My attempt at creating Alex Hormozi’s $100 million offer for my web development business
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As my first piece after adopting Gary Vaynerchuk’s mantra “Document, don’t create” I’ll write about my attempt at creating a “$100 million offer” (clickbaity, yes — it’s not my title) for my web development business. The term was coined by Alex Hormozi, and this article is basically a document collecting my notes from taking his course on offer creation, available for free at https://www.acquisition.com/training/offers. This article starts in “Offer creation Part I”, however, I do recommend the previous ones too (especially the value equation, used extensively in this article).
If you want the course in written format, he sells a book for 99 cents on Amazon.
1. Identify the dream outcome
Firstly, I’ve always wanted to help entrepreneurs and small business owners. Incidentally, they often need websites, why they will be my avatar (the person I sell to).
In my mind, entrepreneurs’ dream outcome with a website depends on its use cases, but could probably be summarized as:
- Establishing a digital presence (and thereby forming trust with their customers)
- Getting leads/sales
- Using it as a tool in their business to improve their operations
- Perhaps receiving the occasional compliment from other business owners.
As an entrepreneur, cash is often tight, making the money aspect important. Therefore, my avatar ideally wants all of the above, without spending too much time/money.
To summarize: “I help entrepreneurs and small businesses who want to establish a digital presence and build tools to improve their operations, without breaking the bank.”
(2) List perceived problems and (3) Solutions
I’ll group the avatar’s perceived problems into Hormozi’s four buckets of the value equation. Of course, I began by writing down all problems, and later appended possible solutions.
Dream outcome
It won’t be financially worth it …
- How a website helps you get more sales
- How an internal tool saves you money
I won’t generate any leads
- How a website can get you leads and track them easily
I won’t be visible on google
- How SEO will help your website rank on google and get you customers
It will increase operational complexity
- How to avoid increasing operational complexity with an internal tool, and make sure they decrease it instead!
The software will crash
- How to design websites/tools with nearly 100% uptime
It won’t be secure, will be hacked
- How to design secure websites
Perceived likelihood
It won’t work in my business/industry
- Internal tools that help all industries
- Why you should have a website no matter the industry you’re in
You’re not able to create stunning designs
- How we design websites (with testimonials/portfolio)
People won’t use it
- How to guarantee people will use your website
My business is too complex
- How we create websites tailored to your complex business (w/ examples)
Time delay
It’s going to take too long to set up
- How to create a website in under a day
- How a “coming soon” page can be used to generate hype
- How subdomain can be used to track my update progress
I will need to wait for content updates
- How a CMS can be used for instant content updates
- Guarantee <24h for content change requests
Implementing and using the internal tool in my business will be time-consuming
- How we help you integrate the internal tools into your business
Effort & Sacrifice
Come up with a domain name
- How to come up with a domain name in 5 minutes
Answer my designer’s design questions
- How to convey what you want to a designer
- Create a web form for answering the questions
Add content to the website (write copy)
- How to write content for your websites
- How ChatGPT can be used to write copy and content
Add images to the website (take photos, find images)
- How to take photos for your website
Need to have meetings with me
- How using your messaging platform of choice will eliminate the need for 90% of our meetings
Payments for services
- How to set up recurring payments for our services
2-auth for services (e.g., Mailchimp)
- How to remove 2-auth or add us as admin so we don’t have to bother you asking for authentication codes
4. Sales to fulfillment
Regarding the sales to fulfillment continuum, I’ll stay on the left, i.e., easy to sell, hard to fulfill. Most service businesses are like this (given that this $100 million offer I’m creating will be easy to sell, which is the whole point). The reason for this is that I don’t make much right now ($6.000,00 last year — still a student though). In essence, I don’t need to focus on scaling right now, I need to make enough to be able to spend 100% of my time on this business after I graduate (June 2024). If that entails working 14-hour days, so be it.
(4.5. 10x & 1/10th test)
1/10th: Build websites, then sell them like an eCommerce store (no personal touch, straight up deliver source code)
10x: CTO-like deliverable, take care of all their technical needs, including purchasing laptops for the office, office network set up/maintenance, and integrating all solutions with CRM & other systems they use in their business.
5. Delivery Vehicle
Here, I don’t know if Hormozi said anything about combining multiple problems/solutions into one problem statement, but that’s what I chose to do:
Regarding cost/value, an insight I got from the course was that content, or other deliverables where you do the work once, are “low cost”. This stems from the media leverage, meaning: I do the work once, and the marginal cost of delivery is zero.
(The ones in italic were removed in the following step 6, i.e., only the solutions in bold will be part of offer)
Problem: Getting a website won’t be financially worth it, won’t get any leads, will be hacked, and crash.
- I will design, implement, and monitor a secure website (HTTPS, headers, validation, etc.). I will also implement loggers for relevant KPIs:s, and send monthly updates as to how your website is doing. High-cost, high value
- I could be available for 1h/day whilst you build your own website, answering all kinds of questions. High-cost, medium value
- Provide a step-by-step guide on how to build a secure and conversion-optimized website. Low-cost, medium value
Problem: An internal tool will increase operational complexity and crash/be hacked.
- 1-on-1 meeting discussing internal tools that could help your business. Will be DFY (Done For You), with reliability in mind. High-cost, high value
- Step-by-step support (applied the same way as above). High-cost, medium value
Problem: My site won’t rank on google
- I will write SEO-friendly content & optimize page load times, introduce meta tags, etc. High-cost, high value
- I will refer you to another business doing SEO (make as a bonus in grand slam offer) Low cost, high value
- 1-to-many articles on how to rank on google. Low-cost, medium value
Problem: It’s going to take to long to set up & get content updates pushed to production
- Set up a coming soon page to generate hype and offer content updates within 24h. Low-cost, high value
- Build/learn how to use a CMS for them to update their content themselves. High-cost, high value
- Use a subdomain for incremental pushes so they can follow along and see the progress. Low-cost, high-value
Problem: Coming up w/ a domain name, content, and images to use on the website
- Write one article for each of the problem statements above. Low-cost, high value
- Write content, take images & come up with domain names for them. High-cost, high value
- Come up with a domain name, and use chatGPT and Dalle/Canva for images. Medium cost, medium value
Problem: Answer questions about design will take time & effort
- Set them up in a quick meeting with my designer. High-cost, medium value
- Create a web questionnaire that’s easy to fill in. Low-cost, medium value
- Create a group chat where questions and answers can be shared. Medium cost, medium value
Problem: Payment for services
- Offer online checkout. Low-cost, high value
- Offer recurring automatic payments. Low-cost, high value
- Establish personal contact with CFO so they don’t have to deal with any of the payment inquiries. High cost, high value.
Problem: Meetings about website and 2-auth (basically, I need to take up their time)
- Set up messaging on whatever platform they prefer, being available constantly (12h/day, 7 days/week). High-cost, high value
6. Offer stacking
So, now I’ll just need to identify two high-cost, high-value offers, and stack them with low-medium cost, high-value offers.
Not to make this article longer than it has to be, I simply crossed out the offers I will not keep. In general, I have more high-cost offers than Hormozi recommends, but I’m ready to work hard, and if it guarantees more cash flow — that’s a positive. With regards to the payments for services, I really want that to be as easy as possible (because the payments is what keeps the lights on), therefore I’ll simply “do them all.”
To summarize:
I will design, implement, and monitor a secure website (HTTPS, headers, validation, etc.). I will also implement loggers for relevant KPIs:s, and send monthly updates as to how your website is doing. In addition, we’ll have a 1-on-1 meeting to discuss internal tools that could help your business and implement the best ones.
On top of that, we will …
- Within 24 hours, we’ll set up a “coming soon” page to generate hype for your customers
- During development, all updates will be pushed to a subdomain so you can follow our progress at any time.
- We’ll also set up a chat on whatever messaging platform you prefer, where we will be available 12h/a day, 7 days/week.
- You’ll get to either (a) a 1-on-1 meeting with the designer to discuss what the website will look like, or (b) fill out a web questionnaire whenever you want.
- We’ll set up whatever payment structure works for you (1-on-1 with CFO, online checkout, recurring payments)
- You’ll get a free 1-hour consultation from an SEO agency
7. Extras
… to be used to get them “across the line” if the value above was not enough:
Bonuses
- Hosting 50% off the first year
- Find different service businesses that can offer free consulting services/calls. Will talk to SEO agencies, social media marketing, etc.
Guarantees
- I will personally be available 12h/day, 7 days/week, and reply within the hour.
- If we implement an internal tool, and you don’t feel it helps your business, you don't have to pay for it!
Urgency
- We will only take on 5 clients in total to ensure the degree of availability. Right now, we have 3 clients, meaning we have 2 slots left!
Reflection on urgency: Turning a loss, i.e., my firm is not large enough to handle hundreds of clients, into a win!]
Final thoughts
Threefold:
(1) I will have to A/B test everything written here, and that’ll probably take a while. I’ll post some reflections along the way.
(2) I have no idea if this is valuable to anybody besides me, if not: sorry, if it was: great!
(3) The problems (& solutions!) I came up with today are most certainly not all-encompassing, meaning a major overhaul of this “$100 million offer” will probably be done down the line — after I’ve had more client experience!
