Read time: 12 minutes
MCC #62 – 30 Jun 2023
Welcome to My Creative Calling!
Today I want to address the elephant in the room for creators.
Which is probably you, given you’re here.
We often get busy creating.
Which is great. It’s fun and rewarding! We love expressing our creativity and making an impact online through our content.
But what if we want more than that?
Specifically, we want to get paid.
But new creators in the online space often overlook one key thing:
To make money online, you need an offer.
And this is something the overthinker can make a real mess of.
How do I know?
Well, I have done it.
And you probably have too.
I started writing online about two years ago. But I still don’t have an “offer” online.
Why?
It seems ridiculous now.
It came out in conversation with another creator. They had been moving along nicely with their creator business. Things were starting to take off for them.
Then they asked, “How’s your offer going?”
It smacked me in the face — I still don’t have an offer.
For my coaching practice, I relied solely on inbound traffic from my content to booking discovery calls. And I’ve been getting a few referrals. But with no “offer”. So it makes me wonder what could be possible if I did have an offer.
This has been enough to get by, but now I am at a point where I want to devote more time to this and get serious about the business side.
It’s funny how your views change over time.
When I started, at first, it was about creating something for fun. Then it was all about followers. You feel vulnerable and exposed without them. It’s like nobody cares.
But then, when you get a bunch of followers, I’ve currently got around 3k across platforms, you realise it means nothing regarding business results.
You can have all the followers, all the likes, and all the comments, but if you aren’t making any money, you will feel shitty.
Likes ain’t cash
JK Molina
Thank you to the “Money Twitter” crew, who have got me thinking more on business lines.
I started this journey as pure “creative”. But now I see it’s a balance—and most modern creators who are thriving are really entrepreneurs.
Entrepreneurs solve valuable problems and get paid.
After all, what’s the point of all the creating if we can’t get paid?
You don’t want to be the starving artist.
And it’s not a crime to want to be paid. As if you don’t make it happen, you won’t be able to sustain this long term.
No, you want to move from surviving to thriving.
I got smacked in the face for a second time.
I was connecting with another creator friend, and he was like, “Yeah, I don’t really understand what you do.”
Duh! I realised:
Yeah, cause I NEVER talk about it on social media.
I don’t know why. Maybe it’s my accounting background, or my shy introvert nature, but I have some serious stigmas around marketing and selling.
But this is ridiculous.
Cause if I don’t face up to that and get over it, I will never succeed long term.
I need to promote myself more.
“Oh cute, look at this guy creating all this nice content for fun.”
No, I don’t want to be that sucker.
So it’s time to level up.
And I hope this can inspire you as well.
Why have you been holding back?
As always — fear!
Fear nobody will like your offer.
Fear nobody will buy your offer.
Fear you will fail.
Come on.
Surely you know we don’t accept those fears as the truth here.
And you know what, if nobody buys your offer:
Good!
Now you are one step closer to the next offer that works.
At least you have acted and done something rather than forever hiding. And we know where that leads — regret!
No, you don’t want to end up there.
So embrace those failures.
Almost every “big” creator I have connected with said it took them at least 5-6 failed offers before they finally hit the jackpot.
So what’s the lesson there?
The sooner you start, the better.
Then you start learning what works, what doesn’t. Keep iterating your offer, get feedback, and test… The cycle of improvement continues.
You don’t want to become one of those “large creators” with a million followers who can’t sell a single T-shirt.
So start selling now.
And then, you will build the right audience. An audience who understands you and how you can help them. An audience who wants to support your work.
Now to sell, you need an offer.
You may be like me, someone from a non-sales and marketing background. You have no idea where to start in creating an “offer”.
I was an accountant for many years and spent much time obsessing over numbers and costs related to products and services. But we never really got into the psychology behind crafting an appealing offer.
So who can be our guide here?
Well, I went and spoke to many creators (some big, some small), and they all kept talking about this one book which was the bible for creating offers:
And I love the subtitle of this book:
“How to make offers so good people feel stupid saying no.”
Yep, that’s what you want!
Sounds easy, doesn’t it? But as always, as soon as you dive in, these things quickly become confusing and overwhelming.
Thankfully Alex breaks everything down into a simple step process with examples. He not only covers creating the offer but also pricing, value, and enhancing the offer. So I highly recommend you check out the book when crafting your offer.
But for today, I wanted to give you a simple overview of the offer creation part so that you had a base knowledge to create a minimum viable offer and get started.
Let’s dive in:
Creating your offer
Value
You don’t want to be caught in a race to the bottom on price.
Nobody does.
That’s a stressful way to operate and probably a fast track to failure.
No, you want to be able to charge premium prices.
How do you do that?
What you sell needs to be valuable.
Those who understand value are the ones who will be able to charge the most money for their services.
Alex Hormozi
So how do we create value?
The good news is that Alex created a repeatable formula to quantify the variables that create value in an offer. And he has the business results to back his methods up — hint, that’s why he called the book “$100m” Offers.
The Value Equation
The four primary drivers of value are on the left side of the equation.
The top two are what you want to increase (dream outcome and perceived likelihood of achievement).
The bottom two you want to decrease (Time delay and effort & sacrifice)
What will I make? (Dream outcome)
How will I know it’s going to happen? (Perceived likelihood of achievement)
How long will it take? (Time delay)
What is expected of me? (Effort & sacrifice).
Alex Hormozi
You can focus a lot of effort on increasing the top two, which leads to bigger and bigger claims. But Hormozi says that’s easy and lazy. You are better off trying to get the bottom two as close to zero as you can.
I have realised that these larger-than-life claims are the easiest to establish (and therefore less unique).
After all, anyone can make a promise.
The harder, and more competitive, are the Time Delay and Effort & Sacrifice.
The best companies in the world focus all their attention on the bottom side of the equation. Making things immediate, seamless and effortless.
Alex Hormozi
Think how effortless companies like Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Spotify have made their products. There is almost no friction.
A key point – Perception is reality
This one blew my mind.
Hormozi outlined how it’s not about how much you actually increase your prospect’s achievements or remove those barriers.
I thought that would be the key! But no:
The Grand Slam Offer only becomes valuable once the prospect perceives the increase in likelihood of achievement, perceives the decrease in time delay, and perceives the decrease in effort and sacrifice.
Alex Hormozi
Let’s overview those four value drivers:
Dream outcome
People already have desires. You aren’t creating them.
So the challenge is to align that desire with your offer.
The prospect has a dream in their mind, a vision. But there is a gap.
You know the drill:
- You want to start a business, but you have no idea where to start
- You want to create content, but you don’t have ideas
- You want six-pack abs, but you don’t go to the gym
- You want a calm mind, but you never meditate.
There is always a gap.
Our goal is to accurately depict that goal back to them, so they feel understood, and explain how our vehicle will get them there.
Alex Hormozi
Perceived likelihood of achievement
Hormozi realised something people value:
“People pay for certainty.”
So there is where the perception of achievement becomes critical.
You do this when you seek professional help.
When your child is sick, you pay for the best doctor.
When you are in a legal jam, you want the best lawyer.
You don’t want to be someone’s first client or patient— eek!
No, you want certainty when something is truly important and will happily pay for it.
So you must communicate this certainty in your offer.
Time delay
There is a time delay from when your client purchases your product or service to when they receive the benefit you promised.
The less time delay here, the more valuable your offer is.
If you backed your car into a tree, you would pay more to have it fixed tomorrow.
Realising that the “dream outcome” often won’t happen overnight is important. So you can make time appear shorter by having milestones. Celebrate the short-term wins on the way to long-term goals. Otherwise, people can lose motivation and interest.
Effort & sacrifice
These are the tangible and intangible “costs” along the way to achieving that dream outcome through your offer.
Decreasing the effort and sacrifice, or at least the perceived effort and sacrifice, can massively boost the appeal of your offer.
Alex Hormozi
Now you understand the basics of value, let’s look at how to make an offer:
Making your valuable offer
Hormozi has a five-step process to create a valuable offer:
Action #1 – Identify the dream outcome
Many marketers say, “sell the transformation” in the coaching space.
Or you’ve probably heard people say, “Sell the benefits, not the features.”
Because at the end of the day, what do people care about?
Themselves.
They want the end result, not a list of features.
I wasn’t selling the plane flight. I was selling the vacation.
When you are thinking about your dream outcome, it has to be them arriving at their destination and what they would like to experience.
Alex Hormozi
Action #2 – List the problems
There are always a bunch of problems in the way of that dream outcome.
Often once you dive in, you encounter problem after problem.
So in this step, Hormozi recommends you write down ALL the problems. Just get writing and don’t stop. Capture every possibility.
- What do they struggle with?
- What are their limiting thoughts?
- Think about problems before and after purchase.
- Then what next do they need help with?
The more detail you capture, the more fuel you will have in the tank for creating a high-value offer.
You want to have answered every question in advance for the prospect.
A neat little insight here is that Hormozi demonstrated how each of these problems we list ties in with the value equation from above. For example, it’s too hard or takes too much time.
Action #3 – Turn those problems into solutions
Now let’s turn those problems into solutions!
Get to work on your list of problems, and start reframing them into solutions.
What we’re going to do is simply turn them into solutions by thinking, “What would I need to show someone to solve this problem?”
Then we are going to reverse each element of the obstacle into solution-oriented language.
Alex Hormozi
For example, let’s say you’re a mindfulness coach, and the prospect’s problem is “meditating is hard and boring”. The transformation to the solution could be: “How to make meditation effortless and fun”.
And remember, at this step, you’re listing the solution titles, not actually working out the steps/method involved (that comes later).
Hormozi caveats that some of this process may seem repetitive for each problem. But that is normal as it all ties back to those same four value drivers — for example, effort or time. And make sure you capture ALL the solutions you can think of. As if one is missing, it can cause someone not to buy.
Action #4 – Create the delivery method for those solutions
The next step is thinking about all the things you could do to solve each of these problems you’ve identified.
This is the most important step in the process.
This is what you are going to deliver.
This is what you are going to do or provide in exchange for money.
Alex Hormozi
The challenge here is to think about anything you could do. Anything that would make your offer more valuable.
What would make someone immediately say, “Yes, sign me up!”
Hormozi says this is “high-value, high-leverage work”, and getting this right makes selling easy.
So take the time to do it properly. Push your mind and creativity to its limits when creating those options.
For example, with the mindfulness coach example above, you might come up with the following:
- Teach the client one-on-one.
- Video teaching one-to-many.
- Take them on a walking meditation.
- Send weekly personal guided meditations.
- Provide a comprehensive list of mediation apps.
- Provide text support when the client is struggling.
The point is to capture whatever comes to mind quickly. I don’t know much about meditation teaching. Get busy stacking up possible solution delivery methods.
Action #5 – Trim and stack your solution delivery method options
Now you should have a big list of solutions.
Next up, Hormozi recommends considering the cost of providing each solution.
Instantly remove the ones which are high cost and low value. You don’t want to be struggling to make ends meet.
And then remove the low-cost, low-value. It’s harder to sell low-value.
If you aren’t sure what’s high value, go through the value equation and ask yourself which of these things will this person:
1) Financially value.
2) Cause them to believe they will be likely to succeed.
3) Make them feel like they can do it with much less effort and sacrifice.
4) Help them accomplish their goal and see the result they want with far less time investment.
Alex Hormozi
Now you should be left with the following options:
- Low-cost, high value
- High-cost, high value
Work through the remaining options until you have a time commitment and cost you are happy with. You don’t want to be selling something that drives you crazy — like personalised 1:1 service where you wait for 24/7 on someone’s every need.
The best solution is high-value but where you can provide it to many people at scale. Consider 1:1 coaching vs group coaching. You can provide similar value but at a much lower cost.
But the easiest way to get started for newbies is usually with a 1:1 high-value service. This is what I have started with. Another benefit is being a small newcomer, as you can usually go above and beyond in different areas that the big guys aren’t willing to, as it doesn’t scale.
Offer wrap up
So now that you have worked through all the action steps, you need to package it into a high-value offer. Here Hormozi recommends modifying the solution wording to give it a “sexier name for bundle”. For our mindfulness coach example, this could mean that the “Take them on a walking mediation” solution becomes the “Walk Your Way To Mindful Freedom” guided walk.
Once you put all this together, it will look so much more valuable than where you started.
The bundle does three core things:
1) Solves all the perceived problems (not just one)
2) Gives you the conviction that what you’re selling is one of a kind (very important)
3) Makes it impossible to compare or confuse your business or offering with the one down the street.
Alex Hormozi
So there you have it.
Work through this process, and you will have the bones of a unique, high-value offer. So you can charge high-value prices. Congrats, you are no longer a commodity.
As I mentioned earlier, dive into Hormozi’s book for the entire process to enhance your offer into a “Grand Slam Offer”. It’s dirt cheap on Amazon Kindle. And if you want to get more practical, Hormozi has a free course going through the process on his website.
I hope you found value in this summary. I’ve been scratching my own itch here as I’ve procrastinated on creating an offer for months.
So now I’m gonna get to work on mine.
And you should too!
Reflection
Get started on your high-value offer.
Follow the action steps above.
Review the book and course for more support.
A quote to ponder
Make people an offer so good they would feel stupid saying no.
Travis Jones, quoted in $100m Offers
What happened this week
YouTube
New episode – Don’t Forget To Show Your Work
I hit 1k followers this week! Nice to get a small win after putting in the effort. Here’s a celebratory post.
Birthday
It was my birthday this week. Here’s a special post I shared thanking my biggest teacher right now — my son.
I’ve started putting more effort into my IG stories, with video and a sequence of slides. I’m hoping to add more value than a generic re-share. I think people underuse this feature. It has much potential for growing and nurturing your true fans.
I won’t get time for this every day, but I’ll aim for 2-3 a week for now.
Final thoughts
Today’s writing background music playlist was Chill Beats on Spotify.
If you enjoyed this newsletter, please share it with a friend, and if you haven’t already, sign up here.
It would be great to have you on board!
Cheers!
Matt K. Head
When you’re ready, here’s how I can help you:
Coaching
- Find more meaning and fulfilment in your work
- Gain clarity and start taking action on your creative journey
