We’re all prone to making mistakes when first starting our businesses, but what we can do to decrease the amount is to learn from the mistakes of those who preceded us. One of the first steps when starting an online business is crafting an offer, and that is where most people make a big mistake.
When deciding what their offer is, most people assess their skill sets or go off learning new ones, whether it's design, writing, coaching, whatever it is. They then take that skill set and say, “Okay, now that's what I'm offering. That's my service.”
Now don’t get me wrong, developing skill sets and learning things is essential for growth, and you can definitely apply those things to your offer and your business.
But that's actually doing business completely backwards.
I know that's what we learn in the job market. That's what we learn when we go off and say, “Here's my resume, here are all my skill sets. Here's what I can do.”
But, the truth is, people don't care about you and your skills. They really don't.
It’s really simple, people only care about:
So what you really want to be doing is figuring out who you want to be serving with your offer before creating one.
People typically know they need a niche, that they need to niche down, but they don't know why they need a niche.
A niche could be a group of people or a type of business or your vision of an ideal user. They share common characteristics, needs and desires, and they share something that you could potentially add value to.
Let's say you're starting with your skill sets. You’re learning writing, blogging, and everything related and that’s your offer. You vaguely specify that you want to offer your services to small businesses.
That’s your niche.
Now let's take an ecommerce business and let's take a business coach as your two potential clients. They’re both small businesses. But they have completely different needs. So now you're coming in with your offer of what your skill sets are, and it's not actually what they need.
It's like trying to sell snow in a Blizzard. You need to sell snow in the desert or somewhere people actually need something cold.
You can’t sell your services to those who don’t need them.
First you start out with who you want to help, who you care about helping.
Let's assume it’s health and wellness professionals or therapists.
Now we niche down to therapists, they’re the user.
Imagine the therapist sector is a ball that's full of water. The ball has a bunch of holes in it and is leaking water.
If you want to serve that sector, then your job is to try to patch the holes in that ball.
If you start with your service or what you want to do, that's not going to patch the holes. You're just sticking what you want to do on that ball, but it's still leaking.
You’re going to create a totally unique offer based on what your niche actually needs. And that offer is going to be extremely valuable to them.
It's going to be worth a high value price because you're starting with the user and you're molding a service and a unique offer around them.
It's not about the time it takes you. It's about your ability to patch the holes. Does it matter if it takes you 10 hours or ten months to patch the holes?
It's the same value.
It's the same worth. It doesn't matter. The faster you can do it, the better. You can still charge high value price.
Now you might be wondering how you’re going to patch all those holes if you don’t have the skills.
Well, you can easily learn these skills.
Even if you were to just read three books on those topics, once you identify where the holes are, and you understand it, you're already ahead of your niche.
You already know more than they know and you can add value to those holes.
So believe in your ability to figure it out and add value.
You definitely can.
You don't need to be the absolute best to be able to add value.
It's all about who you're serving.
Everything else comes after that.
It's not about you.
It's about the niche that you're serving.
I hope that helps you when crafting your offer and starting your business, or even if you already have a business and you're wondering how you can make your offer more valuable. You can always find ways to include your skill sets and what you enjoy doing into that offer.
Be open to molding it to what your niche actually needs.
P.S. If you think you have what it takes and you’re ready to put your heart and soul into creating or scaling your own business, I would love nothing more than to see you succeed and be the best at what you do. You can book a free strategy call with me so we can discuss all the details. Apply below x