Today I'm talking about leverage, the third and final variable in the equation to turn your expertise into scalable revenue. In case you missed them last week, I talked about the first and the second variable, which is protection. And the week before that, I talked about the first variable, which is Audit. So to briefly recap, we start with an audit to make sure you understand what assets you currently own and control in your business right now.
We want to know what assets we have and what rights we need because we don't want to build these new leveraged assets without owning all of the rights. Many of you ask me because you worry about, , can I use this other resource? Can I refer to this other expert? And we do, we do our, audit to make sure that we do own or control all the things we want to include in our leveraged assets.
We don't want to be on the receiving end of a cease and desist letter because we're using materials that we do not own. At best, you wasted money and momentum, but at worst, you'll incur legal fees and maybe even permanently damage your reputation. Then the audit stage lays the foundation for the second step protection. You don't want to find out too late that you failed to put into place protections that prevent clients, subcontractors, and facilitators from using your materials without you.
And that might be. By infringement, or by permission, because we've granted them the rights to use those, materials. So we talk about that in the protection episode. So, now we come to the 3rd and final leg, which is leverage the plain meaning of the word leverage is. The application of a lever levers are machines used to increase force. In other words, a lever multiplies the impact of our efforts In business terms, leverage means increasing profitability, not just increasing revenue.
We have leverage in our businesses where we can increase revenue without also increasing costs, or we decrease costs without also decreasing revenue, preferably both. Typically, we think of leverage, we think about, digital products or online offerings, things like courses and books, subscriptions, you maybe even memberships, group coaching, and absolutely each of these provides leverage with one to many offers or one to several offers.
We create the materials once or we provide our time once and we sell it to multiple. parties. So yes, and you can even have leveraged one on one services. So we can lower the cost of delivery of a one on one service by using standards and procedures by having framework, having models, having templates in place. These are all things that help us become more. Efficient in delivering the service and therefore decreasing the resources or the cost required to deliver that service.
And remember that you and your time are the most expensive resources in your business. So anytime you're able to decrease your time in the deliverable while maintaining the price, you are increasing profitability. That's leverage.
So what is the basis of every leveraged offer, whether it is digital online course, a book, or a leveraged one-on-one service assets that you own and control before you can legally offer any type of one-to-many or one-to-several product or service you must own or have the right to use those assets. Let's talk about assets. If you have followed me for a while, you know that I like to ask my audience, is there a Rembrandt in your attic?
For our expertise based businesses, this question is the business equivalent of a treasure hunt where we look for unidentified and undervalued assets that are hiding in plain sight. Rembrandts are assets that are primed to provide leverage in your business. My favorite Rembrandts are assets that have been created for internal purposes only. So examine your business for these or similar assets. Framework, methodology, workbooks.
SOPs, models, even an email list, employee training practices, market research reports, white papers, industry insights, resource libraries, databases, even your online community. Those Rembrandts that we just talked about, those are the effort or the input. Levers are tools and then leverage is the output leverage is the magnification of our efforts. So, Rembrandts, these are things we put in place. Upfront and we have those we incur those costs upfront and then we create that Rembrandt.
So we put the effort up front to create models. We put the effort in up front to create as a piece. We put the effort in up front to, put together our database or to create our community and then we are able to reap benefits over time by using a lever. To increase the output from those inputs. Now, I don't think there's any such thing as purely passive income because you do need to put in the effort upfront to create those Rembrandts.
They don't make themselves, but it's the application of leverage from that investment or effort that creates the conditions for residual low input recurring revenue. So those are the Rembrandts. levers, some of the levers to apply to your Rembrandts. You can then use your Rembrandts to delegate.
Again, you're the most expensive resource in your business, so you can delegate tasks to less expensive resources, whether internally or with an employee or externally with a contractor, but you need to have some of those Rembrandts in place to do that.
Systemization, when you have processes or systems, you create efficiencies, whether you're delivering yourself or again, delivering with one of those other, resources specialization when we are, Creating communities, creating thought leadership, developing insights, doing research. We become the specialist and those things make everything simpler. You get better, higher referrals and your expertise compounds over time. Access is another lever.
you can sell subscriptions to those Rembrandts, access to your community, access to your, data, to your research, access to your insights. These all have values outside of your business that you can use as levers. And then last but not least licenses here, we create an asset with the intention of licensing to multiple. Licensees. So we talked about Rembrandts, which is our input levers, which is the tool and then leverage, which is our magnified output.
in a services based business, I like to think of cloning yourself as the ultimate leverage by developing a system that allows others to deliver your services. You free up time to focus on other tasks, but still provide consistent customer experience and continue to grow without sacrificing quality. For example, let's a DEI training workshop. written exercises, video scenarios, and a trainer's manual. You have, of course, registered these in the U. S. Copyright Office.
Your workshop is in high demand, more demand than you can satisfy alone. One of your clients could keep you fully occupied for a year you trained all of their employees yourself. you'd have no time left over for other initiatives or for business development. That's where clones come in. I like to talk about four types of clones that we can use to create leverage products, employees, facilitators, and of course, licensees.
First products, books, courses, software, and other DIY products are a great way to diversify your revenue. Depending on the desired result, the customer may be able to get 100 percent of the needs met with a product, but that is not required for creating a valuable product. Helping the customer advance toward their goal with your expert advice is also valuable.
Also, you'll be able to reach a larger audience of customers who might not be able to afford your in person services, increasing your impact and your brand awareness. Employees, as founders, we are the most expensive resource in our business. A common method of cloning ourselves is to use employees by hiring and training individuals who can deliver your workshop. You can free up your time for higher level activities.
In addition to using less expensive resource to deliver the service, employees reduce Risk. If you're the only one delivering services, what happens if you're ill or you hit a wall with burnout? Very few entrepreneurs have a plan for such contingencies, which can devastate the business. However, having employees deliver services independently of you.
Can be very difficult if your clients are only buying your time and not buying your expertise, which you have, systematized or product ties put into another package that can be delivered without you. Facilitators. Outsourcing is a great way to expand your business without taking on responsibility of hiring and training employees. Utilizing a facilitator or other subcontractor to deliver your trainings is an especially effective cloning technique.
When you have large corporate clients who want several cohorts to receive your training, you can serve the business. That might otherwise dominate your time while still being able to focus on other parts of your business. You protect your intellectual property by entering into written agreements with all facilitators that details the limits of their use of your materials, ensures that modifications or improvements will be owned by you and prevents them from poaching your clients.
This covered more in the last episode about protection. Last but not least licensees. So we do this through licensing. Licensing gives another party permission to use your intellectual property in exchange for a fee. There are 2 types of licensees. I'd like to talk about clients, your current clients. potential clients and other service providers. You turn clients into licensees by training their in house personnel to deliver your training. That's also called the train the trainer model.
You turn other service providers into licensees by licensing your IP to them so they can provide your. training to their own clients. And again, that would be a license in exchange for a fee. Now I've heard from many of you that you're concerned about your training being reused by a client without you, more importantly, or being stolen by competitors. With a license agreement, you put in place the structure to make sure that you're paid for all uses of your training.
And it provides remedies for unauthorized use. We've talked about several different leverage strategies and to the surprise of absolutely no one at the core of all of those strategies is the development. Ownership and protection of assets. If we want to create scalable, leverageable revenue streams in our business, we must own assets.
And the reward for our investment in creating and protecting our assets, and it is an investment, is that we have that lever that we can use to make our business more profitable and more enjoyable. This might be through IP based offerings such as licensing or trainings, or it might be through systemization or productization of our one on one services. What I love to do and what I look forward to working with you with is helping you look at the assets in your business.
Making sure that you're owning them, controlling them and protecting them, measure them up with your goals and your market, and finding out the best way to maximize the value of your expertise. I hope you've enjoyed this series. Make sure you check out the last two episodes as well. If you haven't already, and remember, ladies, IP is fuel.