← You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
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Hello and welcome to the 15th episode of the UCAN podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Jolly Jarvis, and today we're going to be talking about how to stop trading your time for money and what to do instead. It's all well and good talking around. Okay, you don't want to be doing this, you don't want to keep trading your time for money, but what, what can you do? What are your options? And that's what we're going to be discussing on today's episode. So I've spent the last couple of podcasts dedicated to startups. It's a hard phase, you can't argue with that. It's a mix, a massive emotional mix of being daunted, being excited, getting things off the ground, being unsure of what to do, what direction to take, what's going to happen, et cetera, et cetera. And during that phase, you tend to be thinking around, or at least I was. Well, you know what, as soon as I've got some clients, when I've got some clients, everything will be sorted and then you get clients. And for a while, yes, you're like, this is great, I just need to get more, I need to be more consistent, etcetera, etcetera. And you're working on that. But there comes a point be that something happens, you want to go on holiday, you've got, you know, a lot. Most of my clients, they set up their businesses for more freedom and more work life balance. And so you start to want that work life balance back and you begin to realize that actually if I'm not present in my business, if I'm not participating in doing the marketing, but also if I'm not there serving a client, one to one, or in a group setting, if I'm not present, then I'm not making money. Now at this stage, you kind of have two options. You either in order to step back, to take time back, to get more of a balance and to make sure that your business is running when you are not present, you have a choice. You can kind of choice of two, you can either bring in other people to do some of the delivery, okay, we'll come onto the pros and cons of that in just a moment. Or you can create a course or digital resources, which means that you will be in a position to not be present for some of those individuals. Learning and development. So you can have clients who they're learning, they're progressing, they're learning your process, then they're learning from you, but without you being present. Now there are Pros and cons to both. Okay. Bringing on other people is great. You've got that sense of camaraderie. You've got an individual in your organization as well. That means that you want on your own. That means you could bounce ideas off them potentially or they could just come in and deliver for you. That means that it isn't a change in the way that you deliver things. It is literally a change in who delivers it. And that can have real plus points in that you don't have to think about setting up resources or doing anything else. For me, having been there, having had staff, the pros are outweighed by the cons in a lot of cases in that you can get some really, really good members of staff. But members of staff, I ended up, it felt a bit like having additional children in that, you know, they have their own problems, they have their own life things to deal with, they have their own priorities, they have their own interests. You can put a lot of effort into training these individuals up for them to then move on. And so, you know, in sales we always talk around, you've kind of got two years from a decent salesperson. You're going to probably spend the first six months training that person up, which means that you've then got sort of 18 months out of them. You've also got the trust issue. A lot of people that I speak to, their biggest concern is, is that somebody will come on board and they will develop connections with their clients and then when they move on, they'll take their clients with them, which is potentially a risk. But that can be absolutely addressed by having the correct contracts, etc. In place and non compete. So that is the kind of side of things with bringing somebody else on board. Um, you've got the other side of things and also obviously they can be responsive. So the format remains the same. So the clients, there's no disruption to the clients and the clients are getting what they want, what they have paid for. Um, and so there is no change in the structure of delivery of any, any services. The creating courses side of things, there is a very obvious, and I'm going to be really honest with you here, there is a massive upfront effort involved. Um, yes, you can, you can create a course and get it out along with some delivery within your work week, within sort of four to six weeks. Okay, you can do that, but you have to know what you're doing. Okay. You have to be very clear on the steps that you need to take and you have to implement them for the Vast majority of people. It takes an awful lot longer than that to create a course and to get that structure up and running where it is, independent of yourself. Now I'm going to be very, very clear here on what I am not talking about. I am not talking about passive income. Yes, it sounds like passive income and yes, this is what people describe as passive income. Apart from they don't tell you about that upfront effort and how much is involved in the testing and everything else and actually how much is involved in the ongoing supporting that kind of funnel structure and having those courses as standalone. I have a course that women's wealth formula. It has sold over 2,800 copies. It is a $3 upfront course with upsells, two upsells, one down, sell with it, with it. And then on the back of that, I then obviously sell people into additional support when needed. And that has generated me well over. We're coming up to over 400k in revenue now from that $3 course. But that took a lot of effort. It's taken a lot of effort. It's taken a lot of investment of time and money to get it where it is now. This isn't. Courses are not the answer when it comes to I don't have enough clients already. I haven't actually got anybody signing up for working one on one with me courses for me and for my clients, they fit where you have your kind of at capacity or ideally just before capacity. Where you have clients, you have that consistent flow. You might have inconsistent income because you're busy delivering and then you take your eye off the ball with marketing, then you're back on delivering and then it's marketing, delivering marketing and you're yo yoing all the time with your focus. But you have got people coming in. There is demand, you know, there is demand for what you do and you are confident with the outcomes that you are delivering and you're getting those outcomes on that one to one, face to face and be that over zoom or whatever. But you know that time for money activity is generating the outcomes you've promised. People are happy with them and you are able to get demand and get people onto it. At that point, you know, you're looking at consistent 5k plus months, okay, where you are working one to one or with group with clients. Now at that point, that is when you want to be starting looking at courses, in my opinion. Okay? Now courses, as I've said, they have a massive upfront effort involved. They if you don't know that that course is going to do well, that that's going to get the results, that that is in demand. Then you run the risk of creating something that will not sell. And that is what I'm going to be talking to you in next week's episode, is how to make sure that your course is in a position where it will sell. Courses help you deal with a restriction in the supply, the ability to supply the outcome to clients. Okay? At that point, that's when you want to start thinking, you know, what, what can I digitize? To be clear, on the cons, when it comes to courses, it's that upfront effort, it's the understanding of the tech and knowing what you're doing that is the kind of major cons to this process. The pros are that you are not having to train somebody up on a regular basis. You don't run the risk of your digital courses, which are fundamentally you going off piste, not providing what it is that you would like them to provide, not responding in the way that you would provide because you are providing that information. You've also got the fact that once they are created, they are created. You may tweak some of them over time. I have. But you will not ever sit down and rerecord the whole shebang again. And so obviously that upfront effort is then paid for in the long term, because you can use it so many times. It is there. It's there for good. It's there. If you got hit by a bus and you weren't around anymore to share your pearls of wisdom, your knowledge, your skills, your understanding, everything that you've built up can be put into those digital course modules, trainings, whatever you want to call them to help people access them, even when you're not even around anymore. So hopefully by now you can see how courses can help you. Well, horse, horses, courses, and either the courses or taking somebody else on, bringing somebody else into your business can help you to be more sustainable, to scale beyond where you're at and stop you trading time for money, your time for money. So more than likely you're thinking, yeah, okay, but how do you even start creating a course and take that next step? Well, I have just created an amazing free training on this and I'm going to put the link for that into the show notes. Okay. It's called Courses that Sell. And I will use that link in the show notes to access it. But as a quick overview right here, right now, your starting point is to think around who is this course? For now, it shouldn't be Anybody that far off from who you're working with right now. So what you're doing is you're thinking for those individuals who maybe would appreciate it being slightly more accessible, price wise, this course would be really good for them because maybe you could I have the price point at a different price. My preference is to look at having courses where you are beginning to think, well, I'm going to just put my prices up if you know, my time is that valuable that I want to be paid more for that time. And I was talking to a client literally two days ago around this and saying to her, she was like, it's going to have to go up. And I was like, well actually before you start looking at pricing it up, which you know is always sensible, prices should go only go one way. Before looking at doing that, you can look at taking parts of your course and making it digital. There is also an argument for taking elements of the course that you currently deliver in person. Which is what I did with Women's World formula is take sort of introductory top level. So if you think about your course as an iceberg, it's that little tip. That little tip is what you're going to be putting into a course to give people a flavor, to help people understand more. For some people that's going to be enough. For other people they're going to want more. And so for more they can, they can pay more, they can get more access, they can get more information. But to sort of put over your general principles, it's a really good way of doing it, is to kind of skim off and take top level your information so that you can be sharing that in a sort of more price accessible course. If you are taking your exact course that you are delivering now, one to one, then what you want to be doing is I would maintain the price at what it is. But those lucky people who got in there earlier have had it all delivered in person. Okay, from you. Whereas going forwards the compromise is that they will be getting elements of digital training. The biggest concern that I've had clients have has been around maintaining that outcome and making sure that that standard is maintained. They don't obviously nobody wants to put their name to something which isn't as good as the original. So how can you reduce the risk of it not working? Well, that's why I get a lot of clients to start off with is to produce something which is a bit of a, what I call a hybrid. So I personally, when clients on board with me, we always go through the same things which is who's your ideal client, who you know what's going on in your market and reviewing your offer versus competitors. Those are the first three elements that everybody, regardless of the size of the business, the turnover, everything else. That is the first three things that they do because it's a starting point and it gets everybody on the same page and it gives me the information I need to help that individual. And so what. Those were the first three things that I recorded and then got people to look at and to start doing on their own. So I would have an initial onboarding, I give them access to the training area and I'd say to them, you know what? Go away. Do these three things, let's book in a call for one to two weeks later, depending on the speed at which and the time that they've got available, speed at which they work, the time available. And then I would. Then they would go off, they would do that. They would send me the information ahead of that meeting that we got booked in and then from there we would re meet and we would look at the what? We'd look at their business in light of that information, in light of them filling in that information plus my onboarding form, that was the most efficient way of doing it. Okay. Rather than me sitting there and going through with them for what would be three plus hours obtaining that information, they are doing it on their own. And actually there is quite a bit of value in that. They are able to think through things, they are able to mull over their answers, they are able to really understand that. So many people say to me, oh, it was really invaluable to go through that. And I've never thought about it in that way. And that straight away sets the scene for how different it is to work with me. Coming back and having that conversation enables you to gauge how useful the information you've imparted to them was. Was it understandable? Was it at the right pace, was it at the right level for that individual? Because they'll ask questions. And that's the thing is when you are creating a course, the questions, the concerns, the clarity that people need is feedback on the information and the clarity of the course. Which leads me on to when people are doing a complete standalone course. I would always get them to run through at least once. In some cases, they've run through it two or three times. Live with people so that they can feel confident of the outcome and they can make sure that they are delivering on the outcome they've promised and that customer is a happy customer. I am very much about focusing on the testimonials, not the transactions. And there's so many people out there who it's all around like get that sale in. Well, yeah, but the thing is, is once that sales in, that's your time to deliver, that's your time to shine. That's when you have to step up and start not using your sales skills, but using the skills that you have sold that individual to provide the outcome that they have paid for. And so you want to make sure that you're able to get those testimonials. So that's why you'd run through it a few times to make sure that that was a consistent thing, that the outcome was delivered and everyone was happy. For the vast majority of my clients, this cuts their customer facing time in half. For some it's even a quarter of what it used to be because they spent so much time imparting the same information to different individuals. And so straight away there's that time saving there. It increases capacity. You can fill that capacity with more clients or you can fill that capacity with that work life balance that you've been looking for. To go one step further, you can move away from individual check ins and you can have group check ins where it's down to that individual to turn up and check in with you. The aim of this eventually is to get to the point where those individuals do not need check ins. That is the ultimate aim. With a lot of courses, with some courses that isn't possible and you're always going to have to have that adaptation to individual scenarios and to have your feedback on things is the value is what people are wanting and paying for. But for a lot of scenarios you can get to a point where there are no check ins and that person is just taking that information all by themselves. And obviously that is as long as it is providing the result and getting the testimonials you are looking for. Hopefully this has given you food for thought on how a course could begin to work for you in your business. Next week I am going to be going step by step into what's the sort of things you want to be thinking around and how to navigate creating your first course. So or for some of you out there who have tried and your course hasn't gone so well, it will be a great opportunity to kind of look at, okay, where did things potentially go wrong. So please do join me next week where I will be talking in more detail around courses and how to set up and start a successful course. A course that actually sells. So again, I have all the information on how to set up a course in that free training that I've popped the link to in the show notes. It's absolutely free. There's so much value in there. There's so much information in there. Do jump on the opportunity. But that's it for me this week, guys. I hope you have a great rest of your week. Join me next week where we'll be talking in more depth around how to set up a course and how to make sure that course sells. In the meantime, please do follow like and review this podcast. It really does help and I look forward to speaking to you all again next week. Bye for now.