Designing Your Offers to Work for You First
As a Life-First Business Strategist, I'm passionate about helping entrepreneurs create offers that not only serve their customers, but also work for them as the business owner.
In this blog post, I'll share my behind-the-scenes thinking on how to design your offers in a way that supports your long-term sustainability and fulfillment.
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The Importance of Designing Offers That Work for You
When it comes to your business, your offers - the services, courses, programs, and digital products you sell - are 100% yours to design. While there are certainly best practices to consider, there's also a lot of room for innovation and customization to make these offers work better for you as the person actually running and delivering them.
The key is to start by focusing on what works best for you first. After all, if you don't enjoy selling and delivering your offers, how can you expect your customers to get excited about them? By designing your offers in a way that aligns with your strengths, preferences, and capacity, you'll not only create a more sustainable business, but you'll also be able to show up more authentically and enthusiastically for your clients.
My Offer Design Process: The Life-First Business Club
To illustrate this concept, let me share a bit about my own offer design process. I'm currently promoting my brand new Life-First Business Club, a subscription membership that releases a new workshop every month focused on life-first business strategies.
When I was creating this offer, I started with the core question: "What do I want to create more of in my business?" The answer was simple - I love the process of making things, of sharing ideas and strategies, and of helping people implement them. But I didn't want the added complexity of running a full-fledged community with calls, forums, and other high-touch elements.
So I set some creative constraints for myself:
I wanted to create a space to make more content and share my ideas, but without the pressure of live calls or events.
I didn't want to build an additional community separate from my existing student group.
I wanted the overall experience to feel calm, easy, and focused - a container that would support me as much as my members.
With these parameters in mind, I designed the Life-First Business Club to be a simple, asynchronous membership with a new workshop dropped each month. There are no live calls or events - just the workshops, a way for members to share their progress, and some optional incentives to encourage implementation.
By starting with what works best for me as the creator, I was able to build an offer that aligns with my strengths and preferences, while still providing value to my audience. And I'm excited to share the reasoning behind these design choices with my members, as I believe it creates a more transparent and compelling experience.
Adapting Your Offers to Suit Your Needs
Now, your offer design process may look different from mine, but the underlying principle remains the same: start with what works best for you.
Here are some ways you can adapt your existing offers or create new ones to better suit your needs as the business owner:
Adjust the Scope
If you find long, drawn-out projects to be challenging, consider cutting them down and making them shorter. Conversely, if you struggle with tight turnarounds, give yourself more leeway by extending timelines. And if you prefer a more focused approach, you can narrow the scope of your offers to a smaller, more manageable set of deliverables.
Limit Deliverables
It's easy to get carried away trying to pack as much value as possible into your offers. But the reality is, unlimited revisions, calls, and other deliverables can quickly become overwhelming for both you and your clients. Instead, be intentional about what you include and why, and set clear boundaries around your availability and support.
Explore Asynchronous Delivery
Not every interaction with your clients needs to happen in real-time. Explore asynchronous ways of delivering content, feedback, and support, such as pre-recorded videos, Voxer messages, or even just a simple Q&A review process. This can help free up your schedule and reduce the pressure of constant availability.
Test Different Approaches
As you start to explore different offers in your business, pay attention to where you feel most at ease and in flow. Do you thrive in the creation process, or do you prefer the client-facing aspects? Lean into the areas that energize you and find ways to minimize the tasks that drain your energy.
Sharing Your Offer Design Rationale
When you make changes to your offers, it's not just about the new features or structure - it's also about sharing the reasoning behind those changes with your audience. This not only helps your customers understand the value, but it also builds trust and transparency in your business.
For example, when I decided to keep the Life-First Business Club simple and asynchronous, I made sure to explain my thought process to my audience. I shared that I wanted to create a calm, focused container for making and sharing content, without the added complexity of live calls or a separate community. By being upfront about my motivations, I was able to position the offer in a way that resonated with my ideal clients.
So as you make tweaks and adjustments to your offers, don't be afraid to share the "why" behind them. Your customers will appreciate the insight, and it can even serve as compelling marketing to attract the right people to your business.
Getting Started with Offer Design
If you're ready to start designing your offers with your own needs in mind, here are a few steps to get you started:
1. Review Your Existing Offers
Take some time to reflect on how you're feeling about your current offers. Are there any that feel particularly challenging or draining? Make a note of the sticking points - where are you finding things tricky, or where might your customers be getting stuck as well?
2. Explore Alternatives
Once you've identified the areas that need some attention, start brainstorming different ways you could adapt or redesign those offers. Don't hold back - get creative and consider all the possibilities, even if they seem unconventional at first. The key is to focus on what would work best for you, not just what's "expected" in your industry.
3. Choose Your Favorites
As you explore different options, you'll likely start to gravitate towards certain ideas that feel more exciting or supportive. Pay attention to those gut feelings and choose the alternatives that resonate the most with you. These will be the offers you'll want to focus on refining and launching.
4. Share Your Reasoning
When you're ready to roll out your newly designed offers, be sure to share the "why" behind the changes with your audience. Explain the creative constraints you set for yourself, the pain points you were trying to address, and how the new structure is intended to better serve both you and your clients. This transparency can be a powerful marketing tool.
Join Me in the Life-First Business Club 🎉
If you're ready to start designing offers that work for you first, I'd love to have you join me in the Life-First Business Club. Each month, we'll explore a new life-first business strategy through a focused workshop, with optional incentives to encourage implementation.
The club is currently open for enrollment, and there's a special offer available if you join now. You'll get the best deal on the membership, plus some fun extras to help you get started. And as a member, you'll have access to the growing catalog of workshops, as well as the ability to connect with other like-minded entrepreneurs in my existing student community.
I'm so excited to share this new offering and support you in creating a business that truly works for you. Remember, when your offers are designed to serve you first, the selling and delivering becomes so much easier and more enjoyable. Let's get started!
