Welcome to episode nine. In this episode, we're gonna look at why without leverage, you're doomed to fail. When building a speaking business, if there's one thing I've learned in my 25 plus years of online and offline business, it's that you must be always looking for the leverage in any opportunity. Now, some people refer to this as scalability. But in essence, it's that ability to serve more people without having to do all the work yourself.
Obviously, you can't take on a thousand clients at once. No one has that ability and it's scaling too fast unless you've put the groundwork in. So for example, when I look at something and I'm looking for that leverage, I think if this takes off, Can I get someone else to do the work or can I use technology to do the work? Like could I deliver a course online rather than in person? So I'm always looking for how I can leverage an opportunity often before I even get started.
So I'm looking for, can I scale this without taking on too much myself? It's all very well to say I'm gonna grow a large business from my speaking, but how are you gonna deliver on your promise? And this is real important because this will affect how people see you. you only have 24 hours in a day, and if you're speaking, you're gonna be traveling a lot, so you're gonna lose that time. So let's look at some examples of possible problems. So one on one coaching.
This is where you are coaching one person directly. So you're sitting down with them, you're talking with them, getting information. You're finding out the specific details of their problems on an ongoing basis, say once a month, and then you are giving them things to do to hopefully solve those problems or to work out a way to solve those problems.
Obviously, going one on one, if you've got 24 hours in a. And you wanna sleep for six hours, that means you can work for 18, you can take on 18 clients, but if you take off 10 minutes break between each one, you know, you can have 12 clients per day. So over 30 days, 12 by 30 is a lot of people, and quite frankly, I can guarantee you will burn out very quickly. What about second idea, a service that only you can deliver? So you've designed a service.
You're the only person that can do it, but it's complex. So this presents a range of problems. Obviously, if you are the only one that can do it, you are the only one that can do it, and that makes it difficult because you can only help so many people if you can't get someone else to do it for you. Another problem, handmade products. For example, my daughter likes to crochet. when she worked out how long it took to crochet a bunny, it took about seven to eight hours.
Well, that kind of limits your ability with the rest of your life going on to produce products and sell them. Personalized products are also another, the slightly different one of this, and this is where you do one off product. So for example, an artist might do a a certain painting for one person. Now obviously if you can charge top dollar, that's not so much of a problem. But if you're not charging top dollar, then you know you're limited by the amount of work you can.
And the last one I had on my list was time consuming products and services. So something that can't be done quickly. For example, it takes eight to 10 hours to complete the process. So if it takes eight to 10 hours to complete the process, you're probably gonna get one done a day. If you were five days a week, that's five a week. It's very hard to scale when something takes a long time to do. unless you start to look at the leverage possibilities.
So let's take a look at these each again and look at how we could leverage what we're doing instead of just trying to do it the hard way. So one-on-one coaching. Now I've heard the story a few times, but many people who are doing one-on-one coaching actually speak switch to group coaching. In many cases, they actually found their clients were happier because they were in kind of a cohort.
So they had other people that they could talk to and they could connect with, and they could bounce ideas off multiple people, not just you. And so they had like a support system in place for when you are busy you might spend say, an hour a week with that group. In the meantime, they've got a little chat group say on Facebook and they can talk to each other and you can drop in occasionally and drop in a, you know, an answer or something like that.
But group coaching, you know, group doesn't have to be five people. It can be 500 people. If you set it up properly, it's up to you. Or you can say, set a limit of say, 50 per group and have multiple groups. So one-on-one coaching. While it sounds fantastic and it is really. For specific purposes say within business coaching and things like that, group coaching is far more effective use of your time.
And in my experience, most people who are doing one-on-one coaching could pivot to say five to one group coaching. Okay. And delivering it on Zoom means that you can take on clients in a much larger. Okay, number two we had a service only you can deliver. Well, realistically, and I hate to admit this because I'm so much the sort of person that wants to do it myself. If I systematize what I'm doing, I write it down.
I make some checklists, those sorts of things, I can always get someone else to do what I'm. I can hire people smarter than me, quite frankly, to do what I'm doing. And the more I systematize it, the more I break it down into bullet points, the easier it is for someone else to do. So that was one of the hardest things for me building an SEO business, was that it was something that I loved to do and I had a knack for it. I can see the problems, I can fix them generally, and.
And to hand that off to someone else and trust them to do it right was a big step for me. Like really hard. But, you know, eventually, you know you find a good manager of your team. As your team starts to grow, you can actually do that quite successfully. And if you use checklists and these days, of course you can have software online. You can log in any time and just check that people are doing things. You can just randomly pick something and go, have they done number five?
And go and check that client. So you can, you can quality check if you. Handmade products look really handmade products. I mean, I get it, I understand it, but if you're gonna do it as a business sort of thing, it, it, it's too hard. Okay. My suggestion is can you buy it already made or can you get someone else to make it So it has the same effect as handmade. It looks handmade and it, you know, it might be done by machines, but. It's much better if you can leverage technology here.
Okay, personalized products. Look, there's a loophole here. You could take a standard product and personalize it. Now, that doesn't work for an artist, for example, but for someone who does, you know I don't know, say drink coolers or something like that. You can buy a hundred of the same drink coolers and put different people's logos on it. So can you personalize a blank, like a blank drink bottle or something like that?
Have a look at how, rather than you know, and, and, and this will depend on what you do, but can you actually personalize it differently? Could you pivot now to save yourself the pain later? Time consuming products and services. This was the last one I looked at earlier on. If you're gonna go for time consuming products and services, you have to be high. Okay. For example, you can charge a thousand dollars a month to do a service, or you can charge a hundred dollars a month to do a service.
If you charge a thousand dollars a month, you'll get a much better level of client, but also you'll get More money coming in for less work. So I would rather charge a thousand dollars to do a really, really good job than charge a hundred dollars and have to take on 10 clients and deal with the 10 problems. So my suggestion to you is, you know, look at pushing the price up. Most people undercharge, like buy a lot. I see people charging $200 for what I charge $1,500 for.
Now, the difference is I guarantee to get the results. I have a track record, but you know, there'll always people cheaper. Alternatively, if you have to ch go for time consuming products, get someone else to do it or subcontract it with your requirements, a bit like we did with, you know, other products, services, for example. So leverage will be the difference between a sustainable growing business and whether you burn out when you do it all yourself. You'll burn out. I, I guarantee it.
I've been there. I had hundreds of clients. I had 74 staff overseas. I was dealing with the calls from my clients, myself, my staff were doing the work, but I took it very personally, what happened for those clients, and I got to know them, and that made things very, very difficult. I, I have a personality that takes on responsibility for, you know, other people's success. And I have to be careful of that.
But I got to the point where I had so much going on, I actually walked in and said to my business partner do you wanna buy the business? And I sold it and I, I walked away. Now, obviously I've started other businesses since then, but don't get, let yourself get to the point. You are gonna burn out, okay? You have to be looking for the proper leverage point. It's not difficult to leverage a business, you just have to plan it out.
For example, the more access someone wants to you personally, the higher they pay. That's a nice, simple rule. For example, if you're selling a course, rather than running face to face in the room training, consider a small course for $197. It solves one problem really, really well, and then upsell people into a bigger course for say, $3,000. Don't teach 'em everything you, you know, need to know, or everything they need to know. I should say, make multiple courses at this price.
You can offer a mastermind group at a thousand dollars a month that people might want to tack onto the top of that. And then finally, at a $5,000 a month level, you can offer one-on-one coaching. So build your leverage in. Look at how you can leverage what you're doing. Use a step up sort of system because it filters people out as well. Some people aren't prepared to pay the high price. and so they're quite happy at a course level. So finally, leverage your time and your knowledge. Okay?
This is where the business grows. This is where you take your speaking from stage and turn it into a six figure business. That'll back you up. I hope you've learned something this week, and I look forward to seeing you in the next.