This show is called What Works for a reason.

Sometimes it’s a declaration: this is what worked for this small business. And often, it’s a question, “What works?”

Today’s episode is very much a question, many questions, really:

* What works when it comes to selling when you want to avoid manipulative or exploitative practices?* What works when your values conflict with many of the best practices of selling online but you still want people to buy your stuff?* What works when it comes to sales in a business that is actively anti-racist and anti-capitalist?

And even more bluntly: Can you even sell things without causing harm or perpetuating harmful systems?

My friend Kate Strathmann is the founder of Wanderwell, a bookkeeping and consulting firm that grows thriving businesses while investigating new models for being in business.

Recently, Kate took a bit of a detour from how she’s used to building her business, which is 90% referral based and fueled by deep relationship- and community-building. She decided to offer a small group program called the Equitable Business Incubator as a way of exploring anti-capitalist business practices and how they apply to the small businesses we’re building.

To fill the program, Kate need to sell differently.

Which led her to asking the question: Can you even sell things as a anti-capitalist?

While that might not be your specific question, I have a feeling that you too have wondering how you can effectively sell your offers without causing harm, perpetuating harmful systems, or damaging relationships. And that’s why I knew Kate and I needed to explore this topic on the show.

This is a conversation about what a kinder, less harmful sales process could look like—and it probably contains more questions than answers. But I’m confident those questions can help you find the answers that are right for you and the sales system that you want to build to make your business stronger.

We start out by defining what we’re really talking about when we talk about capitalism and anti-capitalism. Then, Kate shares how the Equitable Business Incubator came to be and how she ended up selling it. And then we dig into what makes many of the sales formulas and best practices being taught today problematic—and how to think differently to create your own alternative practices.

Now, let’s take a look at what works for creating less harmful sales systems!

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Mighty Networks powers brands and businesses – like yours! – that bring people together.With a Mighty Network, online business owners just like you can bring together in one place:

* Your website* Your content* Your courses* Your community* Your events online and in real life* And charge for them…all while building YOUR brand.

Visit mightynetworks.com to see more examples of brands bringing people together and taking their businesses to the next level.

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In This Episode:

* How Katie Hunt adapted her largely events-based business in the wake of Covid-19* Why a product she’d been working on since December 2019 was the key to serving her people in the most valuable way* How Katie adjusted the messaging and marketing campaign to reflect the current state of affairs* A complete breakdown of the social media posts and email messages that made her sales campaign a smash when it was time to launch

There are a lot of misconceptions about what it takes to launch and sell a new online course or program.

Heck, there are a lot of misconceptions about selling in general—but this is just one podcast episode.

“Launching”—depending on when and where you started your small business—means many different things. I’ve talked to plenty of people who swear it’s not a launch if you don’t have a Facebook ad funnel. Others will swear it’s not a launch if there isn’t a 3-part video series to warm up your audience. Still others will swear it’s not a launch if you don’t have a list of 15,000 people to blast with 30 different emails.

Launching a new online course or program has become so misunderstood and, simultaneously, blown out of proportion, that I often outlaw the use of the word! As my friend Amy Walsh once said, “Launching is for rockets.”

Instead of launching, I plan—and talk about—sales campaigns.

Today, we’re diving straight into an incredibly successful sales campaign to get the nuts and bolts of what worked.

When the economy ground to a halt earlier this year, many small businesses were forced to think fast and make big changes on the fly. At this point, we’re probably all familiar with the local restaurant that figured out an ingenious takeout model or the local clothing store that created virtual shopping appointments or the local yoga studio that started sharing classes, workshops, and meditations online.

And while many digital small business owners kept operating business as usual—or as usual as one can operate in a pandemic—there were a few groups that were deeply affected by the shutdowns.

Two of those groups were small business owners running in-person events as a component of their otherwise online business and small business owners who depend on trade shows for the majority of their wholesale orders.

Today’s guest is Katie Hunt—who is a member of the former group and serves the latter group.

Katie is the founder of Proof To Product, which helps creative entrepreneurs run and grow thriving product-based businesses. She works with designers, illustrators, and artists to help them develop in-demand product lines and get them sold in stores all over the world.

Not long after the pandemic threw her business and the industry she serves for a major loop, Katie and her team launched Proof To Product Labs to provide a completely digital, ongoing support opportunity for business owners when they needed it most.

And that launch was a smash.

Katie and I get into all of the nuts and bolts of how she adjusted the offer to meet the moment and how she warmed up her audience before the campaign, as well as the exact mix of emails, podcast ads, and social media content she used to sell the offer when it went live. We also talk about how she sees the sales system evolving in the future and how the offer has been received now that people are using it!

Now,

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In This Episode:

* How attorney Autumn Witt Boyd discovered that she’d over-automated the sales process for her law firm* The adjustments that she made to get her sales process back on track—and why she chose to put a human touch on it* What steps a potential new clients goes through in Autumn’s hybrid sales system* How her values are reflected in the way her business does sales now

We all have a story about a bad salesperson.

Ask my husband about buying a car and he’ll tell you about the time he and his ex-wife got trapped in a user car lot when they refused to make an offer on a car that was well over their budget.

It’s cliche—but true.

If this is the kind of story you think about when you think about sales, it’s no wonder that selling your own products or services would be a challenge.

But this is not what your sales system needs to look like to be effective.

You can be a kind, generous, and human sales person and be incredibly effective.

This month, we’re talking sales.

We’re going to get into the human side of sales in a minute or two. But first, I think we need to make an important distinction here: marketing is not sales. Sales is not marketing.

Can there be overlap? Sure. Does one often support the other? You bet.

But marketing and sales are not the same thing.

In fact, an intentional, proven sales system is often one of the missing pieces of a business that almost works—but isn’t quite there.

You can’t market your butt off and expect it to just materialize into purchases—you have to sell.

So then, what is sales?

Sales is the system that presents the offer, answers any questions or objections, and then makes the ask and closes the deal.

Sales tends to happen a little more behind the scenes—which is why it’s one of the more misunderstood parts of running a small business. It often happens in an email, on the phone, or even in person.

Our goal for this series on sales is to demystify the process and give you a look at what really works when it comes to selling your service, your program, or your product. We’re even going to take a look at sales through a feminist or anti-capitalist lens.

To kick things off, I thought it was fitting to talk with a lawyer—another profession known for their sales techniques… about how she moved away from impersonal, automated sales processes and into a more human way of selling—and why that generated better results for her firm.

Today, I’m talking with my friend Autumn Witt Boyd, the founder of The AWB Firm, which specializes in helping online business owners protect what they’ve built.

Autumn and I talk about why she started tinkering with her sales process in the first place, the speed bumps she experienced along the way, why her sales process ended up too automated, and how she’s taken a more human approach and actually gotten much better results.

Now, let’s find out what works for Autumn Witt Boyd!

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The market is constantly changing.

New technology, new trends, new players.

We can either treat the constant changing and uncertainty as a threat…

…or we can treat it as an invitation to see everything we do as a work in progress.

All this month, we’ve been looking at the process of value creation–how we wind up building the products and services we sell.

We heard from Alisha Robertson about how she turned her book into the idea for a membership community. India Jackson shared how she she went from modeling to photography to running a brand visibility agency. And we heard from Michelle Markwart Deveaux about how she took a tried-and-maybe-not-so-true model for offering voice teaching services and turned it on its head to improve how she delivered value AND to make more money.

Along the way, I also shared stories from my own companies about how things have evolved and what I’ve learned as things have changed about the ways I create and deliver value–from business support to podcast production to leadership development.

So back to change and uncertainty…

…like I said, change and uncertainty is a given.

There is absolutely no point in fighting it–trying to get things exactly right or anticipate what’s going to happen next.

And you know what? That’s great!

Because at this point, it should be clear that creating value is always a work in progress.

As the market changes, our offers can evolve.

As we learn more, we can try new things.

The challenge in this is actually treating your business as a work-in-progress.

So often, I see business owners work in fits & starts–trying to solve one piece of the puzzle once and for all… only to get frustrated, take a break, and then find something else to fixate on for a while.

Whether it’s creating value, making your systems more efficient, or growing your audience… the trick to treating your business as a work in progress is consistent action. Business-building has to be a habit, not a one-off project you have to get right.

To make business-building a habit, you need a solid system to focus on what matters, a structure of getting the work done, and the support of peers and mentors who can inspire you to keep going.

That’s exactly what we do at The What Works Network.

When you join The What Works Network, you commit to making business-building a habit. Each month, we give you the focus, structure, and support you need to take your work in progress and make it a little stronger.

Together, we take consistent, strategic action to build a more effective, efficient, and sustainable business.

The What Works Network is accepting new members right now through the end of August.

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Hey, it’s Tara McMullin, and this is a special bonus episode of What Works, the show that gives you a behind-the-scenes look at how small business owners take decisive action to build a stronger business.

This is the third and final episode in a series on how I’ve approached creating and delivering value through the products and services I’ve offered over the years.

In the first episode of the series, I shared how my most recent offer, a live program called The Commitment Blueprint, started as a personal life change, grew into a free webinar, and then transformed twice into a paid product.

In the second episode, I gave you a closer look at my other company, YellowHouse.Media, and shared how and why we’ve taken on the productized service model.

And now, as I close out the series, I want to share how The What Works Network has grown out of a long line of products and services that package small business support in different ways.

Earlier this week, I spoke with Michelle Markwart Deveaux about how she refined her voice coaching offer from a pay-for-service model into a value-pricing model, and what that did for how she packaged, sold, and delivered the value she was creating. Just repackaging the same offer in a new way made her business more enjoyable to run and more profitable too. It also gave her students a whole new perspective on what she was offering and how it benefited them.

Refining, repackaging and re-messaging the way I offer support for small business owners over the last 10 years has given me the chance to build a stronger business model and find more valuable, more aligned, and more customer-centric ways of creating value.

Now, to be clear, it would be easy to say the different offers I’ve made over the years are truly different products or services, but I see them as one long lineage of refining and repackaging, and that’s the key take-away I want you to have from what I’m about to share.

Building a stronger business doesn’t mean throwing in the towel on what you’ve already built.

It’s a process of building on what’s working, making guesses about what could work better, and finding ways to experiment your way to a more sustainable, profitable and effective model for everyone involved.

Let’s, as they say, start at the very beginning.

So first, did you know I used to design websites? It’s true.

I used to run my blog during the day in between taking care of my new baby, and then I would build websites either really late at night or very early in the morning. And building websites was a really easy concrete way to create and exchange value. In other words, it was an easy way to make money when that was something that was super important, just figuring out how can I make money.

But what I found was that what people really got out of the work that we did together was a better idea of how to structure their business. In the process of building a website, writing an about page, figuring out what needs to go where on that site, we’d have a lot of conversations about their business,

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In This Episode

* Why voice teacher Michelle Markwart Deveaux refined her offer from a pay-for-service model to a value pricing model* How that shift changed how she packaged her services and what outcomes she focused on for her students* What she did to double her rates while deliver 3 times the value* How she started sharing her methods and business structure with other voice teachers and professionals

Product development isn’t always about building something new.

Often, it’s about taking what you’ve already built and making it stronger.

You refine the packaging, the value proposition, the customer experience, the delivery mechanisms, and the price. Little by little, you create value simply through the process of excavating the most useful or transformative pieces of your offer and making sure they are as polished & refined as they can be.

Refining the product or service you already offer can be as good—or even better—for giving your business a shot of energy as offering something new.

When you refine or repackage your offer, new people might notice it who passed it by before. New methods of delivery might give you back some serious time. A new price point might unlock a new level of profitability for your business. A new message or angle on what you really offer could open your eyes to a whole new way to market what you do.

In other words, refining your offer could lead to a new, bold vision for your whole business!

This is exactly what I talked about with today’s guest, Michelle Markwart Deveaux, founder of FaithCultureKiss voice studio and the SpeakEasy Cooperative.

Michelle is a voice teacher… as well as champion for voice teachers who want to empower students, performers, podcasters, and voice talent of all kinds to use their voices in powerful ways.

Michelle started out teaching voice with the same kind of offer you’d expect any voice, piano, or instrument teacher to use. Students paid her for each lesson and they called it a day.

But as she started to hate how transactional that method was and how guilty it made her feel for doing work outside of her lessons, she started to refine her offer—and ended up creating a whole new model for teaching voice.

We get into all of that and more, including how she doubled her rates and delivered 3x the value, how she structures her packages, and how she got started teaching voice online. Plus, we talk about how she took what she learned refining her original voice teaching offer and created a new offer to help other voice teachers, too.

Now, let’s find out What Works for Michelle Markwart Deveaux!

What Works Is Brought To You By

Mighty Networks powers brands and businesses – like yours! – that bring people together.With a Mighty Network, online business owners just like you can bring together in one place:

* Your website* Your content* Your courses* Your community* Your events online and in real life* And charge for them…all while building YOUR brand.

Visit mightynetworks.com to see more examples of brands bringing people together and taking their businesses to the next level.

★ Support this podcast ★

In This Episode:

* Why Sean and Tara McMullin chose to “productize” their full-service podcast production offer at YellowHouse.Media… and what productized services actually are* What’s included in the package they offer–and why they don’t often custom or a la carte services* How the productized service model allowed them to quickly create a small group coaching program to increase their capacity and serve more clients

Hey! It’s Tara McMullin and this is a special BONUS episode of What Works—the show that takes you behind the scenes of how small business owners take decisive action on building a stronger business.

This is the second episode of a bonus series on how I’ve approached creating and delivering value through the products and services I’ve offered over the years.

In the first bonus episode, I shared how my most recent offer, a live program called The Commitment Blueprint, started as a personal life change, grew into a free webinar, and then transformed—TWICE—into a paid product.

In this episode, I’m going to give you a closer look at my other company, YellowHouse.Media, and share how and why we’ve taken on the productized service model—including what that means for how we serve our clients, run our operations, and build for the future.

Plus, I’ll share how the same principles that apply to YellowHouse also apply to What Works and how we continue to develop The What Works Network to support small business owners as they build stronger businesses.

Now, in the last regular episode I spoke with India Jackson, the founder of brand visibility agency Flaunt Your Fire. India described what clients come to Flaunt Your Fire looking to achieve and how the agency helps them achieve those results.

She also shared that she tailors each client engagement to the goals of that client using both master services list and a really strong idea of what the agency’s yes, no, and maybe projects are.

This bespoke service model is typically how people approach building a service-based business.

The client tells you want they need, you figure out how to make that happen and put a price on it. Each engagement looks different and might include a different mix of services.

And this model works.

But it’s not the only way to build a service-based business.

A few years ago, I started to notice that the most successful people I was working with in our community and mastermind groups were running a different kind of service-based business.

They were running productized service businesses.

(And in case you’re wondering, yes, most of the time these productized service businesses were out-earning the digital product businesses. So don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t make money in client services.)

I was intrigued by the model and operations behind these successful productized service businesses… but, more than that, I was intrigued by how happy these business owners were!

They were focused.

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In This Episode:

* How Flaunt Your Fire founder India Jackson takes a strategic approach to offering custom service packages without getting overwhelmed or burnt out* Why getting to know her potential clients really, really well helps her put together the right packages for their needs* How her “master list” of services helps her build bespoke engagements easily & efficiently* How she’s gotten her team involved with client-facing work and slowly let go of control

Somewhere in the craze for online courses and making money in your sleep, service-based businesses got a bad rap.

Of course, most of the bad rap really just came from marketers who convinced would-be business owners that passive income and infinitely scalable models were the only way to ensure they wouldn’t be overworked and overwhelmed by client work.

The other reason, I think, that service-based businesses got a bad rap was that so many service providers weren’t very thoughtful or strategic in how they offered their services. And understandably so!

You want to make clients happy. You want to say yes. You want to close the deal.

And so you agree to switching things up, doing things that you’re only kind of good at, and going along with what the client wants instead of what you know to be best.

That’s all a recipe for taking on too much uninspired work for yourself—and even for your team.

But offering a service doesn’t have to be that way.

Offer development is an incredibly important part of running a service-based business. Without a careful strategy and thoughtful process behind how you create value, you are likely to get stuck in the trap of trading time for money or wind up overwork & overwhelmed.

That’s why I wanted to make sure we included a bespoke service-based business in this series on creating value.

I invited India Jackson, the founder of Flaunt Your Fire, a full-service brand visibility agency, to share her approach to how she creates value and constructs the services she offers clients.

India is clear on what her agency does and what it does not do.

She’s clear on why her agency offers the types engagements it does and why some projects just aren’t right for them. And, she’s clear on how her team adds value to the services the agency provides—so India isn’t stuck doing everything herself.

Even if you don’t run a service-based business, this conversation has a lot to offer. Listen in and consider how you might be trying to do too much with your product-based business or how you’ve succumb to making offers that aren’t aligned with your values or best work.

We’ll get to this conversation with India in just a minute—but first, don’t forget to check out our special bonus series this month for a behind-the-scenes look at how I’ve developed some of my favorite offers over the years. In the first episode, I shared how we took The Commitment Blueprint from idea to free offer to paid template to paid live program. In the second episode—out Thursday—I’m sharing how Sean and I developed the service package we offer at YellowHouse.Media. It’s the perfect follow-up to this conversation with India.

Now, let’s find out What Works for India Jackson!

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In This Episode:

* How a significant life change for What Works founder Tara McMullin turned into an idea and then several iterations of offers* The process Tara used to turn The Commitment Blueprint process into a free webinar, then a paid template, and finally a live paid program* How a similar process is helping Tara and the What Works team continue to evolve how The What Works Network is structured* And why asking “What’s next?” doesn’t have to mean creating a brand-new offer but, instead, iterating on what you’re already selling

This is a special bonus episode of What Works–the show that takes you behind the scenes of how small business owners take decisive action to build a stronger business.

This is the first episode in a three-part series taking a closer look at what’s worked for me as I’ve developed a new ways to create and deliver value over the years, both here at What Works and now at YellowHouse.Media.

Today I’m sharing how our latest What Works offer, a live program called The Commitment Blueprint came to be—tracing it from its humble beginnings as the seed of a major life and business shift for me to a successful webinar, to a paid template, and finally to the live program version.

Now I’m going to be breaking it down iteration by iteration, from idea to offer and really to the next offer from there and the next offer after that.

So let’s start at the beginning—the idea.

Like so many offers out there, the idea for The Commitment Blueprint really came as a result of solving my own problem.

Now I had always been a planner and a goal setter, but I started to notice that my planning and goal setting was maybe causing me more problems than they were solving. I started to get really caught up in other people’s goals and trying to prove myself based on reaching them. And I realized that I needed to make a change or I was going to be constantly chasing after other people’s ideas of what I should be achieving or accomplishing instead of building the life and business that I really wanted.

So at the beginning, little by little, I started to focus more on process. In other words, I was thinking about. What could I commit to doing consistently to change my current experience and my future outcomes. Now, this led to all sorts of personal growth for me, I got back to being an athlete again after 20 years, I prioritized execution and systems in my work for like the first time ever. I learned to see how other people were functioning in the world and that helped me temper my righteous indignation, at least most of the time.

This whole process was just the experience of major personal growth. And I realized looking back over that time, especially as people started to ask me more and more, “Hey, Tara, something’s different with you. What did you change? What happened here? What, what are you doing?” I realized that there was method to the madness.

I had made certain commitments to myself. And I developed a process for upholding those commitments. And then from there I was able to make adjustments over time.

So once I realized that there was a method to the madness, I realized that I could share it with other people. And that led to the very first offer. In other words, the very first way that I could create value for other people using this same system.

Turning the method into a free webinar

So from there,

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In This Episode

* How Alisha Robertson got the idea for The LOE Collective, a membership community supporting women business owners* The process she used to figure out how the community would take shape and what features she would include* How her course library & Intentional Success Path help members feel at home and in control* Why the pricing for the community has evolved over time

“What’s next?”

The first few dozen or so times I heard this question from a customer I was perplexed—even a bit concerned.

Whether it was after a course wrapped up or a coaching engagement came to a close or a small group came to a close…

…when a customer would ask me “What’s next?”, I worried that I hadn’t done my job.

I thought maybe they wanted to know what was next because they hadn’t quite gotten what they came for. They hadn’t seen a real change or improved their situation.

It took me much longer than I’d like to admit to realize what they were really saying was, “That was great. What else can we do together?”

I realized that “What’s next?” was an invitation to create more value for the people who I was already helping—and, in turn, make a very, very easy sale.

This month, we’re focusing on how small businesses create & deliver value.

How do we develop new offers? Put together new packages? Build new products?

We’ll be deep diving into 3 businesses and how they create & deliver value.

I’ll also be sharing a series of short bonus episodes looking back at how I’ve created & delivered value over the years—and how that process continues to evolve both at What Works and at YellowHouse.Media. Plus, we’ll close out the series by hearing from a few more business owners who have found creative ways to create and deliver value through the offers they make.

As I mentioned earlier, “What’s next?” is often a question that helps you figure out how to create and deliver value beyond what you’re already doing.

A product or service that solves a particular problem might shine some light on the next problem that needs to be a solved. A product or service that creates a delightful experience might simply leave the customer asking for more.

Or “What’s next?” might simply be a request to go deeper, keep working together longer, or investigate new possibilities.

Alisha Robertson found herself with a whole bunch of customers asking her “What’s next?” after she released a book called Living Over Existing. After a lot of thought, some customer research, some soul-searching, Alisha came up with her next move.

Alisha and talk about how the LOE Collective came to be, how she’s set up her community to meet those “What’s next” needs, and how she created the Intentional Success Path to guide her members through more “What’s next” questions. Plus, Alisha shares why she also created a physical welcome kit to send to her new members.

Now, let’s find out What Works for Alisha Robertson.

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