The Leveraged Business: Earn More, Work Less, Grow Faster

Part 2 - After 15 years in business, I've learned a few strategies for growing a consulting practice that doesn't involve taking on more clients.

Finding ways to earn more, work less, grow faster are always the big goals for creating true freedom in your business and in your life.

In this second part of our three-part series, I'm going to reveal a neat way to get uber selective with who you take on as a client alongside increasing the efficiency of your operational processes. It's called a Velvet Rope Marketing Strategy.

Once you have consistent marketing and sales flow going, you'll want to leverage your time and energy by (a) pre-qualifying your prospects, and (b) building out the value in your program and increasing your prices. And velvet rope marketing has become an important way to attract better clients using exclusivity.

In this episode, I share with you some questions that help you with business planning, focused on choice, value and prices, and how this impacts client work in your practice.

You will learn how to plan to increase your consulting income without taking on more clients and create your own velvet rope policies by:

1. Increasing your fees

2. Systematising your operations

3. Cutting out unnecessary costs

4. Attracting better clients

Resources and further support in the show notes at jayallyson.com/podcast/velvet-rope-strategy.

To explore your best leveraged business options and velvet rope strategy, book a free strategy discovery session with me via jayallyson.com.

Part 1 - How to increase your consulting income without taking on more clients can seem an impossible equation to solve. Yet, this is at the heart of what creates leveraged consulting, enabling you to work smarter not harder, to earn more, work less and still see revenue growth.

After 15 years running my own business and supporting others, I've learned a few strategies for growing and scaling a consulting practice that doesn't involve increasing your client base specifically. There are three key ways I fixed the income ceiling that most solo professionals or small service businesses face. And that's what we're going to cover across the next three episodes.

In this first part, we're focus on narrowing what you do for clients, getting repeat work from existing clients, including saying no to things that don't fit the core of what you do. This means working at the top of the tree, and where it makes working collaboratively with others so you can take on bigger, high-ticket engagements.

If you'd love to solve this equation for yourself, book a free strategy discovery session with me via jayallyson.com and we can explore your specific leveraged business opportunities.

Part 2 of my interview with Janice Francisco. Here we focus on the challenges and opportunities that come from digital transformation. We talk about the process of innovation and team building both from our work with clients and more personally in our own organizations.

Janice focuses on improving innovation outcomes in organizations. To do that she developed the ThinkUP Innovation Framework™ and the Innovative Instructional Systems Design™ model used in BridgePoint Effect's training programs, such as Mindset Reveal and Collaboration to Produce Results.

Since 2017, Janice has also been leading a global scale up through digital transformation in her own business, with the need to leverage operations, finance, marketing and services delivery. When you're responsible for leading a team, you know how easy it is to be stressed out because your team isn't working like it should.

If you've hired carefully, but somehow the team isn't working well, if they come to you with every question - it takes up a lot of your time. Yet, Janice argues that collaboration is a very learnable skill. As Principal Consultant, Facilitator & Coach, she has worked with over 500 teams helping them learn how to do it. Anyone who wants to transform their team can follow her simple process. (You can even use this process and tools at home!)

What you'll learn:

-- Should You Hire on the Basis of Team Skills?

-- What Entrepreneurs and Corporate Innovators Have in Common

-- The Importance of Enrolling Your Team in Your Vision

-- The Distinct Parts of the Problem Solving Process Where Teamwork Works

-- BridgePoint Effect's Own Leveraged Strategy

-- How to Start Exploring the Potential of Collaboration to Improve Teamwork.

Register for Janice's free introductory webinar for team leaders and business owners, link is in the show notes at: jayallyson.com/podcast/collaboration-to-improve-business-results/.

Are you frustrated working with VAs or employees or associates, because you know your team could be stronger by leveraging everyone's knowledge to innovate and achieve more?

Great team results start with you, yet leaders shouldn't have to feel frustrated and alone in a complex business environment. If you want to generate better business results whilst navigating change and uncertainty, this interview will set you off the right direction.

In this two-part interview, I'm joined by the fabulous Janice Francisco, founder, CEO and Principal Consultant of BridgePoint Effect, a Canadian-based boutique consulting firm with a bold vision to transform the way leaders and their teams collaborate, innovate, and deliver outstanding business results.

Janice works with frustrated leaders who know their teams can achieve more. After working with over 500 teams she knows that what initially looks like a change or innovation issue is really a collaboration problem. She helps company directors, business owners, executive leaders, and their teams to tap the power of a deliberately creative process to identify the problem-solving innovations.

Janice has an MSc in Creativity and Change Leadership and works as a Trainer, Facilitator and Executive Coach. She invented the ThinkUP Framework™ so that leaders would love leadership again. It offers a practical toolkit and high calibre coaching that gives them the structure, skills and support needed to build an effective team.

In the interview, Janice shares:

--Why people have difficulty working together

--Why we struggle to achieve what we're collectively capable of

--How what looks like a change or innovation issue initially is really a collaboration problem

--Ways to help you work differently so your team works differently.

Register for Janice's free introductory webinar for team leaders and business owners, link is in the show notes at: jayallyson.com/podcast/teamwork-that-supports-innovation/.

Today we're talking sales funnels! That is, the process by which your ideal client or customer finds you and follows a process of getting to know you, like you and trust you, enough to decide to work with you and buy from you.

For any business owner, an online sales funnel is probably the most important marketing tool you have. Even if you're B2B, you still need a sales process to find leads and nurture a trusting relationship.

With so much of what we do going digital, our previous in-person methods of finding clients are less reliable. And yet many consultants, coaches and practitioners - both new and established in business - have a rather loose sales process and often a vague understanding of what a funnel is or how it works. That's what we'll look at in today's episode.

There are lots of words bandied about to do with sales funnels: landing pages, opt-ins, list building, sales letters, sales systems etc. and they are all pieces of a sales funnel. But it can be confusing which pieces you really need and how to get them working optimally.

Failing to fully understand this critical part of your customer's journey, and how they ultimately get to know, like and trust you, means fewer sales, lower profits, and ultimately, an un-leveraged business. So to get us thinking, I'll start off by explaining why a sales funnel is important, talk through a simple funnel and how it works. And then for those of you who already have a marketing and sales process in place, we'll turn to look at leaky funnels and how to fix them.

What part of your sales process are you stuck on? If you'd find it useful to talk through with me where the bottleneck might be in your business right now and get some clarity on how to leverage a sales funnel, let's get on a Free Business Accelerator Strategy Discovery Call and work it out together. Just go to strategycall.jayallyson.com and select the date and time that suits you! It's as simple as that.

For consultants, coaches and practitioners who are building a business around you, your expertise, your unique value proposition, it's important you have more than one 'offer'.

Today we're going to dive into ten new revenue streams in a consulting business that you can build more flexible and secure income.

We talk about the different offers, and then we'll go through how you might present them at different times in the customer journey and different ways to stack them so it's a logical success pathway for people.

In this episode, I dive into new ways to earn income that allow you to build more flexible and secure revenue models. I talk about new ways to meet your customers where they are, and help you create new income streams, even if to start with it's just a trickle!

We'll go through ten different kinds of offer and how to stack the deck in your financial favour and in service to your clients, students and customers. Instead of just creating things that people consume, you can also create programs and services that people participate in.

Show notes and support links available at jayallyson.com/podcast/create-multiple-streams-of-income/.

The current times have changed an awful lot of things, right. And it's thrown a few people who are finding it hard to find the right routes to success in the new territory.

Today we're talking about change, change in the world around us, change in what people want, change in our thinking and in our working habits. Not change for the sake of it, but change that enables and empowers.

For some these are major changes both wanted and unwanted – job moves, relationship changes, business pivots. All of these things impact our time, motivation and energy. In the episode title, I'm taking liberty on a famous parable and book, Who Moved My Cheese, to explore who moved my clients.

For our purposes in business, cheese represents what we consider success – getting and working with clients whether for income, influence or impact, or all three! Through the pandemic, things have shifted substantially for businesses as they have for our lives, so you won't find clients in the same places or the same way you used to find them.

The truth is though, clients and customers haven't disappeared, they've just moved. The question is: when you really start to notice that the cheese has moved, that you can't find clients the same way you used to find them, what do you do about it? And that's what we'll look at in this very brief episode.

When you're ready, I invite you to book a strategy discovery call with me to find out your path to navigating change and energising your business growth. Go to jayallyson.com/contactme/.

The pandemic has forced many businesses, large and small, into accelerated business plans for digital transformation, notably the rapid shift to online modes of delivery and marketing channels. Meeting customer expectations and getting a fair share of digital customers is increasingly driving strategy.

If you're reinventing your business model or even just starting with a new online offer and need to get momentum, or if you've a sellable offer but want to scale – you want to do it well, and you want to do it fast.

For those of you building a business around your expertise, make an impact, and at the same time earn what you're worth, there are several stages you go through. Getting to the next level can feel like a whole new ball game - new challenges, new obstacles, new skills to get your head around. This episode is all about how you can accelerate that process.

When you have a focused business acceleration strategy and clear plan of action, support and accountability to execute it, you'll spend less time on the runway or spinning around mid-air and more time making progress towards your desired destination.

How would it feel to have a 90-day business acceleration plan customized just for your business? Tune into this episode to find out how to create your unique success strategy for business acceleration.

Links to resources and support in the show notes at jayallyson.com/podcast/leveraged-business-acceleration/ and you can book a free strategy discovery call at jayallyson.com/contactme/.

This episode is one that we have been waiting for, for literally a year because this is our one-year anniversary episode. Come join me as I talk about a year of podcasting from kick off to what next… and my big announcement.

As we celebrate the show's one year anniversary, marking the 52nd episode, I'm reflecting on the whole journey so far – from how I got started to how it's going so far. I share how success metrics can either bring us joy or torture us, and how growth happens when we lean into our passion and expertise, when we're consistent, and when we don't give up when things get tough, and we keep on doing it.

With all the success of big names with big numbers that we see in the media, in the days of social influencing mavericks, and seeing TV personalities turn into business brands online, we can sometimes feel insecure about our own contribution.

My share today is a reminder that who you are and the value you bring to each individual you touch with your content and support is way more important than all these social proofs and playing the numbers game. I just want to say thank you to those who have been listening over the last year, following along, sharing your feedback and asking questions, I love it!

With so much movement towards online and digital, the marketplace is what we make it. Don't wait for your life to start again, don't wait for your business to pick up. There are things everyone can do in the short term to get momentum and build for long term success.

For resources and links, visit the show notes at jayallyson.com/podcast/.

Part 2 of our interview with The Healthy Business founder and coach Sarah Cooke continues with a focus on leveraged business strategies for achieving a sustainable business and successful equilibrium between time, money and lifestyle goals.

Working with big corporate brands for 15 years before starting her own business journey, Sarah has run the gamut of business models. From splitting her time between UK and Singapore, a serious sports injury and learning to walk again, and being a mum, she's experienced more ups and downs than most.

Sarah has set up several successful businesses, shifting her business model each time to suit where and how she needed to live and work. From corporate brand and sales consultant to retraining as a holistic therapist, building and selling a successful product business and now a business coach, she's experienced the potential and pitfalls of success at any cost.

Having learned how to achieve business and financial goals without compromising your health, she now runs a business helping entrepreneurs in the health and wellness space to build a business they love.

Sarah has been on the hunt to find a multi-tiered business model that provides her with good life balance, and fits with the various demands on her time and energy. Her focus is on taking care of your mind and body, and how that translates into the workplace.

Resources and Sarah's free e-guide 'One Minute Hacks to Accelerate Results' in the podcast show notes at http://jayallyson.com/podcast/achieving-a-sustainable-business/.