The Simmonds Signal

Alternate education for creators (that school can’t teach you)

Micro Writer → Micro Brand → Micro Business

Something that’s been upsetting me recently…

… There’s so many people trying to make money online.

But most of the education in the creator economy can’t and won’t help them.

Why?

Because the creator economy is kinda like a pyramid scheme.

People learn to write, go viral, and attract thousands of followers.
Then offer to teach others to go viral.
Then those students teach others to go viral.
And so on.

This is fine.
I’ve made great money doing this.

But this leads to people thinking the only way to make money online is to get paid to ghostwrite (write viral content for others) or teach people to write viral content.

One of my Microcreator community members, Tracie Posehn, put it best:

"I don't want to be a ghostwriter or sell a writing course so can I even make money online?"

This question floored me.

Of course she can (and so can you).

There's so many profitable micro businesses and underserved markets that don’t have crazy competition like ghostwriting.

Especially for Tracie who's been a therapist for over 30 years and helped over 1,000 clients.

She's got all the credibility to start a 6 figure micro business by coaching clients.

The problem is, she just didn't know where to start.

So yesterday, we used an 'offer unbundling' technique that I stole from a SaaS startup guide to create a niche $5,000 coaching offer in less than 60 minutes.

I documented the whole process, so you can do it too.

Creating a $5,000 Coaching Offer with Offer Unbundling

Before we begin, this guide is breaking down how to create a coaching/ consulting offer.

The offer structure looks like this:

• One 1 hour call per week

• $5,000 for 2 months of coaching

• Private message support during the week

Anyone can create and sell an offer like this.
(Exchanging their time for money).

With just 2-4 clients per month, you’ll make a full time income (and likely be able to replace your 9-to-5).

IF you can drive and convert the leads.
This guide only breaks down creating the offer.

For further help on attracting the leads and closing high ticket coaching clients, check out the Microcreators community.

Now let’s dive in…

1) Identify what you’re good at

You already have valuable skills, you just don’t know it.

Look to both your past work experience and what you've learned.

Find a high value skill people will pay money for:

If you don’t have any valuable skills…

… Become valuable.

Like me, everyone starts life at 0 - with no skills.

You can't skip the step of learning something society deems valuable.

Pick a skill that:

1. You’re interested in

2. Is valuable enough that others will trade attention for it (and eventually money)

I started with writing and marketing.

This fuelled my own social media growth and my Ghostwriting offer at the same time.

Other profitable skills:

• Life/ career coaching

• Fitness/ nutrition coaching

• AI/ prompt engineer coaching

• Marketing/ content creation coaching

• Productivity/ peak performance coaching

• Offer creation/ funnel optimization coaching

Tracie has 30 years of experience as a therapist working with over 1,000 clients.

We're going to use that experience to launch a life/ career coaching offer.

2) Find solutions that already exist

If you’re new to online business, I suggest crafting your first offer in an existing market.

Net new markets are rare.

And they carry risk (if they don’t exist, it’s likely because there is no demand).

Competitive markets are tested.

They're not a curse, they're a sign of demand.

The reason people don't like them is because they secretly know they can't compete.

But if you develop the skills to enter the top 10% of any market, you'll be able to consistently make $100K per year.

I knew ghostwriting was (and is) profitable because others were making money.

I knew personal branding cohorts were profitable because others were making money.

Don’t innovate on the market, innovate on the solution.

Be 1% different.

After a quick YouTube search, we found Dr. K's mental health guides - his solution that is similar to Tracie's.

Inside he offers mental health guides on ADHD, anxiety, depression, trauma, and meditation.

5 validated offers problems for Tracie and I to create a new offer around…

(PS. It's best to find 3-5 similar offers in your chosen niche. For the sake of this guide, we'll use 1 for simplicity.)

3) Create Your Core Offer with 'Unbundling'

Unbundling is an offer creation technique I stole from a SaaS startup guide.

Take a look at a competitor who is tackling many problems at once.

And focus your offer on solving one of those problems (but do a better job).

As large businesses expand over time and gain more customers, they start solving multiple problems.

But there's a downside to this - by splitting their focus, they often lose the ability to be effective on one key problem.

Herein lies your opportunity to "unbundle" the problem you feel most equipped to solve.

For example, Calendly is a popular scheduling tool valued at over $3 billion.

But did you know, the idea came from unbundling a crappy scheduling tool from a CRM and making it 100x better?

That's exactly what we did for Tracie's offer (and you can do the same).

Dr. K's mental health guides target 4 big problems - ADHD, anxiety, depression and trauma.

He has millions of followers so he bundles the solutions to these problems together.

Offering them for a low ticket price at scale.

But Tracie has less than 1,000 followers (you likely do too).

So we unbundled ADHD as the core problem we're going to solve with her high ticket coaching offer.

4) Position Against Your Competitors Weaknesses

In marketing, positioning is everything.

Your solution can promise the same outcome as your competitors.

But you must be different in how you take your clients there.

Here’s an example from my community, Microcreators:

Many of my competitors have much “bigger” brands, and therefore much bigger communities.

But they are less hands on, often leaving calls and fulfillment to hired community managers.

So I make time every week to lead calls and shred content in the chats.

Where my competitors offer big communities with limited access to their time.

I offer an intimate community with daily access to my time.

After some further market research, we realized Tracie's competitors:

• Haven't worked with over 1,000 clients

• Don't have 30 years of therapy experience

• Aren't formally trained in ADHD therapeutic techniques

So we're positioning Tracie's offer against theirs:

• More experience than others

• More specialization into ADHD related problems

• More personalization (not just a cookie-cutter course)

5) Define Your Niche and Transformation

Most beginners struggle to craft profitable offers because they offer vague promises to an undefined group of people.

To craft a truly profitable offer, you must know WHO you're helping and HOW you're helping them.

Think of it this way:

A niche is a group of people - who you're helping.

An offer is a transformation you provide to that group of people - how you change their lives.

Dr. K's niche: gamers.

His offer: help gamers overcome their mental health struggles.

Tracie is attracting clients on LinkedIn so we changed her niche:

Founders and busy 9-to-5r's with ADHD.

Her offer:

A process for turning their ADHD (traditionally felt as a disadvantage, leaving professionals feeling unorganized, stressed and unproductive…)

Into a competitive career advantage (making them more money).

We even gave Tracie a unique name to help her stand out in her marketing: The ADHD Therapist.

Again, if you're unsure what transformation to offer, try this:

Offer the same transformation as your competitors but use a different process while positioning against the disadvantages of your offer.

Still not sure how to do this?

I created an Offer DNA Notion system that walks you through this whole process.

It's free for all Microcreator's community members.

And there you have it.

From here all you have to do is:

• Turn your offer into a landing page

• Create lead generation content that drives traffic to your landing page and DMs

• Qualify your warm traffic in the DMs

• Close qualified prospects on a sales call using the CLOSER framework

If you land 2-4 clients a month, you make $10,000 with your Micro-consulting business.

Pretty crazy, huh?

Then you can Scrooge Mc'Duck the way to your bank while waving goodbye to those filthy credit card bills.

Kind of joking on that last one.

If you have any questions about this, reply "help me with my offer" to this email.

If not, I'll catch you in the next one.

-Taylin John Simmonds

PS. I spent last weekend finally learning to surf.

I didn’t get up on the first day but nailed it on the first try of the second day.

The lesson?

Much of learning is subconscious - happening when we step away from our work.

Take active breaks to accelerate your learning.