How to get off the “time=money” treadmill

There are several phases that new business start ups move through.

Phase One is when you start your new business with an empty diary and you dream of being booked solid.

With a good product and a bit of marketing then over time you will find yourself in Phase Two where your dream has turned into a nightmare.

It’s become a nightmare because you are still not earning enough but your income has hit the inevitable growth barrier of the time=money formula - which is you have no more time left to convert into earnings.

In Phase two you are not only cash poor but you are also time poor and have the added burden of fulfilling client obligations. It feels like a treadmill because it is … you can run as hard as you like but you “ain’t goin’ nowhere”.
Many Phase Two people are business coaches or consultants or offer some other form of advice or they are manufacture on a small scale … but either way the supply of product to market is still largely dependent on their time.

The following are just three of many strategies to get off the time=money treadmill but a word of warning: each strategy is also a barrier... which means you must make an effort and persist tog et through the barrier. The good news about that is that once you are on the other side of a barrier you will have left 97% of your competitors behind.

Strategy #1: Create scalable value

By scalable I mean that what people are paying for can be purchased and supplied either independently of your time or at the very least with significantly reduced dependency on it.

The best way to do this is to take the common elements of what you do and put those common elements into a teachable process. Once you've done that you can train others to deliver the value.

Want some examples? Name any successful franchise company and you've got an example because that is what they do - they figure out common elements to what they do, put those elements into a teachable process and then sell the processes.

You don't have to franchise however; you can hire employees or outsource the work if you prefer. That way you can stay small and scale your earnings.

Everything from mowing lawns, marketing systems, cafes, accountancy and even massage and yoga has been successfully "process mapped" and taught to others.

Strategy #2: Shift from "one to one" to "one to many"

Please forgive me whilst I use my own business model as an example here.

There are an estimated 17,500+ business coaches and consultants in Australia and for the most part their personal formula for income is time = money. They will work for just about anyone, large or small. And they charge an hourly rate or a project fee (based on hours to complete) or a monthly retainer and they operate one to one.

By way of contrast I focus only on the micro and small business market and I have further segmented potential service offerings to include marketing strategy almost exclusively.

Furthermore I have created a series of processes (see www.8020Center.com/Camp for one example) whereby what people want can be delivered on a one-to-many basis ... in this case using webinars, although for 15 years prior it was in live workshops ... but rarely one on one.

A similar opportunity, neglected by virtually all of my competitors, is available to accountants and lawyers as well as financial planners and pretty much anyone who offers advice: take one segment of the market and one segment of what it is that you do, create seminars and workshops and webinars and then market the heck out of them.

Strategy #3: "Productize" the value

This goes one step further than strategy #2. What you will do here is take what you created with Strategy #2 do and put it onto DVDs, CDs, workbooks, on-line training, books, guides, templates etc so that people can buy and deposit cash into your bank account while you sleep or while you are on holiday.

Actually, once you have engaged in strategy #2 then Strategy #3 is quite easy. Just record all the sessions you conduct in strategy #2, stick them in a box or on a web site and sell them to new clients, existing clients and ex-clients.

The biggest obstacles between you and getting off the time=money treadmill are:

1. Getting past the "my business is different" belief

2. Getting past the "I could never do it" belief

3. Thinking creatively about the above three strategies

4. Regularly turning off the treadmill of client work for a pre-scheduled period of time and implementing the ideas you created in #3 above.

The rest is a process of "trial, measure and refine" and with that your success is simply a question or time.

Go well, Tom Poland