The Do’s and Don’ts of Offer Creation

The following is a transcription of The Peaceful Entrepreneur Season 3 Episode 8.

AMY: Welcome to the Peaceful Entrepreneur podcast. Together, we're learning how to have peace in the process of everyday business ownership by improving one step at a time, how we think and what we do. I'm your host, Amy Stout.

Okay, so you've started your business, you've built your website, you have your services page, and you just have all your services that you do listed out. And you're not getting any sales. Why is that?

That is what I'm tackling with my friend, Madrona, today. And honestly, I just have my services listed out on my website. So I have a lot to do. I have a lot to learn. I have a lot to improve upon. But isn't that just the journey of a business owner? We're always just trying to be better, doing the next right thing, doing the next step that's going to take us a level higher. We don't have to be perfect all at once.

But we just need to take the next step. So I was really encouraged by my conversation with Madrona today. Madrona is a expert in helping you craft your offers as an online service provider. So she takes you through the process of creating, selling and booking out your standout offers on your own terms. Like what is going to actually resonate and feel aligned for you specifically. So we dove into the whole thing today. What even is an offer? Why is it important to have an offer and not just a list of services?

What mistakes do people make? What steps do you need to take to create your offer? I mean, we went into the whole thing and this is such a value packed episode, you guys. So I learned a lot. I immediately started thinking about what I could do to implement and schedule a follow-up conversation with her. And you can do the same after you listen. does take clients and so you can schedule a call if you're like, okay, yes, I need this and I need this for my business. So let's dive into my episode with Madrona.

Welcome everyone back to today's episode. I have my beautiful friend Madrona with me today and I'm so excited to chat all about offers because this girl is the offers queen and I have a lot to learn from her. So thanks for being on Madrona.

MADRONA: Thank you so much for hosting me, Amy, and I'm so excited to discuss this topic with you and share it with both of our audiences. I think offer creation is something that is so not talked about enough in the online space and I'm really excited just to have some open conversation with you about it today.

AMY: Absolutely, yes. We connected earlier this year and it was when I first launched the podcast and I don't know exactly how we found each other. You might remember that. Do you remember that?

MADRONA: I'll tell you exactly how I found you.

AMY: Okay, you know, tell me.

MADRONA: I saw someone repost a screenshot listening to one of the first episodes of your podcast. And you know what I did, Amy? I went and listened to it right then and there. And then I split into your DMs to tell you how much I love the episode. And that was where this friendship is born.

AMY: Beautiful. And that meant the world to me, especially like on launch week, to hear such kind and genuine feedback from a random stranger at that time was so meaningful. And I remember that we spent that first evening like sending voice messages back and forth while our guys were in the other room playing video games. Do you remember that? I was like, I'm sorry.

MADRONA: I sure do.

AMY: I was just telling you about the background noise and you're like, oh, my husband is too.

So yeah, we bonded right away. And I've always just loved talking to you. You are so, I don't know, like people are drawn to you and you have so much wisdom to share and you're so encouraging, which is what makes you such a good coach.

So today is just gonna kind of be like a dip the toe in the water of what could be possible with working with you, honestly. But I want to dive into this whole offers idea. So for people who are listening, who are kind of new to the entrepreneur space, they might've seen this word offer floating around, but let's just start from the beginning, share what an offer is and why it's important for us as entrepreneurs to prioritize.

MADRONA: Of course. So when people hear offer, a lot of times they think of a certain service. So let's use a social media manager, for example, maybe a social media manager offers Instagram management. That is not an offer.

An offer is a clearly built out service that not only contains the service but also certain parameters. So, say you offer Instagram management. If you want to have an offer around Instagram management, it is going to look very structured. It is going to look clear and put together.

So say you offer Instagram management and for your clients, your packages start at $700 And that includes X amount of posts and stories a month, Instagram engagement, Instagram, etc.

So you might have a service within your services and offer is a clearly built out package of that service, whether it is one service or blending and multiple services, an offer is a collection of things that you do for that service. And that just provides so much more clarity and direction than just like, here's my service. Like why are they so crucial? It also offers you an opportunity as an entrepreneur to really target your ideal clients needs because maybe they know that they want or need their Instagram managed to go off the same example that I was just using.

But maybe they want to do their own lead gen engagement together, excuse me, individually. Maybe they want to do their own stories. Maybe they don't care to have someone writing their captions. Having an offer within your services offers you an opportunity to address the need of whatever your ideal client is in a way that really targets individual and specific needs instead of general needs. Because someone might want or need Instagram management, but that doesn't mean that they want or need just it as a service.

They want, they most likely want a package. I mean, that's not, when someone comes to your site and they see you do Instagram management, they're going to have a ton of questions. So if you have your offer spelled out, it answers probably 90% of the questions. And not only that, it offers you an opportunity to get what I like to call an informed inquiry. Someone who is inquiring about your services, who knows almost everything, if not everything they need to know about your services already, and they come into your DMs, or they come into your contact form, or they come into your email ready to hire you, which is ideally what we all want.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm no stranger to a sales call or a sales conversation in the DMs and I absolutely love getting to help a potential client choose an offer of mine that fits their needs best.

But in general, when you give someone all the information that they need about an offer, when they come into your DMs, most likely they're just asking, "How can I pay you?" And I don't know about you, but that is one of my favorite questions.

AMY: Yes, absolutely.

And if you think about it, you're, you're doing the work for yourself ahead of time on sales. So I mean, a lot like something we can pull out for like the peaceful entrepreneur theme is you can provide yourself peace by creating offers because you're cutting out so much of the sales work that you would have to do if you just put up your services. And you've got it all spelled out, you can craft exactly how you want to target exactly who you want to work with. And it will just get you 10 steps ahead of where you would be if you didn't do that.

MADRONA: I couldn't have said it better myself, Amy. And another thing about offering people all of the information that they're going to want and need about a package is it really lets them know that this package is for them. oftentimes when someone is hiring for something, say Instagram management again, for example, they know what they want. And oftentimes, you're able to craft packages that fit most people's wants and needs. Now, that doesn't mean that someone won't occasionally come into your DMs and hey, I see this great Instagram package that you have, I really want to add on this, or I don't actually need this, can we sub this for this?

But most likely, if you do adequate market research and are in touch with your ideal client's wants and needs, you'll be able to create a package that fits most people's needs. So good. So how do people make that jump from, I know what my services are, but how do I turn them into an offer? And specifically, the question that comes to my mind is I'm one of those people that's like, "Well, thinking about all the options of what I could do." And I function off of, and I'm trying to change this, but my instinct is to function off of, "I can do it, so I should offer it." And that's something that you cannot operate in if you're going to create a successful offer. So how do you narrow down? How do you choose what to put into your offer when you're making your very first one?

So Amy, I think it's really all about refinement because as someone who is a multi-passionate entrepreneur just like yourself, I also have an inclination to offer as many things as I can just because I can. there's this thought in the back of my brain that is wanting to appeal to a wider audience.

But I think one thing about that notion that's missed is that when you are trying to appeal to anyone and everyone, that might not mean that you are actually appealing to your ideal client through your offers. And if you're a person who is a generalist and doesn't have a super targeted demographic that they're working with, then that might be okay. But speaking for myself, speaking for you, and speaking for most online service writers and coaches within our kind of corner of the online space, most of us aren't generalists, and most of us do really want to work with a targeted demographic.

So trying to hone in on specialization instead of being a generalist is definitely something that I always recommend to seek on getting from that position of just having a ton of services that you offer laid out to specialized packages and an offering suite that allows your ideal client to work with you at different price points at different points within their journey. I think that not only is it about refinement but it's about thinking about where you want to work with people within their journey.

So you and I happen to have a ton of beginner entrepreneurs in our space. So people who are within their first year, year and a half of business, which is a super fun and special spot to be in. So let's use myself for an example. If I had a list of services right now, instead of built out packages or offers, as I like to call them, I would think about, okay, this is what my audience looks like in terms of where they're at in their entrepreneurial journeys. This is what they need at every point that they're coming to me at. So say they are within their first year. What can I do to offer people within their first year as much support as possible and targeted support within an offer? And what do they need to achieve what I like to call the desire transformation of an offer.

So the desire transformation is what you want your client to accomplish within your offer. So using myself as an example again, say I am creating a program for beginner entrepreneurs that I want them to learn how to create an offer using a very close to home example of of what we're talking about today. How can I offer them the skills and the knowledge to do what I want them to be able to do and the support in learning and implementing that?

So that would be kind of what my desired transformation would look like, thinking about where I want people to go within my containers, what I want them to learn and accomplish. So when conceptualizing offers out of services, I want you to think about how you can give people little pieces of the pie. And when I say pie, I'm using pie as an analogy for all of your knowledge. So you have a ton of knowledge.

How can you offer it to people in small, digestible things at different price points, because we all know what happens if you try to offer all of your knowledge in one offer. People get overwhelmed and they're not able to implement. So long-winded answer but when I'm thinking about helping someone create offers and an offering suite from a list of services I think who is their ideal client, where is their ideal client at right now roughly, and how can my client who I'm helping create the offers of serve their ideal client at different price points and different points in their journey.

Because if you offer people continual opportunities to purchase from you at different levels, they come back over and over and over again. And you know what that creates a ton of monthly recurring revenue, very high retention rates, two things that we all want.

AMY: Yes, that's so good. All of that. Could just bottle it up. That's so good. And a lot of those things that you mentioned are thinking about the target client and how they are served. But you also have to think about yourself because you're the one actually providing the service. So how do you check as you're making your offer if it's in alignment with yourself within yourself?

MADRONA: This is something that I've talked about and thought about so much. I think that truly it is about wanting to create the offer that you're creating, having passion behind it because I see so often entrepreneurs in the online space, having offer suites that are filled with offers that are not only aligned with them but that I can tell even from a consumer perspective before I even get to be anybody's coach, that they created these offers because somebody else told them that they should, or because they saw someone else's offer suite that was doing something similar to them and they mimicked that, which I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that.

Obviously, we never condone copying, but it's not wrong to take inspiration from someone else's offers or to take inspiration from a mentor, an online service provider that you're working with who's giving you direction on your offers. That being said, you should be so passionate about your offers. You should be so passionate that you wanna talk about them at any chance that you get.

You should be so passionate that you believe and see in your heart wholeheartedly the desired transformation that you are using to sell that offer. And if you don't feel that fire in your heart when it comes to an offer of yours, it's probably not aligned with where you're at.

Now, that doesn't mean that it never will be in the future or that it never has been in the past, but our offer suites should continue to evolve as we do as entrepreneurs. And at the point where you stop feeling that fire with an offer, it might be time to either restructure it or retire it. And if you don't feel that fire in your heart when you're creating an offer, you need to look at the why behind why are you creating this. Because there's a certain point where if you're not feeling excited about something, even in the creation, you're not going to feel excited about selling it, you're not going feel excited about launching it. And most likely, you're not gonna sell it.

Most likely, people won't opt into the offer because people can feel when you're selling something, that you're excited about it, that you were embodying the desire transformation, and people can feel when you're not. And we've all launched something that wasn't super aligned with us and then learned that lesson. Well, not we've all but a lot of us have.

And if you haven't, I hope that this can save you learning that lesson because it's truly not necessary to launch things that you're not really passionate about. And when you only launch things that you are really passionate about, you not only have an aligned offer suite, but you are encouraging yourself to sell the offer more. And not only to make more money off the offer, but to increase the impact of the offer. And as impact driven entrepreneurs, both of us are obviously, that is what I want to see for everybody. I want to see people selling offers that they truly believe in that they're so passionate about and that they're so excited to sell.

AMY: All of that is so good. And what's kind of standing out to me is not offering something just because you think you should because the should is not passion. That's a different drive. But when your drive is passion, it honestly, and this might not be for every case, but it's probably going to be something that you have experienced yourself in your own life as a transformation. And you're really passionate about seeing other people have that same transformation. And like you said, people can like feel that passion from within you. That's like something deeper than just like, here's the service and I can offer it to you.

MADRONA: Exactly. And it's so beautiful seeing more and more entrepreneurs over the last few years that I've been in business leaning more in to offers that they're truly passionate about. Because I love seeing people excited about what they're offering. And when you're excited about what you're offering, your audience is too.

And even if someone isn't purchasing an offer, I don't know about you, but when I see someone consistently selling an offer for days, weeks, months that they're clearly so excited about. It makes me excited for them. It makes me so happy for them. And it makes me want to see them win no matter what.

And you know what, if someone's consistently selling an offer, and they're doing a great job and I can see the benefits and I can see everything that I need, and maybe I have a client who's been talking about struggles that someone else's offer addresses, you know, what is the first thing that I'm going to do? I'm going to say, "Hey, I've seen this girl selling this offer recently, and we've been chatting it up in the DMs, and I can tell how passionate she is about this. I can tell how much she has put into this offer. I can tell how supportive this offer would be for you and where you're at right now." I would really go have a chat with her in the DMs and see what's up with this offer because I think this can be great for you.

And I will do that for people who aren't past clients, aren't even close friends in the online space. I will do that because I see people showing up and embodying that transformation and that's something that I want to support.

AMY: Yeah, that's so good. There's another whole piece to this offer creation process that we haven't even mentioned yet which is market research. And this is something that I am admittedly like it's not my first instinct. And so and it but it's something that's so important. So let's just dive into that piece. What would you recommend people do and what would you recommend people avoid when they're doing market research?

MADRONA: I'm so happy to be talking to you about this because this is something that I so often see missed. And it's okay that it's not your first instinct. It's not most people's first instinct. If I wasn't such a research nerd, I probably wouldn't have done market research for at at least the first year in business, and most people don't.

The thing about market research is it's not emphasized in the online space in terms of something that is super important. It is talked about occasionally, but most of the time, it's talked about in high level containers for experienced entrepreneurs. And I personally think that market research should be one of the first skills that you learn as an online service writer.

So in terms of why you need it, let's just be blunt here. Unless you are a part of the demographic that you're serving, without research, you are just assuming what your ideal client needs. And there's a funny phrase about assuming that I'm not gonna repeat here.

But you know, I don't know about you and I don't know about anybody who's listening. I don't want to assume the needs of anybody in business or life. I wanna ask people what their needs are and then I wanna be able to offer them very intentional, well thought out support based on those needs.

And if I don't do that, I am not only missing a core piece of understanding when it comes to my ideal client, I am creating something that I don't even know if they need. And sounds like a waste of time if you ask me. So that is why I believe that it's so important. It offers you an opportunity to understand your ideal client. And then through that opportunity to understand your ideal client, you'll be able to create offers that really address their needs instead of just what you think they need as someone who, again, is probably not a part of the demographics that you're serving. So another thing that I feel like is not talked about enough is how not to do market research.

And like you said, also an important piece to talk about. I want to remind anybody who's listening that market research doesn't have to be complicated. It doesn't have to be something that's challenging. What I recommend the most when it comes to market research is find people in your ideal client avatar, which if you don't use ideal client avatars, that's fine. I use them very loosely for myself and my clients, but find someone within the demographic that you're serving and chatted up with them. Make friends with them, build community with them.

And then when you have five to 10 people like that in your community over a span of a couple months of building relationships, you have people that are not only absolutely willing to help you with market research, but they want to help you because you've built a relationship with them.

They want to see you when they want to see you create super impactful offers. And if they can help you in any way, they will. And the reason why I suggest that is because we've all gotten those Hey Girl DMs from someone who we've literally never talked to before in the online space asking us to hop on a 30 to 45 minute call to help someone with market research. Now, I, because I'm so passionate about market research and about everybody performing market research, I would say I hop on about one to two of those a month. And I usually live with them for 30 minutes, I say, Hey, I have capacity for a 30 minute call, this is what I can offer you. But I probably get three to five of those DMs a week from people that I don't know at all, who have never connected with me before, who have never slid into my DMs just wanting to build a relationship. And oftentimes on the market research call, when they ask me for feedback, I'll say, "Hey, I really respect that you're doing market research and I'm always happy to help out especially newer entrepreneurs in the space with market research, but I would suggest that you shift your approach a little bit in the way that you pitch people on market research calls."

And market research calls aren't the only way that you can complete market research. I like to use Instagram stories to do it. I like to use forms to do it, whether it's a Google form, type form, whatever. so many different avenues that you can access people's feedback on something or people's knowledge about something and choose the one that is going to be the easiest for them.

Maybe people have an easier time getting on a call than filling out a form. Maybe it's the other way around. Maybe they'd rather answer some Instagram story polls, whatever it is. Make sure that the people that you are asking to delegate time that is essentially unpaid work that you are being very considerate of their capacity.

And to wrap this all up, don't overthink it. Talk to different people, let them know how excited you are about something that you're creating and that you'd love a little bit of help. And don't take it personally if they don't have capacity for that. Cause everybody has a limited amount of capacity and just have fun with it.

Ask questions, inquire, say, Hey, I'm thinking about creating this. What would you think about this? How much would you pay for this, et cetera? And don't make it something that is so analytical. As someone who's very analytical myself, I think that I tend to spreadsheet it up and get into a point where it might not be the funnest thing for me. And I think people can feel that.

And if there's one thing I can say to wrap this up, it's have fun with it and allow the people who are helping you to have fun with it to laugh, make jokes, smile, talk about what you really wanna do and what's been hard about this process, be honest, be open, and just allow your community to support you in this way.

AMY: That's amazing. And as I was also thinking about how, based on what your offer is, you will ask different people things, right? Like, so you'll have different audiences that you're doing market research with, and you'll have different approaches to the market research.

So like thinking about you with offering your coaching to newer entrepreneurs doing the Instagram stories, doing the DMs, that makes a lot of sense to do your market research that way. And I was like, how do I do market research? 'Cause I do naturally do it, but not that way, because a lot of my clients are ongoing.

And so the way I do my market research is a quarterly check-in with them. I tack it on to the end of our monthly call. So it's not an extra call for them, it's easy. It's just like five questions that I ask them. every quarter. And it's stuff like, how are things going? Are you still happy with the services that we're providing for you? Is there anything that you want to change? Is there anything that we could add on that would serve you that I could look into adding onto your services? That's probably the biggest one.

Because if you just ask that, I literally had somebody actually it was a discovery call with a potential client. And I was like, is Is there anything else that you're looking to potentially hand off? And she mentioned something that I'd never even thought of offering. But then I went and found someone who could offer, who could offer it, you know, and I could hire it as a contractor. So it's like, you just have to ask it. Like you said, it doesn't have to be complicated. You literally just have to connect with this person and ask them a question. And if you ask, they probably have an answer.

MADRONA: Absolutely. As long as you're not approaching someone in a way that's expecting something that they have no obligation to give you, which, like I said, does happen in the M's often with me, and don't recommend going that route. But as long as you're not asking for something that feels unreasonable to someone, most of the time they want to help you out.

And you brought up such a great point, Amy, of conducting market research with existing clients or even tax clients. clients. I have something similar to that. I have a mid program check in feedback form that I send to my clients and I also have a way that they can ongoing offer me feedback in their client portal. And it offers me so much great feedback. It also offers me a ton of social proof.

And that is another thing that you can gain from getting feedback from current or past clients. Regardless of if it's a testimonial or not, there is so much need for social proof people want to know about other people's experiences with you before they hire you. And if you don't have enough of that, it could make or break a lot of people's decision to hire you. And getting market research done with past clients and current clients allows you not only to ask people who are already working with you questions that they have a perspective on because of that fact, but it also offers you as the service provider or the coach an opportunity to gather social proof through those answers and that feedback that they're offering you, which can be super helpful for you in content.

AMY: Yeah, that is so important and something that I did not put into place for a while 'cause I didn't realize the importance of the feedback, but it is so, so, so valuable. I have kind of an overarching question. It's kind of a bigger question, But what is the biggest mistake that people make when they're creating their offers?

MADRONA: Man, that is a big one. I think that there's so many mistakes that I see people making. And if I had to choose the one that I see the most or the biggest, as you said, I think it truly would be putting out an offer that isn't aligned with you because ultimately our offers, especially if they're signature offers, things that we are going to offer for years to come, they're gonna change, they're gonna grow with us.

But if from the start, you don't feel aligned with an offer, it's gonna be a rocky road, launching that offer, selling that offer, opening doors, closing doors. However you format the launch and the sales strategy for the offer, it's gonna feel like an uphill battle the whole time. And that's really hard. as someone who has been in that spot with an offer before and totally learned that lesson myself, I don't want that for anybody. I only want people to put out offers that they're aligned with.

And it's okay if when looking at a list of services that you offer, if that's still where you're at, that you don't immediately see, hmm, this package could be created out of this, this offer could be created out of this. It takes a while for your brain to start thinking like that. As someone who has been in the online space for, I'm about to enter my fourth year, it took me a while to have those skills and to feel confident in those skills. And I would say for the whole first three to six months, I had that service list going on.

And I think between the three and the six month mark, I realized that I needed packages and I realized that if I was only going off of a services list, I was charging hourly and that wasn't sustainable for me and got me capped out very quickly in my income and my capacity. But I think that there's so much to be learned from that lesson and regardless of if you learn that lesson or not, take it from myself. You don't need to put out stuff that doesn't feel aligned with you.

You can wait and take longer to put out an offer and that's 10 times better than putting it out at a point where it doesn't feel good for you. And if it already doesn't feel good for you when you're putting it out or thinking about putting it out, it might never feel good. And that's definitely something that I would avoid. We put so much time pressure on ourselves. It's like, I get this idea and I must do it tomorrow. where is that pressure coming from?

Nobody is putting pressure on you. I'm talking to myself right now. Like, why are you so worried about this? Like take some time, sit on it, think about it, like wait until you really feel like a deep peace and alignment. And absolutely, we just got to work on breaking out of that. I think that we just live in such a fast paced time in in our society and in in our world and there's so much outside influence to take action on something when you are feeling lit up about something.

And as someone who does encourage that to an extent, I think that it's a really positive thing in a lot of ways. That being said, I don't think that it should put anybody in a position where unless there's a necessity to feel rushed. Because when we are rushed, we're not doing our best work and we're not regulated within our bodies and brains in a time when it's really important to be.

Because when we're thinking about putting something new out, we should be as cool comp collected as the boss we can. And we should be in a position where we're ready and open to feedback. We're ready to learn. there's so much going on when you're in that offer creation spot and I always am talking to my clients about this. Like if you're about to undergo a time where you're gonna create a new offer or multiple new offers, take out as much of the distraction or as much of the outside noise as you can and just focus on you, focus on your business, focus on your clients because it is a really easy thing to fall into to get overwhelmed while you're creating offers and that might be something that pushes you to not create offers for a while after that.

Now, I'm not saying that everybody should be constantly in offer creation mode, but as online service writers and coaches, there's a lot of people who get overwhelmed and then put that part of business down for a long time. And I think that we should always be looking to create different ways that people can work with us at different price points and fill any gaps within our offer suite.

And I don't want people to get so overwhelmed, you don't create an offer for six months or a year or two years. And if there's anything that I can do to stop that, or prevent that I always do not just within my clients, but I get a lot of people in the DMs asking me about offer creation too. And I always just tell them like, sit down with your notes or your laptop. Start brain dumping first, we can always refine it later.

Get into a place physically and mentally where this is the only thing you have to work on. And from there, your creativity, let it run wild. That's what I always tell my clients. Let your creativity run wild and see what comes of this. We can refine it later.

AMY: Yes, that's exactly what I was going to say. It's like when you are feeling that excitement, passion, that like major creativity, brainstorm, spurt, like absolutely write it down all down, go down all the rabbit trails, but like let it just be a brainstorm.

You don't have to immediately implement from that brainstorm. I think that's probably what I do is I just think that like, okay, brainstorm next step, let's do it. It's like, no, there's like five steps in between. I think that is a really important thing to talk about though. I think a lot of people believe that from conceptualization of an offer, they have to immediately get to the point where an offer could be put out.

Now for me, whether I'm creating offers with my own business or more often creating offers within a client's business, there's so much that goes into creation of an offer. I start with an initial brainstorm phase, then I go into a refinement phase, then well actually before even the refinement phase, I go into a market research phase and then I refine and then I do more market research and then I think about launch plans and sales plans and when it comes to like a robust offer that could take a couple days if I'm like moving really quickly and that's like all I can think about. It could take weeks, it's taken months before.

Sometimes I get to a point where I have a full offer created and then I scrap the whole thing because I'm like, wow, actually, I want to create a different offer to solve this problem that I'm trying to solve or to address this struggle of my ideal clients that I am trying to address. And it's okay to take messy action. I I think that messy action is talked about a lot in the online space.

And there's a lot of times where I think it's talked about where it's not quite appropriate as someone who is very analytical type an intentional about every move I make in business and life. There's times to take messy action and there's times to not, but when you're in the conceptualization phase of an offer, that is absolutely a time where it's so appropriate and I even really encourage it because if you try to make everything perfect from the start, it's going to feel stuffy.

The whole process is going to feel stuffy and it's not going to be fun for you. And I want it to be fun for everybody.

AMY: Absolutely. Yeah. I had like inspiration strike at 2 AM the other night, just like wrote a bunch of stuff down at my notes app and I'm like, okay, now I'm going to sit on it. And I think that it's so important to just sit on it sometimes because sometimes. Even though our brains might be going a million miles a minute with you sitting on it, you are giving your brain the space and the call to let what you just created sit with you to consider, okay, I have this written down now I have this brand of now.

Now after that, what, where am I going from here? And what can I do to, to refine this? And I absolutely am always encouraging of breaks within the process. And it makes me so happy that you just took that for yourself.

MADRONA: Also, I'm sure you needed some sleep if it was too late.

AMY: Well, I mean, I think even part of market research could, could and is asking, maybe even people that are even related to your target client, describing it to them, because that's what I've been doing with this specific idea. I've been telling it to a bunch of people. And everybody, everybody has said that makes so much sense. And I'm like, okay, cool. I'm not crazy. You just had something so important. I'm so glad that you brought it up.

So when it comes to market research, I think that obviously talking to the people that you're trying to target with me offer is so important, but I like to have, I would say two to three, sometimes two to five people within my market research process that aren't at all within the demographic that I'm targeting.

And sometimes I ask people who aren't even in business, this is gonna sound funny, but I will oftentimes ask my partner or a friend or a family member who know what I do enough to understand an explanation of something, but don't have the experience of being within the demographic that I'm targeting. So they're offering me an opinion that is a little bit different and unbiased.

MADRONA: Absolutely, yeah. And those honestly sometimes mean, well, I don't know if they mean more, but they mean a lot and they hold a special place in validating you.

AMY: Absolutely. And describing an offer that you're creating to someone in the online space is one thing, but if you can already explain it in a way that makes sense to someone who might have never been a business owner in their life, who might not even know a crazy lot about what you do, then you're probably further along in the process than you think.

MADRONA: Yeah, that's very true. Articulating your offer is a whole nother story. Oh my God. We're going to cut it off. We're not going to go into it yet, but that would be a whole other episode.

AMY: Absolutely. That you would be great at.

MADRONA: And that's a whole other phase of, of offer creation that again, is not something that's talked about. People think that they just need to display what exactly is within an offer, but that desired transformation piece and the messaging that comes with that is way more important than deliverables ever could be.

AMY: Yeah, okay. We'll leave everyone with a cliffhanger. (laughs)

My final question to you is not related to this, but it could be, if you wanted it to be. But in either today, this week, lately, what has been bringing you peace as a business owner and as a person?

MADRONA: It has been lately all about taking my time back because when I'm in these seasons of sprint, as I like to call them, I am so busy. There's so many things that are pulling me every which way.

And as someone who is very family oriented, there's always something going on in the family. As someone who is very community oriented, there's always something going on with a friend. And I think that at least for me, it's so easy to put myself on the back burner and to put my health on the back burner, honestly.

And that's been something that especially since I have been dealing with chronic illness a lot more in the last three years has been something that I've realized that doesn't work for me at all. And really prioritizing relaxation, however that looks, whether it is in the home, outside of the home, rest, non-rest related, there's so many ways to relax.

And also as an introvert, I really need that relaxation time, especially alone. So I have really, really, really been structuring my relaxation time into my schedule recently because in these really busy times, it doesn't happen as much if I don't. And that has been a huge gift for myself.

AMY: Yes, that is like I always say, if you're not taking care of yourself, your business is gonna suffer because you are the motor behind your business. So it's just like you gotta take care of yourself, but we probably do the opposite 'cause we get pulled so many directions. So that is such a good reminder. And I can never be reminded enough of that. (laughs)

MADRONA: Same.

AMY: Yes, well, thank you, Madrona. This has been so valuable and I cannot wait to talk to you because I've been coming up with a list of questions in my head that I have for you about my offers (laughs) as we've been talking.

But everybody, you can connect with Madrona. Go ahead and share your Instagram, your website, and everything will be linked down below.

MADRONA: Everything is @TheMadronarose, themadronarose.com, @themadronarose, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest. As long as you type that in, you will be able to find me pretty much anywhere.

AMY: Which is amazing. And your podcast is coming back.

MADRONA: Yes, Soulful Creatives is the podcast. I'm very, very grateful to be putting out season two in September.

And I also get to have Amy on, which I have been waiting for for, I would say about two months now. It's about damn time. But I'm so excited to have you on. And I'm just really excited to be able to share that with my community along with everything else that I share.

AMY: I love it. This has been awesome. Thank you everyone for listening and we will see you all next week.

Thank you so much for joining us for today's episode. Don't forget to connect with us on YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook, and we would love it if you would leave a review wherever you're listening. We'll see you next week for more tips for how to become a peaceful entrepreneur.