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Work Less, Earn More is the podcast that explores how to get the most out of every hour you work. Gillian Perkins brings more than a decade of experience as an entrepreneur and educator to help you design a business that's not only flexible and fulfilling, but highly profitable. She shares strategies that are working in her own business to save time and maximize profits. She also features interviews with successful business owners on how they’re achieving big things in their businesses with crazy-little time investment. Share Work Less, Earn More with an overworked entrepreneur you know who could use a change of pace!
[0:00] [intro bumper]
We became entrepreneurs because more than anything, we want freedom. We want to be in control of our own schedule, income, and life. But unfortunately, that isn't always the reality of being a business owner. I'm Gillian Perkins, and I'm on a mission to take back entrepreneurship for what it's supposed to be.
In every episode, I'll share with you how to get the most out of every hour you work so that you can work less and earn more. Let's get to it.
[/intro bumper]
Gillian:
[0:36] So when we were trying to decide what my talk on this day should be, I thought about our topic for the day, scaling. And I really thought, I want to just go back to basics with this one. I want to make sure that as we are embarking on this day of talks, all about different ways to grow our business, that we have the right mindset about it, that we both understand what scaling is and how to effectively do it so that we can filter through that all of these different options that we have when it comes to scaling and make smart decisions about which of those ideas to pursue.
Gillian:
[1:10] Because even if it's not scale day at Start Scale Succeed, if you are spending time on the internet, if you are reading books about how to grow your business, if you are listening to podcasts, I'm sure that you are hearing about different ways to grow your business constantly. Whether it's a new social media platform, or a new strategy to use on a particular social media platform, or that you should start paying for ads, or that you should design a fancy sales funnel, you know, whatever it is, I'm sure you're hearing lots of ways to scale. But how do you decide which ones to pursue so you don't feel like you're running around like a chicken with their head cut off, right? So let's just start with the right mindset today. So let us move on into this. So, First of all, when you hear the term scaling, what comes to mind? Does that make you think of hiring more people or maybe starting to use advertising, increasing your advertising budget, something like that, going viral on social media, building a big audience, something like that? Or maybe, and I know that for me, I thought of all of these things back when my business was tiny, but in the back of my mind, something that was definitely there, something I was thinking about, something that I had apprehension about was that I also felt like it would look like me working more. I was kind of imagining everything getting bigger. My team getting bigger, my top line getting bigger, that revenue, my bottom line getting bigger for sure, more expenses, but also my working hours getting bigger.
Gillian:
[2:36] And I thought I wanted to make more money, you know, need to increase the income, but I felt apprehensive about working more.
Gillian:
[2:45] And I think I'm not alone in having these assumptions. And for a lot of us, it can prevent us from moving forward. It can make us a little fearful of growing our businesses. You might have heard people sometimes talk about this idea of being afraid of success. And they describe it in different ways. And I used to think that was silly. And I still think that I don't have all this afraid of success thing that people sometimes talk about. But one way in which it certainly was apparent for me was that I was fearful of what success would mean in terms of the bad things that would come along with it, specifically having to work a whole lot more.
Gillian:
[3:22] So here's what we're going to talk about today. First of all, what scaling actually means. Okay, some clear definitions and practical examples so you can understand what it means to scale and how it's different from just growing your business. Second, we'll talk about the three stages of scaling so you can figure out where you are now and what should come next on your journey of growing your business. Then we'll talk about some different levers you can pull to effectively scale your business because there are different ways that you can progress through these three stages.
Gillian:
[3:51] And then finally, we'll get into an action plan because I always like to make things actionable so that you don't just walk away from today's class with a lot of ideas, but with something that you can do in the next few days to make some immediate progress on what we talk about. I want you to really experience growth. So first, what does scaling mean? I want to clear up this confusion once and for all. Scaling is not just another word for growth. It is a specific type of growth with a very powerful characteristic. And that is that actually scale your business, not just grow, you are growing with leverage. Okay, so traditional growth is more input and more output. It means that you are working more hours to make more sales. You're probably hiring more people so you can serve more clients. You're spending more money on ads so you can get more customers. And the result is that everything grows in your business. Your revenue grows, yes, but your expenses grow also. And like I said, your work hours do as well.
Gillian:
[4:52] When I think of strategic scaling or smart scaling, what I'm thinking about is that we have the same quantity of input. Now that does not mean we are doing exactly the same things, but we have the same quantity of input, meaning our expenses are about the same, our time invested is about the same, but we have exponentially more output, okay? So this means things like automating your processes so that your systems are working 24 seven without you. Creating products that you can sell hundreds thousands even millions of copies of without having to work more hours without having to bankroll that building assets that will compound over time and the result of all of this is that your revenue and specifically your profit will grow much faster than your expenses so of course as your business scales you might see a growth with your expenses, right? But we want the growth with your revenue to far outsize that, okay? Have a much steeper trajectory of that growth with revenue so that your profits are growing.
Gillian:
[5:58] You also might experience your team growing, but I don't want that to be at the expense of you working more and more hours. I want it to just be you giving more and more people jobs, which is great, okay? Especially if, and maybe only if, your revenue is growing much faster than that because it's great to give people jobs, but that's gonna cost you money, right? And that's a good thing if the revenue is going through the roof, but if you're just growing the team and the revenue is staying flat or growing at the same pace, then you're gonna actually find your profit margins tighter and tighter, okay? Kind of like how when two people start out, I've got six kids, right? And so when my oldest kid, when he was three, along comes his little brother, right? And at that moment, he is almost infinitely older than him. A couple years go by. Now, older brother is six, younger brother is three, he's twice his age, okay? But then as they continue to grow, eventually, right, one of them is going to be the older kid will be, let's say, 103.
Gillian:
[6:57] And my younger kid will be 100. Now he's only like basically 3% older. And so that's what can happen if your revenue grows at the same time as your expenses is that you'll feel a squeeze, okay, where your margin, well, it might be the same raw number of dollars, it is going to be a smaller and smaller percentage, you will be treading in dangerous water, right? It'll get more and more risky, literally, okay? You'll be incurring more and more risk in your business. I don't want that for you. So you want to make sure that we actually widen that gap as the business grows so that you can stay comfortable, stay secure, and keep plenty of your time for enjoying the results of your work with your business.
Gillian:
[7:39] So let's look at a few examples here. We're going to look at three examples of how this looks in the real world for a service provider. So someone who works with their clients doing service work. Instead of coaching one-on-one for say $200 an hour, you could create a group program where you serve 20 clients at once and you charge them $2,000 each for the entire program that you're working with them over. And it could cost you the exact same amount of your time, but you could make 10 times as much revenue. What about an e-commerce business? So you could partner with a fulfillment center that automates the picking, the packing, and the shipping so that you could serve 10,000 orders per month without touching a single box yourself. So of course, you need to get the orders right to make this make sense so that your revenue again is growing faster than the expense of having this fulfillment center do this. But it actually ultimately can result in less work for you, where maybe previously you were working around the clock, packing and shipping your, let's say, 100 orders a month, okay, maybe 1,000 orders a month tops, but now you have 10,000 orders a month and you aren't packing any of them. Or for a final example, I know many of you are course creators.
Gillian:
[8:52] Well, when you're a course creator, you can record your expertise once as an online course and then you can sell it to hundreds of students with automated emails and automated payment processing so that you aren't having to individually teach this class over and over and over again, right? So let's bust this common myth once and for all that scaling requires a big team, a massive ads budget, or viral marketing. The truth is that scaling requires leverage. You need systems, you need automation, and smart positioning that multiply your impact without multiplying your effort.
Gillian:
[9:28] So now we're going to look at the three stages of scaling, because every successful business moves through these three stages. Okay, there are lots of things in business that we get to freestyle, we get to do however we want. But there's kind of no getting out of these three stages, you might zoom through a couple of them or be stuck in one of them for a while. So like the speed through which you go through them and how you go through them is very much up to you and the decisions that you make. But every business is going to go through them kind of Just like every person, even though they have a very unique personality and they make different choices in life, we all start as babies and then we grow into children and then we grow into adults, right? And understanding where you are with your business stage can help you focus on the right things and avoid common challenges. An idea that I come back to time and time again in lots of different things that I teach, whether I'm teaching YouTube growth or I'm teaching funnel strategies, whatever it is, is that different strategies are necessary for different stages. Okay. The strategies that a baby would employ to be successful as a baby, meaning like learn to walk and talk and, you know, feel happy, are going to be very different things that an adult needs to do, right, to be successful as an adult. And the same thing is true with your business.
Gillian:
[10:43] Okay. So the first stage that every business goes through is building the foundation. Okay. This is where we create stability for the growth of the business. It's where you prove your concept and you establish consistency, you make your first sales, and you get ready to start building further. So some of the key things you're going to do here is get that proof of concept. Okay, proof that there is demand for your product by getting some real customers in the door.
Gillian:
[11:10] But you want to grow up a little bit beyond that in your foundation stage. You don't just want the first couple sales, but you actually want to see some sales coming in regularly. Okay? You will also work on refining your core offer, figuring out how to effectively sell it, why people are buying it, and how to effectively talk about it. And then it's also best to get some basic financial management in place. Okay? Starting with things like a business bank account, but also a simple bookkeeping software, or at least a well-organized spreadsheet. The primary focus in the stage is to create that clear, compelling offer and figure out how to effectively sell it. Now, it's ideal if you can also make sure that your business is relatively organized, especially your finances, like I was saying. But the main goal and the thing that does allow you to graduate out of the stage
Gillian:
[11:57] is just having that clear, compelling offer and knowing how to sell it.
Gillian:
[12:01] Now, the second stage that every business goes through is the optimization stage. So this is where you are going to increase the number of sales that you are making. You're going to go from just having a slow but steady stream to now having a larger steady stream. And how many that is really depends on what you're selling. You know, if you are selling a high ticket offer, it might be plenty for you to have only three clients a month. On the other hand, if you're selling t-shirts, you're probably going to want to get up to hundreds of t-shirt sales per month to make it to the optimization stage. Now, the main thing that you're going to focus on in this optimization stage is improving efficiency. Okay, so this is where you start to tap into some leverage, you start to see more growth.
Gillian:
[12:48] While you don't increase your working hours and your expenses as quickly. So this is really where I would say the scaling starts. Some of the key things that you will do in this stage are streamlining your processes so you save time, improving your conversion rates and your profitability, getting a tighter delivery so you can have better outcomes with your customers, and getting a clear understanding with your numbers. So not just your finances are organized, but now you're able to make some strategic decisions based on them. Your primary focus here is really on implementing automation and SOPs, which are standard operating procedures. Okay, so standardizing your procedure for how you do things. You'll also want to work on refining your marketing funnel and eliminating inefficiencies that drain resources from your business.
Gillian:
[13:38] All right. And then the third stage that every business goes through is the stage of exponential expansion. So this is where your systems work smoothly, your business is efficient, and now you're ready to kind of like shoot for the moon. Okay, you're ready to replicate success at a large scale so that you can reach your ultimate heights. So some of the key characteristics of this stage are that you have proven systems that are now ready to handle growth. So you're going to multiply your revenue streams and make them start working together. there. You'll expand your audience, your reach and your visibility, and you will hire more team members, most likely strategic team members and placing them in key roles. The primary focus here is expanding into new markets or audiences.
Gillian:
[14:25] Adding revenue streams and or building your team that multiplies your capacity. So if in stage two, you built a well-oiled machine, now you are cranking it up to its maximum potential. Now, that doesn't mean that you need to crank it up to a point where it is about ready to break, but just cranking it up to where it is running at the capacity you want it to be running at.
Gillian:
[14:49] All right. So now we've looked at these three stages, okay, and how they lead one into the next. We start with that strong foundation, then we optimize, and then we expand. And each of these stages obviously builds on the previous one. We don't want to try to rush ahead because that can cause a lot of problems. For example, if you try to expand before you have the foundation built, then you're probably going to be wasting your time and money. If you try to optimize before you have your foundation built, well, then you won't have a system that is working to optimize. So again, it'll be a waste of your time. So we want to make sure we go through these phases in order. But we also don't want to spend too long in any one phase because that can really limit your potential. I see this a lot of times with small online business owners where they either rush ahead too fast or they stay stuck in the foundation stage. And I've been there too, staying stuck in that foundation stage where I felt like I just needed to continue to work on finding the perfect product or finding my marketing message or something like that. Where I was trying to perfect something before I was willing to move on into the growth stages. But really, once we have something that is basically working, we can move on into stage two and we can start just trying to make it more efficient. Now, it's always okay to go back to the drawing board and rethink some things, rethink our messaging, come out with a new product, but we don't have to stay stuck in stage one.
Gillian:
[16:10] So now let's talk about how we move from one stage to the next and specifically how when you are in stage two and you're trying to make things more efficient and then moving into stage three and you're trying to scale things up, how you can do that. There are four main ways you can and most people call these levers that we can
Gillian:
[16:28] use to scale the business. And these are some of the most powerful tools that we have to grow our revenue without proportionately increasing the effort or the expenses. So the first lever is systems and automation. So this means that we are building processes that can run your business without you having to constantly be there to make things happen.
Gillian:
[16:52] Systems and automation mean creating processes and using tools so that tasks happen consistently without requiring your constant attention. Now, not only does this mean that you are ultimately able to work less while your business continues to bring in revenue, but it also means that your business can be a lot more consistent because the reality is that we as humans can't be perfectly consistent. Sometimes we are sick. Sometimes there is too much traffic that keeps us out of the office. sometimes our computer decides to update right when we're about to do something important, you know, like have a meeting or something like that. Or we have something we need to get out and the computer breaks. We have to go buy a new computer or get the computer repaired, right? Now, when we have automations running in the background, that can really help the business to be a lot more consistent, which can help our customers to be happier. It can help our growth on social media to be more consistent. It can mean that our newsletter gets out consistently. It can mean that our team members can keep working even if we are having tech troubles or we are sick or something like that. And so these automations are very valuable for helping our businesses to scale effectively.
Gillian:
[18:02] So some practical examples here of how these can scale your business. You can use automated email sequences to nurture every lead throughout your sales funnel. So imagine what would happen if you didn't have an automation here. New people are joining your email list and you are just sending out random newsletters to them like every week, a new newsletter, but they haven't really been onboarded. They haven't had an introduction. They haven't gotten to know you. It'd be like if you walked up to a random person at a party and you just started talking to them about a random topic. That would be a very awkward introduction, right? And it probably wouldn't turn into a great friendship. We have to go through the stage of introduction first, and we can do that very effectively with automations. The other alternative would be that every new subscriber, you try to personally welcome them to your email list. So you sent them out a manual email, that wouldn't be sustainable. It wouldn't be scalable, right? And when you're very first starting out, it's okay to do things that aren't scalable, right? When you're not in that scaling stage yet, you can welcome each individual new email subscriber. But once you start getting dozens of new email subscribers every day, that could quickly be all of your time. And once it gets to be hundreds of new subscribers every day, it might just be impossible. So we want to make sure that we build in those automations so that we are able to scale as our audience grows.
Gillian:
[19:28] Another great example is using a scheduling tool like Calendly or Acuity to eliminate booking back and forth. Now, again, it can take so much of your time if you are emailing back and forth with every guest you're trying to book on your podcast or every new potential client who you are trying to book a discovery call with, right? So using an automation to let them book on your calendar can save you a lot of time. Another example is standardizing your client onboarding so that it can be handled by your virtual assistant or by software. So at first, you have to be very involved when you're onboarding a new client because maybe you're making these processes from scratch.
Gillian:
[20:06] Once you've done this several times, then you can create a standard operating procedure so that you can just have an assistant do that for you. Or you might even set it up so that they can just use an automated software to essentially onboard themselves. This, again, will make scaling possible. Another example of this is just template libraries for repetitive tasks. So basically anything that you are doing repeatedly, it is good to have a standard operating procedure for or have some sort of automation that can handle it for you so that this doesn't keep you stuck, okay? We want to be able to grow. We want to be able to scale this business and that it's only possible if we use automations to facilitate that. Why do systems and automations help you scale? Well, once you set these up, these systems can run 24-7 with the same amount of effort from you, whether you're serving 10 customers or you're serving 1,000 customers. And that means that your business can work while you sleep, which creates time freedom and a consistent customer experience.
Gillian:
[21:07] Now, the second lever that we have available to scale our businesses is leverage products. Okay, these are also sometimes called one-to-many offers. So basically, this is where you go from working with one customer at a time to now working with several customers at a time. And there are several different ways you could do this. So it all starts with developing some sort of signature framework that can be taught or implemented at scale. When I say taught or implemented, here's what I'm talking about. If it is something that you teach your customers, for example, maybe you are a coach or a consultant.
Gillian:
[21:43] Well, then this framework can now be taught to multiple people at once via a group coaching program or an online course. On the other hand, if you are a service provider, you still want to have a framework, okay? Now it's going to be a framework for how you serve your customers. It'll be similar to a standard operating procedure, except it's more about the big picture. of how you serve these customers. And this will enable your team to be able to serve the customers for you so that you are not the linchpin on which your business's success rests. And the reason you don't want to be the linchpin is again, if something goes wrong, then everything will come to a crashing halt. And even if nothing goes wrong, you will still be the bottleneck that keeps your business small. And that's not because you are not amazing. I know you are. If you are building a business, then you are an incredible person because it requires so much perseverance, so much strength to build a business. But we all have limited capacity. So we want to make sure that we do develop these frameworks that enable other people to be able to help us and enable systems to be able to do much of our work for us.
Gillian:
[22:50] Once you have those frameworks, then you can transform your private coaching into a group coaching program where you can serve maybe 10 people at once. Or you can package your knowledge into an online course or a membership site. And you can also do things like create templates or workbooks or software that can be downloaded an infinite number of times by your customers. So even if it's not about you teaching them things, you can create tools based on the frameworks that you teach or that you implement for your customers.
Gillian:
[23:19] So what gives a product leverage? Well, it's when you do work once to create the product, and then it generates revenue repeatedly without extra work hours. Your income becomes decoupled from your time, which unlocks that exponential growth potential. So whatever it is that you do for your customers, I really want to encourage you to think about how could you change how you're delivering this offer to something that you only need to do one time and then multiple customers can benefit from. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that that needs to be the main offer at your business.
Gillian:
[23:54] And the first idea you have for how to do that certainly doesn't need to be the one that you go with. Like I said, it could be that your team is now doing the work for you. It could be that you have an online course. It could be that you are still doing the work, but you're doing it for multiple people at once. There are many different ways that you can create a leveraged product, but you must break out of that one-to-one type of client work if you want to
Gillian:
[24:18] be able to scale your business beyond your current capacity. Okay. And I say that as a big if, because you don't necessarily have to or want to do that, right? Maybe you just want to grow your business to the point where whatever is a full calendar for you, whatever's fully booked for you. So for example, let's say that's 20 clients at a time. You might just want to grow to that point where you can be fully booked out with those 20 clients and at a very good rate. And that is the amount of growth that you want to get to. And that is amazing. And that is great, okay? But if you want to grow beyond that capacity, you will need to figure out a way to serve more people at once.
Gillian:
[24:57] And you also might be interested in serving people at a lower price point, okay? Not just serving people who can afford to pay you thousands of dollars, but serving people who only have a budget of perhaps a few hundred dollars or even just a few dozen dollars, right? And the only way that that can be successful for both you and them is if you can figure out a leveraged product that can serve people at scale.
Gillian:
[25:21] All right, so now we get to move on to lever number three, which is marketing and visibility. So this is a way you can scale your business by reaching more customers and in fact, closing more customers. Now, this is only really possible if you again have that leveraged product. Now, marketing and visibility can still help you scale even if you have a one-to-one offer, because the more people you reach, the more high income earners you will reach. And so if, for example, you want to book your calendar out with 20 people who are paying you a few thousand dollars each, well, by casting a bigger net, reaching more people, there will automatically be more people in that net who have the ability to pay you those larger amounts. But that may or may not be what you want to do. So what I'm trying to say here is that the marketing and the visibility scaling this up, it helps whether you have the more like mass market model where you are trying to do the volume game, trying to help people at a lower price point, but you need hundreds of customers, or if you have that specialty model where you're only going to help a handful of customers, but at a higher price point. Either way, getting in front of more people can help you get the customers that you need.
Gillian:
[26:30] So this is all about amplifying your reach, okay? Marketing and visibility mean getting in front of more people so that the systems and the offers that you have built can reach a much larger audience.
Gillian:
[26:39] So a few examples here is you can use evergreen content, okay? This is like videos, podcasts, blogs, so that you can reach people who are looking for help with whatever you help people with. And what I love about evergreen content is that it is searchable and it lives on the internet for years and years and years. So you don't have to be on that social media content hamster wheel where you have to post a new piece of content on, say, Instagram every single day just to stay relevant, just to keep your audience growing. So I love using that evergreen content. Another way you can do this is with strategic collaborations and affiliate partnerships that will multiply your reach. So this is where you team up with other people who already have audiences and you do collaborations with them so that their audience gets to hear about your offer. You can also, of course, use paid advertising. This can be one of the surest ways to turn on the tap. But it also obviously comes with that big drawback of it is very expensive.
Gillian:
[27:39] And then we've also just got the classic social media growth. Not my favorite, but it is a go to for many people. So I certainly couldn't leave it off this list.
[27:49] [mid-roll ad]
Hey, did you know that I have another podcast? So, right now, you're listening to Work Less Earn More, which is my main show. But I've also got this other podcast called The 100K Method. The 100K Method is a 10-episode podcast series all about how to build a strategic sales system for your online course, your membership, or your coaching program. So if you don't already have a system that is consistently getting you sales online, then you're definitely going to want to give this podcast series a listen. Now, like I said, there's only 10 episodes in it because I know that sometimes it can be a little overwhelming to start listening to a new show. You don't know where to start. You don't know if you should start with the most recent episode or the first episode that was like three years ago or somewhere in the middle with a random episode that just looks interesting. So I wanted to make sure that this podcast series had a really clear start and finish. you can actually listen to the whole thing and get the whole message. Of course, it's totally free since it's just a podcast series, but honestly, it's kind of like a mini audio course. To check it out, all you need to do is go to gillianperkins.com slash the-100k-method, and you'll find the podcast series right there, and you can start listening right away. You can also just give it to Google. All you'll need to do is search The 100k Method podcast, and it'll pop right up, top result. And I really hope that you do go look that up and give it a listen, because I know what a difference it can make to have a strategic, automated sales system for your product online.
[/mid-roll ad]
Gillian:
[29:28] All right. Now, how do marketing and visibility help your business really scale? Well, marketing creates a flywheel effect. And what's really cool about this is it means that it's not just like we put in one hour of work to get a certain amount, like X amount of growth, you know, X number of new customers. But we actually see this like snowball or this flywheel effect, where this growth leads to more growth in the future.
Gillian:
[29:54] And when you have systems running in the back end that are automatically happening, then you are able to have this really scalable type of growth where not only do you see that snowball effect with your audience, your visibility on the internet, but now as more and more people enter, say, your sales funnel and go through your automated sales process and can purchase your product that isn't just dependent on you, well, now we have this really robust system that can scale almost infinitely. Now, the fourth lever that we're going to look at today is your team, okay, which is maybe my favorite way to scale your business. But those other three levers have to be pulled first. Because if you hire people, what happens is you get more of whatever result you are currently getting, okay, you're just gonna do more of that same thing, get more of that same result. And so if right now the results are lackluster, and you try hiring people, you will find that your expenses will rise, but you will just get more lackluster results. Okay, so we want to make sure that we have products that are effectively selling that we have systems that can scale that we know how to grow our audience effectively before we start bringing more people into the mix to help us do even more of those things.
Gillian:
[31:15] Once you have that, then hiring a team and delegating can mean that you are able to step out of the day-to-day operations so that you can focus on high-value growth work that only you can do. Being the CEO of your company, making those strategic decisions, brainstorming the new ideas, right? Here are a few ways you can use your team to scale your business further. You can hire virtual assistants to handle customer service and administrative tasks so that more of those things can get done so your business is able to handle a bigger capacity of customers. And again, you can reclaim your time to work on driving the business forward. You can hire specialized contractors to help with things like design, ads, and video editing. I love this one because it can really help to increase the quality of the content that your business is putting out, which can help your business to look more professional and attract higher paying clients or have a broader appeal.
Gillian:
[32:11] You can also hire core team members for ongoing delivery. Okay, so this could look like, for example, hiring a program manager for your membership site or your online course. This can help the program to run better, making the customers more happy, helping the customers to get better results, which can lead to more word of mouth marketing. And of course, again, it also helps you reclaim your time. You can also hire strategic advisors who bring expertise you're missing. So this is one area you might find it helpful to hire before you're getting the results that you want. For example, if you are not getting the results you want with growing your audience, so you don't have enough leads coming in the door and you're not closing enough customers, while hiring someone who is an expert in audience growth or advertising or some particular aspect of marketing, perhaps the social media platform you're trying to grow on, for example, can help you to figure out what your blind spots are and what mistakes you're making so that you can overcome those challenges and start seeing that growth that you're looking for.
Gillian:
[33:17] The caveat here is that that doesn't always work. So make sure that you are investing carefully if you are hiring a strategic advisor. And I would say like dip toe in, don't jump in with both feet because there have been times when I have hired a strategic advisor and it was incredibly helpful and it helped me get unstuck. But there have been other times when I invested a large amount of money into hiring an advisor trying to get unstuck and it didn't work. You know, maybe their advice wasn't what I needed for one reason or another. You know, maybe they didn't actually know the strategies that would work for me or they didn't understand the challenges that I was facing or there just wasn't an easy answer. Right. And I jumped in with both feet when I should have dipped a toe to see if their advice was actually helpful and actually worked for me. So those are the four levers that you can pull. I got one more slide here for teams and delegation. your capacity multiplies when you hire more people when others handle that repeated work you are able to focus on strategy innovation and expansion this moves you from working in your business to working on your business if you've ever heard that term before working in your business versus working on your business while hiring a team is a great way to do that just again be careful to not hire too soon.
Gillian:
[34:33] All right. So let's look at this scaling action plan. Okay. First step is to understand that scaling means more output without equal input. Okay. So you want to keep your input as fixed as you can, or at least growing as slowly as you can, while scaling up your output. Okay. The revenue that your business generates. Okay. And that will help to increase your profit margins. Second is to know where you're at. Which stage are you in right now? Are you in that foundation building stage, creating the stability for your business? Are you in stage number two, optimization, where you are working on making your business more efficient? Or are you in stage three, where it really is time to scale up dramatically with the expansion phase? And then the third step is to choose one lever to focus on and take action, okay? And we're gonna look at this step a lot further. So basically, what these three steps are is the first one is like your mindset, having the right mindset about this. Second one is knowing where you're at right now. Third is choosing which lever to choose to pull and then figuring out how you will do that. So which lever should you pull? We've got systems and automation where you can build processes that run without you. Leverage products, okay, where you create one-to-many offers that serve at scale.
Gillian:
[35:57] Marketing and visibility, which amplifies your reach to larger audiences. And then the team and delegation where you multiply your capacity with strategic hiring. So let's work on this right now. We have a few minutes here. Which of these four levers would make the biggest difference in your business? You can write it down and then we're going to identify one small action step that you could take this week to move forward with this specific lever. Now, you certainly can work on any of these different levers at any point. It's not like you have to work on systems first, and then you can work on products, then you can work on marketing, then you can work on team. However, there is some amount of natural order to them. And I have presented them in the order that most businesses are going to benefit the most from them. And so focus more on the first couple and less on the second couple if you are in the earlier stages. Does that make sense? You'll probably want to work on creating some systems.
Gillian:
[36:55] Creating a product that can scale, working on growing your audience before you ultimately are growing your team. And if right now you are not getting the results that you want, meaning your business is not bringing in as much money as you want, but you also feel at capacity, then we really need to work on making some strategic adjustments to what you are doing, not just bringing new people into the business to take work off your plate. It's kind of like when there is a hoarder, okay, somebody who collects too many things. And there are kind of two different approaches you can take to cleaning up the mess. One way is to organize everything, right? Come into the house, start packing stuff into boxes, labeling the boxes, right? The other way is to get rid of things. So you have less to have to organize. And if we are right now full to capacity and we don't have time to work on anything, but we also are not making enough money and we start hiring people, that is the same as coming into the hoarder's house and packing things into boxes. It'll make the situation look a little bit better, but ultimately it's not going to lead to a good outcome because all those things will still be in their house, taking up space, overwhelming them, and most likely going to come out of the boxes again and cause another mess. So instead, what we want to do.
Gillian:
[38:15] Is we want to work on cutting back, okay? Culling what we have in the house, decluttering. And so I want you to declutter your workload before you start bringing other people into the mix to help you out. And how you can declutter your workload, there are many ways. Some of them are things that we're talking about here, you know, creating systems so that you don't have to do things manually, but instead they can happen automatically. Creating leveraged products so you aren't working with as many customers, but you can work with your customers in groups.
Gillian:
[38:45] Or growing your audience. This one is indirectly connected, not as directly connected with getting things off your plate. But right now, you might be doing some type of marketing this very manual. For example, that social media hamster wheel that we talked about, right, where you are maybe putting a lot of time into posting on social media every day or every week. But instead, you could shift to a more sustainable content strategy, a more sustainable marketing strategy, where perhaps you're using evergreen content or even paid advertising, marketing strategies that will take a lot less of your time.
Gillian:
[39:17] Now, once you identify that one scaling lever that you can begin working on this week, then I want you to make sure that you take one small concrete step towards implementing it. And really the key to making this happen is I think clarity. Clarity on two points. One is what lever are you going to work on? And second is when are you going to work on it? You don't right now need to know exactly what you're going to do to work on that lever.
Gillian:
[39:42] But you do need to know which lever and you need to know when you're going to work on it. So I would encourage you to put on your calendar a block of 30 to 60 minutes sometime in the next week when you can work on that lever and decide right now which lever you think would be the most helpful for you to work on pulling to start working on scaling up your business or at least making your business more efficient so that you are setting yourself up to be able to scale down the road. Now, that brings us to the end of today's session. But the last thing I want to share with you is a little giveaway, okay? So we have 10 free strategy sessions that we're going to give away to help you create a strategic plan to scale your business over the next six months. Okay. So here's how the giveaway is going to work. Now, first of all, I am sorry, but this is not a giveaway for quite everyone. Okay. Because we want to be helping people with these strategy sessions who are ready to start working on scaling. Okay. People who have already started their business. They've already made their first few sales. And now how can we make the business more efficient, but also grow the business at the same time, right? So to qualify to win one of these sessions, you must have a product that you have successfully sold to at least three customers. And I know that's gonna immediately cut out a big chunk of everybody who's here today.
Gillian:
[40:59] Because I know a lot of you are just getting started, okay? But if you have sold at least three of your customers, then what you can do is you can use this link here. We've got 10 sessions available. We're not gonna like pick a winner here. It's just first come, first serve. If you go to that link and one of those sessions are available, you can book one of them to get one of those free strategy sessions. Okay, so don't miss out on this opportunity to get some guidance on how to scale your business over these next six months. Again, I don't want you to walk away from the session just with ideas. I want to help you practically implement. And the little way I can help you do that, you know, is by giving you this guidance to choose a lever and to set aside some time. I would love to spend some more time with you and really work on creating, like figuring out how to pull that lever and which lever is going to be the most strategic for you to pull. All right. So that brings us to the end of today's session. So we're going to wrap this up. Thank you guys all for being here. Maybe we have time for a few questions. So let's see here. Gabe, you want to pop back on here with me? Tell me if there was any questions we need to get answered before we wrap this up.
Gabe:
[42:03] Yeah, we had a few questions in the chat. We also have Sarah here.
Gillian:
[42:08] Awesome. I love it.
Gabe:
[42:10] Okay, so let's see. Pam was wondering about like all-in-one business softwares, if they can do the automations, or if you have a recommendation, if you like piecing them together, or if you prefer like an all-in-one type thing.
Gillian:
[42:23] Yeah, yeah. Great question. So there are a few things to say about this. One is that, you know, when I'm talking about automations, I'm not just talking about your sales funnel. You know, there are so many different things you can automate in your business, whether that is onboarding your new customers, or that is a video editing task, you know, or how you're posting on social media, or how you are responding to customers, okay? And this can be standardizing your responses so that you don't have to be trying to figure out what to say from scratch every time. It can be giving yourself a step-by-step process. It can be creating if this, then that type automations where If you say...
Gillian:
[42:57] Publish a new post on your blog, it automatically shares it on a social media platform. Like there are all sorts of different automations that can save you time and help you grow your business more effectively. So just want to clarify that. As far as automations for building your funnel, the main thing that you need is an email platform. That is actually where 90% of your automations are really going to happen. We always use email marketing as the backbone for all of our marketing campaigns. It's similar to a CRM, okay, a customer database, essentially, where we keep all the information about the customers, including tags, which show like what product the customers bought and what they've clicked on and different things like that. So you do not need something like ClickFunnels or what are some of the other ones out there? Kajabi is kind of one like there are these different funnel software. You do not need a funnel software, especially at this day and age where traditional funnels aren't working as well as they used to. Okay, what we need is just a way that we are managing these leads that we have and that we can move them through a sequence of automations. And an email marketing software really does all of that. So personally, I like using ConvertKit, now known as just Kit. We also really like MailerLite, which can be a little bit more affordable.
Gillian:
[44:10] Both of them are great, though. And we have customers who use both of them. So I would recommend starting there, both because it's going to cost you less money, it's going to be simpler, and it will be really everything you need. And then you can add on, like in a modular way, add on different other software that you need to kind of like customize your funnel. If you want to have a webinar, you can add on a webinar software. Or I mean, these days, honestly, we love just using like Vimeo and baking in the webinar into a sales page or a page on your website. And I don't have time today to get into why we love that option so much, but we don't need to like try to trick people, you know, that it is a live webinar if it's actually an automated webinar. That's something people used to do. It doesn't work anymore. And it is very questionably ethical in the first place, right? So a lot of the funnel softwares were really designed to do that sort of thing where you're trying to create this like very artificial experience. And it's just not necessary and not effective anymore at all. So it's better to kind of do something more flexible, is my opinion. That's a great question though. But Gabe, you're muted again.
Gabe:
[45:18] I'm muted myself because I was coughing. Yeah, I was just saying like, keep it simple, especially starting out. I love it. So one more question. And then if we have time, because we were talking about like automation and systems, I think it would be a good time to pop Sarah in and ask her a couple questions. Brittany asked a really good question. She's wondering, how would lever number two look for a physical product? I know you talk more about digital products, but what does that look like for a physical product?
Gillian:
[45:40] Yeah, so let me get back to my slides here. So with lever number two, we're talking about a leveraged product. The good news is that physical products, 50% are already what I would call leveraged product, okay? If you buy a screwdriver, I have a screwdriver on my desk here. I'm planning to install a new hard drive on my computer to make my computer faster. Anyway, if you buy a screwdriver at Walmart, that does not require the person who owns the business, who sells screwdrivers, or who made the screwdriver to individually give it to you, right? Like you're able to buy as many screwdrivers as you want. So that is a very scalable product for that business. So 50% is scalable, right? The other 50% is a little less scalable. How did the screwdriver actually get made? Like a person to some degree made the screwdriver, right? And then it somehow had to get delivered to the store. So there were things that needed to happen for the product's creation and delivery. And how we would automate or scale those things is basically by outsourcing. Okay, you might outsource to a manufacturing company or a fulfillment company.
Gillian:
[46:47] Something like that, right? So yes, it is different than how we would create a one-to-many offer for an educational product or digital product of some sort. But it certainly still can be done. I mean, that's like how Walmart exists. It's how Target exists. It's how Amazon exists, right? is that they were able to scale to be able to serve millions of customers without Sam Walton having to serve millions of customers himself.
Gabe:
[47:14] Amazing. All right, Sarah, if you are available with your camera, we can spotlight you too. But we have a couple fun questions for you, and...
Sarah:
[47:25] I'm here. I'm all ears.
Gabe:
[47:26] Welcome. I'm so glad you were able to be here.
Sarah:
[47:28] Thank you so much for having me pop up here.
Gabe:
[47:30] Yeah. Yeah. It's funny because I don't know if Toby told you, but yesterday I was like, Sarah, where are you? Sarah?
Gabe:
[47:35] Because in my head, you're coming to day one, even though I know we planned you coming to day two.
Sarah:
[47:39] Oh, that's so funny. All good.
Gabe:
[47:42] All good. All good. But we've heard such great feedback from your presentation. And it was wonderful for those who are doing the OBM of their own business. A couple quick questions for you related to scaling and systemizing. What if we want to stay solopreneurs and don't plan on hiring anyone? Does the organization and system still matter? Can we start messy and clean it up later? What are your recommendations?
Sarah:
[48:05] You know, I think you can start messy and clean it up later, if I'm being completely honest. But just from my own personal experience, when I first started off in the OBM space as an online business manager, I also was like, I'm going to be a solopreneur forever. Ironically, right? Like, look at me now. You know, I've had so many teams and so many employees over the last couple decades working online. So I think it's important for people to understand that they will change. And at some point, you will realize that you are not good at doing everything and you deserve of a holiday and we'll want to scale your time. So I would advise any solopreneur to know that there might be a day where you change your mind and you should be prepared. Or God forbid something terrible happens to you and you need to suddenly delegate something, you will be not in a great position.
Gabe:
[48:57] Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, I thought I was going to be a solopreneur and I have one assistant, but it helps me so much because I can take a day off and not like feel pressure.
Sarah:
[49:06] Exactly. Priceless.
Gabe:
[49:07] Priceless. So let's talk about starting to clean up the back end. Like if someone has started messy and is like, I should probably organize a little bit. What's the number one thing you'd say to focus on and get in order first?
Sarah:
[49:18] I love these questions, by the way, because it's OBM week. So I'm like, oh my God, so top of mind. You know, the first thing I would do would I would have an audit of my own tasks, like what's recurring in my business. And then So this is actually what we do with OBM clients off the bat. We'll have them create a time log of how they're spending their time, circle the things that take up the most amount of time. And then from those things, what are those low-hanging delegatable fruits, right? The ones that are not necessarily things that you have to do. Although sometimes we have that mindset that we do need to do everything. And then I would start to create a library of screencasts of how you like those done in your business. So at the very least, you know, you might not have SOPs. I know I shared my SOP template in my presentation. You might not have SOPs in place, but at least you have something to start from where it's like slightly standardized. What is a screencast? Yeah, I mean, I forget that I'm so like in this world. So a screencast is a tool like Loom. Actually, Vimeo has screencasting now as well. There's StreamYard. There are so many free tools out there where you just click a button and you can literally record your audio and your screen. So you can literally walk someone through the process of scheduling an email broadcast.
Gabe:
[50:36] Love it. Yeah, I think because sometimes SOPs sound overwhelming. And yes, it's great to have that process. So it's just like such a document. But an SOP can be super simple in the beginning. Like it really can just be like a video.
Sarah:
[50:48] Living, breathing document that, and I always tell my team, 80% is complete when it comes to SOPs. Does that sound about it being perfect? Also, I find that a lot of the times the systems from the get-go are not perfect, right? It might not be streamlined. It might not be like the perfect system yet, but you are capturing it as is. You're not capturing it in its form of moving towards becoming perfect, right? You're not doing that. You're capturing it with all of its little bells and whistles. And then, you know, when you bring on an OBM or a virtual assistant or whoever you're bringing on your team, then you can work with that person, just streamline it and document it in a way where you can continue to scale.
Gabe:
[51:29] Yeah, perfect. Sujith asked, what's the screencast in the first place? Okay, so screencast is like screen sharing. So if you've ever heard of Loom or Castify or just different screen sharing.
Sarah:
[51:40] I've never heard of that one. I think it's so cool. There's so many of them,
Gabe:
[51:42] Guys. Yeah, there's so many. Google has it now too, like a vid.
Sarah:
[51:45] Chrome plugins, Chrome plugins as well.
Gabe:
[51:48] Yeah, and so it's essentially just screen sharing your computer and you can record it at the same time. So you can record yourself doing the thing and you can count that as kind of like a mini SOP so that you can give that video to someone and they'd see the process.
Sarah:
[52:03] Yeah, start creating a library like that. And then here it is. This is the SOP kit. Let me, I'm just going to pop it in the chat. This is my template for starting to get the ball rolling and being able to delegate, setting up these systems because you want things done in a certain way in your business, you know? And I find also because I have been, you know, as an online business manager and as somebody who really, I matchmake OBMs and they're perfect clients. So I've been doing that for a very, very long time. And I know that one of the biggest reasons for team turnover and people leaving, it's because they don't know what they're actually supposed to do. They have no measures of success. And it's really frustrating, especially on a remote team when the company culture is also maybe something that's not top of mind for a solopreneur moving to having an assistant, right? So it can be really difficult to keep on team members when they're confused.
Gabe:
[52:57] Yeah, absolutely. And I have actually a question for you and Gillian because I'm popping you back in, Gillian. You both have a team. So you have more than one person on your team. You both have like the business manager, you have some assistants. And I think what some people fear is what if they can't do it like I do? Or what if, I don't know, like the control factor of, well, I do it a certain way. How do I make sure they do it that certain way? Or what if my growth stunts because they're not doing it that certain way. Did either of you have that fear when you started hiring? And how did you overcome it?
Gillian:
[53:31] I definitely had that fear and not just had the fear as a potential problem, but tried hiring people and faced that fear. That was a very real problem that people didn't do things how I wanted them done, you know. So there's a learning curve there. A couple things that I found helpful. One was, you know, those SOPs that Sarah's talking about, especially those visual SOPs that helped hugely. Another thing was making sure that I was delegating roles of responsibility instead of specific tasks so that I communicated what the end outcome was to them and that I really gave them ownership for it. So they weren't operating with the employee mindset where they're just trying to like follow the steps, check off the tasks and not really sometimes engaging their brain or making smart decisions because they know what the end outcome is and they're really trying to have that end outcome. You can have your team, the individual people on your team be so much more effective if they can have an owner's mentality. And while they will be the owner of your business, they can at least own that role of responsibility or at least own the project that they're working on. And it can shift them from that employee type mindset to that ownership mindset. So I found that very helpful. And then of course, you know, just communicating with them a lot about the specifics of, you know, what you want. Even though you have them have ownership of that end outcome, you can still have lots of back and forth with them, giving them feedback on the content that they're creating or the tasks that they're doing, right? What do you think, Sarah?
Sarah:
[54:59] I think that that's all amazing. And I think it really highlights the fact that you have had a lot of experience hiring and creating leaders on your team because I know a few of them and they're amazing. I would just add one more, I think, really key thing onto that. I think Gillian was speaking a lot about what it looks like when they're on your team and building leaders and having them be in the big picture and understanding the vision and the very, very important. And I'm going to take it one step before that. One of the things, so I was thinking when you asked the question, Gabe, that I was like, you got to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince, you know, and this is very true when it comes to team. So to shortcut that a little bit, and so that you guys don't have to suffer, I really recommend dating projects.
Sarah:
[55:44] So what's a dating project? Well, kind of what it sounds like. So if you're hiring, let's say you're a coach and you want to scale your coaching program and you're ready to bring on a junior coach into your business. Well, I would maybe consider having them, you know, obviously they have the coaching delegation, but then maybe they have an exercise where, you know, it's a coaching problem and how would you deal with this? And then I would take it one step further and maybe have them record a quick video of themselves giving that feedback so I can see, because if I'm planning to have them show up in my community, I want to see how they show up in this kind of way. So I think that there's a lot that you can get creative with. I actually use ChatGPT, like I'm like I'm hiring for this role these are the kinds of things I want them to do can you suggest some you know snazzy date and I pay for dating projects like I will it's like an hour long dating project I will pay the person for it you know I don't expect them to do it for free but I don't expect them to lean on chat GPT to do it either so I'll be like asking chat GP for like there's some relevant assignment I can give them that can't be kind of chat GPT you know because if it's like respond to these comments in the Facebook group they could you know I feel like A lot of stuff can be fudged these days, but when you get them on camera,
Sarah:
[56:53] Speaking to a specific point for a role of a junior coach is great. So then you qualify people. I think it also is off-putting for some people. And this is only after I've had them jump through some hoops with the application form. And also, one more thing, I find that in my experience, and I think I've literally hired probably thousands of people at this point, both in my business and on behalf of clients,
Sarah:
[57:17] The most important quality is attention to detail, hands down. I feel like our online space, especially if you're an online business owner, you have to figure it out anyway. So if they have attention to detail and they're obviously motivated and very value driven and aligned with your business, that goes without saying, then you're golden. You don't have to be looking for like specific skills necessarily.
Gillian:
[57:41] Yeah, I always love hiring for a character, you know, and training the skills. And I totally agree. attention to detail, like reliability. You know, I need them to do the thing that I asked them to do.
Sarah:
[57:42] And I need to be able to trust them.
Gillian:
[57:53] On time. Yeah, yeah. Trust that it will get done and get done well.
Sarah:
[57:57] Yeah.
Gillian:
[57:57] Which is where the attention to detail piece really comes in, I think. So if they have attention to detail, if they don't know how to do something, they will ask. You know, that doesn't have to be like a separate skill or quality that you're looking for where they are like a good question asker or something like that. Yeah. Like if they are noticing the problems with something, then they will ask.
Sarah:
[58:14] Yeah.
Gabe:
[58:15] Such good insight. I love it. I'm seeing the chat kind of blow up with great tips. This has been so helpful. Great concept, a dating project. Definitely. So we really appreciate having you.
Sarah:
[58:25] I wouldn't miss this.
Gabe:
[58:27] Well, this has been such a great session. Gillian, thank you for leading us through how to scale and kind of what is scaling? What does that look like? Any other thoughts, comments before we take off?
Gillian:
[58:38] Thank you so much, Gabe. We're going to wrap this up for now.
Gabe:
[58:40] All right. We'll see you soon.
Gillian:
[58:42] [outro]
Are you ready to finally take the leap in your business to make it in six figures every year? I would love to work with you to turn your inconsistent income into consistent 10k plus months. And we've created an entire program to guide you to do exactly that. It's called 100k Mastermind. And it's a six month mentorship that will guide you to set up your strategic, automated sales funnel system and fuel it with ready to buy leads. Because I know that you don't just need a funnel, you need a strategically designed funnel that's based in sales psychology. And you need a system that's going to send leads into it. Because a funnel without any leads flowing into it isn't going to make you any money. If you're interested in working together to get your six-figure system set up, then head to gillianperkins.com/100k. That's gillianperkins.com/100k. On that page, you're going to find all the details about the program, what we cover in it exactly what you'll learn and what you'll accomplish as well as the dates for our next cohort and the link to apply again just visit gillianperkins.com/100k. I can promise you this: your business and life will never be the same.
[/outro]