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Could You Handle Getting a 100 New Clients Today? Here’s How You Could…

Find out the “secret sauce” for growing your business from six to seven figures.

This is a continuation of a story how I turned my ho-hum solo practice into a 7-figure business. If you missed the previous lesson start here.

Could you be making $150,000 a year and have a “bad” business?

Amazingly – yes!

Many of the people who seek my help are in that exact spot. Some make a bit less, others – a lot more. But they hit a dead end for one and the same reason.

Their current business model doesn’t allow them to grow any more. If you make a mistake here (and most people do) you end up working too hard and still not making the kind of money you want!

What the heck is a business model and why it’s critical to choose the right one for you.

Two reason why this matters so much.

First, if you don’t choose the right model you might not be able to create the type of business that supports your life and lifestyle. Not matter how much harder, or how much smarter you work, it will be impossible to grow your business beyond a certain size.

Second, with the wrong model for you, you might end up having to do tasks that are totally outside of competence zone. There are always things that you’ll have to do in your business that you might not enjoy as much as other tasks, but if you’re constantly obligated to perform in a way that’s inconsistent with your personality, you will struggle to grow and will likely fail.

For example, a while back I had a student in one of my seminars who was a management consultant and a business coach. He already had a successful practice making about $150,000 a year. But, working one-on-one with individual clients, he was trapped in the time-for-dollars model.

He was making good money, but he had to work long hours and was unable to break through the income ceiling imposed by the limited amount of hours in a week. He was already working seven days a week. The money was OK, but he wanted to make more. He was tired of the constant grind and frustrated by the growth ceiling he hit.

Clearly, the $150,000 a year was the most his business could produce using that model.

I call this “painting yourself into a corner.” If you’re stuck and you can’t grow, eventually you start hating what you do. Not a good place to be in.

A fancy buzzword for this is scalability – the ability to grow your business beyond the limits of your personal time, energy, and skills.

For example, since one of the biggest problems service professionals have is attracting more new business, I often ask my clients this question:

“If you could wave a magic wand and have 100 new clients show up every day – could you handle it? How about just 10? Could you handle 10 new clients a day?”

Most people couldn’t – because of their one-on-one business model.

Thinking outside of your industry will give you new business model ideas.

Before starting my consulting business I owned a chain of coffee/bagel shops. Can you imagine trying to operate multiple locations at once without a “scalable” business model?

It would be impossible. And when I started applying ideas from my restaurants/retail business to my consulting practice it quickly gave me an edge over more other, often more established consultants.

Why you don’t even know that your business model is dwarfing your growth and profits?

When you are growing your business with limited resources this process of painting yourself into a corner happens slowly. You don’t notice it until you’re working crazy hours and still can’t make the type of money you were hoping for.

How do you get off this crazy “marry-go-round”? Remember the concept of “profit explosion“? That’s how. And it’s often possible to generate massive momentum in just 30 to 90 days.

Because of my retail background I was fortunate to adapt a model that allows me to grow a significant part of my company’s profits without trading my time for money.

I did it by creating information products and teaching group programs. There are other ways, too. Bottom line, you’ll want to do something similar; create new sources of revenue that are not based on selling your time.

Now, last important point.

When you are in the “authority” business, meaning you make money by selling your intellectual property, selecting the right business model is even more critical.  I don’t believe in “magic pills” and “easy buttons”. But there was one discovery I made in my business that made doing everything else easier.

One last point. Even following the right model you might still not be generating all the revenues and profits you want. Not on purpose, of course. Truth is few people really know how to get ahead in business. I discovered one key secret a few years ago while watching my two daughters swim competitively. What is it? I’ll share it with you in my next lesson…

I’d love to hear from you…

What’s your biggest aha? What are you doing to break the time-for-dollars cycle and what’s working / not-working for you? Take a moment and post your comment below.