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People out there who are deciding like, “Oh, this is really hard for me. So I’m going to shut this business down and go start a new one,” and they’re going to end up in the same exact place because they’re out of the honeymoon phase of their initial business, they don’t want to do the hard work and they’re going to end up in the same place.

That’s not what I’m talking about here. I’m talking about maintaining your business, maintaining the audience that you serve, not changing that, but potentially pivoting your offer, adding a new offer or making a significant change in how you help your audience. 

You are listening to The Not For Lazy Marketers Podcast, episode number 419.

Hello, my friends. Welcome back to the podcast. I am especially excited for today’s episode because I finally get to make my big announcement that has been waiting for two months. I told you guys, I’ve been teasing, we have things coming. Cashapalooza was one of them. When we kicked that off this week, It’s been amazing. So exciting. I love helping businesses in that live capacity. So the next announcement I am so excited for, over the last year, I have had so many people come to me asking for a done-for-you option that is not as expensive as our current one. Our current done-for-you option is $5,000 a month and that includes everything. We do your ad creative, your copy. We do all of your funnel work, and all of your emails. We come up with creative ideas.

It’s like having an entire marketing team in your back pocket and doing everything for you. But not every single business owner is ready for that, is ready for that level of service and support, but they also don’t want to be doing their own ads. They really don’t. They don’t have the time. They don’t have the skill. They don’t want to learn all the nitty-gritty. They know they’re losing money when they try to do it. So what ends up happening is you guys go and work with these boutique agencies who don’t have enough experience or they’re not good and then you lose money and you’re in a bad situation. So a lot of people come to me and they’re like, “Do you have a middle-tier offer? Do you have something that I can sign up for that’s not quite your full suite?”

So yes, we now do and it’s going to be extremely limited spots because I know that the second I announce this, the spots are going to fill because there are many people who have wanted to work with us in this way. So this is our new Elite Agency Package. We’re only taking on 10 businesses to start. Then we’ll have a waitlist it and we’ll do another kind of cohort in August. I care a lot about my delivery and I don’t ever want to overload my team to the point where we can’t succeed in our delivery. So we’re taking only 10 businesses. Because this is a new offer, I am taking the strategy calls. 

It’s kind of like the beginning days of my business when I was doing that and rebuilding my agency a little bit and I’ve kind of teased that on social media. I am rebuilding my agency a little bit. This is a new arm of the agency. Because I want to make sure the process is right, because I want to be in it, I want to figure out what am I not thinking about with how we deliver this, and how I set up the future team for success. It’s going to be me and an account manager delivering with these first 10 people. Then like I said, we’re going to waitlist it. I’m going to be super involved with the first 10 which is really exciting.

Essentially what it’s going to do is mix together some of the Market Like A Pro support when it comes to auditing your funnel, looking at your messaging, auditing your emails, with done for you ad support. So we’re going to run your ads for you, optimize your ads daily for you, send you reports on your numbers, help you understand your numbers like we do in our done for you package, and then we’re going to also do your copy and creative. There is a limit, but for the people in this package, you’re not going to hit the limit. The limit’s 5 a month of new copy and creative, but with the budget that people in this package will come in for ad spend, that’s exactly what you need.

Then although it won’t include the done for you funnel work, it’s going to include 2 strategy calls a month to be looking at your funnel strategy and that’s where we can say, “Hey, your webinar isn’t converting as good as we’d like it to. Here’s access to our Market Like A Pro webinar training, watch that, redo your webinar, update your webinar,” or, “We’re going to audit your sales page. It’s not necessarily where we want it. We’re not going to change it for you. We’re not going to rewrite it for you in this package, but we’re going to audit it like we do in Market Like A Pro.”

So it’s pulling in a little bit of the resources that I have in Market Like A Pro where we audit and review in terms of sales funnels. So like sales pages, opt-in pages, emails, all those things. Then combining that with done for you support on all the things that take so much time, placing your pixels, loading your ads, optimizing your ads, finding audiences, doing all of that for you. So it’s combining that and I’m so excited. So this is going to be a $2,500 a month package plus a percentage of ad spend. We don’t have a minimum ad spend requirement. In the agency, you have to be able to spend at least $5K in ads and then $5K of our management in our highest package. So that’s not there.

So what the next steps are is if you go to hirshmarketing.com/elite, E-L-I-T-E, on there, you can get on our waitlist. That’s the start because we haven’t rolled this out yet. Once you get on our waitlist, you’re going to be invited to book your next steps interview. Seriously, this is not fake urgency because I’m taking all these calls and onboarding all these clients, there’s a limit. But even if we hit the limit, you can talk to us about being that next cohort in August. So you need to book that call and talk with our team. From there, you’re going to book a strategy call with me if you decide to move forward.

So I rolled this out already to our Market Like A Pro members, because I know a lot of them want to graduate into a done for you and half the spots are gone in a day. We booked those calls. We gave them an early access, half are gone. So we have 5 spots left. That’s okay if you don’t get one of those five spots, because if you’re even thinking pf joining in August, you can just get on the waitlist. So if you go to hirshmarketing.com/elite, you can go check that out. There are more details about the offer on there as well. Okay. Let’s dive into today’s content. I’m very excited about that announcement. If you have questions, feel free to reach out as well.

Today we’re going to talk about when to pivot versus losing focus. This has been on my mind recently because I think there’s a really fine line right now between pivoting and shifting your business due to something not working, you feeling not in alignment with something, the market changing, but also making sure you don’t lose focus. This is something that I’ve actually struggled with because I’m somebody who if you would’ve asked me a year ago, I would not have launched this cash Cashapalooza offer. I would’ve been like, “No, we need to focus on our existing offers. We need to focus on scaling those. We don’t want to be distracted. We’re not going to do that.”

But things have really shifted. So I’ve had to kind of figure out, okay, where is that line for me in not pivoting so much that I lose focus or choosing to pivot when that’s not the right decision. I think more so than in the past, the need to pivot and adjust and make shifts and changes is really important. I think that it’s required more than it was before. But let’s talk about how you know because it is kind of a fine line. So when I say pivot, I mean knowing, is it the right time right now to create a new offer? To change your existing offer? To create a new funnel strategy? To make a significant change in your business?

I’m not really going to qualify and talk about starting a new business. I do think there’s a handful of people out there who are deciding like, “Oh, this is really hard for me. So I’m going to shut this business down and go start a new one,” and they’re going to end up in the same exact place because they’re out of the honeymoon phase of their initial business. They don’t want to do the hard work and they’re going to end up in the same place. That’s not what I’m talking about here. I’m talking about maintaining your business, maintaining the audience that you serve, not changing that, but potentially pivoting your offer, adding a new offer or making a significant change in how you help your audience because that’s what the market is maybe telling you that it needs.

So how do you know if that’s the right answer or if things just got hard and you’re losing focus? The first thing I’d say is looking at what have you done so far to see if it will work. So if you have an offer, let’s say, and you’re like, “It’s not selling. I’m going to launch a new offer. I’m going to launch a whole new funnel. This is not working.” Have you really tried to make it work? If you’re in a position where you’re getting leads, you’re getting traffic, people are engaging with your strategy, they are engaging with what you’re doing and they’re seeing your offer and you have hundreds of people, at least 200 people who have seen your offer and actually been pitched your offer, tried to sell your offer and it’s not selling, that may be an indication that you need to make a pivot.

If you’ve only had like 10 or 20 or even 50 people even see your offer and even have the opportunity to buy, you might not be ready yet. So essentially you need to give your offer and what you’re trying to do a fair chance. If you genuinely feel like, “I have done everything I can to try to make this work and I feel like I need to make a shift,” then it might be time for a pivot. Here’s another time when it might be right. This is where a lot of people stand. Your offer or what you’re selling or your service is not selling the way that it used to. This is kind of what happened for me is our offer is selling, Market Like A Pro is great. The agency is great. It’s not selling to the volume I want it to.

I think that’s because I needed to kind of step down one layer deeper and be able to cater to people who are in different places in their business so that I could create more of my ideal customers for my existing offers. I think that is the situation a lot of business owners are going to be in. So for me, it wasn’t that my offer was not selling. I have a very successful offer that was selling more 2 years ago. As much as I want to scale it and will continue to scale that, I think to scale my business as a whole, I needed to introduce some new things and so I did.

The other thing that you have to weigh is your resources. So if you’re choosing to pivot your offer, or let’s say you’re choosing to launch a downsell to your existing offer or launch an upsell or something new to your audience, you have to really sit and ask yourself, “Is this going to take away from the success of what I’m doing?” If what you’re doing is going really well, or in order for it to continue going well, it’s going to require a lot of your time, your investment, your resources, now might not be the right time for you to pivot. It might be a maybe later type of thing. It might be in 3 months when you get this to a certain place.

You don’t want pivoting to a new offer or a different offer to the same audience to take away from your current success. That’s one thing that only you are going to know the answer to that, but I think one of the biggest indicators on is it time to pivot is if you’re working extremely hard and you’re hitting a ceiling or you’re not getting traction at all. When I say working hard, you have to be reaching people. You have to be showing up, getting people to your offer, getting people in your world, getting people to pay attention to your content and they’re not converting.

Or you’re working really hard and you’re hitting a ceiling. You can’t get past a certain sales goal every month, no matter what you do, no matter how many leads you bring in, no matter how much you increase your budget, you’re hitting a ceiling. Those 2 scenarios mean it’s time to explore, okay, do I need to adjust my current offer with some new components? Look at the problems that my audience and  potential customers are struggling with and make sure I’m addressing them? Do I need to create a different offer? And a lot of times this different offer will end up being a downsell, a lower priced stepping stone to your core offer. I mean, that’s what Cashapalooza is and kind of what this Elite package is, but not really because it’s in the middle of Market Like A Pro in our agency, but it is a step down to our full agency package, to our full-blown we do every single thing for you package.

I think that for me, the market is asking for this and I’m listening to my audience. What is key is that you constantly listen to your audience. So when is it time to pivot versus losing focus? I’ve answered on when is it time to pivot. So on the losing focus part, what you want to make sure is that you’re not choosing this option because you’re bored or it got too hard. Meaning you don’t want to show up anymore. You’re frustrated that something didn’t work.

There’s a fine line with this because if it’s getting really hard, but you’re willing to show up and you’re like, “The amount that I’m showing up and the effort that I’m putting into to try to sell this or to try to make this work is not even coming close to equaling the results that I should be getting,” that’s different than you saying, “Well, this is too hard. I don’t want to show up. So I’m choosing not to put the effort in and it’s easier for me to go get excited about something new and creating something new.” Those are 2 different scenarios. The latter one of getting bored or frustrated to the point where you don’t want to show up because it feels like you’re failing and you’re uncomfortable with that is different than you are showing up, you are willing to fail, you are willing to put in the work and it’s not putting out the output that you want.

Also at the end of the day with this, it comes down to your audience. It comes down to what your audience wants. So the really important thing here is that you are not choosing to change your audience. You’re not choosing to go start a completely different business targeting a completely different audience. I mean, for very few, that might be the solution. But I think for most people, it’s a matter of adapting, tweaking and adjusting the way you’re serving your audience and solving their problem, or creating freshness, or like I said, creating more of your ideal customer from the perspective of how do I create people to go into my core offer.

I, over the years, have actually talked down about the value ladder. Because I don’t believe that people need an entire value ladder in their business to be successful. However, I do think at certain points, whether that’s times in the market or the industry or times in a business, like when a business gets to a certain revenue level, I think you hit a ceiling. I think that’s kind of what I’ve experienced. Well, I’ve experienced both of those things, but I think I’ve experienced where kind of hit, a ceiling with how many new agency clients and Market Like A Pro members we could sign every month, and in order to increase my overall business revenue and growth, I needed to introduce something else.

I think that that’s normal, but why I have talked down on the value ladder in the past is because the other way that it’s being taught is you have to have all these things out the gate. A lot of times, you’re not going to know what that lower priced offer is or that next level upsell offer is going to be until you’ve already done the first one and you figure out, okay, what do people need before they’re ready for this offer? Or what do they need once they’re finished with this offer? So there’s a lot of opportunity in that and I don’t think you can preplan that out in one day and be like, “Here’s my entire business for the next 10 years,” because then you’re not listening to your audience and you’re not basing that off of feedback and experience.

So the one thing to look at, especially over the next 6, 12 months, is when you come to a place where you’re considering pivoting your offer, you’re considering making a big move, making a new shift and you’re like, “Ah, do I do this? Am I going to lose focus?” You have to weigh your resources and you have to make sure this is what the market is asking for, this is what your audience is asking for and what your business needs to grow or sustain overall. Only you are going to ultimately know the answer to those questions. You might make a mistake and that’s okay too. You can try things and they don’t work and  then you try something else and it does work.

So walking that fine line I think is going to be really important over the next couple of years of “I’ve got to be open to pivoting, I’ve got to be open to change, I’ve got to be open to something new and a different way to serve my audience, but I also have to stay focused on what’s working and make sure I’m not creating distractions for myself because something felt uncomfortable or hard.” All right, everybody. I hope for those of you who are super excited about the elite agency package we’re just kind of releasing, you go to that page. You book in your call if it makes sense. I know we’re going to fill these spots really fast and I’m just so excited to be able to create this opportunity and option to work with different business owners who want that. There hasn’t been an option to do that in a long time. All right, everybody have a wonderful rest of your week and I’ll talk to you next week. 

Thanks for listening to the Not for Lazy Marketers Podcast. Each episode is brought to you from the trenches of Hirsh marketing, where our team of industry-leading copywriters, marketing strategists, ads, managers, graphic designers, and tech wizards use their unique genius to help our clients profit more and scale faster than they ever dreamed possible. Want to see what happens when we unleash our experts on your brand? Head over to helpmystrategy.com and apply for a free strategy audit with team Hirsh. No matter where you are in your marketing journey, we have solutions to take you to the next level and beyond. So apply for your call today and discover what marketing magic we can create for you.

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