Regenerative Business Podcast Series Ep 4
Episode 4
How to create a valuable offer with ease
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EPISODE SUMMARY
Join me this week on the Beyond Business Summer Podcast Series as we explore the next step in our regenerative business framework: creating a valuable offer with ease. Building on last week's discussion about making connection your first point of action, we shift our focus to the art of creation.
Many of us are familiar with the urge to build something new from our inspiration, but often we find ourselves launching our products or services to an unresponsive audience. Discover why connecting and engaging with your potential clients early in the process can make all the difference in achieving sustainable success.
In this episode, I discuss the challenges solopreneurs face when creating in isolation, emphasizing the importance of a co-creative process that aligns with our strengths. Hear how taking a collaborative approach can prevent burnout and keep your creative fire alive throughout the development stages. I also touch on the vulnerabilities and perfectionist tendencies that can hinder the launch of a new offering, and how receiving input along the way can keep you motivated and ensure your product resonates with your audience. Tune in for practical advice on transforming your sporadic efforts into a consistent and engaging offerings in your business.
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION
00:02 - Debbie (Host)
Hello and a very warm welcome to the Beyond Business Summer Podcast Series here. Over the course of six main episodes, we'll be challenging the mainstream approach to building a business online and instead creating a regenerative framework inspired by nature that takes your online business from sporadic action to sustainable results. If you would like to use the starter kit that goes along with the series, then head over to www.debbielee.co.uk/starter-kit and download your copy now. That way, you can work along with the episodes week by week and at the end, have a one-page framework that gives your business the springboard that you need to take action in a way that feels good and gets results. Hello, welcome to episode four of the Summer Podcast series. Thank you so much for tuning in. It's a real pleasure to have you here.
01:07
This week we are moving on to the next part of the regenerative business framework, and that is all about creating, creating a valuable offer with ease, and this is very much meant to follow on from last week's episode, which was about making connection, your first point of action, and if you haven't listened, it's really worth going back to tune into that episode. But what I described was, I think, that for so many of us, we associate action with creating something and we really want to see a tangible output for our efforts. And so when we're starting out in business, or even at the later stages, when we have this new idea or source of inspiration, we tend to want to make something with it. So create a new service or a new product with it. So create a new service or a new product. And what often happens is that when we do that in isolation, squirreled away behind the scenes, we release it and it's released to crickets. And that doesn't mean that it's because it's not valuable or not the right thing, but there hasn't been that process of connection or building engagement with people who might benefit the most from what you offer. I know that, like certainly when I began, I started with this build it and they will come approach.
02:38
And while I wholeheartedly believe that as a business owner and, for many of us, as a solopreneur, you really need to consider your own needs, the way that you like to work, I also think that putting in so much effort in isolation really pays off. It has to be that like two-way exchange and a co-creative process, and maybe, to just expand on this a little bit, when we are talking in this episode about creating a valuable offer. I think that it's worth noting that, as a solopreneur, we are one person who is often doing many of the tasks that, like bigger companies or teams, would have several teams worth of people dedicated to. And, yes, we are doing it on a smaller scale, but there's still that real element of responsibility and like task switching and forcing ourselves to do things that don't necessarily play to our strengths, and so, when we go all in, there's a lot involved in it, and I know that quite often these projects snowball a little bit out of out of control. And the other thing is that when we create these things behind the scenes and launch something that feels like we've invested a lot of time and energy and effort and poured ourselves into it's a really vulnerable place to put it out into the world, because it feels quite far along, and we're then like waiting for the verdict, if you like, waiting for people, the validation as to whether other people want to jump on board, at a stage where the thing is already quite evolved along the line. And I think what this makes, what makes this even more so is if, like me, you are a perfectionist, or recovering perfectionist, as I like to think, by the time we've created something that we are happy to put into the world, then it's often like we've taken it quite far along the creative process, and I find that sometimes, by that point, like the fuel from my fire has gone. It's like, by the time I get to the point of actually releasing it into the world, that spark and the drive and the creativity that I started with has started to fizzle out a little bit, because I haven't had input from other people to sustain me and keep me going along the way. And so it becomes yeah, it becomes this big thing that I'm not sure is really the right thing anymore. Um and yeah.
05:44
I think, then, the other point as well is that when we do this, when we launch the big offer first, we haven't had practice, if you like, at inviting people in, and that's what we're going to look at next week but we're creating something and then expecting people to, I think, come towards us without us fully explaining what it is and how it might help them. And so starting off with a smaller offer, I think, really helps so many of these things. It gives us one task to focus on. It gives us some yeah, an area of focus. It is a little bit less vulnerable to share something small, um, it means that we still have the passion and the creativity and the drive behind it, and it also gives us practice at inviting some inviting people in into what feels like a smaller investment than like the big thing.
06:52
So, yeah, with all of that, when we talk about creating a valuable offer with ease, my main take on this, and the thing that I want you to take away from today, is that what this really means is taking this big idea, the big grand idea that you've had, and whittling it down to the smallest possible form, the thing that you can put into action right away. And I think this really helps with that. That entrepreneurial brain that, um, comes up with a million ideas that that are never actually finished. This sporadic action that we've talked about as a theme for this series, um, because it gives us this smaller form, gives us a bit of a test round, and it means that, yes, fewer of the ideas actually make it through to the big thing, but like nothing is lost, if you like, along the way.
07:54
And, um, what I want to move on to next, then, is what it looks like to whittle something down, because I imagine that you have a big, grand idea and even when you think of shrinking it down, you can probably shrink it down even further than you think. Um, and maybe, maybe I'll flesh out a bit of an example to illustrate this. So say, you're a coach, like me, and, um, maybe you decide that you want to support professional women, step up in the workplace, and you've taken the first step. You've connected with many of these women, maybe friends or family members or people in your community, or you've found groups or networks of people online, and from connecting with these women, you realise that something many people have in common is this a real fear or struggle when it comes to speaking in public. Maybe they dread presenting and really feel like that's holding them back in their career, and so your idea is to offer a three month group coaching programme to help people, help these women, gain more confidence in public speaking.
09:14
And so maybe that is the ultimate end goal, and one approach would be starting to create that right away and put together all the nuts and bolts of it in terms of what it might look like, how people might enrol, putting up payment methods. But actually, what we could instead do is whittle this down to a much smaller starting point. That gives you a chance to test out and develop this idea and see whether it's something that you really are invested in, and also allows you to share a bit of a taster with these people and see if it's something that they are really invested in and something that they are actively looking for support with. And so when we think of the, I guess the minimum viable product in this regard, it could be writing a blog post. So I often find that longer form writing is a really good way to start fleshing out your ideas.
10:19
If nothing else, you could record a podcast episode like this, or you could ask a guest on somebody else's podcast where you talk about some of the challenges that you've noticed and the things that you think might help. You could record an audio clip and pass that out to people. You could go smaller still and write a social media post and share that, or you could invite someone that you have connected with to a call. All of these things are ways where you're still creating a tangible product or tangible offering, if you like, but it's not the big full-scale thing and then the next stage is to start inviting people into these offerings, so sharing these smaller scale versions with the people who you have already built connections with and taking it from there.
11:22
So that's what we'll be looking at on next week's episode starting to invite people in, and if this is something that you're interested in and would like to know more about, I'd love to have you there, if you haven't already done so. So please do go and download the starter kit that goes along with this podcast series, because there there's a one-page framework that you can use to record all of your ideas and your thoughts and your takeaways as we go along. You can get that at www.debbielee.co.uk/starter-kit and with that, I'll look forward to speaking to you again next week. Bye for now, thank you.