Badass Is The New Black (Season 4) Episode #23- Q&A with Krissy: How do I know which online offering to create first?

business advice course creation digital marketing lead generation online business question Aug 24, 2022

BNB 23 | Q&A Online Offering Create First

In this week's podcast, I am answering listener Stephanie Westfall’s question about creating an online program! She wants to take her knowledge and skills in Yoga, Meditation, and breathwork and create an online offering but doesn’t know what to create first and doesn’t want to spend a ton of time and effort on creating something that no one will buy.

Maybe you have asked yourself these questions or felt this way too.

What do I create first?

What if no one buys?

Q&A with Krissy: How do I know which online offering to create first?

Hey Krissy. This is Stephanie. I'm a yoga instructor and owner of on twelve.com. I teach yoga classes in person, but I also want to offer an online package that includes yoga classes, meditations and breathwork techniques. I'm at a point where I want to create an offer online, but I don't know how to figure out what to create. First, I'm scared that I'll spend all this time creating a package that no one ends up buying because it's not what they want. What would you do?

Hey, Stephanie, I absolutely love this question. I love it because I think it's a really common question that a lot of people have when they take what they're doing in person or maybe one-on-one and they want to start developing something that's online, a program or a course or a membership. So you are not alone in this. I certainly had this question as well. I know a lot of other people have this question, so thank you so much for asking it and for submitting it to me on the website. So I want to answer this question. You kind of had two questions here.

How do I figure out what to create first?

So I want to dive into the first part first, which was, how do I figure out what to create first? Right? You have some, you want to do an online package. You're teaching yoga classes. Currently. You want to do online classes, meditation and breathwork techniques. So yeah. What do you create first? So my question back to you is what are your people asking for?

So the people that you are supporting and helping in person right now, what are they asking for? And the people online, maybe you are shy. I know that you're sharing some on social media and all of that are people sending you questions and your DMS, are you getting some emails and people are asking questions or they're making comments about, oh my gosh, I love this. I needed this, this hit home for me. Or this was so good. Or, you know, this helped me get my journey started. What is it that they're saying that they're resonating with and really liking and enjoying, and what are they asking for? Because it kind of leads into your next part, which is like, I'm scared that I'll spend all this time and no one will buy well, if you are creating your online course or program or offering based on what people are already asking for, people are going to buy it because they're asking for it. It's something that they want, not just necessarily something that they need. I know that we tend to, you know, we, the collective tend to kind of hone in on, Hey, this is what people really need, but if someone doesn't want it, they're not going to invest the time into it. And they're not going to invest the money into it.

So you really have to kind of meet this middle ground where maybe it's something that they need, but it's also something that they want, or when it comes to your marketing language, when you start promoting this new offering that you're promoting it in a way that really gets them to say, oh my gosh, I really want this. I want to block off time in my day and dedicate it to my yoga practice. So I'm going to purchase this, or I want this so bad. I'm going to not go out to eat and I'm going to pay for this program. Right. So they have to really want it, not just need it.

So again, it just stems back to what are people asking for? What are they talking about that they really want? And that is what you design an offer around. Okay. And it can be something that they need as well. Oftentimes I find like my offerings are not only things that people want, but they're things they need or excuse me, or they are things that people need.

Identify their needs

And you just, again, use that marketing language to help them understand that they really do want this, right? Because it's going to make a difference in their life. It's going to change whatever it is that you change. Hey, so that's kind of the first one. So just kind of taking a step back and looking or doing a survey. So this is if people aren't sending messages to you or to your IgM or whatever platform you're on, or they're not emailing you, then I recommend putting out a survey there or starting to do polls on your social media, on your stories, asking, you know, what is it that you're looking for? What would make your day so much better? Like revolving around the yoga space? What is it that you need? Or what are you struggling with?

Because if they're struggling with something and you provide the solution to their struggle, they might not know what they need or want, but they know what they're struggling with. So this goes back to the basics of knowing and understanding what their struggle is, what they're having a hard time with and what they want, what they really want their life to look like or the outcome to look like.

So if you gave them a magic wand and you could say, you know, poof, this magic wand will turn your day into anything that you want. What would it look like? You need to know that. So if you're not getting this information from them, because they're just sending it to you, you have to put in some effort to do some market research and figure this out.

So again, pull on your social stories, asking on your social posts and having people comment below crafting a simple survey. You could use a Google form, which is free. Some people use survey monkey. We use Typeform. We have jot form that we could use. You know, you could use in Kajabi, if you're using that platform, you could use assessments and attract while there's forms.

So you could send this out to your email list. If you have an email list, a little survey, or if you don't have a survey platform, just send an email and say, you know, if you could, you know, have a magic wand for a day and your day could turn into anything that you want, what would it look like?

Or a question could be, what is the one thing that you're struggling with and how is it affecting your daily life? Okay. Just one question and say, hit reply back to answer. If you have an email list of a hundred people, a hundred people going to respond. No, maybe too well, but that is better than nothing. And you have a little bit of work to start with.

Okay. So put out surveys, send out an email, ask questions. If you're close with people in your network that, you know, are your ideal customer, ask, if you can chat with them and ask them a couple of questions, what they're struggling with, how it's affecting their daily lives on a regular basis or whatever it is that it pertains to.

Right? So mine would be, what are you struggling with your business? How is this affecting your life? Right? And then what is your ideal dream scenario? What's that outcome that you would really like to have? So being able to know that information so that you can provide the solution in your program, and then it's all about marketing and positioning your offering to show them that your yoga classes, meditation and breath work program is going to solve their problems. The other thing that I want to have you think about is your customer journey. So if people aren't sending you all of these problems that they have, and maybe your market research is more limited, think about your customer journey and where someone is starting out, what is that first thing that they need to get started and get going?

Because that will help you kind of determine what you're going to create first, and then maybe there's the next step and the next step. And that actually helps you build out what we call the product suite, which is at the end of the day, maybe two years down the road, you have a couple offerings that you have out there, and that's your product suite, different offerings based on where different people are in their journey or what different transformations they're wanting to experience. Maybe let, just, for example, let's say we've got a yoga course and a program and we have a meditation and breath work program. Those two offerings could bring in people at different places. Maybe they cross promote. So you bring in people for breath, work and meditation, and they end up doing your yoga class or yoga class and then breath work. That's kind of your product suite. And thinking about your journey as to who your customer is, who your ideal dream customer is, what they're looking for. And then what they're looking for next. The reason why I like to start at the beginning of someone's journey is because you actually can create those next offerings alongside those people on their actual journey.

So for example, when I started the coaching brand, I actually wanted to start with helping people create courses online. But then I realized that my current audience didn't have websites, didn't know about freebies, didn't know about funnels or any of that. And so that was actually, it was like kind of putting the cart before the horse, where I couldn't really teach them how to do a course, unless they had a way to build up an audience, build an email list and sell this course. So what people needed was the website and a way to build an email list and what they wanted was a way to sell their courses and make a lot of money, so, or serve a lot of people. And so being able to create digital duplication academy first to help people set up their websites and their free offerings to build their email list is kind of the perfect first step as to where it then the next step.

So as people are building out their websites and, and I'm coaching them through that, I can be building the next offering. That's going to help them launch their course or build out their course or their program. And so then by the time they're ready for that next step, I've got my next offering, which is, you know, this other program that they can jump into next, or it's scale to six coaching community that after they're done with this first step, we can go in there and I can continue to support people like you, Stephanie, on creating and launching your course or your program. So that's where you might want to think. So maybe you end up having a beginner's course beginners for yoga, for beginners, maybe there's an intermediate course and maybe there's an advanced course.

Start with the first thing

And so if you start with that very first thing, because let's say maybe you're just starting building your audience or people don't really know what they want or need, or you're kind of just in the beginning, let's start at that beginning stage. So that there's room for you to grow your product suite alongside the journey of your student, as opposed to, if you started, if you had no audience and you started with an advanced program, then you can't really work backwards to the beginners. You'd have to be advanced and then you'd actually have to build out other things. And that's okay. You don't always have to start at the very, very beginning of someone's journey, but just keeping that in mind that if this is your first thing that you're offering, you're kind of starting to build your audience, think about that first thing that they need to have a win and move forward in their journey with whatever it is that you're doing. So for you, that's their yoga journey. So hopefully that gives you some ideas as to how you can kind of decide and come up with that thing that you want to offer.

So that was kind of the first part. I hope that was helpful. I would love for you to respond back and let me know if it is or isn't. And then the second part that you asked or mentioned and said was that you're scared that you'll spend all of this time creating a package and no one will buy this resonates with me. It's something that I felt certainly before and sometimes continue to feel like, what am I spend all this time and energy? And no one buys like what a waste, right? Well, two things here, if you really are creating an offer and positioning, positioning it around what people are already saying, they want, then someone's going to buy it unless like the pricing is completely not lined up with, you know, what it is or the transformation that you're providing.

Of course it needs to be priced correctly, but if people are asking for it and the price point is in line with where those customers are, what they're willing to spend and the value that you're giving that transformation that you're providing. So sometimes smaller transformation is a lower price point. Bigger transformation can be a higher price point. So as long as all of that is in line, people should be buying, but I have another solution to help you avoid spending all of this time, creating a package that you're afraid no one will buy. So what I've done in the past, actually with two programs with real, pretty much everything that I've sold digitally online is that I have sold it before I've actually created it. And that sounds a little bit crazy, but it's worked really, really well. So that doesn't mean that you can just go say, Hey, everyone, I want to create a program that has yoga classes, meditation, and breath work. So come by the program and then, you know, I'll get you started and we'll give you, you know, get you this transformation. You actually have to have a really good idea of what you're going to create.

The outline of it, the transformation that you're going to help them get the PR. So we'll start at the beginning. You're going to have to know what your online package is solving. You're going to want to know the struggles that your people are having, what solutions they want and what they're looking for. You're going to want to know what's included, or ideally like an idea of what's included in this online package. And then you're going to want to know the transformation that it's going to provide because all of this information comes together. In addition to some other things like how you stand out from other people, why they might want to work with you, as opposed to someone else, you know, common objections that people have and how, you know, purchasing this from you, as you know, how you can basically overcome those objections with those people. Those are all things that go on a sales page. So you'll want to create a sales page for this offering or some type of marketing, something and email or whatever way you're going to promote this with this information. So that you basically look like you already have a program in place.

Hit their pain points

You're able to kind of hit their pain points, tell them this is going to be the solution. Why you stand out from other people, what they're going to get in this program. And then you can actually sell it before you've ever really created the big bulk of everything. So you've worked on the idea and, and what it's going to include an entail, and maybe this very detailed outline, but maybe you haven't recorded all of the yoga classes or you haven't recorded all of the meditations or the breath work techniques, but you know which ones you're going to talk about. And so you sell this, you, you pre-sell it essentially. And then when people buy, you create it. So I did this with build a blissful business, which was a branding course that I, you know, did my first. That was my first course with this coaching brand. Claire and I did this with digital duplication academy. We actually didn't build out any of the trainings and that program is robust until we sold it, which was really, really cool. I will say the one thing that you want to be mindful of is once, like, once you do it this way where it's not yet created and you sell it, you're basically now working against the clock and you have to make sure that you dedicate enough time to actually create it for when you're saying you're launching it. So typically when you pre-sell something before it's created, you have a, you know, a start date that everyone starts on.

So if it's, you know, yoga, meditations, breath, work technique, and you're launching it in November, then maybe everyone is starting together in January, January one or two. And you've, you've allotted that time. Make sure you give yourself enough time to create this program. And that's why you want to know exactly what you plan on creating kind of before you do it.

And a lot the time in your calendar to do it, always know that things come up, kids get sick from school and you have to stay home with them, or, you know, something else comes up that you have to deal with. And so I would say, if you are not someone who likes to work against pressure and against deadlines, give yourself double the time that you think you actually need in order to create, because things always happen. And we don't get to maybe record or do things on, in the exact timeframe or just takes twice as long to do something. So that's my thought and recommendation on that in terms of pre-selling and kind of what you need to know before you pre-sell it, and then scheduling and managing that process of creating before it actually goes live.

And then you can do a live program. Even if you plan on maybe making this evergreen in the future, you can do it live once with students, which is great for getting feedback from them. Having people experience it together, maybe unless it's, if there's no community that wouldn't really matter, but getting feedback, and then always know that you are going to probably modify what you're doing and offering and providing based on feedback from your students.

So you could launch this as a beta round. You could launch it as a pilot, you could launch it. You don't have to launch it as something special. You don't have to launch it with special pricing, but if you're concerned that people aren't going to buy and you really want feedback, sometimes that's a great incentive to get more people on board than what you thought.

When we launched digital duplication academy, we did that. We said, we're launching a beta round. We called it beta. Some people call it pilot. You know, we're launching our first round. You know, whatever it is, we launched a beta and we discounted pricing on it. And we had 126 people jump in. And that provided us tremendous feedback on the program.

And along the way, people were asking questions. And when people started asking the same questions, we realize, okay, we need an extra training in about this topic. So if you know, you get some students in and they're, you know, all saying the same thing or asking for the same thing you can say, okay, actually, I think I want to add this in to the program or the offering that I'm doing.

And you can leverage that to keep building and tweaking and modifying until it's exactly what you want it to be. Nothing is ever perfect. We can always make changes and adjustments to things. So don't get caught up in this perfectionism and this has to be perfect for my first launch and everything has to be set up perfectly. That's just not realistic in this day and age with busy lifestyles and raising families and all of that.

So done is better than perfect. Take the, the imperfect messy action. And again, if you really want to just put it out there before you spend all of this time and effort and energy to see how it lands, do that. And then I think some people will be jumping in and then you'll be needing to rock and roll and create what you need to create.

So good luck Stephanie, on this, I cannot wait to hear about your journey, what you end up coming up with. Please keep me posted, fill me in on what the program is and the offering. I love to kind of give you a shout out once it's done on the podcast. Cause maybe there's people listening out here that could really use some online yoga, meditation, breath, work technique as a fellow Yogi. I know that it certainly helps me decrease stress. It helps, you know, my body regulate, I sleep better. I feel better emotionally, physically when I'm doing yoga and meditation and breath work. So this is so needed in this world right now. So I'm so excited and glad that you are taking your unique process and your special personality that you have and sharing it with the world in this capacity online so that you can reach a whole lot more people than just the people that are coming to your in-person classes.

So cheers to you. I'm going to like cheers you with an air margarita and I can not wait to see what you come up with. So keep me posted and speaking of margarita and a margarita, cheers, I've got a special margarita quiz. No, we're not learning how to make margaritas. This is all about business here, but it's called what's your margarita marketing mix.

And you're going to take this quiz. It's going to take you less than a minute to do, and you're going to find out what your marketing superpower is and how you stand out from everyone else to attract your dream customers that buy on repeat. So you can go to the Krissy, Chin dot com forward slash quiz to take that quiz. I can't wait to see what margarita flavor you are and you're going to get a special margarita cocktail mix up recipe in your email.

Once you complete that quiz, it's super fun. I can't wait to see what flavor you are and I can't wait for you to mix up that recipe and try it yourself. Thank you. Thank you for submitting your voice question. If you have a question out there listening, then you can submit your audio recording on my website, that Krissy Chin dot com and just scroll down to the podcasting section.

And there's a big button that allows you to record your voice questions. So I can have you on the podcast as well.