you know you can help them to solve, pick a transformation you know you can deliver. Build an offering around that, build some kind of framework, some kind of method. 

A process that you can walk them through to achieve that then test it. So you don't have to go and create an entire course and record all of the videos. But pull together some kind of rough framework that you would take them through. And then test that, ask them to buy it. Give them an actual checkout link or an actual invoice that they can pay. 

Because that is the only real way to know whether somebody will pay money for it. And then develop the content with them each week. If it's a course, you can create the next week's lessons based on the insights you gathered about where they are the week before. Each week, you can assess where they are struggling, and what they need more support with to get them to the finish line. 

You could also do this in that one-to-one capacity. And there's no better or worse option. I've given you a couple of pros and cons for each of those options, but I also don't believe that you have to focus on a one-on-one before you are able to launch a course or able to launch a group program, right? You don't have to focus on that one-on-one first. 

 

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