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When you’re an expert in what you do – it’s really easy to dive head first and try to do all the things withOUT setting yourself up for success. And what happens is you end up burned out, turned around, or just plain overwhelmed.

Want to know the next step you should go in your business? Or how you’re going to launch your thing withOUT going in a million different directions?

Our guest Abigail Tiefenthaler breaks down what you need to know in order to serve who you want to serve – and the mistakes you should avoid along the way.

Abigail’s Website

Find Abigail on Facebook

Alyson Lex 0:03
Sometimes when you're getting ready to launch something new, you can get stuck in overwhelm paralysis, where you don't know what the right steps are to take. You might overcomplicate things, you might struggle to keep up with the information overload that's out there. And then you never end up launching, or growing or doing what it is that you want to do. And so, Jenny had Abigail teefin, taller on her summit. And we knew that we had to have her here on the podcast, because what she has to share, and the experience that she has is so valuable. She is the co founder of savvy sales strategy, which should tell you just a little bit about the value she's going to bring to us today. Abigail, thanks for being with us.

Abigail Tiefenthaler 0:51
I'm thrilled to be here. Thank you so much for asking, and thanks for the flexibility. I am sitting on a porch in a house. We're in the middle of renovating. So I hope there's not too much background noise as we chat. See, but he talks about multitasking, right? It talks about the fact that business owners or business owners 24 seven. So there you

Alyson Lex 1:08
guys, that is so right. So I want to just dive right in before those birds start singing. What are the things that you've identified that people need when they want to launch? Let's say a coaching business, although this can likely pertain to any business? Right?

Abigail Tiefenthaler 1:24
Yes, it absolutely can. Although we primarily work with coaches and and service based professionals. You know, here's the thing, everybody goes to get their certification or realizes they have this amazing skill set, because they've been in HR for 30 years. And now they want to help with onboarding, you know, outsourcing, suppliers or whatever, right? Let's just take that as an example. And the initial instinct is to go right into implementation. The initial instinct is to say, I, you know, I've been doing this for years, so I can just start doing it here, right, or I got my certification. And now all I have to do is hang a shingle out on social media, and they'll come flocking, and they don't, that's the problem is whether you are launching something brand spanking new, or you are launching something that is designed to scale your business, you know, you have to go to the fundamentals, because here's the thing, while you might be able to kind of hopscotch across, you know, a discipline for a brief moment in time, it is not a consistent way, or a consistent path to success. So where you start is at the beginning, you know, if you're a house flipper, you don't walk into the fifth house and go, I don't need to worry about the walls, I can just go and decorate, right, you've got to go back and make sure the foundation is firm, you've got to make sure that there's no mold behind the drywall. There's, you know, things you have to do. So I'm a strategist by profession. To me, I'm always about fixing problems. I always say, let's go back to the beginning. So what do you need to launch your business, there's really basically three things. The first is you need a sound offer. And what that means is, is that you want to have that offer, clear in your mind, you want to be confident in it, you might have some missing variables here and there, but you understand the bigger outline of the transformation you want to accomplish, or the results you want to achieve if you're a business coach. And so that offer has to be, at least in your head, pretty visual visualized. The second thing you need is you need to understand why your prospect needs that offer. So you have to have an idea of your ideal target. You have to have an idea of what messaging they need to say, yes, not what messaging Do you want to tell them, but what messaging they need to hear over and over again, until it becomes a broken record in your head. And then the third thing that you need. So that's the strategy part, right? You know, the offer is the bigger picture, the vision of your business, what are you delivering? The second is the strategy. How are you getting there, primarily in the area of brand strategy, and an implementation strategy? How are you going to get there, you're going to do lead gen, you know, social media you're going to do what's your speaking, you know, you're going to identify various paths that are going to work for you and then various marketing elements that are going to help you accomplish that goal in the fastest and shortest route possible. So the third thing you need is really that implementation, which some people call funnels, some people call marketing plan, some people call systems some people call automate automation. Right. That was a mouthful. Sorry.

Alyson Lex 4:54
Well, and that just really speaks to your experience because I asked you one question and you practically a masterclass. I know,

Jennie Wright 5:03
you actually totally took my second question, but that's okay. I've got another one. We are we are nimble footed over here and thinking up great stuff as you're talking because you're opening up some doors and opportunities to ask some great things. Everything that you just talked about this whole launch strategy, this whole ability to do this, does this work with high paying clients as well. And this is how I'm going to sell out courses and programs using that exact strategy.

Abigail Tiefenthaler 5:27
Yes, and actually, it works better with high value items. Because here's the thing, I am not a fan of the ascension model. I think I've said that before. And the ascension model in 30 words or less is basically, you know, sell a $7 product into a $50 or $100 product into a $500 product into $1,000. product. And Geez, you're exhausted and creating content. And you're exhausted in these piddly little, like small, tiny baby steps. My feeling is, is if you're an expert, if you are a true expert, you've been in your field, 10 years practicing full time, you've been doing it for 20 or 30. Like many of our clients, you can go right to multi $1,000 offers. And here's the other thing that I even make it a little simpler, create one offer upsell and down sell it, it's the exact same offer, it's just offering a couple of extra goodies and access for an upsell. And it's offering a couple of fewer goodies and access for the down sell. I mean, isn't that a lot simpler than create a lead gen to a $7 product and then market the heck out of it to a 50 or $100 product and move on very well. You also don't have to work with 1000s of clients to make the same money that maybe 50 clients might make for you.

Alyson Lex 6:53
So you don't like Ascension ladders or value ladders or success ladders or whatever it is that people call them. Am I correct and maybe thinking you don't like the word funnel.

Abigail Tiefenthaler 7:07
So a couple of years ago, when Tammy and I were first talking about getting together and she was talking about doing marketing funnels, and I was like funnels belong in the garage where you pour the oil into the engine of a car, or they belong at a park and a state fair where you get a funnel cake. You know, to me the concept of a funnel, although I understand the visualization of, you know, a top down or bottom up funnel right? it to me, you know, we've been doing marketing plans, I grew up in the ad industry. And in the product management on the client side industry, I grew up developing marketing plans that had a objective, a strategy and an implementation. And that's what we flesh out for our clients. So I'm learning to like funnels because it seems to be a pretty acknowledged, you know, generally accepted terminology, but I really like systems better than funnels, because a funnel can be a sales funnel, like that Ascension or value model. It can be a marketing funnel, how are you driving somebody through the decision making process. And so I don't know that there's enough knowledge in the industry, even among experts, to be able to say we are creating a marketing funnel versus we are creating a sales funnel.

Jennie Wright 8:22
I will agree with you there. And I will also say that as a fan of funnels, I will put myself out there as a fan of funnels. I'm not a fan of Ascension ladders per se, but I love me some bumps and some downsells. I won't Yeah, absolutely all over that. But the ascension model of the $7 product to $30 product to the 50 to the 100 to the blah, blah, blah, that is a heck of a lot of work. And what I think is that you can establish yourself with one or two products. And you could have your mid tier product to make it easy for certain people to get in and the only get you know, gated access kind of thing. And you can have your larger to your product which people can use etc. And once you're established, I find that it becomes a heck of a lot easier to create maybe a smaller product, you know, at the level that I'm at right now, it got really easy for me to create like a like a $9 little thing, because it was these templates and it was really, really cool. But I wouldn't have done it the beginning. What

Abigail Tiefenthaler 9:23
you see that's the thing is I you know, we're forgetting that the experts, right those Tony Robbins level coaching experts that are out there. First of all, they've been honing their craft for 10 1520 years. And there. They have hundreds of 1000s of people in their database. And they have formulated those templates and those checklists and those simple to use fill in the blank Mad Libs type of, you know, offers right and they've got relationships with other people who have 10 1000s of people in their email list. But the average coach, the 95% of this industry, the coaching in the consulting industry, you know, I, and I don't mean this in a in a denigrating way. But it's like they're the second tier coaches. And they're better because they've actually been through more hard knocks, you know, the internet was so appealing. 1520 years ago, when some of these coaches got started. People were just curious and enamored. And if you were an early adopter, you were waiting three days in line, and doing the waitlist and doing the limiters and all of that, but you know, we've gotten savvier. And we've, we've, we've gotten smarter, and we've, we've gotten hurt a lot by what we've bought thinking we were buying the right next thing. And so that's where I think, focusing in number one on what we do well, and then eventually expanding it out. Like you said, any two services that you can give away to somebody who wants to be in your world but can't afford to be in your world isn't ready, let's let's be nice and true. They aren't ready to be in your world yet. So it gives them a taste of who you are. And it lets them grow into you, so to speak. So I love with you.

Alyson Lex 11:19
Yeah, I was gonna say I love how you guys came to that, because I'm there with you. I've had so many clients that are like, Oh, I don't have any products here. I just had a call the other day, here are the five I want to create. I said, Let's start with one. Right. Let's start there. And then we can go there's no, there's not a time limit on this. One thing that you mentioned, that I was really interested about was the sales funnel versus the marketing funnel. I don't think I even really understand what a difference in that could be. And I'm gonna put you on the spot and ask you what you think the difference?

Abigail Tiefenthaler 11:58
Okay, well, and and, you know, to me, a sales funnel is transactional based by the $7 product and by the $50 product. And so you go from, oh, they bought my book, now they've got to buy my course they bought my course, now they've got to buy the group program, they bought the group, you know, so everything is really focused on the sale. That's why I call it a sales funnel in a marketing funnel, which is really what marketing is supposed to do, right? marketing is one way communication that is designed to take somebody or somebody and convert them into a lead, take the lead and convert them into a prospect, take the prospect and convert them into a qualified prospect and take that qualified prospect to your sales table. To close qualify, overcome objection, take their credit card, whatever it is get them into the program. So the marketing is all designed to build authority to build that know, like and trust factor to really continue to offer them the same program. You know, if you can't afford me, if not, again, let's not use those type of words. But if, if you can't make it to my live event, we're going to live stream, here's an alternative. Right? If you can't, if you're not ready to join my six month program, how about a starter? How about the first chapter, or the first two modules of the course. But you're really still designing one program that you then can, can, can slice off pieces. So you're not always like you said, Allison, you know, creating five services or five offers or five programs or courses or whatever it is, I liken it to a stable, you have six horses in your stable. You cannot ride your bike can physically not be on all six horses at one time. Take a course take a horse out, work the horse, enjoy the horse, whatever you're doing, put the horse back in the stable, take another one out. So if you do grief, get, let's say your grief counseling coach, you might focus on women who have had miscarriages, right? Or you might folk in and still want to conceive in the future. So you're helping them overcome that loss and embrace the next step. But you also might work with women who have lost a child, which is a very different grieving process, right, or women who have become divorced, or women who have lost, you know, had been a caregiver for years and all of a sudden they lost the person they were caregiving. Now they have this huge void in their life. Those are imagine those as different horses. So your language is going to be the way you work that horse is going to be a little different with each of those conversations.

Jennie Wright 14:57
I'm loving the horse analogy as somebody who used To ride and still loves, and would just love to be back riding, I'm loving the whole horse analogy. So love that very much you. I did a little bit of light stalking. And in my light stalking I found that you talked about this theory of one. What is the theory of one?

Abigail Tiefenthaler 15:20
One target audience, one horse, you can have that stable, right? we all struggle with multiple target audience syndrome. You know, we talk about bright shiny object syndrome, but we all struggle with multiple target audience syndrome. Let's face it, we can help lots of different people, every single coach, every single business consultant, but we're going to focus on one, we're going to focus on one offer, again, let's make it easy. We've got an upsell from that offer and a down sell from that offer. So if your signature offers somewhere in the three to 567 grand range, well, for two or for one or two grand, you might not offer any live access. Or you might only do office hours once a week, or you might do a group call once a week, and maybe for 15 1010 1215 grand you offer daily check ins or something else right? access is always more important than content. Remember that we overwhelming content, but we don't always provide enough access. And somebody says, Well, I can't afford to do that, right? Or it'll take too much time. Well, if you're only working with, you know, four or $5,000 clients a month, that's 20k, how does that feel to somebody that might 240,000 might be a great way to a great business for them. Right? Not everybody wants a million dollar business, they might have five $1,000 and only make 60 grand a year and be happy. But instead of constantly feeling like they have to churn and create these offers all of the time, go in with one offer, going with one audience go in with one with one marketing platform that will walk that audience through the process, the timing it takes to create that process and go through that process. You might make decisions Jenny in like this, you might say, You know what? I have a gut feel. And I'm gonna say yes or no. But Alison, you might say I gotta think about it. I've got to pray. I've got to talk to my angel guides. I mean, we've you know, I've we've all had, I've got to discuss it with my husband, I've got to look at my budget, my accountants waiting on my tax return, you know, I just filed for a PPP, loan, whatever it is. And if we don't stay in touch with Allison, what's going to happen? When she finally gets that money, or her husband says, Alison, like, go and invest already and get your business off the ground? Alison's gonna go to whoever shows up in her social media feed or networking or speaker and goes out. I could have been saying that six months ago, but she wasn't ready. So that's what it is. It's one complete system beginning to end.

Alyson Lex 18:06
I am totally on board with that. Because it uncomplicate things and I know, we had a guest who talked about uncomplicated your marketing and the two of you would probably get along famously, because he's like, start simple. We have this desire and this idea that we need to have crazy complicated businesses if we want to be successful. But we don't. So ourselves, that's Yes, I think we get so excited. Because we have as experts, we have so much in our head, well, I can do this, I can do this, I can help this. Start with one.

Abigail Tiefenthaler 18:45
Yeah, it's it seems to be the easiest way to, to, to really identify and be able to validate what works and what doesn't. Because here's the other side of the coin. If you're always changing something, you never know what works and what doesn't. Because you're not giving anything the time and the analysis and you know, the opportunity to tweak and modify and make it better.

Alyson Lex 19:17
I had to jot that down. If you're always changing something, you never know what works and what doesn't. Abigail, I can't thank you enough for being here for sharing your wisdom, your experience and your expertise. where can our listeners find more about you?

Abigail Tiefenthaler 19:35
Well, here's what I mean. I'm all over the place and my name is on underneath there because I know it's difficult to spell but here's the good news. There's really only one Avigail t contoller so if you're looking for me on Instagram, LinkedIn or Facebook you will find me easily clubhouse on Avigail T. But here's the here's the thing I'm really excited about if you don't mind me just taking a minute. So we just started a Facebook business page called savvy sale strategy. And I am in there over 30 days with three to five minute short video trainings. And so you can go in, we're not even asking for your email, just come join facebook.com forward slash savvy sales strategy. And you will have access for the this we are Thursday. So we're at day nine of 30 days. And next week, it's all about branding. The first week was about mindset. And believe it or not, it's worth listening to. The second was about business structure. This week coming up is about branding. Next, the following week is about marketing. And you know, we'll have 30 days worth of very short three to five minute video clips on a suggestion attempt. My goal is not to make you a better marketer, I don't want to make you a better marketer, because marketing is 24 seven, and it is always changing. My goal is to make you a better business owner,

Jennie Wright 20:58
there's a really big need to do that. That is for darn sure, we'll put the link to that in our show notes so that you have that as well. So people can go and find it. By the time this episode goes live. Those 30 days will be long well in past, but I'm sure that content will live on so that you can find Abigail and all of her goodness there, also, and I have a couple takeaways that we want to share that I think are incredibly helpful. And one of them kind of spoke to me, funnels blowing and garages where you can add oil to your car, or as a funnel cake covered in nice sugary powder, as opposed to potentially in your business. Now that is a good takeaway. I still love my funnels, but I totally see where Abigail's coming from.

Alyson Lex 21:39
One of my takeaways is that when you are an expert at what you do, and you have all of this experience, the your initial instinct is to dive right headfirst into that implementation. And forget the fundamentals. But don't forget those fundamentals, because that's how you're going to set up that foundation for success.

Jennie Wright 21:59
I was really loving what Abigail was saying about the audience of one, the focus of one, the one offer the one thing and start making it so darn complicated. Don't think that you have to launch a business with all of these, like multitudes of products. I was like, in my head, I was thinking cornucopia like, you don't have to have all the things. And when you do this when you have one offer and an audience and a marketing platform that will sort of walk your audience through the thing that they're going to get to buy your thing. And you can create versions off of the main product, less access and things like that are different. Yeah. So there's really great opportunities to do that, which I think is really smart.

Alyson Lex 22:40
My second takeaway was kind of I almost feel like it was a throwaway comment. But access is always more important than content. Right? And that is huge. When you're building something, how can you add access in and it has much more value?

Jennie Wright 22:59
Yep, great way to add some extra value and be able to if you want to bump up that price. So something to think about Abigail Allison, I just want to take a second to say thank you so much for being on the podcast with us. We've really enjoyed this episode. This has been a ton of fun.

Abigail Tiefenthaler 23:13
Thank you for having me. I I love being with brilliant women. So there you go. Oh,

Jennie Wright 23:18
I'll take the compliment. Thanks so much for listening, everybody. If you haven't already, please do follow us wherever it is that you're listening to your podcasts. And make sure you check out Abigail online and check out everything that she's doing. I think she is awesome. Thanks so much for listening. We'll be back again soon answering another big question.