Hello, welcome back to Corporate to Coach podcast. So this is episode 71, I believe. How exciting. 30 episodes away from the big 100. Today we're doing Scale. the fourth in a four part series where I've been covering start, build, grow and scale your coaching business.
So scaling is a really juicy one. And I think whatever stage of business you're in, this episode is a really valuable episode to listen to because this is ultimately where you want to get to.
And you want to get to a place of scalability pretty quickly. Yeah. Like we spoke about in the last, episode, how you can move very quickly through the start phase, the build phase, and you can grow and there's no timeframe on anything, right?
You can do anything you want, but it is going to require you to step up to the plate and do it. what I was talking about in that episode was you have the fundamentals in place, you know what your business is, you know what you're selling, you know what you're about.
This is where you're starting to really refine who you're working with and build fluency in your messaging so that when you show up, it's just a matter of having fun with it and calling in the right people and getting in a rhythm of your marketing and selling that you're able to do that consistently and build a sense of self-trust where that just becomes second nature.
It's no longer fighting the demons of, oh my God, I'm going to have to do this. And it's like, I'm doing this. How do I want to do this? How do I want to play with this?
What would excite me and light me up and feel alive in me? And that's where you really want to get to for business to start feeling fun.
But you can go in, get in, get out and do it relatively quickly where it doesn't take up so much mental load because you've done the skill development and the learning and the To a degree, and do not take this out of context, enough healing where it stops being about you and it is just a matter of execution and skill development and aliveness and connection.
And when you are in that place of really just having fun with meeting the edges of you and expanding and evolving into the furthest reaches of who you get to become, that is an infinite game.
Because your evolution is infinite. Who you get to become is beyond anything you could even comprehend right now. Who you think you're going to be when it comes to your future self isn't a patch on who you actually get to become when you step up and start committing to the journey.
And that is all the sexy stuff that happens in the growth phase. Now, scaling is a very businessy term. I should have looked up the official definition, but the way I like to think about scaling is compared to growth where growth is about you building capacity, building skill and learning how to do more so that you can create the results you want in your business.
This scale phase comes after the growth phase and the scale phase is when your business learns to do more and you get to step away.
This is like, and you've probably heard this analogy before, but this is where your business goes from being a baby.
to being a toddler, to being a self-sufficient teenager, but probably has a few tantrums, to actually being a fully-fledged, autonomous, independent, sovereign adult who can fend for itself.
Now, within reason, because all adults still need love and care and connection, and so does your business.
And coaching is definitely not the kind of business where you set it to forget it and you completely step away.
Coaching, by its very nature, is about the evolution of you as the business owner. So you're always going to have this this intrinsic relationship with your business at a slightly deeper level than more traditional businesses that you could just build and sell and completely step away from, or you can build, hire a CEO, hire absolutely everybody to do every single aspect of the business.
And you just sit back and reap the rewards. If you are doing a one-to-one coaching business, or even a one-to-many where you are delivering the services, To a degree, you are always going to have your hands involved in the business operations The degree at which you can start stepping away from that, that is where scalability comes in.
So scaling is helping your business or getting your business to a place where it does the growth for you, where it brings in the money and clients for you, where you get to just make sure that everything's working smoothly, that all the ducks are in a row and that everything things are staying up to date and you're just managing it all.
That's the most like extreme version of what scalability could look like. In reality, what that can look like in your coaching business is it can vary.
Like there's 50 shades of gray, right? There is partial scalability where you're starting to put in some kind of standard operating procedures.
I spoke about this in the last episode, but if you're not familiar with what a standard operating procedure is, that's when you have some kind of systemization where anyone can pick it up and do it.
For example, with the podcast, that's something that I can definitely scale other than me, obviously delivering it.
But you, you know, apparently there's even AI now that can literally look like me and sound like me and deliver it for me.
I don't know if I want to go down that route. maybe in the future, but right now it's definitely me, the human. Maybe that's something AI would say. Gosh, I think I've just got myself in a bit of a tizzle there, but it's very much me, the human.
I'll just have to take my word for it. Trust me on that one. But other than me delivering it, when it comes to outsourcing it, I could get someone else to do that for me.
And here's the interesting thing. I bet many of you already are. Many of you already are you outsourcing, but you're managing the outsourcing.
Are you using AI? Are you using ChatGPT? Are you using any kind of system, any CRM, anything that does a little bit of the work for you?
That's an element of scaling to a degree. So for example, with my podcast, I refined and refined and refined and refined and refined everything I spoke about in the growth phase, exactly how I want the show notes to look.
Then I can give that instruction to a human, a VA or AI, and I can have them replicate it for me. What that does is take out the mental load of me having to use more of my creative brain to do that.
And it allows someone else to use their energy to whether that's physical energy or, you know, whatever energy use AI uses and have it do it for me.
And then it's less of a mental load for me just to review it, refine it again, tweak it, make it something that I feel is a really good reflection of what I want to portray and then allow that to be distributed.
That's a really practical example where some of you could be or already are scaling because scalability is letting your business do the work for you.
It is, it is being more efficient with your processes. It's creating the same amount of output with less input. So leveraging AI is a great example of that.
Now, another thing I mentioned in the last episode is how. lots of people try and scale too soon. They try and scale as a substitute to learning mastery for something that they really need to be taking ownership of so that when it comes to scaling, you're able to scale in a way that is actually sustainable.
I didn't outsource things like my show notes until I was at a place where I know what good show notes look like, when I understand what good SEO structure looks like, when I understand what I, as an audience member to my own podcast, would want to hear and would want to see and would intrigue me to listen.
I have to do that work. I have to take that responsibility. And then I'm in a position to outsource it. Otherwise, when you're outsourcing, whether it's to a VA or an OBM or an OBM is an online business manager or an AI chatbot, how am I going to know what good looks like when it produces something?
I need to have that discernment first. I have to have that mastery first. So when it comes to scaling, it is absolutely not not taking responsibility for your business.
Scaling is not a way to outsource the shit that you are avoiding learning how to do. And there is a difference here. There is a big difference between learning the shit that you need to learn so that you can outsource it.
And then there are definitely some tasks where it's okay to outsource them from the beginning because it is a zone of genius that you simply just don't have, will never have, have no desire to have.
And actually there's also no point you learning how to do. Really good examples of this are things like outsourcing your bookkeeping and your accounting and your tax.
That being said, ignorance is not an excuse. Too many business owners, and especially as a female business owner, too many business owners use ignorance as an excuse to not be on top of their finances, to not be on top of their budgeting, to not be on top of their overheads and their outgoings and their profits and their tax.
And it's a normal part of business to make mistakes, and it's a normal part of business for people things to come up that you've never dealt with before, that you didn't know you had to deal with before, and then kind of have to like fix stuff or deal with stuff.
I'm specifically thinking of attacks that you weren't expecting, some kind of overhead that you weren't expecting.
Some of that comes with learning the hard way, making the mistakes and then learning retrospectively.
That being said, it doesn't mean ignorance is bliss. And if you are going in eyes blind to this and you're not asking questions and you're not educating yourself, Under the guise of, well, I'm outsourcing and oh, well, I don't do that.
I don't touch that kind of stuff. I don't know how to do that. And you're playing the like girl math thing. It ain't cute. It's ignorance. And as a business owner, the best thing you can do for yourself, your future, your finances.
And to be honest, just to feel like a business owner who knows what the fuck she's doing so that when you show up to your clients, you have some kind of integrity behind it is that you make a point of educating yourself so that even if you don't know everything.
Even if you know that there are some blind spots, you know enough to be able to know if the spidey senses are tingling and someone's trying to pull the wool over your eyes.
I had this experience when I was searching for my first accountant. I didn't have a freaking clue. I was ignorant as fuck, but I didn't want to be. I wasn't going to let that be a reason not to hire somebody that I felt like I could trust, that I felt like knew how to answer the questions I didn't know how to ask.
That still took me to step up to the plate and actually take ownership and responsibility of that instead of outsourcing that.
And I have a good dialogue with my accountant that over time I have learned to understand and learn that kind of stuff.
I'm still not an expert. I still choose to outsource it because it isn't my zone of genius and never will be. But I know enough to be able to recognize if there's things that I need to be on top of and questions I need to be asking.
So outsourcing, as I say, is not an excuse to be ignorant and it's not an excuse to not take responsibility for the things that are absolutely your responsibility as a business owner, especially your finances.
The other thing I see coaches trying to scale before they're ready is marketing. And I mentioned this in the last episode, but it really belonged here.
So I'm going to have to repeat it, I'm afraid. But it's a point worth hammering in, I promise. Yeah. No one can be you and you are the creative genius for your, for your business until you really have reached a level of mastery and you really have worked with a VA or really learned the nuances of chat GPT or whatever AI you want to use.
I would never just rely on completely outsourcing your, anything that requires your creativity, which is primarily your marketing and selling.
That being said, I'm not anti AI at all. I use it most days. I use it plenty in my content. I'm not afraid to say that, but it is always my voice within that.
There are aspects of AI that I cannot stand. And there are sometimes posts that I read from other people that I can see that they have chucked into AI and AI has had absolutely no tailoring.
It's had no customization and it really does sound like the robot. And I, Unfortunately, my brain does switch off from that. Maybe you've experienced the same when you see that with other people's posts.
And yet I've also seen and I feel this way about my own content, but also message me if you feel like you can.
It gets in the way of you being able to receive the message. There are a number of really successful coaches that I follow. Seven figure coaches, eight figure coaches who use AI and I can tell it's AI and I can also hear their voice so viscerally through it.
I don't have a problem with it because it doesn't disconnect me. I just see that they've used that tool and that's fine. And I can still receive their message as they want it to be received.
So in scaling, leveraging resources like VAs, OBMs, AI, this is all part of scaling. So if you're already using this, amazing, you can feel really good about that.
And the fact that you are kind of growing in your business in that way and that you're leveraging resources available to you.
That's what a resourceful business owner does. This is the 21st century. I think you're crazy to try and avoid it, to be honest with you.
And obviously, as I've said a few times, it isn't an excuse to be ignorant and it isn't an excuse to bypass the mastery that you need to develop as a coaching business owner to actually take ownership and responsibility of your business.
So, The other things that happen when you're scaling is you're doing more with less. So what does that really mean? What that means is you are creating more sales, more clients, more revenue, more impact with less of your energetic input.
In practice, that can look like the amount that you create it might be that you get your messaging to a place where it lands and it lands and people respond.
For that to happen, you have to have built an audience large enough that know your work, like your work, trust your work, you know, the know, like and trust factor.
And there's enough of an audience where people are leaning in, people are paying attention, people are listening so that as you do step back from the volume that you were doing, or you're delivering the same volume, even if you're not as involved as you used to be, because some of it's automated, some of it's outsourced, some of it's repurposed, you're still calling in the clients, calling in the audience, maintaining that connection with your people.
That's the goal of scaling. What you don't want to be doing is trying to achieve that And actually, you're just not putting the volume in to get the results that you need.
So a couple of things that you want to think about when you want to get to that phase. And these are a couple of things that you need to have in place in order to scale effectively.
You need to have your business foundations in place. Those fundamentals that I spoke about in the build module episode. Those fundamentals are having a solid offer that you can sell on repeat because you have sold it on repeat because you proved that to yourself in the growth phase.
A solid offer that you're very clear on. You know who the client is. You know what results you get them. You know what problems they have. And really, your work now is just enjoying the kaleidoscope of all the million ways that you could experience that.
All the different ways that you've taken a client through that process. All the different ways it can present from the symptoms to the solutions, from the symptoms to the transformation.
There are so many different ways that the same offer can be experienced by different people because everybody is living their own version of reality.
You're living your own version of reality. If you came into one of my signature programs, let's say you joined Thrive, my group program.
You joined that, you're going to have a very different experience to another person who joins Thrive group.
Same offer. same general problems, similar transformation, but your personal way of experiencing it is going to be different.
In the growth phase, you are building your fluency in recognizing that, communicating it, and having fun with it.
In the scale phase, you're still capturing that data, you're still enjoying the reward of experiencing all of these beautiful people go through their transformations with your work, but you are able to look at that and see the patterns.
You're able to look at that and see that generally speaking, there are possibly categories of people that fall into these types of groups.
And then you can start using that knowledge and that data to really start targeting your messaging, targeting your marketing, targeting your selling in a really precise way.
And that is when you may wish, to move into either just stepping back, knowing that you're able to create the same results with less effort, or with the same effort or less effort, go into ad spend, where you know exactly who you're targeting, you know exactly what kind of people are going to benefit the most from your offers and get the most amazing transformation so that you can actually put money and therefore very specific intention into towards identifying those people and bringing more people into your world that may otherwise not have had the chance to reach you.
I see a lot of coaches make the mistake of wanting to just target people when they haven't refined and they haven't truly deeply understood what their offer is, what the problem is that they solve, the kaleidoscope of ways that people could experience it, the many transformations that could be had.
It is until you have something that is proven, a true winning strategy, a true proof of concept, that you're then going to put money behind it to get that scale, to get even more volume with less work or the same level of work.
Too many people try and bypass that and they think it's just easier to go straight to the people. And yes, it might get you in front of more people, but if you don't know what you're selling, if you don't know how to sell it, if you're not communicating the message effectively enough, if it continues to be a little bit elusive and a little bit confusing and a little bit vague and a little bit coachy, even to your eyes and your heart and mind, and you're feeling confused about your offer, how can you expect more people to be able to validate your offer when you don't?
It has to come from you. The mistake coaches make with this approach when they do it too soon is that they try and play the numbers game.
But the reason why the numbers game doesn't work is because they've volume that you need to play the numbers game is so high that it would cost you more than you would receive and it wouldn't be worth the ROI When you start doing the math, the math doesn't add up.
But unfortunately, people think that ads are easier and it isn't. Ads actually require... a really targeted intentional messaging, which can only come when you've done the build phase correctly and you've established an offer that you're willing to learn.
because this is the thing in the build phase is not about getting it perfect the first time. It's about choosing something that feels so in alignment with you.
So true and alive for you that when you then go to sell it in the growth phase, you fall in love with it even more deeply so that by the time.
You have sold it 10 times, 15 times, 20 times. You're then ready to go to the scale phase and consider maybe using ad spend, but either way, optimizing what you're already doing and doubling down.
So that build phase is an essential piece of this. It was essential for the growth phase. It's even more essential for the scale phase. You have to have a solid offer that you back.
At the scale phase, it's often that you also need to scale your offer suite. You need to look at how you are working with clients so that you can serve more people with less of your time.
So this is another way that you can scale. Scaling can look like going from one to one to one to many. One of the reasons why I don't recommend going from nothing to one to many is because When you give a deadline and you don't yet have the audience and you don't yet have the know like trust factor from your audience, it can be a lot harder than you think to get people to sign up to a deadline.
That kind of pressure, I see a lot of clients buckle under. Coaches come to me regularly and they say, I've either tried to sell a group coaching program or they really want to.
And I always advise them, because the clients who come to me are generally in that build and growth phase, is prove to yourself that you know how to take a client through a transformation.
Prove to yourself that you can do that, not once, not twice, but at least three to ten times, please.
Prove to yourself you know how to run a sales call. You know how to market and sell, that you can get your message out there, that you can build that muscle of visibility.
that you can take a client through the transformation, that you can articulate beyond the idea that you have about what your offer is, what your offer actually is.
I see this a lot with some coaches that work with me and this happens in life coaching. You choose a niche, you choose what you really want to help people with.
Often it's a reflection of what you've gone through. You spend a lot of time refining your marketing and messaging. You sign your first couple of clients and then they come in You change their life.
They have amazing transformations, but it doesn't fully reflect the transformation that you were originally talking about in your messaging.
And now a disconnect happens. You're like, oh my God, I know I'm a really good coach. I know I'm really good at this. I know I can do this. And the transformations my clients are actually getting doesn't reflect what I've been telling people they can get.
And now I feel like I'm a fraud and I'm not sure if I even have a right to market and sell anymore.
And you end up in this awful tug of war with yourself. Because you don't feel like you have the right to kind of market and sell what you want to sell.
And yet you're not honoring the work that you do. And you're actually downplaying how brilliant your work is. And you're not giving yourself a chance to grow faster.
And then you think, since it isn't working, and then you've slowed down, that, oh, maybe I need to scale.
Maybe I need to go to group. Maybe that would be easier. When actually, you need to get better at your messaging. You need to get better at your self-trust.
You need to fortify your identity as a business owner and coach who gets people results, regardless of the results that they are.
And you need to develop your ability to message and improve your messaging so that no matter what your client results are, you're always selling effectively.
Once you have achieved that in the growth phase, then you're going to be at a place for scalability because then you know how to celebrate every client result and every client win.
And at that point, you're also going to have an audience. which means when it goes to going to one-to-many, you're in a really good position to actually sell to the masses and translate all of that experience you have selling one-to-one into selling one-to-many.
Because it isn't just about serving one-to-many, there is selling one-to-many, marketing one-to-many.
So what I mean by that is currently you've gone from doing one-to-one consults, maybe one-to-one DM conversations, you know how to handle.
And if you don't, then again, if you don't know how to do this, then you're not ready for scaling. And this is where I can help you. Cause so many of my clients come to me with this, they've signed the odd client, but it was, it was kind of so easy and, and almost so cheap that they didn't really have to take them through a sales process.
So when you work with me, I teach you how to run a consult process in a way that isn't pushy. That isn't about overcoming objections. but it's actually about guiding the client to a really powerful aligned decision in the greatest good for them and for you.
So at the moment, you're taking clients through consults one to one. You know how to handle when one client says to you, oh, that's a bit expensive or I'm not sure I'm ready or I need to speak to my partner about this.
When you're having those discussions, you're developing a skill. The skill isn't just to get better at consult. The skill is so that you can translate that to when you are selling on webinars, to when you are selling on lives or in a podcast.
It's building the skill of learning all of the objections that people might have. And when I say objections, I mean the genuine, legitimate questions that somebody, that a discerning, interested buyer would have when they want to make a good decision with their finances and with their life choices.
Objections are not a bad thing. They're a very healthy thing. and knowing how to handle them with a healthy mindset is going to create a really good partnership and help you create a really solid business.
When you've gone through enough consults to build enough of a bank, if you will, on what a consult process even entails, what kind of questions, reasonable questions people have about working with you, about the process, about the transformation, about the kind of problems you solve, about whether or not your process can work for their specific situations, That's when you're in a position to translate that into selling on a webinar, a podcast, an Instagram live, whatever the forum is where you're doing it one to many, even in a public event and actually inviting a number of people at once to have the desire to come and work with you right now.
That is a skillset you need to develop when you are ready to scale your business. And those of you who have jumped straight into group coaching programs may know the challenge.
of selling too many. It isn't, it's a skillset you need to develop and you're going to have to develop it either way.
So whether you do it through the growth phase or the hard way, which is just learning how to do it from scratch, that's a key component of scalability.
The more important piece when it comes to scalability beyond sales is absolutely delivery. You need to be a highly competent coach who knows how to guide many people through a transformation.
And this includes things like knowing how to manage a call, knowing how to set a container up for success, especially when there's lots of people in it, knowing how to set boundaries and expectations, knowing how to lovingly constrain a client to come to sessions very clear on what their challenges are so that you can work through them and so that they don't monopolize the entire call.
This is coaching mastery. This kind of coaching mastery comes from two places. It comes from a getting the reps in. Yeah. Coaching lots of people. And you do that in one to one.
But even then, even when you've coached so many people like I had and then I moved into coaching one to many.
That in and of itself is a separate skill set because it's different when you're dealing with multiple people on a course.
And this is something I really do enjoy working with my clients on because the discussion of coaching mastery for me is a really, really important discussion.
I don't know if I've mentioned it before. I'm sure I have. But once a year, I will always do something to develop my coaching mastery.
And I'm not just talking about me hiring a one-to-one coach to deal with my own shit or going into a business container to grow my business or scale my business.
I'm talking about investing in my time, energy and money specifically into deepening my coaching skill.
Every time I do this, my coaching up levels. Every time I do this, my messaging and sales up level because my conviction in myself has fortified because the results my clients get improve.
And because my clients know that when they hire me and they invest in coaching with me, we're not here to fuck around.
I'm not interested in coaching my clients on the same thing five times over. And at the same time, I will absolutely coach you on the same thing five times over if it gets it done.
But I do not tolerate complacency in my programs. If you say you're going to do something, I expect you to take note of the action step.
I expect you to come to the next session having done those tasks. And that is a standard that I hold because it helps you become somebody who learns how to hold those standards for themselves.
At first it happens with external accountability and in time with consistency and reps that just filters into the level and the standard that you hold yourself because there's a ripple effect.
When you are then coaching your clients and my clients are coaching their clients and they're coming to the session, not having done the work, they're thinking, well, I fucking do the work and I paid double than what you did.
Do you see? So scaling, is being able to hold that standard for a room of people, for a collective, and knowing how to communicate that in a way that is safe, inclusive, and to the greatest good of them and yourself.
And it makes the coaching containers more joyful, more productive, more successful. It's win, win, win. But what you don't want is to be going into group, trying to scale, thinking that it's easier.
thinking that it's a quicker way to make money, thinking that, oh, if I just do a group, because that's what Pamella does, or that's what that seven figure coach does, because that's where you're going to run into trouble because you're trying to run before you can walk.
That's why when my clients work with me, I never stop them from doing a group. And in fact, I've got a number of one-to-one clients right now who have gone into group relatively early on in their business, comparative to the level of experience they have with one-to-one.
And I'm never going to stop them from doing what they want because this is the freaking joy of business.
You don't have to just do one-to-one and then one-to-many. You can absolutely do it any way that you want, but go in eyes wide open.
Like I said earlier, ignorance is not an excuse to do a shit job and play with people's lives. I hold my clients to a very high standard. I hold myself to a high standard and integrity matters and scalability cannot be at the expense of integrity ever, which is why I'm more likely to steer you towards one-to-one.
But if the desire for group keeps coming up, then everything I just said about knowing how to really and getting masterful at refining your message and sales, but more importantly, getting masterful in your delivery as a coach is an essential part of that scaling process.
If you're going to do it well, And the best thing is when you do it well, it creates really beautiful results and beautiful results tends to compound and you get to create more and more and more.
And that's what we're here. That's especially what we're here for in the scaling episode today. So let me just see what else I want to discuss here.
So I spoke about shifting business models. The other thing I want to speak about is, yeah, greater capacity. Now, this is something that you're working on the entire time, especially for my clients who are coming to me because they work in a nine to five.
Not all of my clients are currently in a nine to five, but a lot of them are. Lots of them have a very established career identity. They're working corporate job or they have some kind of nine to five where they are working full time, part time.
It doesn't matter. But your capacity before you had a business was already full. you had a full life. I mean, even if you don't work, your life is still full.
When you decide to take on, and this is the only context in which I think it's useful to call it a side hustle, but to take on the side hustle of building a coaching business, you're going to have to increase your capacity.
Having a side hustle takes time, takes energy. And the only way that you can find energy that you don't currently have only way that you're going to find time that you don't currently have is to increase your capacity.
And how do you increase your capacity? That is all a mindset, not just a mindset. Let's be honest. It's an identity. If you are currently showing up and especially those of you in a nine to five, but even if you're not, and to be honest, probably more so if you're not, because there's no excuses, but if you are showing up to your coaching business with the attitude of i'm so busy i'm I don't have time for this.
I can't fit this in. I need to get this done. It's a checklist exercise at this point. I just need to get it off my plate. And you're going into your business with that kind of attitude where it's a fight to find the time.
It's a fight to prioritize it. And it doesn't feel joyful and natural for you to put it first. And you have to be very discerning with yourself here because you I know how much you think about it.
I know how much you want it. But when it comes to actually taking the action steps, if they are always coming last and it's always a bit of a rush job and you're never feeling fully satisfied with what you're putting and what you're implementing and how you're executing, then you're not ready to scale because scalability is the biggest illusion of creating bigger results with less time when you haven't learned the mastery and the skillset required to actually pull that off effectively and create results from it.
Otherwise, you'd already be creating results with what you already currently do, right? You may need to rewind that and listen to that again. If your business was ready to scale, it would already be making money.
Now, is that true 100% of the time, every time? No, because I did just say that there are some of you, like some of my existing clients right now who have just said to me, Pamella, I just need to get this group done.
I cannot get it off my heart and mind. And that's where I want to go with my business. Done. I will support you 110% of the way. And it is likely your capacity is going to have to grow in an entirely new skill set.
And if we think about the model of the learning model, where we go from unconscious competence to unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence and then conscious competence.
The reason why you probably think going to group is easier before you've learned how to sell one-to-one is because you currently are in the realm of unconscious incompetence with it.
You think it's easier because you don't know what you don't know, basically. And the minute you decide that you're going to start selling group or the minute you decide you're going to start doing ads or the minute you're going to decide you're going to start selling in podcasts, episodes or lives or on webinars and trying to sell one to many, that's when you're going to be hit with the harsh reality that maybe the skill set that you thought you had when it came to selling in that way and delivering in that way, as we just discussed, is nowhere near what you thought it needed to be.
And then suddenly, the conscious incompetence you have around selling one-to-many is exactly the same as the unconscious incompetence you had when it came to selling one-to-one.
And now you have a choice to make. You can struggle a little bit with both, going from shiny object to shiny object, thinking selling something else is going to be easier than selling the thing you've already got, or You develop your mastery, just like I said earlier, in marketing, selling and delivery so that you can get to a place of conscious competence and then eventually mastery.
And as I've said a few times in previous episodes, mastery, as we know, is never a destination. It's always an evolution. But then you get to a place of mastery and then you can say to yourself, well, if I wanna sell a group or I wanna sell a mastermind or I wanna do a subscription, It's going in eyes wide open, knowing that there's going to be a high degree of unconscious incompetence.
You don't know what you don't know about learning to do this thing, to execute this thing. But by that point, you've already developed the identity of someone who knows that they have their own back, who trusts themselves to be able to follow through with these desires and actually has built the capacity to take something like this on and see it all the way through until you start getting results.
Can you see now why the scale phase isn't for the faint hearted? And look, it's not that you don't have a strong heart. I know you do. You're building a freaking coaching business.
It's the way I have come to learn and learn the hard way, frankly, and come to see this is that these are the phases that we naturally tend to move through in order to get to this phase of scalability.
And I'm not fully scaling my business in every which way that is possible because I am to a mild degree in everything I've said to you today.
So I'll give you some examples. Standard operating procedures, I'm getting quite good at putting into place. I do it with my client creation system that all of my Thrive Group clients learn.
And clients who are working with me currently one-to-one learn. So when you work with me, you will learn this too. The client creation system is you basically learning how you sign clients for yourself.
That's a standard operating procedure. When you put that in place, that's when you know you know how to sign clients. I have standard operating procedures for instructions I give to chat GPT.
And I'm still constantly refining that because I still haven't got to a place where I can just drop the prompt and it gets it right the first time.
It's more that I drop the prompt. I share with it my ideas. It's just taking away that mental load of working from scratch and And then I'm still putting all the same energy and effort that I used to, except I'm not working from scratch.
I quite enjoy working with adapting what I'm doing and adjusting what I'm doing. But look, the podcast, the brainchild is me from scratch. Everything is me. Everything you see on this podcast.
These are my thoughts, my ideas. I have to do it. I have. I'll be honest. I have tried to use chat GPT to give me podcast ideas. It just it isn't. It isn't the thing for me, unfortunately.
So we're not there yet with it, but maybe in the future. But for now, the podcast, when you hear me speak, this is all me. When you see the show notes, I've leveraged AI for that.
So that's me outsourcing. I've also leveraged VAs in the past. I don't have one currently, but outsourcing a little bit with VAs, with some of the repetitive tasks that I have, some aspects of onboarding, some aspects of like filing admin, and also some aspects of repurposing.
Then there is the one-to-many thing. And for the last couple of years, I have been really kind of experimenting with my first masterminds, my first group, and then I landed on Thrive Group finally.
And this is an interesting thing to consider. I always knew that when I created Thrive one-to-one, I knew that I wanted to evolve it into a group format because I was priming myself for scalability in the future.
but I wasn't going to try and jump ahead of myself and jump straight into selling a group. I went straight into selling one-to-one and I still have it as one-to-one and now I have it as group and I'm still learning and I'm still developing my mastery and skillset in selling group.
So that's something that I'll be selling in the not so distant future. And I'm so excited to open that up again to you, but that's a beautiful example of, of me scaling into the one-to-many space, both from a sales perspective and and from a deliverable perspective.
And then the other aspect of scalability that I have been practicing for a number of years now as well.
And this is something that you can do right now is if you do have any kind of long form content where you're on video, such as, or voice, such as podcast episodes, webinars, workshops, and there's another one.
Uh, social media lives, like Instagram lives, Facebook lives, LinkedIn lives, whatever, TikTok lives even, you can start practicing selling to the masses.
So taking what you know about the consult process and making offers, telling people to work with you, addressing certain objections that you think people might be having, and then practicing that skill so that when you go to selling one to many, you actually have that skill set locked in.
Okay, so here are some of the mistakes. I've got four mistakes, but one of them I've already discussed, so I won't go into detail there.
But four mistakes that I see people make when it comes to scaling. Number one is scaling too soon. And we've already discussed that. We've discussed what you need to scale, what it looks like to scale, where is that you can start scaling straight away and kind of stepping into that scaling aspect, but not at the detriment or the avoidance or the ignorance of not having solid business foundations in place and business fundamentals that we discussed in episode two and growing your business effectively, as we discussed in the last episode, episode three of this four part series.
So episode 69 and 70. So not scaling too soon. The second mistake I see people make is poor hiring decisions. Now, This is something that I absolutely help my clients with.
I don't speak so much about it on the podcast because it's not so relevant to everybody here, but if I'm wrong about that, drop me a DM because the more DMS I get from you saying, if it was useful or saying, if you want me to be speaking about certain topics, this really helps me.
So let me know if it's something you do want me to speak about in more detail. especially when it comes to hiring a VA or an OBM or social media manager, the mistakes made with hiring, hiring too soon, not understanding the hiring process, not knowing what to ask, not knowing how to how to identify if somebody is going to be aligned with your values, knowing how to communicate effectively, having those standards operation, standard operating procedures in place so that you can teach someone else exactly what you need done, exactly how you like it in a timely, effective way.
It's another skill set to develop as a business owner. And if, if you think it's easier just to hire it out, then you're basically just swapping one set of tasks for another when you could have been just showing up and selling.
Instead, you're on up work or Fiverr, losing hours, writing ads, interviewing people, trying to get the VA to do it right, only to go back and do it yourself when you could have just done it yourself in the first place.
So scalability requires good hiring decisions, making poor hiring decisions, not going into it with absolute clarity about what your needs are and about how you're going to set them up for success so that they can do a good job for you, you're going to set yourself up for failure, unfortunately.
It's just something to watch out for when it comes to scaling. The third piece, the third piece is disconnecting from what already worked.
Big mistake I see with coaches who are trying to scale too soon, especially, is that you, and not even too soon, but even if it is really, completely right for your business in this current season of your business to be scaling, that you step away so much that you disconnect from it.
Something I see a lot, I don't see it so much with my clients because they catch this ahead of time, but I've seen it a lot with some of my mentors actually, where they got so big that they decided to outsource completely their social media.
This is one of the reasons why I say do not outsource your social media, do not outsource your creative genius because that's what people connect to.
They outsourced it, they outsourced it and the audience just stopped engaging. They stopped getting the likes. They stopped getting the validation and the ripple effect because they were at such a scale where that kind of data was mattered.
And they were, there is a very direct correlation between engagement and sales. They weren't getting any results. So the risk is that you disconnect, the risk is that you take a massive risk.
You pull away from your business massively and you you disconnect so much so that you lose the magic of you.
You don't want that to happen in the scaling side. And this is where, yeah, scaling too soon, but scaling incorrectly, scaling with a sense of disconnect is very detrimental to your business.
And some of the things that can cause that is burnout. And if you haven't grown in alignment, if you haven't got to a place of scalability from a place of how do I get to step away from this?
But I actually really enjoy this instead of it being a, I need to step away from this. Otherwise I'm going to burn out. It's, it's already, it's already a mess.
It's you're already setting yourself up for failure because when you do step away from What tends to happen is similar to what happens when you take a holiday when you haven't had one in far too long.
You get sick. The minute you step away, all of the shit can come up and then suddenly it gets 10 times worse.
And then what happens is this massive disconnect. And I just don't want that for you. And then the fourth mistake that I see is that with scalability, even if it's right, even if you don't, stay connected and you still manage to maintain the essence of you in it, what can happen is that you get very attached and there is a bit of a paradoxical context here.
What can happen is that you scale the wrong thing and then your business ends up just being the stuff that worked in the past, even though you have evolved.
And Again, I see this a lot with my mentors. I've seen a number of my mentors go through this and have to correct themselves.
I've not gone through this myself. So this is, this isn't firsthand experience, but what can happen is that when you scale, you focus so much on what the data tells you, and you don't focus on what your heart's telling you that you scaled the thing that works at the detriment of what you love.
And then suddenly. You're building a bit of a beast and a bit of a machine that's creating results, creating money, doing things for you that you don't actually love to do.
And in time, that can create a disconnect as well. And look, for other businesses, that's not a problem because other businesses tend to grow so that you can sell them so that you can completely step away.
In your coaching business, because this is a passion business, business this is a business of the heart this is a business that reflects your personal evolution and growth even when your business is scaling you need to find a way to stay with it for the business to stay in alignment with your evolution and growth so that you are always connected to your business so You may be thinking, especially with that last one, that it's probably a problem that you would be grateful for right now.
You're thinking, I'll just be glad to make clients and money and you can't fully relate to that. And that's okay. That just means you're not there yet. Those of you who are there and have scaled maybe relate to this a little bit and you're like, yeah, okay, maybe I need to get back to the heart of my business a little bit more and connect to what really lights me up before I think about scaling it again.
and leveraging those systems. So that was a big juicy episode. Before we wrap up, I want to invite you, or ask you, not invite you, ask you to, if this episode was useful to you.
If you've got one single nugget from this, and I'm guessing you have if you've listened all the way to the end so far, I would so appreciate if you left a review, gave it a few stars, subscribed on whatever platform you're listening to this on, and let me know how this landed for you.
Let me know what resonates with you when it comes to the way that I deliver the podcast, what I'm about, what I talk about, if this particular episode particularly stood out for you and if it was helpful.
And I ask you to share your favorite episode, maybe this episode, to your social media and tag me or drop me a screenshot of the review you shared and let me know that you shared it so that I can say thank you, so that I can connect to you as my audience, it would be lovely to meet you, to know you, and to say thank you for listening.
And everybody who does do that, who leaves a review and sends me a dm saying, hey, here's a screenshot.
I left this review for the podcast. And anybody who shares an episode in their stories, I'll be sharing with you as a gift to say thank you.
A free money receiving ritual that i have gone through myself and i take my clients through. as a thank you gift for taking the time to leave the review and letting me know that this episode was useful for you.
And lastly, if you're thinking, Pamella, I need to freaking work with you. How can we work together? Then let's make it happen. At the moment, I am offering a three-month container called The Shake Up.
And The Shake Up is for the coach who is all in on their business, completely committed to making the rest of this year count, who is 100% ready to receive clients and money, and 100% ready for a shake up in your strategy, your offers, your identity, so that you can show up more powerfully, more frequently, and more potently so that you can start signing those clients and calling them in.
Not next year, not waiting for the right time, right fricking now. Maybe you've listened to this four part series and you're like, okay, I'm way past the start phase.
I possibly need to do a bit of refinement in the build phase. I've got you. That's why we start off with a two hour strategy session. And we go straight into that growth phase.
Everything we discussed in the last episode and setting you up for success for when you're ready to scale, we are putting in place over the next three months together when we work together.
The offer itself is 2.5K GBP, and you get weekly coaching sessions, the two-hour strategy session, and Monday to Friday in-between session telegram support.
And I will support you on anything. You want to send me messaging, we'll review it together. You want to send me your website or landing page if you have one, We'll do that together.
Anything you've got coming up, consults, workshops, challenges, freebies that need dusting off, an offer that needs a fresh use of life.
If you need to build your confidence, if you need to look at your relationship with your nine to five life and business and how you're managing all of these things at once so that you can have more time, energy and capacity to work on your business, I've got you.
Anything and everything that comes up, that's what we do together. The shake up is for you. So to apply and to start the conversation, DM me on Instagram at coaching with Pamella.
That's P-A-M-E-L-L-A, coaching with Pamella. And just drop me a DM saying grow. If you need a consult, we can have a consult. If you're good with just discussing it over the DMs, maybe you've listened to enough episodes and you're in and you just want to get started ASAP, amazing.
If you're somewhere in between, drop me a message. No question is too big, too small, too silly, too large, too stupid. All of it is welcome. All of it matters. Your questions matter.
As I mentioned earlier, the importance of supporting clients to come to a really good decision. And either way, no matter what happens, if we work together or not, it will be so lovely to connect to you and have this discussion about whether or not the shakeup is the place for you.
But if you're ready for this and you're curious and you're leaning in, and especially if it's just a yes, then DM me the word grow at coachingwithpamella on my Instagram to get started.
All right, I'll see you in the next episode.
