Leverage for Control Freaks

Perhaps you remember the famous J. Paul Getty saying: "I would rather have one percent of the efforts of 100 people than 100 percent of my own efforts."

This is something I understood conceptually, but it took a long time before I could put it into action. After all, as an Independent Professional, how can you get that kind of leverage?

Well... after quite a lot of time of exploring this idea, I've finally accomplished the fifth stage* of this leverage. I now have thirteen Action Plan Marketing Coaches offering services to clients internationally. You can see them here:

http://www.actionplan.com/coaches.html

In several years these will grow to a few hundred. And they will all be trained at a very high level, to exacting standards, and supported in succeeding and making a difference with their clients.

Right now, this feels like a very natural direction. It took a fair amount of work, but very little struggle. What was only a good idea in late October of 2006 is now a reality six months later. Leverage is actually possible!

Have you also wondered how you can leverage your business?

Ask yourself these questions:

Do you always want to be 100% responsible for generating all of your income (trading time for money)? Can you imagine yourself doing what you're currently doing (all by yourself) twenty years from now?

Can you imagine growing your business in a way that both sustained you and that was fun? Can you see that by doing this you could make a bigger contribution and help a lot more people?

What's in the way of you starting? Do you have the belief (like I did) that, "I have to do it all myself," and "Nobody can do it as well as I can."? Is that belief really serving you or simply maintaining a sense of illusory control?

Where do you start?

These days you can leverage your business in ways that were virtually impossible in the past. You don't necessarily need a bigger office, more overhead, and a large staff.

More and more businesses are going virtual. The trend is towards outsourcing and working with freelancers or other Independent Professionals who can actually be more reliable than employees. Why not you?

Start by giving away little things: Bookkeeping, answering some email (I now have a virtual assistant that handles my customer service emails), writing and design work. Start to prove to yourself that you don't need to do everything!

Then explore the direction of selling some of what you know. For me, a big turning point in my business was writing the InfoGuru Marketing Manual, and now information products are a big part of my business. E-books, audio programs and even software are all ways to duplicate yourself.

Training others in your expertise

It's easier to grow an accounting or law firm. Accountants and lawyers, for instance, have standardized training and a more traditional path to follow. Many information-based businesses are built on innovation and trial and error.

So, before you can train anyone, you need to build proven models that have been field-tested with many clients. What works and what doesn't? What is repeatable and what can be systematized? You need to start documenting your methodologies.

But more important than methodologies, you need to attract and train people who are smarter and bigger thinkers than you are, people who have different expertise than you do. One of my Certified Marketing Coaches sold a big in-house program to a bank. I had never worked with a bank!

Letting go of control

I've observed that a large percentage of Independent Professionals are "control freaks." After all, didn't you go out on your own because you hated being told what to do? You can do most things better than most people.

But even if you can, you can't do everything no matter how hard you try. But since you're so talented, why not put those energies into creating systems, methodologies and plans that you can hand over to other people?

In my Certification Workshop, when I watched other people deliver my material (sometimes better than I did myself), it blew my mind! The realization that I could entrust this material to these brilliant people made this workshop the happiest four days of my twenty-two years in business.

*My five stages of leverage

Stage one was developing my expertise and methodologies.
Stage two was growing my online eZine list.
Stage three was creating and selling information products online.
Stage four was offering group marketing programs.
Stage five is the Marketing Certification Program.

As these each of these stages of leverage were reached, I earned a correspondingly higher income. The bigger a difference you can make to more people, the greater you'll be rewarded.

*

The More Clients bottom line. You don't need to develop a certification program to leverage your business, but if you want to grow, you need to let go of some control and give some things away. You may be amazed, as I was, that there are many very competent people out there willing to take things away from you.

*

How are you leveraging your business? What are you giving away? Please share on the More Clients Blog.

Comments

[Carole DeJarnatt]

Thanks Robert for the five stage plan. I am now at stage one and look forward to getting to stage five in the future.

Today, I plan on contacting my accountant and letting him take care of my tax forms. (What was I thinking that I could do it myself)! I believe I'm on my way!

Carole

[Viv]

Thanks for sharing that info Robert,
I'm at stage one, but I can see so clearly that I must get to Stage 5. I'm encouraged by your words, thanks so much.

Viv

[Pamela Slim]

Congratulations on getting to Stage 5 Robert!

I have been a fan for years, and remember very clearly the first time I saw you give a presentation live in the Bay Area. When you said that you had 5,000 people on your mailing list, I was flabbergasted! It seemed like so much at that time (about 7 years ago), before the real rise of blogging and big mailing list campaigns. Now I see that you are over 50k with no signs of slowing down.

Thanks for always setting a great example of applying your own methodologies to your own business, with great results!

All the best,

-Pam