Hello, and welcome to Episode 430 of The Streamlined Solopreneur. It's another solo episode today. And today, I am talking about my product ladder. And you might be wondering, what does this have to do with kind of streamlining your processes? And, well, let me tell you. As a solopreneur, you don't wanna put all of your eggs in one basket. You want to have multiple offerings, and you want some of those offerings to be scalable on autopilot. This is the number one thing that I have struggled with in my business. I don't do a lot of things that scale very well.
And while I'm not trying to make a ton of money, or I mean, I'm trying to make a lot of money, but I'm not trying to be like a millionaire or a multimillionaire, anything like that. I'm trying to support my family, make a good income, be able to go on vacations and knock off when I want to. And because of that, I can't just do, you know, like workshops or straight-up coaching. I need to have some products and some services, like, some easy services, like easy win, high value, not a lot of time on my part. And so I've been thinking a lot about my product ladder.
And the other reason that I would think about my product ladder here is I am in a state of flux as far as, you know, what my offerings really are. I help podcasters, and I've found a really good niche and positioning, but I don't think my products communicate that very well. So that's what we're going to get into today. I'm gonna go over what is a product ladder, why we really need one, and I'll close out with the the product ladder that I have. I'll say, 99% solidified.
In Streamlined Solopreneur Accelerated, we're going to poke holes in my plan, and I'll give a general business and product update, and you can sign up. You can get all the links I talk about. It'll probably be mostly with my products, and you can become a member of Streamlined Solopreneur Accelerated over at [streamlined.fm/430]. But, for now, let's get into it.
Welcome to the Streamlined Solopreneur, a show for busy solopreneurs to help you improve your systems and processes, so you can build a business while spending your time the way you want. I know you're busy, so let's get started.
I'm going to start by telling you a story. I want you to imagine that you are at the park, and someone who you don't know walks up to you and says, I'm selling my car. Do you want to buy my car? And that's it. They don't tell you what kind of car it is. They don't tell you how much it is. They don't know anything about you. That's kind of what it's like trying to sell products without a good product ladder or knowing anything about the audience that you're selling to. Right? And so these are the problems I'm trying to solve with my product ladder.
So, my friend Chris Lema has a great blog post about product ladders. So, I'll link to this in the description and the show notes, but he basically talks about this product ladder paradigm. He's shared it with his coaching clients, and I learned about it at a retreat I did with him a few years ago now.
The ladder paradigm is an approach to creating multiple offers. (I'm reading this directly now) It's a misnomer to call it a product ladder paradigm. It should be multiple product ladders because every micro-segment has its own ladder. So, you can think of rungs on a ladder as your offering, and the target offering is in the middle. If you have five offerings, the one that you wanna sell the most should be in the middle. And then he goes on to break down why product ladders work.
And so, again, this will be the last thing I kind of borrow from this blog post. But he says that people are at different stages, different investment levels, and different levels of readiness to engage with you and your products. And so he breaks it down this way. Some people just want assistance. They want a quick answer, a bit of help, some direction, or a way to know they're not messing up, and they don't have the funds to have you help them. Right? And so, ebooks, webinars, and small online courses are the assistance crowd. Accountability.
All right. Now there are things that people are willing to invest in, and they wanna make changes, and they have serious goals, and those goals require effort. And so this is the accountability crowd. Right? He says, we may still take an online course, but it may not be self-taught. It might be a cohort, or we may hire a trainer or a coach to help us. Right? So coaching, cohorts, live courses, this is the accountability side of things, masterminds.
And then acceleration is the 3rd level that he has here. For a small percentage of folks, they're looking to trade money for results. They know it will cost money. This is the services, the done-for-you side of things. Right? This is the client services part. And the reason that your acceleration products can be so expensive and attract fewer people is because your product ladder takes people along for this ride where at first they want assistance, maybe then they want accountability, and then they want acceleration. Or there are some people who just want acceleration. I think I do a generally bad job of categorizing each of these. And so, like, I'll tell you my products later, and then this pro show will kind of categorize each of those. Though, you should probably know because of the order in which I put them in, where each one falls.
But, you know, I thinkI realized that my products were all over the place. They weren't specifically serving someone. They didn't meet people where they were at necessarily or it's not clear where they're meeting people. Right? Whether they're it's like an assistance accountability acceleration thing. And I internalized this one funnel for everyone's line of thinking. Even though with this retreat from a couple of years ago with Chris and a bunch of really smart people and my friends and stuff, we talked about micro-segments, and we talked about product ladders. And I have a whole Airtable base breaking it down. And I need to revisit that because I had a totally different audience in mind because I was afraid to lean into this busy solopreneur podcaster. They probably have…they probably have kids. They probably are parents. And I'm gonna help them automate. That scared me because I thought, what if I'm limiting the people who are willing to hire me? People wanna launch podcasts all the time. People wanna grow podcasts and monetize. I should really help them with all of them.
And because I serve podcasters at every level, I need to be super clear about how I help them and in what ways. Right? And, the how I help them is through process improvement and specifically, automation. Right? I've been told many times over the last couple of years that I am one of the only people who's focusing on automation for podcasters. And I haven't leaned into that enough because people reach out to me, and they say, I wanna grow my podcast. I wanna monetize my podcast. I'm like, oh, let me help you do those things. When really I should be saying, hey. You wanna grow? You wanna monetize? We need to make time for you to do that. And if you're spending all of your time creating mediocre content, you can't grow, or you won't grow, and you probably won't monetize.
So let's get the basics down, and then we'll automate, and then the other things will come. And so I need to be better about that.
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Okay. So here's where I like to ask a… usually, if I'm doing an interview, I usually ask an inflammatory question to my guest. And the question I came up with, the question I'm trying to answer here is, do you really need to focus on something? Do you really need product ladders? What if you just have people pay you to help them generally? What if you invent products on the fly? But the truth is, I do need to focus because I can help people grow or monetize their podcast. I can help them launch or produce their podcast, but there's a problem with all of those things.
Lots of people are helping podcasters grow their podcasts. Marketing people who probably know a bit more than I do about that, monetizing. Yes. I can help you monetize your podcast. I help people monetize their podcast. But my friend, Justin Moore, has like, the market cornered on being a sponsorship coach, and I'm helping him with that. I am one of the coaches in the Wizards Guild, which is like his asynchronous coaching product.
So other people are doing that. Launch. Yeah. Lots of people are doing that. Produce. Yeah. Lots of people are doing that, and that's not something that I want to do in my business. That's really not scalable unless you hire, and I don't wanna hire. I wanna stay as a solopreneur.
What's my unique offer is the question I need to answer, and which micro-segments need that help? Those are the most important things because that's going to give me clarity. Right? At this point, we probably know. Right? We need to talk to, you need to write your marketing content as if you're talking to one person. Imagine that person and talk to them. If you try to talk to everyone, no one's going to listen. Right? When I tell my kids to clean up, they are 7, 4, and 2. I'm really telling my oldest to clean up. The 4-year-old can help. The 2-year-old is off in her own world. And when I talk to everyone, my daughter, the oldest, doesn't feel like she's getting recognized, and the other 2 don't listen. So what I should do is get on my 7-year-old level and say, hey. I know you didn't, I know you weren't the only one to make this mess, but it would really help me out if you helped me clean up. And we'll try to get the littles to help too, but they don't understand. Because now I'm talking to her, and I'm recognizing her, and, she feels appreciated. But if I just say, guys, clean up, she's gonna be mad because she's the only one cleaning. Right?
Finding your microsegments is kind of the same way. If I just say, I help podcasters podcast, cool. Why should you go with me? A 1000000 people help podcasters podcasts. Half the people I know who launch a podcast go, oh, I could start a course on podcasting. Just because you didn't want doesn't mean you can teach it. Right?
So why should people go with me? This is why I need to niche down. This is why I need to find my unique offer, and this is why I need to build my micro-segments, and this is why I need to build my product ladder. Because if I don't do that, my products are all over the place. People don't know how I can help them.
I have three audits. One is the growth audit, which is the most popular because it's the most fleshed out. One is the podcast guest audit, which is just like I made it up because someone asked me about it. And one is the podcast process audit. That's where I can help the most people. That serves them the best. It allows me to help in the best way, and I haven't done a whole lot of those because I'm too busy trying to sell the growth audit.
So I wanna talk about, like, how I can merge the audits so I can maybe still offer that. But that's not the most important thing. Right? If I choose to help people with their processes, I can filter out bad fits, and I can recommend products. Because the truth is, growing your podcast takes a lot of work for you. And unless you're going to hire me as your coach, that's going to be tough because you need to continue to work on it. Right? Like a podcast growth audit is great. I'm gonna tell you everything you need to do, and then you actually need to go do it. But with a podcast process audit, that's a really good low-level product that I'm like, okay. Here are all the ways you can improve your process. And then they can either go do it or they can buy my self-paced course on how to automate their podcast, or they can hire me as an accelerant. Right? So, I have the podcast or the product ladder at every stage there, and I can help them? Right?
The same thing with monetization. I monetize my podcast. There are a bunch of ways to monetize your podcast. I don't strictly help people get sponsors because that's like its own ongoing coaching thing, and you're not going to have time to do that unless you create margins in your podcast process, so you're not just producing your show all the time. So by choosing processes, I've niched down. I've got clarity. I need to build out my micro-segments, which maybe that's another episode. But this is the important work that I'm doing.
Now that I have basically a suite of products, I can put together the right ones to help the right people. And so with that, the product ladder lets people pick, lets them pick something in their budget based on assistance, accountability, or acceleration. And so I've been talking for what? 20 minutes? 16 minutes at this point ish?
Let's get into my product ladder. I'm gonna start from the bottom up. Okay. So we're gonna start with assistance. These are usually lower-priced things. And then we'll move into accountability, which is the mid-price thing, and then, the acceleration, which is the higher price thing. And it looks like I've got 6. I've really got 5 products here. So, okay.
Starting at the bottom. The first one is my mini self-paced courses. Those are around $47 each. They cover a specific topic. I do have, How to start your podcast on a budget and How to get your first sponsor. I don't really push those a lot. I push those to people who are like, I need help here. And I have that material, and so I can sell it. But the main thing that's going to fill that void is the new automation course that I'm working on. It's gonna be called automation for podcasters or something better than that. And it's going to be, like, the bottom rung of my product ladder. It's going to show people in a self-paced way how they can improve their processes and start automating.
Up from there is the podcast navigator. This is something I've been working on for a long time. It's mostly a Notion template that is designed to help you run every aspect of your podcast. And, yes, this does include launching and positioning, organizing, finding sponsors, or at least a way to track sponsors. And it is, I think, the linchpin of having good podcast processes. That's why I'm including it here. Because knowing everything inside podcast navigator and then having videos, it's like, supplementing you along the way, is really the best way to improve your podcast overall, and that includes having good processes in place. So it's called podcast navigator. That's actually a membership. So, like, inside that or this is the plan, at least I'll talk about this more in accelerated, there are actually three levels to it.
And so but there's one that like, really makes the most sense. It's like, it should be a no-brainer for most people. But, you know, there are some options in there. Right? And maybe you're wondering, like, is this too complicated? And I don't think so because this is kind of what this is, what the exercise of doing product ladders for micro-segments is. You have just kind of similar or slightly different offerings for each of these folks so that they can get into your world and buy the thing that you're trying to sell the most. And, honestly, even though Podcast Navigator is lower on the rung, that is the thing that I really wanna sell the most because it's a self-paced thing. And then if people want more help, they can get the other stuff. But, like, this is kinda based on pricing. Right? So I would say that courses and Podcast Navigator fall into the assistance realm of things.
Next is audits. So this is gonna be the podcast process audit. You're gonna hire me, and there's gonna be, again, a couple of levels. Right? One is where I'm gonna look through your processes. We'll talk, and then I'll come up with some suggestions for how you can improve it. The next level up from there is if you do have a team, we can take a day and I can train your team. Right? And then there's the general audit. Right? And this is general improvements you can make to your podcast. This is something I'm struggling with because if we look at just processes, there's, I don't see it fitting in a good way, but, I think it could with just a little bit of creativity. So this is the thing I'm struggling with at all. Talk through and accelerate.
And so that's audits. This is I'm putting this under accountability because even though it's not an ongoing thing, it's I talk to you. I walk through your podcast and your processes. I tell you everything you need to do, and then I do follow-up a couple of weeks later and say, like, hey. How's it going? Right? So that's the middle of the ladder.
-Then next is coaching. Right? And so you can hire me for a one-off coaching session or ongoing coaching. Ongoing coaching is what I prefer because I think that, like, a one off coaching session is basically me telling you a couple of things. And then like, it's very similar in that regard to the audit where we have a conversation, and then I sent you out into the world.
Ongoing coaching is really the thing that I like to do. And so, like, I have done with you as a separate thing, but, really, like, done with you and ongoing coaching are kind of the same thing. Right? So, like, this could be like, one-off coaching calls. I know you can't see me updating this document. But there's a distinction between, like, the one-off coaching call, which is maybe like a single product, and then the done with you coaching where we talk weekly, and I tell you the things you need to do. You go off and do them, and then we talk about it later.
And then at the very top is the done-for-you stuff. Right? And this is the most expensive thing. Right? And you could pay for, like, 3 months upfront, or you could pay monthly for a higher rate. But at this, we will meet, and I will do stuff. I will build automation for you, or I will build out Notion templates for you. And I will build out part of your processes, and I will record videos for your team if you need your team. And, again, that's the accelerant. Right? Done with you and done for you are the accelerants because you have questions in done with you. I answer those questions and tell you what to do. And then with, done for you, I'm just doing them for you.
So that's my product ladder. We're starting from the bottom. We've got courses, like one-off courses. We've got a podcast navigator. We've got audits. We've got one-off coaching. We've got done with you, done with you service, and then we've got a done for you service.
I feel really good about this because I have something for everybody at every step of the way because people have been filling out my coaching form. And a lot of those folks may not be ready to do the done with your coaching right away. Or people join my mailing list because they like the freebie, and then I'm hitting them with a $2,000 thing. They're probably not ready for that.
But if I understand them, right, and I understand, hey. They are solo, podcasters who's trying to improve their processes, and they're doing it themselves. And they just want some assistance, then I could sell them the self-paced course or the podcast navigator. If they've been at it for a while and they're ready to go to the next level, then I can say, like, okay. Well, you probably want an audit.
And if they're a company with a team and they're trying to get this up and running quickly, done with you or done for you is probably your best bet because I'm gonna create assets and resources for you and your team.
So that's it. That's my product ladder. I think what I would encourage for you is to think about how you wanna spend your time because this is important. Right? I could just try to sell podcast launches or podcast production, but that's a drain on my time. Whereas podcast navigator is not. Right? Or even the one-off coaching or the done-with-you coaching is not. Not as much as doing the whole launch and production.
So, you know, think about how you wanna spend your time, how much money you need to make, and then think about your niche. You know, I'll link to, Chris has a blog post on micro-segments too, but these are basically like, you have your niche, and then you have people in this niche. So like I just said. Right? Like, busy podcasters are possibly my niche. And then inside there is like, solopreneur parents who are trying to establish their authority with their podcast.
And then there's a company that has a podcast that they're trying to advance their company mission. And then I have coaches or thought leaders who are just trying to make, a content factory. They're each gonna want different things. Right? The solopreneur parent is probably gonna want a podcast navigator. They are doing everything themselves, and they just need a little help to automate and delegate. The companies who are trying to advance their mission maybe they have somebody on staff running the podcast, and they want the done with you service or some flavor of it.
And then the thought leaders, they're probably just, like, hey. I wanna talk, and I want you to do the rest. So maybe I want the, they want the done for you service. Right? This is where you wanna think about those micro-segments. Who are people to pick out one person, write a story for them, how can you help them achieve their goals?
Okay. So that's it for this episode. I will include links to everything that I talked about here, including Chris's great blog posts over at [streamlined.fm/430]. It'll also be in the description wherever you're consuming this content. And if you want to get this and every episode ad-free and extended, you could become a member. There will be a link in the description and at [streamlined.fm/430].
Thanks so much for listening, and until next time, I'll see you out there.