TES 010 - Keys to Scaling Your Expert Business?

Hey there, real quick before we jump into the episode, listen, if your earnings treadmill hasn't set you free yet, running faster won't either. Listen, hustle without principles just going to burn you out. So here's what I want for you. I want you to join me for my money machine experience live. It is three free trainings. Deep dive into how to escape the treadmill and build a money machine that actually works for you. All right, grab your spot here by going to moneymachinelive.com and I'll see you in the free training. Hey there. This is Mel Abraham, the author of the Entrepreneur's Solution and the founder of Business Breakthrough Academy. And welcome back to this episode of the Entrepreneur's Solution show. And in this episode I get a chance to communicate with again someone from the Entrepreneur Solution Nation, our community. And this is from I'm going to answer a question in this show that was submitted on our online voicemail. And this is a question that came from Georgia, from Ron, asked about, you know, if you have a high price coaching, you know, what suggestions, it's a difficult thing to scale a coaching practice. So how do you, what would be my suggestions to scale, scale, something like that or what areas could we scale? So Ron, when we come back after this quick introduction, I'm going to come back, I'm going to answer about scaling and leveraging and the concepts of a service kind of business. We'll see you soon.

Welcome to the Entrepreneur's Solution where highly successful entrepreneur Mel Abraham becomes your entrepreneurial mentor. Here, Mel reveals his business building strategies and even gets a chance to answer your questions. Mel Abraham, a CPA by education, but an entrepreneur by exhilaration and a true believer in the entrepreneurial way of life. It's through entrepreneurship that we create community, support society and live our dreams.

It's where possibility meets reality again and you can have the life and lifestyle you want, one of freedom and peace of mind. Welcome to this episode of the Entrepreneur's Solution where it's time for you to be bold, dream big and live life your way.

Alright, welcome back. This is Mel Abraham, the author of the Entrepreneur's Solution and the founder of Business Breakthrough Academy where we teach you how to design a business and create a life, a life of financial freedom and peace of mind. Welcome back to this episode of the Entrepreneur Solution show. And this is going to be cool because I get a chance to answer a question of a good friend of mine, Ron, who's out of Atlanta, Georgia. And Ron asks this question.

Hey, Mail, it's Ron Reardon with Fully invested dads. That's www.fulllyinvesteddads.com. and my question is, if a person has a high end one on one coaching business, which normally coaching is not scalable, what recommendations do you have to scale? What can be scaled? Thanks.

It's a great question, Ron. This is one of the biggest challenges that service professionals, coaching professionals, mentoring professionals have is how do you scale? I mean, at some point what do you do? And here's the challenge is to realize that in coaching, in some sort of coaching type of mentoring type of situation, there's really four types of business models. You've got a time based model which is really swapping hours for dollars and that's a really, really difficult model to scale. This is where I came from as a cpa.

It's an hour swap for every hour they're paying me. And that until I realized how antiquated that model is, I, you know, I couldn't. You can't scale all you can because you have limited number of hours and all you can do is keep increasing your billing rate, which I did and it got really, really high. So there's a time based model, there's a product based model where you're creating products to do your coaching and so, so it's independent of you. There's a hybrid based model where you've got a combination of the two and then there's a model that a lot of people forget about and this is what I call the license licensed based model where you're creating other coaches and certifications. So I want to talk a little bit about that, but let's talk about the difference between scaling and leveraging and what can be scaled in a coaching business and what maybe can't be scaled. When we talk about scaling in a coaching business, we're talking about scaling one, possibly the marketing. If what you're doing is going out and one on one, one to one trying to sell, that's a really difficult model to build because one you're selling one to one, but you're also having to do it one to one if that's the way you're doing it. Well, look, there's only 24 hours in a day. I haven't been able to cut it up or do anything else to get anything more than 24 hours in a day. I need to sleep, I need to eat, I need to be with my family and my wife. And so I can't use all 24 hours a day, seven days a week if I want to Have a life.

So that. So if I'm trying to sell and do at the same time, it's a challenge. So one of the things to consider is scaling the marketing system. The other is to create a system, a process, if you will, that will allow you to scale because you put things in place that can operate without you. The other thing you can do is create duplication. So what I mean by duplication is typically product based types of things. So those are the areas that I think you can scale per se. Now I look at scaling slightly different than what I call leveraging. And you may want to think about these different. When I talk about scaling a business, I'm talking about everything grows. So usually what happens is that the business grows, the number of people grow and the revenue grows, and everything grows. When I talk about leveraging, what I'm trying to do is get more out of what I have in place. And the greatest thing with a coaching business is the fact that you're dealing with intellectual property. It's the stuff between your ears, it's the experience, it's the expertise, it's the perspective that you bring to the table. That is what is all the value. And if you can leverage the use of that intellectual property in a lot of different ways, that then although the business doesn't grow in the sense of girth, it does grow in the sense of profitability and revenues because you're leveraging it and using the intellectual property in multiple ways. So what can we leverage? We can leverage our time and some of that may be hourly or how we use our time, we can leverage and we'll talk more in detail about that we leverage through our products, we can leverage by working with more than one person at a time, groups. And we can leverage through financing, I mean through licensing. So let's go back to some of these and let's start to look at a little bit of some of the things that you can do in some of these areas. So one, let's talk about scaling in the marketing area. How do we scale in marketing? Well, one is to go to an automated system. When I first started building my professional business as a cpa, as a consultant, as a strategic consultant, there wasn't these automated tools. Now we have automated tools. So we can create an automated marketing process that is online, which I know, Ron, that you've got in place, but that allows you to in a sense, move a little bit away from the marketing part of it. So you can do the delivery and the creation. And so the key behind all of this is to be able to create it once and deliver it often. Create it once and deliver it often. But the delivery can be either personal or impersonal in the process of doing that. So now I want to automate my marketing process, which means that I'm working, want to have some funnels in place. I want to have automated funnels. I want to have entry points for clients and potential clients to come in, get value, get something out of it, and take something away from it in a way that we are giving value. This is what you do with a YouTube channel, with your podcasts, with your blogs. All of those things start to stack on top of each other to bring people in. So using automated automation, funnels, sequencing. So this is really creating a sequence, a sequencing of your content, in a sense that I want to take my customer, my potential customer, and I want to take them by the hand. And I said, let's go on a journey. And we're going to take them on the journey. It's like the yellow brick road, you know, we're going to go see the Wizard. But at different parts of the journey, some of your, some of the people that are on the trip with you might just decide to. To step away and say, I've had enough. But those that want to stay with you will stay with you through the process. So one of the things that I would ask you to consider or invite you to consider is to think about your client path. Think about the journey you want to create from the experience you want to create for them that can create a connection, create a loyalty, and get them to say, I want to stay with you for a period of time. And it's that journey that creates the connection, that creates the commerce, if you will, in the long run. So what's the journey? What's the sequencing that would build on each other and allow them to stay with you through the process? The next is to scale your content. And part of it is repurposing your content in different ways in different places. So if you're going to write something, why not record it? Why not record it in video? Why not do things? Remember, it's about creating ones, delivering often in that context. And in the process, the last part of scaling, be using replays. So when we do, when I do webinars, a lot of times those are recorded. That allows me to scale it in the sense that I don't need to redeliver that webinar over and over again. It's there, it's usable, and we can move people to it and allow them to experience the information, experience the training, experience the value of the content without me having to deliver it again. So that's part of scaling in the market process. And I'm talking about the sequencing and the replays and all that. The other, the other part of scaling is we talked about systems. Well, do you have a formalized coaching process? If you have a formalized coaching process, then it's teachable, which means that other people doing things for me in sense creating layers and levels of membership. Dan Sullivan comes to mind where he's got different levels and different layers membership depending on where you are in your business. And you'll get some of his certified coaches. So he's got, they've got a formalized process that's teachable and allows people to get from there. And in order for it to be teachable, it typically needs to be framework driven. And I know Rod, you know me and frameworks, okay, it's about creating meaningful frameworks that are memorable, commercially viable, that are teachable and that are valuable in there, that are built in layers. And it's something that I teach, I work with in my thoughtpreneur academy, which is a separate program that I do live. So it's about being framework driven, systems driven and formalizing a process so you can transfer that knowledge and allow the system to deliver stuff without you in place. And then the last part of scaling is this concept of duplication. Can we productize what we do in duplicating the types of things that we're doing in the process? Creating worksheets and templates and tools and that type of thing that can be used over and over and over again. If everything is in your head, in between the ears and you're doing the coaching personally and you're doing it informally in the sense that someone else cannot duplicate it, cannot replicate it, then it's not scalable, it's not scalable, it's not transferable, it's not teachable, it's not frameworkable, it's not, if that's a word, it's not usable at a level that you can scale it and it's confined to between your ears and what you can deliver in a seven day a week type of timeframe which will suck the life out of you over time. Can you create guides in the sense of tools or guide kits or guidebooks or instructor guides that will help people go and do their own self coaching, self assessment and do it in that context. And then last is to put things online. I have a lot of information that is online delivered initially by me, originally by me, but we scaled up by duplicating and putting it out online and allowing people to access it. And it gives people access to me, to the training, to the tools, to the tactics, to the strategies at a much different level than.

Before. And it doesn't take the time away from me to have to redeliver the same content over and over again. So that's kind of some thoughts about scaling. Let's just touch on this concept of leveraging. And leveraging is a little different from my perspective. One, like we said, let's leverage our time. How do we leverage our time? There's a couple ways. One is instead of doing one on one coaching, is it possible to do high level group coaching? And I think that that is something that is really possible depending on what it is you're doing. You just need to have a structure in place. You need to have a process in place that works in a group, that allows you to now work with people on a one to many basis or one to a couple basis versus on a one on one basis. If I can get even, you know, two or three people in a group that doubles, triples and quadruples my business in the time frame that I was doing, just one. And so we sometimes don't think about it. But that one on one coaching experience, if I simply put two more people in there, I've increased my business 300% without increasing the time necessary to deliver it in that process. So the concept of coaching or group coaching is really, I think, one thing to seriously think about. If you're in the coaching mentoring business, how do you do that? So it's scalable. The other is forums, creating a forum and creating a community, if you will. Because what happens is that as people get trained in your methods and your process and your intellectual property, then it'll take life. They will do some of the coaching for you within the forum. When you see some of these things in Facebook groups or those types of structures, what happens is that people will start coaching your stuff and that starts to relieve you of some of the responsibility. Do it now. You got to oversee it. You've got to be accountable, you've got to be responsible, you've got to be connected with your audience. You can't just completely walk away, but it'll allow you and give you some latitude in that process. Mentioned the concept of replays, webinar replays allows you to redeliver something that was delivered once already, but doesn't require you to deliver it live again. So if you set it up on the platforms that allow for automated delivery of webinars and unrecorded webinars, then you've created it once, now you get to deliver it. Often you still get to deliver the same value, the same connection, the same information, and you can put it out there without it starting to tie your hands. Another place of leveraging which we touched on is also products. Taking some of your information, your systems, productizing it in a way that we can get it out to bigger place, bigger, bigger groups in an economic efficient fashion. Then a little different than group coaching you can leverage by doing what I call big groups seminars. So now I have a hundred people in the room that I'm taking through a process. Now it may not be as intimate, which means it's probably not going to be as high priced as a one on one or one on few type of situation. But still, when I put 100 people in the room, taking them through a process, building, in my case, building their business, building their life around business, and creating that entrepreneurial experience that creates dreams, that allows me to give the information, give the tools at a much more leveraged level than I would if I was just sitting in a single boardroom working with one company per se. And then there's this concept of what I call licensing. And this is where you'll turn around and you will take what you know and you will package it it. You will package it in a designation, in a certification, in a process that's teachable, that's memorable, that's valuable, and you'll have other people that are out there that are going to be certified that can teach your process and that now what ends up happening is you get paid licensing fee, you get paid a training fee. They become part of an organization or a community where they're out there teaching for you. But what's happening is you're leveraging your intellectual property out into the market space to allow you to give information and give people access to you where they can't normally get access to you because your time is limited and your ability to grow is limited. So licensing is a great way, but remember, it needs to be a teachable process. It needs to be a formal process. They need to be able to have the tools to deliver it. They need to understand how to deliver it in a way that gets results just like the results that you have gotten. It needs to be something that's replicatable, duplicatable by other people, and it leverages your intellectual property in effect by duplicating you. So that's the way I would look at some of these things. Think about ways to scale and ways to leverage in this kind of environment. Don't get stuck in this concept that the only way to deliver coaching or the only way to deliver mentorship, deliver mentorship is one on one because that becomes a set of handcuffs because there's no one that's figured out how to get more hours in a day or more days in a week, or more days in a year. So we're stuck with what we have. So the question is, how effective, how efficient can you be with using your time? How do you scale it? How do you leverage it? And we've given you some suggestions, some things to consider. I hope that helps you, Ron Again, if anyone else has any questions, Please go to askmailnow.com and submit your question. You leave a voicemail just like Ron did. I'll be sure to get it on one of the upcoming episodes and we'll make sure that we get it answered. Remember, I want to be your entrepreneurial mentor in your epic journey as we design your life. So I hope you found this of service and help to you if you did, make sure that you subscribe. If you haven't subscribed. So you make sure that you get notified of every episode that comes out and might as well share it with a friend. Let's give a friend the gift of possibility. Let's bring their dreams out of the darkness again. Let's give them the gift that entrepreneurship can give them. And if you want to get any takeaways, the show notes or anything for this show, go to melabraham.comqa2 that's melabraham.comqa 2.

And until we get a chance to see each other again in the next episode, may your vision be grand, your journey epic, and your legacy significant. See you soon. Keep rocking it out. Bye.

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