Offers That Work (for you AND your clients)

Dani Schnakenberg: Hey, folks, welcome to Offers That Work For You And Your Clients. Today, we are going to be exploring offer types that are a little left of normal and how they could work for you and your clients. Real quick. Hey, I’m Dani Schnakenberg. I own Simplified Business Systems, and I’m a serial entrepreneur turned business systems strategist. My focus is on helping entrepreneurs create businesses that work with their brains by identifying, implementing individualized systems to meet their needs. Whether you are neurodivergent, chronically ill, or just tired of doing things the normal way, this is for you. I’ll be exploring three offer types that I’ve incorporated into my own business as well as help my clients incorporate into theirs to create businesses that truly work for our brains and lifestyles.

A little bit more about me, short version. I was a late diagnosed combination type ADHD, yes, in my 30s. In addition to chronic illness, goodness. Definitely had it very easy through school and didn’t, until I entered university, find that things were difficult, which masked basically everything of my ADHD. Didn’t know that was even possibly a thing and just kept thinking something was wrong with me. I was failing because things should have definitely been easier and couldn’t figure out what they weren’t.

Getting diagnosed brought a lot of validation to my situation. It allowed me to have mindset changes around utilizing tools and being able to lean on systems and be okay with that. Not feel like, again, there was something wrong with me. Then I discovered that I’ve definitely been using systems as a coping mechanism, and that is fine. Necessary even. It allowed me to reframe the work that I had been doing for years to help entrepreneurs like me.

Now, before we get in, a little bit of housekeeping here, a reminder that not everything I share with you today will be applicable to your individual situation or needs. Take what works, learn from what doesn’t, move on. Everything really is about adjusting and applying. I’m sharing three offer types that I’ve used in my business that have worked for me. There are also things that clients and students of mine have successfully implemented some version of into their own business.

With each offer type that I talk about, I’m going to explain why I switched to that over its more like mainstream counterpart. I’m going to explain why it might work for you and your clients, why it might not. Like I said, not every idea is going to be applicable to every business type, lifestyle, or even your personal business preference. That’s perfectly okay.

Three offer types I’m going to be talking about are pick-my-brain sessions, which are really lovely, low-effort, high-impact, one-on-one service that works really well for multi-passionate experts. We’ll talk about member-driven memberships, which is a way to have a membership in that monthly recurring revenue without being constantly on the content creation hamster wheel and allows you to really meet your members where they are. Last, I’m going to talk about one that I call blueprint and implement and utilize this for done-for-you or done-with-you service types. It’s just an alternative structure that allows you to better scope and quote projects.

Let me look at my notes real quick and make sure that I haven’t missed anything before we really do jump in here. Just really switching to these things was one of the best things that I did for my business and my health, and it allowed me to just ditch those standard business models that I saw promoted by leaders in my industry. I had spent years trying to make those models work and my inability to follow through on those, the sorts of timelines, and that kind of thing left me really frustrated. Definitely, that’d be feeling like a failure as a business owner.

This was before I even had an inkling that I was neurodivergent or dealing with chronic illness even that I began restructuring my business to work for me. The catalyst for me was selling our home and moving our five kids into an RV and beginning nomad life. Those typical business models weren’t really going to work when I was in a tiny space with internet. I wasn’t really ready to go to like the fully hands-off, more passive business model because I knew I really loved working directly with people, and I still do.

Again, in an effort to make today’s time as actionable as possible, I’m going to take you through the three offer structures that I use in my business. I’m going to talk about how that structure works, what issues it solved for me, compared to its more mainstream counterpart, and then how it’s been received by my audience, which ranges from universities and government agencies to neurodivergent solopreneurs and just about everything in between.

Let’s jump in. Let’s talk about pick-my-brain sessions. The name is a little bit tongue in cheek after being asked many, many times if someone could just pick my brain for a minute. Originally, I followed the normal advice to create solution-specific call types so that the client could book a session and know exactly what they were getting. You know what, on the surface, that’s solid advice, but in practice, it was a disaster for me, being a multi-passionate and functional expert in multiple platforms, offering specific session types for each thing I could help with resulted in way more offers than I wanted to deal with. Multiple coaches that I worked with suggested that I scale back and focus on only one area, one platform. That didn’t feel right either.

Enter the pick-my-brain session. With this more broad offer, I was able to create a single option for anyone wanting one-on-one help for me. On its landing page, I’m still able to describe all of the possible topics that someone could use that session to discuss but ultimately makes it easier for the client too, fewer decisions to make, and easier for me to manage on the backend. I simply include a space on the booking form for them to tell me what they would like to discuss, so I’m not joining the call in the dark.

At a more functional level though, I’m fond of this offer because it requires little independent work for me while providing massive value to the clients. I don’t need to prep anything before the call and then taking a look at what they want to cover. After the call, I have a very systemized follow-up process to send them the recording and any helpful links I may have mentioned during this session.

As implied by the name, solved a persistent problem of people not wanting to book a full one-hour consulting session because I just need to ask a few questions. There’s a reason that I have a 15-minute option, I do 15, 30, 45, and 60-minute options for this. Because I use automatic scheduling system, I have total control over, when these sessions can be booked, the spacing I want between them, and the max number I want in a day or week. This system also handles payment during booking and automates creating the Zoom link and sending a confirmation and sending reminders. Overall, this offer results in very little active admin work for me. All I have to do is show up, help them solve their problem. You know what? I love that.

Now, from the client perspective, this swap was actually received really well. My clients liked that the only decision they needed to make was how long they wanted the session to be. They no longer had to worry about choosing the wrong session type, or needing help in multiple areas and feeling like they needed to book multiple sessions to make that happen. This was really particularly helpful for those that knew they needed my help but weren’t exactly sure which area of my expertise would be most helpful, or that multiple would be. I also noticed after switching to this model that I had an increased number of repeat clients booking. The idea that they could pick a short pick-my-brain at any time felt more accessible than feeling like they needed to wait until I had an issue worthy of a full consulting session.

You want to twist on how to do this? While I enjoy doing these sessions via Zoom, since screen-sharing is often beneficial to the areas that I’m helping, it’s very tech-focused for me. If your area of expertise lends well to it, you could do these types of sessions via something like Voxer even. I do this occasionally to less technical topics, and you know what, it can be an absolutely lovely alternative.

To recap the nerd version-friendly aspects of this offer are that it’s a simple option for multi-passionate entrepreneurs. It lends itself well to being nearly completely automated except for the part where you get to happily help someone, and you can scale it up or down easily depending on your energy levels. I completely block out my calendar for booking these with like one week a month, because I know my head’s not going to be in it. All right, that’s pick-my-brain sessions.

Let’s move on to offer type number two, the member-driven memberships. I think it’s generally accepted that memberships can be a fantastic offer type since they do generate regularly recurring revenue. You know what, there’s pretty much a way to do a membership for any business type. When I first started my very first membership, I quickly found how the general normal model for memberships didn’t work well for my brain, namely that was the need to pump out new content on a reliable schedule. It was fine at first while the excitement was there, and I was full of ideas, but after a while, it got harder and harder to keep up with the whole dopamine-wearing-off thing. I saw this happen to myself and with other neurodivergent business owners. I knew it wasn’t just a me issue.

Enter the member-driven membership model. Essentially, you’re removing the aspect of the membership that’s relying on you to constantly come up with new content. Now, my member-driven membership offer consists of the option for members to submit a weekly question on any topic that’s in my wheelhouse. They also get access to the library of all previous questions that have been asked. I do an extra like office hour days via Voxer for members only. I call this membership Just Ask Dani, and it has been so much fun for me.

Now, this works really well for me because it allows me to spend time answering people’s questions, which is something that I love and find really easy to do rather than struggling to come up with questions. It also gives me an easy place to direct people who are popping up my inbox of questions but aren’t quite the type that need a pick-my-brain session.

You know what? This big mindset change I had to make with this type of membership is that there are members who will join and never ask a question. It’s okay if there are weeks where there are no questions being asked. Some people are just there so that they have access if and when they need it, or they found their question was already answered in the archive library, especially the longer the membership has gone on, the more often that happens.

Coming from the generally accepted model that membership should be fueled by you creating new content regularly, this was actually hard for me at first, but now I love it. What goes into your membership can absolutely vary. It’s the expectations you’re setting that matter. You know what? I’ve had clients adapt this to be just a Voxer access membership or a template-valued membership, where there’s like no content added on the specific timeline. It’s only added when people request a specific template, which works really well for some people.

There are just so many options, but the key here is that you are promising new content, but not necessarily on a schedule. It’s not necessarily a regular steady stream of new content, but it is the ability for them to access what you’ve already created and request new things. Again, there is a wide possibility of ways that you can put this into practice depending on how your business works, what you create, how you help people.

My clients have shared that they’d love this type of offer because it feels like having me in their pocket whenever they need me, but with a clear expectation and boundaries for accessing my knowledge and expertise. Bonus, I’ve noticed that it has a much higher retention rate than my previous content-based memberships did. The core story here is that you get to shape your membership around the things that you actually like doing and drop the things that you don’t.

In my case, I love, love, love, love, love answering people’s questions. That’s my absolute favorite thing to do. I do not love having to come up with new content each week, particularly when it’s on the same topic. I didn’t do some templates before and, man, I bring out that I love making notion templates. I love talking notion, but constantly having to come up with a new template every week was exhausting for me. I’ve found that anytime I’ve tried to do something that is super niche down, like that topic is in that, you’re really dealing with that one topic over and over again, that it can get pretty difficult pretty quickly.

What you love might be the opposite. Shape yours around that. Not all memberships need to be structured the same way and you get to mold yours to fit your specific needs. I’m just encouraging you here to look outside of the box of what the normal membership contains, how a normal membership functions, and figure out what feels good for you.

All right, last one. Let’s talk here about the blueprint and implement, which is a alternate structure for done-for-you or done-with-you service types. These service types are my kryptonite. They were the thing that made me feel most like a failure as a business owner. No matter how hard I tried to systemize it, these projects ended up being bigger than I estimated or either myself or the client would struggle to meet the deadlines and throw everything off.

How I structured mine going forward helped with some of these specific issues that I was facing. As a whole, I want you to take this as an example to consider alternative ways to structure your offers, even if they go completely against the grain. Not necessarily the structure I’m getting ready to share, but just to encourage you to break down the process that you go through and look for other ways that you can structure your services.

Now, to combat the issue of struggling with properly scoping projects, which I know I’m not alone in, I know so many people struggle with this. It really does depend on what type of service you’re offering. For me, I dropped the free 20-minute consult call and went to a paid 90-minute blueprint session. I still occasionally do those 20-minute consult calls early, but we’re not digging in and I am not quoting off of it, but it might tell me if they’re going to be a good candidate to go into a blueprint session if I don’t know that upfront. Not that I never do those free consults, but they’re not my go-to.

I love the blueprint session because these sessions are more in-depth compared to like a pick-my-brain session, and I charge accordingly for that. Pick-my-brain, if I’m doing any work around the blueprint session, I am going to do some work going in. I do charge significantly more for these. Doing this allows me to see behind the curtain of what they already have going on, what they’re looking to accomplish, and we actually map out what it will take to get them there. By taking that deeper dive, I can more accurately quote the work.

These blueprint sessions, going in and doing that deep dive into what they’re wanting to accomplish, what they want me to help them work on, what work needs to be done. It also provides a unique opportunity that I refer to as an off-ramp because I’m separating out the blueprint stage from the implement stage. Either myself or the client can choose to take that off-ramp between the stages.

After everything’s mapped out, we get to decide if we’re going to move together into the implement stage. It might turn out that what they really need is outside of my wheelhouse, but now they know from the blueprint what they need and exactly the type of help that they need to look for. Maybe the solution was actually simpler than they anticipated and they can implement it themselves from the blueprint we created. Possibly the blueprint helps them realize just how big of a project it is. That makes my quote feel more understandable and realistic than what it might have without actually going through all those steps with them.

Overall, this change really has helped me avoid underestimating projects and given both myself and my client a graceful way to pivot if we get into it and realize that it’s going in a different direction than we planned or it’s way more than we planned. Sometimes we even figure out that they actually have all of the structure in place and they don’t really need somebody to come in and fix it. They need something more like a VA to actually implement daily, weekly going forward.

It’s so fun to see all the different paths things can take when we separate that out versus quoting out a big project and then getting into it and realizing what they told me they need, what they explained actually wasn’t in practice what they needed. This does lend itself to the type of work I do simply because I’m not building a website. I’m usually helping actually build the systems that make up their processes and things like that, which means there’s a lot more variance.

If you are somebody that is building websites or doing something that’s more, I don’t know, like paint by numbers, like that type of project, you may find that this works out differently for you. My encouragement here is to separate things out. I recognize this is somewhat unique to the work that I do is the complexity of my projects can vary drastically.

I also know that for many of my clients who initially offered some sort of free console or discovery call, switching to a paid session with some sort of actionable outcome has made the process feel better for both them and their clients. It’s not always the right option for everyone or every industry, but it’s worthwhile to consider, whether or not there’s a way to split your larger projects into separate pieces or pivot your early steps into a more valuable format, more valuable for you and for your clients.

That was a lot, guys. Thank you for attending this session, watching this session. I hope that as I went through those three different offer types and how I have tweaked them to work for my brain has given you some ideas of how you might be able to pivot some of your existing offers into something that works a little bit better for you.

I really do encourage you to sit down and think about what parts of your offers are difficult for you or simply not fun for you versus what parts of the offers really do mean a lot to you, bring you a lot of joy, because it is important to know what parts are fun and what parts are not, and try and find ways to highlight the parts that you, and what’s the word I’m looking for? Dim, I guess, the parts that you don’t. It can work even if you were going completely against the grain of whatever coaches, or I don’t want to use the word guru, but those people in your industry have said, “This is the way to do things.” That is not always the case.

I really do encourage you to break your projects, your offers, products, services into pieces and figure out how you can put them back together in a way that works better for you, eliminating or reducing or automating the parts that are difficult and highlighting the parts that you really enjoy. I’ve done it. I have implemented this in my business and it’s helped so, so much. Even though every once in a while, I ended up working with a business coach that just cannot believe I’m doing things the way I’m doing, but I know that it works for me and I know that it works for my clients. I know what works for other clients of mine that have implemented similar things.

Again, not everything I talked about today I know will apply to your business. Maybe you don’t do done-for-you or done-with-you services. Maybe you don’t like ever doing live calls. Maybe memberships are not for you, but I hope that you found something as I went through these that allowed you to think differently about something that you are offering.

Now, I do have a freebie for you guys. I have a free workshop. I call it the Feeling Like You Want to Burn it All Down workbook. It is really an exercise that you go through in this workbook for reevaluating your business, what to keep, what to build, and what to burn, because sometimes we do need to burn part of it. This workbook, this exercise is great, whether you’re approaching burnout or it’s just time to reflect and review. Maybe you’re not ready to burn it down, but it’s just time to see where things are at.

This workbook guides you through my favorite exercise for reevaluating your business ecosystem. It does go down into like, “Hey, what do I enjoy? What parts are difficult?” A lot of what I talked about in looking at the different parts of your business and seeing if you can restructure this exercise does go through it. Again, it’s great if you are really in that approaching burnout, “Oh my God, I want to burn it all down.” If it’s just, time to reflect and review a little bit, take a peek at how things are going in your business.

You guys have the link below. I do encourage you to download this workbook and give it a try. Probably one of my favorite exercises that I walk clients through, and I hope you guys enjoy it too. Again, thank you guys so much for being here with me today. Do feel free to reach out if you have any questions, and I can’t wait to hear what you guys have. Thank you.