Building a successful online course business in 2024 requires an irresistible, hell-yes core offer.

Here’s the kicker, though.

Whilst making sure your offer is irresistible to the person you’re selling it to is non-negotiable (something we covered in detail in last week’s piece, and this one too), it’s only step one.

Building an offer that sells is one thing. 

Building one that lights you up, fulfills you, gives you more of what you want and allows you to reach your goals so you can run it for the long term without burning out? 

Well, that’s entirely another.

Here’s one thing my seven years in online business has taught me: 

Success isn’t success if it doesn’t give more of what you want.

This is a Naval Ravikant quote, and I have it pinned everywhere:

On my laptop screensaver. 

My phone. 

My desk. 

Everywhere. 

It serves as a reminder for me of what “success” is and what it isn’t. 

In an online world that has for so many years  espoused financial and “numbers” based success as the only true indicator of it, it’s important to remember. 

For so long, “success” and “alignment” haven’t co-existed, nor have they been together “considered”. 

On the one side have been the people chasing “success” at any cost. 

And on the other, those seeking “alignment”. 

But it’s only recently that anyone has considered the two to be mutually exclusive. 

Thankfully, the tides are changing. 

When I started talking about wild alignment, and building a lifestyle business, just TWELVE MONTHS AGO – it was new, and novel. 

Today, there’s lots of talk of freedom-based business, and balance, and building a business that complements your life without scaling to the moon. 

In today’s piece, I want to share with you what I feel is the critical “foundation” for achieving this in practice. 

Step 0 is a leveraged business model; but it doesn’t stop there. 

Once you have it? 

A critical next step in building an aligned business that fulfills your definition of success is this: 

To intentionally build the core offer in that business in a way that both sells (ie the “traditional” definition of success) and is aligned to you, the founder. 

This is a “requirement” unique to personal brand based businesses with a lifestyle business endgame (high profits, time leverage, lean time).

For that reason, it’s usually not included in traditional business advice, and is in many instances only realised with hindsight (cue the MANY personal-brand based businesses burning down their “on paper” successful model post 2022 in the name of alignment).

Unlike with a scale business, the endgame ISN’T for the founder to be outsourced “out” of the business. 

Instead, the founder will always be a big piece of the business and as such, it’s critical to the ongoing function of it that they are intrinsically aligned with the work they are doing on a day-to-ay basis, the results it affords them and the time/energy cost of the success it provides.

That’s what we’re covering today. 

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The Alignment Piece

Building an irresistible offer that also ticks the “wild alignment” box requires alignment in three areas: 

• Founder Alignment:The offer type and deliverables need to align with the unique strengths as the founder.
  
• Goal Alignment: The offer should be set up with a pricing model that is going to allow the business to achieve its revenue goals with its existing or planned lead generation efforts.
  
• Time/energy alignment: The way the offer deliverables are set up should align with the time and energy cost the founder is willing to pay. 

When crafting the core offer for your business, I recommend running it through each of these three filters because hitting “go”. 

As someone speaking from personal experience? It will save you so much time, energy and backtracking to intentionally bake this

Alignment Pillar One: Founder Alignment

Founder alignment means matching your core offer type to the type of FOUNDER you are.

When building a leveraged expertise-based offer (online courses, coaching, memberships etc), your core offer will fall into one of four main “pricing model” categories. 

Low ticket, mid ticket, high ticket or premium pricing.

Your CHOICE of core offer type will largely dictate what you do on a day to day basis. 

If your pricing model for your offer is on the lower ticket end,  you will usually spend more of your time marketing to generate the higher volume of leads required to achieve the higher volume of sales required to achieve your revenue goal. 

On the flip side, the delivery is usually lighter on an ongoing basis. 

If your pricing model is on the higher ticket end, you will usually spend more of your time in delivery. 

On the flip side, less time will be dedicated to marketing because you will need to sell fewer units to reach your revenue goals. 

When choosing a pricing model, consider the type of founder you are and how you want to spend your days. 

If you love creating content and marketing, a lower ticket model will suit you.

If you love working deeply with clients and coaching them personally, a higher ticket model will suit you. 

But, choose wisely.

If what you do day-to-day isn’t energetically in alignment, you will burn out and feel UNALIGNED.

Example: Building a high-touch, high-delivery, high-ticket group coaching program isn’t going to serve you as the founder if your superpower is in creating curriculum and you hate talking to people! 

Alignment Pillar Two: Goal Alignment

The other element of founder alignment is ensuring that your choice of core offer and its pricing model has the best chance of achieving your revenue goals.

The more leads you need, the bigger the audience and focus on marketing that will be required. 

A trap that newer players can fall into is to desire a high volume model, but not yet have the email list, audience size or marketing know how to generate the leads required to support it.

The result? 

Getting “stuck” making little revenue, without the space and time (due to lack of revenue) to build the marketing machine to make the model work.

Example: Let’s say you decide that you are most aligned with a lower ticket model because you love marketing. 

As a result, you decide to create a $100 online course.

Your revenue goal to support your life is to make $100,000, which means that you will need to sell 1000 x $100 units. 100000/100

Using standard online course benchmarks, you will need 50,000 leads to make that happen. 

If you have a small email list, the math will likely prevent you from achieving and you will get “stuck”. 

The lesson? When engineering an aligned core offer, you might need to start with a model that allows you to grow (by being less “leveraged” but high value) whilst you work towards your ultimate endgame. 

Doing this will give you breathing room to grow without financial stress.

Alignment Pillar Three: Time/Energy Alignment

Building an offer based on providing huge value and successfully selling it, without ALSO ensuring that you are happy with the cost (time/energy), is a mistake. 

Every offer will have a cost, and you will need to intuitively decide as a founder the cost that you are happy to pay.

Time Cost: 

All offers take time to create. 

Usually, the MORE time it takes in upfront preparation on the front end, the LESS time it will take in ongoing delivery on the back end – and vice versa. Neither “cost” is better or worse than the other, but you will need to decide which feels more in alignment to you. 

Time cost isn’t the only deliverable to take into account when deciding which deliverables to include in your offer. 

Energy Cost: 

Another equally important consideration is your energy as the founder. “Units of time” don’t always equate to “units of energy”. 

If you include deliverables in your offer that aren’t in alignment with your strengths and energetically deplete you, you could end up resenting your offer EVEN if it doesn’t take a huge commitment of your time. 

In this regard, it’s important to think about the founder TYPE you are, and the way you like to work. 

For example, if calls energetically deplete you, creating an offer that requires you to be on multiple calls a week may not be the best solution. 

Remember, this is YOUR business and you get to design it whichever way you choose. YES, you need to make sure you are solving problems and delivering x10 value, but you should also focus on doing it in a way that feels energetically exciting. 

Important: This is where it is very important not to get sidetracked and accidentally build someone elses’ business. Just because certain deliverables work for one person, doesn’t mean it will work for you. Perhaps doing things a DIFFERENT way will become your point of difference. 

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And so there you have it!

Three things to consider when building a grand slam core offer that is not only irresistible, but that all feels in complete alignment to run. 

Side note: We teach you how to build both an aligned business model, and irresistible offer in a step-by-step, 12 week process, inside of two courses (Dream and Design, and Create and Validate) included in Lifestyle Business School.

Come and join us here.

Keep Listening!

Listen On: Apple Podcasts | Spotify