All posts filed under: Business Growth

Build a Speaking Practice.

Last week we learned how you can start building your brand and then ways to use that brand to monetize your skills. We looked at the steps needed to build a consulting or coaching business. And then how to break away from the tyranny of the clock, which limits your earnings to the hours you can work. If you can command $300 per hour, and very few consultants are able to charge more, then earnings more than $250,000 per year are possible. But wouldn’t it be nice to earn that, or more, working fewer hours.  We learned lessons from folks who have developed as systemized approach and others who had the courage to offer a premium product that could be sold over and over again. To some extent this week we start by returning to a paid by hour activity. Building your own speaking practice. The difference? Once you have established your credibility as a speaker your hourly rate will be very very attractive. Event organizers often have a generous budget speakers. And why not? …

Break free of the clock

Continuing to learn from Dorie Clark’s excellent book “Entrepreneurial You” In an earlier post I mentioned Michael Port’s book “Book Yourself Solid”. Let me share with you the changing ways Mr. Port was able to capitalize on his book’s success. After publishing his book in 2006 Mr. Port suddenly had a massive new audience. He now had the scale needed to build a group coaching program. He started with teleseminars, most internet connections at the time were not fast enough to support video conferences. The cost for a three-month program was $1,200 and demand was strong. Then he tried a yearlong mentoring program for $8,000 per person which entitled his clients to several training calls per month and three, three-day retreats per year. His initial program had 40 participants. Even when he increased his price to $12,000 demand remained strong attracting between 150 and 250 clients each year. But his participants found travel to the retreats pricey, and Michael Port found executing large live events, costly and stressful. Like all good entrepreneurs he took the …

How to build a successful coaching/consulting business?

Continuing to learn from Dorie Clark’s book “Entrepreneurial You” Step 1 Develop your initial market. Tell your family, friends, contacts about your decision to launch a consulting business. Ask them for introductions to folks who are able to hire and who you may be able to help. If time permits you should do this with a personal call or e-mail. And be specific about the type of client you want to attract. I would love to work with anyone in the aviation industry, or ask do you know anyone in Google, they would be my dream client. Of course, this assumes that you have a clear idea of what type of coaching/consulting business you want to build.   If it is not obvious to you where your skill set lies, or maybe you are a generalist, complete an assessment of your areas of expertise.  Some pointers from Bozi Dar who runs an online business as a side gig, Understand what you are well qualified to share. In her book Dorie uses the phrase uniquely qualified, …

Monetize your expertise.

Continuing to look at the ideas contained in Dorie Clark’s book “Entrepreneurial You” Building up the courage to charge for your services is challenging. What if no one wants your product? Or people complain that you are overpriced?  Or call you a sell out for charging at all? Yes that may well happen. But you cannot help others with your advice or great product or outstanding service if you cannot keep yourself in business. It’s strange, people willpay $200 per hour for a psychiatrist  but will look askance at paying the same rate to tap into your decades of experience. I “lose” many potential clients when I tell them my charges, for me this is often a cause for regret, not because I have lost a potential client but because I know I could deliver them many times more value than I charge. Should I reduce my rates? No! I charge what I am worth, as is borne out by my client history. My clients can terminate my services at any time, I do not …

Build Your Brand

The underlying advice contained in Dorie Clark’s “Entrepreneurial You” is that most entrepreneurs in the coaching, consulting, speaking field fail to diversify themselves. Diversification can enable you to earn more and mitigate risk. Too many entrepreneurs focus on earning revenue from one or two activities, such as consulting and coaching. To stop being held a slave to the clock, trading hours for dollars you need to develop multiple streams of income. In her prologue to the book Dorie states that her business model has seven distinct streams. Before you tune out at the thought of developing seven, yes seven, income streams, keep in mind that it has taken Dori over ten years to get to this stage. As she describes in her book “The Long View” it takes time to achieve great things. Not all potential income streams will be appropriate for you, select the ones that match your business goals. Your objective, and its mine since reading Dori’s book, should be to be earning money while you sleep.  And although I will focus on …

Marketing: Just be You

Selling to strangers is hard, it’s much easier if you have a connection with your potential client.  In this episode we will hear what Sahil Lavingia tells us on developing your audience. Congratulations, by following steps outlined in last week’s  blogs which were part manifesto and part roadmap. you know how to build a community, a product and one hundred customers. You have achieved product market fit. Note the 100 customers is not a hard number, it will depend on your business. If you are a coach, consultant or other solopreneur this number maybe only 5 or even as low as 3. The point is that you have repeat customers. This week we will look at the advice for the minimalist entrepreneur offered by Savil Lavingia on how to grow beyond 100 customers starting with marketing by being you. Sales got you to 100 customers, marketing will bring you thousands. Marketing at this stage of your business should not be confused with advertising. Ads cost money and as a minimalist entrepreneurs we only spend money …

Getting Ready to Launch – Your first 100 customers

Lessons from “The Minimalist Entrepreneur – How Great Founders Do More With Less.” By Sahil Lavingia Constraints lead to Creativity. If you are a minimalist entrepreneur the early stages of launching your business is all about constraints. You need to focus on doing one thing well and avoiding the temptation to try to do everything at once. Scope creep where a project or product launch becomes unwieldy due adding just one more feature and wouldn’t be nice if we could do this. Sahal Lavingia uses this check list to keep things manageable. Can I ship it in a weekend? Most prototypes of a product offering should be capable of being developed in 2 to 3 days Will it make my customers lives a little better? Is it likely a customer will be willing to pay me for this solution? Can I get feedback quickly? This first product does not need to be pretty. Maybe the best example of a popular but not pretty solution is Craigslist. It’s never been pretty, but it has always worked. …

Be Confident Be Minimalist

Lessons from “The Minimalist Entrepreneur – How Great Founders Do More With Less.” By Sahil Lavingia Don’t let self-doubt set in; build as little as possible. Writers are told, “Write what you know” for entrepreneurs it’s not quite that simple. When you are starting a business you are imaging something that has not been done before, or at least not in the way you are contemplating your business vision. This applies even if you are considering a consulting or coaching business, there may be many similar businesses out there, but yours will be unique because you will bring your skill sets and unique personality to the table. Unfortunately, this is when many aspiring solopreneurs decide that building a business is not for them. Although they have the passion, they let self-doubt set in. They convince themselves they do not have the hard skills they need to be successful.  Let me tell you a secret, every entrepreneur has doubts that their business with be successful. Even the most successful were not sure of success when they …

Finding your business niche

Lessons from “The Minimalist Entrepreneur – How Great Founders Do More With Less.” By Sahil Lavingia Give away so much value that you think you’ve given too much, then give more. Michael Port Book Yourself Solid Start with Community Sahil Lavingia starts this chapter with a story about entrepreneur Sol Orwell who, in 2009, was overweight and unhappy. He decided he needed to learn more about fitness and nutrition. He joined a Reddit community and the more he learned about the subject, the more he shared, he answered questions and posted about his personal journey of losing sixty pounds (27KG). Working with co “Redditor” Kurtis Frank, they built a community of 50,000 members. Kurtis and Sol noticed a common theme, many questions were raised around the subject of nutritional supplements. In 2011 together they launched Examine.com, they did not sell anything, just provided information. In 2013 they began to think about monetizing. By asking their audience Kurtis and Sahil identified a need for a single reliable source of information about supplements available in the market. They launched Research Digest a …

Taking the Long Game View

Making the impossible, possible When setting objectives for our careers whether entrepreneurial or corporate we often default to monetary objectives. That’s why business degrees are so popular, they appear to offer a more direct route to well-paid employment. But one of the best aspects of being an entrepreneur is that you can focus your activities on what interests you. Dorie Clark calls it optimize for interesting. One of my greatest regrets is that I spent my corporate career in a company that made products that really did not fire my imagination. My hobbies were fishing, boating and aviation, not construction chemicals. When considering where your business should take you, evaluate what you are already doing. What catches and holds your  interest? Set big goals for yourself. It may seem to you that making a living out of what interests you is impossible, so you elect to pay it safe. After all who wants to be loser. By playing the long game however, what appears to be impossible becomes possible. Making a living doing what you …