Lessons

Lesson Info

The Profit in the Process

Now I want to tell you a little bit about my process and how I've created something very much like these. Five have created something that's allowed me to stop waiting for the client paycheck over and over again and start really creating something that brings true wealth and ease to my business. And so that's lesson to We're gonna talk about profiting from the process. So Act one of my story is that five years ago, which seems like a long time ago five years ago I was a Nim urging business coach. I was moderately well known. I had a great reputation on. I was at a couple of conferences where that reputation was really being displayed to me. People were coming up to me and saying, I love your blog's I love your work. I bought this book or I did this course with you and I really, really loved it and thank you and telling me all these wonderful things, and that was that was really great. And so that started getting my brain cycling in another direction. What's next? If I've accomplished a...

ll this already just two years into my business, what am I going to create next and at one of those conferences that was jotting down notes and thinking, I know I know what I want to do all of these people, this a to these events have told me how much they love helping other business owners as well. And I was watching life coaches, Web designers, all sorts of different types of people get into helping small business owners create business models, create marketing packages, create product development. But they didn't have a lot of skills. Self admittedly, they didn't have a lot of skills, but they loved it. And so I realized I could turn all of the work that I'd been doing getting my skills in shape, learning everything that I could about marketing, product development, business models, sales, cash flow and turn it into a system that I could teach and certify other business coaches on. But I also knew I wasn't ready for that yet, And that was not just imposter complex. It waas. It was a pretty objective decision. No, there are other things I need to do first. There are other things I need to figure out, and then I can move on. And so that led me to creating a program. Then the program, the way I created it was that I actually spent two years, two years still working in 1 to 1 service offering. But what? I changed with my mindset. I knew what I was creating. I knew why I was doing that work. So many of us do that 1 to 1 service delivery just because it pays the bills. No, now I was doing it for research. I was doing it to continue to hone my skills and to draw attention to the process. I knew that there was something fundamental going on in what I was already offering, and I needed to draw that out. I needed to understand what my intuitive process waas and that's Ah, that's a roadblock that I know many people run into, as they think, Oh, this is This is so intuitive for me. I just kind of do it and I create results. That's true. And your intuition is actually based on ah, methodology, a process, a system that underlies everything. And it's yours, which it sounds this good. I mean, it is a good as it sounds like you could make a lot of money on that on that's what we're gonna do. But so I started drawing attention to this existing process. I started thinking about the types of questions that I was asking my clients. I started paying attention to the types of exercises we would Dio was paying attention to. The homework that I was giving them was paying attention to the action that they were taking and slowly but surely over two years. And it does not have to take two years, but slowly but surely over two years I started to formalize it, and I built the process, the process or the eternity. The process became exercises, worksheets, conversations, homework. Those things became a mind map, and the mind map turned into the program. Now something important happened between the mind map and the program and that Waas identifying exactly the people that I wanted to deliver the service to in a group in Mass because I know I needed to be inspired by the right people. Another big roadblock that people run into when they're turning their service into their product is they start to go from the personalization of their service to the generalization of their product. I wanted my product, my methodology, to be as absolutely personalized, designed specifically for the people that I was working with, one on one. So how did I do that? I got a group of them together. I call it a virtual focus group. Um, for me, these were people that I was actually gonna be working with. And I took, um, clients that I had actually worked with in the past, people who had hired me for one off strategy sessions and I gathered them together. Some of them are in this room right now. I gathered them together in my head and I started thinking about What are the problems that they're facing right now? What are the goals that they have right now? One of the problems that they had was trading time for money. Another ah, goal that they had was doubling their revenue, changing their business model, revolutionizing the way they make money. Another goal was really coming up with a system of process and understanding of how they're marketing was really going to be effective. And so I took those goals and I took those problems and I turned them into an invitation. And I said, If these are the problems that you're still facing and these are the goals that you have now, I would like to make something for you. That's basically how I said it. I'd like to make something for you. It's not made already. Don't know exactly what it's gonna look like, user, the kind of constraints I'm gonna put on it. But this is what I want to make for you. I want to make something for you. I want to help you achieve these results. And I asked about 25 people about ah, hair shy of 90% of them, said yes and I started creating. He created the first week they did it. They responded. I analyzed what they were doing that I created the second week and I went week by week by week, creating the content, the curriculum, the process based on how the group was faring week to week by week, what questions were coming up, what problems were coming up, what new goals were coming up. What what possibilities? I could see that I didn't see initially, and I created a four month program week by week by week. It was a lot of work, but not as much work as it sounds, because in that give and take that process that we naturally use when we're delivering a service, I could also build a product. I could build an asset, a methodology that was going to work over and over and over again then. So I created that initial program. I launched it a couple more times. I filled it up every time I could handle students at a time. The first group was a little much. I could handle 15 students clients at a time. Then I started to realize this isn't enough again. I started thinking, I want more. It was great. I was getting paid well, but it wasn't enough and it was still too much of a burden on my time. Sound familiar? Yes, So I needed to. And this is Act three. Build leverage. So with some point in thinking, I want Mawr, I want to take this to more people. I'm gonna impact more people. I decided it's time to pull the trigger on training business coaches. So to this point I had still been working with business owners. Now I wanted to work with business coaches. So what did I do? The exact same thing I did the first time I took the existing program. I invited a group of people that I trusted that I knew would love this. And I knew I could get results out of. And I invited them to this program, saying, I'd like to make something for you. I don't know exactly what it looks like yet I don't know exactly how it's gonna work. This is the goal. This is the problem. I see you having I'd like to make something for you. This time I didn't have a 90% conversion rate this time. I had to turn people away from the offer because I could only take I thought I could only take five. I ended up taking eight because I was sad that I couldn't take all of them. But I had to turn away people. There is nothing like the experience of saying no. I'm sorry. You can't pay me for this. It is It will change your life and it's it's good and its bad all at the same time. So many mixed emotions about that. So anyhow, I took this. Took this group of eight people through this program. It was there was a lot of craziness going on. It was not all good, but in the end, they loved it. They have this new expansive skill set. Most importantly, they had a system that they had been looking for for a long time. And most importantly to me, I had people I could hire and so invited three of them to join me in the program that I had been offering with my methodology the next round through so that instead of taking 15 people, I could take and we did. And so I went from making you know, about $40,000 a launch twice a year to making 100 and $30, on the next launch. That was incredible. And it's absolutely possible for you to, um, one last thing. A smallest side before we move on from my story is that I know a lot of times people think, well, two things they think one I don't want to sell B two B. That's okay. There are lots of people out there creating products for people that aren't also businesses. I mean, look around. The vast majority of things you buy on a daily basis on a weekly basis are not for your business right there for you. If you want to build Ah, product, that is not B two b business to business. That is OK. Everything we do today is absolutely applicable to B to C, and you can create the exact kind of the same kind of results, if not better with B two c. So I don't want that will stand in your way. Ah, And then the other thing that people often say to me is that they don't want to create an information product. And so that's why specifically, I invited two people here who are not well, three sort of Jennifer, sort of in information products, sort of not. But that's why I wanted to invite people here that could represent the non information products side. We are not necessarily creating information products, and we'll get to that in just a little bit. So those those are my two caveats. If that was what was on your mind right now, like terror, that's a great story, but it doesn't apply to me it does. It absolutely does. It's just my story. We've got five other stories here today as well. But what we all have in common, I think, is that we didn't actually try to create something new when we set about creating our products. What we did is take something that was already working and we formalized it. We brought attention to it and we formalized it. You know, when Jen went to create the what if conference? I think you know what you realized right was that what was working for you was creating communities and all you had to dio was formalized a community. Yeah, that's it. That's it. That is what we're gonna do. Over the next few lessons, we're gonna bring attention to what's already working what you're already doing and formalize it. It can be that easy. So that's what that's what I did. If you'd like to see sort of the actual step by step by step of that story that I just told you, including, like the e mails and the block posts, all that good stuff that led up to that 1st 6 figure launch, you could go to sick service to six figure launch dot com. It's a free download. It's a complete case study of the storage that I just told you, plus all of the kind of extras that go along with it now, as I mentioned, the thing that we all have in common in the theme that we're gonna have for for all of our lessons in this class is that our services come with products embedded in them, that our products are waiting for us to be discovered. Now this quote is kind of the opposite of that, but it's it's related. This is from a book called uh Connected Company by Dave Gray, and he said products come with knowledge and services embedded within them, which is great because that means all we have to dio is embed our service, embed our knowledge in the product that were already creating products and services aren't that different every time I come on creative live. In fact, they asked me now so is this more for a service, or is this more for a product? It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter now. Obviously, today, what we're talking about is turning services into products. But one of the messages that I have tried to get across over the years is how not different products and services really are. What you're already doing has a product embedded in it already, and your product will come with your service embedded in it. It's a still about transformation. It's still about change. It's still about achieving results. It's still about achieving goals. Products are just a formalized way to help us do that. So I already kind of answered this project, so I'm not gonna pick on you again. But I'd love to hear from from our Panelists again. What did you notice about what you were already doing that you were able to form formalized? Marie, I'm gonna start with you get really high paying clients. Yeah. So you knew you had a system. You knew you had a system for getting really high paying clients. And that was what you were able to form. Yes. Very straightforward. Jennifer. I was listening to what? The questions that people were asking, and they're having trouble finishing projects. And so I ended up creating a course out of that called the finishing project. That talk want that talked him through six weeks of how do you actually finish this? This scrapbook project that's been languishing in your club because you didn't have this problem, right? You were able to complete your projects for the most part, for the most part. Yeah, but I happen. I use the tools that I was using on myself basically means making lists and keeping kind of keeping an organized. Yeah, so that I could finish. So I kind of looked inside myself a swell to see How do I actually do this and kind of turned that into a methodology? OSU students Sasha. Well, the 10 chasm adventure. That is something I really burst without having done tango stuff before. But I think what I noticed was it was my path of healing and that I had totally transformed and changed through tango and that I've created, you know, an intuitive system for other women to have that experience in a week. What I got over many years, so Yeah, perfect. Yeah. You took exactly what you had done to change yourself. Formalized it so you could help. Others changes. Well, yeah. Any questions so far, It really hit the question stuff, Lily. Anything there a couple questions online. Erica would like to know. How can this help someone who has only a couple clients? It doesn't see any on the horizon. Okay, so this is definitely geared a little bit more to people who have had a number of clients. However, it's also something that you can apply if you're just starting off in your business or you just had a few clients. One thing that I often recommend that people often yell at me for but has been huge for me is working for free now. Don't kill the messenger. There's a difference between working for free in a way that benefits you and working for free in a way that does not. And if you can shift your mindset from self employed to business ownership, that's the same thing that you need to do to shift. Whether it's working for free in a bad way or working for free in a good way because it's results oriented, its goal oriented. You know what you're working for. You know why you're working for free. So if you haven't had enough clients to really be able to formalize your process yet, really understand what you're doing? Go get some. Whether they're gonna pay You are not the key to that, though. One more caveat to working for free is that you absolutely have to work for free for the right people. You can't work for free For people who can only afford free, you have to work for free for people who value what it is that you're doing. This sounds like banning in control means having employees when you are the business are the business. How do you turn it into a product? She just technical service work. OK, so part of this absolutely maybe hiring people. And we're gonna talk about the problem with solo entrepreneurship in just a minute. In fact, you totally given me a great Segway, but it doesn't necessarily have Teoh. There's also lots of tools applications, you know, systems that you can use so that you can continue to do the work yourself or parts of the work yourself while outsourcing other parts of the work to tools. But again, this mindset shift is the key to being able to do that, do it effectively so you can leverage the work that you dio yourself. But often you'll find that when you've made this mindset shift. When you brought attention to these things, when you start formalizing these things, you're like, why wouldn't I hire people? This is great, and hiring can look like all sorts of different things, and it's probably not something will have the opportunity to get into in the Navy, gritty over the course of this class. But all I all I want to say is your perspective on hiring people right now or not. Hiring people might now might be leading us stray.