Productized Coaching Experiment ($10k+ in 37 Days)

I just "productized"* something that I didn't think I could before - coaching services! (Not mentoring, but evidence-based, emotionally intelligent strategy for entrepreneurs. Important distinction because there is measurable standards for delivery, I don't have to deliver forever, I know other practitioners that can do fulfillment. I could see the model I'm building as sort of a 'Better Help' but for the coaching modality.)

Back at the end of February I had an idea for a productized version of my intensive 1:1 coaching offer. The productized version's (entirely too long name) is 30-Days of Audio-Based Coaching.

My MVO is officially successful*!

*Successful defined as: Overall solid ROI - net positive creation cost to income ratio, real live humans actually purchased it, I have successfully delivered to clients. ⁠

I have a flat rate of $1k for 30 days and folks can engage with me via audio-coaching on Slack. I've got specific parameters about what they can bring and when I'll respond. The asterisk (*) above was because they aren't getting a single outcome or a set level of deliverables. They are getting 30 days of access for them to use AMAP/as much as they want to.

I was worried about the time ballooning but what I've found is that most folks take less than 20 minutes of time/ week (usually coach folks in 50 min sit-down-on-Zoom sessions once a week which is what I still do but am phasing out in lieu of this model). And any outliers in a single week don't disturb the time I spend listening and responding to messages too much.

I've already systematized the onboarding process from checkout to welcome to onboarding and have check-points for myself as a practitioner to follow with each interaction and the 'reup?' message.

I rolled out my MVO to my "hot" leads (current or recently off-boarded clients) and sold 2. Then shared with my "warm" leads (via my podcast, email list, etc) and sold another 3, so first 5 in about 21 days. Then sold about 6k more/6 more "units" (half of that in reups) in the last month. And then another just last week.

Now that it's validated I'm setting up the landing page and will move to selling it more deeply to "warm "and "cold" humans. I'm also working on moving it into a monthly subscription model, which is where I think the productizing will ramp up.

​The last two months, the point was just to validate the idea. That this offer at this price point to this audience and delivered like this would work (and it does). ⁠
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From a very loose product development front, the next steps include gaining client feedback and preparing to share this product past these early adopters. Continuous improvement (based on feedback and functionality needs) for the win!

I recored a podcast episode to talk through how I'm thinking about the early stages of offer development for this offer (from a non-technical, selling-a-service-vs-software POV).

But basically, my process is:

Hypothesis > soft launch to hot leads > 3 sales > publicly sell > make it permanent-ish (sales page, better branding, etc)

🎧#163: MVO - The Minimum Viable Offer.

In this episode:

• What makes a offer minimal?
• The point of an MVO (short answer: should I spend any more resources on this idea?)
• How to use the half-page business plan to build out your MVO
• Counting the ROI of your MVO
• Building for early adopters vs the general public
• Where to focus your iteration energy once your MVO is successful
• Navigating continuous improvement as a team of one

The sister episode to this one, #170: Digestible Offers Pt 3 HOW talks through the marketing process I used to actually "launch" and sell my MVO.

I've offered productized services before as a freelancer or virtual project manager, but not with coaching, so excited to see how this ends up growing.