Your offer ecosystem is how your creative offerings branch out of your artistry, fit together in the world, increase your income, and expand your reach.
In this episode, I share how I’ve crafted my offer ecosystem over the past decade, and I tell you the stories of how a few of my offers have evolved and even ended.
Tune in to learn about—
What an offer ecosystem is
My favorite ways to get ideas for your offer ecosystem
How to choose a container for an offer
Why one-on-one work can be a great place to start
Charging for your offerings
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“I love seeing all of the different ways that our offerings support each other and play off each other and intersect with each other and bring more art into the world. That’s what I hope more than anything — that your art can reach more people. ”
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Transcript
Introduction to Common Shapes and Offer Ecosystems
[0:00] Hello and welcome to Common Shapes, a podcast about practices, systems, and rituals for a creative life.
And in your creative life, I hope that you create many different offerings over the course of your beautiful life. I hope they look like books and art shows and texts and letters and community projects and all of the ways that you integrate your activism and joy and passions into everything that you do. So today we're going to talk about your offer ecosystem.
We talk about business ecosystems and creative ecosystems in the gardens of creation here on Common Shapes.
If you don't already know, I am Marley Grace. Most people call me Mar.
I am the host of this podcast. I am a teacher. I am a dancer.
I'm a writer. I'm a quilter.
And I am a shape maker.
I love thinking about all of the shapes that our offerings make and how we can invent new shapes.
[1:26] And how the shapes interact with each other, right?
It's like, you don't have to just make a bumper sticker, you can make a bumper sticker about your radio show.
[1:38] If you're listening to this the day this podcast comes out or the morning after, I would love to invite you to take Teaching as a Practice, a three-week class for visioning your offering, building your dream syllabus, and launching and teaching your own online class.
Invitation to "Teaching as a Practice" Class
[1:57] Head to marleygrace.space to learn more about class and sign up. It's not too late. I'd love to have you there. Every class is recorded. You have lifetime access. There are payment plans. There are scholarships. May you show up as your most abundant self even if you have no idea what to teach.
If you're like, I don't even want to come to class if I don't know what I want to teach, then my next suggestion, my next offering to remind you, dear listener, is the Creative Ideation Portal, which is a three-day guide for visioning your projects, bringing them to life.
If the online class isn't right for you right now, take your ideas and put them through the portal.
You'll get clear. You'll find joy. You'll find inspiration there.
MarleyGrace.space slash Common Shapes is where you can find the Creative Ideation Portal, all the show notes, all the podcast episodes, and you can find all of my online classes and offerings on my website.
Creating an offer ecosystem: Introduction and ideas
[3:08] Creating an offer ecosystem. You, dear artist, are amazing.
You are prolific. You are ready to bring work into the world, but you're not quite sure what it is, or you have too many ideas, right?
So in episode two, we talk about creating our creative containers, which is similar to the offer ecosystem. They sort of talk to each other, right?
My web, as Luqueza would say, includes teaching online classes, My free offering, which is the Creative Ideation Portal.
My newsletter, which is both free and has the option to become a paid subscriber.
[4:01] Writing books, this podcast, and the thing I added back in most recently was one-on-one creative advising.
Now, if you've been listening to this podcast, you might've noticed that I stopped talking about Flexible Office, which was the digital coworking space that I was running.
So that was part of my offer ecosystem that no longer is, and I'll talk a little bit about why that is later in the episode.
Those are some of the very basic things to put in an ecosystem.
Other examples would be physical objects. So let's say I was in a season where I wanted to make quilts to sell.
I wanted to have an art show of quilts. That would be an example of something I might add onto my ecosystem.
Perhaps I want to teach a real life dance class series series at the Township Hall.
Maybe I want to add group coaching.
[5:08] Perhaps I want to have a book club. Perhaps I want to start an online membership community.
Right, so flexible office sort of existed in the online community world of offerings.
In episode two, again, we talk about all the different kinds of creative containers you can have.
And so today I wanna talk more about how we pick which ones to do, how we decide if they make money or not, and how much money they each cost or make, and just how to decide what season it's all in, right?
So follow me on this journey.
Welcome to the journey of creating your offer ecosystem as an artist, as a creative person, as an entrepreneur, As a small business owner, welcome to the journey.
As always, I suggest you make a list, but I want you to make a list of all the ways.
[6:18] You like making money, right?
So you might make two columns. One that's the ways you like making money and one that's the things that you love doing that you maybe could make money on.
So I wanna be clear that when I'm talking about offerings, I am talking about making money.
I'm talking about your job.
But I'm also talking about maybe a hobby that makes some income, right?
I think we can be loose about what is a job, what is work, and what is adding in commerce to the things we already do, right?
So if you're listening and you're like, well, I still have a nine to five, and I don't know if I need like a whole offer ecosystem, that's okay, it could be as simple as Maybe you wanna teach a one-off online class that's two hours long and also have a newsletter that promotes it and the newsletter is free.
That could be as simple as what your offer ecosystem is. Is a two-hour class and a newsletter to tell people about it.
That can be the whole ecosystem, right? So I've been building mine over almost 11 years of time that it's gonna be bigger and it's gonna be always shifting.
So like I mentioned, I was including Flexible Office and then I removed Flexible Office.
[7:41] Flexible Office started as a seasonal offering. When I first released it in early 2022, it happened for two months.
And then I took a month break and then I did it for another two months and then I didn't bring it back until early this year, 2023.
And it went so well and it was so fun and people were so excited about it that I thought, I'll just have this be all the time and cost way less money.
[8:10] And I can't exactly describe how I came to that. I think it was really like the desire was there, right?
So when you're creating your offers, pay attention to the desires of your students, your readers, your community, your audience, but also pay attention to your desires and the seasons that you make things in.
I was really paying attention to like, these people want twice a week co-working, they want it all the time and they want it to be two hours every time.
And if it's always happening, I'll charge them less money so it's more accessible.
You could pay $0, $5, 11, 22, right? It was sliding scale.
[8:56] And so we started and I thought the way to keep it sort of feeling seasonal, was we would do a monthly visioning session.
So, what happened was...
Summer began to creep in and I realized the exchange for my time and energy wasn't enough.
So it wasn't bringing in enough money for me to feel like it was correct for my time exchange and my season of creation really changes in the summer.
I like to teach a little bit and write, but I don't necessarily want to sit in community with others. I want to be outside more. I want to be practicing in my garden. I want to be planting literal seeds so that in the fall and winter, my projects can sort of come to life.
And I'm sort of wishing for more time with others in a digital space. And so I had tried to foresee this and planned to take August and February off of Flexible Office, but it was still just like, it started to sit weird in my ecosystem and feel like not the right thing.
[10:19] So I made the hard decision to end it early. And to stop doing it, I had put it in the platform of Mighty Networks. I'll say to anyone considering their own offerings that a con of using Mighty networks is you cannot pause subscriptions.
So I couldn't just pause it for longer. I couldn't say, oh, okay, actually, I want to take three months off in the summer and then pause everyone's subscription. There wasn't a way to do that.
For instance, like on Substack, if you wanted to take a month off, you could pause the subscriptions if you want.
Of course, a lot of your readers are happy to pay for artists to take breaks.
I don't think you need to pause subscriptions, but let's say you have a more community-based, interactive-based sub-stack or Patreon or offering of a subscription like that, there's usually a way to pause that membership.
And in Mighty Networks, there was not. And so I did make the decision to end flexible office.
Early and just be open to bringing it back for a new season if I wanted to down the road.
So again, whether you have a small offering ecosystem or a big one, pay attention to.
[11:40] What are your readers or community audience, what are they wanting? What are they noticing?
And a great way to start noticing that is in one-on-one relationships. So whether you you see people in a one-on-one advising, or maybe you're a therapist, or you're a service provider, and you're a chiropractor, or a massage therapist, you know, whatever it is, this can also just be in your relationships, right?
So if you have a relationship with a friend, or a loved one, or even one of your readers who you get a lot of feedback from, pay attention to what themes and patterns of devotion of devotion are coming up for them, right?
[12:25] What direction do they want to go in? And that is how you can start to sort of formulate what's next.
And then you get to decide what container it goes in.
So for instance, a huge theme in my own life is reclaiming my attention from both the systems that take it and the tech that takes it and the time, et cetera.
Anything that steals my attention or that is built to take my attention, I'm questioning. I'm reclaiming that time and that energy and that precious resource of my brain. And so I write about that often in my newsletter, but I'm also working on a bigger offering of a book that will eventually sort of encapsulate all of this research and thinking about it that I'm doing. Now, because I'm so in process with it right now, I wouldn't develop an online class about that.
Before I was thinking about it as a book, I did develop an online class about it, right?
Cultivating Creative Attention is a two-hour class that I teach.
[13:35] But now I'm just in a different season of it. I'm digging deeper. I'm going deeper into the research of it. So what I mean to say is right now, I'm using the energy of reclaiming the attention. That part of what I'm thinking about is going towards the offering of a future book, a long-term project with short-term writing in between. It's not asking me for new online class material right now. Now quilt class took a break. It's sort of asking me to come back. I'm really feeling the people being like, we really want quilt class. And I get to pause because people were saying they really wanted quilt class before and I knew I needed a break from it.
I knew in order to be a good teacher and excited and lit up in the way that I wanted to be about quilts, I had to step away. I had to get excited about going back to school to learn about quilts.
[14:34] And now I'm ready to bring back the class in some way, shape, or form. It's not totally clear yet to me what it's going to look like though. Is it going to look exactly the same? I don't know.
It needs a little more time to brew. And if you listen to the episode, what to do when you don't know what to do next, you'll know that I get that information from morning pages, list making, movement, calling a friend, right?
These different tools that I use to get clear on the offerings, right?
So you're not just making all this up from scratch in your little brain, you are gonna be using these different tools to get clear on what it is that wants to come forth.
One-on-one work as a source of income and research
[15:26] The other thing about one-on-one work is it's a way to charge money for your time and also be gathering information, right?
So whether it's creative advising, creative consulting, branding work, getting hired to redo someone's website.
You know, anything that you're brought in for your work and your knowledge, that is a way to generate income while also researching at the same time, right?
So I've just started taking one-on-one clients again in little short spurts, right?
I open my books, I tell people about that, and people sign up for this guidance.
And because I recently handed over my Instagram password to my virtual assistant, Hannah, shout out to Hannah, I have so much more capacity for taking on one-on-one clients, right?
I don't feel myself burnt out from responding to and talking to.
[16:31] My students and readers in the realm of Instagram. And that's helping me have better boundaries with my newsletter as well, and even in my friendships.
So I have that capacity to support other artists in a one-on-one container of creative consulting and advising and supporting them on their own projects.
Offering creative consulting and advising to support other artists
[16:52] If you're listening to this and you want more one-on-one support, shoot me an email, check out marleygrace.space to see if my books are open.
I would love to support you in that way. So that has been a part of my offers on and off since 2015, right? So when I had a store, which was a huge offering, right? A store that was an artist residency, an art gallery, and the shop, I added that as an offering because so many people started asking me like, how do I use social media to market my business? You're so good at that.
How do I set up an online shop? How do I get a Squarespace website?
You know, it was like these really basic new things to business.
And that was that reflection of friends saying, hey, you're good at this thing, I need to understand more about it, and then creating an offering around that.
[17:47] Now, you might know that you're good at something, right? This goes back to that first list I encouraged you to make.
What are the ways you love making money? and what are the things you love to do that you could make money at?
[18:01] Now, I'm loving gardening. I don't wanna start making money at that.
You know, I know that that is a slippery slope for me in terms of how to not always be working.
[18:12] But I will write about my gardening practice in my newsletter.
[18:20] So see how sometimes we have offerings that are writing about, talking about, teaching about the thing that we do, but aren't the thing that we do itself.
So I would never try to teach a gardening class, right? That's a hobby, it's an experiment, but I'm always writing about my hobbies and experiment, that's one of my offerings.
So maybe my main offering is my weekly newsletter and this podcast where I talk about being in process with the things that I do.
So navigating what's making money and what's not making money.
So again, just because you're good at something doesn't mean you need to immediately turn it into a one-on-one service that you offer, right? You might be great at building Squarespace websites and never want to do that for another person.
So you also might want to be able to release things in seasons, right?
So when I took flexible office away, I needed to create a new offering to supplement that income, right?
[19:22] I didn't have a flush enough income. I don't have a book advance right now.
I didn't have a new online class set up.
So I took away flexible office. I get to pick into my hat of offerings and think, oh, what else could I work on right now?
And this was there for me and perfectly in alignment with not having access to social media anymore.
I was like, perfect. I feel ready again to take on one-on-one clients.
That's how the offer ecosystem shifted.
[19:53] Another thing is, a lot of times my readers and my students are asking me for a more consistent sort of community space, like a membership site, like a Mighty Networks, and that's just something I know I can't give.
I know that I don't want to be constantly facilitating a space.
I love doing things in season.
So that's why I did the Artist's Way book study. And then I do make a container that makes it need one more step to access it, like becoming a paying subscriber of my newsletter, that allows you to access the book study, right?
And then that is like, I don't host a Zoom every single week for that.
There are two Zooms in the 12 weeks, and then each week you get an email, a pep talk, and an opportunity to share about how your week went with the Artist's Way.
That is an offer, right? A book study can be an offer, and you are allowed to charge for a container to hold it in, right?
You're allowed to charge money for your offerings. I don't know, that sounds so simple, but I just feel in this moment like wanting to say that.
Expanding Your Reach and Increasing Income
[21:06] Now, all of these things are about branching out of your artistry, right?
So if you're listening to this and you are a painter or a weaver, or a ceramicist, or do body work.
You know, whatever your thing is that you do, these are all about increasing your income and expanding your reach, right? That's what building an offer ecosystem is really about.
If you make objects and you sell them.
[21:37] That's beautiful, and you might be looking for more, right? There's only so much time and energy that you can put towards creation, and this allows opportunity to charge more for your time, and to reach more people who might not be able to access your work because of time and space, because of price, whatever it is, right? So part of creating the different offers is also about having different price points for our work, right? My one-on-one sessions are a very different price than a zine that I make, right? So if someone isn't at the point of, being able to afford or access a one-on-one session with me, I know that they can access my newsletter or one of my $44 classes, or even one of my $400 classes that offers so so much more knowledge than you could get in just a one-on-one session.
Creating Different Price Points and Offerings
[22:38] But the one-on-one session will serve my students who want deeper understanding of their own process and what they're trying to invent in the world, right?
So someone who's going to take the World Needs Your Online class very well might want to also have a one-on-one session to go even deeper with their ideas.
[22:58] So if you're creating an idea for a class, adding on a one-on-one session to advise on the thing that you do or teach in class is a great idea to expand the resources that you offer to other people as well as increase your income.
[23:17] Again, let's say the ecosystem is really small and it's like a two-hour class with just your newsletter that tells them about them. Maybe it's even like a 30-minute call that's a hundred bucks.
Or maybe it's a tarot reading that's a three-card pull, a $75 add-on for class.
You know, I'm just spitballing numbers here.
That might sound high to you. That might sound low.
Of course, some people who read tarot charge $450 for an hour.
Many prices in the offerings world, right? So I'm just throwing out some ideas for you to start thinking about how these things start to add and relate to each other. So of course, let's say you're listening and you're like, I'm a fine artist and I don't want to add any of these sort of online business type offerings.
Adding Analog Offerings to Connect with Your Art Show
[24:08] I totally hear you and I totally understand. So let's talk about some analog offerings you could with the ad.
[24:15] Let's say that you are going to have a show of paintings in an art gallery. Another offer that you could add is a zine that goes with it. You could hire a local Resograph printer, illustrator, artist to create some prints of your paintings, right? So this could also help. Maybe your paintings are $35,000 each and so you want to make an exclusive print that goes with the art show that are $50 each and then a zine that goes with the art show that are $15 each, right?
[24:53] That way everyone who comes to your art show could possibly leave with something that makes them feel connected to the show. You could also print out a free piece of paper with with your favorite things that you've been thinking about that inspired you about the art show, right?
So there's so many different options to even add to your current art practice that aren't necessarily digital offerings or one-on-ones, but it's just more ways to give people access to the art that you're making.
I can't help but think of like Bread and Puppet where it's like you can go and see this beautiful parade and be a part of the puppetry of it all.
Or when you're far away, you can order a print from them or a calendar or different things and cards.
There's so many different parts of that ecosystem that make everyone feel like they can sort of be a part of this thing, even if they aren't there in real life.
Documenting and archiving as an integral part of work
[25:58] I want to talk about the documenting side also of our offerings, right? So my newsletter is really a practice in research and documenting and archiving the work that I do every day, right?
So I'm photographing, I'm being photographed, I'm using film photography and writing as a way to document my experience of the world.
Now, I have decided, or at some point, it naturally evolved into being my job, but it's also just my work and my practice at the same time.
So part of the offering could also be the experience of documenting.
You can use social media to do that as well. Maybe it's making a fun reel or stories.
And again, I will always stand by, I will never make a reel, and you never have to make a reel to be an artist and to reach people.
But shout out to people who make really good and cool reels, or TikToks, or whatever the kids are working on these days.
You know, you can use social media and a digital presence to document and share about the process of your work, right?
That's part of creating this web of how everything fits together.
[27:19] So go back to your list-making exercise and start to write out all the different things that.
You could offer and the containers that they come in and the prices they could be and how they all relate to each other, right? So having things that cost less than $50, the things that cost more than $50, the things that cost more than hundreds of dollars, the things that are thousands of dollars, right? You might not want to do one-on-one sessions just randomly with people because that burns you out, you might want to create more of a package. You might want to ask someone what their budget is first and then design a package for them that offers consulting on different things that you can give them, their brand identity, or designing things for them if you're a designer. You might want to just consult and not do the design part of things, right? So So there's all of these different ways to sort of create packages for people, whether it's one person or a company, or you are one person or in a company, you're going to look at the different themes and topics you might wanna think about or teach about and decide, is this a quick two-hour class?
Creating different packages and formats for teaching and sharing expertise
[28:40] Is this a longer online class?
Is this a book? You know, where does this go?
[28:45] I really think that having something like a podcast or a newsletter will help you see what the offerings are and what wants to emerge.
Both from hearing back from your readers and listeners, what they're excited about, what feels cool to them, what they're gravitating towards, that's gonna lead you to think, oh, that would make a really cool online class, or this is really exciting to me every time I think about it, maybe I'll wanna make a book about that someday, right?
So the more you find yourself wanting to write about a specific topic over and over, you might think, you know, This could make a really cool book.
[29:24] So, there are so many offerings to make and so many sort of ecosystems to create out of them.
And also, just remember that you get to shift them when they aren't working for you anymore.
And having sort of backup ideas is great.
And you could have a totally digital online business and suddenly be like, you know what?
I want to have an art show.
Or you could be an artist making physical work and suddenly be like, you know what?
I want to try to teach an online class.
It's not too late.
It's not too early. You're right on time. Like you are allowed to create the offerings that you dream of and that you want to see in the world.
I mean, I think that is really the biggest thing is I usually create what I wish I had, or I usually create what I don't see in the world.
Right.
And that's where you are the only one there will ever be.
You are the only you we have, and your perspective is so important.
So as you're thinking about this, I want you to notice offering fatigue, which would be if you're offering too many different things, or if the fatigue is coming from thinking there are too many of the thing already.
[30:48] Right? So in terms of offering too much to your audience, that's where it's, I think, good to take things out and put things in.
So I wouldn't necessarily be like, I have flexible office and my class and this and this and this.
It's like, I try to pace out how I talk about these things and when I offer them.
For instance, I took away flexible office and put in creative advising.
And I only offer a certain number of them because I know I need time for my writing, for my podcast, and for the other things that I offer.
So make sure you're balancing that and figuring out what that dance is for you.
In terms of thinking there's too many things in the world, I think that's gonna be a wound for artists till the end of time, right?
The like wound of, well, there's already so many newsletters, there's already so many podcasts.
It's like, yes, but you have your own unique audience and readership and community of people, who are ready to learn from you and support you and be with you.
So I want you to really think about that before you just write it off as another random thing.
[32:03] I love seeing all of the different ways that our offerings support each other and play off each other and intersect with each other and bring more art into the world. That's what I hope, you know, more than anything is that your art can reach more people. So if you're out there making ceramic mugs or you're out there working at a plant store and creating different packages of plants and seeds for us to buy for our gardens.
If you are making quilts for art shows, whatever you're doing, if you're doing a really physical labor of art making and you are looking to reach more people in a digital way or a real life way, the printed multiple, whatever it is, I hope that you do it.
I hope that you do it in small steps, little by little.
[32:58] It doesn't all have to be at once. Practice shifting your offerings just a little bit when they aren't working for you.
Practice throwing one new thing in and seeing how it feels.
And again, go back to episode two if you wanna learn more about creative containers and the way these episodes are all starting to sort of play off of each other.
Check out the Art of Newsletters if you want more about newsletters and definitely check out episode four, Art as Service, which I hope you keep coming back to to remember the importance of your work in the world.
[33:34] And if you wanna shoot some of your ideas through the portal, check out the Creative Ideation Portal, the three-day guide for visioning all of these offerings, bringing them into the world.
You can find it at marleygrace.space slash Common Shapes. And just one more time, I would love to see you in class.
We start tomorrow, July 13th. If you're listening to this the day it comes out.
Otherwise, every class is recorded.
You have lifetime access. We meet Thursdays in July, the 13th, the 20th, the 27th.
It's going to be so fun. We're gonna vision, build and launch our online classes.
We're gonna make beautiful offerings to this world in the form of teaching.
And I hope you'll join me, marleygrace.space, or in the show notes.
It's where you can find all the information. Thank you for coming on this journey with me today to talk about the offering ecosystem that all artists can and should be thinking about and making to stay in their own practice and of benefit to those they may serve.
Acknowledgments to the Contributors
[34:50] Thank you to everyone who makes Common Shapes possible. Thank you to Lukeza Brampman Verissimo for our art. Thank you to Saltbreaker for our music and Softer Sound Studio for editing.
Thank you, dear listener, for sharing this show on social media or in your own newsletter or on your podcast. I just heard someone said their therapist recommended it to them. That is the the greatest honor.
Thank you to therapists everywhere for doing the Lord's work, and thank you for recommending my podcast to your clients.
Thank you for giving us a five-star review or writing us a rating, sharing it far and wide.
It means the world to me.
Thank you for being a listener of Common Shapes.
Common Shapes is an ad free listener supported show. To receive emails when new episodes come out and get bonus content subscribe to my newsletter