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In this episode, Tara breaks down the 4 levels or evolutions for scaling a service-based business. If you started a business or agency by completing projects for other companies and you have found yourself at a growth plateau or crossroads, this episode may give you the tips and tricks to send you into your next level of growth!
About Me:
My name is Tara Bryan. I help business owners break into the next level of success by packaging their expertise into an online course experience. It's my passion to help to find the fastest path to results to create a greater impact and income for you and your tribe.
This podcast is 100% focused on support, knowledge and example sharing, and building a community of online course builders who are passionate about building awesome learning experiences.
We do that by building engaging, motivating, gamified, and learner-centered online course experiences. We come up with ideas and strategies to ensure that our learners can thrive and succeed using our packaged products.
To learn more:
Find us at https://www.tlslearning.com
Here are two ways we can help you grow and scale your online course-powered business:
1. NEED TO CREATE YOUR ONLINE PROGRAM or COURSE EXPERIENCE?
Join LEARN ACADEMY - Learn Academy is the best done-with-you On-demand and cohort implementation program that will help you create, sell, and launch your online experience.
2. ALREADY HAVE A COURSE or PROGRAM?
Join THE COURSE EDIT™ - Do you have a course or program that isn't selling or one that people aren't completing (therefore not remaining customers)? The Course Edit™ is a VIP Strategy session that will assess your current online program and give you personalized feedback to take it to the next level. It is time to bring in THE COURSE EDIT.
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Hey, everybody, it's Tara, Bryan, and you are
Tara Bryan:listening to the course building secrets podcast. Whether you're
Tara Bryan:a coach or a CEO, the success of your team and clients is based
Tara Bryan:on your ability to deliver a consistent experience and guide
Tara Bryan:them on the fastest path to results. This podcast will give
Tara Bryan:you practical real life tips that you can use today to build
Tara Bryan:your online experiences that get results and create raving fans.
Tara Bryan:Why? So you can monetize your expertise and serve more people
Tara Bryan:without adding more time or team to your business? If you're
Tara Bryan:looking to uncover your million dollar framework, package it and
Tara Bryan:use it to scale you're in the right place. Let's dive in. Hey,
Tara Bryan:everybody, welcome to today's episode of the course building
Tara Bryan:secrets podcast. Hey, in this episode, this is for my service
Tara Bryan:based entrepreneurs and business owners. And how do you look at
Tara Bryan:growing and scaling your business beyond just working
Tara Bryan:harder, or having a huge infrastructure in terms of team
Tara Bryan:and location and all of the things. And this episode speaks
Tara Bryan:directly into my heart because when I started my agency 16
Tara Bryan:years ago, this is the way that I started. And then the way that
Tara Bryan:I scaled my business so that I could keep growing, I sort of
Tara Bryan:ended up in that place where two things happened. One is I
Tara Bryan:couldn't take on more clients without hiring more people. And
Tara Bryan:when I hired more people that grew my, my expenses in so I
Tara Bryan:never quite got ahead of becoming, you know, more
Tara Bryan:profitable because I had to have more and more expenses as I was
Tara Bryan:growing my agency. And the second thing is, is that we just
Tara Bryan:we were sort of always in that feast or famine, right? So we
Tara Bryan:had to have enough capacity in order to keep the team they had
Tara Bryan:to have the team in order to meet the capacity. So it kind of
Tara Bryan:was always in that chicken in the egg scenario. So I don't
Tara Bryan:know if you find yourself in that place. But what happens in
Tara Bryan:that situation, when other than it being super stressful? Is
Tara Bryan:that you cap out at at a specific revenue number because
Tara Bryan:you can't, you just can't leap over where you are in terms of
Tara Bryan:growth, just by working harder, longer, or putting in more
Tara Bryan:effort, right. So something has to change. So this is a lot of
Tara Bryan:the journey that I went through, but also as we've taken our
Tara Bryan:clients through of how do you package your expertise? How do
Tara Bryan:you package your service based business in order to grow and
Tara Bryan:scale it in a way that you can have that exponential growth in
Tara Bryan:order for you to keep growing, and not kill yourself, by
Tara Bryan:working a ton of hours or building a huge infrastructure
Tara Bryan:in terms of team as you are going? Alright, so I'm going to
Tara Bryan:break this down into various sort of stages or, or levels
Tara Bryan:that you can think about in terms of as you're growing your
Tara Bryan:business. So let our students when you first get started, say
Tara Bryan:you're leaving your corporate job, and you're going out and
Tara Bryan:putting your shingle up or your No, you have, you know, wanted
Tara Bryan:to do something with your expertise. Usually what happens
Tara Bryan:is you start by, you know, just getting clients, right, so
Tara Bryan:you're just doing a bunch of different things, you're helping
Tara Bryan:them you're, you've kind of determined your expertise or
Tara Bryan:your topic from a broad picture perspective. And then anyone who
Tara Bryan:comes in, you're helping them regardless of sort of, do they
Tara Bryan:match that core system that you that you want to create, right?
Tara Bryan:So you're just kind of in this hours for dollars pattern,
Tara Bryan:you're helping people but every single thing that you're doing
Tara Bryan:for every client is just a little bit different, or could
Tara Bryan:be a lot different, right? So when we first started, we do
Tara Bryan:custom learning solutions for large companies. And so when
Tara Bryan:when we started, what would happen is we would have our sort
Tara Bryan:of way that we would work with clients, but all the projects
Tara Bryan:were different, right? different industries, different needs,
Tara Bryan:different problems that we were solving. And so everything was
Tara Bryan:just slightly different. So I had to hire really specialized
Tara Bryan:talent to come in to help actually get to the finish line
Tara Bryan:with the different projects which is great, right like
Tara Bryan:working with a lot of awesome people. But the more specialized
Tara Bryan:your talent, the more expensive they are, the harder it is to
Tara Bryan:make margins, right so everybody was all my clients were coming
Tara Bryan:Again, and we were providing an awesome service and really doing
Tara Bryan:a great job with them. But every single project was different. We
Tara Bryan:couldn't, we couldn't put it into a system or a framework or
Tara Bryan:a formula that was consistently applied all the way through with
Tara Bryan:all of our clients. And so the challenge with that is every,
Tara Bryan:you know, because everything is different, it's really hard to
Tara Bryan:kind of work, work through, you know, the consistency, when
Tara Bryan:you're hiring people, it's really hard for them to follow
Tara Bryan:kind of a, an ad hoc model. It's hard when you're bringing
Tara Bryan:clients in to provide them with a level of security, that
Tara Bryan:they're going to have their project delivered on time and on
Tara Bryan:budget. And, of course, the more variation that you're doing in
Tara Bryan:your business, the harder and more complex it is to run the
Tara Bryan:business. So That's level one, that's usually when people start
Tara Bryan:as they're just trying to kind of figure out either who their
Tara Bryan:ideal client is, what problem they solve, and how can they
Tara Bryan:start to consistently solve that problem in a way that, that they
Tara Bryan:can provide an efficient solution. Okay, so that's number
Tara Bryan:one. So what happens is you get to a level of growth, again,
Tara Bryan:really hard to scale, you kind of end up in that place of like,
Tara Bryan:everything feels like a mess, everything feels really hard.
Tara Bryan:And, and you're not able to get any efficiencies as, as you're
Tara Bryan:going. And so it's just, it's a really tough place to be in at
Tara Bryan:some point you max out. So then you have level two, which is
Tara Bryan:you've chosen a specialization, right? You've taken all of those
Tara Bryan:projects, you're like, Okay, these are, this is the one, or
Tara Bryan:these projects are the ones we love the most. And so you kind
Tara Bryan:of you choose that one and you specialize. When you specialize,
Tara Bryan:what you can do is you can turn that into a step by step
Tara Bryan:formula, or step by step signature framework or
Tara Bryan:methodology that you can consistently deliver each and
Tara Bryan:every time to all of your, your customers. So if you do that,
Tara Bryan:and you're, you know, consistently providing them that
Tara Bryan:level of experience, what starts to happen as you get more
Tara Bryan:efficient, you can document how things go with that step by step
Tara Bryan:system, your team has more predictability, your client has
Tara Bryan:more predictability, you can start to just deliver on that
Tara Bryan:one step by step methodology. And then you can start to think
Tara Bryan:about what comes next. Right. So once you've done that, and you
Tara Bryan:can run all your clients through it, it helps to save time, it
Tara Bryan:helps to gain efficiencies, you're starting to create some
Tara Bryan:standard operating procedures are starting to create some
Tara Bryan:systemized approaches for how things happen. And it becomes
Tara Bryan:something that it can be scalable, because it's more
Tara Bryan:streamlined. And it's it's one way of doing it versus sort of
Tara Bryan:ad hoc, everyone's a little bit different.
Tara Bryan:But it requires some discipline, because it requires you to just
Tara Bryan:choose that one thing and move forward with that one thing and
Tara Bryan:and really start to, you know, just hone that one process as
Tara Bryan:you're going through. So choose the one that sort of your
Tara Bryan:signature methodology that solves the problem that you like
Tara Bryan:to solve the most. And then start saying no to everything
Tara Bryan:else, what that will do is it will attract the right people to
Tara Bryan:you who need that solution, and give you the opportunity to
Tara Bryan:start honing in on just that focused area. So as you're
Tara Bryan:starting to, to grow in this area, what you'll see is you're
Tara Bryan:able to hire easy, easier, you're you're able to attract
Tara Bryan:the right clients who aren't asking for all sorts of crazy,
Tara Bryan:wacky new things, and your profitability will start to go
Tara Bryan:up because you can have a little bit more predictability in how
Tara Bryan:you're delivering and how you're getting other people to help you
Tara Bryan:deliver as well. Alright, so That's level two, is if you are
Tara Bryan:in that place where everything is totally different, and you're
Tara Bryan:solving different problems for every single client that comes
Tara Bryan:in, start to think about which one you like the best start to
Tara Bryan:put together kind of that signature methodology, right. So
Tara Bryan:step by step process from point A to point B, that helps to
Tara Bryan:define how you're helping people each and every time. So for us
Tara Bryan:in the agency, we came up with a five step framework, and in that
Tara Bryan:framework, we took all of them through the same process. So I
Tara Bryan:was able to go out and and talk to prospective clients and say,
Tara Bryan:Listen, I can I know that how long this is going to take, how
Tara Bryan:much budget it's going to take and what the schedule is going
Tara Bryan:to be based on the fact that we have a proprietary framework
Tara Bryan:that you can feel confident that we're going to go with through
Tara Bryan:and get results. Because we have that level of predictability, I
Tara Bryan:was able to get about 90% accuracy with everyone's
Tara Bryan:projects because of that, because we had such a specific
Tara Bryan:methodology that we were going through, it helped. It helped
Tara Bryan:everything. And that was the first big transition point in
Tara Bryan:the agency that allowed us to keep growing. And keep growing
Tara Bryan:in a way that was sustainable. Okay, so then the next level is
Tara Bryan:how do you take that step by step methodology, and start to
Tara Bryan:package it in a way that allows you to deliver it in some some
Tara Bryan:interesting ways, that allows you to save time to save effort,
Tara Bryan:and not repeat yourself, this is sort of the the game we get into
Tara Bryan:I call it 51st dates where every single time we're working with a
Tara Bryan:customer, we're repeating ourselves, we're making up new
Tara Bryan:things. Once we have that step by step signature methodology,
Tara Bryan:now we can start saying, okay, so how do we bring customers on
Tara Bryan:onboard? Consistently? How do we get them set up? How do we put
Tara Bryan:them in the system? How do we help them learn the different
Tara Bryan:components that they need to either, you know, be a part of
Tara Bryan:our done for you service, or start transitioning them in this
Tara Bryan:phase into done with you. So perhaps, they just want the
Tara Bryan:system and some coaching and accountability, but they have a
Tara Bryan:full implementation team who can implement, they have a full team
Tara Bryan:who, or they want to themselves, do the work to implement, right,
Tara Bryan:so you can give them the system, and then they're able to go in
Tara Bryan:and, and actually, you know, complete what needs to be done
Tara Bryan:because they have the step by step path. And so this opens up
Tara Bryan:a whole new revenue source for people who are either, like I
Tara Bryan:said, have a team or they want to do it themselves, but they
Tara Bryan:want to use your methodology. So again, you can start packaging
Tara Bryan:that you can give them your standard operating procedures
Tara Bryan:that you use with your team, any templates or tools, coaching and
Tara Bryan:accountability, this starts to shift the conversation from just
Tara Bryan:done for you, to done with you. And allows you to start
Tara Bryan:packaging your expertise in a completely new way. And like I
Tara Bryan:said, serve a new audience. And then once you have done that,
Tara Bryan:and you've been able to help them you have something that's
Tara Bryan:packaged, you've kind of learned all the pitfalls. We call it
Tara Bryan:controlling the dip, which allows you to create an
Tara Bryan:experience that is highly leveraged using systems and
Tara Bryan:technology, and still provides an awesome experience that
Tara Bryan:allows people to participate and get results and have sort of
Tara Bryan:that coaching, and, and help as they're going. In Level Three,
Tara Bryan:once you've done all of that, then you have a whole new
Tara Bryan:opportunity to package all of that into maybe a do it yourself
Tara Bryan:option. If somebody wants to take your system and apply it on
Tara Bryan:their own without any intervention from you, they have
Tara Bryan:that opportunity either as a full program, or you can pull
Tara Bryan:out pieces of your core program and just give them parts that
Tara Bryan:they can start to implement on their own. So you can sell them
Tara Bryan:on their own or sell them as part of a package. And so when
Tara Bryan:you look at that progression, what it does is it starts to
Tara Bryan:take you from that ad hoc will do anything, anyone who comes
Tara Bryan:in, we're gonna say yes, to a very strategic growth model that
Tara Bryan:helps you continue to grow and adds additional levels of
Tara Bryan:customers that you may not even be able to see yet today,
Tara Bryan:because of the way that you're just doing done for you
Tara Bryan:services. So imagine if you didn't just have the done for
Tara Bryan:you services, but you also had additional ways to serve people,
Tara Bryan:you would have additional customers and members if you
Tara Bryan:have a continuity model, but you also can still have your core
Tara Bryan:done for you services, as well, that are more streamlined based
Tara Bryan:on the problem that you're trying to solve. And it
Tara Bryan:simplifies your entire business model gives you revenue from
Tara Bryan:additional sources and eventually allows you to grow in
Tara Bryan:scale in a way that is sustainable and, and grows
Tara Bryan:beyond you as the business owner. So if you're in that
Tara Bryan:position of trying to scale your services, or you're just in a
Tara Bryan:position of you're just not growing anymore, you've reached
Tara Bryan:that ceiling. I know that the first time I reached that
Tara Bryan:ceiling it was about an 800,000 in annual revenue. And I just
Tara Bryan:couldn't get back past it. And so we had to start looking at
Tara Bryan:these other levels in order to maximize our efforts that we had
Tara Bryan:as a business. So that we could not only grow or continue to
Tara Bryan:grow revenue, but also grow our profitability. Because as you
Tara Bryan:know, if you have, you know, a great top line revenue and
Tara Bryan:terrible profitability, you don't really have a sustainable
Tara Bryan:business, right. And so this allows you to do both. So if
Tara Bryan:this serves you today, I would love to get your feedback on
Tara Bryan:this, because I know that when I was a struggling service
Tara Bryan:provider, this is one of the the answers that I would have loved
Tara Bryan:to have had, I just didn't know the right question to ask,
Tara Bryan:right. And so, so often, it's, it's just put more people on it
Tara Bryan:put more, you know, you can work on your operating system, put
Tara Bryan:more people in it, get a new office, get more clients, all
Tara Bryan:those different answers. But looking at how you're offering
Tara Bryan:your services and how you're productizing your services
Tara Bryan:actually provides you with what you need to unlock those new
Tara Bryan:customers, and unlock the ability to help people and have
Tara Bryan:it completely removed from your time right from recreating the
Tara Bryan:wheel every time from having that 51st state scenario. And so
Tara Bryan:hopefully, this serves you because I know that it made a
Tara Bryan:huge difference in my business as I was kind of at that, that
Tara Bryan:point of growth. And if you are trying to create your program,
Tara Bryan:and you haven't actually gone through these levels, it may be
Tara Bryan:interesting to think about the fact that maybe you need to
Tara Bryan:start by going out and helping you know, maybe five different
Tara Bryan:customers that you can just help serve them so that you can
Tara Bryan:uncover your signature methodology and start to package
Tara Bryan:it, it's really hard to start with the you know, trying to
Tara Bryan:package or put a course together, or a program together
Tara Bryan:without having that sense of how you're getting them from point A
Tara Bryan:to point B, right? How are you solving their problem in the
Tara Bryan:fastest and most efficient way. Because at this point, like if
Tara Bryan:you haven't worked with customers, you're just sort of
Tara Bryan:guessing right, or you're using your own experience, which is
Tara Bryan:great. And so but you it may serve you to just jump in the
Tara Bryan:game and start, you know, taking people through your signature
Tara Bryan:methodology, one on one or in a small group, so that you can,
Tara Bryan:when you are packaging it, when you are automating it, you are
Tara Bryan:able to provide that level of service in a simulated
Tara Bryan:delivery method. So that you are you know, making sure that
Tara Bryan:you're getting those results, making sure you're helping
Tara Bryan:people solve that problem. And, and it helps to really expand
Tara Bryan:your ability to serve. So that's just a side note. If you're kind
Tara Bryan:of starting from level four, you may want to fill in a little bit
Tara Bryan:with level two and three, I wouldn't go back to one, but
Tara Bryan:going back to two and three, from a short time perspective so
Tara Bryan:that you can dial in some of the SOPs, some of the the details in
Tara Bryan:your signature methodology. It will really help you as you are
Tara Bryan:growing and scaling. So there you go. That is your course
Tara Bryan:building tip for today.
