How to Beta Test Your Online Offering Offline: Art of Going Gray Case Study
Betsy Ogden, who already had a thriving business call Upper Valley Pilates, came to me wanting to build out her online brand, The Art of Going Gray. I immediately saw the potential for this to be a lucrative, freedom-driven brand, as well as for Betsy to be a media darling.
But without hustling her way from sale to sale, how could she launch an online offering? Well, the key was starting offline. Read her story below.
The Art of Going Gray Case Study
I had been reading Tara’s work for a while and liked her no-nonsense, outside the box approach to building businesses. I had been encouraged by another coach to offer 1:1 Pilates training to women over 50 via Skype. In my heart I knew it was not what I wanted to do but more importantly, it didn’t seem to ring a bell for my potential clients. And when I launched the program it landed with a thud.
For the life of me I couldn’t see my way to another option.
Enter Tara and 10ThousandFeet. By moving step by step through the Customer Perspective Process and Business Model Review, I was able to see that my business model as it stood, offered no option for growth. The turning point for me was to finally declare the one thing I wanted to work on for 2014, my Chief Initiative. It rolled out of me easily because of the work I did in 10ThousandFeet. Finally, I was able to envision a business model that would leverage and layer my business offerings in a way that served my Chief Initiative and felt right for me.
It had never occurred to me to use my strong bricks and mortar presence in my community to test a potential online offering. But with Tara’s help I stepped outside of the proverbial box and created The Pilates Gone Gray 6-Week Fitness Challenge. The response was amazing!
I sold out with a solid sales page (Tara helped create) and a very bare bones launch. The attendees were spot on my ideal clients. The success of this workshop has given me confidence that I am on the right track and can move forward and create a successful online offering.
My next step is to create an offering that logically brings my clients into the workshop and then another offering that will allow them to continue beyond the workshop on their own. It was a stroke of ‘Tara genius’ that allowed me to see the potential that lay right in front of me in my bricks and mortar business, and to realize how extremely lucky I have been to have the option to beta test my ideas before putting them online.
And if you’re ready for similar support in taking your idea to “sold out,” click here to learn more about 10ThousandFeet.
You Can Choose Less Stress
In a recent post, I remarked that everything in business is a choice. From how you price your offerings to the brand you create to the marketplace you sell in, everything can be determined by you.
Of course, we’re often less than intentional about these choices and that leaves us feeling backed into the nether-corners of business.
The same is true of our health. And entrepreneurship can be a heavy burden to bear on our overall well-being.
I spoke with Dr. Samantha Brody, a Portland-based naturopathic physician (and a client of mine!), about handling stress as an entrepreneur.
The two big takeaways I had from this chat were:
- I can be more in control of my own health when I better understand all the things that are stressing my body.
- I can choose to remove stress factors, even in little ways, to have a big impact on my overall health.
Watch this short interview above, or click here to view it in Vimeo.
Learn more about Dr. Samantha, Stress 2.0, and how to take control of your health: click here.
Why You Haven’t Reached Your Revenue Goals Yet (and Still Feel Burnt Out)
Imagine this common scenario: Stella is a new business owner. She’s got impeccable skills, a passion for her work, and a unique set of insights into her market. She’s poised for success–and excited about sharing what she does with the world.
She develops her first offer, a one-on-one service with companion workbook that helps her customers make big steps toward their goals while giving them the tools they need to maintain their success. She gladly tells her network all about this new offer. She’s full of the kind of earnestness and zeal that really moves people to action, even if just one at a time.
As Stella is in business longer, she gets even better at what she does, grows her prospect list, and has many happy clients. However, things aren’t quite as exciting anymore.
Why? She feels like she needs to hustle more & more to maintain her revenue growth. It’s not so much that she doesn’t feel “successful” so much as she isn’t having as much fun growing the business.
She hustles and hustles. She develops new offers. She launches like a boss.
And she’s feeling burnt out.
That’s rough. Burnt out isn’t a fun place to be in your career. Especially when your business is largely dependent on you to keep it rolling.
Surely, there must be a way for Stella to reach her true revenue goals (they’re high!), to keep up the parts of her business that she loves, and to spend less time & energy on the maintenance of her business so that she can live her life own her own terms.
There is.
The “microbusiness earning plateau” is an extremely common problem. Hustle, hustle, hustle, and you just don’t get the same growth you used to get. On the outside you look successful, but on the inside you feel tired and spent.
It’s where I see a lot of microbusiness owners end up throwing the towel in. They just don’t see the path to the revenue and scale they thought was possible.
And that’s often when they come to me.
That’s when we start working on creating a business model that breathes. Marketing & sales activities pulse through its veins. Customer perspective feeds its soul.
The key to busting through the microbusiness earning plateau isn’t more offers (that’s just more work) and it’s not necessarily some signature program or ebook.
The key to busting through the microbusiness earning plateau and creating a business that helps you stick with this for the long haul is leveraging:
- Prices that serve your customers.
- Products or services that address their evolving needs.
- And marketing & sales strategies that are designed for your freedom.
And that is the essence of a business model.
When you’re focused on creating, delivering, and exchanging value according to those three principles, you can kiss that microbusiness earning platue (and burn out, and frustration) good-bye.
You Always Have a Choice
One of the major breakthroughs I had in my business very early on was realizing that my earning potential wasn’t written in stone. It was a choice.
For a variety of familial and community reasons, I believed that my earning potential was capped around $40,000 per year. So I planned my business to generate about that much revenue.
At some point I realized that this was an arbitrary number–sometimes I am less bright than others–and that I could set any goal that I like. So I set a higher goal. Wouldn’t $80,000 be nice? Maybe $100,000? Maybe $150,000?
Once I realized that my earning potential was up to me (sky’s-the-limit, please and thank you), I could make different (read: better) decisions.
One of the chief lessons I want people to take away from my new book, Quiet Power Strategy, is:
Treat everything in your business as a choice.
Whether it’s the amount of revenue you want to generate, the way you want to promote your products, the model you use to construct your business, or the channels you use to communicate with your customers, everything is a choice.
It’s easy to get bogged down by what you think you need to do to succeed. It might be pricing your products or services a certain way. Or it could be creating a certain set of offers.
For instance, I can’t tell you how many times clients have said “I’ve been seeing clients for a year now so I know it’s time to write an ebook and then create a program.” Really? Is that the best thing for you? How do you know?
Constantly looking for the best practices and “right ways” is tantamount to backing yourself into a corner. And that’s when the mistakes happen. Following someone else’s lead can be great, but not without careful personal examination first.
When you allow others’ previous success to guide your actions, you ignore the insanely creative voice inside your own head. You might also ignore the fact that your customers are quite different or that you have different goals for your business.
Generally, I don’t encourage business owners to reinvent the wheel. But some of the best marketing, branding, and business model ideas have come from when business owners just like you have disregarded what “works” in favor of trying something out of left field.
Think Netflix, Dropbox, Nespresso. Think coworking spaces, clothing subscription services, doctors-by-skype.
Consider what works for your personality, your business’s personality, and your customers’ motivating values. Consider what will be memorable, welcome, and gratitude-inducing.
You don’t have to set a certain price.
You don’t have to use a certain marketplace.
You don’t have to use a particular business model.
You don’t have to use social media.
You don’t have to do anything.
Arm yourself with information, engage in strategic thinking, and make a choice.
***
The Mission
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to choose to do your content marketing differently by writing a blog post that only you could write. How? Focus on your unique point of view in your field: your design philosophy, your methodology, your personal pet peeves, your guiding principles, etc…
Don’t be afraid to say things that have been unsaid or might prove unpopular with some people. Invest yourself in your unique point of view and choose to powerfully communicate the individuality of your business.
When you’ve completed the post, share the link on Facebook or Twitter with the hashtag #contentdirectionmission and #quietpowerstrategy.
Don’t know what this is? Join in Lacy Bogg’s Content Direction Agency scavenger hunt: click here.
Wait! Before You Start Your Next Big Project…
What follows might be the most apolitical thing ever written about American health insurance reform. What follows might also save you a lot of heart ache, time, and money on your next product launch.
To my mind, there is nothing worth building that should be built all at once.
That’s what really stunned me about the roll out of health insurance reform in the US. Politics aside, the company building the website–the primary interface for the reform–should have known better than to try to build something so complete all at once.
This was especially true here in Oregon where the state government went all in. Cover Oregon wanted to be the most complete, most comprehensive health exchange in the nation. They invested millions of dollars in a really great, you-know-you’re-in-Oregon-when marketing campaign.
The intention was great. (Sound familiar?)
As of January 1, they had not enrolled a single customer via the website.
Everything that serves, everything that has value, everything that has a message worth sharing has been built in pieces. Test upon test upon test. Ideas, features, details all carefully fashioned together one at a time.
Sculptures, transformational programs, jewelry collections, menus, books… all reach their fullest potential when they are reduced to a single this-is-what-really-works element. And especially when that element is not just what the creator wants to create but what is created to delight the customer.
Bottom line:
Don’t try to build something all at once.
Don’t let your ambition, your vision, or your perfectionism side-track the proper development of your idea.
Silicon Valley figured this out a long time ago, relatively speaking. It’s the essence of Lean Startup mentality. Build. Measure. Learn.
It’s why your new favorite app doesn’t actually do everything you’d like it to do (they’re working on it).
When you launch something all at once, you have to stop at “Build.” You have no time (or data) for measuring. You have no energy (or experience) for learning.
When Megan Auman sits down to design a new jewelry collection, she doesn’t try to create the whole thing at once. It starts with a single piece, even a singular idea. Maybe it’s a change in the way she designs the shapes, maybe it’s a shift in the way she composes the metals.
She plays. And then she completes… something.
What she does next is extremely important: she wears it.
She takes it for a test drive. She starts to understand how it feels, how it changes the way she dresses, how it attracts compliments and “gotta have its!” That’s solid data to measure.
Then she learns and adapts. Each piece that derives from the initial prototype is a new iteration on that single idea. She constructs each piece knowing that it’s built on a proven idea.
All to often I see people with brilliant ideas spending too long trying to realize the full brilliance of their idea. Businesses that bring truly valuable things into the world know when to stop and analyze.
It’s a leap of faith.
A big one.
But it’s one that pays off in the long run.
It’s a little light bulb that goes off and says “this is enough.” For now.
Before you embark on your next big project or idea, remind yourself to look for that first stopping point. Quiet your perfectionist’s brain enough to hear when a potential prototype is whispering to you. Challenge yourself to think beyond big and, instead, reach for small.
So before you being your next big project, figure out the small thing you’d like to accomplish first.
This is the Motivation That Helps Your Business Succeed
“I make better kimchi than your Korean grandmother.”
That was what his online dating profile said.
I was intrigued.
Not because I have any great love of kimchi but because that was how he chose to describe himself.
After a couple weeks of dating, he dropped off a jar of kimchi and some soup at my apartment. I promptly ate the soup. The kimchi, I put in the cabinet. No freaking way was I going to eat that.
A few months later, going through my cabinets in an attempt to find some movie snacks, he discovered the jar of kimchi. “Um, this wasn’t sealed. It needed to be in the refrigerator.”
What happened next completely shocked this suburban girl who grew up on processed food and the-mall-as-entertainment:
He opened the jar and popped a big bite of fermented cabbage in his mouth.
Then… then… he plucked out a bite for me.
Blinded by love and inspired by his enthusiasm, I ate it.
It was good. Really good.
Fast forward 9 months.
One morning last week, he told me slept poorly because he read too much stimulating information before he went to sleep; The Art of Fermentation was sprawled out on the floor next to the bed. He’d spent restlessface hours considering new ideas for pickled vegetables.
On New Year’s Eve, he dropped off a jar of kimchi to the newest chef in town, a chef who’s been featured in Bon Appetit & Sunset Magazine, among others. New Year’s Day, he told me how he brought in another jar for his coworkers to try. He said, “I just want everyone to know how good this stuff is. I love it and I want them to love it too.”
I’ve told him many times that I think he could easily make a business out of his passion for pickling. But it was that last statement that really sold me on his ability to create something sustainable.
Businesses motivated by the deep desire to get what they create in the hands of others–to solve their problems or delight their senses–succeed. They inspire truly great marketing. They prompt story after story, reaching new prospects all the time.
That’s very different than just starting a business because you love doing your thing. Those kind of businesses generally don’t cause ripple effects of results or person-to-person sharing. They don’t get stories in magazines or mentions on the nightly news. They don’t inspire their teams to do better work.
It’s not the feeling you get when you’ve created something awesome that motivates great business; it’s the feeling you get when someone else experiences that something awesome.
When that is what drives you on a daily basis, you don’t need top 10 lists of promotional tactics. You don’t need Advanced Social Media Marketing. All you need is that core desire to share.
The reason I see potential in my partner’s passion for a sustainable business isn’t just because he loves to pickle things, it’s because he also has a passion for offering it up to others. The delight on his face when someone tries something from one of his jars for the first time is contagious. The energy he derives from seeing yet another skeptic converted to the ways of the fermented is immense.
You must have as much passion for the dissemination of your art as for the creation of it.
You must be willing to break down all your personal fears to pursue the act of plopping what you’ve created in the laps of the people you think should care about it.
You must be motivated by the surprise and the delight those you share your art with will experience.
Anything less than that and you won’t push past all the ways your fear will get block you sharing your art with the world.
Amanda Steinberg has built her publishing empire to over 1 million subscribers not because she loves writing about women & money but because she can’t wait to get smart financial information in the hands of women everywhere. Sarah Peck doesn’t just write because she loves to write but because she has a passion for engaging others about the questions and ideas she’s pondering. Catherine Just isn’t a photographer because she likes to snap pictures but because she’s eager to share the miracles she sees through the viewfinder with as many people as possible.
You might find these distinctions semantic. I don’t.
This very real difference not only predicts success but indicates whether a business owner will push through her fear, tolerate more risk, and do what is necessary to make her vision reality. It indicates whether she’ll have what it takes to trust her own ability to create the tactics that will grow her business instead of relying on the prevailing trends.
As you begin the new year in your business, ask yourself if you’re as passionate about sharing your work with others as you are about creating it. Forget that you might not know the “ins and outs” of marketing and sales. Instead, embrace a burning desire to say, as Seth Godin puts it, “Here, I made this for you.”
The rest you can figure out in time.