Hi friend,
I've recently come to realize that a lot of the work I do with clients is really helping them bring clarity and structure to their world building aka business ownership.
I have Lots Of Thoughts about world building as it relates to small business stewardship, which will continue to unfold here, I'm sure. Today, I'm zooming in to one of the biggest components of world building especially for service-based businesses and digital product creators, which is offer design.
When you design and iterate your offers intentionally, you have something that people really want and that feels good for you to create. This is a ✨sticky offer✨.
When you unknowingly have a gap in your offer design or offer iteration process, you might feel shitty about your offers or experience the business owner's dreaded right of passage ... launching to crickets. This is what I'm calling a "cricky" offer. Because of the crickets. 🦗🤷🏻♀️
The little voice in the back of our heads looooves to boil the complex and nebulous problem of a cricky offer down to some deeply incorrect and also rude self-critiques like "I suck; I suck at business; everyone else is better at this than me; nobody wants my work"
But the reality is that the difference between a sticky and a cricky offer is simply a combination of internal & external variables, of which there are MANY to consider. Some of the internal variables are things like when you want to be selling and where you want to spend your time online & IRL. Some of the external variables are things like the format of delivery and the positioning of the features & benefits.
The big problems come when you build out an offer and these variables aren't considered.
For example, if you get super revved up about an online course to teach folks how to knit but you don't want to nurture a large audience of online strangers and you create an audio course, you're highly likely to have a cricky offer when you go to launch.
On the flip side of that, if you already have an engaged audience of online strangers who have been watching you knit gorgeous things (or want to grow one), and you plan for a video course so folks can see where the needles need to go (and you consider about a dozen other variables like runway, capacity, cadence, ecosystem, et al. to give yourself the best possible chances) you might just have yourself a ✨sticky offer✨ when you launch!
Now, dear reader, I don't want you to get discouraged by how complex offer design can get, or how many offers you have already created (or half-baked) without considering the internal & external variables. If nobody has ever taught you this, how would you know?
I'm here today to clue you in, and I hope you'll hear me when I say: If you have experienced the heart-wrenching letdown of creating a cricky offer in your business, you are not wrong, bad, dumb, or unwanted. In fact, you are in great company because very few folks spontaneously discover intentional offer design on their first attempt to make and sell a thing! See also: the man in the arena, daring greatly.
AND! When you take some time to intentionally design & iterate your offers, over time you build a world (business) that is sticky. And that feels really good to exist in!
Today is Part One of a series on Sticky Offer Design. Part Two will cover the internal variables, aka your gut check and the tests any new offer needs to pass to make sure it's something you actually want to do before you spend time & energy working on it. After that, I'll talk through some of the external variables, which are the things that tell you if anyone is actually going to want the thing (in the way you've conceptualized it), and what to do if the answer is 'probably not'.
💌 Have Qs about designing your next ✨sticky offer✨? Hit reply and I'll see if I can weave my answer into this series for you!
Cool People Doing Cool Things
🔦 I've been really trying to get into walking, because I had a come-to-Jesus moment with myself earlier this month about how sedentary my lifestyle has become of late. I love my work; my work requires me to sit at a desk for HOURS at a time.
This weekend, I'm going to try out my friend Karly's free guided run audio (but while I slowly walk around my property) to see if it's more motivating than composing, for the twelfth time, the retort I would have had for my MIL if only my brain had moved faster stewing in my own thoughts. My hypothesis is "yeah, duh, of course it will be". If I like it, I might sign up for her 12 part guided run/walk series in May, which I am already pre-disposed to buy solely because the graphic design is TOP NOTCH. Right? ⬇️
What I've Been Wrangling This Week:
A peek behind the scenes aka nourishment for the curious, nosey, and those with Gemini placements 🙋🏻♀️
🌞 Advised on the tech stack for a summer book club for a speaker/consultant
🌞 Talked through some changes to Honeybook automations because of an issue with how emails were getting drafted for a wedding industry pro
🌞 Guided a somatic coach + biz astrologer through a half day strategic planning intensive wherein we started mapping her offer ecosystem & how all of her multi-passionate goodness can be positioned under one brand
🌞 Schemed & dreamed on some adjustments to my own offers to better account for some internal & external variables I am reconsidering my orientation to in this season
🌞 Drafted up the April Field Guide for my Rhythms community, Tending your Energetic Field (how to feel less stressed & more creative)
Tired of trying to make someone else's plan fit your unique small business? → Book a Strategic Planning Intensive.
Think you might be ready to wrangle your work but not quite sure? → Let's chat.
P.S. I leave in my em dashes because I refuse to change my writing style to prove I'm not a robot, but an LLM was nowhere near this email. Real thoughts from my real head, typos and all!