Collaborate vs Hire

Speaker 1: Hey, it's Mike Cooch. Thanks for stopping by. In this video, I'm going to share with you the six critical shifts that a service business has to make to go from being trapped in a professional services business model or client services business model to being a service business that can scale in size and profitability while also at the same time giving you the lifestyle that you were after when you started your business in the first place. Okay. The far majority of services businesses, I'm talking agencies, consultants, freelancers, and you can extend this to other industries, lawyers, accountants, CPAs, they are trapped. They're trapped because they're selling their time and they're selling relationships with them, which the end result is no matter how many clients they sign, no matter how much work they do, what they end up doing is just producing more and more work for themselves and getting stuck.

Speaker 1: Okay? Try and find a lawyer that's really happy with their schedule and you'll know exactly what I mean, but unfortunately this is happening to my friends in the agency, business consultants, freelancers. I'm going to share with you the six critical shifts that you can make to escape that professional services trap. Okay, let's go ahead and jump right into it. Shift number one is to go from a business that is selling professional services to a service provider game. You may think that that's a small distinction right now, but I promise you this is what drives everything else. The other major shifts that we're going to talk about today, they all come from this decision. A decision to sell packaged services instead of selling access to you to your knowledge, into your time. Okay? Let me share with you a great example. That is a company that's really active right now that will show you exactly what I mean.

Speaker 1: Okay. Bench, which you're probably familiar with, bench does bookkeeping services for small businesses. Prior to companies like bench existing, you had to hire an accountant or a CPA that was doing that in a professional services but basis and there are tens of thousands of accountants and CPAs out there selling their time and they have clients instead of what bench has done, which is created package services. They've gotten out of professional services and they've simplified what they offer. They've made it flat fee pricing and made it very, very easy for them to scale up to thousands and thousands of customers even though they're selling to very small businesses, which is something that as you're probably aware, most CPAs never get anywhere near that. They've got a small handful of clients and then they're on that treadmill of billing every single year, particularly around tax season and just selling their time. Okay. This is a perfect example of going from a professional services, you know, accountant, CPA to a service provider, a provider of bookkeeping services to small businesses.

Speaker 1: Shift number two then is to go from clients to customers. Okay. You heard me? OIT already mentioned that when I was referring to bench, they have gone from having clients. Okay. Somebody that has a relationship with you, somebody that knows who you are personally. They may even have your cell phone number, okay. And be able to call you whenever they want to. Nobody should have access to your cell phone number. You want to sell your company bench sells bench and the services that they've created, they don't sell a person. They don't sell. You know Mike, the CPA, they're not selling relationships. They're selling their company. Now I'm not saying that that means that you can't have relationships with your customers. Of course you can, but that's not the focus of what you're selling. I think that this is a great example. This company called WP quickie.

Speaker 1: Okay? This is a gentleman who built a business around doing small WordPress tasks. Okay? WordPress is a huge market and there are so many businesses out there that need help with WordPress tasks. This gentleman was doing a great job selling his own time, but then realized if I want to escape that I need to transition this to a brand and have customers, not clients so that I can have other people doing the work for me. So he's no longer selling access to him. He's selling access to WP quickie. This is a fantastic service. Okay. Shift number three is to go from time based to value based time based to value base. Okay, so you want to sell based on value that you're providing, not your billable rate. So this is how we escape that attachment to our time being sold ever on is actually a business that I founded and ran for about nine years before selling it.

Speaker 1: And we pioneer this in the it services space for small businesses. Okay. Up until uh, everyone in the small business space you charge on an hourly basis for your services. But we transitioned that to selling on a flat fee basis that we will perform certain tasks and be available for certain services, but it had nothing to do with time as a flat rate that we sold each month per device that we were supporting for our clients. Completely revolutionize the industry. Shift number four is from, I can do that too. Is it scalable? Okay. If you've been in a service business for Hey, length of time dealing with clients, you have certainly experienced that mindset where your clients ask you for something and you feel like, well, I've got to say yes, right? I've got a client asking me to do something and they'll pay me money for it and I've got to do that.

Speaker 1: I've got to do that because that's what a good business does. They take care of their customers. The customer is always right. Well, the better question to ask yourself then when that happens is to say, is it scalable? Is it scalable? The reality is that the best service businesses do less, not more. A doing more saying yes to everything just because a client asks is a trap. Successful scalable businesses do less. Here's a perfect example. Restaurant engine.com you know there are countless a website design. The website designers out there who have tried to make a living by selling websites and they get caught in that trap of having to do custom design for every single customer even though that customer really can't pay enough to justify it, and so restaurant engine says, Hey, you know what? It's $499 we've got these website templates for you.

Speaker 1: We're going to do certain customizations of your menu, of the pictures on there of your name of your domain name. All that good stuff, but then you're going to get one of these templates customized with these color schemes. You know this placement of the images, we're not going to custom design a site for you and because of that, the price is a fraction of what a custom design would be and they've got a scalable service because they are saying no to all those customer requests. Does this model work? It works really well. I did this in the it services space as well selling websites and could sell these by the dozen because it was very, very easy to then execute the website. So this is a great example. Shift number five is to go from results to activities and assets. Okay? For my friends in the agency business, the marketing agency business, you know what it's like when a customer believes that you owe them or results, you owe them to be able to grow their business for them, right?

Speaker 1: You can't be on the hook to grow their business for them. There are so many variables that are outside of your control that impact the growth of their business. But what you can do is do consistent activities for them that need to be done and you can develop assets that can help them achieve their business goals that they can license and use from you. Instead of providing results based services where you're making promises and guarantees and then you're hustling like crazy to try and get those results for them when you know you generate leads for them and they actually don't do followup phone calls and time to follow up on those leads, but it's you to blame if you've been there, if you felt that you know exactly what I'm talking about, there is a better way to go from results to activities and assets.

Speaker 1: Okay. What's the famous example of a company that took what could have been work for clients doing specific campaigns and doing client services work and instead turned it into a major, major asset? groupon.com is a perfect example. Okay. Groupon does giveaway campaigns or deal campaigns for their customers, but prior to Groupon, Groupon, there were lots and lots of agencies that were out there doing giveaway campaigns and coupon campaigns for their customers, but none of them turned it into an asset like Groupon. They all worked with individual clients and charge client services and campaigns and professional services rates to those clients. Instead of turning it into an asset, Groupon, turn it into an asset, they said, come to Groupon. We will easily set up a giveaway campaign for you and we will email our list because they had created an asset of all of those consumers and to give a marketplace that were interested in deals and that allowed them to create floods of customers for these businesses very, very quickly by leveraging their assets, a totally different business model and value proposition, which was why they were going to grow so quickly and so profitably.

Speaker 1: Okay. Shift number six. The final shift is to go from the customer is always right to always the right customer. Okay. Focus on a specific niche and boundaries around what you offer. Creates scalability a saying yes to everyone today you're working for a restaurant tomorrow for a CPA the next day for a lawyer the next day for a chiropractor thinking that you can provide services to all of them. Just the same is a huge mistake and a cost you scalability and profitability and ultimately you're going to get beat by the competition because there's no way that you can be great at providing services to all of those different customers. So you've got to pick the right customer and focus on them and focus on them exclusively. And by doing that, by saying no to the wrong customer, you actually get scalability instead of saying yes to businesses that kill your scalability.

Speaker 1: Okay, great example of this is zander.com they do marketing services specifically for SAS software businesses. That's it. They focus their services, they focus what they do to ensure that they are providing an excellent service only to the right clients that gives them scalability and that allows them to compete by being the best in their particular niche. So you've got to go away from all customers are the same. All customers are worth doing business with to focusing in on a very, very specific market where you can be the best. Okay? That's the six critical shifts that you have to make to go from being a professional services provider trapped in that horrible business model to something that can actually scale. Okay. When you combine these six shifts or not even all of them, even just a handful of them together, what you get is a better business model.

Speaker 1: Okay? If you've been trapped in that professional services or client services model, either as an agency, a consultant, some sort of advisor or a freelancer, I'm telling you, it's not your fault you have a broken business model. One of my favorite quotes comes from Warren buffet and he said that you don't get any extra points in business for degree of difficulty. When I first heard that, it really opened my eyes because I realized I had been in traditional services, professional services, business models in the past. And no matter what I did, no matter how hard I worked and how hard I took care of my customers, I never really got ahead and I was frustrated because I thought if I just work harder, if I just do a little bit better, surely at some point I'm going to get ahead. But the challenge is not how hard I was working or how good results I was producing.

Speaker 1: It was that I had a broken business model. Okay? So what Warren buffet means there is, you know, he says you're not an Olympic gymnast and Olympic gymnastics. If you do something harder, then you get extra credit points by the judges, right? Because you did something that had a higher degree of difficulty. But in business there was no judge that's making that determination, okay? You don't get any extra points for a hard business model. So choose a business model that is easier and just simply better. And that's what these six shifts allow service providers to gain access to is a better business model. Now, one of the things that's been incredibly important for me is over the years I've done tons and tons of research on the various businesses that have executed these concepts well in a variety of industries in a variety of different ways. It's my services that scale swipe file down below this video here, you're going to find a special offer to get your hands on that swipe file.

Speaker 1: That will come also with some additional training from me walking you through these businesses and how it is that they've applied these concepts to scale up. By doing that, what's done for me is it's allowed me to have a better clear vision of what I'm trying to build and how I can escape that professional services or client services trap and I've now been able to do that in it services and in agency services, building businesses to the multiple seven figures of recurring revenue and sewing them because I had created a scalable model. Okay. Again as a special offer for that swipe file, swipe file down below, grab it, get your hands on it, and please let me know if you have any questions on how it can help you execute these concepts. Thank you.