In this Q&A session, we talk about the topic “Scaling a Coaching Practice” to answer the question sent in by Ron Reardon.

The question is “If a person has a high-end one-on-one coaching business, which normally coaching is not scalable; what recommendations do you have to scale what can be scaled?”

Scaling is one of the biggest challenges that service professionals have. For coaching business owners, there are four types of business models:

• Time Based: A model where you swap your limited hours for dollars.
• Product Based: You create products to do your coaching and those products are independent of you.
• Hybrid Based Model: A combination of time and product based model.
• License Based Model: A model where you create other coaches and certifications.

Scaling vs. Leveraging

When you scale a business, everything in it grows. When you leverage a business, the revenue and profitability increases with the help of what you have in place.

Scaling

Things such as marketing, system or process, concept of duplication can be scaled.

Scaling the Market

Automated Systems: Create once and deliver often by using automated tools. Clients will be able to come in, get value and take something away from these automated funnels. YouTube channels, podcasts and blogs can be used to create an experience that will help you gain loyalty of your clients.

Scaling Your Content: Re-purpose your content in different ways. For example: Recording it in a video. You can do the first webinar live and then use the recorded video over and over again.

Scaling the System

Create a formalized coaching process and make sure it is teachable. Then other people will do things for you in a sense of creating layers and levels of membership. For it to be teachable, it should be framework driven. The framework should be memorable, commercially viable, and valuable.

Concept of Duplication

Create products like worksheets, templates, guides, tools and kits that will help people go and do their own self coaching and self-assessment. Put such content online so that you don’t have to redeliver the content over and over again.

Leveraging

We can leverage our time and product, and we can also leverage through licensing.

Leveraging Time

Group Coaching: Instead of one-to-one coaching, have a structure in place so that you can do high level group coaching. Having more people means increasing your business in the same timeframe.

Forums: Create forums and communities where people trained in your methods will do some of the coaching for you. It will relieve you of some responsibilities.

Concept of Replays: Webinar replays will allow you to deliver something that has already been recorded and delivered before. The same value, connection and information will be delivered.

Leveraging Product

Take some of your information and productize it so it can go out to bigger groups in an economic efficient fashion. You can reach out to big groups with hundreds of people and give them the same information and tools at a much more leveraged level.

Leveraging Through Licensing

Take what you know and package it in a designation or certification. For a license fee, you can have certified people teach your process that is replicable. It allows people to get access to your information even when your time is limited.

— Begin Transcript —

Hey there, this is Mel Abraham, the author of The Entrepreneur’s Solution and the founder of Business Breakthrough Academy and welcome back to this episode of The Entrepreneur’s Solution Show and in this episode I get a chance to communicate with again someone from The Entrepreneur’s Solution Nation, our community and this from … I’m going to answer a question in this show that was submitted on our online voicemail and this is a question that came from Georgia from Ron.

Ron asked about, “If you have a high priced coaching—it’s a difficult thing to scale a coaching practice so how do you, what would be my suggestions to scale something like that or what areas could we scale?

So Ron, when we come back after this quick introduction, I’m going to come back and I’m going to answer about scaling and leveraging, and the concepts of a service kind of business.

We’ll see you soon!

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All right, welcome back. This is Mel Abraham, the author of the Entrepreneur’s Solution and the founder of Business Breakthrough Academy where we teach you how to design a business and create a life: A life of financial freedom and peace of mind.

Welcome back to this episode of The Entrepreneur’s Solution Show and this is going to be cool because I get a chance to answer a question of a good friend of mine, Ron who is out of Atlanta, Georgia and Ron asked this question

“Hey Mel, this is Ron Reardon with Fully Invested Dads. That’s www.fullyinvesteddads.com and my question is: If a person has a high-end one-on-one coaching business, which normally coaching is not scalable; what recommendations do you have to scale what can be scaled? Thanks.”

It’s a great question Ron. This is one of the biggest challenges that service professionals, coaching professionals, mentoring professionals have is, “How do you scale?” I mean at some point, “What do you do?”

And here’s the challenge is to realize that in coaching, in some sort of coaching type of, mentoring type of situation, there’s really four types of business models:

• You’ve got a time based model, which is really swapping hours for dollars and that’s a really, really difficult model to scale. This is where I came from as a CPA. It’s an hour swap and for every hour they’re paying me. Until I realize how antiquated that model is–you can’t scale it. You have limited number of hours and all you can do is keep increasing your billing rate, which I did and it got really, really high. So, there’s a time based model.
• There’s a product based model where you’re creating products to do your coaching and so it’s independent of you.
• There’s a hybrid base model where you’ve got a combination of the two.
• And then there’s a model that a lot of people forget about and this is what I call the license based model, where you’re creating other coaches and certifications.

So, we’re going to talk a little bit about that. But, let’s talk about the difference between scaling and leveraging, and what can be scaled in a coaching business and what may be can’t be scaled.

When we talk about scaling in a coaching business, we’re talking about scaling:

1. Possibly the marketing: If what you’re doing is going out, and one-to-one trying to sell; that’s a really difficult model to build because you’re selling one-to-one but you’re also having to do it one-to-one if that’s the way you’re doing it.

Well, look there’s only 24 hours in a day. I haven’t been able to cut it up or do anything else to get anything more than 24 in hours a day. I need to sleep, I need to eat, I need to be with my family and my wife. And so, I can’t use all 24 hours a day, 7 days a week if I want to have a life. And so if I’m trying to sell and do at the same time, it’s a challenge.

So, one of the things to consider is scaling the marketing system.

2. The other is to create a system, a process if you will that will allow you to scale because you put things in place that can operate without you.

3. The other thing you can do is create duplication. So, what I mean by duplication is typically product-based types of thing.

So, those are the areas that I think you can scale per se.

Now, I look at scaling slightly different than what I call leveraging and you may want to think about these differently. When I talk about scaling a business, I’m talking about everything grows. So, usually what happens is that the business grows, the number of people grows and the revenue grows and everything grows. When I talk about leveraging what I’m trying to do is get more out of what I have in place.

And the greatest thing with a coaching business is the fact that you’re dealing with intellectual property. It’s the stuff between your ears. It’s the experiences, the expertise, it’s the perspective that you bring to the table.

That is what is all the value and if you can leverage the use of that intellectual property in a lot of different ways, that then, although the business doesn’t grow in the sense of girth; it does grow in a sense of profitability and revenues because you’re leveraging it and using the intellectual property in multiple ways.

So what can we leverage?

• We can leverage our time: Some of that may be hourly or how we use our time. We can leverage it and we’ll talk more in detail about that.
• We leverage through our product: We can leverage by working with more than one person at a time—groups.
• And we can leverage through financing, I mean through licensing.

So, let’s go back to some of these and let’s start to look at a little bit of some of the things that you can do in some of these areas.

So,

1. Let’s talk about scaling in the marketing area. How do we scale in marketing?

Well one is to go to an automated system: When I first started building my professional business as a CPA, as a consultant, as a strategic consultant; there wasn’t these automated tools. Now we have automated tools, so we can create an automated marketing process that is online which I know Ron that you’ve got in place.

But that allows you to in a sense to move a little bit away from the marketing part of it, so you can do the delivery and the creation. And so the key behind all of this is to be able to create at once and to deliver it often, create it once and deliver it often but the delivery can be either personal or impersonal in the process of doing that.

So, now want to automate my marketing process, which means that:

• I want to have some funnels in place.
• I want to have automated funnels.
• I want to have entry points for clients and potential clients to:
• Come in,
• Get value,
• Get something out of it,
• And take something away from it in a way that we are giving value.

This is what you do a YouTube channel, with your podcast, with your blogs. All of those things start to stack on top of each other to bring people in. So, using automation funnels sequencing.

So, this is really creating a sequencing of your content in a sense that I want to take my customer, my potential customer and I want to take them by the hand and I say, “Let’s go on a journey.” I’m going to take them on the journey. It’s like the yellow brick road – we’re going to go see the wizard.

But at different parts of the journeys, some of the people that are on the trip with you might just decide to step away and say, “I’ve had enough”. But those that want to stay with you will stay with you through the process.

So, one of the things that I would ask you to consider, invite you to consider is to think about your client path. Think about:

• The journey you want to create for them
• The experience you want to create for them.

That can create a connection, create a loyalty and get them to say, “I want to stay with you for a period of time”. And it’s that journey that creates the connection that creates the commerce if you will in the long run.

So what’s the journey? What’s the sequencing that would build on each other and allow them to stay with you through the process?

2. The next is to scale your content.

And part of it is re-purposing your content in different ways and different places. So, if you’re going to write something:

• Why not record it?
• Why not record it in video?
• Why not do things?

Remember, it’s about creating once delivering often, in that context and in the process the last part of scaling: Be using replays.

So, when we do, when I do webinars a lot of times, those are recorded that allows me to scale it in a sense that I don’t need to re-deliver that webinar over and over again. It’s there, it’s usable and we can move people to it, and allow them to:

• Experience the information,
• Experience the training,
• Experience the value of the content without me having to deliver it again.

So, that’s a part of scaling in the market process and I’m talking about the sequencing and the replays and all that.

3. The other part of scaling is we talked about: Systems.

Well, do you have a formalized coaching process?

If you have a formalized coaching process, then it’s teachable which means that other people doing things for me in a sense creating layers and levels of membership.

Dan Sullivan comes to mind where he’s got different levels and different layers of membership depending on where you are in your business and you’ll get some of his certified coaches. So he’s got, they’ve got a formalized process that teachable and allows people to get from there. And in order for it to be teachable, it typically needs to be framework driven.

I know Ron, you know me in frameworks, okay. It’s about creating meaningful frameworks that are:

• Memorable,
• Commercially viable,
• That are teachable,
• And that are valuable in there.
• That are built in layers.

And that’s something that I teach and I work with in my Thoughtpreneur Academy which is a separate program that I do live.

So, it’s about being framework-driven, systems-driven and formalizing a process so you can transfer that knowledge and allow the system to deliver stuff without you in place.

4. And then, the last part of scaling is this concept of duplication.

Can we productize what we do?

In duplicating the types of things that we’re doing in the process, creating worksheets and templates and tools and that type of thing that can be used over and over and over again.

If everything is in your head and between the ears, and you’re doing the coaching personally and you’re doing it informally in the sense that someone else cannot duplicate it, cannot replicate it; then it’s not scalable.

• It’s not scalable,
• It’s not transferrable,
• It’s not teachable,
• It’s not frameworkable (if that’s a word),
• It’s not usable at a level that you can scale it.

And it’s confined to between your ears and what you can deliver in a 7 day a week type of timeframe which will suck the life out of you over time.

Can you create guides in the sense of tools or guide kits or guidebooks or instructor guides that will help people go and do their own self-coaching, self-assessment and then do it in that context?

And then last is to put things online.

I have a lot of information that is online delivered initially by me, originally by me but we’ve scaled by duplicating and putting it out online and allowing people to access it. And it gives people access:

• To me,
• To the training,
• To the tools,
• To the tactics,
• To the strategies

At a much different level then before and it doesn’t take the time away from me to have to redeliver the same content over and over again. So, that’s kind of some thoughts about scaling.

Let’s just touch on this concept of leveraging and leveraging is a little different from my perspective.

1. We said let’s leverage our time. How do we leverage our time?

There’s a couple of ways. One is instead of doing one-on-one coaching, is it possible to do high-level group coaching and I think that is something that is really possible depending on what is it you’re doing. You just need to have a structure in place. You need to have a process in place that works in a group environment that allows you to now work with people, on a one-to-many basis or one-to-a-couple basis vs. on a one-on-one basis.

If I can get even two or three people in a group that doubles, triples and quadruples my business in the timeframe that I was doing just one. And so, we sometimes don’t think about it but that one-on-one coaching experience—if I simply put two more people in there, I’ve increased my business 300% without increasing the time necessary to deliver it in that process.

So, the concept of coaching or group coaching is really I think one thing to seriously think about if you are in the coaching, mentoring business. How do you do that, so it’s scalable?

The other is forums.

Creating a forum and creating a community if you will, because what happens is that as people get trained in your methods, in your process, in your intellectual property then it’ll take life. They will do some of the coaching for you within the forum.

When you see some of these things in Facebook groups or those types of structures what happens is that people will start coaching your stuff and that starts to relieve you of some of the responsibility to do it.

Now,

• You’ve got to oversee it,
• You’ve got to be accountable,
• You’ve got to be responsible,
• You’ve got to be connected

With your audience; you can’t just completely walk away. But it’ll allow you and give you some latitude in that process.

Mention the concept of replays

Webinar replays allow you to redeliver something that was delivered once already but doesn’t require you to deliver it live again. So if you set it up on the platforms that allow for automated delivery of webinars and on recorded webinars, then you’ve created it once; now you get to deliver it often.

You still get to deliver:

• The same value,
• The same connection,
• The same information

And you can put it out there without it starting to tire hands.

Another place of leveraging which we touched is also products: Taking some of your information, your systems, productizing it in a way that we can get it out to bigger place, bigger groups in an economic efficient fashion.

Then, little different thing, group coaching: You can leverage by doing what I call big groups, seminars. So now I have a hundred people in a room that I’m taking through a process. Now, it may not be as intimate which means it’s probably not going to be as high-priced as one-on-one or one-on-few type of situation.

But still when I put a hundred people in a room, taking through a process, in my case:

• Building their business,
• Building their life around business, and
• Creating that entrepreneurial experience that creates dreams.

That allows me to give the information, give the tools at a much more leveraged level than I would if I was just sitting in a single boardroom working with one company per se.

And then, there’s this concept of what I call licensing.

And this is where you’ll turn around and you will take what you know, and you will package it. You will package it:

• In a designation,
• In a certification,
• In a process:
  • That’s teachable,
  • That’s memorable,
  • That’s valuable

And you will have other people that are out there, that are going to be certified, that can teach your process and that.

Now what ends up happening is you get paid a licensee fee, you get paid a training fee; they become part of an organization or a community where they’re out there teaching for you. But what is happening is you’re leveraging your intellectual property out into the market space to allow you to give information and give people access to you, where they can’t normally get access to you because your time is limited and your ability to grow is limited.

So, licensing is a great way but remember it needs to be a teachable process, it needs to be a formal process. They need to be able to have the tools to deliver it. They need to understand how to deliver it in a way that gets results just like the results that you have gotten.

It needs to be something that’s replicable, duplicable by other people and it leverages your intellectual property in-effect by duplicating you.

So, that’s the way I would look at some of these things, think about ways to scale and ways to leverage in this kind of environment. Don’t get stuck in this concept that the only way to deliver coaching or the only way to deliver mentorship is one-on-one because that becomes a set of handcuffs, because there’s no one that’s figured out how to get more hours in a day or more days in a week or more days in a year.

So, we’re stuck with what we have and so the question is,

• “How effective, how efficient can you be with using your time?”
• “How do you scale it?”
• “How do you leverage it?”

And I’ve give you some suggestions, some things to consider. I hope that helps you Ron.

Again, if anyone else has any questions please go to AskMelNow.com and submit your question. Leave a voicemail just like Ron did. I’ll be sure to get it on one of the upcoming episodes and we’ll make sure that we get it answered. Remember, I want to be your entrepreneurial mentor in your epic journey as we design your life.

So, I hope you found this of service and help to you. If you did, make sure that you subscribe if you haven’t subscribed. So you make sure that you get notified of every episode that comes out.

And might as well share it with a friend; let’s give a friend the gift of possibility. Let’s bring their dreams out of the darkness again. Let’s give them the gift that entrepreneurship can give them.

And if you want to get any of the takeaways, the show notes or anything for this show, go to MelAbraham.com/qa2.

And until we get a chance to see each other again in the next episode,

May your vision be grand, your journey epic and your legacy significant!

See you soon, keep rocking it out. Bye!!

— End Transcript —

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Like this? Please share it and help a few more people bring their dreams out of the darkness and give life to them again.  Cheers, Mel

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