If you ever think to yourself, “If I just give more value, more people will buy.” If you think to yourself, “If I just give enough, if I teach enough, if I help enough, more people will buy.” But then you're still overworking, over delivering, showing up constantly, being incredibly helpful, teaching everything you know, and not seeing your sales scale, then it's probably because of what I call the value illusion.

The value illusion is this set or combination of beliefs around value that aren't actually aligned with what your people, what your audience thinks is valuable. And it can lead to some really common mistakes that entrepreneurs make when they're trying to create value. So I want to go through a few of those, some of the most common ones, and help you see what to focus on instead: to generate more demand and more sales by truly creating a different type of value and not just focusing on the value that you might assume people want.

So the first mistake that I want to touch on, that I feel to a degree is like something I say so much that it might come across like a broken record, but I don't know that I can say it enough. And I feel like I have to keep saying it and keep saying it in different ways and about different topics to help you really understand the importance of it. Because so much of the work that I do around scaling not only your business, but your freedom comes down to this concept. And so today I'm going to talk about it in these terms.

More does not equal more valuable. More does not equal more valuable. I really want you to hear it. So I wanted to repeat myself there and make sure that you soak this in.

A lot of entrepreneurs assume that giving more, adding more, whether that's more access, more features, more offers, more options, creates more value. They think that in order to justify the price, in order to convince someone to say yes, it needs to have a lot of stuff in it. But that's not true.

When you really think about what your people want, the result that they want, you have to remind yourself that no one wants to do more work than they have to do to get the result, if given the option to get the result either way. But one option is, “I only give you exactly what you need, and you get the result. I only tell you exactly what you need to do. I give you a very simple, doable, clear process to follow, and you get the result.” If that's one option, or the other option is, “I'm going to give you everything that you might possibly need. I'm going to record and cover everything that you might ever encounter so that you're prepared. I'm going to ask that you show up and commit to being at all of these calls and talking to me every single day so that you can get the result.”

If they truly believed that they could get the result either way, which would they choose? Of course they would choose the simple version.

The problem is we all have this tendency to think that it's harder than it really is. We have this tendency to think that more support, more time, more effort makes it more likely to get the result, which just isn't true. And so it's your job first to shift your own mindset around this and then to help your potential customers and your customers see what they actually need versus what they don't to get the results that they want. To help them see that more isn't more valuable. Less is actually more valuable if they still get the result.

When you add more, when you over deliver and overwhelm your audience, it doesn't create a better experience for them, it doesn't create better results, and it actually weakens your demand over time. When instead you can be really simple and clear and confident, you're gonna reach more people, convert better, and help them get where they came for. So remember, more isn't more valuable. That is an illusion.

The second mistake is that business owners think that value is connected to delivery. And they focus so much on what happens after clients work with them, and they forget that value starts before delivery. You've probably been taught that what happens inside of the offer matters, and to get clients results, you really need to focus on the customer experience and the customer journey. I talk about that. I just talked about it in the last episode, because it's true, right? You've been taught to focus there, but you can't only focus there.

Most people think value is only what's delivered after someone buys, and they forget that, actually, if your prospects don't feel the value, if they don't experience value from you on the front end, they're never going to make it to your delivery. Value is created through your marketing and sales as well. Before the offer is ever purchased, before someone ever talks to you, before they work with you, you are creating value. You're creating value by giving them results ahead of time. You're creating value by giving them an opportunity to buy and to work with you.

And you need to remember that marketing is value, selling is value. Marketing and sales are valuable. They are valuable not just to you. And that's the mistake, right? That's really the piece that a lot of people miss. Entrepreneurs feel bad about marketing and selling. They think that they're just doing it for them, that it's only valuable to them as the business. But marketing and selling is really valuable to your prospects as well. And we're going to talk in a moment about what makes it especially valuable. But it's important for you to understand that you're not marketing and selling just for you to get something.

You are giving value. Giving people an experience of value upfront in your marketing and your sales process makes it more likely for them to work with you on the back end, for them to become a paying customer. And if your marketing and your selling doesn't deliver value upfront, like I said, they're never going to make it to delivery. And there's no amount of backend support in your offer. You can be the most brilliant person in the world, you can get clients incredible results, but there's no amount of work on the delivery side that's going to fix the lack of value given and experienced, the value demonstrated and offered in your marketing and sales.

The third mistake that I want to touch on today is around specifically the marketing side, and it's that there's too much focus on information. Information alone does not create demand. Information alone is not what's valuable. And every day information becomes less and less and less valuable. So the world is changing. People used to pay for information. There was a whole phase of marketing where just giving helpful information, how-to content, was incredible. It was easy. But that's not what moves the needle anymore.

People can find information and answers anywhere. And sure, you could provide it in a little more convenient way, and people might pay for the convenience. But even that, I think, is shifting and changing. And so it's not just about how-to content or more information. And we really need to stop defaulting to that. We need to stop leaning on information to prove our value.

And sure, deliver some helpful content. I'm not saying cut out every bit of teaching, how-to content, or information from your marketing. It's an important piece, but it's only a piece. We need activating content that really shifts perspectives and behaviors. High value content isn't just the content that teaches someone something. It's not just the step-by-step, do this, do that. It's the content where they feel a shift, whether that's a shift in their thinking, a shift in their feelings, a shift in the action that they take.

We need content that gets them to move, gets them to change. So problem awareness content helps them understand. It helps them shift their thinking and understand what the real problem is. Belief shifting content helps them understand that the way they're thinking about something isn't the most helpful, most resourced, best way to think about it. Connection content helps them feel something. It helps them feel more connected to you, helps them feel more connected to themselves and what's possible. And activation content gets them moving. It gets them taking action, helps them again see what's possible, but act on it.

That's what's moving people to buy. It's not just, “Here's some information, here's how to do this, here's the three steps.” It's deeper than that. It's more nuanced. It's more layered.

And maybe you're doing a lot of marketing, you're putting out a ton of content, and you don't have the demand that you want. And you're thinking to yourself, “Demand takes a lot of time to build. It just takes time.” And you just keep waiting patiently, doing the same thing, waiting for more demand, waiting for more sales.

But you don't need more time, you don't need more content, you don't need more information. You need the right content mix that changes people, that gets them to move.

If people aren't buying at the level that you want right now, and if you're here, my clients, I know, are getting sales, you get clients results. So it's not that there are no sales. But if you're not at the level that you want, that you have dreamt of, and maybe you've decided isn't possible for you, I want you to know that it is. But the way to get it isn't by doing what you've been doing.

If you've been trying to create more value for people, if you've been trying to give more, teach more, help more, and you're not getting the results that you want, then you're trying to give value in a way that's misaligned with how value is received and experienced by your audience. It might be the value illusion at play.

You've been overwhelming your audience. Instead of giving them only what they need for results, you've been building your delivery and focused on giving value there instead of building demand. And you've been trying to give more information instead of activation. This is the shift. This is what's required to move the needle.

You still need value, so I want you to understand that. I'm not saying not to create value. Value is an important part of the demand formula. It's just that what you've been thinking is value has been a little off, not quite aligned with what your audience sees as value. And to be clear, it's going to keep changing. What was value 20 years ago when I started my career in marketing and business consulting is not what was valuable 10 years later, and it's not what's valuable today. It's going to keep evolving, and you have to evolve with it and not stay stuck in the value illusion.

My goal today was to open your eyes to that illusion, and my hope is now you see things differently and I've at least gotten you to reexamine your views on value and to continue to reflect and evolve them. And I want you to know that when you do that, it will lead to more demand and more sales. So don't get complacent with your definition of value. Really be open to learning, to constantly learning what value is and how your people want to experience it, and go create that.