Do you know what your best offering is? How knowing will change your business

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A lot of business owners, creative ones especially, tend to offer too much in the hopes that they’ll make more money because they’re giving customers more options to choose from. And it doesn’t always work out like that.

So today I asked our experts, how have you discovered what your most profitable or enjoyable offering is? And how did your business change when you knew what was bringing in the most money and bringing you the most joy? Let’s see what they have to say.

This season’s experts:

Quinn Tempest is a business strategist and coach who helps females founders create more purpose + profit in their business *without* burning out. She’s the founder of Create Your Purpose®, a community of global entrepreneurs dedicated to building impactful businesses with intention. Her professional expertise is in branding and holistic digital marketing strategy and she is a frequent speaker at events and organizations around the country.

Visit Quinn: Website | Instagram

Alisha Robertson is an author, business coach and the founder of Living Over Existing; a podcast, newsletter and community for women entrepreneurs who want to run a successful business without sacrificing the life she desires.

After experiencing severe burnout, Alisha tore down everything she thought she knew about becoming a successful entrepreneur and decided to build a brand that helped women to focus on building their business and life with intention. Through her work, Alisha strives to not only help women entrepreneurs to launch, grow and scale their brands but also help them to prioritize themselves in the process.

Visit Alisha: Website | LOE Collective | LOE Instagram 

Jordan Gill, operations consultant and founder of Systems Saved Me, helps overworked one-woman shows become streamlined solopreneurs. Her jam is creating a cohesive operating system for managing your tasks, files and inbox. She’s been on podcasts like What Works and CEO Vibes sharing her love of replacing monthly retainers with one day virtual intensives. She currently lives in Dallas TX with her cavapoo Vivienne and collection of 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzles.

Visit Jordan: Website | Instagram | Facebook

Katelyn began her career in marketing and public relations in Nashville, Tennessee. After working in the agency world for six years, she decided to pursue the entrepreneurship route to create more freedom and flexibility in her life. Now, Katelyn works as an Online Business Manager where she helps entrepreneurs organize, strategize and prioritize the backend of their business to go from overwhelmed to out-in-front. A Georgia grad, she bleeds red and black and is a diehard Georgia football fan, dog mom and outdoor enthusiast.

Visit Katelyn: Website | Instagram

Megan is a Life and Business Coach that specializes in helping online course creators, coaches, and service providers build a scalable, sustainable, and enjoyable business… without sacrificing their personal life!
She does this through her coaching program, Empowered CEO™, and her weekly live show, The Productive Life.
Megan has a Master’s Degree in Organizational and Human Resource Development, corporate Human Resources and Recruiting experience, and has been helping online business owners streamline and systemize their businesses since 2015.

Visit Megan: Website | Empowered CEO |Facebook Group

Transcript:

Erin Flynn:

Today’s question is a really interesting one, and I think you’re going to love the peek behind the scenes. You see a lot of business owners, creative ones especially, tend to offer too much in the hopes that they’ll make more money because they’re giving customers more options to choose from. And it doesn’t always work out like that. So today I asked our experts, how have you discovered what your most profitable or enjoyable offering is? And how did your business change when you knew what was bringing in the most money and bringing you the most joy? Let’s see what they have to say.

Quinn Tempest:

Oh hey there. It is Quinn Tempest. I am the founder of Create Your Purpose. Coming at you from Arizona today. So how have I discovered what my most profitable and or enjoyable offerings were? And then how did that really change my business? Well, really it came down to tapping into who I felt most passionate about serving, most passionate about working with. And a lot of marketing strategists out there, I’m one of them, not that has said this, but a lot of them say, you got to know your ideal client before you ever start your business. And I don’t agree. I think you got to try a bunch of dishes at the buffet before you know what thing you’re going to go back for seconds for. And so, that’s really what I did. I worked with a slew of different clients, just getting my fingers wet, just feeling what I could do best.

And I started to notice that what I felt most passionate about and who I felt most passionate about working with were entrepreneurs who had a clear purpose, or as I started to discover, that I could help bring out their purpose. So for instance, one of my first clients I noticed this with, her name is Anastasia. She is a hiking and backpacking coach, which could be just that, hiking and backpacking. But she was so much more than that. She wanted to help people and empower them to live adventure filled lives, and she did that using the wilderness as the vehicle for that unique purpose of hers. And I found that I was really good at identifying that thread. I was also equipped with the skillset to bring that purpose to life to, as my businesses now called, Create Your Purpose. It was creating Anastasia’s purpose through her website, through her branding, through her communication strategy. And now she’s doing amazing things.

So really, I found my most passion in working with people who were purpose driven. And so once I discovered that, and that took a few years, I started asking myself, well, could I work with more of these people? Could I start targeting women, especially women entrepreneurs who are purpose driven? And I found that, yes, that was possible. And it was more meaningful for me and it was more profitable, because these clients, they felt like my best friends. They felt like meaningful connections. They felt like I was actually making an impact. And I think for anyone listening, that’s something that you want to follow. That is a thread that you want to follow, is where do you feel … Or let me rephrase this. Who do you feel most called to serve? And where do you think the most impact is that you can make in your work?

I think those two questions, those lead you to feeling more empowered in the purpose that you do deliver through your business. And I found that where purpose flows, profit goes, because when you feel alive, when you feel excited, other people sense that energy and they want to be a part of it. And there’s so many more opportunities that open up to you when you can really follow that thread. So really, that is what changed for me, is I started really enjoying my business. I also started seeing it as more than just work, more than just a job. I saw it as a career, and honestly, almost a calling. And for me, my purpose is to help people bring their ideas to life, and if that’s by helping them design a website, great. If that’s by designing a logo, awesome. But that also has evolved over time.

So now I lead a community of about 60 women, and they’re connecting with each other and sharing ideas and resources, and I’m helping all of them collectively create their purpose in a community. So purpose can evolve over time. It can be expressed in different ways. But purpose and profit are definitely connected. So if you’re listening, if you’re feeling stuck, keep asking yourself, who do I feel most called to serve and where can I make the most impact? Follow the things that light you up, because that is the key to staying in business for a long time and staying happy in your business as well.

Alisha Robertson:

It’s Alisha Robertson, you’re business coach, mentor and personal kick in the butt when you need it most. So when it came to figuring out what my most profitable and also enjoyable offering was, unfortunately it took me experiencing severe burnout before I could get to that point. So a few years ago, I really struggled with burnout and overwhelm in my business. I was doing one-on-one coaching, but I was taking on way too many clients. I had really fallen for the hustle culture and was trying to do all the things that all the marketing gurus were telling me to do, and it really ended up burning me out to the point where I didn’t even want to get out of bed in the morning. I really was into the lot of the work that I was doing with my clients, even though I completely just, I loved it.

So it really took me, in order to get out of that burnout, I had to tear down everything that I thought I knew about entrepreneurship and essentially start my business over from scratch. And while I was doing this, one of the things that I really made important was, what type of business do I want? Yes. But also, what is it that I want out of my personal life? We build these businesses because yes, we want to make money, but we also want freedom, we also want flexibility. So before I had built this business and then was trying to build my life around that, when I should have been building my business around the life that I desired. And it’s one of the things that I preach to my clients all the time. So it took me tearing everything down and then thinking, okay, what is it that I want to do?

So I really want to use all of my gifts. So I love teaching. I love coaching. I love community and bringing women together. And for me at that time, building a membership community for my clients where they can meet other women and they could still get the coaching they needed, they could still get the resources they needed to grow their business, it just seemed like the right fit. And honestly, I am a little over a year into it now, and it’s been the best decision that I’ve ever made in my business. I absolutely love our community of women. I love being able to bring women together and put women in the spaces and in the room for them to meet other women who are like them. I love that it still allows me to coach without completely burning myself out or feeling like I have to fill my schedule with coaching calls. And I love that it allows me to teach, and it allows me to create different printed products that I could send to my amazing clients and community members.

So I really do think that in order for you to build an offer that is enjoyable, that is something that still makes you money, you really do have to think about, okay, what is it that I want out of my life first? And how can I build that offer or how can I build my business around that? So think about your non-negotiables, think about if you want to spend more time with your family, or if you want to travel more, or if you want to build a business that is going to allow you to give back to your community. Put all of that first and then say, okay, what type of business model, or what type of business or offer can I build around that desired lifestyle? And I promise, when you start off with more intention, the better it’s going to be, the happier you’ll be. You’ll feel like you’re more in flow with what you’re doing, and the money will be better as well. So that is my biggest takeaway, build a business around the life that you desire and not the other way around.

All right, you guys, I hope that was helpful. Again, my name is Alisha Robertson. You can find me over at livingoverexisting.com.

Jordan Gill:

Hi, I’m Jordan Gill from System Saved Me. So there’s kind of two waves of this. When I first started out in my business, I was doing monthly retainers as a systems person, and five months in I knew that that was just not going to work out for me. I was making good money. It was about 3,500 a client. But it was 40 hours a week, it was just wall to wall madness with lots of six-figure launches and all the things. And so I knew that that was not going to be sustainable for me. And so I learned about VIP Days through a sales coach that I had signed on with at the time. And I was like, I must do these, these VIP Days sounds super fun. And so then I realized, I mean, I was able to do $3,000 for four hours of my time, which is obviously way more profitable and enjoyable, in my personal opinion, then 40 hours a month for $3,500.

So I really had that as my main revenue generator for the majority of my business for about three, three and a half years, almost four now, I guess. And then I had another pivot of just wanting a different offer, wanting an area that, again, was going to be scalable and add more revenue to where my VIP Days, I would probably only do maybe one a month, and I would focus on just growing my team and a lot more of the backend stuff in business and not having to do a ton more client work. So I started doing my Done In a Day group coaching program in March of 2020, and it has definitely been a profitable offering and enjoyable offering. I’ve been able to bring on a coach and more team members. And I think because I’m able to bring the awesomeness magic of virtual VIP Days to more people, it really allows me to give back in a way that feels good and is a lot more different or whatnot then what you’re hearing in the industry, which is webinars, funnels, courses, all the things.

Talk about VIP Days is very unique, which I thoroughly enjoy. And if you want to talk more about VIP Days or program stuff like that, then you can go to systemsavedme.com, or you can follow me on Instagram and we can chat in the DMs @systemsavedme.

Katelyn Hamilton:

Hey, this is Katelyn Hamilton, and I’m an online business manager and marketing strategist. And I have been able to find my most profitable offer and really just grow my business simply by a little bit of trial and error. So what I did was I really focused on one offering to start and grew from there. So when that became booked out, I was able to raise my rates and expand my team to be able to serve more people. I’ve always worked on a one-on-one model mainly, so I serve my clients in a capacity that allows me to have a really strong relationship with them.

Being an OBM, I manage the entire backend of their businesses. And so knowing their business on a deep, intimate level and having that trust factor built in with my clients is really important to me. So while I do have a team that I can hand off some things in terms of execution, it’s still really important for me to have that relationship with my clients, be the primary point of contact. So of course, that doesn’t necessarily always allow me to scale on a massive level being that I do offer that one-on-one personal approach. For me, that’s kind of been my sole focus all along because that’s what works well for me and brings me the most joy.

In addition to that, I have been able to offer intensives to my clients that are either half-day or full-day, and now work on a full day model to really serve more people, but also still give them great results in getting things set up in their business. And that has, again, scaled and grown over time. As I was doing half day intensives, I realized that the best way to serve people and get them the results that they need and deserve is to kind of move forward into that full day model, which has also allowed me to, again, raise prices. But I keep that at a very one-off basis. I only take a couple of those a month because I want to serve those one-on-one clients. So for me, I think that you just have to really look at what you enjoy doing, for me, it is that one-on-one approach.

Some people will go more of like a course route or a group route, which I think is also great and those are things I’ve explored, been exploring. But I mean, you start a business to see what brings you joy, to enjoy your work, to serve your clients well, and so for me, that is that one-on-one model. So I think a little bit of time will tell you that, and taking the time to kind of analyze what does bring you joy in your business, and who do you enjoy working with the most and what type of work do you enjoy doing? If you want to stay connected with me, you can follow me on Instagram at Katelyn, K-A-T-E-L-Y-N, Hamilton, H-A-M-I-L-T-O-N, or you can visit me on my website at www.katelynehamilton.com.

Megan Minns:

This is Megan from meganminns.com, and I help online business owners learn how to run, and grow and scale their business in a way that makes them sustainable, and that makes their life as a CEO actually enjoyable. When it comes to the right offerings for your business and understanding how to find that beautiful balance of bringing in good money and also enjoying what you’re doing, I’ve had quite a journey myself. I actually started my business doing one-on-one virtual assistant services, then I transitioned into low ticket courses, and then I transitioned into one-on-one coaching, and now I do high-level group coaching and mastermind programs. So I have definitely seen a lot of different types of business models behind the scenes and I have felt this same struggle, because when I was doing one-on-one services, I hit a scalability issue where I either had to continue to increase my prices, build an agency, or just be booked out.

And then when I did courses, I ran into a volume issue where, especially since I was doing lower priced courses, I really had a limit to how many people I could reach. I had to focus a lot on volume, which was not enjoyable. And for me, courses really didn’t make me feel fulfilled as a business owner, because they were more hands-off and I was more removed from my clients compared to the one-on-one work I had been used to. And then one-on-one coaching was my favorite, but really did run into, again, another limit on time, and it is quite demanding to have to do so many one-on-one coaching calls. So I feel like I found the perfect sweet spot for me with group coaching. And I think that the important thing here is that everyone is different. Group coaching is the sweet spot for me because it’s higher ticket, I can really focus on showing up and serving my clients in a really, really meaningful way where I don’t have to hold back because I’m pricing at a high level. I’m not trying to be the most affordable person in my industry.

And that means I can give, give, give, and show up and focus on supporting my clients without even worrying about the return on investment. And it allows me to still get the feedback, the high-level wins, the high touch interaction with my clients that I loved from one-on-one. So this has been a really good balance for me and has been the best thing I ever did for my business, was doing high level group coaching. It’s so fulfilling. I get to have a big impact and there isn’t a limit on how many people I can support because we’re delivering it in a way that is truly scalable. And I’m able to grow my team and hire coaches to bring an incredible experience to our clients. Because the reality is, I don’t know everything. I’m one person. So when I continue to bring really smart, intelligent, experienced people into this program, it just gets better for our clients.

And I really feel like, for me, finding the sweet spot has allowed me to build true momentum, because I’m actually focused on one offer instead of being focused, like I used to be, on multiple different courses or digital products, jumping around, shiny object syndrome. So wherever you are in your business journey and whatever your ideal business model is, I think either way, what I would love for you to do is to focus on one offer. Hopefully it’s priced in a way where you can focus on the one offer and still have a really good growing, profitable business. But either way, focus on the one offer and give it the time and spaciousness to make it better, to experiment with selling, to get more comfortable with selling it, to get incredible results for your clients. And again, hopefully it’s a high ticket offer of some kind so that you are still making really good money and running a successful business.

So that has been a little bit of my journey and that sweet spot that I found. I hope you can find that too. Would love to connect with you over on Instagram. My handle is Megan_Minns where we’re talking all about how to run your own scalable business. So I hope to see you there.

Erin Flynn:

Hey there, it’s Erin again, and I just loved hearing all of these different perspectives and experiences when it comes to figuring out the most profitable and enjoyable offering in the experts businesses. But I would love to hear your experience too. So be sure to head over to our Instagram, successfully simple, and weigh in on your best offering, and how knowing what that offering is affected your business. I would love to know, and I’m sure so would many others. So head over to Instagram right now and let us know so that we can get the conversation going. See you there.