How do you know it’s time to make a change in your business or your offers?

In this episode of Art of Online Business, I wanted to open up and share about my own experience changing course and really optimizing my business over the last two years, specifically my offers.

So many people are afraid to make changes to their business because they don’t want to be locked into something that they don’t enjoy, or because they don’t want to rock the boat on something that’s already working for them, even though it isn’t in alignment with their goals.

Sometimes you do need to make a change though. In this episode, I’m sharing how to know when it’s time to change, how to pinpoint opportunities for your business, and improve your business using data and intuition.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Pivots I made within my Accelerator program
• My pilot program
• How I tested and optimized my offer
• Why you should check in with yourself about your offer
• Tips for gathering and analyzing data
• How to start making changes in your business

Links & Resources:

• The Art of Online Business website
• DM me on Instagram
• Visit my YouTube channel
• The Art of Online Business clips on YouTube
• Full episodes of The Art of Online Business Podcast on YouTube
• The Art of Online Business Podcast website
• Check out my Accelerator coaching program

*Disclosure: I only recommend products I use and love and all opinions expressed here are my own. This post may contain affiliate links that at no additional cost to you, I may earn a small commission.

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Hey, my friend, real quick, just a reminder that I’ve made some big changes to our accelerator coaching program. So if you’re looking for personalized coaching and mentorship to help guide you to the next level of your business, whatever that next level looks like for you through help with optimizing your sales and marketing, ethical marketing leadership and being the CEO of your business team, building systems and processes, etc.. Go over to Rick Mull, Radio.com for Accelerator and fill out the form right there to see if we potentially could work together. All right, Rick. Morty Ford, Accelerator. Now let’s get into today’s episode. Hey, my friends, Rick Morty here. Welcome to the Art of Online Business podcast. Thanks for hanging out with me today. So today I want to talk to you about the evolution of a multi million dollar offer. And I want to start by asking the question, how do you know it’s time to make a change in your business or.

Your offer or offers?

And today I thought I’d open up and share about my own experience changing course and really optimizing my business over the last two years, specifically my offers. I talked to a lot of people who are afraid of making changes to their.

Offer or offers.

And oftentimes it’s because they feel like they’re going to be tied to whatever changes they make.

Forever.

Meaning if I change this one thing, I am locked into it forever more, which couldn’t be further from the truth. Or you might feel out of alignment right now with what you’re offering or how you’re selling it, but you’re afraid to make any changes because it’s what got you to this point, right? It’s got you to where you are today. And so why rock the boat even though you might feel out of alignment with what you’ve been doing, but you don’t want to make a change because again, what you’ve been doing got you to where you are today. And so I want to help you with that today and help you maybe know when it might be a time to make a change in your offer and in your offers, and also how you can pinpoint opportunities to improve your business.

Improve your offer.

Using both data and how you’re feeling and your intuition. Right? And then if you are going to make any changes to your. Offer.

How do you strategically roll those changes out to your current members or your students or your customers? And some people might describe what I’m sharing with you today as a pivot. I feel like that’s one of those like industry words that have been around for a long time. I see this as just changes that that I made in my business that were more in alignment with what I wanted in the business, and that I knew based on data that my members wanted as well. And I’m going to be sharing this through the lens of my accelerator coaching program. And a lot of you, a lot of people don’t know, but accelerator my accelerator coaching program has been around for like six years now. And the program looks very different than it first did when I started it all those years ago. Very different. I started it as a small group Facebook ads coaching program where it was. I forget how much it was. I started it as a three month program that I moved to six and just made all kinds of changes over the years. On the length of the program, again, testing things out, feeling what you know, how things felt for me, how the members liked it, etc., etc.. And so this was originally designed to be a Facebook ads coaching program, higher ticket program, where they got hands on help with their campaigns and so forth.

Now, that is back when I was only teaching Facebook ads. And then as the business evolved, and as I’ve talked about a lot here on the podcast, I started to change the offer and really it changed kind of from year to year and then moved into into really changing the accelerator offer into more about what it is today in terms of what I teach. Right? So optimizing your sales and marketing, ethical marketing leadership and being the CEO team, building systems and processes, that’s the real focus of what the program is today. And about two years ago, this is sort of the first big pivot, if you will, that I made in the business with accelerator. I made the decision to bring on coaches into the program to help with the coaching inside of accelerator. And again, this was my first sort of big pivot, if you will, with this offer. And there were about 35 people in accelerator at that time. And my intention back then was to allow about 50 people in the program. And so I knew that if I if I wanted to do that, I needed to be able to support that number of people. And I was going to be doing that through having coaches in the program help me fulfill on the offer, on the promise of the of the program. And, you know, having the coaches worked out.

Well for a.

While, it helps with my time. But after a while it started to feel out of alignment. And I was really struggling with this notion of having a larger group inside of accelerator with the more direct connection that I really enjoyed with each member that was really only possible. With a smaller group. And frankly, I was also struggling with this whole notion of sub coaches. And I felt like, you know, if people are investing in my program, it started really eating at me and started feeling more weird about somebody investing in the program, coming in. And then, yeah, they’re coaching with me, but they’re also getting a lot of coaching from one of my sub coaches, if you will. And by the way, zero judgment on the whole sub coaching model. You know, that works. A lot of people do it. It works for them. It just didn’t feel right for me. And so this was my sort of my first kind of. I knew there was something off because I felt this sort of push and pull, if you will, about what what did I really want this program to be? Because I could have grown it to a big number of people. And there’s plenty of programs out there that are group coaching programs with, you know, 100 people in there or what have you. Now, at the same time, I was hearing a ton of feedback from people who were interested in learning more about the program, about what they were experiencing in other programs. And one of the big things was, you know, I invest all this money and I never see the person whose program it is.

And for me personally.

That just this doesn’t feel right. Like it doesn’t it doesn’t I don’t align it doesn’t align with me. And I’ve been in programs where that’s happened before as well, and it didn’t sit well with me. And so, you know, I also in addition to. You know, the whole sub code, the sub coaches level and all that stuff. I wasn’t allowing myself the direct connection coaching that I absolutely love, Right. You know, the one on one coaching where you really get to dive into things with a person. And I was really struggling with this because, you know, you’ve heard me say it on the show here before, and I’m sure you hear it from everybody else out there that you can’t scale aa1 on one coaching business. And I’m not saying that accelerator is only one on one. I’ll talk more about that here in just a second. But what I ended up doing is I was listening to this feeling for a while that I was having of like this kind of struggle internally with what I had created up to that point, which was very successful, by the way, in in how I was defining success. And also I was feeling this like pull towards like, wait, I feel disconnected from so many of the members and I wanted that connection.

I wanted to dive in more deeply into their business. And how I had set it up wasn’t allowing me to to do that right. I had this self awareness around that. And so I listened to this feeling for a while. And so the first thing that I did. Was. I surveyed the accelerator members. I created an anonymous questionnaire for them. I gave them an option, an option to Voxer me directly, any feedback. And I also gave them the opportunity to hop on Zoom with a member of my team. By the way, I’m always asking for feedback and recommendations for improvement. This was something that early on in my business I felt I was like, I’m not going to do that because then I’m kind of opening up. This is this is what I felt. I’m opening up to the fact that, you know, this isn’t very good. So hey, tell me what isn’t very good, right? But as you know, as I’ve matured as a CEO, as a business is matured, we’re coming up on nine years and know eight and a half years in the business. It’s like, wait, I’m here to.

Serve.

The people who are who are investing in the program. And of course, in addition to all of you, I’m here to serve, right? So why not get people’s feedback and recommendations and see if it makes sense? Does it align with what I want is aligned with our values? Does it align with what we’re able to do, etc.? And again, I think that this is something that not enough business owners do is ask and listen to their students, their customers, their clients, what have you. Right? So I want.

To stop here for a second.

And highlight what was going on for me. So if these similar types of thoughts and feelings are coming up for you, it help might help explain what could be going on for you too. And some. I’m going to be getting into some things like, all right, if this is going on for you, what to do, what to do next. All right. So just to kind of recap that, I was there was a struggle going on. I wasn’t feeling like what I had created was in full alignment with what felt good to me. And don’t get me wrong, I loved that version of the program, but I just felt like it could.

Be better.

And I felt like I could be happier, frankly, in delivering it. And so I tried something, you know, like I tried like, All right, you know what? I want to grow this to about 50 people. In order to do that, I’m going to need some I’m going to need a couple of sub coaches. And this wasn’t like a big group of sub coaches, by the way. I brought in two primary sub coaches that were day to day coaches along with me, if you will. But then again, after a while of doing that, it just didn’t feel right to me anymore and I really struggled with it. It also, again, just to kind of recap, I wasn’t getting the fulfillment of diving into things deeply with each person that I love to do, right? Like I love to dive into your business and and pick it apart and figure out like, what can we optimize and what’s going on over here and why is there a disconnect in the messaging over here. And the offer can do this and your team is this, and how do we get more from all that stuff? I love that. And so if you’re feeling a bit out of alignment, if something is feeling off to you and you’re asking for feedback from your students and you’re getting that feedback. Potentially some changes need to be made. And so we got some great feedback from the members. Great feedback from the members. And what we did with that with with that data is we put it into charts and we put it into pie charts and see like, all right, what percentage of people are saying this versus this over here? And this is know these are things that they’d love to see more of if they if this.

Over here was.

Not there anymore, they wouldn’t really, you know, all these types of things. We put it into very actionable data and analyzed it. My team and I did. So then from there we started modeling out potential changes that I could make to the program as a result of the data and how I was feeling about things. And so, you know, what those changes might look like. Were there any revenue and profit implications, implications, etc.? You know, I just want to look at all of those things. I want to kind of model everything out and see, okay, if I’m thinking this, does it affect my time, my energy, my, you know, my opportunity to spend as much time as possible with my daughter and my wife and all that sort of thing, Right? So I started modeling out the potential changes. And then from there, my team and I came up with a plan of the changes that we were going to roll out. We prioritize the changes that we wanted to make and decided that, hey, we’re going to start rolling it out at this time. And then this is sort of phase one, phase two, etc.. So we may prioritize what those changes were going to be from there.

We then made an announcement to the members that we were going to do. I called it a pilot program and actually at the time recording this, we’re still in the pilot program and because it’s going till the middle of December. And I’ll give you a hint right now. It’s going to continue past that because I love it. And so anyway, so I made an announcement to the members that we were going to do a pilot for the next two and a half months consisting of the changes that my team and I decided to make as a result of the data, the results of the questionnaires, what I was feeling, etc.. And I called it a pilot because I didn’t even know if these changes were going to stick. I didn’t know if I was going to be even going to like the changes. And I also wanted to get feedback from the members again at a later time. And so after the pilot. And so this is a this is a tip for you here. If you’re going to make a change to something in your.

Offer or offers.

And you feel like you have this fear around making a change, because if you make a change, you feel like, Oh, I’m locked into that change. First of all, you were never locked into anything in your own business because it is your business. You can make any changes to it that you want, but call it a pilot program, right? A pilot is when there’s a brand new TV show, for example, the.

First.

Episode that they pitch to a studio is the pilot. It’s like, Hey, this is what we can do. We’re going to test it out and see how audiences react to it. And then from there it might go into getting a full season or what have you. And so that’s what I didn’t know. If I if these if I was going to like these changes and I’ll share an example of the chain is here in a second. I didn’t even know if I was going to like them. I also wanted to make sure that the members liked it right and so. Rolling this pilot out was the second big pivot and optimization of of accelerator. What I did in the pilot, for example, is number one. Well, a while ago I started to phase down the sub coaches. One of the coaches just didn’t work out. The other one is amazing. He’s still part of the program. But I started to change what that looked like in the program. And so in the pilot, for example, I rolled out opportunities for one on one coaching with me two times a month. And it’s 230 minute calls. And so this was something that the members had requested. And I took that into account when modeling what changes that I might want to make. Right. And I also have a lot of self-awareness around the fact that I love one on one coaching. I love the opportunity to dive in deeply into somebody’s business. It energizes me and frankly, brings me a ton of joy. So again, going back to this is my business. This is my.

Offer.

I can create whatever it is that I want. So, hey, let’s test this out. And so I knew that one of the things that I knew, going back to what I originally its early said earlier on here in the episode was, you know my vision of 50 people in in the program. I was like, you know what? I don’t want that. I want it lower. I want it to be about 30 people. So right now I cap accelerator at 32 people. Again, this is different than what it used to be. It’s part of the evolution of the program. I mean, heck, it started out with. I want to say six people.

Like years ago, six years ago, I started.

With six people and then I had like eight and ten. And then it started to grow and, you know, and so I wanted to cap it and be really selective about who I allow into the program because I want them to align with our values. Are there businesses qualifying, quote unquote, for the type of level of online course creator membership or online coach that we serve in the program? And that was really that’s really important to me. And so I wanted to I wanted to bring this aspect into the program. And I had people I think I mentioned this on another episode here recently, Like I had people in the program literally say, Are you okay with this? Because I have big blocks of time every single week where people can sign up for the one on ones with me. And I was like, Hell yeah, like, I love it. Again, I’m just reiterating what I just mentioned to you. So I optimize.

The offer.

To test out the changes that I rolled out in the pilot. And so, again, this was the this was the next big pivot that I made. I basically did away with, if you will, the level of sub coaches. Like I still have coaches in the program, but it’s not it’s not set up how it used to be. Right. And so I made those changes and now there’s the one on one access to me. This also came from, as I mentioned, like the questionnaires, but this was also like this is a differentiator, right? Very few people at the level of the type of program that accelerator is can can compete, if you will, even though I don’t believe in it’s not not competing with anybody. But like, who’s doing that right? Who’s offering what we’re offering in terms of the level of coaching and the one on one coaching. So I’m like, That’s what I really struggle with. Am I, like capping myself, if you will? And again, work the number. I worked the numbers. I modeled all of this out and I’m like, this works.

And so let’s test it out. And so, again, I optimize the offer. I tested it out and it felt right to me, you know, and it feels right to me right now. Like, literally, I’m in the pilot right now. I’m sick, like halfway through six no, three fourths of the way through. And it’s been awesome. And the immediate feedback from the members was that they loved it, too. And by the way, I’ve also made some other big changes to the program based on the data, based on the feedback, and also what feels right to me. If you want to learn more, if you’ve been to the page in the past, well, it is updated. It’s a brand new page for accelerator talks, all about the changes that we’ve made and all this other stuff. So if you want to if you want to head over to the brand new accelerator page and check out what’s up with the program right now. Rick Mul Radio.com forward slash accelerator. And so here’s the deal like pivoting is never easy making changes in your. Business in your.

Offers.

Is never easy, but it’s often necessary to.

Better serve.

Your business, your people that you want to serve and you like.

Better serve.

Yourself. And I’m talking about these changes through the lens of how I’ve evolved this offer in my business. But but frankly, my my entire business has changed as a result of optimizing and evolving this offer. Like, this is my this is this is my one.

Offer.

In the business. I mean, I do some some some revenue share partnerships with people. I’m going to do another their episode about that here pretty soon. And if you wanted to work with me on that level. But this is what people come to me for having the opportunity to make my own decisions in the business. Obviously what, you know, got to bring got to take into account the team and stuff like that and get their feedback and so forth. But it’s your business. You get to make whatever changes that you want. And so for you in your business right now, here’s what I want you to do. First, I want you to check in with yourself and be honest with yourself about how you feel about your.

Offer or your.

Offers right now. Like, I know that sounds kind of like really do that. Like check in with yourself. How do you feel? Does it let you up? Is there alignment in what you’re offering? And on a scale of 1 to 10, for example, how do you feel.

About your offer?

You know, I just had a call with somebody this morning and they were saying, Yeah, I’ve gotten to the point exactly what I mentioned before. I’ve gotten to the point where I am right now because I learned all of the stuff, you know, that gets taught that is sort of cookie cutter. And I did all that stuff and it got me to the point where I am right now, which is, which is great, which has been helpful. However, I’m in that messy middle now and I want to blast out the other side, if you will. And what I’ve been doing doesn’t feel in alignment. And also what I was taught, what I been taught in the past doesn’t feel in alignment. So I want to make changes. And whether that’s changes to the business or changes to the offer. My point to that person was it’s okay. And there’s a process for how to go about potentially making changes and evolving your offer or evolving your business. And that’s exactly what we’re talking about here, Right. So check in with yourself, number one, and be honest with yourself about how you feel about.

Your offer or your.

Offers right now. Is there alignment? Are you feeling aligned with what you’re offering? Give yourself a rating. If you want a scale of 1 to 10, how good do you feel about your offer? Next. And a lot of people don’t look at things through this lens about. But how much.

Effort are.

You putting in to your.

Offer or your offers.

Compare.

To the profit.

That you’re making on each.

Of your offers? So if you got one offer.

How much effort do you put in? How much time do you devote to that offer in terms of fulfillment, marketing, sales, etc.? How much time are you putting in in effort compared to what your profit is on that offer? If you’re putting a ton of effort and time into your.

Offer.

But you’re offering what your profit is super low on it, that’s a pretty good indication that something is off. That changes need to be made in some way. And oftentimes we need other people to look at this and say, because we’re so.

Close to our stuff.

Right. We don’t know. We don’t know. And oftentimes we need other people to look at it and say, Oh, this over here, oh, this over here. It becomes that much easier. The next thing. If you don’t currently have a process for asking for feedback from your students, from your customers, from your clients or whatever, go ask them a simple anonymous questionnaire. Works amazingly well, and I do recommend that you offer them to to complete the questionnaire anonymously because then they’re going to be more candid with you on the feedback. Yeah, sure. Have a name field there if they want to, to leave it or give it, but it’s not required. So if you don’t already have a process for asking for feedback from your students, go ask them and then create a process for that. Like, what is your system? Is it quarterly? Is it do you do it twice a year, whatever it might be? Get feedback from them on a regular basis and then analyze the data in a really smart way. In an actual way. And then, if anything, what changes might come about from from the feedback. And then if you could make any changes to your offer, what would they be? Like, literally, what would they be? Remember, this is your business. You could do anything you want. What changes would you make? Would you you know, would you do away with that coaching aspect.

After after.

The that you offer, after you do a live launch or whatever it might be like? I hear that a lot, right? Would you convert something into a membership? Would you not do the membership anymore because you’re putting a whole lot of effort into it? But your profit but your profit margin is not good, right? Whatever it might be. What changes would you make to your.

Offer.

If you could do anything? What would they be? Because you can make any changes that you want. So your business, you can do it. And then once you come up with that list like I did, like I was explaining before. Come up with that list. You’re getting feedback. What changes that you want? You’re taking all this into account and then coming up with a list of the changes that you want to make and you start to prioritize them. And then you’re like, All right, when am I going to roll these out? And then you just release a pilot. You say, Hey, I want to be piloting some new changes here. We’re just going to check it out. I don’t know.

Like it’s not forever.

We’re going to see how we like these and we’re going to go from there. And then as you’re doing the pilot, check in with yourself. How are you liking it? Does it more align with you? Does it energize you? Does it drain you? All these things, right. Does it improve your profit margin, etc., etc.? Do you get more customers as a result of the types of changes that you’re instituting that you’re piloting, I should say? And then, of course, ask for feedback. Ask for feedback from your members based on how they’re liking the the pilot. How do you like the changes? So I hope this was helpful for you. This is something I’ve been wanting to do for a while. And then also, by the way, I mentioned to you that another change that we made and I’m going to do another episode about this actually, but I’ll mention it right now, is I mentioned to you that we created a brand new accelerator page. One of the one of the evolutions that we’ve done with this.

Offer.

Is and I’ve talked about it here in the podcast before, is we’ve never.

Had the.

Price of accelerator on the page. And it’s.

Never sat.

Well with me. And, you know, we were going through changes on the page and ran into a whole bunch of problems there. It’s a whole different story.

But anyway, like this whole it’s all about transparency, authenticity. The price is right there, like it’s right there in the page. And I think again, so many people, I get feedback from so many people. They’re like, if I go to a page and I’m looking at something and there’s no price there, I’m out of here. Right? And frankly, like, I kind of do that too. I want to know, like, what is the investment? And I feel like some people, like when they’re like kind of hiding from it. And I did that for a long time, too. So zero judgment. But again, this is just part of the evolution of SEO and what we’re doing. Et cetera. And so the price is right on the page. This is something that I’m pumped to to roll out as part of the evolution of the offer, the evolution of the business, evolution of our values. And me as a CEO. So I hope this was helpful for you. If you want to run anything by me, if you want my help in figuring out what chain is that you might want to make, shoot me an email. Rick at Rick Mulraney. Let me know what’s going on and we’ll see about what does it make sense to work together, does it not? If not, I can direct you somewhere to see how I can help you. Thank you, my friend, as always, for listening to today’s episode. Appreciate you. I’ll see you next time right here on the Art of Online Business podcast.