#259: Is It Possible to Scale Your Creative Services?

Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast, helping you propel your writing business to a whole new level. And now, here's your host, Ed Gandia.

Hey there. Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast. I am your host, Ed Gandia, and this is the podcast for business writers and copywriters who want to earn more and less time doing work they love for better clients. You can find detailed show notes for this episode@b2b launcher.com episode 259. Those notes include a summary of our discussion here, as well as any links to resources we mention during the show. As a business coach, I work with a lot of established six figure writers, copywriters and marketing professionals. And one of the challenges that many of these professionals come to me for is scaling their business. So many of them started out dreaming about at some point earning a high five figure income. And then they got there and they started dreaming about earning a six figure income. Then they got there and found themselves earning more than they ever had before. But now they're working nonstop. So they've essentially sold their entire work capacity to the highest bidder, if you will. The idea that they're trapped in a money for time cycle becomes very clear to them. Now they see the limitations of this business model. The income is great, but they have no life. They have no margin, no flexibility, and eventually no joy. And that's when the question of how to scale their operations starts to surface. They wonder how they can keep growing or how they can scale back a bit without negatively impacting their income. But very quickly they also start shooting down these ideas because they have this belief that you can't really scale creative services. So when the product is your ideas and all the acquired knowledge and wisdom inside your head, I mean, how can you possibly detach yourself from the business? How could you have others working under you if they can't do the work as well as you do? So what do you do if you're the bottleneck? Right? And these are all great questions. Before we dive in, I should mention that scaling your creative business is not for everyone. So before you start going down this path, you need to have a serious conversation with yourself about what you want and why you want that very important, that big. Why, why you want that. That's really what drives everything. Because let me tell you, this path is definitely filled with challenges. And if you're not sure why you're doing this, you could easily get on the wrong path and burn yourself out. And then you'll wonder, wait a minute, what was the whole point of this to begin with. That's really a sad place to end up. So in this episode, I'll say this. We're not going to go deep into the how of all this, okay? That's beyond the scope of this podcast. Rather, what I thought would be more helpful is to get you thinking about this the right way. Because you know from experience, I know that making big, successful shifts in your business starts by asking yourself better questions. Okay? Better questions. Make the best decisions possible. Then, you know what? I think I've done my job here for today. All right, so I got three basic questions for you. Do exceptionally well. So what kind of work do you do exceptionally well? Of course, you can interpret the question however you want, but this is really meant more as a question of, well, you know, when it comes to the services you deliver or the work you do, what would you say is one or several things that you do exceptionally well? What do I mean by exceptionally? Because a lot of people take that literally. I don't mean you're the best in the world, period. Okay, that's a bit too strict a definition. What I mean is, if you're honest with yourself, and I want you to be honest with yourself, don't be too modest. What is one thing? It could be two or three things that you find that you do better than most people. Better than most other people who do what you do most. Not everybody, but most. And I'm sure, again, you're good or even great at several. Well, don't necessarily need to be the best in the world at that, but you're better than most people. By the way, this doesn't have to be your best paying assignment, but it has to be something that you're very good at delivering. In fact, I'd even say that you're great at delivering. So my suggestion would be to give some thought to this question today and just spend 10 minutes or so writing down different things that come to mind and see which service offering rises to the top. So here's the thing. Specialization is going to be key to scaling effectively. It's extremely difficult to scale a business where you claim to do anything for anyone. Not only does it become very difficult to find and train the right people to do the work, it's also an uphill battle to market and sell your services when your positioning is so diluted and so unclear. Now, I don't want you to freak out thinking, oh my gosh, am I going to have to change my business and just offer one service? That's an extreme situation. That can work really, really well. It's not the only way of doing it. But here's what you don't want. You don't want the other extreme, where you can do everything for everybody, okay? So it's important to, at least as a thought exercise, as an initial step in this direction, to narrow it down to one or two things you do really, really well. Once you have that, here is the second question. How could you systemize that? So how could you systemize the process of delivering that service? Here's the thing. A project is nothing more than a set of steps designed to achieve a goal, to create an outcome, right? And every project has a beginning, an end, and several steps in the middle. Now, you may not have your steps written down for completing, say, a white paper. You just kind of get started and just move through the steps organically. The information is in your head. And that's the way that most of us operate when it comes to delivering our services. That's a topic, by the way, for a totally different podcast episode, because there are huge benefits in documenting your internal processes, even if you're the only one doing the work. But this second question is very important because this is really about how you could document what you do to deliver that service to a client. Because if pressed, the question becomes, you know, could you sit down and write down all the steps you go through in order, not maybe in one take? You may have to kind of think through how you do it and just write down whatever comes to mind, and then kind of go back and reorganize, and then you forgot a couple of things, so you add that to it. But, you know, could you. Is it conceivable that you could sit down and just write down every step of your process to deliver that service from beginning to end? And be honest with yourself. I know there's a big creative element to much of what we do, but if I forced you to do so, could you document every step of that process? And let's say if I gave you two or three hours to do that. And by the way, don't get hung up on thinking that your people would have to do everything. Okay. If you. If you're to scale your business, in many cases, and especially at first, you'd be involved in some of the key steps of a project. Okay? And again, remember that a project is a set of tasks that have a beginning and end and several tasks in the middle. Who said you had to do them all yourself? And who said that you may not be involved in some of the tasks at the beginning and end and maybe a couple in the middle. Okay. You can work your way out of some of this stuff. Even if you. At the beginning, when you're first training someone, you have to be closely involved in some of these steps. Now, right here, I'm not asking you to document everything, okay? And I'm asking. In fact, I'm not even asking you to document anything right now. The question right now is, could you document. Could you break this down? It's kind of like your secret sauce. If there's a spaghetti sauce that you've been making for years that you're well known for, you just kind of always make it up as you go. It's not that you make it up. It's just, you know, it's a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and you don't measure everything. But if I were to force you to measure everything and to just write down what you're putting in that pot as you add ingredients, could you do it? You know, if you had help, that's fine, whatever. Could you deconstruct the recipe for your secret sauce? And could you do it if you had no choice? Which, in fact, brings me to the third and final question. What if you were suddenly forced to scale back? So what if you had no choice? If your life was threatened? Could you document every step of the process if I gave you two or three hours to do so? And I know this seems like a very dramatic question, so just bear with me, okay? I want to explore this idea a little more deeply because it's an important one. Having freedom in a wide range of choices can be a very good thing, but it can also hamper your growth, because when you have the choice to keep doing things the way you've always done them, you're going to be comfortable, but you also won't know what's possible. And the longer you keep doing things the same way, the more you believe your own story about this being the only way to operate your business. So to try new approaches and models, I find that you need a strong catalyst because the change is not going to happen on its own. One of the early catalysts in my business was the fact that I got very overwhelmed with work, and I didn't see a way out of that. When I get overwhelmed, I tend to get emotional. I tend to get anxious, stressed, and those feelings often lead to other negative feelings and typically frustration and anger. So that's what got me to explore different ways of growing my writing business. It was just the Stress, the frustration, the anger, the anxiety that motivated me to solve the problem. Those are very strong emotions. And feeling those day in and day out motivated me to start looking for a writer to whom I could outsource the work or some of the work. And I didn't give up, even though the first couple of writers that I tried didn't work out. Now, years later, as I was growing my online course and coaching business, there were elements of what I did that I considered sacred. I really believed that I was the only one who could do those things. But here again, I started feeling overwhelmed and the overwhelm got out of hand. And then I had some personal life events that added to the challenge. And I found myself forced to let go of the idea that I was the only one who could do all these things in my business. And guess what? Letting go and trusting that I could train others to take some of the tasks away from me was critical to getting my business to where it is today, my coaching business. Now, believe me, letting go was very, very difficult for me. I didn't think it was possible, but outside factors forced me to make a decision. And when there's so much going on and you're stressed and you're angry and you're frustrated, it's amazing how easy it is to let go of some of that resistance. Basically, I had no choice, or I felt like I had no choice. And when you feel like you don't have a choice, you have to trust. When you trust, mighty forces will come to your aid, as the poem goes. So it happened again about three years ago when I was scaling my coaching business and I had essentially grown to a point where I could no longer do it all on my own. I was starting to burn out, and I knew I had to make some difficult decisions. And what I found is this is all about constraints. I don't like constraints, but I find that constraints help me get clarity on what's going on and get clarity on the decisions that I need to make and the changes that I need to make. So I had these constraints of I got no more room, I'm out of time, I have no bandwidth, and I have to change something. So the constraint, negative as it felt at that moment, was actually a blessing in disguise because it forced me to ask myself some difficult questions and make some difficult decisions and take what I felt at the time were some calculated risks, and I didn't want to take risks. You've undoubtedly heard the stories of the mother who somehow musters superhuman strength to lift a car by herself in order to rescue her child who was trapped under the car. The mom had no choice. There was a constraint there that she had to get it done. I mean, there was no thinking. And of course, that's an extreme example, right? But the reason I like these examples, the reason I like to kind of take things to an extreme as a thought exercise, is that it gives you clarity on the core point. The core issue in here, it's. The core issue is that you shouldn't give up on this idea too easily. And if you're having trouble with it, ask yourself, if I had no choice, how would I get help? So this extreme situation basically forces you to see your options for what they are. Where would I get started applying that help? And how could I break down what I do in a way that I can start training someone to perform some, not necessarily all of those tasks? So, look, if you've entertained the idea of scaling your creative business, or you're currently thinking about it, but you're not sure how it's even possible, or you keep giving up on the idea because you just don't think it's doable, I hope these questions get you thinking differently about both the challenge and the opportunity. So, again, the questions are very simple, but very powerful. Question number one, what do you do exceptionally well? Try to narrow it down to one, two at the most. Two things, preferably one. Question number two, how could you systemize that service? Question number three, what if you were suddenly forced to scale back? What if you had no choice? What would you do? These aren't questions you can answer in your head. Again, I recommend. I strongly recommend you just extract this information out of your head. Get it onto the paper, get it onto the page, and spend some time kind of expanding on your answers and getting better clarity. Just let it all out. Don't restrain yourself. Don't tell yourself this or that is not possible. Just get it all onto the page. And once you have it there, and only once you have it there, will you start getting the clarity you need to make the right decisions for yourself. I hope you enjoyed this episode. And if you have, I have a favor to ask of you. Please consider forwarding the link to a friend or colleague who could benefit from it. Maybe someone you know has been wanting to grow or thinking about how they would grow their business, or already thinking about scaling and not sure why. Again, all the nuts and bolts are not here. That's a much bigger question. It's a much bigger issue. But it all starts by asking yourself the right questions. Because the right questions lead to the right answers. This show is about to enter its eighth year and it's grown almost exclusively through word of mouth, for which I'm extremely grateful. So thank you. Thank you for listening. I really mean that. I thank you for sharing the show with others. I thank you for inviting me to your walks, to your workouts, inviting me to your car. And I hope you have a wonderful rest of the day. Take care.

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