E61: How to Scale Your Service-Based Business

EPISODE 61

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:00] AW: You’re listening to the Transcend Podcast. I’m your host, Asha Wilkerson, an attorney by training and an educator at heart. This podcast is all about empowering you to build a business and leave a legacy. Here’s the thing. The wealth gap in America is consistently increasing, and while full-time entrepreneurship is not for everyone, even a side hustle can change your financial landscape if you’re intentional about using your business to build wealth. I’ve run my own law firm for over ten years, and in that time I’ve helped countless California businesses go from idea to six figures. On this podcast, we talk about what it truly takes to build a sustainable business and find financial freedom. Let’s dive in.

[EPISODE]

[00:00:43] AW: Hey, there. Welcome back to another episode of Transcend the podcast, as every week, I am so grateful and excited that you are here listening to whatever tips are on the top of my mind for this week. Today, I want to talk to you about, How to Scale Your Service-Based Business. Now geez, growing a business, of course, is always the goal, it’s the thing that gets pushed, make more money, do more, grow bigger, but you know that I am all about living in alignment with your purpose and leaning into what actually feels right. So for me I had to really think about whether I want a million-dollar business and whether I am willing to sacrifice what may be necessary for a million-dollar business. 

I will get to a million-dollar business if it allows me to have freedom of time, time with my family, freedom of location, right? The ability to do the things that I want to do and if it doesn’t feel so emotionally draining and taxing, then I can get up every day and look forward to what I’m doing. If that will get me to a million dollars, which I think it absolutely could, then be great. If not, I don’t really need to have a million-dollar business, because for me sacrificing the quality of my life is not going to be worth a million dollars. 

Now that is not to say that people who have million-dollar businesses, gross and make a million dollars in revenue have a poor quality of life. No, that’s not what I’m saying. What I actually want to talk to you today about is how to scale your service-based business in a way that doesn’t make you feel super stressed and you’re stretched too thin, and scaling your service-based business in a way that is possible to lead to a million dollars, while still honoring how you like to work, when you like to work, and who you like to work with. 

Let me just get right into it. The first thing that I want you to think about as you’re scaling your service-based business is to brainstorm or think about how you can go from serving one client to serving many clients. How do you go from one-on-one coaching to group coaching? How do you go from using your time and talent to create a project for one business to maybe doing or for one client to maybe creating a workshop, or seminar, or training, or an e-Course, where multiple people can come and get information from you, but you only have to deliver it one time, either one-on-one day at one setting to multiple people or in a digital format to multiple people. 

I keep thinking about a friend and client of mine that has a landscape architect business. I don’t know why my brain is always working for everybody’s businesses that are in my orbit. Lupe, if you’re listening, I think one thing that might be really cool is to do a couple how to packages, how to style is not the right word, but design your small backyard to maximize space, right? The folks that are going to be the DIYers are going to continue to be the DIYers and they aren’t going to come to us for their service anyway. 

There are people who will never come to me for legal services because they trust themselves so much that they want to do it themselves. I have programs where I walk you through creating your California LLC, reviewing your own contracts, and hiring your own employees, because that’s a whole segment that’s not going to come to me anyway. I might as well give them good information that they’re willing to pay for because they’re going to get instructions on how to do it. Then I can still serve the people who want me to do it for them. 

Actually, giving information to the folks who are the DIYers makes me more credible because now I just have more people who have been touched by my service or who have seen my style and like it. Same thing for architecture, same thing for coaching, maybe you have, I don’t know, a 30-day coaching program in a digital format. Maybe you have a daylong workshop, right, where your work walking people through a particular problem that most people in the group have and then there’s an opportunity to work with you one-on-one after that. I mean, I think the possibilities are endless whether you’re selling something for $39 or $399 or $3,099 is $999, right? Think about working instead of just with one client at one time to working with multiple clients at the same time, in a format that’s a little bit different from then how you do your one-on-one. That could be a piece of what you do in the one-on-one, maybe it’s the introduction. 

A friend of mine, she’s a graphic designer, and she wants people to go through this branding consultation ahead of time and she’s been doing it with them, but there’s also those folks who want to learn about branding, but then trust themselves to be able to create their own emblem or their own logo and they’re not ready to spend the money on a designer to do it with them. So my suggestion to her was that little course that you have people do in the very beginning to work with you, why don’t you sell that for a small fee to get people into your database, but also, it’s the folks who aren’t actually going to hire you anyway because they want to do it themselves. Then all you have to do is provide the information, they walk themselves through it, and they design their own logo.

For me, I’m not going to design my own logo. I just don’t have that skill, but I would probably do a little exercise in branding if I already had something and wanted to update it because I didn’t think it would be necessary for me to go and hire a full-on branding consultant. Things like that. I don’t have all the answers, but I think I got some good questions for y’all. How can you expand your business by moving from one-to-one to one-to-many through coaching, workshops, seminars, trainings, digital courses, downloads, whatever you can think of.

The next step, number two, is to go digital. Where in your business, can you put information in a digital format? What services or what pieces of your service that you’re already providing in a one-to-one format, can you turn into a digital format? I mentioned that before, but thinking about creating many courses of some aspect of your service. So within Transcend the membership, which is a group program, I have provided a training course on how to form your California LLC. Now forming a California LLC is something that I do anyway, but I have put that into a digital format so that I can reach the folks who wouldn’t want to or wouldn’t necessarily or wouldn’t ordinarily come and hire me or hire anybody as their attorney to do it, right? 

Again, I’ve created other courses like analyzing your own contracts and hiring your own employee. Those are all services that I provide one-on-one, but you can also get my training to do it yourself in a digital format. I think also how to sheets other digital products, maybe spreadsheets that you’ve created, that you’re using within your coaching services. Anything like that what you’re using within your business, I think are great digital downloads that you can put on your website. 

Clients can go and download them and you can make money without having to give your time one-to-one, because again, I don’t know if I mentioned it earlier, but the goal is, as you’re scaling your business, not to also scale your time at the same rate, right? You got to get good at providing the service, that’s probably going to come from a one-to-one in the beginning, right? But you want to make sure that you’re able to grow and scale without also multiplying your time and your effort at the same rate because that’s how you get burnt out, that’s how it starts to not become worth it because you’re just giving more and more of yourself and you have a limited capacity. 

Now the third thing and final tip that I’m going to give you is to make sure you hire the right support so that you can scale. If you are still doing a lot of the day-to-day admin in your business, if you’re thinking too much about paying the bills, if you’re doing the backend on your website, if you’re sending out bills to clients, if you’re sending out proposals, if you are trying to manage your calendar, these are all things that you can get support to do whether it’s a virtual assistant, an in-person assistant, or maybe there are aspects of your business that you don’t particularly care for. 

I’m not a big fan of forming corporations. I can do it, but I’m not a big fan. I can hire someone who loves to form corporations, and I can supervise and review their work. That frees me up to do the things that I love like forming LLC and doing business coaching. If I’m going to grow and scale my business, if I want to have more business formation come in under my umbrella, then in order to do that, because it’s not my favorite thing, even though it does make money. I would hire someone and make sure that they have enough work to do, that it pays for their salary, and also puts a little bit more money into my business. 

We are hamstrung by our own capacity. That’s not a good thing or a bad thing. It’s just a thing, right? When we think about scaling and growing, be realistic about what your capacity is, not just how many clients can you meet in a day, but how many clients can you meet in a day before you become drained while you still have energy to go and hang out with your family, take care of your kids, spend time with your friends, do your workout, relax at the end of the day. What is it that you are willing to put into scaling? Then also, where can you offload some of that responsibility so that when you do scale, you’re not scaling your responsibility and your time, right, and your energy and your effort at the same rate as you’re actually scaling the activities that your business is engaging in. 

Okay, I hope that that was, not only interesting to you, but helpful. Ways to think about scaling. How do you scale? You go from one-to-one, to one-to-many, you got to go digital, and then you have to hire the right support around you to make sure that you are not scaling your energy and effort at the same rate as you are scaling your business. This is one of my favorite things to talk to and to work through with business owners. I do this in my business coaching. I’m doing one-on-one business coaching. If you are interested in that at all, I implore you go to my website, thewilkersonlawoffice.com/contact and fill out that contact form.

There’s a button on that page that says work with me, you can see the different ways to work with me to book a quick consultation and you will also see all of the other products that I offer. If you are in a space where you’re thinking about growing and scaling your business, and you’re not quite sure how, don’t start thinking about all the ways that don’t work, start opening your mind to all the ways that it could work. If you want a little bit of guidance and want to work with a business coach on that, then hit me up, head over to the wilkersonlawoffice.com/contact and we’ll see what we can do for you. 

All right, y’all, I hope you have a wonderful, wonderful week. I will see you in seven days, right back here, same time, same channel. Ciao.

[END]