Tag: business options

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E#235 3 Proven Strategies to Grow and Scale Your Business

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3 Proven Strategies to Grow and Scale Your Business

In this current podcast series dedicated to business and revenue growth, let’s talk about three proven strategies you can use to grow and scale your business – even if you’re relatively new to the business and have a few paying clients. Two of these methods discussed today do NOT require you to find new clients – which is often the most costly and time-consuming way of building your business. That means you can improve revenue immediately!

Background

When your business reaches a certain size, you might find yourself working at full capacity in terms of the hours you can physically work or the clients you can physically service in your business.

In this episode, I’ll talk about 
* Upgrading Your Systems
* Changing Your Prices
* Increasing the Offers

You may reach an upper limit of income or find that your start-up business systems (e.g. manual invoicing) are inadequate and time-consuming to manage.

While there are no immediate problems with either scenario, a business that relies solely on you presents a level of ‘risk’.

What happens to the business if you get sick? What if you want time off? And how can you outgrow your expenses and start making a real profit?

These are just three of many considerations that might inspire you to grow or at least improve efficiencies in your business.

There is a saying that goes, ‘If your business isn’t growing, it’s shrinking.’

If you want to grow your business and revenue, there are several options.

Here are three of the easiest options for businesses in the early stages of growth (‘seed’) who have some customers and are ready to expand their reach, sales and profit.

Upgrading Your Systems

Upgrading your systems becomes a relevant growth strategy if you have reached a limit as to how many clients you can see, and therefore how much money you can earn.

Before you consider upgrading, you’d want to make sure you have regular cashflow and enough profit margin to cover the costs you will incur via systems upgrades.

Two ways of upgrading your systems include:

– Getting specialist help (outsourcing) and

– moving away from manual systems into more automated ones.

Either or both of these can free you up to service more clients. Let’s look at each in turn.

Upgrading by Outsourcing

Thinking about the outsourcing, hiring specialist contractors is an easy way to get qualified help when you are busy or need help in a specific area. This is known as a ‘business to business’ arrangement whereby you engage another business to complete specific work or tasks within your business.

It is also helpful if you don’t want the burden of buying and setting up software (e.g. accounting software) and just want someone to do it for you.

If you are considering outsourcing, you might not have the workload or cash flow to employ someone permanently, but they could do some monotonous but important tasks for you, or cope with irregular busy periods, so that your time is freed up to service more clients.

For example:

· Hiring independent contract coaches can be helpful for irregular work e.g.

  • busy periods
  • when you go on holiday.

· Alternatively, outsourcing allows you to hand over specific tasks or regular roles to an expert e.g.

  • virtual assistant
  • bookkeeper
  • accountant
  • marketing consultant
  • IT professional.

I will be talking more specifically about VA’s in the next episode of this podcast.

If you do any outsourcing, you would need to have a formal signed agreement in place before work commences, which clearly outlines the scope of work, specific duties and payment arrangements.

You’d need to have some clear policies in place about privacy, conduct and other things that state your expectations around quality of work and expected behaviour, and procedures to help hand over specific tasks.

Upgrading by Automating Tasks

When you start a business, you’re often doing a lot of things manually. For example:

  • Creating invoices in Microsoft Word.
  • Keeping track of clients in a log book, or an Excel worksheet.
  • Posting your social media posts one at a time on each platform.
  • Manually writing individual, separate emails to your customers, before, during and after programs.

When you switch these manual systems to automated processes and/or use software, you can save yourself a lot of time and mistakes, which frees you up to coach more clients.

Examples include:

  • Using dedicated financial software like WaveApps (free), Quickbooks, or Xero
  • Using a social media scheduling tool instead of manually posting (e.g. RecurPost, HootSuite)
  • Using an email system like Mailchimp or Mailerlite
  • Using a booking system like Calendly or Acuity Scheduling. For more info on these, you can listen to episode #105 Best Essential Business Systems or episode #106 Best Advanced Business Systems.

Increasing Your Prices

When your business reaches a certain level, a very simple strategy to grow your income without any cost to you, or without working extra hours, is to repackage services and/or raise prices.

For example, you might decide to:

  • raise prices by 10% and may also offer a bonus downloadable training course with your program – which raises the tangible value of your services and makes the increase more palatable with only a one-off labour cost, or
  • raise prices by 15% and re-position yourself as a highly experienced specialist in one area of coaching –raising your tangible value, or
  • creating a group coaching model to increase ROI
  • develop a premium (high-priced) specialty service.

There are many pricing strategies to choose from.

Pick the one that best suits your niche, your level of expertise and your business and lifestyle (working hours) goals. Work with a business coach to create the right strategy for you. You might also be interested in my podcast episode #202 Should I show pricing on my website?

Increasing the Options

When you start out in business, you’re often just focusing on doing one or two things well, becoming known, and getting a good reputation.

As you start to get more customers, you will start to see more opportunities to work with people in different ways.

By increasing the number of service options you have, you can grow your business and revenue.

For example:

– A short, DIY program with email support provides a low-cost entry point for people who are interested in working on one small problem they have (e.g. establishing a bedtime ritual for better sleep).

This means you are getting some income for very little live client time and gives them a step into your main program. This equates to more money for less time and effort (note: you would still need to promote this program regularly in order to sell it).

– A 1:1 program is now available as a small group program

This means you are earning more money per session, and also building a community of like-minded people who work with you and connect with each other. They are more likely to want to stay connected.

– Your initial 8-week program is now followed up with a 6-month maintenance program (VIP high-end pricing for individuals or mastermind, or moderate price for groups) or a membership.

This means you are keeping customers longer, earning more money and/or over a longer period, and helping your clients get next-level results after their initial program has finished.

– A higher value program where you add specific resources, a welcome pack, or package up other services or products such as meditation playlists, or a recipe book.

This means you can earn more money in the same amount of time.

One important caveat is this – keep your number of available services to 3 or 4, maximum. Otherwise, you risk entering the paradox of choice, where customers walk away without making a decision as there are too many options or difficulties in making the best choice.

Summary 

When you are coaching enough clients that you hit a ceiling of available time or income, or if you notice opportunities to help clients more or for longer, there are a few strategies you can do to take your business to the next level.

We talked about just three of the options today, including

  • Upgrading your systems
  • Increasing your pricing, and
  • Creating more options for working with you (but not too many).

If you need help developing business and revenue growth strategies to suit your business and niche, contact me to join my private coaching waitlist, which runs for five months in February and June of each year.

My private coaching programs usually sell out within a week of advertising, and you need to qualify to be a part of them. To enquire or join the waitlist, hit up my contact page and I’ll get back to you!

Ready to get clarity on your pathway to success?

Understanding who you are and what you need will allow your business to thrive! If you’re truly ready to break old habits and get out of the rut I encourage you to check out the Habitology membership.

Learn more here:

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E#153 Some Better What ifs

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This episode is about some better what ifs

A lot of coaches that I help with in business get held up by fears and it shows up in the form of unhelpful what if thoughts. I used to be like this too. I used to think, what if I fail, what if people judge me, and all of these other sorts of limiting thoughts.

Today I want to show you what it sounds like when you problem solve and flip the what ifs, so that you can manage your fears, keep showing up each day, and find more calmness and enjoyment in running your business.

Problem Solving Unhelpful What Ifs

Unhelpful ‘what if’ thoughts happen when your brain latches onto your underlying fears and limiting beliefs. 

Unhelpful ‘what ifs’ are a problem because they often get amplified into terrible catastrophes. Please know that although painful and scary, these what ifs are just thinking habits that you can change just like any other unhelpful habit in your life.

In this episode, I’ll talk about 
* What are unhelpful what ifs in problem solving?
* What are better what ifs?
* How and when to do it?

Let’s look at how to do that now, firstly by problem solving those unhelpful what ifs.

First, I want you to notice how you feel when you hear these unhelpful what ifs. Just a few to get you thinking. 

What if I launch and there’s just crickets?

What if nobody buys?

What if I crumble and can’t answer the questions?

What if someone trolls me?

What if I’m no good at this?

What if I don’t like it?

You’ll notice I added some emphasis and intonation to make it sound just like that scaredy-cat voice in your head.

How do you feel right now, listening to these?

Do they help you take action, or block you?

I feel miserable and defeated if I think like this. And just to be clear, you can move into more positive statements which we will get to in a minute, but, it can be kind of interesting to answer those negative what if’s.

For example – what if you go to all this effort and you don’t like it?

If you were to problem solve this, there are a lot of options. One option is to go back to your old job. Another option, if your business has some traction, is to sell it. Another option is that it might lead you down another path toward something more meaningful, something that you can’t even conceive of right now because you haven’t persisted long enough.

Right now, think about how much weight the what if has after you’ve really analysed it?

Here’s another one – what if nobody buys?

Great question. What if nobody buys, what does that mean? Does it mean you suck? Probably not. It probably means the offer isn’t relevant or worded right, so you can go back to your audience and find out what they truly want, and how they would describe it, so you can get the copy right. Or maybe you need more exposure so enough people see the offer in the first place.  In any case, you can get help.

As you can see, writing down the what if’s that are buzzing around in your head gives you the chance to problem solve them and take away their power.

It’s an interesting exercise – give it a go!

This is one thing you can do to address the what ifs.

But your computer hard drive – your brain – may be still wired to generate what ifs.

So in that sense, you need to go back and rewrite the code.

This is where reframing or flipping comes in.

I want to give you an experience of what’s possible when you reframe these inner statements and create some better what if’s.

Better what ifs

As you listen to these, notice what happens in your body and mind.

What if Instagram was a place you could have fun and connect with people?

What if LinkedIn was a place to build professional contacts and find aligned clients and colleagues?

What if professional photos were a way to highlight your strengths, best bits, and personality so you could attract more clients more easily?

What if email campaigns were a way to find people that you love to be around, connect with, and help to achieve significant transformations and goals?

What if people in your niche felt intimidated by perfection, and much preferred you to be only three or four steps ahead of them?

What if writing was a hidden strength that you could harness and grow to build your business?

What if you could hire an online business manager to organise everything that you need to do online regularly, so that you could just relax and stop sweating the small stuff?

What if you only needed to work five hours a day to build your business, sleep soundly at night?

What if people desperately needed and wanted the service that you want to sell and were so thankful and relieved when you launched your business?

What if you don’t know what your business is about, but you were willing to keep going because he knew you would figure it out eventually?

What if you didn’t have to try and please everybody, and you only needed to work with people that you were really excited to be around and had exceptional rapport with?

What if all you had to do was be really good at one thing and do that one thing consistently?

Reflect on those for a moment. How do you feel?

How different is that to the first set of unhelpful what ifs?

As you can hopefully see, it’s your brain that is your undoing. The work is to create a habit of problem solving and reframing those unhelpful what ifs so you can persist and learn to love your business, despite the unknowns.

How and when to do it

So, how often should you do this work?

I would recommend daily at first, so you can develop a regular habit of getting stuff out of your head rather than ruminating on it.

Make it easy – choose one What If that has come up that day, and then problem solve it, and reframe it.

Over time, you might reduce this to a few times per week – but I’d suggest you start more frequently and maintain that for a while as it takes persistence to break an unhelpful habit.

Summary

Today we looked at what ifs that come up and sabotage your efforts on building your business.

The key is to get the what ifs (monsters) out of your head, and into the real world, where you can problem solve them, and reframe them.

Hopefully you felt the effects of hearing unhelpful what ifs, and better what ifs.

Now, you have a choice. Do nothing, or start rewriting your mental code.

Ultimately, your work is to develop a daily or weekly practice that will help you break an unhelpful thinking habit.

Ready to get clarity on your pathway to success?

Understanding who you are and what you need will allow your business to thrive! If you’re truly ready to break old habits and get out of the rut I encourage you to check out the Habitology membership.

Learn more here:

Learn More