Sell your offer BEFORE you create it.

Trust me on this one.

One of the biggest mistakes I see online offer creators make is putting all their time, energy, and effort into an offer …
… only for it to flop.
Why? Because they didn’t take the time to validate that their audience wanted that offer in the first place.

There are a few other mistakes you’ll want to avoid with your online offer on top of this one. Curious?

Tune into this episode to uncover the truth.

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Show Notes:

Hey, risers. Welcome to Empathy Rising. Today's episode is about the mistakes that most therapists are making when they come up with their online offers and why we need to pay particular attention to them. Because as therapists venturing into the online space, we are different than any single other person who is trying to do an online income stream and we're gonna cover that today.

So the reason that offer creation, or really we're gonna call it “offer brainstorming” is such an important part and why I wanted to have a workshop around this is because it really is the bedrock of everything that you do for an online income stream. It's the thing that needs to be dialed in before you can make sales, and it's the building block for every single other thing that you do in your online income stream.

Now, early in this episode, I want to make two clear points. They aren't the topic of this episode, but they're really important distinctions to make, and it's something we need to have in mind when we're thinking about offers.

And I realize it's only the first five minutes of the episode and I've already said, oh, that's a topic for another time. But that really is a key into how much information there is around offers and how important this piece is. I really wanna just hone in on the message of today, which is the mistakes that a lot of people are making.

But I wanna get these two points out of the way first. And the first one is that your offer does not have to be made before you sell it. I know that's confusing with the word creation, and I sometimes still say “offer creation” and I'm working on that. And a lot of times you will see other people who talk about online income they'll mention it as offer creation.

What I want us to do is do a quick little reframe here and a quick little swap, and let's change that word creation and let's replace it with brainstorming, okay? Because the fact of the matter is, the truth is, you do not need to create or build or make your offer before you sell it. In fact, I recommend the exact opposite.

So please do not write all five modules, 24 lessons, 30 plus hours. Do not put that into your course before you have sold it. But instead, what you need to have is a solid concept of your offer that explicitly explains who it's for, what it does, and why the ideal customer needs it. Once you have that, you are ready to start marketing and selling.

The other point to make is that the concept is not set in stone. I'll say it a thousand times: You need to take your concept into the market and validate it before you start selling it. This means asking your ideal customer what they want, what they need, and what they're willing to pay for it.

Too many people skip this step, put those 30 hours into building their program, and after two months are why? Wondering why they have made one sale or zero sales. Okay? And that's because they have skipped these steps.

But keep in mind, even after you've pre-sold and actually created the offer, and even AF if it's like the fifth round of the offer, right? You are still gonna be gathering feedback every single time you have a student going through, or you're gonna be gathering feedback from your membership site members on a regular basis or every time you run your online group program.

You're gonna be getting feedback from the group members at the end. So a good business owner, a good entrepreneur, is always innovating. It's always tweaking and adapting and making their programs better. So while getting clear on what it is you plan to offer is the most important step, know that importance does not equal rigidity.

There needs to be some flexibility built in, and the offer will evolve over time. The reason that brainstorming your offer is so critical is that every other piece of the online income stream stems from the offer. Okay? When you go to make an opt-in and start building an email list, it needs to relate to that offer.

When you're building an email list, you are not building an audience, okay? This is a huge misconception. Your email list is not building an audience. Your freebie, your lead magnet, your opt-in, they are qualifying your buyer. So you are not accumulating more and more people. You are ruling out more and more people by qualifying your buyer, and the only way to do that is to make sure that your freebie or opt-in aligns with that offer.

The only way to qualify if somebody is ready to buy your course or to hire you as a coach is to make sure that the thing that they're getting aligns with the thing that they are buying. So let's not collect a bunch of people who are never gonna buy from us. Let's cultivate and curate a list of people who are qualified to buy from us.

The next thing is when you go to sell a tripwire off the back end of your opt-in, it is essentially the bridge between your freebie and your offer. That's another way of qualifying this buyer, right? And again I'll repeat it a million times, but if you don't have that offer in place the concept of the offer in place, there's no way that you're gonna be able to build a freebie or build a tripwire that functions between the freebie and the offer.

When you start fostering a community, whether this is on Instagram, whether this is a Facebook group, whether this is whatever, it needs to be centered around your offer, you need to be talking about the concepts and the problems that you solve and the things that you help with your community.

If you don't know what those things you help with and those problems that you solve are your community is not gonna be geared up or ready to buy from you. When you start going on coffee chats and connecting with referral sources, those relationships need to have your offer in mind because it won't make any sense if you're getting on the phone or on Zoom with somebody and they're never gonna refer to your type of offer, or they're not aligned with your offer.

They're not interested in what you have to offer. That'll be a waste of your time, and it'll be a waste of a relationship. Okay? When you start using visibility strategies and going on other people's podcasts, you need to have your offer in mind, because if you're selling something for toddlers, why are you on a podcast that's geared for teens, right?

It doesn't make sense if you don't have your offer in mind. So if you've been following what I'm saying, your offer sets the tone for your sales funnel. It is what determines every piece of your sales funnel, and then when you get to the point where you're ready to run ads or something like that with paid marketing, you really need to have this offer nailed down and you need to have an airtight funnel because now you're paying money.

Now you're paying for your people to be exposed to your freebie, to your tripwire, to your email sequence, to your product. And that's a really expensive learning curve or a really expensive endeavor if your funnel is more like a sieve, right? So we can see how offer creation, offer brainstorming really is the key foundation to correct marketing, to correct audience building, and to making sales.

And we've talked a lot about sales right here, which, most of us are doing this to make money, right? But we also have to have the offer in place to make transformations happen—to be that change agent. All of us are here because we wanna help other people. And if the offer isn't dialed in, and if the offer isn't selling, we aren't helping anyone.

Now, sometimes it happens that people come at an online income stream from the reverse order, meaning that they build an audience first. Now, this isn't necessarily bad or wrong, it's just the roundabout way, and it could take a lot longer. In fact, I've now had two students go through Side Hustle who've had rather large audiences but they never had anything to sell to that audience. And they've had to reposition themselves as the expert authority with a product rather than a helpful friend or rather than someone who's running a support group.

And they've gotten called out when they've started to sell oh, hey, I thought this was a free place. Or, oh, hey, I thought we weren't allowed to market here. It's much harder to come in and monetize an established group than it is to build an audience around your offer. But that doesn't mean it's impossible, and it doesn't mean that it's not going to work if this is the case for you.

If you have an audience but you have not yet monetized that audience, it's still really important to get your offer right, because often your audience will tell you what they want to buy. But your experience will tell you that it's not actually what they need. Think about therapy. We see this all the time. Somebody comes in and they're like, I just wanna focus on my new girlfriend and make this the best relationship. In our heads, we're thinking sorry, Sally doesn't work that way.

We're gonna have to go back and look at why you can't keep a relationship for more than six months, and that's gonna mean looking at a lot of crap. You really don't wanna, but that's what you need if you really wanna make this new relationship work, right? We know this so often our audiences will be demanding some sort of product, and we have to think, okay, you may want this, but is that what you need?

So in situations like this, it's even more important to get the offer right, so that you can make sure it meets demand and it's gonna sell and it's gonna give them what they're looking for, but it's also gonna provide that change and that transformation and that value that we all care about providing, right?

We're not selling widgets, we are transforming lives. So we need to make sure that even if our audience is asking for something, that we use our experience and our expertise to make sure that there is an element of change and an element of transformation inside that offer.

Now because we're therapists, we have a whole other layer to all of this, right? A whole nother layer to brainstorming, and that is maintaining ethical boundaries so that we are protecting our licenses. This is also something that's really important and it's something that pretty much no one else in the online space has to deal with, like at all. Seriously. I can think of another helping professional, even like a dentist, right?

He has no need or she has no need to pay attention to whether the customer would qualify as a patient. They'd have no need to worry if the curriculum would be too close to what they're actually doing when someone is in their dentist's chair, right? They could literally create a course that records them doing their exact job.

Here's how to brush properly, here's how to floss property, and then there would be no concern whatsoever. About them being in violation of anything. Now we can definitely create a course that teaches skills like grounding exercises or tapping or communication. We can pass on skills, but we have to qualify the person buying it.

We have to make sure that person buying it is not meeting a clinical diagnosis. And for courses, this is a lot easier. But when we go into something like coaching or a group program where there's a live element, we have to be really careful when we're thinking of using these types of techniques.

So while maintaining our licenses and practicing at the same time, we have to ensure that the offer we conceptualize and ultimately end up building down the road doesn't cross any lines or jeopardize our ability to practice at all.

Now, I don't wanna sound doomsday here because it really isn't that difficult to do, but it's something that is so unique to us and that other people in the online space, they just don't get they'll just teach you how to make up course and they don't get that you have ethical responsibilities and ethical obligations and they don't address this type of stuff in their education.

So it's not hard, but it's something that we uniquely have to think about. And I've hit on this already before, but there's two things that happen when your offers are not planned for and prepared for, and brainstormed. The first is that they don't sell. Okay? Muddy offers do not convince people to pull out their wallets. The consumer cannot envision themselves getting the results they need or want. They don't know what's expected of them in regards to how much time is this gonna take or how long is the program. They don't know any of that. If it's not communicated to them. They don't even know if they're ready for the offer.

They don't know if they're too late or maybe they're past what that offer is providing, and they don't… they can't tell. So they're not gonna buy if they don't know that it's right in line for them. They also don't know what they're paying for. What is the result? Are they gonna get a sense of mastery from the course?

Are they gonna get a sense of growth from the group program? We have to communicate this. They also don't know why they should buy from you if this is a cold lead and they don't aren't in your community, or they don't have a relationship with you already. They have no idea why they should buy from you if it is not communicated to them.

The other piece of this though, and probably for all of us, the more important piece is that muddy offers don't serve, right? They do not help the person that we are on a mission to help. Muddy offers are really hard for us to deliver and for us to make sure that we're providing that service.

We're not sure what we're doing if we're on the right track, whether that's coaching or whether it's creating modules. Of course, we don't know if we're actually getting somebody from a point A to a point B. It's really hard to fulfill our vision if we haven't properly planned, and if we haven't properly brainstormed.

So we may know and be able to see in our head what we want, but to take that idea and that vision and make it concrete, that's another step. That's another skill. Okay? We're also unable to give the best results possible because we're not organized. So ultimately this means that we're not able to guide the transformation.

Whether that's the modules of a passive course that we have nothing to do with, or if it's a coach, one-on-one coaching package that we're really instrumental in. We have to be able to guide the transformation, and in order to guide that transformation, we have to know what that transformation is.

Now, here's what is different when you have fully brainstormed your offer, when you've organized your ideas, when you've fleshed them out, when you've taken care to make sure that they are ethical, and when you've gotten this clarity too, things happen, right? Your offers are so much easier to market.

Everything from the imagery you use to the copy, to your promotional materials, all of it comes together to create a cohesive experience and a cohesive sales funnel so people know what they're buying, why they're buying it, and they're happy with their purchase. There's no buyer's remorse.

There's no, oh, I don't know if this was the right course for me, or there's no questioning of if you're the right coach. They're happy because they know exactly what they have consumed. And then on your end, they are so much easier to carry out, whether that's writing the curriculum, delivering live calls, the activities you plan for your monthly membership, or even if it's just one-on-one coaching, it's so much easier to deliver.

A fully brainstormed offer is going to make you so much more confident that you are actually serving and you're actually helping the people who invest in your online income stream. You will know that your program is valuable and helpful, and you can trust that transformation is taking place.

So if we are really passionate about and interested in an online income stream, and we're ready to make sure that it is planned well and thought out well and giving us the best chance to make sales and also giving us the best chance to make true transformation, we need to avoid some pitfalls and we need to avoid some common blunders and some common mistakes. And that's what we're going to start exploring right now.

The first mistake that really anybody in an online income stream makes, not necessarily just therapists, but the first mistake that most people make is that they are not clear enough or narrow enough on their niche.

I see this all the time on people's Instagram bios or in their elevator speeches, and they're like, I help people look at the fears from their past and move forward without anxiety. It's okay, what does any of that mean? It's not clear enough who that is speaking to.

This could be like NASCAR drivers who've had really terrible accidents and now they're afraid to go get it back in their cars and out on the track. Or it could be a mom who's had a traumatic birth and now it's having trouble bonding with her baby.

When you're trying to talk to every single person, when you have not narrowed in on that person's demographics and that person's psychographics, you are not gonna make sales, okay? And you're not gonna serve them as well as you will when you're really in the pocket and really in your zone of genius.

This sounds similar to your therapy niche, right? But when we're talking about online income, it needs to be even more specific because we are solving a specific problem for that specific person. Okay, so it might be that postpartum mom who's not bonding with her baby. And now we are going to teach her a tiny bit of attachment theory, and we're going to give her a few skills so that in the first few months of her baby's life and the first few postpartum months, she's gonna have an action plan to start bonding. And she's gonna understand the importance of bonding.

We're not processing anything here. We're not taking her through anything or we're not looking at her past experience of attachment or anything like that. We're not doing therapy, but we need to solve a specific small problem for that specific type of person, and that is what's going to create an online program or product that will sell.

I saw this just the other day where somebody I know is creating a new podcast for counseling interns. And another person commented on that thread and said, why? Just interns? And in my head I thought, no, she's doing it right. She has a really specific niche, so the person creating the podcast was actually on the right track.

But people don't understand how specific you need to be for online income. Now, that's not to say that your product won't be helpful to another population, and once we get it rocking, enrolling, and selling, and serving your intended population, we can take a look at broadening that marketing and perhaps taking the same course and applying it with different people.

That's totally a possibility and it's totally feasible. But we have to be narrowed down on that niche first. We have to prove that it sells first. We have to prove that it serves first. Then we can take a look at what expansion might look like.

Now the second mistake, and this one is specific to therapists, is not distinguishing from a therapy client. You heard me talk about this just a second ago. When we're thinking about nicheing, we need to make sure that we are distinguishing from a therapy client, okay?

Our customer does not meet a diagnosis. If they meet a diagnosis, we are not the person addressing that diagnosis. There's no way that we're not gonna be able, or we're gonna be able to tell that somebody who buys our course off of Facebook ad at two in the morning does not have some kind of clinical diagnosis. There's no way for us to know that, but we need to know that.

Our program is not addressing a specific diagnosis. Hopefully, that makes sense. That person buying it could have clinical depression, but they're not buying our program to solve their clinical depression. We are not marketing a program that solves clinical depression.

So that's the difference. We are marketing to a specific person who does not meet a diagnosis, and we are marketing with a specific program that does not address a specific diagnosis. So I hope that's really clear, and those are two mistakes that lots of people in the online space make. But it's another mistake that can be costly for therapists if you are not really drawing a hard line between what you do as a therapist and what you do as a course creator, or a coach, or a program creator.

Now, why this is important is that when you are marketing to everyone, you are selling to no one. And if you are selling to no one, you are serving no one. People need to be able to identify with your marketing. They need to be able to see yourselves in their words, to know that you understand their pain points, and to be able to envision themselves in the change that you are proposing.

If you're not getting that, you're not gonna get sales. And if you're not getting sales, you're not getting transformations. And then it's really easy to know why we wanna distinguish from a therapy client, right? We want to preserve our ability to practice. We wanna make sure that there is no reason that anybody could claim that what we're doing is unethical.

Because we don't wanna fight our board, but we also don't wanna fight other therapists, and we don't wanna fight other people who are saying, oh, can you really do that? Yes, we can, because we've taken the measures and we've made sure that we can do this and we're doing it appropriately and we're doing it correctly, right? So why even give any fodder for those conversations?

So the next mistake that people make is that they are not clear enough about the problem that they are solving. They are not clear enough on exactly what the program addresses. Okay? They're trying to solve every problem that a postpartum mom has.

They're trying to solve every problem that a new college graduate has. They're trying to solve every problem that a couple going through infidelity has, and that is an issue because the person cannot clearly distinguish what they're going to get when they purchase your course. We need to specifically say, in 30 days, you will be able to X, Y, Z.

Alright? And we cannot make that kind of promise if we don't know the parameters of the problem that we're solving. And also if the problem that we're solving is too big. We can't make that kind of promise because there's no way that we could solve that big of a problem, right? So narrow down and really focus on what the problem is and make the problem seem really small, okay?

Because for therapists, we know a lot more than we give ourselves credit for, and we see things as less important than they really are. But why it's important to make sure that your problem is clear enough is that when a person gets a really small win, that transformation can make them believe that bigger change is possible, and it can be just enough to keep them going on their pursuit of growth or on their pursuit of personal development, right?

But if we have too muddy of a problem or too big of a problem that we're trying to solve, we're never going to give them that win. And they're never going to feel like they've gotten value from our program and they're never gonna feel like they can continue to move forward.

They're gonna feel overwhelmed. They're gonna feel burdened. They're gonna feel like they failed. And the truth is that we actually failed because we over-promised. Okay, so it's really important to make sure that what we are solving and what we are promising is clear enough and small enough.

The next mistake that people make is that they don't take it deep enough. We know, again, as therapists, which is why we are so ready to take the online income world by storm, is that there's the context of the problem. And then there's the process of the problem, right? There's what people think is going on and there's what is really going on.

And if all of our marketing only speaks to what they think is going on, we're not going to hit those buttons, those internal buttons that say, oh, they really get me. Oh, they know what I'm really going through. They're in my head, right?

When you speak to what's really going on, when you speak to the internal experience of the problem, that's when you get those customers who are like, it changed my life. Even if it was a small problem that you solved, right? It's still gonna feel life-changing because we're going to address the internal problem, right?

So that new mom, It's not that we might be solving the fact that the baby is crying a lot, or we might be solving the fact that she doesn't feel warm and fuzzy when she picks up her baby because she doesn't have the knowledge or the comprehension of what's actually happening and what a traumatic birth might be doing.

We might solve that, right? The surface level of the problem. But what we're really addressing is that she's a failure of a mom. She made the biggest mistake of her life. She's screwing up this brand new kid. Those are the internal experiences of the problem. And when we can address those and when we can speak to those, that's when we have profound change, and that's when our program really hits the nail on the head.

It needs to be clear, it needs to be small, and it needs to be deep. Okay? So those are the five most common mistakes that come up when we work on offer brainstorming. When we work on offer creation, we conceptualize offers for people that are not specific enough. We don't make sure to distinguish between a therapy client and an online customer.

We don't create a program that has a clear enough problem and promise. We don't create a program that has a small enough problem and promise. And we don't create a program that has a deep enough problem and promise. Okay, so what happens when we do those things? What happens when we have a clear-cut person who this is obviously for?

And when we know that person is not a therapy client and we know that we are solving something specific and we know that we're solving something small and we know that we're solving something deep, is that we get an offer that is designed to sell well, that is designed to provide transformation to people who would not have found it otherwise.

And it also covers our asses. In any case, when we might come against somebody who thinks we're doing something unethical. And I've covered a lot about what can go wrong and a lot about why it's important to get it right now.

It's important to make sure that the time you spend on your online income stream has a return, but it's also important to make sure that you are keeping your license safe. Keep on rising.