Five Ways To Simplify Your Offerings For More Ease, Impact, & Space

One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned in my own simple and spacious business journey is how important it is to simplify the offerings in our business.

Because it is so easy to create a beast of our own making in our business, for the thing that ends up draining us and burning us out being born from our own decision making in our work.

I’ve seen this to be so true for so many of my clients too. They come to the start of our work together feeling so overwhelmed and frustrated and disconnected in their business, sometimes they’re making really good money but are really unhappy in what their business asks of them to make that, or sometimes they’re really overworked in their business but struggling to actually make a sustainable living and find the joy they’re craving in their work along the way too.

And we always, always, go back to basics first and dig into their business vision and their business model.

Because it’s these foundations that shape a simple and spacious business and so often we find that the real magic happens when we get stuck into the process of simplifying their offerings and reshaping them to truly work best for them.

And this is what made the biggest difference in my business journey too, it’s why I’m able to make a really sustainable income in my business by only working 8-10 hours each week, it’s how I’m able to do this work alongside motherhood and a chronic illness without burning out every step along the way.

So if you want to welcome more ease and space and impact into the work you do in your business, I have five steps to walk you through today that will hopefully support you in doing exactly that.

Step one: get clear on the magic of your offering

So often we actually end up diluting this magic by overcomplicating what we do and how we do it out of the fear of making sure our offer is high value and worth the price.

Let me give you an example. I bought an online class recently for a few hundred pounds. It’s really beloved in its industry and I’ve followed its creator for years and really adore and connect with her work and I wanted to be able to dive deeper into the process she walks you through in this course.

And this course is incredibly simple, there are a few videos but mostly it’s PDFs holding your hand as the creator walks you through this process that has made a huge difference in her life and now in so many of her customers too.

It’s a beautiful, simple offering that has absolutely no unnecessary extra bells and whistles. She recognised the core magic of her offering and poured that so simply into the materials of this course and that’s why it has such rave reviews because it’s completely focused on supporting you to go on the journey it’s here to facilitate and illuminate.

And it really inspired me as a business owner to see this because it reminded me of this big lesson I’ve learned over the years that often times less is more in business.

Because when you get clear on what the magic is of your offer you then get super laser focused in delivering exactly that, therefore simplifying the process for you and dialling up the impact and value for your clients and customers too.

To dig into this more ask yourself these four questions:

First: What is the invitation I am making to my clients or customers through this offer?

So think about what journey or discovery or experience you are inviting your clients or customers to go on with this offer.

Let’s use my my 3 month 1:1 offering and currently one of the main ways I dive deep with my clients each year.

The invitation of my offer is to support my clients to get unstuck and move their business forward with intention, focus, and joy so that they can truly start to thrive in their work in whatever way that looks like for them. The heart of the invitation of this offer is for my clients to feel deeply supported in this season of their business, to have my guidance and encouragement and support every step of the way through our work together.

For you it may be the invitation to go on a branding process that leaves them with a website and brand design that they love, or perhaps you sell limited edition art prints and your invitation to your customers is to welcome some beauty and inspiration into their home, or perhaps you’re a copywriter and your invitation is to create words that help your clients to sell with more ease, or you’re a jewellery designer and your invitation is for your customers to invest in ethically made jewellery to gift to the people they love.

Then ask yourself: What is the magic within me that I’m pouring into this offer?

What is it that your clients are really investing in your for? Is it your experience? Your approach? Your style? Your process?

Using my 1:1 offer as an example again, the magic within me that I’m pouring into it is my experience and my business perspective and my approach to holding space and encouraging my clients. Me showing up and being all in with my clients during our time working together is the most important thing that I bring to the table with this offer.

And I know it can be kind of awkward to recognise our own magic and brilliance but if we don’t how else can we be super clear in how we’re pouring it into our offers? So give yourself permission to just bear witness to your own magic and brilliance here, to get clear on what you’re bringing to table with your offerings and what the magic is your clients are truly investing in. This will help you clarify what to actually include and how to actually deliver your offerings in the most simple and spacious and impactful way.

And then ask yourself: How do I hope my client or customer will feel as they experience this offer?

Do you hope they feel safe, encouraged, excited, connected? What experience do you want to facilitate for your clients and customers after they invest in what you do?

For me my hope for my clients when working together is that they feel deeply supported and encouraged throughout our time together, that they feel clarified and focused in their business and what steps to take next and feel supported through all of the wobbles and roadblocks and fears that will inevitably come up along the way. I know I’m doing my job right when my clients feel supported to take brave and beautiful and intentional steps forward in their work while also feeling safe to go at whatever pace works best for them.

And then finally to tie all of this together ask yourself: what do I hope my client or customer takes away from this offer?

So will they walk away with beautiful new branding and website for their business? Will they have developed a new process to help them do something they really want to do in their work or life? Will they feel clarified and supported in their next steps to take? Will they have a beautiful piece of jewellery or art?

For me my biggest hope is that my clients leave our work together feeling more at home in their business and more at ease in their role as the leader of their business too. I hope they have made meaningful progress in this season of their work and feel confident in their ability to keep on moving forward too.

Hopefully what you can start to gather here is what the invitation is that you’re making to your clients and customers through your offer. This can then shape the clarity and simplicity that you bring to it next.

Step Two: how do you want to experience delivering this offer?

Because if we only focus on what we want to give and not how we want to experience giving it we will inevitably find ourselves feeling a little stuck and disconnected in our work. Putting our own needs on the table is a key piece of building a simple and spacious business and that’s why this step is so important.

So how do you want to experience delivering your offers? Do you want to feel calm? Organised? Excited? Energised? Boundaries?

You may even find it helpful here to ask yourself how you no longer want to experience delivering your offers. Perhaps you don’t want to feel overstretched anymore, or like your boundaries are being pushed.

I know for me when I think about how I want to experience delivering my offers I want the experience to feel calm, connected, and spacious. I don’t want to feel like my schedule is too full with no space to breathe and I also really want to feel the ease and joy that comes from working within my zone of genius and working with clients who my work is a big hell yes for.

Step three: time to remove the fluff.

Now that you’re clear on what the invitation of your offer is and how you want to feel when delivering this offer you can start to examine if your current version of your offering is actually aligned with what you want it to be.

Have you included anything that isn’t actually essential to the core of what you want this offering to be? Have you included extras in the hopes of adding more value that actually just drain you or distract the offer from its real magic?

So maybe you’ve added a lot of calls into your offering, calls you don’t actually have the true capacity to deliver when you’re booked out and calls that are more than actually needed to deliver the true magic of your offer.

Or maybe you’ve got a ton of bonuses in your course or program that sound flashy but that really don’t add any true deep new value to the offering - you just feel like you need to say you have bonuses for the marketing push.

Outline everything included in your offer and then highlight what actually fulfils the invitation you want to be making with this offer and what’s aligned with how you want to experience delivering this offer too.

Perhaps what you discover is there’s something you want to even add into the offer that’s really going to fulfil that invitation, but I imagine you may also find some things that are just fluff and don’t need to be there too.

I have found over and over again that the simplest version of my offer is often the very best version it can be - and when I show up from that steady and empowered place of knowing what the magic is in my offer and how best I can deliver it too that is so obvious and attractive to my hell yes clients too.

Step four: automating what you can and what you want to in your offer.

Losing time to busy work is one of the most draining things we can do in our business and thankfully it’s never been easier to automate steps in our process.

For me it’s really important that the human connection parts of my offerings feel like a human connection, so I only automate the parts of my offer that aren’t affected by not having that personal touch. So I prioritise the communication with my clients and customers and being present on our calls and being the one showing up for them in my programs, so I don’t have any customer service support for example in my business. But what I do automate is the booking process and the scheduling process - I use a tool called Satori which is built specifically for coaches so that’s been pretty perfect for me. Something else I also automate is payments - I don’t ever want to be chasing up missed or late invoices with clients and customers so I always have payment plans automated so my software like Satori or Podia for my programs takes care of that for me.

For you automating some of the customer service process might actually be perfect for you, or like me you may just need a scheduling system in place to save the back and forth of booking in meetings and calls. You may thrive with a tool like Clickup or Dubsado for managing client engagements or you may really benefit from having a VA or assistant manage some parts of the client experience for you.

This step is all about getting clear on what automations will work best for you - don’t worry about imitating someone else’s approach to business, root into what will actually work best for you and your business instead.

Step five: price with your capacity and desire for time off in mind - and build a bridge if you need to.

People are often a little shocked when they hear about my working routine, a client just the other week said: Jen, do you really only work 8-10 hours a week?

And here’s the messy nuanced answer: yes, I really do only work 8-10 hours a week (with the caveat that I will work a little more than that if I want to but those weeks are pretty rare) and it’s taken me 8 years to build to this place. Before this I worked 10-15 hours a week, before that I worked 15-20, and so on.

And this isn’t to say that I believe working only 8-10 hours a week should be everyone’s goal. For me as a mum and a human who lives with a chronic illness this is my capacity for how much I can work without it compromising my health or the time I want to spend with my son too. And the only way I’ve been able to build this type of workweek, and a business that enables me to take regular time off a year 0 for the past few years now I take at least 18 weeks off a year and this summer I’m taking 3 months off together in a row from client work - is by being really intentional about my capacity and the time off I want to be able to take from my business and price accordingly with that.

And that hasn’t been possible overnight, I’ve had to build to this place and increase my prices at a pace that I felt comfortable with and diversify my income with other offerings and build a buffer of savings to support me to feel safe enough to take some risks in my business too.

So yes it’s taken time but the only way I’ve got here is by getting clear on what it needed to look like and then gently walking my way here.

So take the time to get clear on what your ideal capacity would actually look like, how many clients that would be a year or how many students in your programs or how many projects you’d take on. And build your desired time off into that capacity too so you have a really clear picture of the time and space you want to make available for clients and customers.

And then you can do the maths of how much you want to earn while working at the pace you want to work and that will tell you what you would need to charge and or also what other income streams you’d need to build into your business model too.

And you might need to build a bridge to get there, it’s very rarely done overnight but if you have a clear direction in mind you then make it possible to actually make it your reality.

Simple, easeful, spacious offers are the very heart of my simple and spacious business. It’s how I have ample space to breathe in my work while also doing really meaningful and impactful work each week too.

See if these five steps can hold space for you to bring more ease, impact, and space to your offerings too.

And remember: sometimes less is more. Lean into where your magic happens and go all in on that. Don’t dilute your magic by trying to do all the things - that’s not what your clients and customers are coming to you for. They’re coming to you for you - trust in whatever way your inner business compass is guiding you to deliver your best, most joyful work.

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Jen Carrington23 March 2022