When you are feeling out of alignment with your business or just plain exhausted it can be very tempting to want to make dramatic changes to your offers. But that can mean you get rid of offers that could work with a few small changes. Which are must easier and often less time consuming to implement. Think tweaking a sales page rather than having to start from scratch with a whole new service. And that isn’t even considering adjusting all the back end pieces if you have systems in place (and you should!)
Getting specific matters when you are thinking about what you would like your business to look like.
Last year I had a bad introvert hangover. I had run a 4 hour zoom training session and that evening and into the next day I just felt exhausted. I don’t have introvert hangovers so often these days as I’m much better at protecting my time and working out what drains me. But I’d been asked to run a workshop and the money was pretty good (I still struggle with saying no when the money is being offered is good and especially if its for friends and past colleagues).
The story I initially told myself from this experience was that I hate running training sessions. I’ve been slowly working away on a course this year and my immediate reaction was that I didn’t want to have a course and that I should all this work I had done.
Now that I’ve gotten some distance from the training I’ve unpacked what I actually didn’t enjoy about the training and why I had such an introvert hangover from it:
- 4 hours in a zoom room is not for me. But that doesn’t mean that a 1 hour workshop wouldn’t feel good or recording short videos or doing something over the course of a few days or so many other options. I quite like in-person events but they aren’t something I’m doing at the moment with sick dogs.
- The topic of the training was communication – not something I feel like an expert in so that added to the hangover. I was running the course for someone I contract to occasionally and it was their course. This also gave me a lack of sense of ownership over the content.
- It was delivered to people in corporate who weren’t necessarily there by choice (some were). I love working with small business owners who choose to be there. The energy is very different.
- It didn’t fit in with plans for my business so it wasn’t something that I could see refining and then doing more of. I ran the training for the money – I know that when I let money alone drive a decision it is never the best outcome.
If I had loved the experience of the 4 hour zoom workshop, then I could have thought about managing the introvert hangover better. This would probably have looked like taking the next morning off from my business or at a pinch doing admin type tasks like my accounts which don’t require much brainpower from me. It would also mean making sure my pricing for this kind of service factored in needing downtime and lost work hours.
I know I didn’t get specific when I stopped offering Facebook ads management. I could have changed up my services such as getting clients to prepare the copy and images as I found out later other Facebook ad managers did. I could have changed my niche – I was working with too many people who weren’t as ready as they should have been to run ads. Dropping Facebook ad management was hard especially financially. It felt like the right decision at the time but I wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t gotten myself stuck with thinking I had to offer services in a certain way.
I think in the long run I would still have shifted out of Facebook ads management but in a much more gradual way while I created something new. Which would have had a smaller financial hit.
Quitting one to one work
One to one work is where I most see people getting frustrated and thinking about burning the house down. (I know I felt like this a couple of years ago. Even though I love one to one work – its my favourite way of working with people.)
I see people including myself struggling with one-to-one work because they haven’t put appropriate boundaries in place or are charging such a low rate they are having to take on a lot of clients or are taking on less than ideal clients.
The solution is seen as a course or group program because that is what so many say to do without acknowledging the work that goes into this is not to be underestimated. If you are thinking about heading down this path then you need to read this post or listen to the podcast episode from Maggie Patterson about the real cost of building multiple income streams.
What to do if your offers aren’t working for you
Instead of burning down the house, take a step back! If you are planning on making changes to your offer(s) it’s easy to generalise about experiences you didn’t enjoy and rule things out. Instead, get specific. Ask yourself these four questions before you completely throw something out:
- What was it about the experience you didn’t love?
- Are there things you could do to make the experience enjoyable for yourself?
- What do your clients need to get the outcome you offer them?
- Does it fit into your long-term vision for your business?
I recommend using pen and paper to answer these questions and just journal whatever comes to mind. Try not to rush answering these questions. I like to do this kind of journaling at a spot other than my usual desk. I find that if I sit at my desk then there is an undercurrent of feeling that I should be doing something more productive. Even though this kind of work gives me so much clarity which in turn helps with productivity and doing the work that moves my business forward.
One word of caution: I wouldn’t use that question about long-term vision as the overriding question. Sometimes its good to acknowledge you are doing something for now. Nothing has to be forever.
The main thing is not to let one bad experience derail you but to also acknowledge and take action when something is regularly feeling out of alignment.
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