Hello my friends. As you are listening to this, I am married. I'm on my honeymoon. Well, mini moon. I'm pre-recording this episode because I'm taking a couple weeks off to get married to do a little mini moon in Portland. Maine, not Oregon. It's kind of fun. I feel like I'm speaking into the future. Anyways, this episode might be a little different than the ones, other ones I've been doing recently. I wanted to get a little bit more opinionated. So I have this belief that more structure in your offers creates better results for your clients and better relationships. Better relationships, better outcomes, better results, better for you and better for them. Let's talk about it. Hey, I'm Amy Nessheim, licensed attorney for online business owners and founder of my own business, Artful Contracts. You're listening to Legal Made Easy, the show that makes the legal aspects of online business easy to understand and implement so you can grow your business with confidence knowing you've got it all covered. Let's dive in. So here's what I mean. I see a lot of service writers bending over backwards to give their clients whatever they want. They are understandably, I don't want to say desperate because that sounds so negative, but they are just really striving to get clients to make an income, to get their business going. And they think that means that they have to do whatever their clients want. They think that means they have to offer anything and everything that the client asks for and just say yes, yes, yes. It's understandable because it comes from a place of wanting to please their clients, not wanting to lose clients, not being sure how to get clients, maybe, and feeling like the best way to get a yes from a client is to give them a yes to whatever they want. Because it feels like if you design a package and then say to a client, this is the package, and no, I don't do that other thing, they're just gonna go to somebody else and then you lose that client, right? And that's scary. But I think that that kind of I think that kind of approach gets worse results for everyone. You don't make as much money, you're not as happy, you're more stressed, and your client doesn't get as good of an outcome as they could, and they might not even get the result that they really want. Here's why. In the thing that your client is hiring you for, you are the expert. You know, even if you don't have a ton of experience yet, this is what you do. You know how to achieve the outcome that the client is looking for, and you know the steps to take to get there. You might not be ready to own it yet, but you do know it. And just chasing down every client request, following whatever rabbit hole they send you on is not the quickest path to the result that they're looking for. And they probably don't even realize that. And then you end up burnt out, overworked, underpaid, doing all of these things that lead you in a different direction when it was your responsibility, your job to lead the client to the result that you had originally promised, the whole reason that they hired you. That is scary. It can be scary to own your expertise in that way and say to a client, no, I don't offer that, or that request is not going to get us closer to the goal that we're trying to reach. But your dream clients, your ideal clients, are going to respect you more for that and see you as more of an expert, as more of the leader that you are, and that they need you to be. Now you might be thinking, well, this is something that like it's not that far off of target, or it's just a little thing, it'll take take me a few minutes. But here's the other thing: you're also allowed to have a field of expertise, a zone of genius that includes certain things and not others. And if you are not the best person to do something for a client, they deserve to know that. They deserve for you to say, no, I'm not the best person to do this thing. So, for example, if you are a copywriter and you are amazing at email marketing, you write amazing newsletters, you write amazing sales emails, launch sequences, you have that covered. And they ask you, oh, can you just write some ad copy too? Yes, it's still copy, it's still selling the same product, but if it's not what you do, if it's not where your zone of genius lies, if it's not where your area of expertise lies, if it's not something you've done before, you could be doing them a disservice because it is a different skill. So your client is really better served if you say, actually, I know this other person who's really great at ad copy, I'd love to loop them in on this. And you know what? Even if it is a skill that you have and it wouldn't take that long, and it is in pursuit of the client's goal, you are still allowed to say no. And that is still, it still might serve you better. So that same email copywriter, if a client asks them to schedule those emails, and maybe you also use the same email service writer, you know how it works. You can schedule emails, but that wasn't part of your package, or it doesn't serve your goals, it doesn't serve your business to be spending time on that, you can say no, and you should say no. And all of that comes together really well when you design packages and present them to a client and say, here is exactly what I do and how I'm going to get you from point A where you are now to point B to where you want to be. And if that is very clearly outlined, here's exactly what I do, then it is really easy to point back to that and say, Hey, in our proposal, I said I do X, Y, and Z, I don't do A, B, C. If your offers are general, if they're too vague, then that is a lot harder to do. And clients are gonna end up confused and disappointed because they weren't clear. When you have a package, the clients get to benefit from your expertise, from your experience, bringing clients from point A to point B. You know that path, you know the best ways to go down it. You don't need them sending you on side quests, but you have to dictate it from the beginning. You have to decide what that is. You have to claim your expertise, own your skills, and declare exactly what you offer. That means that nothing wishy-washy, not I do design, and I'll take on anybody who wants design. Too vague, too general, you're gonna end up overworked and your clients are gonna end up disappointed. So here's why I feel so confident saying that, and why I feel so certain that that's true, that you are never gonna get the best results for your clients unless you're specific about what you do, and that you're gonna end up overworked unless you're specific about what you do, because your offers as a service writer, as a coach, your offers create the reality that you live in every day. Your offers are the thing that you have to fulfill on. So, in order to make sure that you're not burnt out, that your cup is full before you serve your clients, that you're not frazzled and operating from a reactive place, constantly putting out fires, you create the structure of your offers. And that structure creates a container in which you can be your best self, provide your best service to your clients. As a business owner, we are wearing all of the hats, right? You need time for fulfillment, you also need time for marketing, you also need time for visionary work. And if all you're doing is running around chasing down client requests all day, you're not gonna have time for those other things. So building out the structure of your offers, putting parameters in place, putting boundaries in place before you even are working with the client, just saying this is how we work together gives you so much more space. And if you build it intentionally enough, that has no impact, no negative impact on your bottom line. It can actually have a huge positive impact because you have more time because you are serving your client better from a place of spaciousness, and you have more time to put into the other things that you need to do, your systems, your marketing, your goals that build your business, that keep it running, that keep it moving forward. So, to make this a little bit more concrete, let's say that you are a coach and you really want to give value to your client. So you offer them three calls a week and boxer access anytime they want. You can probably see where I'm going with this. If your goal is to work 20 hours a week, max, and one client takes up at least three hours just with calls plus time for boxer every week, you're gonna max out so fast. You're not gonna have time for anything besides client work and you are going to hit a wall. You can only take on so many clients when you are putting so much time into each one of them. Now, if that's what you need to create the result for the client, fine, you have to just charge accordingly, right? So maybe you have you put a lot of support into that client, but you charge so that you only need three clients. Or you change the structure of your offer, pull back a little bit, and give yourself more space. And that requires thought. It requires examining what is it actually that the client needs in order to get that result. They probably don't need three hours every single week of calls to get to the place that you're trying to get them to go, to get to the place that they want to go. You might have to be more strategic and more focused in designing what you are giving them, in designing your pathway, your transformation. So putting the structure around your offers, putting boundaries in place, it might require a little bit more thought, a little bit more effort up front, but it's going to make your life easier. It is going to create better results for your clients. It's going to create a better, more sustainable, long-term business that has room to grow. And it requires intentionality, it requires thought, but it is so worth it. I say this all the time. As a business owner, you get to make the rules. So many of us get stuck in just, you know, thinking the corporate way of you have to work 10 hours a day, or even you have to work eight hours a day, or that there's a specific way that things are supposed to go, that you have to respond to everything immediately, that everything is an emergency. But that is not necessary. You get to make the rules, you get to decide that you want to have a business that is not reactive. You just have to put those boundaries into place. You get to make the rules, but that means you have to actually make the rules. Clearly, I feel very strongly about this, but this is the whole reason I got into business to avoid the reactivity, to create space in my life, but it requires intentionality. It requires vision. You get to create your reality as the business owner, but your offers are going to dictate that. So you have to build out your offers in a way that creates the reality that you want. If this has resonated for you at all, or if you disagree with me, I would love to hear from you. Send me a DM over on Instagram, my handles at artfulcontracts. And I know this was a little bit off from our normal legal content, but it's lining me up today. So we're doing it. Let me know what you think. Do you want to hear some more of my opinions? I have a lot of them. I've been doing this for four years now and seeing a lot of things that I disagree with and a lot of things that are great. So I have some thoughts. You might be getting a little bit more of this. Alright, well, that's it for this time. I'll see you next time.