Scaling 101: Don’t skip too many steps all at once

Rosy Volcano is a transformational coach and a new mom. She and her partner Kit incorporate yoga, shamanic training, and body work into a coaching training course. She is celebrating her baby boy, and another big launch coming up.

Their challenge is figuring out how to scale their business without losing the intimacy, or making it feel watered down. They want to pass the current program over to on of their current coaches, and create a new, more advanced course. How do they multiply themselves? 

 

03:58 Question: What are you responsible for with these protegees of yours? Are you giving them leads, or teaching them how to market and sell for themselves? 

04:08 Rosy: We teach them how to market and sell for themselves, and the actual techniques of coaching.

04:12 So they're self-sustaining business owners after they graduate?

04:16 Rosy: Yes.

04:21 Question: You have like 5 or 6 of those people running this for you after? 

04:22 Kit: Those people are the ones that work for us, and what we're responsible for them is they provide some leads, and we provide some leads. It's kind of a co-creative situation.

04:39 Rosy: When we do a launch, we have so much demand we couldn't handle it all. So the overflow goes to them, as well.

04:42 Question: So if you 10X the number of people you're working with right now, overnight, what would break first? What would be over capacity?

04:53 Rosy: Kit and I still lead group coaching calls for everyone. We wear so many hats, and I have a 3-month old. I feel that our time would - it would be too much. 

05:14 Question: Can somebody else do those things, or a capacity of those things, that you do now that are currently finite?

05:23 Rosy: Yes. We're creating the role of coaching director for one of our employees. 

05:31 Question: What else would break? Or what else could be automated, eliminated? 

05:42 Kit: We don't have enough coaches right, who are working for us. Their loads would be overdone, too. 

05:58 Brad: It feels like the model is self-limiting. Maybe rethink your model. How could we serve 2,500 people with the same amount of energy and time, or even less energy and time, that we currently serve 250? I like the hybrid evergreen model. I borrowed it from a mentor of mine, Sam Evans. Your next level of iteration is deciding what type of business you want to be, and how to deliver that value in a more automated, streamlined way. 

07:03 Suggestion: What are your non-negotiatbles? Jeff Locker is great at this, he writes down his non-negotiables. You wouldn't believe how little he does for his business. And you wouldn't believe how much his audience appreciates him for not doing much. The community agrees to his non-negotiables. So figure out why you want to replace yourselves, and what your non-negotiables are what's important to you.

08:05 Rosy: We are too available for the people at that level. It's one of our main challenges. We spend time personally replying to messages. But then the next round of people comes in. 

08:37 Brad: There's no reason why you can't hire a community manager or something at that level. You can still provide the same level of service. Now that the revenue is there to hire people. start investing in things that take time off your plate. Ultimately, the things that got you here are not going to get you there. Uplevel your thinking.

09:14 Suggestion: This business is your baby. At first you nurture the baby, but after a while you don't always need to be there, coddling it. Let the nanny come in sometimes. Let go of some control. 

10:24 Question: What levels of engagement do you currently have with your clients? 

10:47 Rosy: We have a Mastermind, the leadership program, 

10:53 Kit: We have this coaching training program, and we have scaled ourselves out of the one-to-one, then we jumped a little too far into a high level Mastermind-thing that was triple what our coaching program was. We didn't get too many sign-ups, then we realized there was probably a step in-between we need to put more energy into. I think we should take ourselves out of the intimacy. I think we need to give up replying to Facebook threads and emails. It's just our boundary and that's it. 

11:52 Brad: Maybe all of your communication is funneled to one email box. Then one person is trained to reply to those at regular intervals. Train your public to know they'll get replies twice a day. 

12:21 Question: What's the low level of engagement?

12:27 Rosy: Group-coaching that is once a week, that's $100/month. Not very many people have signed up for that. Like, 10.

12:47 Brad: It needs to be reassuringly expensive. I would never invest in $100 coaching. There are too many low-balled offers out there. 

13:04 Suggestion: It probably doesn't feel worth it because there's only 10 people and it's a huge time investment. They would be better served it it was once a month. There's another level that would make it more worth it for all of you. They're probably not really investing in it, either. 

13:41 Rosy: When I created it I was thinking it could be a step from the free Facebook group to the bigger program. 

14:10 Suggestion: If it's worth it to you, great. But it seems like maybe you could start to resent it, because it's not worth your time. 

14:13 Kit: The idea is the next level will be a $5,000 3-module program, on leadership. We're teaching them how to facilitate the events that we do. They come as paid-volunteers and we educated them a little more. So for part of their training, they do the group calls. Then people are paying for their free work. 

15:15 Brad: Tony has an army of volunteers, but they have to have gone to his events before. They go through Leadership Academy. You could do that, but make it robust. 

15:50 Suggestion: Delegation is important, you know. But there's something in the middle, too, that will serve them and give them great value, but is less of a time commitment. 

16:19 Kit: I actually think our issue is not completely time freedom, it's scalability. We want more money. But we're afraid that we'll have to work more to get more money. So I think we're holding back on relaxing.

16:45 Suggestion: Time old limiting belief! But you know what to do now. 

16:52 Brad: Have you considered hiring a scaling or growth consultant? 

16:53 Rosy: No! We got as far as buying the book Scaling Up. Haven't read it. 

17:08 Brad: It's scary because what's been working for you so far is both lucrative, but also handcuffs. It's too specific. Zoom out, and look at what other people are doing. 

17:32 Kit: Yeah, I just want to do the things that I love to do. 

17:55 Brad: I've helped companies in your position. We should talk.

17:59 Kit: All of our online systems are the Winchester Mystery of Click Funnels. It's a mess.

18:20 Suggestion: I write down a list of everything I do that day and I record screencasts of it. Then the first job of my assistant is to transfer that into an SOP, and create a PDF of my video, using screenshots and arrows, etc. My assistant has created a library of SOPs. All it took was me, the last time I wanted to do that job, was just record a screencast. 

18:55 Rosy: That's amazing! We have an assistant would be awesome at that.

19:05 Brad: Something you do more than twice per month can be an SOP, and delegated. That makes the business bus-proof. When you hire somebody, tell them, if you ever leave, you need to train your replacement. 

19:36 Question: What do you love doing? 

19:37 Rosy: I love being a mom. I also still love doing shamanic healing work and incorporating that into my coaching. And I also creating the bond between out leadership team and strengthening that. I'm planning our first retreat. 

20:06 Question: So how could you do more of that? 

20:09 Rosy: I need to figure out the time balance between being a mom and doing the things I love. The retreat is in two weeks, and it will be my first weekend away from the baby. 

20:29 Brad: You'll know better after it actually happens.

20:36 Rosy: I love these events, but they're exhausting. 

20:45 Rosy: Sometimes we go to other countries. That would mean baby care for like a whole week. It's a lot. Figuring out how to make money off the events now is a whole other thing. 

21:03 Brad: True freedom is choice. We can do it, we want to do it, great. Or not. There's a difference between running a business and having a bunch of jobs. Maybe right now you have a bunch of jobs. 

21:53 Suggestion: Think about your son when you're making decisions. He'll learn from your model. 

 

Three Key Points:

1. Ask yourself what you love doing, then find the ways to be able to do more of that
2. Create SOPs and delegate to your employees
3. There’s a difference between running a business and doing a lot of jobs