Art of Growth, Quiet Power Strategy
For as much as you love the idea of figuring out how to do business your way, you also want a clear-cut action plan. You sense that someone else has come along and figured out the best way to launch a program, turn a service into a product, or build a compelling brand, and you want to know the 1-2-3 step plan for making that happen.
But you’re also not naive. You know there’s no cookie cutter action plan that just works for everyone. So you try to create your own.
And you still come up short. You take action only to find yourself back in the weeds and confused about priorities.
Why does that happen?
I’ve been thinking about this problem quite a bit. I want to figure out why it is so easy for me to turn an idea into effective action and so difficult for so many other people.
Here’s my current hypothesis:
Your action plans fail because they assume your goals require linear action. You try to create a set of steps to follow instead of a strategic map that incorporates all areas of your business.
Once you’ve passed the startup stage of your business, all of your execution has to be integrated action instead of linear action.
Linear action is “first I do this, then I do that, then I’ll do the next thing.” Integrated action means knowing that when you act on one thing, it affects many other parts of your business. One simple action can create a chain reaction of necessary actions.
To get the most out of any plan, you need to account for how you’ll manage those chain reactions. Some, you’ll act on immediately. Those are the things that best support your strategy and help you create the most amount of leverage. Others, you’ll intentionally put on the back burner. You can’t do everything right away.
You also need to know your overall strategy for each area of your business so that once you realize a chain reaction is occurring in that area, you can act with intention in line with your strategy.
Here’s what that looks like in my business:
I’ve started a complete restructuring plan for 2016. It includes changing the format and scope of the foundational Quiet Power Strategy™ program, adding additional outcome-oriented programs, and building multiple channels for new members to join our community.
I started by planning out the first 6 months of the year on giant calendars. This was linear action planning. Now I can see when I will start promoting, launching, selling, and delivering our new programs.
However, if that’s all I would do, my plan would fail.
Now that I have a basic structure for my 2016 plan, I need to rework many other parts of my business. I’ve decided to rebrand our membership community and incorporate it into Quiet Power Strategy™; I’ve decided to move from Mailchimp (sad face, still love ‘em!) to ConvertKit; I’ve created a plan for identifying, segmenting, and nurturing new members based on their interests so that we can connect them to the right offers.
Each one of those things (and the many other decisions and systems involved) warrants its own linear action plan. But again, without integrating that into the overall plan, those action plans are worthless.
If you try to reduce your action plans to linear action, you’ll always (and I mean, always) come up short. A formula—even one of your own creation—is just never good enough. One step in that formula will always lead to another chain reaction of steps.
This is also why it feels like you’re regularly biting off more than you can chew. Once you get started on a good plan, it quickly spirals out of control because you realize just how much more there is to do.
One way I’ve found to effectively combat this problem is to pre-mortem my plans. A pre-mortem is essentially a way to reverse engineer your problem-solving and incorporate it into your action plan to begin with. When you do a pre-mortem, pretend your plan has utterly failed—the patient is dead on the table—then list any and all reasonable factors that could have contributed to its failure.
Once you have that list, countermeasures need to be integrated into your action plan. Now, you have an integrated action plan.
As you turn your focus to the next phase of your business, pay special attention to the chain reactions that necessarily occur because of the decisions you make. Create plans that anticipate and incorporate these chain reactions so that you’re not left in a lurch with your action planning.
Art of Growth, Quiet Power Strategy
I love idea-driven businesses. They’re not just solving problems, they’re not just serving people, they’re not just putting cool products out into the world.
Idea-driven businesses are fueled by the pursuit of change.
Their innovation is born from a deep desire to change the way people think about themselves, their businesses, their homes, their careers, their wardrobes, their families, etc…
Idea-driven businesses come in all shapes and sizes. Some create physical products, others offer services, still more offer education or training.
I’ve been working primarily with idea-driven businesses for about the last 5 years. I’ve encountered them at all stages and have created systems for tackling the biggest problems they face. So with this article, I want to shed light on the different stages of idea-driven business and what problems each stage entails so that you have a better idea of where your idea-driven business is and where it’s headed.
I’ve included a description of each stage, the biggest difficulty the business faces in each, what happens during the transition from one stage to the next, and, finally, the inflection point that changes the transition from eventual to intentional.
STAGE 1: STARTUP
A startup is defined as a business that is trying to figure out how it will make money, reach a growing number of customers, and build the systems it needs for continuous optimization.
Yes, this normally comes with the trappings of venture capital, hip offices in an expensive city, and fancy parties. But it absolutely doesn’t have to.
At the heart of whether a business is a startup or not is 1 core activity: learning.
Think about when you started your business: did you know what product or service offers would work? Did you know the best way for you to find customers? Did you know what you even wanted your business to look like at maturity? No.
You were learning. You were learning how you could reliably make money; you were learning how you should connect with the right people; and, you were learning how to do those things more efficiently so you didn’t lose your mind (hopefully).
This is the Startup Stage of idea-driven business. At this stage, the idea may not even be articulated. It could be more of an ethos or personal philosophy in the back of your mind. You don’t know the value of it yet—and how could you?
You’re simply figuring out how you can make money, reach the right people, and do things more efficiently as you go in an effort to create positive change for people. You start doing the work, put up a website, and learn how your work is most useful.
BIGGEST DIFFICULTY: Finding people to offer your product or service to so you can learn.
THE TRANSITION: As your business starts to enter the transition to the next stage, you find yourself reasonably confident about what will sell and what won’t. You have a hazy understanding of where you can find new customers when you need them. You’re paying the bills but it’s not always easy. You’re excited about your business but the reality of how you will make it grow seems incredibly daunting.
INFLECTION POINT: You realize that nothing will change unless your business changes. Your business can’t grow without a significant adjustment to the way it creates, delivers, and exchanges value.
STAGE 2: GROWTH
The Growth Stage begins when you don’t just repeat what’s worked in the past but truly understand why it’s worked. When you know why certain products, tactics, or messages have worked, you can engineer new products, tactics, or messages based on that same principle.
Now, you begin to take control of the growth of your idea-driven business. It’s intentional expansion—not the unintentional explosion that often leads to collapse.
In the Growth Stage, you might need a waiting list or to get some production assistance. Things are still tight but you’re starting to see how they could work out—and you sense wiggle room might be just around the corner.
BIGGEST DIFFICULTY: Finding ways to serve more people without burning out.
TRANSITION: Here is where your idea starts to emerge. You discovered it hiding underneath the unique way you offer your work and you’ve started to talk about it. That idea has helped your business growth gain traction and momentum.
INFLECTION POINT: You realize you’re spinning your wheels on growth. There’s little point in reaching more people because your business doesn’t have a way to serve them. Because there’s little point, you’re not doing what you need to do to reach more people. Revenue growth stalls—even if reach does not.
STAGE 3: LEVERAGE
The Leverage Stage begins when you use your idea as a way to do more with less work. Your idea becomes the heart & soul of your message, offers, brand, and business model. Your business is known for its unique perspective. Your business has stopped trying to be everything to everyone.
Idea-driven businesses don’t always scale as they grow—but to reach a level of ease, they must find leverage.
Focus is the key to leverage. You focus on 1 message. You focus on 1 growth channel. You focus on 1 offer. You focus on 1 customer. It’s counterintuitive to get more specific and add more constraints to your business to create leverage—but it’s key.
BIGGEST DIFFICULTY: Clearly and concisely describing what you offer to appeal to the right people at the right time.
TRANSITION: As your business starts to enter the transition to the next stage, you sense that all that focus will allow your business to expand if only you can create the systems and get the help that will allow that to happen.
INFLECTION POINT: You see a pattern among your customers that point to additional ways you could be serving them. All you need is a way to make it happen—and you could significantly increase your revenue per customer.
STAGE 4: MICROENTERPRISE
The microenterprise is the startup all grown up. It’s lean, mean, and changing the world.
And you, as its owner, are not burnt out. You’re enjoying the freedom, control, independence, and influence that you imagined when you started this whole thing. You’re working your systems, optimizing regularly, and letting your growth machine do most of the work.
You have a team to support you and your ideas. You’re not responsible for every email, decision, or sale. You have time to think, be creative, and enjoy being an executive.
BIGGEST DIFFICULTY: Knowing when to disrupt your own systems or process.
Orienting your business to the stage that you’re in helps you anticipate pitfalls, plan proactively, and discern your next steps. Plus, when you know what stage you’re in, you know you’re not alone. The frustrations you feel and the goals that you have put you in the company of other smart idea people who are making things happen.
Building a business is a journey–enjoy the ride.
Art of Growth
At some point, you decide to make a change. Deciding to change the way your business delivers value or the type of services that your business offers isn’t the hard part.
The hard part is deciding when to stop what you’re doing now.
What you’re doing now pays the bills. It’s safe. It’s (fairly) comfortable. People expect it. It’s shaped the way people see your business and how they think of you as a leader.
Even as you start to envision what’s next, it seems like all outside forces are pushing you to double-down on what you’ve got.
This is a problem that many of our clients face and a question I regularly ask myself: How do you build the next phase of your business while you’re working the current phase?
Business model innovation is a key activity of any business.
Okay, that’s jargony. Evolving, adapting, and optimizing the way your business creates, delivers, and exchanges value (i.e. transformation and results) is something you need to do on a regular basis.
That means testing prices, adjusting sales messaging, and iterating on existing products. But it can also mean sweeping change in the what your business offers or how it offers it.
The prospect of this is often exciting.
The reality of making it happen can be terrifying and paralyzing.
When something is working, it’s incredibly difficult to find the motivation—let alone the time—to change it. But change it you must.
Stagnation simply isn’t an option.
If you want to move from 1:1 coaching to group programs, at some point, you need to stop offering 1:1 coaching. If you want to move from physical products to digital products, at some point you need to stop offering physical products. If you want to move from small retreats to large conferences, at some point, you need to stop offering small retreats.
There are two main ways I work with clients on this big change—both of which I use myself in steering my own company.
Option 1: Shadow Offers
If the work you do is paying the bills, but you want to stop doing it, stop marketing it. The good news is that just because you stop marketing it doesn’t mean you have to stop getting paid for it.
Last year, Whitney Hess, a leader in the user experience field, worked with me to back off of her corporate gigs and add more coaching (both individual and group) to her business model. She stopped marketing her corporate consulting and started positioning her business for these new coaching offers. After a taking a few months off at the beginning of 2014, she put the plan into overdrive taking on enough corporate clients to pay the bills while welcoming a whole cohort of coaching clients. That led to her best year yet.
Often the businesses that employ this technique are getting their clients on a referral basis. Their happy former clients are sending them eager new clients, regardless of their sales pages or outside lead generation strategies. That means those sales pages can come down and their lead gen activities can stop while the revenue keeps flowing—right up until they decide to say “no” to it.
Once you take down the offers and stop actively marketing them, they become what I call “shadow offers.” They’re a part (even a big part) of the way your business generates revenue—but they’re not in the light anymore. Your business isn’t defined by them.
Often, the hardest part of making a change in your business model is teaching people a new way to see your business. By employing shadow offers, you can start the process of repositioning your business much sooner without damaging your revenue stream too early.
Option 2: Progressive Business Model Planning
In Quiet Power Strategy, one of the highlights of the program is creating a Business Model Plan. It’s not just the framework for how the business creates, delivers, and exchanges value, it’s a plan for how it will do so when all the right pieces fall into place.
However, even a forward-looking business model plan isn’t the solution for some business owners and the changes they want to make. In this case, we make 2 plans.
The first plan is a framework for how the business will create, deliver, and exchange value in the interim. It’s generally heavy on the offers that are currently generating the most revenue and incorporates an offer or two that indicates the direction the business is heading. It allows the business owner to see how she can start making decisions that support her future positioning without jeopardizing the safety of her current revenue streams.
The second plan is a framework for how the business will create, deliver, and exchange value in the future (often 12-18 months out). This is the goal plan. It reflects the projected changes when they are complete.
Moving between the first plan and the second plan isn’t like flipping a switch. It’s progressive and incremental.
We set milestones (number of sales, dollars in savings, etc…) that signal the time to make a single change from one plan to the next. Eventually, the enough milestones occur that the business model is transformed from the original plan to the new plan.
This is always how my business has evolved its model. I make a plan with a smaller change first, then make a plan for what it will look like eventually. Then, I set milestones and benchmarks for when those bigger changes will be made. That’s allowed me to transition my brand multiple times while leading my audience toward the next set of offers I’ll make.
Is it time to make a change in your business model? If that question makes you think, I guarantee the answer is yes.
Both of these options allow you to mitigate risk as you move from one business model to the next. Which one is right for you?
Art of Growth, Quiet Power Strategy
So you want to grow your business. You start tracking new Facebook likes, new email subscribers, and your website traffic. You discover how to move the needle on each and do more and more of the activities that create growth in these metrics.
It takes a lot of time. You’re posting to Facebook 5 times a day—which takes creative energy to come up with posts, reading time to share others posts, and productive time to tear yourself away from the onslaught of other people’s posts. You’re looking for new ways to gain email subscribers—hosting webinars, planning joint ventures, hosting telesummits, setting ad campaigns. You’re writing more blog posts, adding pillar content pages, and optimizing the SEO on your site.
The metrics you’re paying attention to are constantly pulling you away from time with clients. But you’re growing your business!
Or are you?
Are you paying attention to the right things? What have those new Facebook likes, email subscribers, or website visitors gotten you? Have they brought in new revenue? (Do you even have a way to tell?) Have they streamlined your production? Have they helped you develop new opportunities?
Most likely, no.
And if they have, they’ve only entrenched you further into the business you have instead of helping you grow the business you want.
Now, I’m not at all opposed to new Facebook likes, email subscribers, or website visitors. Those are 3 metrics I track myself.
However, I don’t spend time on those metrics until I’ve actually gone about the business of working on my business.
You see, building your Facebook page, growing your list, and buoying your website traffic isn’t working on your business. Marketing your business is an “in” your business kind of activity. And if it’s the only thing you’re making time for, it’s not going to do you a lot of a good in the long-term. Unless you’ve got the right systems, strategy, and development plan set up, it’s not buying you any more time, money, or sanity.
Let me say that again: Promoting your business isn’t buying you any more time, money, or sanity.
You might have noticed that. You might have realized posting more on Facebook—even sending more emails, one of my personal favorite activities—isn’t improving your quality of life.
But if your metrics of growth are all things that lead to more time spent on marketing, you’re wasting time and not creating the kind of systems that lead to true growth, true profit, and true sanity. And I write this as someone who loves marketing with a burning passion.
You’re paying attention to the wrong things.
And it’s costing you time (not to mention money and energy, too).
So what should you be paying attention to?
(more…)
Art of Growth
Just because you don’t get a paycheck anymore doesn’t mean you can’t get stuck living paycheck-to-paycheck. In fact, your whole business can get caught operating paycheck-to-paycheck.
When you’re in the never-quite-enough cycle, no matter how much you want to grow your business and no matter how hard you’re willing to work, business growth can feel impossible. You’re always a little short on the money you need to invest in a sweet new design, a rockstar employee, or the applications that can make running your business easier. You’re also just a little short on the time you need to evolve your business model, leverage your services, and grow your platform.
I’ve tried to figure out what separates those who make the leap from never-quite-enoughness to abundance and growth with their businesses. And here’s what I’ve discovered:
You have to use what you want, not what you have, as your baseline.
That means you don’t figure out how to replace your day job salary, you make a plan to make 20% more. You don’t figure out how to get enough clients, you make a plan to have a waiting list. You don’t figure out what you need to price your offers at to pay yourself, you plan a pricing strategy that builds in profit.
That means part of planning for your business is getting clear on what you want:
- Enough income and extra profit to take the summer off?
- A team of talented co-conspirators who can help you serve your clients?
- A website that truly represents the personality and quality of your business?
- Tools that make your life easier?
If you want to take the summer off, make sure your plan has your business generating enough revenue in January-May, September-December. That changes the way you launch offers, plan partnerships, and schedule marketing activities.
If you want a team (or to grow your existing one), make sure your plan includes a pricing strategy that pays them. Put that extra labor budget into savings and you’ll have a cushion that makes you feel comfortable expanding.
If you want a new website, stop trying to piecemeal your solutions (i.e. spending unnecessary money) and find the credit you need to get one. Then make sure your plan includes how you’ll harness that website to payback the credit as quickly as possible.
If you want tools that make your life easier, make sure your plan makes it clear exactly what they need to do for you. That changes what you look for in new solutions so that you’re only investing in the ones that do what you need them to do.
Setting goals and stretching your comfort zone pays both strategic and tactical dividends. When you know what you want, you can make the business strategy decisions that help you get there. If you’re always focused on maintaining the status quo, you’ll be stuck there.
P.S. If you’re a maker or designer trying to get ahead in your own business, check out my Pricing Your Craft workshop on CreativeLive on August 17th. You can watch totally FREE while it’s live: RSVP here.
Art of Growth
When I first set out on my own, what I really wanted to do was get paid for doing work I loved. I wanted to use my skills and see what I could create with them. I wanted to help cool people and great organizations.
I worked hard to bring in work, hone my services, and value my own time enough to get paid well. In many ways, I was living a dream.
But I struggled to close a persistent gap between where I was at and where I really wanted to be. I saw others with great businesses that allowed them to take considerable time off, build a legacy, craft valuable intellectual property, and lead teams of talented people. I wanted that. And I just didn’t see why I couldn’t make it happen.
Every step forward ended up feeling like two steps back.
I’ve come to realize that these goals didn’t match my mindset. The actions I was taking to move forward weren’t actually closing the gap between my reality and where I wanted to be. Every decision I made was dictated by my mindset and every decision I came to made it more difficult to realize the goals I had.
I needed to shift from a self-employment mindset to a business owner mindset.
When I “started my business” what I was really trying to do was just get paid for doing work that I wanted to do. I didn’t know anything different.
I didn’t yet have a vision for something bigger. I just wanted to love my work.
And I did. I crafted myself a great job. Even though I had a job that many others would envy, I figured out it wasn’t exactly what I wanted. I wanted the fruits of owning a business and creating something bigger than me.
Now, before I continue and tell you exactly how a self-employment mindset differs from a business owner mindset, I want to get one thing clear: there is nothing wrong with wanting a great job. There is nothing “less than” about wanting to create a container in which you get to do great work everyday and explore your craft. If that sounds like exactly what you want, own it. And, at the same time, realize that the goals you have need to match that mindset.
What many bloggers, authors, and speakers have told you is possible—passive income, truly flexible schedules, working less for more return, etc…—only if you’re willing to shift from self-employment to business ownership.
Do you want a great job or do you want a business?
When I was trying to get paid to do work that I wanted to do, my goals were things like replacing the income from my day job, having a steady stream of clients, and trying to make myself useful. These were great goals (and I bet they sound familiar to you). But achieving these goals actually kept me struggling to get further ahead. I could raise my income, get more clients, and become more useful—but I wasn’t able to take a break, create revenue above and beyond the value of my time, or build a platform to do things that would allow me to do work I had deemed “more fun” (like writing books or speaking).
I was trying to work toward business owner goals with a self-employment mindset. It was incredibly frustrating. Each mindset has a set of goals associated with it and, while there’s significant wiggle room in each, there’s very little overlap.
Doing the Work
If your priority is digging in and doing the work, self-employment is a great way to do it. Doing the work is hugely important—also fun!—and still a part of my schedule. But it’s no longer the focus of my activities. Other people are often doing the work for me, or that work has been developed to the point of automation. My main task now is business development. I’m exploring new revenue streams (like licensing a fresh crop of business strategists on my methodology) and exploring ways to leverage others content to create additional value for my customers.
When your priority is doing the work, you’re not prioritizing restructuring your business model, looking for new revenue streams, building teams, etc… That’s okay, but you need to check your goals and make sure that your goals are aligned with doing the work.
“What” Instead of “Who”
If your priority is figuring out “what” you need to do instead of “who” can do it for you, you’re in self-employment mode. If your first thought is “I wonder what I need to do to get better at…” when an idea or opportunity comes your way, that’s self-employment talking.
This is probably the hardest transition for me: acknowledging that others can not only do it but do it better. Realizing my business won’t be as good as it could be if I don’t involve others was part of my shift into the business owner mindset.
While still extremely uncomfortable, I’ve rewired my brain to think “who” when there’s something new I want to explore in my business. Who is better at this than I am? Who already knows how to do this? Who has already created the program or has the content? Whose personal values would allow me to expand the scope of my business beyond my own?
Hiring people isn’t just about getting help. Hiring people is the best way to expand beyond your own limitations of knowledge, values, and capacity. Hiring people doesn’t just help you do more, it changes the very nature of the way your business can deliver value.
The self-employment mindset will guide you to hiring people who can help you do more of the work while reclaiming a little sanity. Business owners know that hiring people increases the amount of value (and therefore, most often, revenue) their businesses create.
Profit
If you’d like to do great work for a great salary, self-employment is the way to go. You’ve likely heard about the time-for-money trap—but it’s not just that. If you want a great salary, assets that increase in value, and a healthy share of profit from a great business, you need to shift to the business owner mindset. Self-employment excludes a hugely important part of the business-building equation: profit.
When I review past business models with our members, one of the main things I’m looking out for is profit calculations. A profit calculation is not the same thing as accounting for labor (yours or anyone else’s). Profit is the money you make because the value your business creates goes beyond the value of the labor and administration it takes to create that value.
To become profitable, you have to examine the true value your business is creating (often not what it is on the surface), you need to scale to a certain point, you create additional efficiency in the way the value is delivered, and you look for ways to innovate on the way the value is traditionally created. Creating profit is a process of optimizing effectiveness and efficiency.
Examine the products and services you’re offering now. How much of the revenue you’re creating from them is actually profit? How much is just paying for your time?
When you’ve been focused on paying yourself for so long, breaking into profit generation can feel really uncomfortable. Even though I’ve been generating profit in my business for some time (in the form of more accessible and lower-priced products), when I moved into profit pricing in the more exclusive side of my business, I got really nervous. The change in price wasn’t dramatic but it was accompanied by decisions to outsource part of the hands-on work and service delivery. That meant I was making more money and doing less work.
While that might be the “holy grail” of business, it was personally nerve-wracking. I gave myself many pep talks about value, growth, and profit as I intentionally shifted my mindset from self-employment to business ownership. Eventually, it sunk in and that lead to doubling my revenue last year and being on track to double it again.
Of course, my personal piece of that puzzle hasn’t grown as fast. That was another change from self-employment to business ownership mindset. My business’s revenue is not the same as my income. Even though that might be obvious, I’ve discovered that the more my business grows, the more I need to detach personal income and business revenue. Trying to grow them equally leads to making decisions that are ultimately about serving yourself (been there, done that!) instead of serving your business.
I used to run my business at a 85% profit margin. Now, I run with about a 40% profit margin. My financial team is still impressed.
Next Step
Over and over again, I’m confronted with audiences, colleagues, and clients that have goals mismatched to their mindset. There’s no amount of tactical learning that will “fix” your business problems if your mindset is creating an insurmountable gap between where you’re at and where you want to be.
I won’t end this post by asking you to change your mindset. Instead, I’m asking you to consider what you really want and whether the decisions you’ve been making are actually designed to get you there. Has your mindset gotten in the way of achieving your goals? What’s one thing (structure, help, profit, etc…) that you could start shifting your thinking on?
