I wanted to dive into this whole idea around how to create a compelling offer because a lot of people (including many successful entrepreneurs), spend ages obsessing over every single detail of their product before doing anything else.
Like what are the course modules going to be or what’s the 5-step framework I’m going to teach people or where am I going to host my 5-day yoga retreat for burnt-out business owners?
Don’t get me wrong, all of this is valuable stuff eventually, but it’s not what you’re actually selling. Because the thing is, and this is really important: people don’t buy products, they buy offers.
This was one of the biggest mindset shifts I’ve had over the years and it’s completely changed the way I think about business.
If you think about a book like Feel-Good Productivity for example, the cover design, the title, the subtitle, what’s written on the back, the table of contents – that’s all the offer. Whereas the actual stuff inside the book, the chapters you read, the value you get – that’s the product.
And people make their buying decision based entirely on the offer. Of course they can’t read the whole book before they buy it – they can only see what’s “on the box.”
So you can have the most incredible, life-changing product in the world, but if your offer doesn’t communicate that value in a compelling way, then no one will ever discover how good the product actually is.
On the flip side, a brilliant offer can get people to buy even if the product isn’t great…but obviously that won’t work long-term.
So you want that sweet spot of having both a compelling offer that accurately represents an amazing product, but most people get the order wrong. They build the product first and then try to figure out how to sell it, rather than starting with an offer that the market actually wants.
So the question is: how do you create a compelling offer? And this is where my 5 P’s framework comes in:
1️⃣ Person
Step one involves identifying who you’re serving – someone who has both a problem and the money to solve it – and this is something you want to identify first when you’re thinking about your niche.
2️⃣ Problem
When thinking about your niche, you also want to identify a problem that’s painful and tangible. Not some vague, abstract idea, but something that people would genuinely pay real money to solve.
3️⃣ Promise
This is arguably what I’ve realised to be the most important part of your offer because it’s the headline transformation you’re offering (and it’s essentially the inverse of your problem).
For LBA, our offer is “to help you build a $100K/year Lifestyle Business in under 12 months”. It’s specific, compelling, and tangible, and it’s the kind of offer that makes someone think “wow, I really need to find out more about this.”
But if your promise was something like “learn business skills to maybe make some money online eventually” (which is a bit of an exaggerated example, but you get the point 😅), it’s technically accurate but completely uninspiring, and I doubt anyone’s going to be thinking “yep, sign me up immediately.”
So a mental model I like to use when I’m creating a promise is to imagine you could wave a magic wand and instantly give your ideal customer their dream outcome. What would that be?
4️⃣ Product
After you’ve nailed your promise, you then want to figure out how you’re going to deliver on it. What’s the actual process? And is it a course, a community, 1:1 coaching, a combination of these things, or something completely different?
5️⃣ Pricing
Last but not least, pricing. This is where I see a lot of people make a huge mistake by undervaluing their offer – pricing too cheap is often worse than pricing too high as I’ve talked about quite a bit in recent emails.
Now there are actually a few more P’s that I cover in LBA – things like positioning, perks, and proof – but these 5 are enough to create something that’s testable in the market.
And the key word here is testable.
It’s very easy to spend weeks or months trying to perfect your grand slam offer before ever putting it in front of actual humans, but you just need an offer that’s good enough for you to start having conversations and seeing what resonates.
Then you refine your offer based on that feedback, basically letting the market guide you toward what actually works.
This whole process – from identifying your niche to crafting a compelling offer to testing and refining it – is exactly what we walk through in the Lifestyle Business Academy.
But even if you’re not planning to join any time soon, understanding these 5 P’s will fundamentally change how you think about creating something people actually want to buy.
Hope this was helpful and feel free to share which of these 5 P’s feels most challenging when you think about your own offer.