ERIN MARCUS LIVE: GROWING, LEVERAGING, SCALING

Erin Marcus Live: Growing, Leveraging, Scaling

Transcript by Descript

Erin Marcus: All right, all right, here we Go. I’m excited about what I want to share with you today, because this is really based on so many conversations I’ve been having lately, as we do this deep dive planning for the new year, and now as I record this, we’re at the end of January here, and people are way into the big plans that they had for 2024.

Erin Marcus: And yes, it’s 2024, but if you’re listening to this later, this is really like an evergreen concept. Anytime you’re working on your business plans, and one of the most common mistakes that I’m seeing being made over and over and over again is not having the strategies that you’re utilizing, your go to market strategies that you’re utilizing be in alignment.

Erin Marcus: With your stage of business and that by the way doesn’t mean how long you’ve been in business It’s just your current status today. Like what? Business problem. Are you trying to solve what business internally what business problem a problem? Are you trying to solve internally for your business and do your go to market strategies in your business model align?

Erin Marcus: With what it is that you’re trying to do when this doesn’t happen when we are misaligned this leads to so much wasted time It leads to so much wasted money Spiraling a feeling stuck in a plateau you end up disenheartened. That’s my new word that I’ve picked up. I’ve seen it a lot lately disenheartened Frustration, let’s face it being outright pissed right?

Erin Marcus: That was me at the end of last year being outright pissed So how do we avoid this? How do we avoid this? Let me back up for a second in case you don’t know me and what it is that I do. I help businesses with their go to market strategy. I basically reverse engineer what it is that they’re trying to achieve and turn it into a step by step action plan that gets them to where they want to be, right?

Erin Marcus: So I want to introduce you to a tool or an approach that I use when I’m working with clients and truthfully internally at my own business when I’m trying to Now, I’m going to use some words with specific definitions here in a way that helps me make decisions. This doesn’t mean that these are the only definitions or that you don’t use different words.

Erin Marcus: I’m going to warn you right now, do not get trapped in semantics over this with me. Listen for what I’m trying to explain, and then if you have to use different words, draw your line in the sand in a different place, doesn’t matter, but just stick with me here on this overall concept, and let’s shorten your learning curve and get you results faster, right?

Erin Marcus: My goal in my business and with my clients is to create As many litmus tests as I can to help make good decisions, create these boundaries, these bumpers in my gutters, these litmus tests, factual external things that I can use as a guide to help make better decisions each and every time. And this is the one of the ones that I use.

Erin Marcus: The idea here is to determine what has to happen in your business right now. What has to happen in your business right now? And the three phases I use, the words are growing. Do we need to grow leveraging? Do we need to start leveraging our assets or three? Do we need to scale? Is it time to scale? So let me back up here for you for a second.

Erin Marcus: Growing just needs more. It just means needs more at its very base. You need more money. You need more clients. You just need more. Little bit more, right? This is foundation. This is foundation. You have to have that solid, solid foundation. You don’t move to the other phases without creating this foundation first.

Erin Marcus: So there’s growing. Do I just need more? Number two is leveraging. Are you at a point where you need to use your resources, your time, your money, your energy, your effort in a different way? I can say more, that’s growing. Leveraging. Now you need to use your resources in a different way that allows for an increased ROI on your efforts.

Erin Marcus: Again, time, money, energy, attention. Those are all your resources, right? So, leveraging is when we have to start looking at getting a different approach to using our resources that get us a greater ROI. Some examples for you. A great example of leveraging versus growing in in a business model is when you move from only having, say, your coach or consultant, and you move from having one to one clients.

Erin Marcus: And now you have a group program. Now you are leveraging your time. You’re serving more clients at one time. An example in a growth versus a leveraging business strategy for marketing for marketing is when you move from networking, that’s a growth model. You’re meeting people one to one. Maybe you’re moving to speaking.

Erin Marcus: Right now you’re meeting more people at once. You’re getting out in front of more people at once. So those are some differences. The third stage is scaling. If leveraging is addition, then scaling is multiplication. If you think about it that way, growing your business, you just need some more. Leveraging is an addition.

Erin Marcus: How do I grow my business from a one plus one equals two and now two plus two equals four type of thing. But scaling is multiplication for purposes of this decision making approach. I consider scaling to be when we’re moving into mass strategies, we’re creating volume when we’re creating volume, right?

Erin Marcus: Growing is just needing more. Leveraging is looking for a greater ROI on our efforts by way of addition and scaling is multiplication in terms of a business model, right? Let’s look at terms of a business model. Growing might be raising your rates. You just need more money getting a few more clients.

Erin Marcus: Gives you more clients, more money. Leveraging is about being able to serve more clients simultaneously, most commonly through a group program instead of one on one. Or for service based professionals, you hire an additional consultant, you hire additional lawyer, you hire an additional CPA for your firm, right?

Erin Marcus: You hired another Attorney, architect, one more person to deliver the services. So now you’re both delivering on the services to the client that’s leveraging. Scaling, scaling shows up in two main ways. Passive income products, right? Such as courses or additional service lines. So say a bookkeeper adds tax services.

Erin Marcus: Say a graphic designer adds website development. In terms of a client acquisition strategy, like marketing examples, growing is going to more networking events, right? Going to higher level networking events. Going on more, having more one to one conversations. That’s growing. You’re doing more of the thing to get more of the results.

Erin Marcus: Leveraging, a leveraging marketing strategy would be speaking or hosting events. Now you’re talking to a group of people all at once, and you can make an offer to those people all at once, and get a higher return on investment for your time, right? Scaling is when we’re looking at automated funnels, or maybe hiring a third party marketing agency.

Erin Marcus: to do a much more mass amount of work for you. Make sense? Hopefully you’re following me. So where does this go wrong for people? Hopefully you’ve got that base. Where does this go wrong for people? The biggest place that I see a problem arise is when you jump into scaling strategies when what you really need is just more growth or more leveraged approaches.

Erin Marcus: Right? So an example is a coach. You’re out of hours in the day and days in the week to serve more one on one clients. Great! This is a good problem to have. But the mistake is when you jump into solving that problem by creating a course, For passive income. Now, why is this wrong? Stick with me here because I am not in any way, shape or form saying that courses are bad.

Erin Marcus: That’s not what I’m trying to say. It’s not the right step. It’s an ROI problem. There needs to be a few things absolutely in place in order for a scaling strategy to work. A large enough audience and following that are, is needed in order to sell the course to enough people. Boom out the gate to make the effort worth it.

Erin Marcus: We need the bandwidth to have the time to create the course, the finances available to pay for it, to hire good people who could help you do a good job at this, and then handle the marketing so that you get the ROI on it. Remember we said we can’t grow anymore when we’re out of hours in the days and days in the week.

Erin Marcus: So then we move to a scaling strategy, jumping over that leveraged piece. But truthfully, we don’t have the pieces in place. If you don’t have the pieces in place to do a good job at the scaling strategy, it’s not going to work for you. It’s just not going to work for you. Leads to frustration, being disheartened, exhausted, out of money, feeling like we wasted time, feeling like we wasted money.

Erin Marcus: This is what we’re trying to avoid. I’ll give you another example, a service professional business, right? Chiropractors, dentists, CPAs, lawyers, people serving people at white collar situations. You want another stream of income? Fair enough. And too many times I watch these groups of people add a service line that is too far removed from what your core business is.

Erin Marcus: I’ll give you an example. I went to the dentist. I like my dentist. She does a great job. She’s very nice. But there’s signs all over the place that they also do Botox. And I’m like, what? What? It’s not that she, I’m not saying that she can’t do it and that she’s not earning some money, but it’s, to me it was just so weird.

Erin Marcus: Why would I go to my dentist for Botox? I would go to like a med spot for Botox, right? And I’m not saying that these efforts never work. And that you can’t make some money at them, but you’re talking about a fight your way through the challenges approach, right? When we’re jumping strategy steps, we’re, it’s a bang your head against the wall way to do business.

Erin Marcus: So what can we do about this? What can we do about this? How do you fix this? Make sure you don’t become susceptible to it. This is a very, nine times out of ten, this happens because you’re choosing a tactic over a strategy. It’s a very classic tactic over strategy problem. The people who teach these tactics, are very good at marketing their solution.

Erin Marcus: This is not a bad thing. Like this is kudos to them. This is awesome. They make it sound easy and they make it look easy. So you need to take a step back instead of tactic over strategy. You make sure going through this decision making matrix that I just gave you that you’re choosing strategy and then backfilling it with the tactics to solve that problem.

Erin Marcus: Don’t say yes to a tactic until you know if it’s in your right category for your strategy. Why else do we, does this become a problem? You started your business to do what the business does. Not because you’re an expert at building a business. Fair. Not a bad thing. Just is. But it makes you susceptible to the wrong path.

Erin Marcus: Not in the victim y, they fooled me way. It’s just the situation. Just like I don’t go into my dentist’s office. I don’t go into my attorney’s office. I don’t go into my financial planner’s office and tell them how to be the expert at what they do. They shouldn’t expect to be the expert. A business strategy.

Erin Marcus: These are different things. These are just different things. And then the third problem here is that social media and the proliferation of these tactics reinforce that this is easy and the next logical step. The strategy piece that I’m talking about is the piece nobody’s talking about. This is doing the work before the work.

Erin Marcus: This is not the fun glamorous stuff. This is the foundational necessity stuff if you want everything else to But being surrounded Being surrounded by the message that this is easy, and that this is obvious, and that this is what you should do, makes it very easy to follow along, thinking that this is what you should do, right?

Erin Marcus: No harm, no foul. It’s just, this is why it’s a problem. So what do you need to do? What do you need to do about this? How do you make sure you’re less susceptible to going down the wrong path? It always starts with clarity. It always starts with knowing what you want. You have to know what you want, and you have to know why.

Erin Marcus: What problem are you solving in your business? What problem are you solving in the business? What is the fastest path to that solution? The fastest path to the solution. Most scaling strategies are expensive and long term in nature. Even if they bring in money, it’s not what I call today money. They’re investments of money and investments of time that have to be made before your ROI starts to come in.

Erin Marcus: Scaling strategies will not solve today. Revenue problem scaling strategies will not solve today out of hours in the day and days in the week doesn’t make them bad. If scaling your business as a goal, it’s a fantastic goal, but just no scaling strategies do not solve today.

Erin Marcus: The second thing is you have to get yourself past whatever it is that puts you in resistance to the right solution for the business that you’re trying to solve. Stick with me here. People choose the wrong strategy in an effort to avoid doing. The thing they’re scared of doing. I’ll say that again. This is huge.

Erin Marcus: People choose the wrong strategy in an effort to avoid the thing they’re scared of doing. So what are you avoiding? That if you did it Would shorten the path to solving your business problem. Are you avoiding having sales conversations? Are you avoiding raising your rates when you know you should be?

Erin Marcus: Are you avoiding going to a higher level group and immersing yourself? with people who could help you rise up. Are you avoiding hiring a team? This is huge. Are you avoiding hiring a team? Maybe you’ve tried these things before and they didn’t work or you feel they didn’t work. That’s totally fine. That’s how business goes.

Erin Marcus: We try things and they don’t work, but we don’t give up on that. Did you stop trying because it was hard because it felt uncomfortable because you didn’t like it and Because of fear, turn in a direction that won’t actually solve your today problem. If you take nothing else away from this extended life, are you choosing the wrong strategy in an effort to avoid doing the thing you’re scared of doing or that you think you don’t want to do?

Erin Marcus: A lot of times what I’m talking about sounds like simple solutions because they’re just not complicated. Solving business problems is not complicated. It doesn’t mean it’s easy, because you do have to get past what’s stopping you internally. It’s not easy, I mean there’s work to do, but it’s not complicated.

Erin Marcus: Today, business problems are not complicated. Fact, the less complicated the solution, the more likely it is to succeed. Scaling a business is a great goal, but so is leveraging. So is growing. Watch your words, because the definition of scaling can lead you down the wrong path. I watch a lot of marketers use scaling to imply growing or leveraging.

Erin Marcus: And the businesses, the businesses they’re targeting are just not ready for it. It’s time for an honest conversation with yourself. Reverse engineer what you’re trying to solve so that you pick the right solution. And get guidance. Get guidance. Your gut might have good instincts, but your feelings will lie to you.

Erin Marcus: External guidance that’s able to ask you the right questions about what it is you want and what it might be that you’re avoiding will help you keep the bumpers in your gutters. to help you keep moving forward.