When Tiny Offers Started Feeling "Too Small"

Over the last couple of years, I found myself getting invited into bigger and bigger rooms, bigger conversations, bigger names in the industry. And I started being on bigger stages, seeing other people's, what felt like much bigger business models than mine, people with bigger ideas. And somewhere along the way, I started questioning if tiny offers were even a worthy thing to build a business around. Welcome back. Welcome to the Start Tiny podcast. This is kind of a relaunch episode if you've been here in the past. I haven't published an episode in 18 months. So first of all, if you missed me, I'm back. If you didn't notice I was gone, which was probably more likely. I always tell people, don't make a big announcement if you've been gone for a while. Like, most people are so busy. With their own lives that they're like, oh, you were missing. And then, and then go into maybe not trusting you for disappearing or wondering like, oh, where did you go? So let's talk about the elephant in the room. Why I haven't published an episode in 18 months or so. There's no dramatic reason really why I didn't publish. There was no major scandal. There was no secret project. There was really no reason why I just stopped. And today, this episode, I want to talk about why I stopped, and I want to talk about why sometimes entrepreneurs lose momentum, or why they feel like they're burning out, or maybe why they go quiet for a while, and know that it can happen to all of us. So I want to talk about that today. I want to share a little bit about where I've been, what I've been working on, because I think the reason that I quietly disappeared without realizing— I mean, I looked today and I was shocked that it had been 18 months since I published an episode, but I think this happens to a lot of people. And I do believe that it's the same reason that many people stay stuck in their businesses. And if I can share this authentically, maybe it'll help some of you out to see something from a little bit different perspective or to realize, you know, maybe it's something that you're going through as well. So the real reason in retrospect of why I think I went quiet or why I stopped publishing is I kind of felt like I didn't have anything to talk about. In a way, I felt like I was slowly losing clarity. And feeling like I need more clarity on my next steps, or I need more clarity about my message, or more clarity about who this is even for, and more clarity about where I was going, what direction I was growing into. Because I very much so felt like maybe starting tiny wasn't enough. Like maybe tiny offers, low ticket offers, maybe I was just kind of over it. You know, maybe it wasn't a big enough category or a grandiose enough business. For me to stay excited about it. And I stopped knowing who I was creating for anymore because I felt like I was kind of in the messy middle of this big growth and expansion period without having a clear idea of what was on the other side. So what I've realized is that for far too long, I let that clarity become an excuse. I stopped creating, I stopped showing up as consistently as I was before because I convinced myself that I couldn't move until I knew exactly where I was going. And that is the opposite of what we do here at Start Tiny, right? I, I couldn't see the big plan. I couldn't see the next 20 steps in front of me, so I just stopped moving. So the irony is that I had built an entire brand around starting before you're ready, around starting tiny, around taking just the next right step, following that next clear idea that you have. And I stopped doing all of that for myself. I stopped taking my own advice. And if I can kind of track back to what happened or where I started going off of the path over the last couple of years, I found myself getting invited into bigger and bigger rooms, bigger conversations, bigger names in the industry. And I started being on bigger stages, seeing other people's, what felt like much bigger business models than mine, people with bigger ideas. And somewhere along the way, I started questioning if tiny offers were even a worthy thing to build a business around because I felt like it was a tactic. I felt like I had built an entire business around a tactic instead of around an entire category. You know, I have friends who teach sales. I have friends who teach operations. I have friends who teach AI now. I have friends who teach all sorts of cool things, ads, you know, and they felt like such big Categories, like entire categories. And here I was sitting like, oh, I teach a funnel. Like, I teach one single funnel about low-ticket offers, and that's all I've got. That's my only— that's my one trick, you know. That's the one thing I go into a room and I talk about. And even though everyone says have a thing, have a category, have a framework, I was making myself feel like that wasn't a worthy enough category because I had seen so many other things being in these masterminds that I had joined, being in these big rooms, being exposed to all of these amazing entrepreneurs. Somewhere along the way, I started questioning, is the tiny offer even enough? Is this a category? Is it a movement or is this just a tactic? So I looked around and I saw people talking about billion-dollar companies, acquisitions, AI revolutions, venture-backed growth. These massive ecosystems and teams of hundreds of people. And I was like, how can I go from where I am with tiny offers, tiny team, making massive revenue? But like, it didn't feel big enough for a long time. And it started— the thing that I built started making me feel small in these rooms that I was invite— I was invited into these rooms, right? Like people saw something in me, something in my business, to offer me invitations to these invite-only communities. And even though all of that was happening, I still was allowing maybe my fear or my limiting beliefs. I was allowing the story that I was weaving about my business to feel like it wasn't enough. So a couple weeks ago, it's funny how things kind of all fall into alignment, right? Like when, when the universe or God is trying to give you a message, sometimes all the dominoes line up and you can't ignore it anymore. Like, sometimes the message is so clear that it kind of slaps you in the face and you're like, oh, like, this is the thing that I've been missing. This is the thing that I have been ignoring. So a couple weeks ago, I had kind of been feeling like, oh my gosh, I, I do have clarity. Like, why can't I just move? Like, why am I stuck? I had changed the name of this podcast like 4 times. I don't know if you guys noticed that, but it was like Autopilot Clients, and it was like something about self-made AI marketing. And like, because I, I was excited about AI, I'm excited about marketing, I was like, my category is marketing. But it's not. My category is Starting Tiny. My category is tiny offers, which I'll get into this in a little bit, but it's not necessarily a single funnel, it's not a single tactic, it is so much more than that. And I was letting myself believe— limiting beliefs— that that's all it was. So Back up a little bit. A couple weeks ago, one of my longtime clients, Katie, sent me a message. Thank you, Katie. Shout out to Katie. And she basically said like, Allie, what are you doing with your life? Because I am a client. I am getting massive results from your teaching, from your coaching. I love your Tiny Offer program. She's in Tiny Offer Lab, which is a coaching program of mine. And she basically said, why are you not shouting about tiny offers from the rooftops? Why are you talking about all of these other things? When this program has been absolutely life-changing for me. She's like, I cannot understand why you're not so loud about this, why you're not talking about it, why you're not trying to share this with every single business owner in the world. And honestly, it totally woke me up. It hit me like a brick. And I was like, you know what, Katie, you are so right. Thank you for asking me that because it gave me a really intentional space to reflect on her question. And realized that I was spending so much time comparing myself to what everyone else was building, that I had forgotten to appreciate what we had already built. Everything that I had already accomplished, the pages and pages and pages of testimonials that have come in from my coaching, from the Tiny Offer Strategy, from everything that people have been able to build on the backend and all of the impact that my clients have been able to make, the ripple effect of impact, right? Like my clients are helping so many more people because of the strategies that I taught them, because of the growth that they had on the backend of launching a tiny offer. So it's not just a tiny tactic, it is a movement. It is allowing people to do things so much bigger than a tiny offer because of the psychology of how it works, because of the psychology of starting tiny, because it works so universally. That I had forgotten what an impact I was making. And I was focusing on— what I'm learning is the, just this, the things that can happen. You know, there's impact versus averages, and I'm learning this. I joined a nervous system coaching program with someone named Emily Judice. I highly recommend that you look her up as well. She has a program called That Girl, or Be That Girl, and it's a fantastic program for understanding how our brains can kind of spin up these stories. So this is also part of the comeback episode, is learning that it was all nervous system related, right? It was me keeping me safe, whether I wanted that or not. Like, somewhere subconsciously, that was decided for me in my brain, that this is, you know, we're going to be afraid, we're going to say we don't have clarity, we're going to not move because we don't know where we're moving yet. So I had spent so much time looking at what everyone else was building that I forgot how much I had helped people. I was focusing on the impact that a few super negative messages had made on me, a few loud voices. And we've all got this in our client list, right? We've all got this in our Facebook ad comments. We've all got people who are coming at us that are like, you're a scammer, why are you trying to make money from your passion? Or, I tried this and it didn't work for me. Or, this program's a scam, right? Like, people who are really doing things have entire Reddit subreddits about how their program didn't work or how they're, you know, like just a grifter trying to make money. And, and I let some of those voices— as far as I know, I do not have a negative Reddit channel, so I'm going to stop looking. But as of right now, that's not, that's not what this is about. That's just a general statement. Anyway, I obviously care about what people out there on the internet are thinking or saying, and that is a really dangerous place as an online entrepreneur because you have to have a thick skin. You have to be able to keep moving forward even if you don't have 100% success rate, because no one has 100% success rate. Gym owners do not sell less gym memberships because not everyone is using their gym membership every single month. And I see so many entrepreneurs, myself included, who look at their programs, who look at the, the completion rates on their courses and think their work doesn't matter because they don't have 100% success rate. And I'm— that was a huge part of my silence, is seeing the impact that a few negative voices made on how I felt about my program, how I felt about my experience on the World Wide Web building an online business, and how much you're putting yourself in a position to be attacked, to have people say negative things. And it is It is polarizing, right? Like in, when you are growing, you are making space for even more good things to happen. But because of the law of polarity or whatever it is, when you have greater things happen, you also have more negative things happen. So part of growing an online business is being able to make room for the good and also accept the bad. It's like you have an amazing program and then someone copies you. You have, you're invited to be on an amazing podcast and then you see someone's talking smack about you in the comments or in somebody's Facebook group. You have an incredible client experience where you got them the best results imaginable. And also someone tells you you're a scam artist. Like the law of polarity happens and we cannot have one without the other. So you can't create something amazing without also making space and understanding that negative things are going to happen too. So part of it is knowing that and accepting it and being like, oh, something bad happened. That must mean I'm making room for more good things to happen. Where at the same time, being able to move forward with the good things without fearing that the other shoe is going to drop or without, you know, worrying about things bad that are going to happen because guess what? They are going to. But also you have survived 100% of the bad things you've already faced. You have developed developed so many skills for yourself as a result. You have handled it, you've figured it out, and you're going to continue doing that inside of your business just like I am as well. So the lesson that I learned and what I have decided and owned and been excited about over the last week or so is that tiny offers were never just a tactic. It is a fricking movement and it was always a doorway. It's always been a doorway to entrepreneurship, a doorway to feeling super confident in what it is that you're creating. A doorway to being able to create income from your knowledge, your skills, your experience, and making a living online teaching people what it is that you're passionate about. Like, how cool is it that we live in a world where the internet exists, where AI exists, and you can do things so much faster and do things you could have never accomplished before? You can build an app for your business now. You can do so many amazing things in, in just a snap of your fingers that you couldn't do even 5 years ago, 10 years ago. So how cool is it that we have the doorway to build businesses that actually fit our lives? And I know from experience, from coaching thousands of entrepreneurs, that starting tiny is actually the best way to do it. Not only from selling tiny offers as a front door product to your business, no matter what kind of business you have, I think every business needs an easy entry point for their people, a low-ticket thing that gets people in the door, lets you run ads, lets you get unlimited visibility, lets you be able to reach people for, you know, just a tiny commitment instead of a massive commitment. I believe every business on the planet should have a tiny offer. So it's not just a tactic, it is a movement. And it is still what I believe. I've never wavered on the importance of tiny offers. And I believe in it now more than ever. People are talking about trust recessions. People are talking about longer buying cycles, about people being in that consideration phase. People aren't trusting everything that they're seeing anymore, for good reason. We shouldn't. People aren't trusting the first influencer or creator that they see, and we shouldn't. We should be, as creators, as entrepreneurs, we should be caretaking our audiences. We should be doing more to show up and prove that we are worthy of their trust. And I believe more than ever that a tiny offer and starting tiny is that doorway for us to keep showing up, for us to keep taking that next step, but also for our buyers and our customers and our clients to be able to take a small step forward to seeing what it might be like to work with us because we are in service of them, because we want them to feel safe, because we know how much is on the other side of that tiny commitment. All we're asking for, for our clients, is to put one— we want to put one toe in the door so that they can see what it is that we're offering so that they can get a taste of how amazing we are, how trustworthy we are, and what kind of results we're going to help them achieve. So today we know that we're living through one of the biggest shifts we've ever seen in business. We know that AI is changing everything. We know marketing is changing. Everything feels a little bit harder. Content is changing. Search is changing. Consumer behavior is changing. We know money is tighter for a lot of people. And I see a lot of people responding in one of two ways. They're either panicking or they're stuck in total paralysis like I was for 18 months. So here's what I believe in. Here's what I'm here to say, and here's how I will be supporting you. There has never been a better time to build a business around what you know. There's never been a better time to start creating leverage with your voice, with your content, with your personality, with your authenticity, and There has never been a better time to start tiny. We know AI isn't going to replace the entrepreneurs. We know that it's giving entrepreneurs new tools. And we also know, or what I believe is that the people who win won't necessarily be the biggest. They're the people who keep adapting. They're the people who stay authentic and the people who stay connected to real people. What I've taught and the people that I work with have always been human to human. Business to consumer, B2C, whatever, B2B, whatever. Human to human is what I'm talking about on this show. Leveraging AI, sure, but we're going to talk about how to build businesses that serve other people by starting tiny, which serves you and it serves your customer. So here's what's coming next. Here's my commitment. I am back. I am committing to weekly episodes at a minimum. I will be posting every single week and the things that we're going to be talking about on this show include building an online business around your expertise, around your passion, around how to create offers that people actually want, how to grow an audience without burning out, you know, how to get visible and how to run ads if you want, but also how do you build visibility? How do you build a show? How do you build something that people are finding and connecting with you organically as well? Because I think that's more important than ever. How to use AI strategically, how to build systems that create freedom in your business so that you don't get burned out. And then also something that I'm super passionate about that I wanna talk about more is how to create long-term wealth instead of creating quick wins or chasing those quick wins. I don't wanna see the Ferraris, I wanna see your investment portfolio, I wanna see your real estate. That's the type of life that I've built for myself living in Northern Minnesota, a fairly humble life in a small town with a multimillion dollar net worth that most people don't even know exists, Except I do talk about it, so I guess they do. But I want to talk about that in a world that is changing rapidly. And this is a little bit scary, but this is a belief of mine that someday income might look different for us someday when AI— and maybe this is coming sooner than we know, there's a lot of studies going on, there's a lot of research, there's a lot of people predicting what's going to happen in the next 5, 10 years— income might look different for people. When we have more AI doing more jobs. And something that I am super passionate about personally is saving, not just for myself, but for my children to live off of my income someday, for my grandchildren to have a nest egg that is going to keep them safe no matter what income looks like in the next 10, 50, 100 years. I want to know that I built legacy wealth for generations to come, and that's a really big inspiration of mine. So we're probably going to talk about that a little bit, but we're also lastly going to talk about how to stay relevant in this rapidly changing world, how to keep showing up, how to keep adjusting or shifting and moving forward without fear of the future. So there's one more thing that I want to mention, and that is that Tiny Offer has grown up. It is growing up and it's not getting away from the roots of why it started. But it is growing deeper into them. It is going to include more in-person gatherings. I'm going to start hosting retreats and in-person events with hundreds of people and stages and fun environments and hugging each other in real life, right? I can't wait to host that kind of stuff in the future. So more opportunities to connect, more community, more conversations, and more collaboration, because as as powerful as I believe technology is, I think community is becoming even more valuable. And I think people are craving real connection, and they want to build along other people who get it, who get them. Entrepreneurship is really, really lonely, and I've heard that from a lot of people and experienced it myself. So I think that is one of the most important things that we can create together is community. So in closing, if you have been waiting for clarity before taking action, consider this: your reminder, and I'm talking to myself here as well. Clarity doesn't come before action, it comes from taking action. You can trust me on that. I've spent 18 months relearning that lesson again and again, and now we're going to start tiny together again. So thank you for being here. I'm so glad that you took time to listen to this episode, and I cannot wait to continue bringing more to you in the future. And I will see you next