How do you double your service-based business without adding more work?
By embracing the concept of strategic constraint and the Pareto Principle.
Instead of spreading yourself too thin trying to do it all, you want to make it strategic and take a few actions that will create most of your results. Such decisions are based on positive emotions rather than fear. By focusing on the 20% of efforts that yield 80% of results your business will scale more effectively.
And if you're ready to work with me to help you double your business without overhwlem or adding hours to your schedule, book a sales call with me here - https://calendly.com/maggie-s2l/discovery-call
How do you double your service-based business without adding more work?
By embracing the concept of strategic constraint and the Pareto Principle.
Instead of spreading yourself too thin trying to do it all, you want to make it strategic and take a few actions that will create most of your results. Such decisions are based on positive emotions rather than fear. By focusing on the 20% of efforts that yield 80% of results your business will scale more effectively.
And if you're ready to work with me to help you double your business without overhwlem or adding hours to your schedule, book a sales call with me here - https://calendly.com/maggie-s2l/discovery-call
Maggie Perotin (00:00:01) - Your business exists because you had the idea to start it. Everything begins in our minds. That's why your business results cannot outgrow your current level of thinking. Do you want to serve more clients, make more money without working more, or burning yourself out? Grow yourself first as a leader of your business because that's who you are as a leader. Even if you're the only person in your business right now, when you lead yourself first, the business results will always follow. My name is Maggie Barton. I'm an international business and leadership coach, an expert in business mindset, strategy and high performance. I created the Diamond Effect podcast to help you elevate your thinking, expand your perspective, and through it, grow your business without overwhelm. So let's get started. Hello. Hello, everybody. Welcome to Diamond Effect podcast. I'm very happy to be here with you again. It's a week 141 and therefore episode 141. And today I want to talk about something that might not be talked about a lot, but I want to talk about strategic constraint, as I call it, which is really a way to say less is more even when you're growing your business.
Maggie Perotin (00:01:30) - And that idea came from me, of course, coaching my clients and observing entrepreneurs were many people spread themselves so thin and try to go in so many different directions, trying to achieve their goals and believing that this one new thing is going to be the solution to all their problems, and it's going to give them the results that they want fast, without putting in the work, without failure, without learning, and so on. Even with my clients who I help get focused and constrained and work only on priorities, get that need or get pulled in that direction. Of course I don't let them if it doesn't make sense, but they sometimes feel that, especially when they feel stressed and frustrated sometimes when a lower income months happen, right? So I did talk about lower income months in the episode 133. So have a look and check. It's a great episode and help you deal with that. But I always say you don't want to make decisions in your business, whether they are short term or long term, coming from panic and fear and frustration because of whatever situation you're in, in your business, which you want to take make decisions from, is courage and determination and belief or whatever else.
Maggie Perotin (00:02:58) - More positive and serving emotion. Because when you make decisions from more of a negative emotions, they will usually go to let's go to the new things, let's do more of something we've never done before, because the brain will want to get that instant gratification and get consoled by the new shiny object. Okay, but very often that doesn't work. And here is why. So there is this principle, and you might have heard about it that is called paradox. Principle in the nutshell. It says that 80% of our results come from 20% of action, or 80% of the outcomes come from 20% of effort. Okay, so in business, it could look like 80% of your income comes from 20% of your biggest clients, or 80% of profit comes from 20% of the offers that you have because they're most profitable. Okay. It's like 8020 rule. That's what it is. Or sometimes it also known as low of vital few in it. I found that accurate at least directionally in business many, many times in many, many different areas, not only profit and income, but also in KPIs.
Maggie Perotin (00:04:25) - So key performance indicators, team leadership operations, whatever you can measure when you zoom out and look at the results of those measurements. Usually the 8020 rule applies directionally. So think about it now that if it was true in your business, which I promise you it is, how can you use this principle and knowing what that is to your benefit, to compound your growth, to grow faster. And that's definitely one of the things that I coach my clients on and change their mindset about, but also strategically make decisions having that rule in mind. Even when we create their winning strategy together, we pick the actions that are going to take in the strategies that they are going to apply to grow their business. With that principle in mind, today, I want to give you a couple of examples and tips that you can take in. Think about them in your business and how can you apply it to improve your results and grow. So the first area you can apply it to is your offers or the services. Different type of services you offer to your client.
Maggie Perotin (00:05:44) - Not trying to be everything to everyone and having a selection of almost the same things, but little tweaks where it just gets even difficult for the client to decide what. Day one, but rather strategically thinking about the ideal clients you want to attract and what are their problems. And they create just couple few. Whatever your business is, core offers that will serve them the best, and that will be also easy for them to choose to know which one is for whatever problem you're solving. So we'll give you some examples. In my coaching business for this moment, I only have two offers and I don't deviate from that. And I only offer those two things because I know that the clients I want to attract will fit either in one or the other. So the first offer is my Diamond Effect small coaching group, where I help early stage entrepreneurs. So people who are just starting haven't even made any money. Or maybe they made a little, but they're struggling to get their income to their first 50 $75,000 and create the business structure to be able to repeat that over and over and also gain skills and marketing organic marketing funnels to be able to continuously repeat that.
Maggie Perotin (00:07:13) - So I have the Diamond Effect small coaching group. There is a lot of benefits for those early stage entrepreneurs to be in a small group, so they get the benefit of masterminding and seeing that their journey is not as lonely or as unique as they think, that they're not the only ones experiencing the challenges. And also, the group is small enough where they get a lot of one on one support from me that they truly need, especially in the beginning, right? So they can apply the coaching, they can learn things and really grow their business much faster. And then the second offer I have is for business owners who are more mature, and I already add this 6 or 7 figure level, and their challenges are sometimes unique and different one to another depending on what are their goals, what type of business they have, business model, and so on and that I coach you guys one on one. We work six months at a time. We meet weekly so we can dive deeper into your business, different aspects, whatever we need to attack or work on to get you where you want to be.
Maggie Perotin (00:08:21) - That's it. I don't offer paid to session thing, I don't do separate trainings and so on per se, unless I offer free value, right, to showcase how I can help. And then. But this is more like a marketing strategy for me or part of my business growth strategy rather than an offer. Now I'm a coach again. It doesn't mean that in your business, depending on what type of service business you have, you you only should have two offers. You can totally have more, but you don't want them close enough to the point where the client doesn't know what to choose. And even if they choose, one makes more money than the others because you didn't think it through, right? So, for example, maybe you're a virtual assistant or some social media manager and whatever, and you created five packages and there's no incentives or almost no difference between those packages for the client, where they would be completely confused by which package to choose and why would they want it. So they always go with the cheapest one.
Maggie Perotin (00:09:30) - And with that, you don't even make that much money, or you're a spa and you only have low ticket offers like maybe, I don't know, waxing of eyebrows or quick nails and you don't have anything that's maybe high ticket that the customers can spend maybe more time in your spa, but also higher profit. Therefore, you have a lot of little things that people buy low profit. And you can't scale this way because you also have a space and only a certain amount of space each day for certain amount of customers. So even if you were full every day, all day, your business is not profitable. So for example, if you have only many treatments for $40, if you have ten customers a day, you're making $400 that day, right? But if you had also treatments for $200, and if those three of those customers, let's say you still can only take ten a day, but three of them took a $200 offer, then you would make just out of those $3,600. So more than from the 1040.
Maggie Perotin (00:10:47) - So you can see how that higher ticket offer very quickly will account for 80% of your income or even profit, as opposed to the lower ticket. Offer. So you want to be strategic about how not only your price, your offers, but also what type of offers you have based on the clientele, the business model you have, and who do you want to attract? You want to create a balance. So again, you're not spreading yourself too thin, doing million things and getting a little bit of income everywhere, but not being able to scale because you're limited by the time that you have every day. And if you're a business with a physical location, the capacity of the space and how long you can have it open and all those things. So parameter principle can help you determine which offers are more effective and profitable, which offers maybe take less time and then focus on the 20% that create 80% of the income most of the time, and the other 20% of offers or other offers that create a little bit of income.
Maggie Perotin (00:11:59) - Strategic, chosen, and you know the reasons why you have them. The second area of Pareto Principle I want you to think about in your business. It's actually the actions you take in your business every week and every day. Because if you look at them, probably only 20% of the actions you're currently taking CRE are creating 80% of the results. The question is, do you know, what are these actions? Which 20% creates 80% of the results? And the only time you will know it's if you have a strategy and not only have a strategy, but implement it and then evaluate and track how the implementation execution is going. Because what happens is the strategy allows you to theorize what are those 20% of the actions, and then it acts as a guiding post as a reference to okay, now I'm going to implement it. And then you know how to track it in your feedback and see what's working, what's not working, why you can theorize on why it's not working and then start tweaking so you can get there.
Maggie Perotin (00:13:12) - And the more complex your business is, that strategy is required not only in your marketing and sales. So business development area, but also, you know, service delivery team leadership or whatever the case might be, because then it allows you to truly understand the root causes of your problems and then fix them. So I'll give you the example. So let's just say that part of your marketing and business development strategy is networking. And you're a part of 5 or 6 networking groups. How do you know which groups actually create the most results? Because when you are able to determine that and see that and evaluate that, you will be able to then just focus on the groups that are working the best for you and let go maybe of the groups that don't. And that's how you then start using Pareto principle for compounded effect. So if out of six groups, three are working for me, if I just focus on that now that 20% of the actions, I'm almost like dabbling it. Right? So I'm taking the 20% of the actions.
Maggie Perotin (00:14:27) - They're creating 80% of the results, and I'm even narrowing down on those actions within that area. I take, again, 20% and dabbling on that. And when you double and double on that, that's how you end up growing and doubling your business without adding more work, because you're not spreading yourself too thin, you're just doing better. The things that are already working. And yes, don't get me wrong, there's always needs to be a room for experimentation and trying other things. But within the things that are already working, you always want to get better and just keep dabbling on that. So you can use the Pareto principle for compounded growth. Another way to also make sure that you're not spreading yourself too thin, and that you focus on those core thing that create most results, is focusing only on one, two, or three key focus areas per quarter or per year as a business owner, as the CEO, depending on what you have going on in your goals, and not trying to fix all the issues that you have in your business all at once.
Maggie Perotin (00:15:39) - So let's just say you have some challenges in bookkeeping or finances, and maybe in service delivery, and maybe in marketing and selling and people leadership and so on. And every one of those areas maybe has some little challenges that you feel like you need to fix, trying to address them all at once and focusing all at once. Will lead you just to frustration, minimal results, and overworking as opposed to when you identify, okay, what is the most important thing that I can focus on this quarter and just do this and fix that thing and then move on to the next thing if needed. Focuses your action like a laser and therefore allows you to make bigger impact. Just give you the last example. Maybe in people leadership, if you have a team, if you measure your team's performance, you will know which 20% of the people deliver 80% of the results. And that information allows you to a reward those top achievers and nurture them and lead them and help them grow so they stay and are happy and keep growing within your business.
Maggie Perotin (00:16:49) - And then look at the other 80% to say, okay, are the good performance in my kind of be students. The steady deliverers that are still need in my team and which ones are not, and how can I manage them and either help them grow and become reliable, you know, team members that deliver or which ones are just not fit for the positions they're in? If you have challenges in your team and you try to, like, kind of fix them here and there with an action here and there, they will never really make a difference. But if you focus on it for a short period of time, make certain decisions, create procedures, create systems to then support the fixed team. You will be able to kind of run itself right, and you will be able to focus on something else. And that's how you get explosive results. I hope the burrito principle and giving you a couple of examples was helpful, and it will get you thinking, how can you use it to your benefit in your business? Now if you want to double your business with my help, very strategically through my top SEO framework, with the winning strategy and continuous success recipe where we apply it very methodically step by step, it ultimately leads you to understanding your business at the deep level and your business.
Maggie Perotin (00:18:20) - By your business, I mean your clients, your offers, the performance of the offers, how your clients come to you, how can you attract more of them, and also if you have your team and how everything works together, knowing those things will help you keep narrowing down to 20% of the things that create 80% of the results and compounding that effect. So if you are ready for some exponential growth, let's talk schedule a sales call with me through a link to my calendar that I'll put in the show notes. Have a fantastic week. Talk to you soon. Thank you for listening today. If this podcast resonated with you, please come back. Also, you can leave a review on whatever platform you're listening, and if you have a suggestion, question or a topic you would like me to talk about, let's get in touch via email. Email me at Maggie at Stairway to Leadership. Com. See you in the next episode.