Stop Working Harder—Start Scaling Smarter

I personally find it helpful to create clarity in what we do and how we help our clients build their business by doing it in the form of writing, so it should come as no surprise that this newsletter is a variation of that. Content created by me to reflect clarity to those out there who are interested. I share this more as a precursor to the meat of this article, but something I thought you’d find helpful on the creative process of building a business and the content that supports it.

Let’s start by asking a question: What is the process Engage Movement uses to help clients build their business?

I like to borrow from other models of explanation, so let’s look at this as a pyramid with 3 levels: Foundation, Operations, and Scale - this is simply how I think most businesses are iterated, each with their own flavor of how they achieve the goal and vary in magnitude of size. 

FOUNDATION: Performance Provider Growth Model Phase 1

The foundation and base of each business need to be solid and well-agreed upon by those executing the business. What I mean by that is if you’re constantly changing your approach, creating chaos all the time, and never seeing any projects fully through, your foundation is weak and unstable. 

However, as you create clarity in who you are as a personal brand, what you stand for, how you want your business to run by design, and get more clear on who your ideal client is the more stable your foundation will be.

When clients come to us, this is the first phase of our coaching program. We MUST establish a solid foundation upon which to build.

Most of the time, the foundation is established after a few iterations, so if you haven’t figured yours out yet, you may simply need to iterate (not completely change).

Some of what we cover in our Foundational Phase: How you want to operate (a blended model for our clients), what is your messaging, what is your sales philosophy, what is your relationship with money, and how it relates to pricing your services, and who is included in your business ecosystem (from both a client and business relationship standpoint).

OPERATIONS: Performance Provider Growth Model Phase 2

Once the concept of the foundation is established, we can start to build it by reflecting the decisions we made in the business construction through operations. I write that sentence that way because these things happen in tandem, so conceptually, a foundation needs to be established while it is actually built. 

The way we construct our business model is one that reflects flexibility, consistency, high upside, and control. I’ve noticed that when I have thrived as an entrepreneur, these were core concepts of each business I have enjoyed building. Conversely, when I didn’t have these things, I quickly ran into burnout and resentment. 

Since we use a blended model of operation (in-person + virtual asynchronous services), we are able to decrease the amount of time spent with each patient/client and untether ourselves from needing to trade time for money. When I was running my blended cash based business, I was able to get my effective hourly rate into the $1,000 range from time to time, depending on the complexity of programs. For me, that showed me this was a MUCH more viable model than simple charging for sessions. 

During the operations phase, this is where the magic happens. Magic is actually really simple in business - all you need to do is implement. Yes, that’s it. You implement, you make mistakes, you gain context from the situations, and you make adjustments to the process, which leads to a different outcome. 

Unfortunately, this is where most people get stuck. They are too afraid to make mistakes, to lose sales, and to take chances that are necessary to grow and evolve.

Once implementation has taken place, we can start to refine it, and this process will be repeated over and over throughout the entirety of your business journey.

SCALE: Autopilot

I think there are really only three ways to scale a business: People, Price, and Process. We generally use Price and Process as our scale mechanisms because most of our clients want a high earning potential without the headache of managing a team of other service providers (no knock to that model, but I promise it’s not all sunshine and rainbows… AND you’ll still have a “job” it’ll just be a different one).

The more you charge, the more money you make. Price scaling is simple. Price scaling is something that I tend to see happen as confidence in services delivered increases and the psychology of money changes. It’s easy to say, “just charge more” - it’s hard to help someone do that confidently. We are methodical about price increases in a way that adjusts and accounts for this with our clients. 

Process is another scale mechanism that we use. Now, our Performance Provider Growth Model is already a scale mechanism as it allows for one provider to generate more revenue than if they were solely selling sessions. 

Software is another process scale mechanism. You want to implement software processes that replicate tasks that take you time. Automations, follow-ups, things like that. This is the “systems” people talk about a lot. The biggest issue we see with people who implement systems is that they either don’t really know what they want their systems to do or they aren’t generating enough revenue for the systems to make sense. Whenever we talk about software scale implications with our clients, we make sure there are certain criteria they are hitting before implementing processes like this. When this is implemented properly, it can greatly accelerate the amount of work a single person can produce.

Now you have an inside look at exactly how we operate and if you want, how we can help you construct your business. 

The most important thing I will leave you with… Make sure you build the business YOU want, not the business everyone tells you to build. Time to go create.