From time to time, we are offered a chance to widen our audience – be exposed to more prospects who don’t know us and who we would not have met otherwise. There are only a certain number of people you can naturally meet in a lifetime – wouldn’t you pay for an opportunity for your talk or content to be heard/seen by a whole new audience? 

Yes and no. 

As always, a new opportunity sounds exciting and gets your blood pumping for all the possibilities. Logic maven that I am, though, I need to break it down into details and ask more and more questions. We all know that QUALITY is better than QUANTITY so we need to make sure if our investment is going to the opportunity that best matches our goals and needs. 

Clients have come to me to help them decide whether to take this bright shiny object and apply money to it. It could be a fabulous investment or a waste of money and time.  

Here are 7 questions to ask of yourself and of the presenter of this offer: 

  1. Who is in “the audience”? Who are the podcast listeners or the article readers? Are your perfect prospects going to be exposed to your message? 
  2. How large is the audience? What is the most recent number of podcast listeners or blog subscribers? Is it an audience of 50 or 5,000? How does that number compare to the amount of your investment? 
  3. Where are they? If you are a local business, it’s great for your article to be featured in a local magazine. If you’re regional, how many in the audience is within your geographical boundaries? 
  4. What topics will they allow you to cover? Sometimes the topic they ask for is not the hot topic you want to promote. Important: listen for how much of the talk or content they want to control. 
  5. Will you be able to promote a special offer or upcoming program? Can you direct people to a landing page to sign up for something (call to action)? 
  6. How detailed does the material have to be? Will they have you teach something step by step when you otherwise rely on people to purchase that class? Are you paying to give away something you typically charge for? 
  7. Who has presented or been interviewed before? Contact them to see what their experience was like and did they derive benefits from it. 

Now here are THE BIG questions: 

  • If you get ONE new client from this experience, will it have paid for the investment you made?  
  • If not, how many new clients will you need to bring in to the business to make up this amount of money? 
  • Do you have this investment amount available in the bank or will it come from a credit card or loan? 
  • If you had to borrow (from yourself or from others) to pay for this investment, and you don’t get new clients from the opportunity, what’s your plan to pay it back? 

It’s important not to get lost in the bright and sparkly opportunity without looking at all the facts, especially the money part! You want to embrace a wonderful opportunity that will open the doors to more perfect prospects in the geographic region you want to serve. You want to bring in more new clients – help more people than you would have been able to reach on your own. Just take a few moments to breathe and ask ALL the questions before you say yes! 

Feeling Overwhelmed? 

If you need help with this or similar scenarios, and are reaching Decision Exhaustion and Entrepreneurial Loneliness, it may be time for you to consider outsourcing a business partner. Bringing on a business consultant who specializes in small business is the same as contracting a bookkeeper or virtual admin. Running all aspects of a business alone is madness. Even when you have a team working with your clients, outsourcing some of your operations will lighten your load, and allow you to shine in your true zone of brilliance. 

Schedule time to chat here: https://calendly.com/susana-f/phone-consult