E23: Stop Telling People What to Do

What of the best way to grow your surface business is to stop telling people what to do. Welcome to Invisible Solutions. I'm your host, Steven Shapiro. Each week we tackle your most complex problems using the lenses from my book Invisible Solutions. If you need the lenses, go to get the lenses. With that, let's get started with today's episode. In last week's episode I talked about scaling a service based business and today I want to dig a little deeper into it. And I'm going to talk even more specifically this week because I've had several conversations with colleagues of mine who are speakers, authors, thought leaders, and I shared with them a model that I use that I find to be very powerful and very simple. And so I just want to share that with you today. So for my speaker, author, trainer, thought leader, friends, whatever category you want to call yourself, one of the things that we tend to focus on when it comes to developing products and services is we focus on what I would call tell me products and services. And this to me is the first category, the base category. And the tell me products and services are those which tell people what to do. So books, speeches, I would even argue to some degree training or elearning courses, videos, all of these are designed to tell people what to do. And look, they are incredibly valuable. They share information. When you put yourself in the shoes of the consumer of the content, your client, your customer for them, it could be a reasonably inexpensive way to get access to your content. A book could cost you $20, maybe an eLearning course is 30, 40, $50, whatever the number is. So from a price perspective, it's actually quite reasonable potentially. But when you think about the amount of energy and the amount of time money that it's going to take for the consumer of the content to actually transform those ideas into reality, it's actually large. So if you're trying to implement some kind of system in an organization and you spent $20 on a book, you might spend thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars trying to actually implement it. So the upfront cost might be low, but the long term cost for the consumer or the client might be large. Another category which is sort of the top of the ladder. So if you look at tell me as sort of the base, the bottom of the ladder, at the top of the ladder is what I would call the do it for me. And the do it for me content is really more of a consulting model, an outsourcing model, and it's where you get someone else to do the work for you. So if you think about consulting work, it's more expensive upfront because you're going to pay the service provider more money. But at the end of the day you're going to get probably better results because you don't have to go through the whole effort of transforming a concept, an idea that you read in a book into reality. The person who you hire to do it will do it for you. So it's sort of a one stop shop. They take care of it. So the initial cost is high, but the implementation cost is potentially lower. Now if you put yourself in the shoes of the service provider, the author, speaker, trainer, the great thing about Tell me Content is it is scalable, infinitely scalable. I can write a book once and sell a million copies. I can shoot a video once and, you know, distribute it around the Internet on YouTube and get a billion followers, whatever the numbers are. So it's infinitely scalable, which is nice. Whereas the do it for Me the consulting model is more difficult to scale because what you're looking at for do it for Me content is time. If it's a consulting model, you're actually spending a lot of time working with somebody. So for the service provider, it's actually less scalable. It is scalable, but it takes a little bit of creative thinking. For example, if you want to scale a Do it for me model, you might need to get other service providers who are certified in your process, or you license your process to others who will then do it on your behalf. You create a train the trainer program or certification program and you deliver that to people who will now deliver that content to others and then they can do it. So it's scalable through other people, whereas books and video are scalable through paper technology and bits and bytes. The downside of the do it for Me model when you're trying to scale it through certification is potentially your brand is at risk. I'm not saying you shouldn't do it, I'm just saying that what I found is that it becomes risky, er, you want to choose the right partners to certify. Now I do certification work for my internal clients. What I mean by that is a company hires me, they want to create a culture of innovation. I will take some of the people inside the organization and I will turn them into master black belts of my process. And so I'm able to scale the work internally inside of a corporation. And this to me is great because not only am I able to teach others to do what I do and then they're able to carry on the work. It helps produce greater results for the client at much less cost in the long run than having to bring me back all the time. So if you're dependent on a consultant all the time, then a certification or a licensing model can be very helpful. But it's the middle category that I want to talk about now, because I think this is maybe the sweet spot of where we can create the greatest amount of value for our clients and our customers, and at the same time give us the greatest potential for scalability without the risk of brand erosion. And I call this level Enable Me. And the Enable Me category basically means I'm going to enable somebody to do what I do, and I'm going to give them the tools, the techniques, the processes, whatever it might be, so that I can accelerate the implementation. So unlike the tell me where, it requires the consumer of the content to do a lot of work to transform it here, I'm going to help them through the process. Now, this can be done in a number of different ways. One way might be through automation. We can actually automate our process into tools. And this is what a lot of software vendors do, is they take what could have been a service and they turn it into a product, a software product. We could also create tools, enablement tools, tools that allow people to do what we do. And by the way, tools don't have to be fancy technology. I have something called Personality Poker. Now, Personality Poker is a card game, is literally a deck of cards, suits, colors, numbers on the cards. In addition to that, each card has a word on it. And in Personality Poker, you trade cards with other people, and you go through this process of gifting cards to other people. And when you're done, you have five cards in your hand. And based on the suits, the colors and the numbers, you will know everything about your personality. You didn't have to spend hours and hours and hours trying to read about the book. What you did was you basically picked up a deck of cards and you started playing. And within five minutes, 10 minutes, everybody in your organization knows what their hand is. And then in just a matter of minutes after that, you can go through the interpretation process. So it's an enablement tool that embeds and embodies the content in a way that's usable for others. The other option for Enable Me, some might call this the document do it with Me model. And the do it with Me model is different than the do it for Me model. The do it for Me model means you give me your stuff, I'm actually going to take it over and you don't have to think about it. The do it with Me model means you're going to do the work, but I'm going to be hanging out, watching over your shoulder and making sure that you're getting it done. So this might take the form of a mastermind group. I'm in several mastermind groups where we do this. I'm currently implementing a new CRM and I'm part of a mastermind where they will actually watch over my shoulder as I do things and point out what I need to do and tell me where I'm going wrong and I can Questions very valuable. Now, the thing with Do It With Me is it's scalable to a degree, whereas the automation tools and software and things of that nature are potentially infinitely scalable. And that's why I think the enablement category is probably the sweet spot. It's the sweet spot because it's the best combination of cost for the client and speed of result. And when you have these types of tools, people are able to implement concepts very quickly. For example, with invisible solutions, the tell me portions are the book. We also have a video book, which is actually me on video telling all the stories from the book, hours of content that we sent to people. We have an elearning course where maybe we tell you and you're able to start applying the concepts, but you're still doing the work. I'm not watching you, you're not getting feedback. So that's the tell me content. We have more, but that's basically, you know, the core tell me content with the do it for me content. Well, that's me actually helping companies out. I go in, they have a problem, we go into a hot seat, I solve their problem. And that is great because it's very specific to them. I'm doing the work, but I'm also showing them how to use all the tools. And it's a great model for somebody who's stuck and wants help. But it's not scalable for me and it's expensive for the client to do it too many times. So the Enable me content, where I get excited, are some of the tools we're developing. We have two tools in particular. One is called the Lens browser and that's more Tell me Enable me right on the cusp of those two because it doesn't have a lot of intelligence in it, but it does embed all 25 lenses. It allows you to look at the content in the 25 lenses, organize them, bookmark them, hide them. So there's A lot of useful components to it that are going to help accelerate the transition from learning about the lenses to actually applying them. But where I'm most excited is something which is being developed right now, which is called the Lens Bot, the Lensbot. And Adam Leffert, who a brilliant coder up in Boston, he's building the Lens browser and the Lens Bot. The Lens Bot is actually an interactive tool where it asks you a series of questions. Hey, is this question a little too broad? And let me give you some guidelines for this. And it will prompt you to say, well, if it is, well, maybe you want to consider this lens. So it actually has some intelligence in it to help guide you through the process. So instead of having to hire me every time you want to solve a problem, you can use the Lens Bot, Ask it. It will help you through the process to get to a better answer quickly. And one of the cool things that we're also able to do, especially if we're creating digital products, is to partner with others. And I'll be announcing shortly that I'm getting into a strategic relationship, a strategic partnership with a software company that's in the innovation space. And they're going to use a lot of my invisible solutions materials, the lenses, the videos, the chatbot, the Lens browser, and bring these to their clients to help them reframe problems as they're using their software. So as you start to create enablement tools, the enablement tools can actually be embedded in other enablement tools and you get this multiplier effect, you get even more value from them because now it's getting to more people. So let me just give you one quick example that shows the three different levels in action. So let's say you wanted some PR and you wanted to promote a new book that you're coming out with. So the first thing you might do is some tell me content, which would be maybe buying a book on getting publicity or taking a three day boot camp on getting publicity. So that's a great way to get started. But you have to create the pitch, you have to contact the media, you have to do the outreach, you have to do the smiling and dialing. So it's a lot of work on your part to actually make it happen. On the flip side, and I've done this several times over the years, is you can hire a PR firm and a PR firm will actually do it for you. They will help write the copy, they will do the calling to the media, they will make all the arrangements, they will manage everything. And it's Great, because they get results, but it's also expensive. And for the PR firm, it's not really scalable. But over the years I've used a couple of different, what I would call enablement tools. They don't have to be actually tools, they're enablement concepts that I've used in PR that I think are very valuable. One is called Help a reporter out Haro. A lot of people will know about this. It is basically an email service. So instead of if you want PR having to find the media and contacting them, you get an email every day or twice a day with requests from the media. And if you have something to say about that, you can respond to them. So they bring the media to you. This to me is an enablement. A more sophisticated tool that I've used over the years is something called PR Leads. It's basically like Haro, except it has better filtering and you get less noise and it's more focused on what you really need. But the same general concept, the journalist, the media come to you, not the other way around. And then finally there's something called the National Publicity Summit. I've done this a couple of times over the years. And it's a really interesting concept because again, they're bringing the media to you. What you do is you pay a reasonable amount of money, but you go to a conference and they will have a hundred people from the media. Newspapers, magazines, radio, television, bloggers, podcasters. And you get to decide which media outlets would you like to pitch to, how many would you like to be able to actually see if they're interested in what you have to offer. Now you can't get all 100. You have to prioritize them. And so you're limited in how many you can actually get to, but you can get to a pretty large number. And you're given three minutes to be able to pitch them. And it can be fantastic. I mean, for example, when I did it back in, I think was 2005, I met a woman who was the editor for oh, the Oprah Magazine. And I did a pitch. I said, hey, I know that, you know, Oprah's always said that the best things that happened to her in her life happened when she wasn't focused on her goals. I'm writing a book called Goal Free Living now. The book wasn't even written, but she became intrigued. I went to New York, we had an interview. Voila. Even before the book came out, there was a two page article dedicated to Goal Free Living. And in fact it was referenced on the COVID of the magazine. Now that was an enablement tool. I didn't hire a PR firm to get it. The media came to me and I could actually do my best job of pitching to them. The point is, we can get creative. We can get creative with what we do because we want to create the greatest value for our customers and our clients. We want to create as much impact as we possibly can without it taking all of our time. So what can we do? We can tell people what to do with books and videos and elearning courses. We can do it for them with a consulting model, or we can enable them by actually making it easier for them. They don't have to learn every single aspect of what we're trying to teach them, but we're also not doing it for them. So we can scale it. So, although we didn't cover any specific lenses this week, I thought this would be an interesting conversation or an interesting topic just because I've had this conversation several times over the past couple of weeks and it seems to really resonate with my colleagues. And with that, we are at the end of this week's episode. To submit problems you want solved on this podcast, go to Invisible Solutions podcast.com and remember to download the lenses. Go to get the lenses dot com. I look forward to being with you next week. Until then, happy problem solving.