TES 054 - How to Grow Your Coaching or 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. I'm Mel Abraham, the author of the number one best selling book the Entrepreneur's Solution and the founder of Thoughtpreneur Academy, where we teach you how to capture, package and monetize what you know, your expertise, your wisdom, so you have more impact, more time and more income. And welcome back to this episode of the Entrepreneur Solutions show. And in this episode, we're going to talk a bit about this concept of, you know, what I call the wisdom business thoughtpreneurs is the way I look at it is those people that have ideas, knowledge, expertise, wisdom that they take out into a marketplace to have a greater impact while making money doing it. Some people call it the expert space, some people even call it infopreneurs. I call it thoughtpreneurs because what we're really doing is selling our thoughts, making sure that we better people's lives in the process. And so we're going to talk a bit about that business and the different kinds of business models. How do you scale or leverage it? And this came out of a question that was asked by a good friend of mine, Ron Reardon, about scaling it in the context of a coach. So thoughtpreneurs will show up in a lot of different ways. So when we come back after this brief introduction, we, we're going to jump in, we'll talk about some of the business models, we'll talk about how to scale and leverage it. We'll talk about the expert business, a Thoughtpreneur business, if you will. And so I'll see you back here right after this brief introduction. See you here 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. Way.

Hey there. And welcome back to this episode of the Entrepreneur Solution. Show this one. We're going to start talking about the concept of a thoughtpreneur business. And this is someone that has wisdom, knowledge, expertise, ideas and perspective that they're going to take to a marketplace to improve, to have a greater impact the marketplace and make a living, make money at it. And they show up in a lot of different ways. It could be a coach, it could be a facilitator, it could be a trainer, it could be a mentor, it could be a speaker, it could be an author. I mean, those are the modalities, if you will, of which they deliver their message. And we go really deep in this, in one of my trainings, Thoughtpreneur Academy and then Thoughtpreneur Imperative. But the bottom line is that what we're really doing is selling knowledge. Selling knowledge that can improve people's lives, that can shift an industry, shift a market and shift a community or society in the process. And this question came to me by a good friend of mine, Ron, who said, great, so if I'm in a coaching business and I'm doing a one on one coach coaching business, which is somewhat thinking business, your selling thoughts is.

How do I scale it, how do I build it up, how do I move beyond that? Because there's some limitations and there really is. And so.

What we do here is need to first start understanding the different types of models that exist. And I talk about this.

In the tool, in the download that we have here. It's called the thoughtpreneur expert. You can Download it@melabraham.com session0 or just text me, text me mylegacy. One word, no spaces. 38470 and I'll send you the download link. But nonetheless, let's jump into this. Here's the deal that I call it the practice spectrum, if you will. And the practice spectrum is built on two different axes. It's basically four different, you know, a quadrant model that I look at and say, so there's a level of process or systems that exist. And depending on the level of process or systems that exist, it will determine how intimate and how involved you are in the process. And none of these are right or wrong, it's just that they are. And you can choose and you can Use all of them in variety of different ways in your business. The question is, are you doing it intentionally? And so you've got on one axis and is the level of process or systems that are being created that can operate or be replicated with or without you. And on the other axis is their access to what I call your intellectual property, which is packaged thoughts. It's packaged in a way that is commercially viable, that is memorable, that is valuable, that is learnable, that is teachable, that is packageable in a way that people will pay a premium for it because it impacts their lives at such a high level. And it's got a lot of depth of thought in it. And that's a whole different ballgame how to do that. But the question is, how do they get access to what you know? That's effectively it. So at the very first level, at the very base level, what we see a lot of is what I call one on one, one to one, one to one coaching, one to one consulting. This is partly what I did, you know, as a cpa, most of the work was one to one, one to one. And the challenge here is that.

You'Re typically selling your time, you're typically selling your hours, you're swapping dollars for hours. It's a well seeded model that has been around for decades, decades and decades. You know, the timesheet effectively came back, came out in 1919, I think it was, when it was first started to be used. So one to one and many of you may be having these one to one practices as a coach, as a trainer, as a facilitator, something of that nature where you're the one going out and delivering in that context. The second level is you create a bit of more process, a bit more systems around it, so you have the ability to go and deliver one to many. Now, one to many could be in the form of a live event, it could be in the form of a webinar, it could be a form of a webcast. So it's still you delivering the message, delivering the content, delivering the training, delivering the knowledge, the wisdom, the expertise. But you're not now doing it just single, one on one. So you've expanded a little bit and you get access to more and more people because you built process or systems around it in that context. The next piece though is one to few.

And I don't mean one to few in the sense that it's worse, just one to few. This is your masterminds, this is what I'll do at board meetings where I get asked to come to speak to boards of directors. So it's a small group, but it's high level, high price in the work that we, we do. I do it in some of my masterminds, my think tank, and all of that is small groups. I try to keep them very small so we can have more intimate, more access to the ip, more access to me and the knowledge, but still I'm the one that's delivering it, by and large. And then when we get enough processes and systems in place and to give people access to that information, we can deliver many to many. Now what this typically involves is at some point now, the complexity when you get to this stage is a little higher and it can be a lot higher. It depends. But what this involves typically is either some sort of certification where you're training people to do what you do, you're training people to do what you do, or it's licensing or something of that nature that allows you to move yourself out of the game. So you're not the only one delivering the message, delivering the knowledge, delivering the expertise and the wisdom and doing that, but that you've trained other people in your system, in your process, so they can think and present and do the things that you do so they can go out and get your message out there in a greater way. So they become the arms of your organization, so it becomes many to many. So that's really how this different business models work. For the most part, you're going to land in one of those four categories. And as you grow, in all likelihood you will find that at some level you may have business in all four of those categories, or two or three of them at the same time. I do one to many, I do one to few, I do one to one. And in the works is a many to many model that's going to be coming down the pipe, down the road here at some level. So realizing that it's not an exclusive, it's not to exclude anything, it's simply to say, here's the models. Figure out what fits for you. And if you want to start to shift and change, you can. If you just simply want to layer it on and have another model in there, you can. So how do we do this? What do we need to look at in the context of.

A coaching practice, a speaking practice, authorship, what I call a thoughtpreneur practice, a thought leader practice, if you will, that we call it a thought leader global. So we talked about a bit about the models here, but let's talk about how we can make money more directly. And the first part of this is really understanding the different ways that we can create revenues, if you will, and then can we scale it or leverage it? And we'll talk about the difference between scaling and leveraging, at least in my world, and my thought process behind that. So when we're dealing with models, we can sell our time. And this is the traditional model that most thoughtpreneur, thought leader, expert types of businesses, coaches, speakers do, is to sell their time for money. Me as an accountant, when I was in a, had my firm, and I'm doing the consulting. I'm selling time for money. I'm selling hours. Here's the challenge with that is there's a limitation. Look, I haven't figured it out. If you figured it out, let me know. But there's only 24 hours in a day, seven days in a week, 365 days in a year, unless it's leap year. And that is all you get. You get no more. And I don't know how to cut it up any differently. I don't know how to get more out of it. It's about how effective you are at using it. And I can do everything for 24 hours a day because I got to sleep and I want to spend time with my beautiful wife and my family and do the things that I want to do. So at some point, you hit a threshold of time that you can sell. So what do you do? You start to increase your hourly rate, which I did. I've got a very, very high hourly rate. And so you're selling less hours at more dollars. That gives me more space, more time. Now we got to deliver a different set of results. Usually, if they're gonna. If they're gonna pay those kinds of dollars for what you do. But the key behind this is to really understand the dynamics of what you're dealing with in this kind of model. Now, I'm going to invite you to say, if you're doing that, if this is your sole way of making money, to start to find a way to transition or find other ways to supplement the income from your time. We'll talk about that as far as the scaling and leveraging as we move forward. The other model that you could have a product model. So you're taking what you know, you're creating a product out of it, and you're packaging it and selling it, which now alleviates the time issue. Now we just got to create it once and then sell it often. So that's certainly a model that a Lot of people in this space have started to move towards, including myself. We have a number of products and trainings and things that are out there. The third is what we call a hybrid model. Hybrid model gives them a bit of your time and a bit of the products. And so for instance, you come to thoughtburner, if you register with me at thoughtburner Academy, what ends up happening is you get online training, you get online tools, and then you get a chance to come in and spend time with me live. So you've got product and you got tangible stuff that you're working from and working with, and then you got access to me in the process. So it is a hybrid, if you will, product. And I think that there's a tremendous amount of value with that because what allows you to happen. This kind of goes back to the Khan Academy kind of philosophy in the sense of let people learn in their own space and time, the online training, if you will, and let them come to a workshop, to a place where they can ask questions, get distinctions and do implementation and make it real, make it come to life. And that's kind of the way we do our trainings is just that instead of you coming in to get educated, let's give you the foundation of education first. So when we come in, we've got a more meaningful conversation that moves the needle much farther, much faster as we move forward. So hybrid products, I think are really, really a great way start to build that. But understand where are you at? And then the last model is what I call license model. And that is when I systematize my stuff enough, I can then teach someone to go out and do what I do and I can give them the license to use my intellectual property. The knowledge that I have has been packaged in a way that they can go out and teach it and present it and consult with it and make a difference. And they become my.

Extra arms, if you will, that extend the reach of my intellectual property, my thinking out there. So those are the types of models. Again, level of complexity, as you start to move up, this chart goes up, but also the level of compensation can go up. Now here's the thing that I'm going to caution you on. If you go and try to do something at a much higher level before you're ready for it, because there is an order, a strategic sequencing that you should go through to build it. Because if I haven't developed my content enough, if I haven't developed my thinking enough, I haven't developed my business enough, trying to license it is A mistake. It's like trying to create a franchise. And I had a very good friend of mine in Australia that tried to create a franchise before it was ready to franchise, and he ended up buying all the franchises back because it was premature. So before you turn around, say, oh, I want to do the licensing thing or the hybrid thing. Let's prove it out, let's build it out, let's do the right things and do the foundational work. So when we put it out there, now we got something that's real, something that has depth, something has breadth. It's something that, that will allow it to grow and grow the roots. So it's strong at the foundation. So that brings me to this question of how do you scale? How do you scale? How do you leverage now? What's the difference between scaling and leveraging? So here's the way I look at it, scaling a business, and you'll hear it, you know, how do we scale a business? What scaling a business does is it grows the revenue, my mind, but it also grows the expenses. So things start to grow. Now the challenge is that I can't sprout more Mel Abrahams, and God forbid my wife's got enough with just one of us. So, you know, but I can't just scale me per se. There's some things I can do to scale my business, but that's not going to continue to grow on a regular basis. What I can do is leverage me, leverage my time, leverage my knowledge so I can get it out there easier, better, faster, and in more ways. So there's a difference between scaling and leveraging, and there's some aspects of your expert business that we might be able to use scaling for and some that we may be able to leverage. Now, I'm going through the difference here. It doesn't matter. The bottom line is we're going to try to grow your business. We're going to try to do a couple of things. We want your income to go up, we want your tase off to go go up, days off to go up, your time free to go up, your impact to go up. So to me, whether you want to call it scaling or leveraging doesn't matter. What matters is that your income goes up, your impact goes up, your days off go up, and life is good. So let's just look at it first. Let's look at the scaling column first. So one of the things you can scale is your marketing. In other words, if you're going out there one on one, trying to sell, maybe, you know, that's really not going to be an effective, efficient model long term to allow you to scale. So what could you do to scale your marketing? Well, one of the things you could do is put automation in automated funnels to build an automated funnel of communication and connection with your possible market, with your potential market, with your, with your referral sources, with the people that you're doing business with, to create a community, to build it. So it's not you knocking on doors all the time. There's a time and place for that. Absolutely. But what about using the technology that exists today, whether it's an infusionsoft, whether it's an eye contact, whether it's a, you know, optimized press, whatever it is.

To scale, if you will, your marketing efforts, to be able to go out there and do marketing while you're sleeping, to do marketing while you're out doing other things, delivering. Because remember, as an expert, as a thoughtpreneur, you gotta market it, sell it, and then you got to deliver it. Well, while you're delivering, if the system isn't in place, if you haven't got the automation in place, you can't be marketing and selling while you're delivering at the same time on an ongoing basis. Now granted, when you're delivering, you could be selling at the same time. That is a possibility, but likely, when we talk about broader base, that's not what's happening. So automation, funnel, systems, sequencing. And when I call about, when I talk about sequencing, what we're really getting at is creating a journey for your possible customer. What's their customer path? What is it that they're coming to you for? And allowing them to jump on the boat with you and go for a ride. A ride of training, a ride of education, a ride of authority, a ride that gets them to understand what you could do for them and how that could impact their lives. So sequencing is another way that you could do it, getting your content out there. I do these weekly shows as well as posts daily, multiple posts daily, constantly working to build the community, to get information out there.

And get it out there in a way that once it's out there, it's out there. And now all we need to do is allow the automated marketing system to deliver it in a couple of different places on an ongoing basis. So I create it once and deliver it often. And then the other way to do it is through what I call replays.

Whether it's a webinar, a webcast, record it and let it play. And now they can get access to the education, the training, your tools, your thinking and your wisdom on an ongoing basis where you don't have to deliver it personally each and every time. The next piece of scaling, I think, is your systems. It's really to look at your process, look at what it is you're doing, look at how you're doing it, and say, is there a way to take what I do and package it into a box called a process, package it into a box called a system to create a framework that allows someone else to pick it up and go do it in the same way that maybe you do it and get the same or similar results. And so the sooner we can systematize and create a process that works, the easier it'll be to have other people doing the work that you're doing and to give you, remember, lower days, more income in the process. So it's going to be framework driven. I know all of you know how framework driven I am. Frameworks for everything. So what is your framework.

If you're not sure about it? This is something that we go deeper into in some of the other trainings and thoughtpreneur and all that. But we need to create your proprietary system in a way that makes it more transferable then duplication. The interesting thing about duplication is it's like cloning yourself is the way I look at it, how do I productize what it is I do, how do I create maybe guides on what it is I do? How do I create.

An online program where they get access to it? For instance, when I first did Business Breakthrough Academy, the very first live event that I did, I did that live. And from that live event, we created an online program. So what it allowed me to do is to duplicate the experience that my customers had, that my clients had at Business Breakthrough Academy. They duplicated the experience and allowed them and other people to come back through and experience it without me necessarily being there. And I like, I still do Business Breakthrough Academy and a number of other events. But the question that I'm going to ask you is, what is it about your system, about your process, about what you're teaching or doing or consulting or mentoring, that we could create and duplicate in a way that it can get delivered without you being there? And then the last piece of scaling, and this really is in both areas, I think, is licensing. And this is down the road. In other words, for you to license someone to do it, you need to have created enough intellectual property and know that the results you get are consistent enough that they can go out and Duplicate it. And this is a much more complicated model. It takes a bit of time to do it. I got to create instructor guides, how to guides, systems that are duplicated, processes that work, frameworks that are, that are implemented and all of those things, and license them to do that. Now I don't have enough time in this episode to really go into the concept of licensing. Just put it in the back of your mind that it could happen, that you could create a certification, you could license people to use your intellectual property to take your wisdom, your knowledge, your way of thinking and take it out in the world on your behalf, where you get paid license fee, a royalty fee, a training fee, something of that nature. So that's kind of how I see the element of scaling. So how does that differ from the element of leverage? Well, let's look at leverage because this is going to be more driven by you personally and your time. And the first is how do I leverage my time? In other words, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, unless we're in a leap year, that's all I got. So how do I take and use my time more effectively? And we touched on it when we put the quadrant up about the.

Practices. And that is first off is instead of doing one to one, how do I do one to many, how do I turn around and go one to few, how do I grow and impact a grander group, a bigger group at the same time? Well, we can do it through groups, we can do it through forums, we can do it through the replays that I talked about. There's a lot of ways to start to look at what is it that I do that maybe instead of doing it one on one, I can do it one on few or one on many. Ask yourself that, start to examine that. And maybe there's a way to adjust your process, adjust your systems to allow for that to come into play or have an element of that that relieves you to do some of the other things. The other piece of leverage I think is through products. If we're, you know, in scaling, we're creating systems to leverage your time more is to create products. What products could you create? Can I create a fast start or a jump start program that gets people into the process, gets you the foundational training. So now you can bring them into a one to many kind of situation or one to few situation and know that they've got a baseline of understanding and training with that products. Then groups, like we said, building groups, doing seminars, you know, I've got Titans Think tank, which is my think tank, my mastermind, which is a high priced, small group type of mastermind. But they, in order to impact greater people, I do my live events, my live seminars with 100, 200 people at it at a time where I've got the ability to deliver one to many in that process. And when I combine it with products, say an online training, I now have leveraged the process in there. And again, the last piece of this, the concept of licensing again. And licensing is always in there, but I think it's probably one of the last things you want to really. It's not something that you want to go into really quickly because we need to have a well developed set of intellectual property, a portfolio of intellectual property to really take it out there and do it. We need to have it framework driven. It needs to be a teachable process, it needs to be a transferable process, needs to have predictable results in the process. And it needs to be something that someone can come and train and say I got it and I can go do it and get similar results. And until that's in place, licensing is not the game for you. And I don't do any licensing at all. I am looking at it, but it is a play down the road, It's a plan down the road. It's not something that I'm going to do right now, right now, because right now I want to create that intimate community. I want to build that process as we go forward. And licensing is part of the strategy, but it's not, it's not immediate right now. So those are the things that I think that you can look at in your business, in your expertise, in your practice, in your thoughtpreneur practice. When you look at and say, how do I grow it? What can I do to grow it? Well, well, let's figure out how we can leverage our time, how we can create products, how we can maybe go from a one to one to a one to few to one to many model, how we can create systems and processes that allow you to.

Remove yourself without losing the predictability of your results, the integrity of your system, the integrity of your thinking, the integrity of your wisdom. So we can duplicate you and not just focus on a time driven model, but move ourselves in some capacity to a hybrid model where you're doing time and product and online in a lot of different ways. So you create.

Income streams, multiple income streams from the same thinking. And we talk about this in ThoughtPreneur Academy and ThoughtPreneur Imperative is that sometimes we get caught up in how we want to deliver it. In other words, we look at things and say, I just, I'm a speaker and that's it. Bottom line is that we have a message and we need to focus on that message and we want to build that message. And we have a system, we have a process because it impacts people and it gives them these great results. And that's what's most important. Does it really matter how you get it out there, except that we get it out there? And so I'm going to invite you to be more open minded to how you might be able to deliver your message out there. Let's refine the message first. That is the most important thing. Let's get that refined and defined. Let's create the intellectual property portfolio around it, let's build a practice around it and let's be ready to then go out and deliver it in multiple modes. And if you develop your information, if you develop your content, if you use some of the principles and develop your content the way thought leaders develop their content, you will think once you'll create the portfolio intellectual property and then you can deliver it multiple ways and multiple times without having to recreate it. So you no longer are in a situation where someone calls you up and they say, I want you to speak and you have to create the speech. Then someone else calls you up and says, hey, could you facilitate this retreat? And you create this two day retreat. Then you get a call from someone that says, you know, hey, can you write this article? So you now have to go write an article. See, that's the old model. That's the wrong way to do things because that's tiresome. It's frustrating. It's recreating things repeatedly over and over again. We got to think once, we got to create and package our intellectual property in a way that allows us to then deliver it over and over again without having to recreate the thinking in the process. And so that's the way that I'm going to invite you to start thinking about it. There's more tools, there's more things that we can do on this and we will over time. I just don't have enough time in this episode to get there. I just wanted to answer the question about scaling an expert practice, a thought printer practice. And you know what? To learn a little more about this, download the ThoughtRunner Expert by going to melabraham.com session054 or just text me. Text Mylegacy if you happen to be at mylegacy one word no spaces to 38470 and I'll make sure that I send you the download link so you can get that. You'll read a little more about the business models and the principles associated with with all of that and if you found this of value, do me a favor, subscribe, leave me a comment, hey, say hi. Whatever it is, I'd love to hear from you. I want to get a chance to get to know you, see if there's other things that I can do to serve you, support you and help you along the journey. So subscribe, leave me a comment, say hi and share this with a friend. You know, give them the gift of some of these, some of these tools and tactics and strategies to move from. And if this brought up some questions for you and some some concepts that you're sitting back that you want clarity on or you're unsure of or some things that you want me to deal with, go to askmelnow.com leave me your question, leave me your comment and I'll be sure to make make it part of one of my upcoming episodes on the Entrepreneur Solutions Show. And I thank you again. I'm blessed to have the opportunity to be with you, to talk with you, to be part of your life. I don't take that lightly. I don't take it lightly that you take the time out of your day to spend with me. And so I am in deep gratitude and appreciation. Thank you so much. We'll see you on the next episode. And until then, may your vision be grand, your journey epic, and your legacy significant. See you soon. Cheers. Bye.

We hope you enjoyed this episode. Make sure you subscribe so you get access to all of Mel's business and success tips. And if you like this episode, share it with a friend. If you have a specific business or success question, you can ask it at www.askmelnow.com. remember, it's all about being bold, dreaming big, and living life your way because the world needs you. Until the next episode, may your vision be grand, your journey epic, and your legacy significant.

And that's it for this episode of Building your Money Machine where we help you learn how to master your money, eliminate financial stress, and live a life of choice. If you found this valuable or helpful to you, here's what I'd love for you to do. If you do me a favor, go to Apple, Apple Podcast, or wherever you're listening to this podcast and rate and review the show. It helps us tremendously to keep us at the top of the list so we can continue to get this information and this message out to people because I truly believe that financial freedom is your best birthright, and I want to help each and every one of you claim it. Thanks so much.