What To Do When Your Offer Isn't Selling—Real Talk

Well , I'm just gonna share with you two circumstances where that happened in my business and in my life , and this is going to be one of these more personal episodes where you get to know me a little bit and guess what the name of this podcast Is the art of online business , and it is an Art . There's this ancient book that has this wisdom in it .

Let me read this to you . I returned and saw Under the Sun that the race is not to the swift , nor the battle to the strong , nor Bread to the wise , nor riches to men of understanding , nor favor to men of skill . But and here's something we all know time and chance Happen to them all .

If you don't know , that came from the Bible , because I'm a Christian and here it is in Regular English , that makes even more sense to me . The fastest runners and the greatest heroes don't always win races and battles . Wisdom , intelligence and skill don't always make you healthy , rich or popular . And knowing all of the online business Strategies .

This is my own paraphrasing and , having listened to the Pat Flynn's and the Amy Porterfields and the Rick Mulreddes and the James Wedmore's and the Laura Higgins shout out to you , laura , it'd be cool to clap at you on the podcast pretty soon .

And the stew McLaren's doesn't always help your business , as in the strategies that they say don't always work for your business . Can I hear it ? A bid , all right , so we each have our share of bad Luck . And so , like , what do you do when your your offer doesn't work out ? So two stories . This is what I did .

So I was in China and I had a business teaching Chinese and I loved that business like with my heart and soul . It was like quote-unquote what I believe I was meant to do , like it was just ultra fulfilling to help people learn Mandarin Chinese .

And since I lived in China for 12 years , I Would and this is not gonna be a long story but I noticed frequently that people were asking me oh well , how did you get so good at Chinese ? And how do you just like , thrive in the day-to-day Chinese life ?

And you're always talking to people and Shown up late stuff , because you were just meeting with somebody at the market and talking with them , and so I started a business and it was going quite well , and it went even better once I joined Rick Mulreddes .

That's how we first met each other back in 2018 , and when I joined his mastermind and flew over to San Diego and started exchanging ideas with other people inside of his mastermind group coaching program , and it ended up growing better . And then the Super unfortunate talk about time and chance happening to them all .

Well , I flew with again across the ocean , because my wife is not Mexican , though we live in Mexico , and she does love Spanish , but she doesn't speak Spanish natively .

She is white and she is , though there are plenty of white Mexicans lest you think I am I don't know what the word would be , but she's from Michigan , okay , and she just really loves Spanish , and when our kids were born , she spoke Spanish to them most of the time .

We're like this weird linguistically gifted couple , and I spoke Mandarin to my kids , and so I really wanted to participate , be a part of this whole Spanish language thing , and so I got us to fly over to Puebla , mexico , where I could participate and learn in a Spanish program , and so then that's when the pandemic broke out and we got stuck in Mexico and

Mexico became our home because we had to get on FaceTime and we couldn't go back to China . So we had to sell all of our things in our four bedroom apartment condo . If you will whatever in China through FaceTime , whittle it down to six luggage , and we got our luggage a year and a half later .

Sad story , but now I can say it without crying , because God is good and he has healed my heart . So I tried to pivot that program that I had , teaching people in China how to learn Chinese , to just teaching people all over the world how to learn Chinese . Was I a really good Chinese teacher ? I would think so .

And did I have some online course business acumen ? I would think so . Did I have a coach ? Well , I had one in the form of Rick Mulready , and he's super legit and I would think so , but I couldn't do it .

My financial pockets bled for like a year and a half while I was stuck in Mexico creating content about learning Chinese in general rather than just being in China and learning Chinese , and I just couldn't do it , even with a big YouTube channel that had lots of organic traffic and people lauding me about speaking fluent Chinese Mandarin .

You know well , I would never claim that I was fluent , but I spoke really well . I just couldn't do it and I launched another course and another course and created a new offer and I did the founding member launch because I knew how to do that , you know , and it just wouldn't work . So , like , what did I do ? Well , I had to give up .

And this is the thing about online business is as , like a business owner , sometimes you just don't know . Like could you have ? Like you've seen that little meme online . It's the animation .

It's like two people digging in a well , you know , or digging down into the ground with like shovel , and you know one , I think James Earl Jones is narrating it , you know , which is super Motivational , like I love me some James Earl Jones Narration . And so , and one person is digging straight down , it just takes that person a while .

The other person , meanwhile , is not digging straight down .

They're digging like one little hole , and then they changed an idea , right , and so they end up digging another little hole Next to that one and another little hole , and eventually they don't find the diamonds which are at a certain depth , and the one person just kept digging , found those diamonds , but dang it .

How do you know how long until you get to the diamonds ? And in the online business world , or just business world period , could you ? Would you , would it have worked if you kept going ? I don't know .

But ultimately you got to make a decision in your business and that's one of the things I really respect about Rick Muller ready while I'm on that topic is this guy is Decisive when he decides , he decides and he moves in the direction he decided . So I had to decide .

You know I had passed my tolerance for losing money and it was like a year and a half and I decided to burn that boat , so to speak , and officially shut down Elementary Chinese , elementary Chinese , and it hurt like like I cried a lot .

You know , I spent many a day walking up and down my street in Mexico , just like kind of wondering what to do next , and at the time I had already been Coaching online business stuff , you know , working with Rick , and I had already been managing Facebook ads and so like that pivot but I Mean the title is podcast like what do you do when business gets tough

or your offer doesn't work or sell ? Like sometimes you got to stop . Look at what you learned , apply what you learned , kind of like if you lost your job , you know you take those transferable skills and go Work at another job .

Well , you take what you learned from your previous business endeavor and move on , and this can get tricky right , like we I say we because you started an online course or online membership and I've done both before .

We get these ideas in business like if I'm good at this one thing and this one offer is just crushing it , why don't I just make this other offer over here and see how that works ?

And Sometimes it works great , which could be good or bad , because maybe it's great and it distracts you from your core offer , or maybe it's great and you just go that way and kind of leave your old offer behind . You know interesting how these things work out , but I tried that Last fall , so that would be fall 2023 . I tried that

. I Tried this thing called the table , you know , because I'm a Facebook ads manager . I am running Facebook ads for clients . I was running , and we'll still run , facebook ads for clients and I thought , well , I had just created a course , three courses actually one Teaching DIY Facebook ad fam how to run their own ads .

Another one teaching DIY Facebook ad fam or online course or online membership owner , fam , who had a lead magnet , how to attach a welcome offer , something of value for sell , on the thank you page of that lead magnet and recoup some of their ad spend by making some money and offering value and welcoming even a higher quality client directly into their paid

business , ecosphere . And then another course on how to make funnels work better .

Since that's what I do , and Then I had this idea , I'm gonna make this thing called the table , and what this would be was a membership where I would invite since I love meeting people , I would invite other online business experts , you know , the copywriters and the launch strategists and the executive assistants and Obeo online business managers and all these folks

who specialize in Online business and serve the same niche of established online course graders that I serve . I would invite them one by one or two actually a month Into this membership where they could talk about their expertise .

And I would give that service to my current Facebook ad clients , you know , who are paying me on a monthly retainer for free , and so , since they have online businesses , they , for two hours a month , could listen to experts who could help them grow their own businesses Right , and then I could also sell that to other online course creators and memberships .

Who membership owners who wanted to get that kind of help like who had heard people on the podcast Right , the guests that you have enjoyed but then would love to ask them specific questions as applies to their own businesses To get that like kind of more strategy in a more customized strategy in a more intimate setting right . It sounds good , shoot .

The people I talked to said it sounded good , like I did the right things . I asked around . You know I pulled some folks . I talked to my wife about it because she helps me make some good decisions sometimes , a lot of times , actually . Thank you , jamie . And then I had it and my clients were like thanks for this .

This is useful because I asked all my clients I think most of them we'll call it 95.6% of them and you know what happened the offer just did not hit Like it was on my website . People didn't really ask about it , even though I even made a little ad about it on this very podcast .

And then I would email clients and clients , though they said it was helpful , they didn't show up . I would upload the videos unlisted , you know to my YouTube channel . I could see how many people were watching them . Like it wasn't public on the YouTube channel but I could still see the view count because I would share the links to my clients .

That didn't show up and it's like three views , you know . So not very many of my clients were watching it . And then I would email my email list of people who had purchased courses from me and would still email me and say I love your course , kwejio , and I'm like awesome .

You know , here's this other thing you can come and get help for your business from experts , like targeted help , like you get to ask a specific question , not just listen on the and the offer . Just people weren't buying it and I was like what is going on ? And then I would like email my course to the email list and people would buy it .

And I would email the table , this monthly membership , and people wouldn't buy it . And so I just had to stop and focus on my core product , which is , you know , running Facebook ads and doing strategy calls , and I have the Facebook ads courses too .

And you know , I had to ask myself was that a circumstance where , because I had some knowledge and I believed I was good at meeting people , which I am and I had this offer . But was that a thing where the offer just wasn't really that good ? Was it ?

Maybe and here's the hard thing was it maybe my messaging wasn't on point , even though I teach people messaging and I consult weekly clients on their messaging , because it has a lot to do with the funnel's performance .

Right Was the offer just not right Was the price off , even though I consult people on pricing , because I'm a Facebook ads manager , I help people run ads to their ads , run ads to their offer . You know like I had to just kind of go over this and be like where did I go wrong ?

But ultimately I had to make a decision to focus on what was working and leave the thing that wasn't working behind . So be encouraged that if you've put effort , and you've put wise effort and even consistent effort into an offer and it's not quite working you may never know if it's going to work but you owe it to yourself to move on .

I'm gonna say that , or at least intelligently put your time into what else is working if you wanna still hold on to that offer and still hold on to the hope that it's going to work .

But sunk in cost bias is very real and all that means is that if you spend more time and more money on something , then you will believe that it just takes a little more time and a little more money . You'll believe this more that that thing will work out for you because you've already sunk in a lot of costs in it .

So you're more biased that it's just another all nighter , another 180 hours in two weeks that you need to put in to make this thing work . Another few connections , another few pitches , another just effort , chunk of effort of your life units put into making this thing work . And sometimes , sometimes , we're blinded by that .

Other times , of course , we always hear the stories of people that did just continue to grind it out and it ended up working . Ultimately , we make a decision and you'll never know the other side of that decision .

But if you press forward and commit to it , like that decision to pivot , to move on , I've seen a lot of stories , including my own , where it did work out , it hurts because , let's be honest , like when you put a lot of time into something , your identity can really get caught up in that .

I put so much of my life , energy , my life units , if you will which I believe our life units are limited I don't believe I'm going to re-incarnate . If you do , okay , that's okay , you can have your worldview . I got my worldview , you know .

I believe I got one shot at this life and I gave a lot of my time to trying to build the Chinese business and building it , seeing success that I always wanted , and then losing it all and For the longest I was like how could I ever do anything else ? Because I am elementary Chinese and I was hard . You know , it was super hard .

When I'm like sitting in my screen here in Mexico I think I only had one screen now . Now I got two monitors and a laptop , three , I think . Optimally it's actually two monitors . That's more productive , I digress and just people .

So I'm like working at that time part-time with , like Rick already you know , coaching people in his program and Learning tons , getting good results right , running Facebook ads for my part-time job .

I used to work in a Facebook ads agency and Wanting to go back to China , wanting , wondering should I stop , and then , after I did stop , elementary Chinese wondering should I start again . I got people DMing me on the regular .

Like back in the day , I had , like I don't know , almost 30,000 subscribers on my Chinese Instagram account and that was , like you know , 2018 .

It's not a big channel , right , but at the same time , it was harder to get more subscribers back then and I had plenty of people Can , because I did YouTube super well , so I had like lots of organic traffic , people discovering me . Then they would go over to Instagram and DM me and be like hey , what are you gonna make more videos or like .

The worst was when people because I was like Low-key famous in China a story for another day .

But the short story is is I started incorrectly using Facebook ads to like boost my Instagram posts in China and Because China is like a closed country to Western media , like people have to use virtual private like networks , vpns , to get on the internet , to get on the gram and Facebook , and you know , because Facebook is a marketplace as far as ads is concerned

, like no Western companies are advertising on Facebook ads in China , right , because it's like blocked off , you know . And so here I was getting super low like cost per clicks and my videos .

Like I would boost like for like five bucks and All the foreigners in the city would have like my Chinese videos showing up on the iPad , on their iPads or their iPhones or whatever their devices were . Sorry , android users , you just get categorized into that , whatever category . I used to have an Android , you know , before I was enlightened .

Anyway , what would happen is it was I was like be lister famous . We're talking like Like conservatively to people out of every tin that were not Chinese , that were like foreigners in China , would see me on the streets and like Recognize me , you know , as elementary Chinese . They didn't know my name , but they called me elementary Chinese Anyway .

So , like I'm Pan in the pandemic , stuck in Mexico , having like shut off effort to building elementary Chinese and people are still DMing me . When are you coming back to China ? Hey , I got a job for you . You want to come back to China ?

My school would love to have you teach because , like I was kind of famous , like people knew me and I'm just like crying and praying and crying and Praying and crying lots , you know , and like talking to my wife a lot and praying and crying , you know it sucked and my identity was just I was that elementary Chinese guy and I wondered what could I ever do .

Besides that , you know , and I just had to make that tough decision and like , where is this going ? Sometimes it's just really sucks and Sometimes that decision will be tough . It always is tough , but sometimes it'd be way tougher .

But you got to make that decision and it's my prayer that on the other side of that decision to stop and to do something different , you will find peace and joy and success within a different offer in your online business or , if it comes to that , a different online business focus period .

So until the next time that you see me or hear from me , be blessed and I'll catch you in the next one . Bye .