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I HAVE PHASED OUT + ADDED ALMOST TEN PROGRAMS IN TWO YEARS.

I hope that if you’re an entrepreneur or you want to be, you learn A LOT from this episode. Today I am aggressively pulling back the curtain on the past years of my business and the transition to what it is in present time.

This episode came from this idea that people see my biz now, where it is, and may not know where it came from.

And that sometimes we need a reminder to not compare our first year of biz (or anything for that matter) with someone who is further ahead.

Even more, to not copy what someone else is doing because they will likely change or even get rid of whatever you just copied. I have done this in the past and throughout my entrepreneurial journey.

Thought “oh, so and so does this, and they’re successful, so I should do that.” Now, I am not talking about copying verbatim, rather concepts and formatting. But still, I’d roll something out, thinking I’d be done, and then that person who I got the idea from, rolls out something new and better. It’s just not a good plan fam. You’re always behind, and you’re not focused on you and yours – what your audience really needs from you.

So, I’d like to share some of the programs and segments of programs that I’ve had through the last five years and why I no longer offer them.

Even if you’re not an entrepreneur there is likely a takeaway here for you on some level.

I had the first four programs all the way into 2018. So the transition to the Annie Miller Concepts you see now didn’t happen that long ago.

And the transition I am talking about came out of really honing in who I was meant to serve and what that person truly needed from me. That would be my Ideal Client Avatar and I literally used my FREE PDF Ideal Client Avatar Creator to clearly define my dream audience. Then promptly got rid of all programs that didn’t serve that person.

Which brings me to my first four programs that I no longer offer at Annie Miller Concepts:

20 day challenge

6 week transformation

Pull up guide

Macro + nutrition breakdown

Starting with the 20 day challenge – 

This was my first ever offer and I straight up made it while I was still in college and I saw Emily Schromm doing her 21 day challenges. It was appealing. $21, 21 days and you basically give people the basics. It’s a kick start. Mine was nowhere near hers. But it was valuable AF. I made videos for 20 days and posted a new one everyday in the Facebook group. They received recipes, workouts and handouts. It really was a shit load of value and mine was $20 for 20 days.

It worked too – people lost weight and inches. I got testimonials, and people always joined.

But there was so much wrong with this.

1. I was attracting people who were not actually my ideal clients. The offer didn’t make any sense for where I wanted to go and who I wanted to work with. I loved writing weight lifting programs. People who are looking for a 20 day kickstart ARE NOT looking for a legit weight lifting program…Not a great start to my offer pyramid or offer suite.
2. It was $20 and I had like 300 followers on Instagram and 47 people on my mailing list…I also paid for Facebook ads that did absolutely nothing for me because I had no idea what I was doing. I am on team organic growth and sales until you’re established. Then enter into paid advertising when you can hire an expert to do it for you. That’s my personal take, you can have yours.
   1. Do the math – $20 and a small audience is not how you make a sustainable income online or in person. And I did a challenge every quarter. The most I ever had was 52 people I think. Thats $1,040 folks…Mind you, it was not easy to run these challenges either. You heard me list off what was included! Videos, daily workouts, emails, facebook group, PDFs.
   2. And Lord knows barely any of that was automated. I was doing an ungodly amount of work for barely any money. NOT A GOOD BUSINESS MODEL.

So, we have a program that attracts people I don’t actually want to work with. That has me doing work I am not actually passionate about. At a price point that has be losing a nauseating amount of time and making microscopic profit…

What do I do? Create another program to bridge the gap between my two offers.

At this point, I had the 20 day challenge because in my brain this was “fast cash” and then I had my 1:1 programming. These were attracting very different clientele. 1:1 has always been weight lifting based. They have always been closest to my ICA even from the beginning. So, what did I do?

I created my 6 week transformation.

Again – I used marketable words. 20 day challenge and 6 week transformation.

These both indicate a short time span and an end date. Again, not attracting the type of person I ACTUALLY want to work with.

BUT – we were getting closer. The six week transformation was somewhere between $67 – $97 I think.

I had a body weight, dumbbell and barbell 6 week transformation. Fam, I was in fact learning and starting to think more like an entrepreneur. The idea was an offer pyramid, I just didn’t know what I was doing at the time.

Someone would do the 20 day challenge, love it, and sign up for one of the 6 week transformations. This was a downloadable and fillable PDF with a six week block of training. So there was no work from me. They bought it, and I sent it to them. Done.

Just like the 20 day challenge these were VALUABLE. To this day that programming was still effective and efficient. They got access to a video log with all exercises and coaching for those exercises.

We knew fitness, just didn’t know business. Which is all too common in the online and even in person world.

So like I said – the offer pyramid in my mind would do this —> 20 day challenge, 6 week transformation (within this, someone could do body weight then dumbbell then barbell) and then they’d sign up for 1:1.

Not bad in theory but it poses the same problem as the 20 day challenge. They type of person who is looking for a 20 day quick fix is not looking for 1:1 weight lifting. Therefore the up-sell was not effective. Yes, it worked to some extent. I sold a lot of 6 week transformations and I did get some 1:1 clients but rarely from the up-sell – moreso just from the different programs attracting different people.

Now we have an ineffective offer pyramid but a lot of value and we are getting closer to who we want to work with. I am starting to hone in what I actually want to do. And making more money – the six week transformation required no work from me.

The last two of the four were the Pull Up Guide and Macro + Nutritional breakdown.

These are perfect examples of trying to build an offer suite and just not getting it right.

I created a pull up guide because a lot of women want to get a pull up – and I thought it would be a great low ticket offer to get people into the 6 week transformation OR a great add on for someone who is doing the 6 week transformation.

Here’s the deal. It would have been effective if someone actually followed it. But it is more effective to just hire a coach or follow a program like Built by Annie that improves pull ups as part of the entire program. Very few humans are going to just follow a pull up guide. And that human likely already knows how to lift weights, is disciplined, but just can’t seem to get a pull up.

THAT is not the person I was marketing to or attracting. 

I want to pause to point out the insane importance of knowing your ideal client and matching offers to the exact needs of that ideal client.

All of my previous offers are perfect examples of GREAT offers. All were jam packed full of value, had great seamless delivery and worked. But they weren’t made for my ideal client, and they each attracted different people just based on the product themselves. Therefore I had an ineffective offer suite.

I really hope that hits home and makes sense for you. It’s very important that offers make sense for the market and audience you’re working with.

If you know about my offers now, you can see how much more cohesive they are. And how much more attractive they are for my ideal client and audience in general. Check out my episode on creating your offer suite if you haven’t yet. I won’t dive into the weeds here.

So the pull up guide was great but not what I should have spent time and money creating. And then we had the macro + nutritional breakdown.

I’ve mentioned this before…

People wanted nutrition so I thought I had to provide it. FALSE.

It was my worst product in my opinion. I mean it still worked, it was simple and effective. But I am not a dietician or nutrition coach. It’s not what I am passionate about and I made it in order to fill a gap I thought I needed to fill.

I dropped all of these programs after re-viewing and taking a deep dive into my ideal client, my only statement for my biz, and deciding what I TRULY wanted to do in this space.

In 2018 and 2019 I got rid of every program we just covered, and created all the programs I have now on the fitness side.

Movement 101

Body Weight for Weight Lifters

The Big Lift Audit

And a relaunch of Built by Annie to help it serve my ideal client EVEN BETTER.

All educational weight lifting based programs that target the woman who has experience in the gym or is serious about learning to lift weights safely, for the long haul, and loves the process.

And that actually brings me to my next and final segment of a program that I no longer offer.

The other situation I no longer offer is Live Calls for Built By Annie.

When I relaunched in September 2018 with the second BBA – which now included basic, plus, premium 1 and premium 2,  I added the educational component of live calls. I did this every month for 13 months and it involved creating a Canva presentation, doing the and recording the call + answering Q&A.

Pretty sweet, right? Why phase it out?

Because as an entrepreneur and CEO I am always looking for ways to be more efficient, provide value, and work less.

Which is why Annie’s Secret Lab of Brain Gains was created.

I found that most BBA clients were watching the calls on replay and not coming in for live Q&A. So it didn’t make sense for me to be spending four hours per month on the call creation + call itself.

I was doing more work than I needed to – which is never the goal.

I had all the call material. So I decided to create a type of client portal instead where clients could go view the calls at their own pace. Annie’s Secret Lab of Brain Gains also opened the door for a space to have other resources. I can add to it over time and improve it whenever I like. This is a win for me and my clients.

Live calls worked for a time in Built by Annie but they weren’t necessary for my ideal client. Not in the format that I was presenting them. The Secret Lab is much better for them. They can view the videos at their own leisure and have access to everything in one place.

But I want to point out that the live calls in FitsPRO Foundations are huge and needed for those clients. If you don’t know, that is my six week online biz course for fitness professionals in the online space. It would do a disservice to Fitspro Foundations to remove the live calls and have pre-recorded ones like BBA because the live calls are SO HELPFUL to my biz clients and a large portion of the calls are dedicated to small group coaching with live Q&A. So for now, that remains a very effective portion of the course.

As an entrepreneur and CEO you should always be looking at efficiency and if you’re doing too much work. Because we can often keep adding work when it is truly not necessary. What does the client need? Provide only that, and in the most efficient and effective way you know how.

The live calls were not needed long term for BBA but served a great purpose while I had them.

That’s what this is all about. Doing, learning, and doing better.

There was always value in my offers. They just weren’t always in alignment with who I truly wanted to serve and what I was made to do in this field.

Now you have the TEA on all my past programs and why I no longer offer them. This was a fun one for me to talk about and I certainly hope it was a fun one for you to listen to – whether entrepreneur or not.

If you don’t know your ideal client and feel a bit like I did back at in 2017 and beginning of 2018, check out my free download – Ideal Client Avatar creator. Don’t half ass it. Because as you can see, you’ll create offers, content and products based around this person. And it can be a beautiful thing, or a long slow train wreck.

That’s all! We did it.

Now review the podcast. 

Review of the week comes from sarah.g.fitness and says,

“Annie does an amazing job sharing clear & concise information with actionable steps. Many business podcasts fill their episodes with a lot of fluff, but Annie gets straight to the point! I love the no nonsense approach to business & fitness!”

Remember you need to check the show notes (here) to see if you were review-er of the week, and then keep an eye out to see if you were listener of the month as well. That will be in the show notes and Annie’s Weekly Wrap. You can subscribe to Annie’s Weekly Wrap here!

If you find value here, on The FitsPRO Podcast, then pretty please head over to iTunes, subscribe, rate and review the show. It means the world to me when you spread my message to more humans.

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