Offer Authenticity — How to Build Something You Actually Like Selling

Welcome to the Business Without Burnout podcast. I'm Kirsten Roldan and I help entrepreneurs make a lot of money peacefully. I'm a New Yorican who went from working in healthcare while cleaning houses and braiding hair on the side to building a business that's generated over $4 million and counting. But there was a time I almost shut my business down because I had a lot of money but no peace. I managed to turn it around and that's why every week I share the 4 strategies that help you grow without burnout: email marketing, team systems, and mindset. So let's dive in.

Hello, Peaceful Millionaires. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm really excited for today's episode because this has been a big topic of conversation with my clients and even with myself in my own business. And it's about offer authenticity and how to build something that you actually like selling because you can be fully booked, clients getting amazing results, and still feel disconnected from what you're selling and your business. I've been coaching on this a lot with my clients. Really what I've been coaching on is the balance between marketability and giving our audience what they will actually buy versus authenticity. And I think it's because for a long time, a lot of us got caught up in the trap of building something that's highly sellable. Like, for example, maybe it's very low pricing and really high-touch deliverables, or, you know, maybe it's just like super over-delivery. Even if it's high ticket, like, it's like you are really, really delivering so many things because you feel like that's what people want, but that doesn't work if your offer doesn't feel authentic to you. And that's so important to know. The offers that sell themselves are both marketable and authentic. That's why I will have a client come to me with a seemingly perfect offer, but they're— in terms of like marketability, but they're not selling. And it's like, oh, you're missing the authenticity piece, right? So there are like 4 angles of authenticity that I wanna talk about. Most people think offer authenticity means selling something you're just passionate about. That is not it. There are 4 things you have to actually like about your offer in order for it to be authentic to you. Number 1 is the price. You feel good saying the number out loud. You don't feel resentful about it. And I wanna be very clear about this one, because a lot of y'all will be like, well, I like the price, $50,000. Okay, we all have prices that we like, don't get me wrong. But this is the balance between marketability and authenticity. You know, I'm not saying like, jack up your prices and sell like the vibe-y price that you would just absolutely like, your highest self would love. No, no, no. I'm saying it's a marketable price that also you're like, yeah, and it feels— that feels fair to me. That feels good to me. Okay. Very, very important that you like your price. And then deliverables, they are strategic and supportive to your clients without feeling like it hurts you or your team, whether it's hurting, you know, your margins or it's hurting your team's workflows. You like the deliverables. You like, you're like, yeah, these are solid. They're strategic. They're supportive. And they don't hurt my margins and they don't hurt my workflows. Right? And again, there's a balance between sometimes we provide something super high touch because it's marketable with making sure it doesn't feel harmful to us in order to deliver it. Outcomes. You like the transformation you're promising, and it's one you believe deeply in and that you've seen work. And I think this is like the secret killer. I'm not even joking. Clients, clients, the person you built this for is someone you actually want in your community and you want in your world, not someone you're just willing gonna tolerate for the money. Okay? So the price, the deliverables, the outcomes, and the clients is what makes an offer feel authentic. If even one of these is off, you will feel it, right? And how you pitch and how you show up for delivery and eventually in your results. So here are some signs that your offer is misaligned, and this is what I see the most with my clients. So like you dread selling. You dread the sales conversation, you dread marketing it because some part of you isn't fully sold on what you're selling for whatever reason. You may even feel relieved when someone says no. Like I've had clients that are like, yeah, I'm getting sales calls, but I, you know, by the end of the call I'm like, oh, thank God they didn't join. I really didn't wanna have to do this.

Right?

Or I have clients that are like, I just don't even know what to go on social media and say, or I don't even know what kind of email to write cuz it's just like they feel blocked around it. Right. Right? They just dread selling it. Maybe you deliver out of obligation, but it doesn't feel— it feels like people pleasing, right? You do the work, or you have your team do the work, but it costs more than it should. Or every client interaction feels like, I wish I were doing something different, but this is what they want me to do. Does that make sense? You know, like, it's like that energy of like, I don't think they need this, but this is what they want. You know, like, I don't think they need this extra call, but they all say they want this extra call. Like that energy. That's how you know your offer is misaligned. You've stopped talking about it organically, right? Maybe you only mention your offer when you're in launch mode, but you never bring it up really because you're just not actually excited about it and you built it just for the market and not for yourself. So you saw what was selling, you reverse engineered an offer around it, and somewhere in that process you left yourself self out of the equation entirely. I've had people do that, and I've even done this for myself. I've had people look at my offers and be like, oh yeah, I'm gonna do like copy-paste exactly that, right? Not like the exact niche, but like the exact pricing, the exact delivery model, all this stuff. And it didn't work for them because it's not authentic to them. I've done that myself in my own business. I'm like, okay, copy-paste, this is the business model I'm gonna do. And because it seems like it's working, and I'm like, this is not authentic to me. Like, I recently realized that with one of my offers, and I'm like, oh, I'm going to like make this more authentic to me, right? That is a big one. So here's how to realign without burning everything down. Start with the complaint, not, not a full rebuild. So you don't need to scrap your offer. You need to find the specific complaint that you have about it. Like the specific thing that feels off. Go back to one of the four categories, your price, your deliverables, your outcomes, your clients. Usually it's one or two, not all four. Okay, so that's really, really important. I had a client recently where she had a quote unquote perfect offer, very similar to what I just said. She kind of like reverse engineered what she saw in the industry. It seemed fine, seemed solid, and she was not selling it. It's very easy to be like, this needs a whole overhaul. But upon coaching her, I was like, you don't like your clients. And she was like— Yeah. You know, and I don't mean that in a mean way. I don't mean that in like her clients are bad people. That's not what I mean at all. And she doesn't think that at all. But more so her marketing, you could tell, was trying to get anyone and everyone to join as opposed to her dream person that she wanted in her community. So I asked her, I'm like, what are the things you're not saying in your marketing because you're scared it'll cost you sales? And she's like, oh, a million things. Like, and she ended up saying all these things and she feels like she's getting these clients that she has to drag through her offers and into her offers. And I was like, yeah, just fix that. Just fix how you're communicating your offer and make sure you're attracting your ideal client. I think about for myself, for example, the one thing I needed to fix in one of my launches recently was really just focusing on who my person was. And my person, I made sure to create really controversial content, right, around AI and sending a lot of emails and being salesy and all of that. And that helped me to attract my ideal person. Okay? So that's really, really important. So, but it was just one fix, right? One fix. So 1 to 2 things at a time without burning it down. You'd be amazed at how much that will help. Okay? A lot of times I ask my clients, I'm like, would you hate your offer if you liked your clients?

No.

Great. Fix that. Would you hate your offer if you liked your price? No. Great. Fix that. Would you hate your offer if you liked your deliverables? No. Okay, fix that. Right. That's how you need— that's what you need to ask yourself. With all that said, fix the price first if that's the issue. Like, nothing poisons an offer and selling it faster than a price you resent. If you're undercharging, you will eventually underdeliver. Not because you're unprofessional, but because who wants to feel like they're underpaid, right? Raise the price or restructure the deliverables to match the one you have. Okay. You also need to audit your delivery for what you actually like. So inside your current offer, what do you know is required and what do you have just to people-please? Like I said before, where are you like, this is absolutely what's required and this is just because people ask me for it. Either remove it, systematize it, or delegate it, but stop forcing yourself to build a business around work that you don't think is even necessary. to get your clients results. And then get honest about your client avatar. I know I spent a lot of time on this. That's because this is like the number one thing I've been coaching on, so I'm going to spend even more time on it. Sometimes the offer is fine and the client is not the vibe. You're not attracting the clients that you want, right? The outcomes you deliver are solid, but the person you're delivering them to is not someone you want in your community for whatever reason. And so that's going to be a positioning and a messaging fix. Like you're attracting the wrong person. Because your marketing is not repelling the wrong person. You need to be repelling the wrong person from your offers and you need to be willing to quote unquote lose money over it. And that's the issue with a lot of you is you're not willing to lose a dollar, lose a dollar, right? To have your dream clients. And trust me, you will make more money. You always do. Like I said throughout this episode, there's a balance, right? Authenticity doesn't mean ignoring the market. This isn't like permission to build whatever you want and call it authentic.

Authentic.

Okay? The goal is the overlap. It's where what you love to deliver meets at what the market actually needs. And the question isn't, what do I wanna sell? It's what would I love to sell that someone is desperately looking for? What would I love to charge? And what is the price that someone would pay? If you can answer that, you will have an offer that's both marketable and authentic. I hope this was helpful. I am currently creating exclusive in-depth content on offer strategy, team systems, and mindset strategy. To help you to scale and make more money with less work on my email list. So make sure you join so that you don't miss it. I only post here once a week, but you could be getting a lot more really good content of all about this stuff on my email list. So I will see you there and I'll see you in the next episode.