James Schramko here with my friend Ron Reich.
Hello, Ron, how are you going?
Hello James, how's it going? Great to be here as always.
Good we have these little chats.
And today's topic is how many courses you should be having
or offers or products in your bundle, if you like, as you go out to the market.
I mean, obviously, as you start out, there's a few different approaches you could go.
You can try all different things and see if one of them takes;
so you could go wide and shallow.
You could go really, really deep into something.
But then you run into problems like is this thing ever going to work or not?
And decide whether it's a sunk cost
or whether you're just one inch away from the gold?
And then of course you find something that works.
But then, you know, I've experienced this too...
Do you keep adding products?
Do you adjust the product you've got?
How many can you actually handle?
And so all these complexities come up that when you get under the surface,
it's probably about a quarter of the stuff I do
is actually product strategy and "toe" the right thing.
What has your experience been with this,
and when you're coaching students on this?
Yeah, exactly. All the questions you have are really,
really good questions. I mean, when it really comes down to it,
especially to go from six to seven figures,
and really, of course, to get to your first six figures,
you really just need one offer.
Definitely one offer to get to your first six figures,
really no more than two to three offers to get to seven figures,
in my experience and the experience that
my students and the people I've worked with.
And the whole thing is is like,
the secret to having a great offer is to have a great offer.
And the way you find out a great offer is the market decides.
So the way you do it is to go out there and sell something
to the market and see what catches, essentially.
And then sometimes that doesn't work.
And so then you got to go back to the drawing board.
If you keep that, if you keep listening to the market,
keep listening to their feedback,
you're going to find something that's going to hook.
So you're kind of maybe a little bit wide
or be willing to be a little bit wide at first.
But then once you find the thing that works that has traction,
then we really want to more or less to put a lot of our marbles into that,
at least as we get to our first you know, 100,000, couple of $100,000 a year in revenue.
And then we can add more complexity with more offers and things like that.
What are your thoughts?
I agree with this.
Like, yes. I had to go a little bit broad to find my thing that took.
And this is a major problem in the online space,
people are selling step-by-step courses.
But of course, you can't just start a step-by-step course
and predictably get an offer to take.
As you know, there's a little bit more voodoo magic / luck
around getting that offer that it takes.
Absolutely.
And people get crushed.
Because they go out, they spend a lot of money on a course,
they follow every step. And still don't succeed,
because they're coming at it from their perspective,
and their expert's step-by-step system.
But what they haven't necessarily catered into there
is some of the luck factors or whether they can find the right offer
or get the right- copy is often something that's super weak.
They might have a good offer, they might have a good market,
but they're not able to convey the value in that.
So you actually need a lot of things to go well to get an offer that works.
And I agree with you.
Once you've tried a few things and you're getting something to work,
that's the time to put all the marbles in that pot, like go deeper on that thing.
That's what I did. When I started out, I went into affiliate marketing,
and I found my offer and it was to build website software.
And I was an affiliate for this software.
And that's where I made my first $100,000.
That was half of what got me to quit my job,
because I was then able to stack other offers on.
But over time, I did what everyone else does, you start adding too many offers.
Yeah, absolutely.
And your attention gets diffused.
And if you do look at my business today, I've essentially got around three offers.
After all my time online and all the experience I've had,
I'm essentially just focusing on my three.
Now the only way that I've found to go broader than that
and to not lose focus is to partner with people, with guys like you;
I help you grow your business, I help other people grow their business
and they've got that sole dedication and focus and depth
that you need to do to go to the six-figure to seven-figure and beyond.
So I agree with you.
Try a few things, get the offer that goes, and then pile on.
And one sense that really helped me a lot is
do more of what's working.
If you've got something in your portfolio and it's working, do more.
Back to you and then I'll give one more little power tip.
One thing I just want to echo that you said
and, I give this information to clients,
it's hard to see the picture when we're inside the frame.
And what I'm getting at is that, I myself when I look back
at the biggest mistakes I've made over the last couple of years
when it comes to like, or just in my career generally,
it's always adding that other offer
thinking I could do you know, too many things at once.
Or thinking I could get this funnel working while I'm still in.
It's just like if I had to go back in time,
the big thing I would always tell myself is,
don't do that. Just focus on your one offer,
just focus on your one market, and you'd be a lot better off.
So I just wanted to echo what you said,
even big guys make those kinds of mistakes.
Exactly. And one of my favorite theories is the catamaran theory.
And that's where you have two offers.
And ideally, they're somewhat aligned,
where they're sharing the trampoline, and they're sharing the sail,
and, you know, if one gets a hole in the hull,
the other one can still float you back to shore.
So you've got some protection and redundancy built in.
That's why it's so tempting to have more than one.
But I think the bigger problem is that most visionary entrepreneurs
just keep coming up with ideas, and they get bored quickly.
And when the going gets tough on that making that offer deeper,
it's just far easier and more attractive to start something new
and to get excited and romantic about the new idea.
So contain that excitement. Limit yourself to two things.
And if you're going to add an offer to what you've got,
I would suggest you go around that exact same thing.
But make it more expensive and cater for a smaller market.
I call this 10% 10x -
10% of your existing audience will probably pay 10 times more,
that has panned out for me.
So if you're getting bored,
and you need to add another offer to your existing offer,
and you really want to hit the accelerator,
come up with something of much higher value
that costs a lot more that you could deal with a smaller volume.
And usually if you just add that to what you've got,
that's your offer's extension.
And that way you're still staying in the same field.
All that work you've done is still worthwhile,
you've probably got access to the clients
and you can get some really easy wins doing that.
Absolutely, that's exactly what my business model currently looks like.
I have essentially my mastermind which is where I
put most of my time and energy and then I do have some
for a much more significant investment.
I have like my super premium one-on-one clients
as kind of that 10% 10x rule.
So exactly. Keeping it simple, just like you recommend.
Love it. If you want to have a chat to Ron, RonReich.com.
Great chatting again, Ron, I appreciate it.
And let's keep exchanging these great coaching ideas.
I always love talking with you. Great stuff. Talk soon.