You are listening to My Freedom Grove podcast with Gretchen Hernandez, episode 107.

Welcome to My Freedom Grove podcast. The all inclusive podcast that teaches mindset and business tools. We'll help you rise as your authentic self. Be unshakable with your emotional freedom and unstoppable in achieving any goal and living your purpose. I'm your host, Gretchen Hernandez. If you want to put your mental health first in life, relationships and business, you've come to the right place.

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Hi my strong friends. I had so much fun. Last week, I was attending a retreat training workshop for quite a few days. As you know, I have a long term goal of having some pretty large retreats. Some will be small, some will be large, some will be incredibly large. I want to make sure that I'm creating a high quality experience for all of my guests.

So I started to go through Wanderlust Entrepreneurs Retreat Blueprint training. This has been a phenomenal experience, very eye opening and it's value aligned. Oh gosh. You know, I love Don Miguel Ruiz. Can you believe that the trainer for this particular retreat training used to be a teacher under Don Miguel Ruiz? In fact, she led his retreats. So she organized all of his retreats for several years. So I'm like, I am in very good company.

These are all value aligned people. We're planning retreats the right way. So, so excited to be able to do this. One of the things that she said, because some people are thinking about just creating a retreat as their one and only product. What Sherry shared with them is that it is a disservice not to have something else available for retreat participants after they come to the retreat. You see in retreats, there's often some transformational change that happens. But you need some extra support afterwards to make sure that that change sticks. Or if it now just opened up Pandora's box and there's a lot to work on, you need to have some safe container to continue with your retreat leader. To have them help you develop that part, work through everything in Pandora's box.

BUSINESS MODEL VALUE LADDER

Now this wasn't new to me because, you know, I focus on business models. I'm looking at unique business models, all of the different pieces that go together. What she was describing is a value ladder. Within a business model, you can offer multiple products and services. This has different revenue streams for you, but they're all tied together under one umbrella. That is your business model.

So I thought today I would go over value ladders with you so that you can start thinking about what is the right thing for you to offer to your clients.

So what is a value ladder?

A value ladder is a series of services, events, and programs to help achieve a specific goal or solve a specific obstacle.

The design, container and the duration is perfectly suited to helping someone achieve their outcome. Each of these products or services has a specific result identified. It might be a standalone result that someone's looking for. Or it might be an incremental result that contributes to their overall large goal.

HOW TO SEGMENT PRODUCTS

Now, when you did your customer research, you uncovered all of the different pain points, all of the dreams that people have. And if you help your clients by using The Clarity Steps, you're finding out what are all of the obstacles that are getting in the way for them to achieve their goal.

Well, when you have that list of obstacles, you now have everything you need to figure out what kind of products and services can you put together to help them in achieving their goal.

Solution - So looking at those obstacles, what are the ways that you can create a solution to solve that obstacle?

Container- And then what's the right container to put that in. Is that a 1:1 thing? Is that a workshop? Is it a challenge or a support group? Maybe you need a retreat. Maybe a weekend retreat would be great. Maybe a full week retreat would be great. Retreats are fun because you can get away from the rest of the world for a while, put things on pause and focus on just one thing.

Format - Even thinking about the format of it. If it's online or if it's in person for any of your offerings, is something to consider. Even speaking engagements are part of your value ladder.

PRODUCTS INSPIRED BY THE CUSTOMER JOURNEY

You have to think about the customer journey. The customer journey includes five different stages and your different products and services, whether they're free or they're a small fee or a bigger fee, they all fit into this value ladder that meets the customer where they're at.

1. Pain Aware

So in a customer journey, you have pain aware, very first thing, someone is experiencing a symptom of their problem. So they're experiencing some kind of pain. So what types of products and services would be appropriate for someone that is looking to express their pain. You wanna be able to connect with them, speeches and podcast posts and videos. These are perfect type of things that help someone who's saying, Hey, I'm in pain. How do I help with this symptom?

2. Problem Aware

The next stage in a customer journey is problem aware once they know what the actual problem was that was creating that pain. Now they're looking for a solution to that problem, or they're trying to learn more about that problem. So what type of information products can you create to help them to understand that problem a little bit more and all of the different solutions that are available to help them.

3. Solution Aware

The next stage on a customer journey is solution aware. So they're already aware of their problem. Hopefully they know the root cause of their problem. So they're fixing the right thing. Now they're becoming solution aware. They're looking for all of the solutions. Well, this is great. Especially if you have multiple modalities that you've put together, the modality is your way of solving that problem.

There's multiple modalities that can be offered out in the world. This might be your competition, right? There's other people with different modalities that can also solve that problem. We care about the customer. We wanna make sure that their problem gets solved. So our modality might be perfect, or our combination of modalities. Because like me, I use business process and mindset, fusion of the two. You may have a fusion of multiple modalities also. So sharing your solution is what your modalities are so that people understand that you're different than the other solutions.

Now, this doesn't mean that we poo poo those other solutions. We can absolutely let people know that there's other types of modalities out there too. We can always refer them out. If our doesn't work for them. We can also form business circle alliances with other people that solve the same problem, but they use other modalities because we can tag team coach. We can help form like that village around our customers to help them because sometimes it really does take all of these different modalities to be able to help them. How can you partner together as part of your value ladder with other businesses that offer other modalities so that you can be part of the solution?

4. Product Aware

And then the next thing in the customer journey is product aware. So this is after they realize that your solution, your modality, is something that they would like to try. Now, what is your exact product? So this is where your specific value ladder is. You may have a variety of products. You might have something that is small, like an entry level thing. It's something very, very specific. It solves one obstacle. This might be a good approach for building up trust with your client. They wanna try one thing at an affordable price, just to see if your solution actually works for them.

And then once they realize it does, they've solved that one obstacle. Well, what's the next thing that you can offer them? You've got that whole list of all of their different obstacles. How can you help them? Because eventually it would be great if they could resolve all of their obstacles and have that final goal achieved.

So just to recap, a value ladder is a series of services, events, or programs to help achieve a specific goal or solve a specific obstacle.

FIRE HOSE OR SUCCESS PATH

How do you even start to figure out what your value ladder would be? Well, I want you to think about a fire hose or a success path. Now I'm guilty of this too. I wanted to just solve everything, just give someone their full transformation. So I was doing a fire hose approach multiple times. I just wanted to give them everything all at once, thinking that this is a great value. They're gonna have everything that they need all in one shot. Problem is that gets overwhelming for someone.

So it's too much information. It's not always sequenced in the right way so that they can get those small wins along the way. And then eventually have their final, big win.

So you have to think about a success path.

What is that thing that they want the most?

And then how do you break it all down?

And then what is the right container and everything to put it into.

This can be challenging if you haven't decided on one goal that you help all of your customers to achieve. So if you don't have one particular goal that you help all of your customers to achieve, you're gonna have to get pretty creative with this structure that you put together for your value ladder. It has to be something that can break it out in bite size pieces so that no matter what goal they have, they'd be able to achieve that using your process.

Now, one quick tip that I can give you is that if you go back and you listen to episode #10 Clarity From Confusion, this is going over the full Clarity Steps. If you think about all of the goals that you have accomplished in your life, and you start to put it in the structure of the Clarity Steps, it's gonna help you to see a pattern that emerges. Then you'll have an idea for what would you have needed for any of those goals at each point, along the way.

Now, if you happen to have narrowed down where you are the expert in helping them to achieve one goal, this is gonna be great. You're gonna be able to even apply the Clarity Steps to that. Look at how you would use all of the seven steps of the Clarity Step process to be able to lay out a success path for your clients.

And then once you see all of the sequence steps, which solutions, which experiments you would do at each of those steps?

Then you can start to decide what's the right container to put that in.

What's the right duration for that product or service?

Is that a done for you service a done with you? Is it a DIY?

If it is an information product, then you can start to put it in a sequence and also assign it a price.

It's called a value ladder for a reason. Your very first offering that you give them usually has a smaller price to it. The value that they're going to get from that solution, it's going to be impactful in their life. They're definitely gonna have value. You'll have to think about how that shows up in their life? What kind of price would they put on having that result in their life?

And then that next thing that you offer them, it's gonna be a higher price point because the value of that result from that one product or service, it's gonna be even more significant in their life.

And then you just keep stepping it up. This value ladder. Each thing has a different price point because it's giving a higher value in their life. Eventually when they get close to the top, it's gonna be a lot more expensive product. But the value that they get from the result of that product or service is going to be huge.

CREATE A WIN-WIN SITUATION

Now, how can you create a win-win situation? Now you're in business so that you can provide a living for yourself, but you also wanna make products and services that are accessible for your clients. We want to help the world. We want to help all of these people. If we make everything super, super expensive, we're only gonna be able to help a certain segment of the population.

There are billions of people in this world that need our help. So how can you choose price points that can allow more people to have access to that while you're still making an income?

Some of that is gonna come with your creativity in the types of containers that you choose. When you do things that are a 1:1 model, where it's you working directly with the person, you become a rate limiting step. There's only one of you. You only have so many hours in the day. So it's gonna be a lot harder to create an affordable, accessible price, to be able to help as many people as possible and still be able to make an income for yourself.

So that's where you might wanna consider what are all of your 1:Many options?

Some people will use a book as one of their first value ladder increments, because a book is something that has a more accessible price point. Sure. You put a lot of effort up front in creating that book and you have to know how to market that book, but now more people have access to it and you can create an income from all of the royalties that come off of that book.

Workshops are another way where you can have a 1:Many, as many folks can fit into that workshop and actually get the result at the end. That's gonna make it a lot easier for you to make an income that you can live off of speaking engagements. That's another way you can get paid for speaking. This can be part of your value ladder. This might be one of your earlier ones (products) where this is the first time that people are meeting you, but you're getting paid. And there's lots and lots of people that are there. You get a portion of that entry fee that helps it make it sustainable for you and accessible for them. And then when you have the next thing available for them, some of those people in the audience can now sign up with you for the next thing and start advancing up your value ladder.

If you have things like masterminds, this could be a concentrated group of people brought together for a specific duration that are going to get a really great result. You can choose the pricing on that because that one, depending on how valuable that result is, can be worth quite a bit of money.

Another option for that is instead of having a very focused group for a short amount of time, you might wanna consider a membership model. This gives that mastermind experience of bringing people together for a common result that they're trying to get, but it gives them an extended amount of time to achieve that result. And you can do that by having courses and coaching, maybe some community involvement. This allows a lower price point, so that it's more accessible for people, but the format that you've put together can support more people in achieving that result. You just have to put in a lot of upfront effort, do a lot of research, make sure that whatever you have in your courses, whatever you've put together for your product and service there, your support model is going to help them to actually achieve that result.

The worst thing that you wanna do is create something that people are gonna come in, pay money and not be able to get results. So put the effort in, make sure that you've done all of your research and then figure out what are the right series of products and services that you can offer people.

You might even have a combination of speaking and books and workshops, a membership and retreats. All of that is possible. Now it takes a while to build all of that. Is it possible for one individual to do all of that? Yes. I'm an example of that. It takes a lot of constraining your focus, creating your processes to be able to support it, automating a lot of it. It's time intensive, but once you get all of your details, all flushed out, everything is a smooth running routine that can be managed by one person. You can also look to hire other people that can support you in doing a lot of these.

So those are all things that I can help you to flush out all of the details for. But now you have an idea about value ladders and how you can help meet your clients, where they're at, how you can help to provide the products and services that they need the most at the price point that works for them and works for you.

If you would like some help in flushing out what this could look like for you, for figuring out all of your pricing models for how you can make it accessible to them and profitable for you, as well as coming up with all of the details, all of the processes on how to make this happen. I'm here for you.

You'll wanna schedule a consultation with me so that we can discuss what your dream, what your vision is. Come up with some ideas and then start plotting out the course for how you can make this happen. You can set up a time to talk with me by going to my website at www.myfreedomgrove.com. Go to the contact me tab. There is a schedule. You can pick a date and time that works for you. We'll set up a one hour consultation so that we can get started.

All right, my friend, I hope this has given you all sorts of creative ideas for what you can do in your business and have a wonderful week. I'll talk with you soon. Bye bye.

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Thank you for listening to My Freedom Grove podcast.  I can't wait to work with you directly. I'll help you to be your authentic self, to have amazing relationships and to live your purpose. I invite you to check out Unshakable Men and Unshakable Women. The Unshakable programs will give you all of the tools, the coaching and the community to help you rise in life, relationships, and business. To learn more, go to my freedom grove.com/workwithme. I can't wait to see you there.