Tara Newman: Welcome to the Bold Money Revolution Podcast. This is your source for straight-talking, no fluff business, and high-performance conversations that add real depth and value to the way bold leaders live, work and thrive.
I’m your host Tara Newman. I’m here to show you how to optimize your performance as a leader so that you can grow a business that is profit-rich, efficient, and allows you to generate real tangible wealth for yourself and others. We are here to help you lead with your values to perform without overwhelming burnout and to do your most important work in the world.
Stacey Harris: Hey, hey, Bold Leader. I am not Tara Newman. Your ears do not deceive you. I’m Stacey Harris. I produce this podcast and in addition to that, I help out at adding some of the stuff that happens inside the Bold Profit Academy. And last month, Tara sat down with a Bold Profit Academy member, Heidi Taylor. They had a conversation about the history of Tara’s offers and how she’s moved through different iterations of her offers. It was a really incredible conversation. It’s about ninety minutes long. The entire conversation is in the Bold Profit Academy, but there were twenty minutes that as I was editing it, I really wanted to share with you here. So I asked her if it was okay and she said, yes. So here we are sharing today this section of the conversation. Like I said, this is about twenty minutes pulled from a larger ninety-minute conversation. If you want to hear that whole conversation, it is available in the Bold Profit Academy as a part of our offer creation, implementation cycle that we just wrapped up. It still lives in the on-demand training. Absolutely still available for you.
If you would like to get access to this and the future implementation cycles, including our Q3 implementation cycle that will be starting soon, head over to theboldleadershiprevolution.com/academy. And you’ll find all the details to apply and get any questions answered that you need to ask. And I will see you inside. Beyond that, I’m going to leave you now. We’re going to jump right into the conversation with Heidi and Tara. Here it is.
Heidi Taylor: Let’s move on to 2016. The Bold Leadership Sisterhood.
Tara: Oh gosh, yeah.
Heidi: Ninety-seven dollars for nine months.
Tara: Still have a traumatic wound from this one.
Heidi: Well, I think this is what blows me away about your resiliency is that you continue to iterate on group programs.
Tara: Okay, so I’ll explain this. Yeah. The reason why I’ve been so successful is I accidentally realized that I needed to focus on one offer and master that. My one core offer for a very long time was one-on-one work. And the reason why it was one-on-one work was because it was the most bang for the buck. It actually did not deplete me or drain me. I was able to charge a good amount of money for what I did and I had built my business on that. And then everything after that was how do I take this one-on-one result experience and then turn it into something that’s more leveraged. In the process, we had a lot of experimentation around how I would like to work the price point that I work while at what do I want to do? And I got to tell you that some of these experiments were not my focus. I had money coming in from this one on. I need to be really clear.
Heidi: Yes.
Tara: Because I see the mistakes that people make. One of the biggest mistakes I think people make is that they don’t focus on selling an offer that is significantly priced. I call it a premium price. It could be a group. It could be one-on-one. One-on-one is honestly the easiest place to start because you need one person. You don’t need a huge audience. So many of us don’t have this really huge audience to constantly be pulling from and we need to work our way towards that, but we can always have one-on-one for a period of time. So these experiments were on the side. A lot of these experiments were based on what I was told to do based on online business strategy tactics. I had a coach tell me, “Why don’t you try?” I see this other person, “Why don’t you try a ninety-seven dollars a month program?”
Heidi: I mean the other thing interesting part of this is you mentioned that your audience was asking for a lower fee option from you. So I was really curious about that. This is what I imagine are your audience is thinking about as we’re talking. How do you know if what people are asking for is what you should be delivering on? If it’s their projections of what they need, how have you sort of assess when you’re– We’re always listening to our audience. We always want to know what they’re thinking, but we also have to make decisions based on what’s right for our business and for ourselves. So how did you navigate that? Really, that’s a challenging decision to make.
Tara: Right. So seven-year in Tara only listens to the clients who were paying her.
Heidi: Great distinction.
Tara: Okay? 2016 Tara listened to the people who wanted the results that Tara gets people but didn’t want to pay for them. And that is a real big hurdle. That’s a real big disconnect to try and navigate, to get people results that people are paying top dollar for and deliver them in a ninety-seven dollar a month way. It’s impossible, of course. And so the breakdown, I mean, obviously, I remember there being like like they were messaging breakdowns around that, but obviously it was a fault. It was flawed from the beginning because of the purpose. So we hear a lot– I didn’t realize that somebody brought this to my attention that if we see a lot of content around doing it messy. And I think that we want to give perfectionists the permission to not be perfect and so, we do it messy. I think that’s the intention behind that conversation and I like it. Listen, we all got started. Sometimes you definitely have to do it dirty. That’s what I was doing back then. I was doing it messy. But what’s far more impactful is when we do it. meaningfully. Anybody can do it meaningfully. This isn’t like you have to be messy when you start and then transfer to being meaningful in your work. You can be meaningful from the beginning when you start to think about what is the purpose for why I’m doing this and then really checking in and making sure that purpose is in alignment with other things.
So I did not do that back then and that was the mistake I made and that was the lesson I learned. I think the biggest takeaway from that is my style and my strengths and what I want to how I want to work and the results I want to help people achieve cannot be done for ninety-seven dollars a month.
Heidi: Yeah.
Tara: I will over-deliver until I’m dead on the floor, and that is what happened. I have no concept of what a ninety-seven dollars a month delivery looks like. It’s like not in my frame of reference. It’s not how I operate.
Heidi: Yeah. I mean, there’s so many things to learn from that, right? We’ve all been in this experience where we listen to our audience maybe a little too much. They get in our heads. We’re helpers. We want to offer things to people, and as you were talking, I was thinking about this thing that I read this morning that said that powerful people are purposeful and you just basically said that to me. There’s still has to be so much purpose behind what you’re doing and that’s what really gives it so much power. You’re not flipping around based on three people who aren’t willing to pay you.
Tara: And I will let everybody know that a ninety-seven dollar price point attracts a very specific person and that is okay if you are somebody who’s meant to deliver at ninety-seven dollars to those people and you can unhook yourself from lots of stuff, that’s fine. But it’s often the people who are looking for the ninety-seven dollar thing that need the most support and need the most help and drain you of the most energy. So we try and give beginners, people who are stuck in something this lower-priced to offer, but those are the people who need the most support.
Heidi: So do you think that when you’re offering your podcast that’s for ninety-seven dollars people. They get your podcast. And they’re getting amazing insights for free.
Tara: Yeah.
Heidi: Which is a beautiful thing. So okay. Can we contrast what we just talked about this ninety-seven dollar offer listening to your people and your audience, not the people paying you, let’s contrast that with the decision you made. So you did have a paying client say, “Hey, Tara, do you do masterminds?” So you created an offer based on that paying client and then you did this really bold thing which really fascinated me when I read it. I’m very curious to hear your thoughts about your ‘why’ behind it. You said that you offered that mastermind that you created for this one person’s ask, you offered it for no additional charge to the other people that you are already coaching, your existing clients. Tell me about that.
Tara: Listen, I don’t know if this is a good idea or not so don’t copy what I did. If it resonates, try it, if not– So what was happening was I really wanted a group program, right? I wanted to create more leverage in my business but I only had set enough time– Listen, plus everybody’s talking about this is how you do it. And every single time I went to sell a group offer, I want them signed for one-on-one clients because they got on a call and they said, “I don’t want group. I want one-on-one. So I was super frustrated. Also, this is partially my own mindset. There’s disbelief here that I can get people results in a group. There’s disbelief happening around transferring my work into a group. I saw when this woman in 2017 got on a call and was like, “Do you offer a mastermind?” I was like, “This is my invitation,” right? “And this is my invitation to create new evidence and to prove myself wrong.” So it felt very safe to do that in that way.
And then what I was hopeful of happening was that the people would have a good experience in the group. I would be able to test my process. I would be able to put some things in place. They would be able to share that they loved this group experience. That would then attract other people who wanted a group experience and we would keep going. Then what happened was at the end of 2017 so in 2018, I did it again. I charged my one-on-one rate but I increased the number of group calls and decrease the number of one-on-one calls.
So I was still selling one-on-one with a group but I was starting to shift the balance and continue to test it. It wasn’t until 2019 that I switched from selling one on one to it being a mastermind with one-on-one because I had tested. I had experimented. I was starting to talk about it and share about it. Listen, I’m a slow mover. So I’m actually a quick start on the Colby but I’m five on the FactFinder. I temper myself real well.
Heidi: Yeah, nice. Okay. I’m imagining through this experience. It sounds so smart and bold to do it in that way, right? Lots of pluses to sort of iterate in this way and it feels safer. It sounds right. You’re gathering people who already trust you. I’m wondering how that has informed because in 2018, the Brave Society was born which is a very different offering at a high level one on– I’m sorry, mastermind offering. I’m thinking about certain– I don’t know if context switching works here, but in a sense, it is a context switch because you’re having in this high-end mastermind, it’s a different kind of experience you’re offering them, the Braves Society.
Tara: This is one of my most wonderfully failed in reiterated experiments, the Braves Society. In 2018, it’s June, I’m sitting at breakfast with my dad and he is off his rocker. My dad, I consider my mentor. He’s a longtime business owner. He retired. He started another business. I talked a lot about my dad. After he gets done grilling me, his only concern for me, my first three years in business until I implemented profit first was I saving enough for taxes because he had a friend who got in trouble that way. That is his frame of reference. So every time we would hang out, he would be like, “Are you saving for your taxes?” And I’m like, “Yes, I’m saving for my taxes,” right? And then he goes into like there’s a recession coming. The economy is not going to be doing well. This is like June 2018 and he’s like, “You got to start reading the papers and the this, and the that, and make sure you’re following people who are talking about the economy.” And I’m like, “Okay, dad. Okay, dad. Okay.” Like, you’re really freaking me out. Can we just move on to something else.
But I heard what he said and I did some research and I was tracking the economy and I said, “Okay, so if we wind up with a recessive economy which I was predicting would happen in 2019, women business owners are going to need a place where they can continue learning and growing and developing themselves but at a reduced price point.” And okay, I knew ninety-seven dollars wasn’t going to work and I learned some things and we’ll do try it this way. What I conceptualize is very obvious to what it is today but the point was to give women the things that I needed when my husband and I were going through the great recession. Need a community. We needed to learn how to be self-reflective, how to identify problems, how to make continuous improvements in ourselves and our business. So this container with the CEO debrief where we teach women how to really be in a feedback loop and move from inside to action was born. That’s the Brave Society, right? And that’s where it started.
Heidi: Yeah. Okay, so if we stay here for a second, tell me about– I’m thinking about the people who are listening to this and watching and saying, “Okay, I want another stream of income. I see Tara’s point about the recession. I see how valuable it would be to have an offering like this. What kind of guidance would you get them as they’re thinking this through? Knowing what you know now.
Tara: Great. So the first thing I want to share is whenever I create offers, I try to make them as unique as possible but also that people will understand what it is. That’s actually one of my biggest challenges is because I do make things unique and because I have a unique skill set sometimes they’re not always easily understood by others. It takes me a while to message and communicate what something actually is in a language that other people can understand it. So I know that’s one of my red flags and my weaknesses. So the wonderfully failed experiment is that in 2020 when we had a recessive economy, when the world was on fire, when crisis struck, it was easier for me to sell a twenty-four thousand dollar coaching package than it was the Brave Society which was at two hundred and fifty dollars a month at the time.
Heidi: I’m just wondering, I’m going to press you a little bit about guidance for someone that’s trying to figure out, “Okay, I know I need another stream of income. I know there are some people in my world I could probably use a group experience.” Where would you have them look first? Inside? Outside?
Tara: Inside.
Heidi: Okay.
Tara: Inside. I would listen to what your clients are saying. What’s the next step for them? And I would look at it from that perspective, like, work with what you already have. Listen, there’s lots of different ways to teach people to sell. There’s lots of different ways to teach people to generate leads. I personally am organic, warm, hot leads. Right? So I always go organic. I go warm. I go hot. It’s too much effort to try and control the mass amount of cold leads you’re gonna get and it works sometimes and it works to a point and it has a place. But for me, I always start with, where can I make money now? What do people need? I’m already working with need right now. Woman gets on the phone with me. I want to work with you one-on-one. Is there a mastermind component to this? She’s ready to pay me.
Heidi: Yeah, as you’re saying that I’m immediately thinking about the whole internet tells us just sell the thing and then create it later. I think you’re different than other people in that. You have a lot of experience coming from the corporate you have designed programs before if somebody has never designed a program before, I think holding a space for a group and delivering it in a certainly in the way that you’re delivering it now, takes a lot of skill set and experience. I think I’m sort of answering my own question here but knowing what your skillset going in and how you’re going to sell that offer I think it’s probably incredibly important, right?
Tara: Yeah, I mean, I think creating also group programs aren’t for everybody to deliver, maybe you don’t want to offer a group program. Maybe you want to do a series of workshops. Maybe you want to do a group-intensive experience. There’s other ways to leverage that than doing something that doesn’t feel good or work for you. And there are very specific reasons why personal internal reasons why my programs are the way they are even regarding pricing. I can get away with charging certain prices in certain places because I have other streams of income that people might not even see or realize or because I’m running my business in a way that’s incredibly financially profitable and lean. And I don’t have a lot of other costs. So I have flexibility in how I’m pricing things.
I think, looking at what other people are doing is really dangerous. I think that there’s a lot more thought that needs to go into these things. I understand that we can get paralyzed in thought and some of us are real over-thinkers, but we need a process to be able to think and move to action and not make one or the other bad or wrong if that makes sense. There’s also nothing wrong with experimenting and throwing something out there and you don’t want to completely design something in its totality before you’ve delivered it and worked through it until you get to a certain point where that no longer works. Like I did that the first whole handful of years. We would sell a concept and we would have a frame around it then we would build it out as it goes.
However, that doesn’t work with my brain. I need structure. I need to know what I’m doing, when I’m doing it, what is expected of me to deliver. I need that. So there’s a cost to me needing that and I’m okay because that’s how I show up best. But that is not everybody.
Heidi: Right. That comes back to this guidance which can feel frustrating to hear, but is so true is that listen to yourself first, right? I feel like you’ve been listening to yourself and you look at your body of work before you started coaching, and all of that comes into the way you’re delivering what you deliver now.
Tara: And it’s frustrating, and it’s time-consuming. It’s muddy. It’s not easy. I don’t know what to tell anybody. Every single looking for a quick fix and an easy solution. If there’s one thing you take away from this it’s just like put one foot in front of the other, try something, figure out what works, ditch with doesn’t, try it again, iterate.
Heidi: Yeah. I mean, I feel like that is written throughout the timeline of your business for sure.
Tara: Well, that’s critical thinking. That’s how you think critically about things.
Stacey: A quick reminder before I let you go, this is the small snippet of a larger conversation. If you want to hear the rest of the conversation between Heidi and Tara about the process and history of Tara’s offers, a great time to join us is right now. If you are looking to improve your sales and the second half of 2021, these implementation cycles are really, really incredible. I highly recommend it. Come on over. And you join us at the boldleadershiprevolution.com/academy. You can submit your application there and get all set-up. Get any questions answered that you need to have answered and join us. So, again, that’s the boldleadershiprevolution.com/academy and I will see you in there.
Tara: If you found this podcast valuable, help us develop more bold leaders in the world by sharing this episode with your friends, colleagues, and other bold leaders. Also, if you haven’t done so already, please leave a review. I consider reviews like podcast currency and it’s the one thing you can do to help us out here at the Bold Leadership Revolution HQ. We would be so grateful for it.
Special thanks goes to Stacey Harris from Uncommonly More, who is the producer and editor of this podcast. Go check them out for all your digital marketing and content creation needs. Be sure to tune in to the next episode to help you embrace your ambition and leave the grind behind.
