Why I start my clients with a 1-1 offer

I can teach you. I can. Hello and good afternoon. I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach. Coming to you live in kind of a rush because I'm driving to New York in about seven minutes, maybe, maybe ten minutes. We'll see. Because I have something really exciting happening for client tomorrow. Really excited for her, but we'll, we'll just leave that to tomorrow. I don't want to announce it until she does anyway. Side note, I have some hot dog costumes missing. If you broke into my home and stole my hot dog costumes, I'm going to be mad. Please return them to me. And I'm also saying this knowing that I probably put them somewhere for safekeeping and lost them. So, yeah, Rasta costumes on Amazon is about to get a new order. Anyway, we're talking today about why I have my clients start off with one to one offers. Okay. If you don't know me, Hi, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach. I help ADHD business owners start their businesses and scale them to however large they want them to be. And just for a little housekeeping, I am going live to the Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube today. I couldn't deal with Instagram and the little like, key thing that happens there. Anyway, let's talk about why it's smart to start with a one on one offer. And this doesn't matter if you're working with B2C where you're working directly with one on one clients or if you're working with businesses. The reason that we start with one on one offers is because they are so easy to change. Honestly, most of the time when you start a business, you have to, you have to pick a niche, right? And most of the time that niche is not going to be correct the first time. Okay. There are very few people who pick the perfect niche right off the bat. If you're one of these people, I am sorry. So envious of you. I started off as a dating coach for men. Got pretty much all female clients. They didn't really want dating coaching though. They wanted executive leadership coaching. So I did that. And I did pretty well at doing executive leadership coaching. And then all my coaching friends started asking, like, how I started a business and how I was selling and how I was marketing. So I started showing them and then they started insisting on paying and referring clients to me and I realized I liked that a whole lot better. And then the pandemic came and I lost most of my leadership clients. And then I Realized, like, I actually wanted to do that more. So it was, it all worked out. But that's four different niches that I went through. So if you're struggling with this, I want you to know, like, I teach this shit and I got it wrong the first couple times. And that's normal. Okay, that's normal. But here's the thing about starting a business. It's. Yes, there's all these influencers and business coaches out there who are like, oh my God, sell groups, sell digital products, sell this, sell that. Well, here's what they don't tell you. They don't tell you the failure rate on a lot of those things. Groups. I can tell you from personal experience and from the experience of my clients, 50% plus of the groups that you attempt to roll out are going to crash and burn. Like, they're going to have very little enrollment, if any, and they're incredibly hard to get off the ground. Why I have my clients start with one on one clients is because imagine you're just starting a business and you don't have any income coming in and you devote so much time and energy into launching a group program, and you do, and you're working so hard to promote it and you're posting on social media and you're emailing, you're doing all this stuff, but you really don't have a good base. You don't have a lot of people on your email list, not a lot of people are following you because you really haven't promoted anything yet. And then you don't really get anyone in your group program. And then you're six months into your business and you don't have any business, you don't have any money coming in. If you're independently wealthy and you're willing to go through that and you're willing to like throw some money at having someone help you with the marketing and ads and building. Go for it, go for it. Have fun, you know, enjoy your wealth. But if you're like a regular person, just like me and my clients, we can't do that. We need income to come in. And your fastest path to cash will always be one on one clients. When you're enrolling into a group, remember, everyone kind of has to start around the same time. And if they don't start around the same time, then you don't really have a reason to create urgency for people to sign up when you want them to sign up. All right? Versus someone who comes to you and they want to work with you one on one, they can start whenever they want. And the urgency is all about them. It's about them getting to what they they want through the work with you. It's also, you know, a lot of people don't like being in groups. I'm one of them. I don't really enjoy group programs. I worked with coaches in the past who like had their one on one and then they had a lot of group stuff and it just didn't work for me. I don't, I don't enjoy being a participant in that space. I love host hosting groups and I have a lot of group options for my clients both in BYOB and with my one on one. But that's for them. It's not necessarily because I would enjoy that as a participant. So here's what I have my clients do is we focus first and foremost on creating a solid one on one offer. And this one on one offer is designed so they're not working too many hours in the week and so that they make enough money with, you know, not, not a ton of clients. So that as they continue to grow their business, as they continue to enroll one on one clients, they have some money to spend on building out different parts of their business, like building out an email marketing system and getting some help with their copywriting and building out a website and, you know, investing the money in the stuff that you need to run a group program. Okay. Without that stuff, it's really hard to stick with it. I can't tell you how many clients have come to me having already designed digital products that never took off because there was no market testing for it. It was something that they thought was very interesting, something that they really love designing and something that maybe they do with a lot of people, but it's not something that there's a market for or the way they're communicating. It just doesn't land. When you work with one on one clients, it is like a sandbox to figure out what works and what doesn't. Work like that, all right? Because you're going to either attract clients or not. If you're not attracting clients, you know, to change your marketing. And if you are attracting clients, you get to double down on exactly what you're doing correctly. And then when you get to the sales call, if you're signing a ton of clients, then great, everything's working hunky dory. If you're not, then there's something in your sales call that needs to change or maybe something in your offer that needs to change. My whole approach with my clients is we're going to create a plan that is iterable, that is changeable. But when we realize something needs to change, we're not going to change absolutely everything in one go. No, no, no, no. That is a recipe for disaster. We're going to do is we're going to change one little bit at a time and we're going to find that little bit that makes the difference until we can figure out how to sell a one on one offer. If you struggle to fill up your one on one coaching or your one on one consulting or your one on one copywriting, it's going to be really, really hard to hone in on the messaging that's going to fill a group offer. You know, I get this question a lot. Especially like people see my business and they see I have a group program and I have a membership and I have my one on one coaching. And I have to remind folks, like, it took me like six years to build this. Okay? It took me four years to get to the point where I was launching a group program. I'm still iterating it and growing it and changing it. Okay? There's a reason why I keep, I keep the enrollment kind of low because I want to be able to change things if I need to. If I'm noticing that, you know, something's not quite correct. Okay. We haven't actually fully launched the group program like in a, in a dramatic like fill this, fill this thing up kind of way. I was going to say another word in there, but you know what I mean? And really, I mean, the thing that has kept my business running has been my one on one clients who I adore working with long term. They're not going to be, you know what I'm going to be spending the majority of my time on. I'm going to want to step back and really invest more time on my groups and my membership. Okay? But that's something that happens like half a decade into your business. I, I know how it feels to be impatient. I know how it feels to want everything right now when I want it. And also, unfortunately, like, it takes time. It just takes time to build these things. And it's not a failure on your part, okay? You need to know that it's not a failure on your part that you don't have this yet. It's just that you've only been doing it for a certain amount of time and you've been doing it this way and you've been doing it this way and you know, if you want to Have a group program at some point. Here's where I want you to start, is I want you to get a really solid one on one offer. As you're working with clients one on one, I want you to pay attention to what is the common problem that they all have, every single one of them. What are the common problems that they all have? And after you have built a business of one on one clients that pays you a full time income, that is key. We don't do this before then. And when you have a email list that has a lot of people on it, okay. And that's. It depends on what your industry is, what a lot means. Okay. It doesn't necessarily mean to need to be a million or ten thousand. Okay. It depends. That is when you can start practicing and trialing with some group programs. Okay. But for your own sanity, for the sake of your own bank account, your savings and your stress levels, focus on one on one first. Start designing your one on one offer first. It is going to be your fastest path to cash. And once you've built up that, that full time income from your one on one, that is when you can start looking at group programs. Anyway, Lauren Lefkowitz. I went live. You can't make me sing today. I'm driving to New York. I'm going to meet with a client client tomorrow. I'm so excited. Like I said, I'm gonna wait until she, you know, talks about what she's gonna talk about because I don't like outing my clients before they out themselves. But so much good stuff coming. If you stole my hot dog costumes, I'm mad, but it is probably me, honestly, so I'm just mad at myself. Anyway, another person I can't embarrass. Anyway, I'm off. I have to hit the road. I'm already four minutes behind my itinerary and thank you for watching and I will see you all tomorrow.