WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.880 Welcome back everyone to the game in our audio first series. 2 00:00:03.880 --> 00:00:05.520 I've been making these as audio, 3 00:00:05.520 --> 00:00:06.640 y'all have been telling me that you like it, 4 00:00:06.640 --> 00:00:08.160 so I will keep doing it. 5 00:00:08.160 --> 00:00:10.640 And today I want to talk about scaling deliverables. 6 00:00:10.640 --> 00:00:12.360 All right, so this is a follow up 7 00:00:12.360 --> 00:00:15.040 on the unscalable value scalable kind of continuum 8 00:00:15.040 --> 00:00:15.880 that I was talking about before, 9 00:00:15.880 --> 00:00:16.680 but I have a different framework 10 00:00:16.680 --> 00:00:18.240 that I want to introduce to you today. 11 00:00:18.240 --> 00:00:20.440 I have the easy to sell hard to fill continuum 12 00:00:20.440 --> 00:00:24.120 that exists, but I wanted to kind of zoom in on that 13 00:00:24.120 --> 00:00:27.680 and walk you through two versions of scaling. 14 00:00:27.720 --> 00:00:30.080 This may be a shorter pod, 15 00:00:30.080 --> 00:00:31.320 but I think for the right person, 16 00:00:31.320 --> 00:00:32.440 it may be game changing. 17 00:00:32.440 --> 00:00:35.320 So let's say that you have a service business, 18 00:00:35.320 --> 00:00:36.720 which 78% of businesses are. 19 00:00:36.720 --> 00:00:38.240 And if you're a software's a service, 20 00:00:38.240 --> 00:00:39.960 then you still deliver the same things that a service does. 21 00:00:39.960 --> 00:00:42.360 You just do it with a machine, right? 22 00:00:42.360 --> 00:00:43.280 If you start in the beginning, 23 00:00:43.280 --> 00:00:46.240 which many people do as one-on-one at whatever they do, 24 00:00:46.240 --> 00:00:48.840 then there are ways that you can scale it. 25 00:00:48.840 --> 00:00:51.040 And there are basically two continuums 26 00:00:51.040 --> 00:00:53.280 that you can quote scale. 27 00:00:53.280 --> 00:00:55.640 So one is that you keep doing the thing, 28 00:00:55.640 --> 00:00:59.880 but you increase the ratio of you to customers. 29 00:00:59.880 --> 00:01:02.080 So you go from being a one-on-one person 30 00:01:02.080 --> 00:01:03.320 to be a one-on-four person, 31 00:01:03.320 --> 00:01:04.480 to a one-on-10 person, 32 00:01:04.480 --> 00:01:06.200 to a one-on-100 person, 33 00:01:06.200 --> 00:01:08.280 to a one-on-1000 person. 34 00:01:08.280 --> 00:01:11.520 And in those settings, you can also change the medium. 35 00:01:11.520 --> 00:01:13.960 So it's like, I can be one-on-one in person 36 00:01:13.960 --> 00:01:15.960 versus one-on-one remote. 37 00:01:15.960 --> 00:01:17.800 And I could change the one-on-four in person 38 00:01:17.800 --> 00:01:18.760 versus one-on-one remote, 39 00:01:18.760 --> 00:01:20.400 and that might be more valuable. 40 00:01:20.400 --> 00:01:23.800 And I could go from one-on-one to 100 remote 41 00:01:23.800 --> 00:01:25.400 to one-on-100 in person. 42 00:01:25.400 --> 00:01:27.320 That would probably be more valuable. 43 00:01:27.320 --> 00:01:29.040 And so there are other variables that you can play with 44 00:01:29.040 --> 00:01:30.440 beyond just your ratio, 45 00:01:30.440 --> 00:01:33.400 but the ratio is probably the most significant one 46 00:01:33.400 --> 00:01:35.000 that will change as you scale. 47 00:01:35.000 --> 00:01:39.680 One version of that is just more fractionalized access to you. 48 00:01:39.680 --> 00:01:41.640 The alternative version is the version 49 00:01:41.640 --> 00:01:43.120 where you add bodies. 50 00:01:43.120 --> 00:01:45.760 So that's where you take what you are good at, 51 00:01:45.760 --> 00:01:48.360 and then you try and break it into constituent parts. 52 00:01:48.360 --> 00:01:50.040 And so when you do your process, 53 00:01:50.040 --> 00:01:51.400 whether it's you crack people's backs, 54 00:01:51.400 --> 00:01:54.240 you fix, you know, you're some expert at something, 55 00:01:54.240 --> 00:01:56.240 you have something that you're very good at. 56 00:01:56.240 --> 00:01:58.400 But fundamentally, there are just behaviors 57 00:01:58.400 --> 00:02:00.320 that are based on different conditions. 58 00:02:00.320 --> 00:02:02.200 And so when you see X, you think Y, 59 00:02:02.200 --> 00:02:04.160 when you see Z, you think W, or you do W, 60 00:02:04.160 --> 00:02:05.480 or you recommend W. 61 00:02:05.480 --> 00:02:07.840 The work of creating the scalable solution 62 00:02:07.840 --> 00:02:12.600 that does not require you requires you to break it into parts, 63 00:02:12.600 --> 00:02:15.400 and then drill other people on how to do 64 00:02:15.400 --> 00:02:16.920 each of those individual parts. 65 00:02:16.920 --> 00:02:18.200 And sometimes it's multiple people 66 00:02:18.200 --> 00:02:20.000 who do multiple parts of a singular process 67 00:02:20.000 --> 00:02:22.880 that you on your own could do on your own. 68 00:02:22.880 --> 00:02:27.520 The second path creates the more sellable business. 69 00:02:27.520 --> 00:02:29.800 That is what creates a set that other people 70 00:02:29.800 --> 00:02:31.160 could eventually buy from you. 71 00:02:31.160 --> 00:02:32.800 And if you look at the ultimate versions of these, 72 00:02:32.800 --> 00:02:34.480 you look at, you know, like consulting 73 00:02:34.480 --> 00:02:36.200 as a very, quote, unscalable business, 74 00:02:36.200 --> 00:02:37.360 I put quotes on that. 75 00:02:37.360 --> 00:02:40.600 But the people who say that also don't even like recognize 76 00:02:40.600 --> 00:02:43.720 that like McKinsey is a multinational, 77 00:02:43.720 --> 00:02:45.320 massive multi-billion dollar company 78 00:02:45.320 --> 00:02:46.920 that's a consulting firm, right? 79 00:02:46.920 --> 00:02:49.680 Accenture, same thing, Bane, same thing, 80 00:02:49.680 --> 00:02:52.440 Gartner, same thing, PWC, which is accounting, 81 00:02:52.440 --> 00:02:54.560 same thing, Urson Young, same thing. 82 00:02:54.560 --> 00:02:55.800 So it's like we have this idea is like, 83 00:02:55.800 --> 00:02:57.720 I don't think this, of course, is scalable, 84 00:02:57.720 --> 00:02:59.080 it just takes work. 85 00:02:59.080 --> 00:03:02.040 Like we have cities in the middle of the ocean. 86 00:03:02.040 --> 00:03:03.840 We can do this, we can hire someone 87 00:03:03.840 --> 00:03:06.240 and teach them how to do the same thing as us. 88 00:03:06.240 --> 00:03:08.880 Those are basically the two paths that you have. 89 00:03:08.880 --> 00:03:11.440 You have a more fractionalized access to you, 90 00:03:11.440 --> 00:03:13.720 or you teach other people to do the same thing you do 91 00:03:13.720 --> 00:03:16.520 until eventually a process of people put together 92 00:03:16.520 --> 00:03:17.560 creates the aqua. 93 00:03:17.560 --> 00:03:20.480 Now there's a third bucket that I don't talk about as much, 94 00:03:20.480 --> 00:03:22.640 but is absolutely a solution, 95 00:03:22.640 --> 00:03:24.520 kind of a hybrid between these things, 96 00:03:24.520 --> 00:03:26.000 which is, and this is, I would say, 97 00:03:26.000 --> 00:03:28.960 more accurately descriptor of what Bane McKinsey 98 00:03:28.960 --> 00:03:31.600 all of these kind of like big firms do, 99 00:03:31.600 --> 00:03:34.200 which is that they have a hierarchy 100 00:03:34.200 --> 00:03:37.640 of junior, middle level, and senior management. 101 00:03:37.640 --> 00:03:40.000 And by doing that, that gives a career path 102 00:03:40.000 --> 00:03:42.520 for the younger guys to go to the senior management level. 103 00:03:42.520 --> 00:03:45.560 And the senior managers give that little bit of credibility 104 00:03:45.560 --> 00:03:47.040 to whatever the work, the analysts 105 00:03:47.040 --> 00:03:48.600 and the middle level guys did, 106 00:03:48.600 --> 00:03:49.840 whether it's investment banking, 107 00:03:49.840 --> 00:03:51.960 or like I said, consulting or accounting, 108 00:03:51.960 --> 00:03:53.080 it's still knowledge work. 109 00:03:53.080 --> 00:03:54.280 Same thing works in law firms. 110 00:03:54.280 --> 00:03:55.800 They have senior guys and they've got junior guys. 111 00:03:55.800 --> 00:03:57.560 The junior guys are doing most of the grunt work, 112 00:03:57.560 --> 00:03:59.080 but the senior guys are the ones that sign off 113 00:03:59.080 --> 00:03:59.920 and say that it's good. 114 00:03:59.920 --> 00:04:01.880 They're the ones who risk their reputation 115 00:04:01.880 --> 00:04:02.720 and their reputation in the firm, 116 00:04:02.720 --> 00:04:03.720 whereas the smaller guys actually do 117 00:04:03.720 --> 00:04:05.200 the majority of the leg work. 118 00:04:05.200 --> 00:04:06.440 And so this is fairly typical 119 00:04:06.440 --> 00:04:08.880 within most kind of knowledge-based businesses. 120 00:04:08.880 --> 00:04:12.320 The difference there is that it's actually many to one. 121 00:04:12.320 --> 00:04:13.600 And so I'm talking about scaling to deliverable 122 00:04:13.600 --> 00:04:14.920 of like it's one on one. 123 00:04:14.920 --> 00:04:17.480 A higher version of that is many to one, 124 00:04:17.480 --> 00:04:19.960 which is you basically pull yourself out 125 00:04:19.960 --> 00:04:21.800 of doing all of the work, 126 00:04:21.800 --> 00:04:24.680 but you have other people that do parts of the work 127 00:04:24.680 --> 00:04:26.320 and then you sign off on it. 128 00:04:26.320 --> 00:04:27.520 And so this allows you to kind of get 129 00:04:27.520 --> 00:04:28.600 a little bit of the best of both worlds, 130 00:04:28.600 --> 00:04:29.440 rather than being like, okay, 131 00:04:29.440 --> 00:04:31.520 I can only run webinars to a thousand people, right? 132 00:04:31.520 --> 00:04:33.280 So that's like kind of a third path 133 00:04:33.280 --> 00:04:35.120 that you can have along this continuum. 134 00:04:35.120 --> 00:04:36.680 Now, if you're like, okay, 135 00:04:36.680 --> 00:04:39.080 well, I'm stuck at one to one right now. 136 00:04:39.080 --> 00:04:40.240 What do I do next? 137 00:04:40.240 --> 00:04:41.520 It actually, in my opinion, 138 00:04:41.520 --> 00:04:44.040 depends working backwards from your goal. 139 00:04:44.040 --> 00:04:47.000 If you go fractionalize access to you, 140 00:04:47.000 --> 00:04:49.760 in my opinion, you will make more money. 141 00:04:49.760 --> 00:04:51.800 You will make more money in terms of income. 142 00:04:51.800 --> 00:04:53.880 Because what happens is you'll create this virtuous loopable, 143 00:04:53.880 --> 00:04:56.080 it'll force you to just get better and better 144 00:04:56.080 --> 00:04:58.120 at doing whatever your skill is. 145 00:04:58.120 --> 00:04:59.880 Look at like a Tony Robbins, right? 146 00:04:59.880 --> 00:05:01.680 He was started, you know, one on one, 147 00:05:01.680 --> 00:05:03.120 and he kept scaling up and scaling up. 148 00:05:03.120 --> 00:05:05.440 And now he does global events, 149 00:05:05.440 --> 00:05:07.840 you know, remotely with 10,000 people, 150 00:05:07.840 --> 00:05:11.440 50,000 people at once, but he's still him. 151 00:05:11.440 --> 00:05:13.120 And so trying to transfer the skill set 152 00:05:13.120 --> 00:05:13.960 that is Tony Robbins, 153 00:05:13.960 --> 00:05:15.760 because he is absolutely skill set. 154 00:05:15.760 --> 00:05:18.440 He just has a lot of skills that take time to learn 155 00:05:18.440 --> 00:05:20.440 that it's very difficult for other people to replicate. 156 00:05:20.440 --> 00:05:22.800 He could have a number of people 157 00:05:22.800 --> 00:05:23.840 that run the Tony process. 158 00:05:23.840 --> 00:05:25.000 And I think he does, 159 00:05:25.000 --> 00:05:27.840 but I would bet dollars to donuts 160 00:05:27.840 --> 00:05:29.000 that the largest revenue driver 161 00:05:29.000 --> 00:05:31.080 and specifically value driver and brand driver 162 00:05:31.080 --> 00:05:35.200 of his business is fractionalized access to him. 163 00:05:35.200 --> 00:05:36.680 It's where you consume the stuff 164 00:05:36.680 --> 00:05:38.640 that he does live one to many, 165 00:05:38.640 --> 00:05:41.160 or products that he's recorded in the past 166 00:05:41.160 --> 00:05:44.520 where it's still him with his star power, again, one to many. 167 00:05:44.560 --> 00:05:47.760 Now, the downside of that is you have key man risk, right? 168 00:05:47.760 --> 00:05:49.040 Which is that if you leave, 169 00:05:49.040 --> 00:05:50.480 then the business doesn't work. 170 00:05:50.480 --> 00:05:53.040 But I want to push back on this a lot, 171 00:05:53.040 --> 00:05:54.120 or a little bit at least, 172 00:05:54.120 --> 00:05:54.800 for those of you who are like, 173 00:05:54.800 --> 00:05:56.480 well, I want to build a scale blast set. 174 00:05:56.480 --> 00:05:59.120 Well, and of course, it sounds like running coming from me 175 00:05:59.120 --> 00:06:00.800 for a person who sold one of these businesses. 176 00:06:00.800 --> 00:06:03.520 But if you plan on working for the rest of your life, 177 00:06:03.520 --> 00:06:05.200 which you probably do, 178 00:06:05.200 --> 00:06:07.360 it might be worth extending the time rise 179 00:06:07.360 --> 00:06:09.160 and getting better. 180 00:06:09.160 --> 00:06:10.640 The scaling the deliverable part of it 181 00:06:10.640 --> 00:06:12.960 of going one to many will force you to keep up loving. 182 00:06:12.960 --> 00:06:14.200 You see, go from one on one to one on four. 183 00:06:14.240 --> 00:06:15.200 Go from one on four to one on 10. 184 00:06:15.200 --> 00:06:16.440 You go from one on 10 to one on 20, 185 00:06:16.440 --> 00:06:19.120 one on 20 to one to 100, one to 100, one to one to 1000, right? 186 00:06:19.120 --> 00:06:20.240 And at each of those levels, 187 00:06:20.240 --> 00:06:23.600 you'll have to develop more varied and deeper skills. 188 00:06:23.600 --> 00:06:26.040 And so you'll actually just keep getting better. 189 00:06:26.040 --> 00:06:28.440 And I've just never been against getting better 190 00:06:28.440 --> 00:06:30.240 at anything, right? 191 00:06:30.240 --> 00:06:32.200 If you follow along that path 192 00:06:32.200 --> 00:06:34.320 because it's fractionalized access to you, 193 00:06:34.320 --> 00:06:36.520 you will gain the benefit of having many, many customers, 194 00:06:36.520 --> 00:06:38.840 but very low or light delivery 195 00:06:38.840 --> 00:06:40.320 in terms of number of head count. 196 00:06:40.320 --> 00:06:42.680 And so you'll be able to make significantly more profit 197 00:06:42.680 --> 00:06:43.520 in general. 198 00:06:43.520 --> 00:06:45.520 You will be able to live the whole time as you grow, 199 00:06:45.520 --> 00:06:47.520 being able to reinvest lots of that cash 200 00:06:47.520 --> 00:06:50.440 into other things, including developing more skills. 201 00:06:50.440 --> 00:06:52.280 But if you do wanna build the, 202 00:06:52.280 --> 00:06:54.360 I wanna sell this thing, path, 203 00:06:54.360 --> 00:06:58.120 then I would encourage you to either go the many to one path 204 00:06:58.120 --> 00:07:00.480 as an intermediary, which is you chunk it out 205 00:07:00.480 --> 00:07:01.640 and then you give pieces of it, 206 00:07:01.640 --> 00:07:02.800 rather than saying, 207 00:07:02.800 --> 00:07:04.120 and this is where I think a lot of people make them stay, 208 00:07:04.120 --> 00:07:06.080 and I've really yet to see someone succeed with this 209 00:07:06.080 --> 00:07:09.400 at scale, which is I'm just gonna hire people 210 00:07:09.400 --> 00:07:11.480 and teach them everything that I do. 211 00:07:11.480 --> 00:07:13.480 Because it's just really unlikely 212 00:07:13.480 --> 00:07:15.400 that if you're really good at this thing, 213 00:07:15.400 --> 00:07:16.840 if you're really good at it, 214 00:07:16.840 --> 00:07:19.080 it's probably taking you some time to get really good at it. 215 00:07:19.080 --> 00:07:21.000 And if you can teach somebody else to do the thing 216 00:07:21.000 --> 00:07:24.440 that you do in like a weekend or a week 217 00:07:24.440 --> 00:07:25.960 because you're onboarding them, 218 00:07:25.960 --> 00:07:29.560 then you're probably not teaching them fully how to do, 219 00:07:29.560 --> 00:07:31.880 because there's probably other ancillary skills 220 00:07:31.880 --> 00:07:34.200 and behaviors that you do that make you the star 221 00:07:34.200 --> 00:07:37.520 or the authority of your expert that they don't have. 222 00:07:37.520 --> 00:07:39.040 And so you end up really just selling 223 00:07:39.040 --> 00:07:41.120 a watered down or diluted version, 224 00:07:41.120 --> 00:07:44.320 and I would personally rather sell a fractionalized version 225 00:07:44.320 --> 00:07:46.520 rather than a diluted version. 226 00:07:46.520 --> 00:07:49.880 I'd rather sell you a smaller cup of milk, 227 00:07:49.880 --> 00:07:52.120 but the milk is still just as good, 228 00:07:52.120 --> 00:07:54.880 then sell you a cup of the same size milk 229 00:07:54.880 --> 00:07:56.720 that I added a bunch of water to. 230 00:07:56.720 --> 00:07:58.680 That's fundamentally the difference. 231 00:07:58.680 --> 00:08:03.080 And in order to sell the milk in as many glasses 232 00:08:03.080 --> 00:08:05.760 at scale and have the sellable business, 233 00:08:05.760 --> 00:08:09.520 then I think it's where you create the partner structure, 234 00:08:09.520 --> 00:08:10.720 the firm structure, 235 00:08:10.720 --> 00:08:12.680 that all of these professional services businesses 236 00:08:12.680 --> 00:08:14.280 oftentimes end up in, 237 00:08:14.280 --> 00:08:17.000 which is you have these layers of people 238 00:08:17.000 --> 00:08:18.840 who develop more and more skills over time 239 00:08:18.840 --> 00:08:21.320 until they eventually over years 240 00:08:21.320 --> 00:08:23.440 can become a senior partner, not weeks. 241 00:08:23.440 --> 00:08:25.080 When you're like, oh, I got an onboard a coach, 242 00:08:25.080 --> 00:08:27.680 oh, I got an onboard another account representative. 243 00:08:27.680 --> 00:08:29.320 If what you do is actually valuable, 244 00:08:29.320 --> 00:08:31.000 then you probably can't teach it in the week. 245 00:08:31.000 --> 00:08:32.840 And I think that's the TLDR of that. 246 00:08:32.840 --> 00:08:34.160 Now, can you sell it? 247 00:08:34.160 --> 00:08:36.040 Sure, you can sell people on it, 248 00:08:36.040 --> 00:08:37.440 but they're not gonna stay. 249 00:08:37.440 --> 00:08:39.440 And I think that's really what this comes down to. 250 00:08:39.440 --> 00:08:41.000 If I'm looking at my business 251 00:08:41.000 --> 00:08:43.400 and I'm like, what do I want my next step to be? 252 00:08:43.400 --> 00:08:45.240 If I wanna sell this thing immediately, 253 00:08:45.240 --> 00:08:47.920 then I'm probably gonna look at the partner path 254 00:08:47.920 --> 00:08:50.520 of breaking this up and having grunt guys 255 00:08:50.520 --> 00:08:52.480 do a lot of the leg work using templates 256 00:08:52.480 --> 00:08:54.600 and then working their work with experience and repetition 257 00:08:54.600 --> 00:08:57.000 to know how to contextualize those examples 258 00:08:57.000 --> 00:08:59.560 to particular businesses or use cases. 259 00:08:59.560 --> 00:09:02.560 If I don't care about celebrity on any kind of short term, 260 00:09:02.560 --> 00:09:04.800 then I'm going to just increase the factionalization 261 00:09:04.800 --> 00:09:08.960 of access over time so that I can still, 262 00:09:08.960 --> 00:09:10.760 basically make even more the benefit 263 00:09:10.760 --> 00:09:14.680 of lots of customers without the cost of lots of headcount. 264 00:09:14.680 --> 00:09:18.000 So just a thought that I've had in thinking about lots 265 00:09:18.000 --> 00:09:20.120 of education and really knowledge, 266 00:09:20.120 --> 00:09:21.720 not even education, just knowledge-based businesses, 267 00:09:21.720 --> 00:09:25.480 which be fair, a lot of service businesses fundamentally 268 00:09:25.480 --> 00:09:27.240 exist based on somebody knowing how to do something 269 00:09:27.240 --> 00:09:28.320 and somebody else doesn't. 270 00:09:28.320 --> 00:09:30.040 And I think that those are three different paths 271 00:09:30.040 --> 00:09:32.040 that you can consider when scaling 272 00:09:32.040 --> 00:09:33.600 and the pros and cons of each. 273 00:09:33.600 --> 00:09:35.360 I think the reason that a lot of people don't do 274 00:09:35.360 --> 00:09:36.920 the kind of like the firm path, 275 00:09:36.920 --> 00:09:38.680 which is like, I'll have junior analysts 276 00:09:38.720 --> 00:09:40.560 and then I'll have senior analysts and VPs 277 00:09:40.560 --> 00:09:43.000 and moving around is that you have to have a brand 278 00:09:43.000 --> 00:09:45.600 to attract intelligent people and a lot of people don't. 279 00:09:45.600 --> 00:09:46.960 And you also have to have an incentive structure 280 00:09:46.960 --> 00:09:48.800 that encourages them to want to stay over the long haul 281 00:09:48.800 --> 00:09:50.200 because people who are really intelligent 282 00:09:50.200 --> 00:09:51.640 are thinking five years ahead. 283 00:09:51.640 --> 00:09:53.240 They're thinking, what is this going to do for my career? 284 00:09:53.240 --> 00:09:54.520 If you have no path for them, 285 00:09:54.520 --> 00:09:56.920 be like, you're just a coach at my company. 286 00:09:56.920 --> 00:09:57.920 I don't think there's anything wrong with that. 287 00:09:57.920 --> 00:09:59.640 It's just like there's not a lot of progression there. 288 00:09:59.640 --> 00:10:01.520 Maybe you can see your coach, okay. 289 00:10:01.520 --> 00:10:04.640 But it's just more difficult to attract that level of talent 290 00:10:04.640 --> 00:10:06.240 and create an opportunity that's big enough 291 00:10:06.240 --> 00:10:07.960 that they will want to join on 292 00:10:07.960 --> 00:10:10.200 and be willing to commit to learning the skill set 293 00:10:10.200 --> 00:10:12.120 at a much deeper level than just like, 294 00:10:12.120 --> 00:10:13.720 hey, we have a one week on boarding 295 00:10:13.720 --> 00:10:16.480 and then we're just gonna fill up your roster, right? 296 00:10:16.480 --> 00:10:18.200 Like if you're talking in rosters, 297 00:10:18.200 --> 00:10:21.200 it might not be the level of person that you want. 298 00:10:21.200 --> 00:10:23.320 And they're probably actually delivering 299 00:10:23.320 --> 00:10:26.200 watered down milk rather than fractionalized delicious.