Creating a Scalable Product

Mike Killen: Hi there and welcome back. In this video, we’re going to talk about creating a scalable product particularly how to create a product that you can sell over and over and over for profit and something that already uses the systems, and processes, and services that you already provide. By the end of this video you’ll be able to build a scalable product. I’m going to take you through the process that allows you to create a new product that you can sell repeatedly over and over and over for profit using the scalable framework that we’ve talked about already that also currently takes a process that you’re using at the moment and allowing multiple people to go through it rather than having to be the only person that delivers it.

The 80/20 rule as it crops up everywhere, we find that 80% of our work particularly as consultants and single-person businesses or microbusinesses and entrepreneurs, 80% of it can be delivered at scale and we can use that time saved to grow our business. I find this a lot whenever I’m consulting with a lot of customers. I find that the majority of their time is spent delivering the same kind of, uh, processes and rules and work over and over and over to the same group of people and we’re going to be able to take that time that you use all of the time, the 80%, and create a product that allows someone else or something else to deliver which will allow you to focus on growing the business. We’re going to decide the end result and the transformation. So that’s the first thing we’re going to look at. We’re also going to look at the stages that you go through to reach that transformation and we’re going to choose a recording process.

I’m going to go through the three different media that are available to you to deliver a scalable product. The first and the most important piece is to decide the end result and the transformation. When we’re creating a scalable product, it’s so important to understand where do we want the customer to be. After they’ve bought this and after they consumed the product, where do we want them to be? And the easiest way to think about that is to think, “Well, where are my customers when I finish working with them?” Let’s say that you’re a marketing consultant that helps a customer define a niche for their business and so the transformation is they are now a business with a clear and defined niche and a marketing strategy on how to reach and appro-, and approach that niche, that’s where the customer wants to be. They want to be where they have an understanding of what their niche is.

If we were to take it in a completely different direction where you could say you’re a coach that helps people lose weight through running and through diet. You’re a health and fitness coach. So where do they want to be? They want to be at a healthier weight and they want to have a better lifestyle. When we understand what the customer wants, we can understand the desired transformation. So what’s the overall transformation that someone goes to? There’s a kind of before and after shot that particularly the fitness industry uses. But we say, before working with you and before going through this process a customer is unclear on their niche, they’re unsure of where they want to go, they’re not entirely sure who they’re targeting, they’re struggling to find customers, the transformation that you help them go on, that’s the process.

The transformation is, by the end, they then have a, uh, defined niche, they know the target customer that they’re going after. There’s a process and a transformation that they’re going after. That desired transformation is critical, understanding what that desired transformation is. And then we can kind of step above that and think, “What’s the most common end result that you deliver?” When you first sit down with the customer and you deliver your work, think about what they need most of the time. It could be that most of the time they need a logo or they need some kind of design work. Maybe most of the time they need to understand who their niche is. Maybe a lot of time they need an audit done on their website. Maybe they need to understand the product lifecycle of the new app that they’re developing. Maybe the most common end result that you help someone do is run their first 5K race or 10K race.

Think about the most common end result that you deliver or if there’s a range of products or a range of services that you provide, think about the, the end result that is most desired, uh, by your customers and by your audience. When we know the result and the end result and the transformation that we want to take people on, the rest of the product creation becomes very, very easy. This is now the stage where we think through the individual stages that take someone through that transformation. What you need to do is list out the five to 10 milestones that a customer needs to pass in order to reach that transformation. For example, if you help people define a niche for their market, there are going to be five to 10 milestones that they have to pass in order to be at a business who now has a defined niche and a defined marketing strategy.

In order to lose weight and run their first 5K race, someone has to go through a series of milestones in order to be able to run that first 5K race. And you need to write down the five to 10 . . . they could be relatively broad, that’s absolutely fine, but the five to 10 milestones that customers need to pass in order to reach that transformation, maybe they’re, um, things they need to achieve or things they need to do, their activities. For example, if someone was going to define a niche, they need to brainstem-, brainstorm out all of their product ideas. That’s milestone number one. Milestone number two is look at their current customer database. Milestone number three is do some market research. We’re going to look at the five to 10 broad milestones or stages that you help them go through in order to reach that transformation because then we have a map and a journey in order to be able to help them reach that.

Our job then is to write out the process that you take customers on during your delivery. For each one of those milestones maybe there’s a worksheet, maybe there’s a process or a workshop, maybe it’s consultation, and you have to write down the individual steps that make up that milestone because what you’re going to be doing is going through each one of those steps per milestone and delivering all of those milestones. It might be that each milestone is an hour long webinar and you sell six of those webinars to help people go on a complete journey. It might be that each one of those milestones is a workbook and an audio guide that comes along with it. And if you were to sit down and teach a customer how to go through that transformation right now, think about the milestones that you’re going to have to go through. They might not even be in a particularly order.

I happen to know that helping customers build, you know, a very complex marketing automation funnels and systems it’s not as simple as saying, “Well, we start with your email list and then we move on to remarketing and then we move on to landing pages.” There’s a lot of things that happen at the same time. But if I write out the milestones that they do have to accomplish, they do need to have their C.R.M. updated, they do need to have their Facebook page, uh, you know, set up inside the business manager, they do need to have their website pixeled for retargeting. As long as those are marked out, I can then say, “Well, for each individual milestone how do I get the pixel in the website? How do I set up their C.R.M. system?” And by going through those individual steps, I think about, “What if I was to sit down and teach someone this and go through that process with them, could I check off each one of these? What would make it easier?”

Well, in this case we typically have a workbook for example or a worksheet. We have something that we can give them or if I’m just going to record it for them and create an audio guide for them, that’s what they want to go through. You need to write up the process you take your customers on during the delivery process. And then finally we need to choose a recording process. So we have video just like we’ve got here, where you could break it down into a series of slides, use a camera and a microphone to record through the process. Video is fantastic. It’s slightly harder to consume and requires a little bit more attention from people. But if you’re going over quite complex procedures or things that might need a Screen Share for example if you’re going to show someone how to use Google Analytics or a piece of design software that you might need to physically record the screen. Audio might not be enough.

Video is now so, so, so easy to create. It’s relatively affordable as well as the price has come down dramatically and you can package yourself and, uh, deliver it at a premium price as well. Video comes at a fantastic price. Audio is much faster to create. For example, if you’re more motivational or guide-based, you can absolutely just create an audio guide. We have multiple audio products where I have sat down with a customer, I’ve consulted them, I’ve talked to them through two, three hours’ worth of material. I’ve recorded the whole thing and after that I put the recording up on our website, and we’ve sold that as a program to other customers who also want to learn how to close a customer on the phone or do market research or discover their perfect customer avatar.

A lot of it can be done just via audio and also allows people to listen to it via their headphones or in the car without having to, um, you know, consume and sit the co-, sit the content out in front of a screen. Audiobooks are a fantastic example of this where someone has written up the process in a book but the audio version allows people to consume it in other ways. And finally we have documentation. This could be physically writing a book, like I did with From Single to Scale. It could be worksheets. It could be processes. It could be documentation. There’s a lot to be said for the written version. Or you can combine all three into a very sophisticated high quality product. My advice would be, don’t think too much about how you want to do it. Get it started. Think of the first process that you want to go through and then come back and deliver each individual stage in a way that makes sense for you.

Don’t feel you have to get everything perfect straightaway because you can always come back and add to the product later on. So what if you think that your customers won’t pay for a recording? I totally understand how you feel. Uh, a lot of consultants, uh, think the same way. We think that they want our time when in actual fact if they did just want our time, we could hang around just watch movies and play chess with them, they’re probably not going to pay us. What they do want is the results. They want the transformation and you’d be surprised at what customers will pay when they can learn or do something at their own pace. The . . . doing that at their own pace, the privilege of doing it at their pace is considered a premium.

And if you’re able to call them up or do accountability with them, or run through the process with them in a group setting, so if you sell 10 products to people and you say, “Well, we’ll do a group call once a month just to see how people are getting on,” they will pay a premium for that service. You’re also giving yourself a chance to charge higher fees for the price . . . uh, higher prices and higher fees for the chance for people to work on you one-on-one. Let’s say you put together a very basic course. You take someone through the process of how to choose a niche, they aren’t going to be just satisfied thinking, “Well, I know everything about this now.” If anything, they’re going to start thinking, “Well, I’d love to know more about desi-, defining a niche and going after the market strategy. I wonder if Mike is available for one-on-one,” and that’s when you can charge a higher price.

You end up working with fewer customers for a higher revenue and you spend less time delivering one-on-one because the majority of your work, 80% of your job is done via the recording and via the scalable product that you’ve delivered to your other customers. The most important thing to remember is that results do not equal delivery. If people want to learn how to do something and achieve a certain transformation or achieve a certain goal, then they’re able to do that via a multitude of different media. They could do it via podcasts. They could do it via online courses, via books, via workshops, via documentation, via apps, via software. There are multiple ways for you to be able to deliver the same results. Instead, you’re now able to spend time building your business.

If you don’t do this, if you stick with the way where you are delivering the work to your customers, you are delivering the results to your customers individually, you’re spending time going over the same processes over and over and over where you could be spending time growing your business and finding more customers and helping more people. So your action for this video is to choose your transformation and write up the stages that you’ll teach and record and I’ll see you on the next video.