Building Fast Vs. Building Secure
Momentum is a drug, and it’s addicting.
If you scale a business without the necessary frameworks for safety and margin, it’s possible to go extremely fast and have things end extremely messily.
What does this look like?
- Overworked, tired teams
- Zero margin in the areas that count (both money and energy)
- Unbalanced, unfocused systems that hinder clients rather than help them
- Eventually… total burnout
In case you can’t tell, we advocate for building slowly and more sustainably, using frameworks that flex and scale naturally with your clients.
All of these frameworks are built around what we believe are the three “levels” of consulting products. If you figure out how to maximize each of these levels, you not only have a business that can scale – you have a business that can scale to a profitable EXIT.
Level 1 – Information
If you ask yourself this question: “What were my BEST clients of today, doing / looking for 2 years ago?” The answer to that is probably some variation of the following:
- They were looking online for books
- They were Googling how to deal with XYZ problem
- They were frustrated with blah blah blah
You don’t want to just publish material that’s good for where your clients are today, you want to publish material that’s good for where they were 2-3 years ago. Why? Because that’s where your “2-3 years from now” clients are. This is the key switch from “finding” clients, to “creating” them.
This is always level one. People start to vet you out by going through and searching for information. In our “Codex,” there are 6 different ways we provide information for prospects and future clients. We systematically go through them and once we get them working, we bolt on the next one.
Level 2 – Action (or Accountability)
The next run up is when you take information, and customize it (to the user, the client, the customer, etc). Information is amazing…
One of the greatest tools in the WORLD is information. Information has elevated the average incomes and opportunities for billions of people. There is no doubt, the world is getting safer, smarter & in most cases wealthier, as a result. There are times when information needs to be customized for faster results.
This is how you can think of level 2, “speed.” When you can customize something, you are really selling SPEED. Now, of course — be careful with this. Because the faster you bring results to someone, the more “conditioning” they will need to HOLD IT.
Many people view their lives transactionally. “If I can just get to the next level,” they think. But there are two battles here:
- The battle to GET there
- The battle to STAY there
When we introduce speed into the equation, you have to become responsible for their conditioning. Or else, you’re dumping an increase/result on people and then expecting them to figure out how to manage it / hang onto it. Nonetheless, this is level two.
As counterintuitive as it sounds, this means your products and packages actually get more expensive the “smaller” and tighter they become — because the faster you can make point A to point B, the more people are willing to pay for it.
Level 3 – Access
This is the highest level…
When people pay for the Consulting Digest (for instance), they’re getting a form of customization. There is information, but not bucket loads of information. You’re not reading a 200 page book. What you’re getting is a tight, condensed version of information (some created, some curated) that specifically applies to building your brand and influence online.
When people get into Chamber (our flagship program), they get even more customization (and we introduce action & accountability). They know what to do, how to do it, and (most importantly) when to do it. Then we roll into “PHASE II.”
What we want to give people is a level of access that they don’t have to pay an arm and a leg for. We could make more money if we charged $100k for a mastermind — but it’s often more impactful to give people hands-on access to what’s working to build businesses in real time than to force everyone to wait for a once a quarter mastermind meet-up.
So we do monthly fly-ins. We offer calls that are easily accessible. We do all these things for PHASE II clients so that they have access when they need it. Our main goal is to shorten the time frame of “Help, what do I do here,” to “Here is the answer.”
We also use technology to aid us in that.
But the point is not how we do it, it’s to show you that this game flows up in levels. You can organize your IP this way and it will serve you in the long run.
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