Welcome to the latest edition of A Founder’s Lens. Our last installment covered strategies for securing work, including searching freelance and fractional job boards, inquiring within your network, and launching a custom offer. Today’s post provides a framework how to build that offer. Let’s dive in!
Building a business idea into a tangible product or service can feel overwhelming. I know this from my recent launch of the SarNDipity Blueprint advising package. It helped to think in the context of the 5 W’s - Who, What, When, Where, and Why. Here’s how you can use these five elements as a guiding framework.
Your customer is the individual or organization who pays for your product or service (the “what”). Their act of purchase is the core building block of your business, so it’s critical to understand what drives this act as much as a possible. Key customer research questions include:
How does your offering fulfill a desire, need or problem they have?
Why should they purchase your offering versus one from another provider?
(This is known as competitive analysis.)Where do they spend their time (both physically and online) so you can focus your marketing efforts for maximum visibility?
What is their available budget and willingness to spend on your solution?
(This will inform offer pricing.)
You can consult a number of sources to uncover this information. Online and AI searches are a great starting point. Direct conversations with people who align with your target market are even better. As Hello Generalist founder and On Work author Shaina Anderson explains in her essay, “How to start working for yourself” (worth a read), “There is no one right way to get started other than talking to potential customers.”
Customer feedback can be collected through surveys, 1:1 interviews and focus groups. To inform the SarNDipty Blueprint, I designed a survey and solicited responses around solopreneur’s motivations and challenges. Data collection remains underway, and I’d value your feedback as I continue to refine the offer. When conducting your own market research, areas to examine could include customer demographics, attitudes and beliefs, taste and preferences, and buying behaviors.
As you establish your offer, its “who” can extend to include vendors and collaborators, such as designers or copywriters you rely on for offer delivery. This is a great way to support fellow entrepreneurs while also increasing your reach to potential customers within their network. We’ll explore partnerships in later editions of A Founder’s Lens.
Your product or service offering is the output that your customer purchases. This could align with work you’ve done earlier in your career, or be built from an interest or activity outside of a job. Keep on at Real Media founder Denise Nowakowski launched her web design business after building a site to serve as a virtual gathering space for her daughter’s baby shower during the pandemic. She explains, “What began as a way to bring people together during Covid grew into a business focused on helping real organizations communicate clearly online.”
If you have an offer live or envisioned, you already have a great start. If you’re still identifying what to offer, consider the areas, activities or projects that have previously excited you - now could be a great opportunity to explore these further. The key piece to keep in mind is whether you can identify an audience that will pay for the offer you create. Use this article’s framework to guide your market research and offer development, and adapt it as you collect customer feedback and sales data to position yourself for maximum success.
Because customer purchases drive your business, it’s important to present your offer as clearly as possible in your marketing materials. Keep on at Real Media does this effectively on their services page, delineating the items included in each package, rates and her approach to the design process. Use the 5 W’s outlined here to test your offer presentation and anticipate any questions potential customers may have.
The timeline is the period in which you deliver your product or service to a customer. This could be a one-off event, like the discovery call included in all SarNDipity Blueprint packages, or it could be an extended engagement, like the implementations that build off that discovery call. Use prior projects as a guide to estimate how long it will take you to fulfill the offer to manage client expectations, along with your time and resources. Doing so helps you forecast incoming revenue and budget accordingly.
Your market is the area where your customers are based, and your working location is where you conduct business as an entrepreneur. These spaces can be geographic, like a region of the country, as well as virtual, such an online communities or social media channels. The key is to position yourself where prospective customers can connect with you, whether that be at networking events, coworking spaces or Facebook groups. Beyond that, you have geographic flexibility that is a huge benefit of entrepreneurship. If this mobility is a primary motivator for you, check out Melody Warnick’s book If You Could Live Anywhere: The Surprising Importance of Place in a Work-from-Anywhere World, for strategies on establishing ties to a home where both you and your business can thrive.
Your offer “why” comprises two components - your customer’s reason for paying for what you provide, and your reason for providing that product or service. If you’ve done your market research effectively, your customer why should be straightforward - they purchase from you because you fulfill a need or desire or solve a problem that they have. If you can’t connect your offer to its target customer’s purchasing motivations, you may need to conduct more research or adjust your offer presentation. Ultimately, customer engagement and sales will be your best indicator of your offer’s alignment within its market niche.
The other critical why relates to your personal motivations. These drivers could be related to the offer you provide, such as a passion for servicing an unmet need or audience. Beyond the offer itself, your why could extend to reasons for pursuing an entrepreneurial path, such as geographic mobility, flexibility over working location and hours, and financial reward. Preliminary results from my ongoing survey of new and long-time entrepreneurs reflect a combination of motivators (respondents could select multiple options):
Whatever your motivations for starting a business may be, what matters is that they’re important enough to you to guide you through both business and personal challenges. Next, Together™ founder Keri Darling understands this firsthand. Following a cancer diagnosis, connecting with a coach through a support group inspired her to launch her own practice. She says, “I support women who have been affected by cancer, helping them to move forward with confidence, clarity, and purpose.”
Every business idea starts somewhere - a motivation, a need, a moment of clarity. Defining your who, what, when, where, and why turns a business idea into a grounded offer. Here’s how I applied this framework to create the SarNDipity Blueprint.
Who: The SarNDipity Blueprint is designed for aspiring and growth-stage solopreneurs looking to launch or elevate their businesses.
What: The blueprint consists of a discovery call, action report and optional add-on services.
When: The discovery call is a one-time 30 minute virtual session. A post-call report is prepared and shared within the next two to five business days. Five and ten hour implementation packages include a 1 hour virtual audit, 3-7 hours of implementation work, and one to two hour-long review calls over a 30 to 45 day window. All packages include 30 days of on-demand support.
Where: I service clients virtually from my home in Stamford, CT, participating in local organizations like the Stamford Partnership, Startup Westport and the Women’s Business Development Council to cultivate my network. I also engage in virtual spaces like LinkedIn, Medium and of course, Substack.
Why: Customers schedule a discovery call to access an external perspective on their business. I developed the SarNDipity Blueprint packages to help high-achieving professionals (including myself) leverage their experience and expertise to shape the career and life they desire. Read more in my article, “Identifying My Why: Prioritizing Agency and Ownership for Myself and Others.”
While the five Ws offer a helpful framework for creating an offer, the most important step is introduce that offer to market so you can measure customer response. This concept is often referred to as Minimum Viable Product (MVP), defined by Lean Startup founder Eric Ries as, “That version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort.” In other words: Introduce your offer, see if it resonates, and use that information as a signal to guide your next move.
Finally, recognize your progress. As Shaina Anderson explains, “If you’re able to get to one paying customer, you’re already ahead of where most people get, which is to have an idea, and do nothing about it. This is hard, thoughtful, emotional work, and you should take a moment to celebrate that you got there.”
I couldn’t agree more, and I’m here to support your success. That’s why I’m thrilled to introduce the following resources to facilitate your journey. Can’t wait to discover what you’ve been working on!
Looking to assess your offer presentation or delivery? Schedule a SarNDipity Blueprint Discovery call. Review your ideas and come away with a complimentary action report to guide your next steps. It’s the perfect opportunity to apply the Founder’s Lens curriculum toward growing your business.
A Founder’s Lens is looking to spotlight more entrepreneurs like Denise and Keri as part of this ongoing series. This is an excellent opportunity to gain visibility for your business while sharing field-tested insights with our growing community. Click the link below to share your story and facilitate a conversation.
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