How to Know What to Offer (When You Have 12 Ideas and No Sales)

How to Know What to Offer (When You Have 12 Ideas and No Sales)

If you’ve ever felt like your mind is a nonstop idea machine — courses, workshops, lead magnets, oh my! — but your sales dashboard is flatlining, this post is for you.

I’ve been there. I’ve had notebooks full of brilliant ideas and a heart full of passion, only to launch something and hear… crickets. And when you care deeply about helping people, that silence can feel personal.

But it’s not you.

It’s your process.

So let’s get real about how to narrow your ideas and finally land on an offer that not only sells, but serves.

Your Offer Is a Bridge, Not a Baby

This is the mindset shift that changed everything for me: your offer is not your identity. It’s not your baby. It’s not your final masterpiece. It’s a bridge between a problem your audience has right now and a result they want more than anything.

Stop protecting it like it’s sacred. Start treating it like a prototype.

Let it evolve. Let it breathe. Let it be wrong until it’s right.

Step 1: Understand the Moment They’re In

Your ideal client isn’t just scrolling for fun — they’re in a moment.

A milestone. A crisis. A transition.

They just got promoted. Or fired. Or diagnosed. Or divorced. Something changed. And that change created urgency.

We don’t buy when we’re comfortable. We buy when we’re in motion.

So your offer needs to meet them where they are — not where you wish they were, not where they’ll be someday. Right now.

That’s why so many offers fail. They’re solving problems people don’t prioritize. They’re relevant to your expertise, but not to your audience’s current reality.

Step 2: Get Crystal Clear on the Promise

If someone says yes to working with you, what’s the specific outcome you’ll help them achieve?

Not “feel better” or “get unstuck” — those are vague. We need clarity. We need specificity.

Try this:

“I help [who] go from [starting point] to [desired result] by [your process].”

If you can’t fill in that sentence, your offer isn’t ready yet.

Step 3: Know Your Process (Even If It’s Evolving)

You don’t need a 100-page curriculum to start, but you do need a sense of structure.

Think of it this way: if someone pays you, how do you walk them from problem to result?

What are the key conversations? The tools? The milestones?

Even if each client is different, there’s always a throughline. Own it. Name it. And use it as part of your offer.

This builds trust — because people don’t just buy results. They buy confidence in your ability to deliver.

Step 4: Pick One and Focus

I know — choosing feels like losing. What if you pick the wrong one? What if you could have made six figures with a different idea?

But here’s the real cost of keeping all 12 ideas: confusion, burnout, and inconsistency.

The only way to know if an offer works is to commit to it long enough to see results — or get real feedback.

So pick one. Just one. And give it 30–60 days of your full attention.

That doesn’t mean you can’t change later. But until you’ve tested something, you’re just guessing.

Step 5: Test the Idea Before You Build

Please — don’t spend weeks building a course no one asked for.

Instead, start conversations. Ask questions. Float the concept in your stories. Create a simple lead magnet or waitlist page.

Your audience will tell you what they want — but only if you listen before you build.

Step 6: Simplify Your Messaging

When you have a million ideas, it’s tempting to try and explain them all. Resist that.

Instead, focus on a single message: a specific person with a specific problem that you solve in a specific way.

If you confuse, you lose.

Remember, people aren’t buying your process. They’re buying a better version of themselves.

Step 7: Know the Difference Between Slow Sales and a Broken Offer

This is a big one.

Sometimes the offer is fine — you’re just not giving it enough time.

If you change your niche, your message, and your process every 60 days, people won’t trust you. They’re watching to see if you believe in it.

So ask yourself: “Am I not succeeding, or am I just not succeeding fast enough?”

Final Thoughts

If you’ve got 12 ideas and no sales, you’re not broken. You’re just overwhelmed.

Your creativity is a gift — but it needs direction.

So take a breath. Pick one. Test it. Tweak it. And trust yourself.

Because clarity isn’t something you wait for. It’s something you create through action.

You’ve got this.

Chapters:

00:00 Navigating Idea Overload

03:11 Understanding Offers and Invitations

05:40 Identifying Offer Problems

08:30 Amanda's Offer Process Explained

16:29 Optimizing Your Offer Strategy

19:25 Overcoming Belief Traps

22:57 Taking Action and Building Confidence

Full Transcript:

Amanda Kaufman (00:00)

Have you ever found yourself thinking, I've got a dozen ideas for a course or a program or maybe a workshop or a webinar and it's dancing around in your head but you're not sure which one to go with. Or maybe you've launched something and you heard crickets. Well, if you heard crickets you might be thinking, I might have picked the wrong one.

Hello, my is Amanda and welcome to the Amanda Kaufman show. in this episode, we're going to talk about how do you know what to offer, even if you've got a dozen ideas dancing around in your head. And you know, if your mind is a nonstop idea machine, hello, I am the same way, but your sales are quiet, you're not broken. You're a creator and that is powerful. But if your offer is

like all these ideas that are coming out of your head is just clogged and you're getting stuck because you have so many good ideas and you're just not sure which one to pursue, then it's just time to reset. And hey, I've been there. I've built course after course, workshop after workshop, and guess what? I did figure it out and I was able to build a business to multiple six figures a year while raising a family, while building in my own personal growth and development at the same time.

Only a few of my programs sold to over six figures. There's so many that I built over the years that were, you know, a sale or two, maybe half a dozen, and then it never went further than that. And I'm going to help you shift from idea overload to a simple offer process that is going to actually get your clients saying yes, or at least increase the chances of your success. Now, if

You, if you're new here, I love to share these kinds of strategies because I had to spend tens of thousands of dollars going into different masterminds. I risked hundreds of thousands of dollars in advertising spend. I've gone through so many of these things that many, coaches really struggle with as pain points. And I want to share with you what made the biggest difference because I'm hoping that

that by understanding more of the reality of the industry, you're more likely to be successful with it. So by the end of this particular episode, I want you to be able to know, how do you select an idea? How do you go through a testing process and trust your ability to build the right offer and finally take that action that you've been looking to take with confidence? So why?

do coaches get into this overwhelm spiral when it comes to what do I want to offer? Now let's just get on the same page about what an offer is. We're gonna start there. An offer is simply an invitation to someone to do something. So technically you could offer to have somebody join a newsletter. You could offer to have them listen to your podcast. You could offer...

to invite them to a workshop or a webinar, you can offer to have them come to a speech. So all of those are generally gonna be free or low cost offers, but I always think of an offer as simply being a invitation to someone, and it's an invitation in exchange. So for example, if you wanna come to my event, then you buy a ticket.

If you want to get my free download, then you're going to give me your contact information to follow up with you. You see what I'm saying? So it's not just the offer in the sense of just here's an invitation, there's nothing required of you. It's actually both sides of it. And I find that super helpful to just understand off the bat because so many coaches build these to-do lists that are absolutely overwhelming. I'm going to do the course. I'm going to write the book. I'm going to make the webinar. I'm going to do da-da-da-da-da.

And speaking as someone who's been in the industry, boots on the ground for years, I know the pressure to finally be successful. And I know the pressure of feeling like everybody else has more success than you. And the thing is, you're not going to busy be your way to being successful as a coach. You need to be more strategic in the offers and the invitations that you make with people.

The truth is you're not short on ideas. Like very often, I'm working with clients, I'm working with people in my community, they have no shortage of ideas. If anything, they have too many ideas. And what that means is that we need to work on our clarity and our confidence to pursue one idea at a time. So like right now, I'm filming this podcast.

and recording this podcast. I'm not also building a course. I'm not also having a sales call. I'm not also doing a lot of other work. And that's that focus that presence is super important. And, know, like as somebody who is ADHD and everything, I know, I know the temptation of jumping from thing to thing to thing. I totally get it. I've had to learn over the years different strategies to help me activate that focus. And I've had like it has not been easy.

But just because it's not easy doesn't mean it's not worth it. And I really want to unpack for you how to think about these offers maybe differently so you can finally start getting some traction and start getting some very needed feedback on your ideas to figure out which ones are the winners and which ones are we gonna leave behind. So a lot of people, like here's how you know that you probably have an offer problem is if you just feel like you have to jump from idea to idea.

You know, maybe it's this, how about this? Maybe it's that, how about that, right? And so you just kind of find yourself chasing your tail trying to figure out like, well, what should I start? And you're constantly restarting. The second thing that you might be running into is that you perhaps have worked with a mentor or you followed somebody that you really admire and you find yourself wanting to copy what they did, but you feel like you're losing yourself in the process.

So I'm super excited that you tuned into today's episode because I'm share with you framework that is gonna really help you with being original as in like aligned and authentic to you, but at the same time being recognizable and choosing a way to present your offer and present yourself in a way that the market, AKA strangers, are going to understand what you're all about and what it is that you do. The third thing is you feel like you're always

having to reinvent yourself for your audience. So this showed up for me a couple of years into my business. I'm about eight years in now, and a couple years in, I figured out that whenever you release a new course to your audience, you get this burst of engagement. You get this burst of activity, and people will want to participate and find out what the new thing is, and the novelty is great.

However, you can overdo it, you know, if you're always like launching a new course, a new course, a new course, a new webinar, a new webinar, new webinar, new webinar, that is exhausting. And being able to like dial that in, the other problem with it is that if you're always launching something new and the things don't lead back to each other, like there's no ecosystem in what you're building, then that is going to be so frustrating because you're never going to build the optimization that is necessary for that.

that course or that program or that coaching curriculum to really take off. Like you've got to have a good bit of focus on that to be able to optimize over time. So if you feel like you're always reinventing yourself, then you might just want this process that I'm about to take you through. If you're saying things like my offer might be too broad or it might be too specific or it's too much like what other people are doing, I hear that one a lot, and you worry about your originality,

to the extent that you're just not producing anything. And that doesn't work either. I don't want you to be a copy paste coach. I don't want you to be some clone of somebody else. But at the same time, we all start somewhere and the success leaves clues. Model what works in the industry as a starting point and then start getting creative. I think one of the biggest things is I just don't know if people are gonna want that from me. I just don't know if people are gonna want that from me.

And that is a natural doubt and a natural concern. But again, this is all pointing to the same thing. And that is that you're in this energy of scarcity and doubt. You're kind of in this emotional state of despair and frustration. And that is repellent. Like that doesn't attract anyone. When you have confidence about, yes, I chose this offer. Yes, I have.

Maybe if you have multiple offers, have this ecosystem of offers that they all make sense together. I know exactly what I'm saying. I know exactly what I'm doing. That gives you a confidence and an ease about yourself that is more attractive. So it's a really, really powerful strategy. And remember this, whatever offer you choose to work on next, whether, you know, I have a friend who's launching a new assessment, right, or...

you know, because you can sell assessments or whether it's like a new course or a membership, whatever it is that you are wanting to put into the world. Just know that you are not the offer. You know, your offer is not your identity. It's a bridge for your customer or your client between a problem that they're experiencing and a result that they want to achieve. That's it. That's all it is. It's a tool for them.

So you don't have to be 100 % confident, especially the first time that you go and do it because you don't know, you don't have any experience with it. Why would you know exactly how it's gonna actually turn out? You just need to be more confident in solving a problem that people really care about right now. So I wanted to take you through something that I lovingly call Amanda's offer process. And what I love about Amanda's offer process, and hi, I'm Amanda.

Is that I've tested this and tested this and tested this and it just works So you step through every step in order every time you're preparing an offer for your community to make sure you're developing an offer They're more likely to want from you. So this works for free offers paid offers all the way up to million dollar deals so The first thing is you got to know who you're talking to or you know Who are you wanting to talk to or invite into this process?

The second thing is, and this is like not just the demographics by the way, it's also what do they care about? And then it takes us to this next step which is the premise. So the premise is what is a shift that has happened in their life really recently? So maybe it's a milestone that they achieved, what's their like context? So maybe they're coming to a new stage in their career.

Or maybe they're moving into a new life stage, or they just got married, or they were recently single, or maybe they had a change in their health. There's some kind of change going on that is causing them to prioritize solving a problem. So that's the premise, and it is the most important part of this entire framework, right?

I think when coaching offers fail, it's because they're solving something so generic that doesn't really match to the priorities of the person that they're trying to help. So you really got to understand like what is the moment that your person finds themselves in. The third thing is the promise. What is that clear outcome that you are helping them toward? Like when they say when they sign up with you, what is that clear outcome you are going to help them?

award and that is of course the promise of the offer. The fourth piece is the process. So what are the specific structure or steps that you're going to be walking them through? Coaching is not a wing it sport, okay? It is a strategic sport and the coaches that get paid the most they have these frameworks, they have these structures, they have these curriculum, they have the map.

that they can guide people through. And you know, I get into this conversation an awful lot with coaches who have been classically trained in the, have you done this week? And what are you hoping to accomplish next week? And how is that going? And how are you? And how do you feel about that? Coaching is not therapy. And I would argue that even therapy doesn't work like that. When people are engaged in a meaningful conversation with you, there's purpose to it. There's a real agenda.

So as a coach, I am asking questions of my clients that are going to bring out their best selves, their best energy. But if I don't have a focus for that call, if I'm not willing to lead us through a discovery pathway that has been predefined, not that the answer is predefined, but that the progression is predefined, I am doing my clients a disservice.

I think it's so important here to have a curriculum, to have steps and milestones that you're taking people through, even if they have a very unique experience in each one of your calls. I think one of the biggest mistakes most coaches make is they think, this person is so unique, there's never gonna be a process, and therefore I can never focus. And that actually speaks more to the personal growth of the coach and the maturity of the coach.

than it does with reality, which is you can absolutely build a sequence of steps that you're gonna take people through as they are uncovering and discovering. So that's the process. Once I know what the process is, it's set the price. So for example, the person, the perfect person for this podcast is an entrepreneur, probably a coach, probably somebody who...

wants to be more successful at selling and engaging with people, but they're running into all these roadblocks. The premise is that they've been sold this bill of goods that they should be able to just sell by having a particular marketing structure and they are encountering the reality that it is more complicated than that. But they really, really still want to succeed. So that's the premise of my person. The promise is when you listen to this podcast,

you're going to gain actionable insights that are going to keep you motivated, keep you inspired, and keep you on the track to building a business that you're super excited about and proud of. The process that I take you through is every week we are releasing multiple episodes that are, you know, a little bit more than just a regular social post, but they're not overwhelming and intimidating. Because I chose a podcast format, the price is free.

Right, because it benefits me to be able to have more reach, help more people, you know, strut my stuff in public, so to speak. And so the price is really your attention, you know. And if you want to hear more of it, then you hit the subscribe button. Right, and if you want more and more than that, then you hit the description and there's links and things that you can hit to get even more support if you really like what I'm talking about. So yeah, so the price is maybe not.

money for the podcast, you know, as an offer, but I've certainly thought through the person, premise, the process, and the promise. Okay, so the last thing is protections. I love thinking about this when I'm doing offers. How do I make it feel lower risk to buy? So for example, maybe I'm including bonuses, maybe I'm including guarantees, maybe I'm...

setting some kind of boundaries that help you feel better about saying yes to the invitation. And so I think a lot of coaches learn like, you should sell, you know, with this offer stack and the offer stack should have three bonuses. And, you know, they just kind of randomly put things together. But when I'm doing a bonus stack or I'm thinking about the agreement that I'm going to have with my ideal client, I love to think about how do you

feel great about doing a hard process and you're investing your time, your energy, your money into this process, how do I make you feel as good as I can that that was the best decision? know, obviously having a great process, I look at that as being a prerequisite. that's not an as well as, that's not a bonus situation that's like no, no, no.

as a coach I take a lot of responsibility for the process that I take people through, period. And I'm super thoughtful about the environment, I'm super thoughtful about what we're talking about, I'm super thoughtful about that curriculum and the resources and the tools and I take my process extremely seriously. The protections, that is the stuff that is going over and above and beyond that baseline of excellence. So like I said,

What bonuses? If you go below this video, you're very likely gonna find a free resource on how to build a business that you really, really love. It's probably gonna direct you to some more content that is gonna be even helpful along your journey. And basically making it so that the payoff of being in the podcast is as high as possible for the price. How do you translate that to a paid offer? Well,

For example, I have a course that I recently released and I strategically chose the bonuses to help you with the biggest obstacles outside of the core program that you're probably gonna be encountering. And so I'm really strategically thoughtful about what those protections would be. So that is my offer process, the person, the premise, promise, process, the price and the protections. I sound like Dr. Sears. Let's keep going.

I even with having a strategy for how to build an offer, I want to make sure we talk in this episode about, what if you have a lot of them? You know, so Amanda, when she started this business, I did it on the back of attending seminars and I started going to seminar after seminar, following guru after guru, and I would fill my notebooks with ideas, templates.

courses, toolkits, and I actually built and sold many of them. And when I looked at the numbers, I did this strategic analysis a couple of years ago that I was like, whoa, holy cow. And it was just looking at, you know, how many of a course had I sold and how much money did I make from that course. And there was a very clear

know, Pareto kind of a distribution where 80 % of the courses were representing, you know, 20 % of the revenue. But like on the flip side, 80 % of the revenue was coming from 20 % of the courses. So it was really, really powerful to see that in my own data and realize like when I slowed down and I really doubled down on things that people actually paid me for very easily.

It took so much stress out of my business because I didn't have to be so creative with the marketing. I didn't have to be so aggressive about selling. I didn't have to be so extra, you know, because when you build an offer that is what people actually want, you are much more likely to be able to sell it with mediocre marketing and, you know, half cocked sales, you know, like I know there's levels to the game.

But I think like most people that I work with, say to me, Amanda, I just want to be a coach. I just want to generate, you know, $5,000 a month, $10,000 a month, maybe $20,000 a month. But they're not looking to necessarily be a millionaire. And a millionaire, by the way, a million dollar business is going to be generating $84,000 a month. So there's a decision there. Like, do you want a lifestyle business where you can get away with being a little more casual?

a little less proficient in everything and maybe get away with not hiring a huge team or get away with not having as much investment in the technology, but you're happy because you're making the amount that you wanted to make. I think the real key and the crux to all of it is am I doing something that people want anyway? Because if you're doing stuff that people want anyway, then all you have to do is show why yours is such a great option.

And I love the old saying, know, when all things are equal, people tend to buy from their friends and all things not being equal, people still tend to buy from their friends. the thing is, is that there are a few belief traps that tend to keep the average coach stuck. And I want to pop through those real quick. The first one is that my audience is too unique for an existing offer. And the truth is that you're unique, but

the problems that your people have are solvable and you can use proven structures. You know, I know as a creative and as a original human being, I love to engage in the fantasy that it's the first time that anything has ever happened, but let's just like look at the statistics and the reality. First of all, people have been around for like 10,000 years.

Plus, right? So people have been peopling for a really long time. I was sitting on a coaching call a few years ago and I had to kind of stifle a laugh because my mentor at the time was saying, oh yeah, you know, my mentor invented this style of consulting. And I knew for a fact that that was not true because I had started my career in the consulting industry. And that was like way lots, way lots of years ago. And

that company had been around for decades and decades and decades before. And in fact, consulting actually started in the late 1910s when a bunch of professors wanted to make a little more money. So it's been around for a really long time. I absolutely promise you there's no internet guru who has invented consulting or coaching. That's not a thing.

What has happened is that more information is available across more different channels. And so, yeah, there is definitely a proven structure. And if you're like a lot of coaches, perhaps you even have a curriculum or a structure that your certification program has given you that is proven, that has worked, that you're not using because you think that it's got to be so crazy, super original. The second big issue with offers is that people say like,

Well, no one wants coaching and you know, actually they probably don't want coaching in the sense they don't want generic coaching. Everyone wants a solution that works for them. So if coaching as a solution works really, really well for that person, they are going to love it, right? They're going to love it. Last trap is I'm not qualified to make a big promise. My gosh, I hear a version of this all the time and

You know, if you're listening to this and you're thinking like, yeah, well, I don't have the experience. Yeah, well, I'm too old, too young, too focused on this other thing, too family oriented, too, too faith oriented to this, to that. If there is like a wish that I had for the world, it's just more loving kindness. Be kind to yourself. You know, you're the one that spends the most time with yourself. Please start practicing kindness and

The truth is that if you're obsessed with getting your clients results and you're willing to map a process that's repeatable across multiple different clients, you are already more qualified than 90 % of the market because you've simply decided to pro up and to show up, you know? And insofar as like the negative self-talk, the imposter syndrome, all of those things that so many new coaches especially encounter,

Hey, let's have less judgment, let's have more compassion, let's have more kindness because the world needs you at your very, best and you deserve to be treated very kindly. Okay, so what I would love for you to do out of this episode is just take a look at your offers. Take a look at your offer ideas, take a look at your offer stack and just spend some time, like 30 days to focus on one particular offer and just give it all you have.

talk about it in conversations before you start building it. So one of my favorite little tactics that I've picked up along the way is I will ask my social media audience questions that are related to an offer or a workshop or a freebie that I'm considering building. And if it gets like no engagement, I'll find it. I'll rephrase it maybe a few times just to make super sure. Cause you know, you got algorithmic effects, you got all these things. But if I, if I put the idea in like four different ways,

out to an audience of hundreds of people and I don't get like a single thumbs up. I don't get a wow, that'd be really cool or put me down for that. I'm not gonna spend time building it, right? So super, super huge. I think like it's so important and valuable to build a minimum viable version as soon as you possibly can. And it's cool to have the vision for the future, but you've got to optimize towards that.

And you learn so much through the practice, through the actually doing that it makes a huge, huge difference. I think that one of the biggest obstacles to success, like a big don't, is don't wait to feel qualified. Don't wait to feel like you're finally gonna be recognized. Don't wait for somebody else's opinion of whether you're going to really do this thing. Be super careful about constantly shifting. You know, I see a lot of...

Kind of middle level coaches who are trying to teach something and they they they are constantly abandoning ship and then they're like I have staked a new claim in a new ground and they stick with it for 60 days and then they're on to a new ship and that instability people see it and They they realize you're not really serious and so it's important that although I want you to test and although I want you to get out there as soon as possible just temper that with

Are you not succeeding or are you just not succeeding fast enough? Because in most cases you are succeeding, you're just not succeeding as quickly as you had in mind. And so you give up on the momentum and the traction and go pursue something completely different and it's effectively keeping you stuck starting over and over again at zero. Last thing is don't assume that not making a sale means it's a bad idea.

you need to look at the entire conversation, all of the messaging. Like, is nobody open to talking about this with you? Is nobody having this conversation on other platforms? Like, are there no YouTube videos on the subject? You know, often, very often, the core idea is great. The messaging sucks, right? So if we can focus the messaging on the messaging, excuse me, very often you can sell the core idea even better over time.

So with all of that being said, if you find yourself kind of swirling an idea mode and you feel like you would love to get out of that chaos, make sure you go to nextfiveclients.com. That's next number five clients.com and join our clients over chaos community. I built that free community to be a safe place for coaches to come and discuss and learn how to engage people in the offers and the marketing and all of that.

without feeling like you are failing because you're not getting through a immense to-do list because you don't have a team, because you don't have, don't have, you don't have. We gotta get out of that chaotic mindset, start getting into what matters, and when you join the community, you're gonna get access to five videos that I've put together that are my very best tips on exactly what you need to do to get your next five clients in the door as soon as possible.

So you can grab that again at nextfiveclients.com. We've also got some other goodies for you below and don't forget to subscribe. If you found this to be super helpful, make sure you grab the link and share it with at least three of your friends. Just send it on text or over DM. And until the next episode, thank you so much for joining me and we will see you next time. Do what matters.