E2: Let’s rewind and create an offer
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Episode Transcript
Welcome to Probably Bothered the podcast that cuts through online business meds so that you can redefine your version of success because I believe if you aren't a little bit bothered, you probably aren't paying attention.
Hello. Hello. Happy Wednesday. I'm saying Wednesday intentionally because as of right now it is 1:55 PM
on the day that this episode. is supposed to go out. So if I say Wednesday, . That means that I will edit it immediately And actually publish it for you all. So you can tell from that intro how my day. is going.
My week really, things are getting a little bit behind. I'm currently sitting on the floor . I'm always sitting on the floor, but I'm currently sitting on the floor of my bedroom because my husband is on a call and he's. so loud that I have, I have migrated, I'm, I've propped my microphone up on the bench that is at the end of our bed, which by the way, I got on Facebook marketplace.
I was really, really proud of this find. So that sets the scene for my state of mind. That sets the scene for where we're at this week. And with that, let's just jump in for this episode, I wanted to rewind back to the beginning. So right now I've told you, you know, what's going on for this season have probably bothered I've told you about the strategy that I am working on creating.
And now let's talk about offers. What does the offer actually look like? , and I'm going to, I'm gonna tell you right now, I learned a hard lesson, a good lesson, but a hard lesson. And the lesson was that. I was wrong. . No, but in all reality, I, I was wrong about this offer. Everything from that I've told you about this offer, and when I say this offer, I mean my semi custom website offer.
If you're not sure what I'm talking about, go back to episode two from season two. And it walks you through a little bit of, of the thought process, but. This is the big change to my business. This is what I'm focusing my effort and my energy on, and really trying to figure out how do I get this right?
So this semi custom website offer, because it is so new, I made a lot of assumptions and I'll tell you how this idea came to me. So I actually had someone in a Facebook group. I just saw their post. And the post was something along the lines of, Hey, I'm looking for website support for my clients. And I wasn't really sure what they were
looking for, what was gonna happen, but I put my info in and was like, reach out to me.
I'm, I'm curious, I'm intrigued, like what do you do? Who are your clients and why are you going with this model where you're not doing websites yourself? So I had this conversation and basically the person is an OPM And They are, They have a few different offers but some of the people that they're targeting, and I'm being vague on purpose because I'm not, I'm not giving up their identity or their business plan.
That's not the point of this podcast. But some of the people that they're targeting need a website and they were looking for a partner so that they didn't have to take that on. And so I thought, oh, okay. . This seems really cool. We are currently partners to this day, but in addition to that, I thought I could have more than one partner.
I could do this times three, times five times 10. I, you know, I'm not sure. We'll, we'll see when we get there, and I made a lot of assumptions from that initial conversation. The assumptions that I made were, this one person represented my whole target audience. So I went into this thinking, oh, I need to target ob.
OPMs are gonna be my people. The other assumption that I made is that everybody will wanna work in the way that this person wants to work. And so we had a very specific agreement of the things that I would take on, the things that she would take on and you know, who would be client facing and what the expectations looked like.
And the other assumption that I made was
that, , everyone would view partnership through an altruistic lens, and some of those assumptions have been right and some of those assumptions have been wrong. So after I had this first conversation where the opportunity was presented to me to partner on semi custom websites and I realized, I think this is a thing I could re.
Then I had to figure out what does it actually look like in a way that is, that works for me and is sustainable to my business? I also had to figure out what is the best way to bring this to market and who is my audience? And the way that I went about this was I started having conversations. Now, one of the things that I learned very early on in my business
is that assumptions.
can be the death of a very intriguing offer or strategy. And unless you are creating an offer that I'm going to loosely categorize as standard, like I would say website design, pretty standard offer creating a brand pretty standard offer, you may do it in a unique way and that is fair and that is fine.
But for the sake of this conversation, If you are, if there is a proven model that you can use to base your assumptions off of and do research on, maybe assumptions are fine, but if there is not a proven offer, then a lot of times our assumptions can lead us astray. So with that in mind, I started having conversations and asking questions.
And the way that I went about this is I went to, I've got a pretty core group. Business friends, friends and colleagues as my friend Devin Lee likes to say. So, Devin was actually one of them. But I went to her and others and just said, Hey, I've got this idea and I need to talk to people about it and validate it.
I need to see if this is something that they would be interested in, and I need to see, you know, if I'm right, if my ideas are. . So I started having multiple conversations and the thing that I realized was that my offer was structured wrong and my audience was wrong as well. So when I say the offer was structured wrong, I had made the assumption that I could work with five strategic partners and create templates for each of those partners that were unique to each.
and then I started getting a question about minimums. Do I need to have a minimum number of websites that I bring you a month in order to be a partner? And my immediate gut instinct was, no, you don't, you don't need to have a minimum number of websites that you bring me a month because I'm a small business owner too.
If I were looking at a potential partnership and they said, you could only work with me if you bring me five people a month, I would be immediately turned off by that. It would immediately be no, because we all know you have some months where that five would be so easy and you have some months where that five would be impossible.
And I didn't wanna put anybody else in that position. But then it begged the question in my mind of, well, if there are no minimum. How sustainable is this if I assume that every partner would need three to five website templates, and I'm not guaranteed even one return on investment for those templates.
This isn't sustainable for me. So I needed to start restructuring based on my needs, but I also needed to restructure based on the feedback that I was. From these conversations. So that's just one example. The other example of my audience being wrong was really, really interesting to me. I, I thought that OBMs were going to be my people in this offer.
And what I started to realize is that OBMs a lot of time. OPMs a lot of times work with people who are further on in their business. They are used to making big investments. They're not normally on their, they're normally moving on from their first website. and if you are at the point in your business where you are leaving a first website behind, then you're probably at the point where a semi custom template based design is not the right fit for you.
At that point, you're looking for a very custom website design. And so after speaking with a fews, they had great feedback in terms of, you know, remembering. What it was like a little bit earlier in their business journey, maybe if they had moved from being a VA into an OBM and things of that nature. So the feedback was still wonderful and applicable, but I realized that the target audience.
Was not a match. So then I had to reassess who are service providers who are working with business owners who are earlier in their business, and I came up with a whole list of a new target audience that was more appropriate for this offer.
So I say all of this to say that don't be afraid to have conversations before you're ready. I literally, A half done idea into 20 different conversations and. What do you think? Can you poke holes in this? Can you find the flaws? Because I'd rather find the flaws and look a little bit unorganized, even if it's a new networking contact, even if it's somebody that I haven't ever spoken to before.
I would rather have the opportunity to address flaws before my partners find them. Then, you know, once we're working with a client and trying to figure this thing out in real life, so,
I am pausing here in full disclosure because I did not outline this episode up until this point. I've been fully talking off the cuff and I've been trying to figure out how I want these episodes to go, because really this is a weekly diary. Today is a little bit of a catch, so you know where I'm at. And next week I've got a little more of a ketchup and then we'll be, we'll be in real time after that.
but I want this, I want to show the real and honest side of. How I have been working toward this offer, but I also, the organized part of my brain wants to wrap up every episode up and a pretty bow and give you a takeaway and a theme for the episode and, and, and talk to it in a way that makes sense. So here's my findings.
That, that was my, a little bit of chaotic journey into figuring out what my offer was and how I did that. And here's, here's the pretty strategic part. Here's the finding. Conversations with others, depending on your personality, but for me, are wildly important. I think out loud, I iterate off of people's energy and I do not believe people can, people can disagree with me on this.
I do not believe for me and for most people, that it is possible. Create an offer in a vacuum. Now I, when I say that, I do not mean that you are not capable or I am not capable of thinking of a unique offer. What I mean is when we bring that offer into the market and start getting feedback from our ideal audience, things are going to change.
And we have two choices there. As entrepreneurs, we can stick to our. Or we can listen to the market and potentially change that thing in ways that make more sense than we ever would've thought. And it's one of those, kind of put your pride aside moments, because like I mentioned earlier, I had to put my pride aside in the sense that I wasn't coming to to these calls.
An organized presentation or even a sales page, I still don't have a sales page. That's intentional. We'll talk about that next week. But these calls were not the most organized calls of my life and they were not an opportunity to showcase me at my best. They were me saying, business owner to business owner.
I want your feedback. I want your opinion, and I wanna know, and obviously not in a non-committal way. , would you sign on the dotted line? Would you want to be a partner in this offer that I'm presenting to you? And if the answer was no, like maybe it was, you know, audience wasn't a fit, that's fine. But if the answer was no, I wanted to know why.
Because that's how I figured out the holes in my offer. That's how I figured out the, the
pain points that I was addressing were different than the pain points that those business owners had. And that's how I figured out. How to think about this in a way that was creative, but also in a way that made sense for me and my business because I'm still a one woman show over here.
I'm not relying on anyone else to serve my clients and my partners other than myself. So creating an offer that makes sense for the market but was also sustainable for myself. That was the big picture. . So opening yourself up to hearing the thoughts of and opinions of others is invaluable in, in creating a brand new offer, especially one that is unique.
Okay, I think I'm gonna leave it there. I feel like that's a good ending point. Next week we are going to talk about network. , and I'm gonna give you a hint. I love networking. Networking is not a bad word in my brain. It's not an anxiety inducing word anymore. It maybe at one point it used to be, but.
Networking is what, how many times can I say networking? Holy smokes. I hope you're not annoyed with that word as I am saying it, but it is the thing that I am hinging my entire strategy for this offer on, and I am staking my bets, is that my husband is gonna be like, that's not a phrase. Staking your claim.
Hedging my bets. I am hedging my. That this is the way that I will market this offer. And spoiler alert, it's been working. So we'll talk about that next week. But on the note of networking, I am going to include my calendar link in the show notes for this episode. If you are listening, please book a call with me.
I want to talk to you, each and every one of you, and I sincerely mean that. , I just went on a five minute speech about how much I love networking and I would love to get to know you. And if you don't believe it by now, I don't know what else to say, so I'll leave it at that. The link is in the show notes and I can't wait to meet you.
All right. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. As always, if you resonated with this conversation, if you would like to pass it along to a friend, I would be endlessly grateful. And if you want to subscribe or leave a review as well, that would make my day. It would make my week if we're being honest.
Until next week, this was probably bothered.
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