As a newer coach or consultant, there are two paths people tend to choose from, and one path they get stuck on.
Now, what do I mean by newer?
That could mean you’re just launching your coaching or consulting business, but it could also mean you’re jumping into a new niche. Maybe you’re well known in your real estate space, but you’re jumping into a much bigger space like personal development. Or you’ve been involved in big companies with big brands, but you were behind the scenes. So you have credibility, but not a lot of name recognition.
These are all very common scenarios, and I love the strategy decisions at this stage.
So here are the two paths in terms of what you offer and how big of an audience you try to build.
You can either go big audience and small prices, or small audience and big prices.
Those are the best two options, but the absolute worst option is the path where people often get stuck – small audience and small prices. That’s a recipe for frustration.
So which of the paths is better for you? Should you go for building a big audience and sell them a digital program or course? Or should you go straight to the most valuable slice of the market and cater to them?
First, ask yourself what kind of assets you have on hand.
Do you have….
Big email list or social audience, relationships with big influencers with big followings,
capital to run a list-building campaign like a summit or physical event or energy, time and connections to speak at events consistently?
If you don’t have most of those things, starting with a low price offer just isn’t a good idea in today’s climate. Why? Because the world has changed. Social media especially has changed.
It takes more time, energy and cash to build an audience than it did 5 or 10 years ago.
Bigger brands have jumped in with big budgets, so Facebook and Instagram ads aren’t cheap anymore. Building your email list on ads is pricey and requires a steep learning curve. And side note, if you think hiring a Facebook ads agency is the solution, think again. I have yet to run across a client who has retained a Facebook ad agency for longer than 12 months.
So you might think, “I’ll just continue posting to social media, I can build a bigger audience organically if I just put more content out.”Not necessarily.
To build a following on social media today, you have to play by the rules of Facebook and Instagram at a high level, and even then there are no guarantees.
If you enjoy social media and you’d be there even if it didn’t make you any money, by all means, spend time there. But if you’re like me and you look at social media as a necessary evil at best, then growing a big audience organically won’t be the best answer for you.
Here’s what tends to happen when you’re a newer coach or consultant and you choose the path of building a big audience and selling something with a small price tag.
You spend a ton of time creating your offer, your product, your funnel, then you realize building an audience or an email list isn’t cheap or easy.
People are distrustful, you don’t yet have big name recognition, so you have to overcome more barriers. If you run ads, they have to be that much better to cut through the noise. So the ads that might work for big names in your space won’t work for you.
And at the end of the day, you’re likely to get stuck on that third path – small audience and small prices.
So what’s the solution? In the MicroFamous book, I talk about going after the most valuable slice of the market and establishing a Home Base first. So I want to pull out some things from that chapter that are relevant to newer coaches and consultants.
A Home Base is a leadership position we’ve built with a specific group of like minded people in our niche. Serving this group allows us to experiment and develop our tools and systems faster to a higher level, and it’s where we can dig in and deliver big results to our first round of clients. A Home Base is like a base camp on a mountain expedition.
It’s a place we can build from that supports our overall mission to reach the summit.
As our tools and systems get better and take less time and effort to deliver results to that core group of clients, we start to build up surpluses – profit, time, energy, capital, etc.
We can then invest those surpluses into a new round of growth. That’s a great time to look at group coaching, digital programs, courses, or investing to grow our audience with something like a podcast. In my podcast production agency, that’s the point where most newer coaches or consultants land on my doorstep. They’ve built up surpluses of time, energy and profit they want to invest, and they want to keep growing.
But it all starts with carefully choosing your path – Big audience and small prices – which is very tough to build starting out – or Small audience and big prices. Much easier.
So if you’re a coach or consultant who is newer to the scene, or you’re jumping into a bigger niche where you aren’t well known, that’s the path I recommend.
To me, the best time to jump into low price offers like digital courses is when you have more demand for you than you can handle either in individual or in group settings.
Of course you can find success stories of people who’ve done the opposite, like Tai Lopez for example, who apparently sold his interest in a couple of night clubs and online dating sites to fund his 67 Steps program.
The path of building a Home Base, serving a small audience with big price offers gives a massive advantage to those who are patient.
If you’re willing to grow slowly rather than fail quickly, building a Home Base is the path I’d recommend.