174 | You Might Be Confusing Your Audience (Here's How I Confused Mine)

This is Grow the Show, the podcast to help you grow your war podcast. My name is Kevin Switzerland, I am your podcast growth coach and today is going to be a little bit of an introspective episode where I'm going to share with you a lesson that I have recently learned more than once. Unfortunately, I'm going to share what it means for you and hopefully give you a word of caution so you can avoid the lesson that I just learned. And basically what we're going to talk about today is your offers. So this is for you if you offer a product or service behind your podcast, maybe you're a business owner and your goal is to convert your listeners to customers of your product or service, or if you don't have a core offer that you sell your audience yet, but you are thinking about creating one and selling it, this will be impactful to you as well. So I'm going to be totally candid here. I feel a little humbled and embarrassed because I actually made a solo episode about this very similar lesson just like three months ago, declaring that I have learned my lesson and I'm not going to make the same mistake again. And then for this up and then for the subsequent three to four months, I continue to make that same mistake and that mistake is having too many offers. So just this past week, my partner Chris got on a welcome call with several new members of the Grow the Show Academy who had joined at $97 per month and virtually all of them expressed tons of confusion about what the Grow the Show Academy is, how much it costs, what you get in it. On the same day, I had a sales call for our Grow the Show accelerator program and that person expressed immense confusion as to what that is, what the mastermind is that I launched, what the live event is that I launched and he basically said, I know you have the loads of offers and I have no idea which one is right for me. So I was hoping you could just walk me through what they are and tell me which one I should buy. And so as I said that, I was like, ah, man, it hurt me because I was like, man, I'm still confusing the people in my audience. And then later that day, Chris told me what had been shared on the Grow the Show welcome call where he said, yeah, man, people are pretty confused. I was like, damn, I really, I really did not learn the lesson as I declared that I did in an earlier episode this year. And so essentially here's what's happened basically for the first three years of this company of Grow the Show, I had one offer. It was the Grow the Show accelerator, a high ticket coaching program and that was it. That was all that we had. And on one hand, it was really nice to have the simplicity of just only having one offer. We have this one thing. That is it. Either, you know, join it or don't. And it was nice, you know, having that type of simplicity, yes or no, it makes it really, really easy to make decisions. But after three or four years, I heard from tons of people all around. I heard from other people in the Grow the Show audience for whom the super high ticket program wasn't a good fit. I heard from employees and teammates here at Grow the Show. And I heard from coaches and other online creators and influencers that I follow that I should consider diversifying and have multiple streams of revenue and multiple products that people can buy. Well, you know, after three years of only having one offer, it sounded really cool to do that, to have multiple offer, multiple points, you know, multiple price points and everything. And for the past like year-ish, I've kind of taken that too far. And what I've learned is that without the structural simplicity of only having one offer, I found that I didn't have the discipline to limit the amount of offers and limit the amount of price points that I have. And so once I opened Pandora's Box and started offering different price points and different products and services, I pretty much offered every price point in every product and service. So just to name a few, this year I launched a mastermind. I launched a $97 all day event. I've had many different price points and offer points for the Grow the Show Academy. So the price to that has ranged from $97 a month all the way up to $2,400 a year. Every different iteration of the price included different things and differing level of service. So it was not the same price for the same thing. Some of them included tons of coaching calls, some of them included, you know, done for your work, some of them included none of that. And indeed, I still have sold the Grow the Show accelerator program, which is a four-month, you know, really intense podcast growth coaching program. So throughout this time, I've had all these different offers. And you know, if you are new to Grow the Show, if you've recently discovered us, you may be feeling a little confused right now. If you've been with us for a while, I know that there, I've heard from tons of folks that are like, dude, what are you doing? Like, there's just so much going on right now. And quite frankly, it just, I just kind of lost the handle on it. And really what I found myself doing is wanting to make it so that everybody could have a way to work with us at a price point that was right for them. That is the big mistake that I've made and that is what I have been optimizing for for the last year. And you know, you might have already learned this lesson before. You might experience this when you're selling things. And my word of caution to you is to be careful not to try to add a price point for every single person who tells you what they want to pay. Because that's what I've done. I tend to be a people pleaser. And so people have been like, well, I just want to pay monthly. Well, I don't want to come into a year. Well, I want to get one-on-one coaching. Well, I want this. I want that. And so I've just been like, okay, okay, okay. And then I, you know, wake up one day. It's a year later. I myself with like eight different offers, several with the same name and a huge audience of people that are really confused as to what to do or what it is that we do here at Grow the Show other than the podcast anyway. So like I said, I'm humbled to share this because I made a solo episode earlier this year that I called the one to one million rule where I advised to stick with just one offer until that offer makes a million dollars. However, my company has already surpassed a million dollars. We're closing in on the three million dollar mark in total revenue over the past four years. And so, you know, I'm already past the one to one million dollar rule, but I don't know a rule for after a million dollar. Is it two to ten million? I'm not really sure. So without, you know, me intentionally putting a guideline behind it and saying, no, we need to make sure that we optimize one or two offers to Grow the Company. I just kind of went ham and said, yes, let's add all of them. Multiple streams of revenue. Keep everybody happy. So again, what that has done is caused tons of confusion, even folks that have joined the Grow the Show Academy or joined the Grow the Show Accelerator or match to the show have all been confused as to what they get, what it comes with, all those different things. So Chris Jordan, who I mentioned before, working with us here at Grow the Show, visited Miami this past week. We had a wonderful two day session where we dove deep into what we want to achieve here at Grow the Show for the next year. And one of the first things that we committed to was we need to simplify our offer stack. So as of today, we have two offers. It is the Grow the Show Accelerator, which is a four month, one on one, intensive coaching program. And then we've got the Grow the Show Academy, which is a year long coaching program that is a lower investment and a little bit less intense, a little bit more go at your own pace. And the big change is that once and for all, we are no longer offering monthly membership into the Grow the Show Academy. This was the big decision that we made because what we found is that those who commit to a year get results faster because they are committed to a year. And they are also more engaged in the community. They come to the coaching calls, they ask questions, they watch the videos, whereas many folks who have joined at the $97 per month mark have not been that engaged. And I know I can speak for my own experience that when I pay $97 for something, I never use it. I never consume it. And I'm just like, you know, I'm just like, oh, yeah, let's, we'll see how that is. And then what happens is I don't consume it because I'm not invested in it. And then if it's $97 a month, I cancel right away. So I'm like, well, I'm not even using this. Why should I, why should I keep paying for it? Whereas when I commit to a year in advance and I pay in advance and I am much more committed, then I use the damn thing. And yes, there are moments where I'm like, oh, man, I can't believe I bought this thing. I better get the most out of it. And then I get the most out of it. But on top of that is just quite frankly, from a business perspective, $97 a month is not enough to be profitable and for it to make sense. And for us to provide a level of service that we want to provide. Finally, I don't know if you're somebody who's in the online coaching space, you might be noticing that a lot of online coaches are moving towards monthly membership models where you get access to all of the courses, all of the training and you can cancel anytime. I've joined a couple of those. It's really hot right now. People are using this platform called school. And that's what everybody's going. Like everyone do monthly. But honestly, I don't think I believe in it because of what I just described where I really don't think that customers and clients are going to get results if they, you know, commit a small amount of monthly and are able to leave whenever because we're human beings. And the more that we invest, the more we will be invested, right? The more you pay, the more you pay attention. And on top of that, from a podcast growth perspective, I'm here to tell you right now, a podcast cannot be grown in one month. So when you pay monthly for something every month, you're like, hmm, should I pay for another month of this? And I'm just telling you right now, when you join the Grow the Show Academy, your show is not going to explode in 30 days. It takes time to implement the systems that we teach. And so for that reason, we will be requiring everybody that we work with in the Grow the Show Academy to commit to a year. Now the other thing that I'll add is that we are for the first time offering payment plans for the Grow the Show Academy because that was a big question that we got a lot. Folks would ask, hey, is there any way that we can split this up? And in the past, I said, either no, or I said, yes, let's do a monthly membership model where you can split it up in that way. But the difference is, but the key difference is there's a difference between being committed to something for a month and being committed to something for a year. So from now on, all Grow the Show Academy members must commit to a year in the program in order to join, but we do allow payment plans for the first time. You are able to make equal monthly payments for the first four months in the program to split things up, that will be easier for cash flow. So in conclusion, this solo episode was very, very much from the hip. I considered republishing a guest episode today from last year, but I decided kind of at the last second, I would just share with you this raw reflection on what's going on with Grow the Show. And you know, if you're somebody who's been confused as to what we offer, now you know, we offer two things. The Grow the Show Accelerator, a one-on-one coaching program. You can apply to that in the show notes if you want. Grow the Show Academy, which is a year-long membership learning program. The link to join that is in the show notes. And again, my hope for you is, regardless of whether or not you already work with us or ever work with us, is to share with you this lesson that I have repeatedly learned, to not have too many offers, not change it too much, and not to confuse your audience because the confused mind says no. So that is my raw reflection for today. If you liked this more informal and raw solo episode, and if you liked hearing me sort of reflect on the inner journey of this business, rather than just talking about how you can grow your podcast, please let me know. Email us at podcaste Grow the Show.com or let me know on Instagram at Kevin Schmidland. If you thought this was valuable and if you would like to hear more raw business reflections, if you think it would serve you in your journey. So that's going to do it for today. Next week, we are going to be back with a guest episode. I've mentioned Chris Jordan several times. He's recently joined us here at Grow the Show, absolute all-star. Next week, you're going to learn from him the lessons that he learned growing several top 100 podcasts. So Chris is a former producer of Lewis House School of Greatness. He's also worked with several other big-time creators to grow their audiences. He is now with us here at Grow the Show. And so next week, I will be interviewing him to share the lessons that he has learned and introduce him to you because you're going to be hearing a lot more of Chris here on the Grow the Show podcast in the future. So that's going to do it today. I hope you have a fantastic week. Once again, let me know if you liked this episode or if you didn't. If you don't want episodes like this and you want me to just stick to podcast growth, let me know. Either way, happy to hear it. And finally, hopefully, if you're confused about what we offer at Grow the Show, hopefully today we have cleared that up. So that's going to do it. My name is Kevin Schildland. And I will see you next week.