First, I will introduce you to the 3-Prong Expert Business Model. In this business model, you are the expert at what you do, and there are three prongs to the type of products and services you offer:
1. One-to-One
2. One-to-Many
3. Leveraged Assets-to-Many
Here are the differences:
1. One-to-One
For One-to-One products and services, you have to be physically present. These could be consulting-based services, private concerts, or private lessons and chats. These products and services are the most expensive things you can offer because you're giving away your most precious and finite resource, time. In this business model, you'll do One-to-One the least. Maybe 20% or less of your sales will come from One-to-One products and services. Since these are your most expensive offers, you can make a lot of money from them while doing very few of them.
2. One-to-Many
One-to-Many is when you offer products and services to many people at once—for example, training people or giving a concert. Of course, you still have to be present, but you're presenting your expertise to many people instead of just one.
3. Leveraged Assets-to-Many
In this prong, your brand deals with many people at a time. You're leveraging brand assets like books, music, and downloads to many people simultaneously. An online training program is a terrific asset that you can offer to your list. In this prong, you don't have to be present, and you can make sales while you sleep. This prong will account for 50% or more of your sales, leaving the remaining 40-50% split between the other prongs.
Side note: I want to ensure you consider yourself an expert. You're a musician, so you're a music expert. And the reason why people listen to your music is that you're the expert. It doesn't matter if you don't know everything, but you're an expert at what you do. And a segment of your email list will be musicians, and they will be interested in you differently than the rest of your list. You can offer lots of stuff to the musicians on your list, and I would consider that strongly.
Customer Ascension
One of the best parts of this three-pronged system is that you can ascend people from inexpensive leveraged assets (music, books, online courses) up to more valuable products and services (gigs, one-on-one lessons, private concerts). And you can bet that your high-end customers will buy many of your lower-priced offers, too.
Micro-brands
"Micro-brands" will give you more opportunities to sell to your audience. A micro-brand is your very own sub-brand. For example, I'm Graham English, and I'm branded as a music educator to some. To others, I'm branded as a musician. I have several micro-brands within the music education space, like Speed Songwriting and Logic Studio Training. And within the music community, I'm micro-branded as a keyboard player, composer, songwriter, jazz musician, Hammond B3 player, etc. All of these micro-brands cater to separate audiences.
The following are three types of microbrands to consider:
1. Mission-based
2. Meme-based
3. Brand-based
1. Mission-based
You're not a one-dimensional person, and you probably have many interests. And when people find out, for example, that you're a dog lover and go to dog events, and maybe you publicize dog rescues or something similar, you can capitalize on that part of your brand.
The above example, being a dog lover or supporting dog rescues, is a "mission-based micro-brand." Your mission could be the environment, religion, or even politics (if you've got the stomach for it). You can create original merchandise supporting a cause that you believe in (don't use other people's trademarks and copyrights). For example, let's say you're into astronomy and have a favorite planet that you talk about a lot. You can sell planet-based merchandise, like t-shirts, cups, pins, etc. Suppose the things you're passionate about have charities related to them. In that case, you can even give a portion of the profits to the charity and possibly gain tax benefits, giving your customer another positive reason to buy your merchandise. And it gives you lots of things to sell that have nothing to do with your music, but people are still interested in them.
2. Meme-based
Meme-based micro-brands are when you take current pop culture, put your unique spin on it, and then sell it as merchandise. Make it original and don't plagiarize, but you can piggyback on a popular meme and make it your own. For example, you've probably seen the "Keep Calm and Carry On" t-shirts that people have worn for several years. You can easily repurpose that phrase into something your audience might like: Keep Calm and Listen to Jazz Piano. I've created t-shirts with slogans like "I like loud sax" and "All is fair in love and songwriting" and sold them to sax players and songwriters. If you've got a segment of your list like that, you can come up with dozens of merchandise ideas. Go to any meme search engine and start looking at memes. If you find something you can make your own, you can sell it (or, at the very least, share it on social media and gain some new followers).
3. Brand-based
These micro-brands focus on your music, personal brand, and any other brands you own. You may have more than one band or musical project, each a separate micro-brand. Each micro-brand can prompt merchandise ideas, such as anthology collections and box sets, online courses, books, etc. For example, I have micro-brands in the songwriting and music production space that are very different audiences from each other, though they are all musicians. They each have separate email lists that I can cross-sell to.
As you can see, many creative ways exist to offer products and services to your list. You have the 3-pronged business model: One-to-One, One-to-Many, and Leveraged Assets-to-Many. You can also ascend your customers through inexpensive leveraged assets to more expensive and exclusive products. Finally, you can develop micro-brands, sell related products to your list, and even attract new fans via your micro-brands.
ASSIGNMENT: Brainstorm Your Asset List
Download: Entry-Point Offer Cheat Sheet
Google Doc: Asset List
Assignment Instructions:
https://vimeo.com/367860414