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In this episode, I’m talking about why a downsell can massively sabotage your main offer.

We get into what happens when people are presented with a higher-support offer and a cheaper option, why your role as CEO has to completely change as you scale, and why the answer to growth is often systems, not more products.

I also share the filter I use now when I think about creating a downsell, what I would build instead in many cases, and why the best offer suite is not necessarily the one with the most ways to buy.

Key Takeaways

• Why you should charge premium (and the math behind it)
• The offer suite to scale to 7+ figures
• What makes or breaks profitability as you scale

 _____________________________________

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READ THE EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Emily Hirsh:

You’re, like, the figure-it-out, CEO and, like, fuck around and find out. But that is zero to six figures. If you continue to do that you won’t get there. You cannot scale chaos, you don’t know what’s working. Everything that gets you to six figures will actually kill you getting to seven figures.

It doesn’t matter what price you make your offer, they’re gonna do it over the hundred dollars. And it’s unfortunately what probably holds them back from their success and will until they figure that out, but you can’t really solve that for them.

You wanna create an offer so good that people are like, “I will do whatever it takes to figure out how to get the money to pay for that offer because I know it’s gonna solve my problem, because I know it’s gonna get me where I wanna go.”

Embodied CEOs don’t chase trends. They pave the way they lead from within. Move by purpose, unshaken by noise. When you are the source, you do not need permission.

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. I hope you guys are having an amazing week. I’m feeling very excited, very grounded, very alive. If you follow me on Instagram, I’m gonna tell you guys a quick fun thing. If you follow me on Instagram, you saw this cool thing we’re doing, and I’ll give you a little backstory of it, ’cause all I’ve posted is the video on Instagram.

But last week Friday, I was doing my regular content shoot with my content manager Haley, in the office. And we always do some strategizing during that, like, just kind of riffing and brainstorming and you know, talking about ways we can make the content better, what’s working, whatever. And I was like, “You know, I feel like I need to just do some more epic shit in my content.”

Like, because it is who I am. I am very much somebody who, like, full sends life. I, I go big. I like to experience life. I mean, I’m, I’m an experience over things girl all day long. I love adventure. I just love experiencing life and being so happy and grateful that I’m alive. And so anyways, I was like, “I think I need to do more epic stuff.”

Like I, I just do the same thing. Like when I’m home and I’m not traveling, I get into this routine where every day looks different, but there’s like a cadence to it. There’s a comfortability to it. So anyways, I was like, “What if we go on a trip and I don’t know where we’re going?” And then it evolved into this thing, which I’ll tell you guys a little backstory of it, which is funny, is it evolved into this experiment, I guess you could call it, where her and I are going on a trip, and I have no idea where we’re going.

Like right now, I have no idea. We are leaving in a week from recording this. I’m recording it Monday. We leave Monday. When the podcast comes out, it’ll be less than a week. And you guys picked the location. So on my Instagram over the weekend, I deleted it from my app or I deleted my app from my phone, and she put the poll up on my stories with four options, and you guys voted, and I don’t know what you voted.

I don’t know the winner. Whatever the winner is, is where we’re going, and I genuinely don’t know. I have a guess because people put … I have a guess of what I think most people chose, but I really have no idea. And I’m really hard to surprise. So I will not know where we are going until we get to the gate at the airport.

It’s like she booked it. It’s all, all the confirmation, everything’s going through her. We’re gonna go to the airport. We’re gonna go through the gate, then I’ll figure out where we’re going. On top of that, I’m gonna go 48 hours. So at the airport, I’m gonna hand her my phone, and it’s gonna be shut off for 48 hours, 48 hours straight, zero phone.

I have been out of service before traveling, but I’ve never like not had my phone. And so we’re talking, you know, meditations, my WHOOP app, everything completely off grid. She will obviously be there, so if my kids have an emergency, someone can get ahold of her, but I won’t talk to my kids for two days, and that’ll be okay.

But also it’s like I won’t even be available for my team. When I travel, normally when I travel, it’s like I’m still … You can text me. And so if there’s like a quick decision or a quick thing, I do pretty much check in every day, and I don’t mind that. Like I actually prefer to travel for long periods of time and spend a little bit of time working than be totally unplugged.

But the experiment is 48 hours without my phone, and she’s planning the entire We’re basically on for two and a half days. She’s planning everything designed to get me out of my comfort zone. The rules are I can’t say no to anything she plans, I won’t have my phone, and I have to have at least one meal with a stranger every day.

So when I was brainstorming with Claude… So like, we came up with this idea, and then we started looking at tickets. We’re like, “Let’s go to Europe,” you know? And like, “Let’s do something cr- let’s just- let’s just do something crazy,” is what it came to, like… And we both got really excited about it. And then Claude, I was like, “Knowing me, like, here’s our idea.

What would you do?” And Claude’s like, “Why don’t you make it so that the person who’s always in control is now no longer in control?” And I was like, “Wow, thanks, Claude.” Like, you know that from all my conversations with Claude. And so that’s the concept. It is, I talk a lot about it on here, the unknown, getting yourself out of the day-to-day.

This is, like, to the extreme. Getting yourself in the unknown where you can’t be predicting and planning and staying comfortable. And the reality is, like, I, I like to be uncomfortable. I love to push myself and push my edge. But when I’m controlling that, there’s obviously still, like, a limit. Like, I’ve never actually been like, “Okay, somebody else gets to decide what I do for 48 hours, and I’m also gonna be completely off my phone.”

You know, I’ve gone to retreats and things like that where I’m- where I’m there, and I’m just doing what’s planned, but nothing like this. So I’m calling it The Wild 48, and it’s an experiment, and we’re gonna document the whole thing. I will be offline, but Hailey will be posting, and we’ll see what happens.

I think it’s gonna be really cool. I’m definitely… I’m mostly excited, ’cause I do love this stuff, but I bet you there will be some moments where I’m like, “Ooh, I don’t wanna do that,” whatever she’s planning. Most likely it’s things related to, like- putting myself out there in ways that make me uncomfortable.

And I want to show this because actually for you guys, this is something I wanna demonstrate, is like let’s take… And Hailey was like, “Let’s take the you who is the leader, you’re confident, you come across as you have it together, you put yourself in situations where you’re good at things that you do.”

I’m good at CrossFit, I’m good at business, right? We all do this every day. We put ourselves in situations where we can excel because that feels good. Let’s take that version of you and put you in situations where you’re not the expert, and you’re not confident, and you’re uncomfortable, and move through it.

Because I think a lot of entrepreneurs actually feel this way creating content, putting themselves out there, you know, doing new things in business. And so I actually wanna document that and show you that experience. And we’ll see. I literally have no idea what to expect. So we came up with the idea Friday.

We made the video that day. We posted it Saturday morning. I went off grid all weekend. I was off. I deleted Instagram from my phone. And we did the poll on Saturday. The place was picked. She booked the flights Sunday. Isn’t it great being an entrepreneur when you can just come up with an idea that morning and then do it that day?

And, like, how freaking cool that I get to do this as a business write-off. and, like, just being an entrepreneur is so cool. You get to design your life experience. So I’m, I’m super grateful, and thanks to everyone who played along, and stay tuned. So we’ll probably end up posting where we go the day we leave, but I will be offline, but we’ll put it up.

And so, like, nobody literally knows except for Hailey where we’re going. My family is super invested in this too. They’re, like, trying to talk to Hailey and coordinate, and it’s fun. Anyways, that is something fun I wanted to share and also just invite you to make sure you go to emilyhirsh on my Instagram if you wanna follow it along kind of in real time.

We’ll, we will put stuff up there, and then I’m sure I’ll have lots of takeaways when I come back onto the podcast after 48 hours completely off grid. We’ll see what Hailey plans for me. We will see. So in today’s episode, the content piece, I wanted to talk about this one point that came up in Embody Marketing Live, and I’ve been saving it for a podcast episode because it deserves its own episode.

And it’s just a specific lesson that I think a lot of entrepreneurs forget, and inc- myself included. Like, this is a hard one. And it came up in conversation with somebody at the event during their hot seat, and they’ll probably listen to this podcast. And I, when they, when it happened, I was like, “I am so doing a podcast on that.

Thank you so much for this.” And that is this, idea that you are losing customers and you are losing money if you don’t have an offer to serve people who can’t afford what you sell. So essentially, a downsell. And it’s like, when is that actually a helpful thing to include in your business, and when is it hurtful?

And I would argue more times than not, it is hurtful over helpful, but, but we can’t see it. And I have done this many times, many times. So in this hot seat, I’m just gonna give you a little background. This entrepreneur in the room was… She’s, she’s at about six figures, and she’s massively scaled over the last six months.

Like, seen tremendous growth. And she really doesn’t have a system in place. A lot of her growth is happening right now somewhat organically, but through a lot of, like, manpower. So conversations, kind of hustling on, on LinkedIn. That’s where she gets a lot of her clients. And she’s doing all the delivery.

Like, she is… I don’t know if she has any support or not, but she is definitely mostly a one-woman show. So she’s seen tremendous growth. She’s blown away by the sales. And she’s in our program. So she’s been in our program for six months. She kind of blew up with her offer and selling her offer, but like I said, it’s actually a lot of manual work for her right now, and then she’s also doing all the delivery.

So she came into the room very burnt out And sh- figuring out a lot of the conversations that we had throughout the weekend or the week was how we’re gonna get her out of the day-to-day, transitioning from that CEO that she had to be to get to where she was to now transitioning from the six to seven-figure CEO, which I’ve supported a lot of entrepreneurs through that, especially in my mastermind.

And it’s a very… It’s my fa- I think it’s my favorite. It’s, it’s a really cool journey because to go from zero to six figures and then six to seven figures, you literally, in so many ways, have to become a different entrepreneur. Completely different. Like, everything… And, and I know this is, like, a cliche thing to say, but it’s true.

Everything that gets you to six figures will actually kill you getting to seven figures because you get to six figures through hustling. You get there through using time, and grind, and hustle, and doing anything it will take, and taking a bunch of action, and a lot of times doing things yourself that you eventually shouldn’t be doing and hiring it out.

And, like, you’re, like, the figure-it-out, CEO and, like, fuck around and find out. But that is zero to six figures. If you continue to do that six to seven figures, you won’t get there because you can’t scale that. You cannot scale chaos, and it’s, it’s almost like it’s chaos in the beginning in a good way in the sense that you don’t know what’s working.

And so you can’t have this, like, overly planned and structured system because you don’t know what works yet. But if you scale that, it’s like she came in and she’s at max capacity. She has no more time in the day. She has no more capacity. She has no more time. She has no more that she can scale what she’s currently doing.

And so then you become at a crossroads, and it’s like, “Well, either I stop here and I don’t grow my business any farther, or I, I implement systems, systems in my marketing, systems in my delivery, and I start to view myself as the CEO with the most valuable resource, my time and my energy, and how do I get myself out of the day-to-day?”

And you become relentless with that, and your entire role as a CEO has to change, your role, your beliefs, your vision, like, everything. And so I love helping entrepreneurs because they have to fully change for this to work. So she’s there. And so I’m giving you this context because she is in a place where she’s at max capacity, and when we did her hot seat, she said, “You know, there’s a lot of conversations that I have with people who can’t afford my main offer, and I wanna have something to offer them.”

Okay? And so we talked about that and anyways, in so many words, what I came to was: Why would you consider making a new offer right now when you are completely maxed out? With your current offer, have no more time right now to try to sell it. You don’t have a system selling it. So, like, she’s selling it, but it hasn’t been scaled, the, the system to sell it without her, without her involvement.

And not to mention, you have no more time to deliver. And so then, and then she went to, “Well, I can’t just create a digital offer for these people, because they won’t buy it. They want some live support.” So we went back and forth, you know, and I talked through it with her of options. And ultimately, I came to, like, no way would I recommend that you add another offer.

I said, “Instead, if you took all of that energy, that strategy, that energy, that time, that, you know, resources in creating that down-sell offer, and you put it into selling your offer that’s already selling, I can guarantee you, you will get better results.” And here’s the thing. You want … Like, these people who s- who are saying that they can’t afford your main offer, you make your main offer so good that they’re saving their money to buy it.

Like, that is the way to actually get access to you, to get the result that you provide. She provides a very specific result in six months, gets a amazing success rate. We’re implementing that she has a guarantee that basically, if in the six months you do all the work and you don’t get the result that they want, then you get to stay in for free.

So it’s like, it is, it is it. It is her main offer. It is the way that people should work with her. And creating something because you feel bad that there is people who can’t afford it, and also then we get in our head and go, “Well, I’m losing opportunity. I have leads saying they can’t afford it, but they might buy something else.”

What I have learned You know, and this offer, I think it’s like, I think it’s almost 3K. I think it’s maybe a little less than 3K. It’s… We’re not talking about a $20,000 offer. You know? If you, if you came to me and you’re like, “All I have to sell is $20,000 offer,” then I’d say, “Yeah, sure. Let’s have something lower.”

But a 3K offer is a very good core offer price. So I said, “Make that offer your signature offer. You don’t have another way to get the result that you’re promising unless you go in that offer,” which creates desire. Now if someone has a conversation with you about this offer, they really want it. They see all the results, all the receipts, the guarantee, the way that this, this is the path to getting what they want.

And her offer is really good. It’s really locked in. And now they’re gonna have that conversation, and guess what? They’re gonna go save money, or they’re gonna go figure it out. They’re gonna go get financing. They’re gonna go get a credit card. They’re gonna whatever. They are gonna figure it out. But if you say, “Oh, but for less support, you could get a similar result, or you could get part of that result for $500,” guess what?

Now people who would’ve bought the $3,000 offer are gonna buy the $500 offer because when you go to sell something to somebody- They think th- their perception is that they’re gonna do the work. Nobody buys something and is like, “I’m probably gonna need more support, because I don’t think that I can do this and hold myself accountable.”

Very rarely do people buy something in that state. So when you present someone with two offers, and you say, “Here’s this main offer. It’s $3,000 or $2,500, and it includes all this support, and you get these reviews. And, like, basically, this is everything you need to be successful. And I know this as the expert, because I know that you’re not gonna do X, Y, Z, because I’ve seen so many people do it, right?”

You have that. And then you say, “But I also have this option where you get less support, you get the content, whatever, you get this, you get that. And you can either get a similar result if you do it all, but you don’t have support. Or you will, you know, get, at least make progress or solve a main problem.”

A lot of people are gonna choose the lower offer when they’re presented with the options. Because in their mind, they think, “It’s okay. I’ll save the money. I’ll choose the lower offer. I’ll do the work. I’ll show up, and I don’t need the extra support,” when in reality they need it. They just can’t see that.

It’s why with my offers, I took out any program that’s done with you. Because I could say to you, “Buy this program for $1,000. And it’s just my prerecorded trainings and my templates, and go do it yourself.” I know for a fact pretty much 100% of the time you’re gonna get stuck. Because you’re gonna think you can do it yourself.

You’re gonna think you’re gonna hold yourself accountable. You’re gonna think you’re gonna work through the roadblocks when the tech doesn’t work or the ad targeting’s confusing or whatever, but you’re not. So you’re gonna buy it, you’re gonna start it, and you’re not gonna finish it. And I don’t want that to be an option.

So the only way to work with us is the higher level offers where we do it for you. Because I know with my expertise that we have to build the funnel. We have to design the ads. We have to set up the ads. We have to do the targeting So when you create this option, a downsell can actually massively sabotage your main offer if you’re not careful.

My point being, first, you should have a core offer that is your main focus, that people who can’t afford it yet want it so bad they’re gonna go figure it out. They’re gonna go save their money. They are going to plan to buy it in the future ’cause they want it so bad. There’s no other option. They want it.

They know it’s gonna get them a result. You have built the trust. You have built the credibility. You have the receipts. Like, that takes time. And this entrepreneur has been in our program for six months. I don’t know exactly how long she was doing her business before then, but let’s just say the last year.

She has done a ton of work to earn trust, to earn credibility, to build a great offer. If she were to go make a downsell and say, “Well, I feel bad for all the people who can’t afford the offer yet, I’m gonna make this option for you,” I believe it would sabotage her success. Because not only would it take away from effort and resources that need to go into what’s working, but it also would give somebody now an option that is significantly less money.

So we nixed the whole downsell idea, and as we were talking about it I was like, “Man, I’ve done this.” Because you convince yourself that you need to give somebody a cheaper option, but when you have a relatively reasonably price, like my lowest offer is $3,000. That, for a business offer, it’s not that much.

There’s payment plans, there’s financing, like, you can figure it out. If I was to say, “Okay, here’s a $1,000 offer,” you know, or a $1,500 offer, it would sabotage it. And I’ll tell you this also. The people who can’t afford the main program don’t go and figure it out and you want to sell them this downsell are just as hard, if not harder, to sell.

Like, those, people often, I hate to say it, but it’s true, have massive limiting beliefs and money mindset that holds them back. Because most people, when they really want something, will figure it out. They will figure it out, and they will, they will take the leap of faith. They will, they will take the risk.

They will lean in. They’ll do the thing that makes them scared. The people that circle and circle and can’t make a decision, and it’s too much, and they’re scared, like, that’s usually very deeply rooted in fear that’s driving their business and driving them and driving their life. And so then when you come up with the 500 or the thousand dollar offer, it’s like that’s still there.

They’re still gonna come up with the reasons why, and honestly, like, usually they’re worse and more work clients than the ones that could pay. It’s like that meme where it’s like the hundred thousand dollar client is like, “Great, s- tell me how to pay,” and the, like, thousand dollar client has, like, 15 questions and is, like, analyzing everything.

It is … Truly, it’s like a, it’s a frequency. It is. I’ve seen it over and over again. Like, there are people who don’t operate from fear and entrepreneurs who don’t operate from fear and the ones who do, and it doesn’t matter what price you make your offer, they’re gonna do it over the hundred dollars. And it’s unfortunately what probably holds them back from their success and will until they figure that out, but you can’t really solve that for them.

So, the amount of energy this was gonna suck from her, both the strategy, the product development, the selling of it, and then the delivering of it, I’m like, those clients are going to be worse than your clients paying you almost $3,000. I guarantee it. You know? And, and so anyways, I wanted to bring this up because I think this is a trap that we so often can fall into as entrepreneurs where we convince ourselves we are losing opportunity, and we are losing potential sales, and so therefore, we need to create this downsell product.

But if you have a core offer that’s reasonably priced … Again, if you’re like, “I only have a $20,000 offer,” then I would tell you, “Okay, you could create a downsell.” But if you’ve got a reasonably priced core offer And most people could afford it, and most people could figure out how to afford it. Don’t … Most likely, you should not spread your resources into a down-sell and think that that’s going to be a m- a needle mover for your business.

‘Cause what I also told her is, like, if you make a $500 offer, you have to sell three of those to equal one of your sales that you’re getting now. No, more than that. $500 offer to … You gotta sell six of those if it’s $3,000. So if you tell me the amount of effort that’s gonna go into selling six of your $500 offer compared to one of your $3,000 offer, there’s no way.

There’s no you know, there’s no way. It doesn’t add up. So whenever you’re considering things like this in the business, even if it feels like opportunity, you have to ask yourself, what is it taking away from? And if I took that same amount of energy, time, re- money, and resources, and I put it into my core offer, what is already working, and I said, “How do I sell more of these?

How do I do this better? How do I deliver this in a more streamlined way?” Which one’s gonna move your business forward more? Most likely, it’s that one. I’m not saying 100% of the time, but most likely. So really go all in on that core offer And if anything, build the upsells. Like, ’cause you’re gonna have amazing people.

Some of my best clients are the ones that have been with me for a while, and then they come into my mastermind, and then they go to my event. Like, build the thing for those people, the dream clients. What do they want more of? Versus, let me take the lowest hanging fruit and try to capitalize on the people who couldn’t figure out how to get into my core offer that’s reasonably priced and guaranteed to solve their problem, and I have all the receipts to back it up, and it’s an incredible offer, and, like, figure out how to convince them to buy something.

No. And she was like, “Yeah, I actually do have people who tell me they are saving to buy my offer.” I’m like, “Good, because the second you come out with that downsell, you just lost them as a client to the $3,000 offer.” Like, they’re saving for it. That’s what you want. You wanna create an offer so good that people are like, “I will do whatever it takes to figure out how to get the money to pay for that offer because I know it’s gonna solve my problem, because I know it’s gonna get me where I wanna go.”

And if that takes someone two months, if it takes someone three months, great. I have people who come back, and they literally saved money to buy our offer. I respect those people. Like, you figured out how to still get what you wanted for your business, and you’re operating not from a place of fear, and you’re making it happen.

You will be successful. You have the traits that I wanna work with as a client. All right. Hope that was helpful, you guys. Just a little check for your business, ’cause I do see this mistake, and I have, I have truly made this mistake probably a dozen times because I forget and because you convince yourself, like, “Oh, my gosh, there’s so much opportunity.

There’s all these people that said no to this core offer. Let’s sell them something else.” If I ever do a downsell and, and moving forward it’s gonna be w- 100% passive. Like, that’s okay if it’s 100% passive, but it also can’t solve the same problem your core offer solves. That doesn’t make any sense. So for me, w- we have unignorable, which is going to be just purely digital.

It’s like, you buy it, here’s the access. No support. So that costs me nothing. Once I make it, to deliver it, you know, and if I wanna offer that to my leads, but it, it doesn’t solve the same problem that our main offers solve at all. It still leaves you with a gap because it just gets you started, which is what a downsell, if you have them, should do.

And I have seen people cannibalize their core offer by creating a downsell where they think, oh, because it has less support, then people will think that this is still valuable, the other offer. But people buy things thinking they will go through it, and they don’t need the support. Only the expert, the coach, you know, the leader knows the support that they need to get the result that you’re trying to get them.

All right, everybody, make sure you follow my Instagram. Super excited for my adventure next week. Thanks so much for tuning in, and I will talk to you next time.