Creating Offerings (Products)
In the original guide I used "offerings" and "products" interchangeably; sorry for the confusion. This is my guide to creating the different kinds, from my own experience of building each one.
Writing
I started writing every day in June 2024. I write unless I am physically unable or traveling without a device. Writing daily seems hard, and over time I realized it is only hard when you do not have a path defined. You think whether or not you write. So why can't you write what you are thinking? Because what you are thinking is not aligned with the path you present to people. This is why walking your talk matters: when you are living the path, everything you think is relevant to it.
You do not have to publish every day. But writing a lot accrues benefits later: book material, things for people to binge, a record of how your thinking developed.
Video
Camera-shy? I was too. I am an extreme guy, so I decided to shoot a lot of videos because I had a lot to say, and over time I got the ability to talk on and on about a topic, plus a thousand-odd YouTube subscribers as a side effect.
What do I have to say about being camera-shy? Surprisingly, nothing. It is easy now to be a VTuber or use text to speech and I have no bias against it. I just do not go that way, because I like the minimal number of steps. If I record a two-minute video, the whole thing takes three minutes: turn on OBS, record, upload, write the title. Can you do more? Sure. Is it necessary? No.
Audio
Many people in this program have podcasts. Host one, or be a guest on someone else's. Podcasts have a different feel from video: less speedy delivery of core ideas, more atmosphere. And why not both? Upload the episodes to YouTube and let people choose how to consume them.
Interactive
Against my better judgment I once made a quiz on Typeform. It was simple and it took hours, and I consider myself a decent technologist. I hate to admit it: it was one of my best consumed offerings. If you are willing to learn how quiz makers work and structure your quiz so it is easy to build on your platform, quizzes can be one of the best entries into your pathway. Beyond quizzes, forms and anything with a user-input component count as interactive.
Self-study
I have made a lot of e-books because I write a lot. Google Docs is a fine tool for it, and sometimes I hire artists for the PDFs. Templates and font suggestions are a search away. For design, most people use Canva; I have found Adobe's templates effective for my purposes.
Automated
This is likely the hardest kind, because it needs two things: technical aptitude and patience. I mean ads and funnels. Both take work to set up and then do a lot for you.
Ads feel like filling out a tax form; there are many parameters. The platforms have onboarding templates for a first campaign, and once you run one you will likely get a business development contact from the platform (Reddit did that for me). Funnels are hard because you have to think through the complete user flow with its edge cases. You would not guess how many times I sent people to nowhere after telling them the guide was on my website.
On patience: both need time to observe. The checklist asks you to keep an automated offering live for at least a month; that is what tells you how it actually performs. And remember the human intention behind the machine: you are using technology to invite people onto your path. Make a deep offer with it.