Ep. 04 - The Most Counterintuitive Way to Grow Your Small Business Profits

It probably seems counterintuitive but if you truly want a sustainable and successful business, the best way to do it is to simplify everything before you expand it!!  And I mean everything.  Take a look at successful businesses like Virgin Air – built a reputation on ONE thing and one thing only; streamlined operations and stayed focused on being the best in their niche.

In this episode – let’s look at 5 powerful ways you can go against everything we think we should do – streamline in these 5 areas!

REFERENCES

• 5 Powerful Ways to #worklessearnmore (download)

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Transcript

Carl Richards: Welcome to the Grow Equation Podcast, a training podcast for service-based business owners who want to hashtag work less, earn more. Your host, Diana Lidstone has been working with businesses for more than three decades to help them get known as the undeniable authority in their industry, wrap up their profits and optimize their resources with the end goal that they work less and earn more. So if you're ready to implement simple steps to banish the hustle and to do business differently, then stop, stop folding laundry or running on your treadmill. Grab a pen and paper, and let's dive into today's episode. 

Diana Lidstone: Hello and welcome everyone to another episode of the Grow Equation Business Podcast; today's episode is about one very counterintuitive way to help your business earn more profit. You see the thing is to build a sustainable and successful business. The best way to do it is to simplify everything before you expand. Now, what that means is getting rid of things that aren't working really well and doubling down on those things that are producing the most profit and joy with the least amount of effort and I mean everything. So if we take a look at successful business like Virgin air, it built a reputation on one thing. And one thing only it streamlined its operations and stayed focused on being the very best in their niche. Well, this episode is the first in the series of six and possibly seven episodes where I'll walk you through what you need to do to streamline in these five particular areas that I'm gonna summarize for you today.

And I'm also excited to say that part of this series will include an interview with a client who has totally transformed her legal business by simplifying before she scaled. So what is it that we actually overcomplicate in our business? Well, the truth of the matter is we often think as entrepreneurs, we can help everyone so we try to please everyone. And so we have multiple dream clients. We think that maybe we can solve all the problems that these clients have instead of becoming an expert, a well-known authority at solving one particular client, we go out and we create so many offers to solve all of these problems because well, sometimes the first offer didn't work that well. So we I'll just go out and create another one or we try too hard to get everyone out there to like us. So what happens is we don't take a stand on a particular viewpoint and our marketing sounds well kind of vanilla and boring, and we sound just like everyone else in our industry.

And we spent way too much time on way too many social media platforms to gain visibility. And you know what? The list just goes on. We overcomplicate our businesses in so many ways. Well, how do I know? Because I've done all of those things and I'm continually helping other business owners simplify their business so they can earn more and work less. The truth is it doesn't really matter what type of business you have. I've worked with both product-based businesses and service-based businesses. It doesn't matter the size of the business. I've worked with those at a 100K or 10 million dollars and I've seen the same over complications again and again, you've got to simplify if you want to scale, meaning if you want your profits to explode that's scaling and you don't wanna work as hard as you are in your business, you've just simply got to simplify.

So got your pens and paper ready? Here we go the five areas where you can simplify your business. Number one is find your micro-niche and I don't mean just a niche or a target market. I mean a micro, a little niche and focus on helping everyone in that niche do really well. You become the expert and guess what? As an expert, as an authority, your clients are willing to pay you the extra, the extra time, the extra money and your business will grow. For example, my lawyer client who you'll meet in another episode, she narrowed down her niche and narrowed it down and narrowed it down. Now I won't lie it took me a little time to actually find that one micro-niche that would make this woman not just profitable, but love her business. Again, you see, instead of being perceived as a small town generalist, which she was, we raised her profile, we elevated her brand, her marketing message and her website, so that everything that she did was focus on helping real estate investors.

Yes, real estate investors. What I did find out was that she was a real estate investor herself, she loved doing it and at first she see the possibilities that she could grow and expand her business just by focusing on that narrow micro-niche. But when we started looking at the numbers and when we started seeing how many real estate investors there were and how many of them there were in the province of Ontario, what their average ticket rate, if you will, what she would be able to build them, how often they would come back. Once they built that no like and trust with her, then she saw the possibilities. And the big thing is this happened without any advertising or major time investment, her profits, just sword by focusing on that one little micro-niche, that's the first way to simplify your business.

The second way to simplify your business once you have that micro-niche is to solve one problem for them becoming an expert in one area of a business is how you become that sought after expert the one, the authority and it's how you build the solve led reputation. So again, if we think of the lawyer, she solved an issue for real estate investors. The issue being that they needed to close deals fast and they needed someone who could look at their investment from a holistic perspective, that was the one problem. The third way you can simplify your business is to become known for one yes, one scalable core offer, product or service. Now in the service-based business, people might say, this is a signature program, a flagship program. It is not one thing that you are known for that you build your authority and your reputation around.

It doesn't mean that you don't have other offers. You have upsells and down cells and maybe you have a back pocket offer, but it is the one thing that you focus the majority of your time and that you earn the majority of your profit from so having one core offer. So we've talked about the first thing is having a micro-niche, the second is solving one problem. And the third is having that one scalable offer you number four way to simplify your business is to focus on one lead generation source. There are many ways out there to generate leads speaking, networking, social media, strategic alliances advertising and what happens is very often business owners will dilute their expertise because they are using too many marketing tactics. They don't focus enough time on really becoming an expert in that one lead generation.

So I'm not saying that you don't do other lead generation, but you focus the majority of your time. So what is the way that you best generate leads? Is it teaching? Is it speaking? Is it networking? Is it how having one-on-ones? What is that way that you generate most leads? Again, if I go back to the case study of the lawyer, what she did was become a member of a particular association and speak to that association. It raised her level of authority, people saw her as the go-to expert and the leads just started pouring in. So focus on one lead generation source and last but not least for those of you who are on social media, please focus on one social media platform, maybe two but start with one, just like everything else in our business. There is so much to learn, there is so many ways of doing things.

And when we try to be an expert on all of these platforms, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram, Pinterest, you name it. If you're spread across, you never become a master at one figure out where your dream client is, where do they see you? What do they connect with? Do they post likes? Do they post comments, become an expert on that problem, on that social media platform. Now I'm not saying that you will know exactly by the likes and the comments and the shares, which social media platform, but you've gotta ask, you've gotta ask your clients when they come to you. So as many of you know last January, I simplified my business by letting go of my group programs. And that was a real test for me truthfully I felt guilty, I felt shame, I felt all kinds of things, but you know what it did? It opened up my energy.

It opened up my calendar. It opened up everything for me to be able to service those clients that I truly could have big impacts. And so now I work privately with clients and it's been an amazing journey to see which clients and where these clients have come from. And I only know where they come from by asking them. So where did you connect with me? What have you been doing? Are you on my email list? Have you been watching my Facebook lives? We have to get this feedback in order to be able to tweak our marketing plan. So there you have it five ways that you can counter intuitively, let go of things in your business. Definitely earn more profit and certainly work a lot less. So stay tuned for the next couple of weeks as I go through each one of these, and we're gonna dive deeper into them so that you can simplify your business because I want you to be able to work less and earn more thanks so much for listening, talk to you next week bye for now.

Carl Richards: Thanks for listening to the Grow Equation, Business Training Podcast, where it's all about hashtag work less, earn more. Before you go, please take a moment to leave us a review, if you enjoyed this and want more of Diana, you're invited to join her private Facebook community for live trainings, articles, and Q and A head over to facebook.com/groups/think like a CEO with Diana until next time thanks for listening.