3 Steps to STOP being the bottleneck in your business

The biggest hindrance to your business growth is most likely YOU. It’s not that you aren’t great at what you do, it’s that you won’t let go of what you do. The key to consistent growth is to remove yourself as the bottleneck in your business and begin to rely more on systems and team. So, if you are looking to make more money and work with better clients while ALSO working less; this is for you.

It’s almost common knowledge that once you hit a certain level of growth, you need to invest in team and systems in order to keep growing. However, this is easier said than done. Most entrepreneurs and small business owners struggle to grow past the 6-figure mark because the secret to their success is, in fact, the entrepreneur themselves.

How can you build a team, develop the right systems, or even find the right automated tools to help you when you’re not even sure what it is you are doing right?

The fact is that the problem is not you. The problem isn’t that you don’t know how to systemize or that you are a bad leader. No, the problem is in fact something a layer deeper.

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The real issue is that you are still too broad.

In order to build systems, inspire a team and keep your business growing you need to develop and maintain an intense focus on servicing only your top clients.

In other words, it’s time to niche down again.

But we’re not talking about switching industries or defining demographics; what I’m proposing is that you look at your current client roster and cater your offers, marketing and entire business to the top 20% of clients you serve.

This goes against the popular “Hustle Harder” mentality plaguing most entrepreneurial circles. Instead – we are going to be smart about growing your business. 

  • Instead of trying to sell a million things – we’re going to create a core, high-level, irresistible offer. 
  • Instead of working with a million clients – we’re going to focus on working with better clients for more money. 
  • Instead of out-hustling the competition – we are going to find the things that we naturally do DIFFERENTLY that gives us a competitive edge. 
  • Instead of GUESSING at what to do next – we are going to use a simple process to leverage our best clients’ insights and wisdom to tell us EXACTLY what the marketplace wants. 

In short, you’ll be servicing your tribe more deeply. This will result in better clients (who pay you more), a simpler business model, and a clear direction on how to get help/build team.

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Implement these 3 Steps

I run all of my clients through a simple process of real-time market research with the goal of leveraging your client’s insights to create your best offer, refine your marketing, and streamline your business.

Here are the three steps that this process entails:

  • Step 1 – Define Your Top and Bottom Clients

The first step is to actually figure out who are your top and bottom clients. This can be a confusing task, because many time our highest paying clients aren’t our best clients.

If you’ve ever had a client that you hated working with, but who paid you well you understand the issue. By one standard, they are your worst client (you hate working with them). But by another standard, they are your best client (they pay you well).

So, how do you really know where they fall? You have to quantify “good” and “bad” by actually ranking your clients.

Use more than just money as your main criteria. As yourself, “What does a perfect client have in place? What do they look like? How do they act?”

Then rank your current and past clients according to that criteria.

  • Step 2 – Qualitative Research (A.K.A Ask Questions) 

Now that you know better WHO your perfect client is, it’s time to go get some answers to your questions. In particular, we want the information to help you:

  1. Create the Perfect Offer for your Ideal Clients
  2. Refine your Marketing to Clone your Top Clients
  3. Focus your Service Delivery to Provide more Value
  4. Discover where Your Mission and Their Needs Overlap

If you ask the right question and listen closely to your clients they will help you discover everything you need to make your social media posts more effective, your sales calls more effective, your business day more focused, your branding more powerful.

It’s all sitting inside a simple conversation with your top clients

  • Step 3 – Focus on the Best and Dump the Rest

Now it’s time to take this information and build your business to do two things:

  1. CLONE your top clients (that’s the Focus portion)
  2. REPEL your bottom clients (that’s the Dump portion)

This is how you shift your business to serve a higher caliber of client and cater to your top clients. 

This will allow you to get better results, and – in turn – charge more money. 

By simplifying WHO you service and WHAT you offer, you can start to build systems and team to drive results.

This provides a more consistent experience to clients, while also freeing you from being the bottleneck.

Imagine being able to build systems and team(s) around:

  • Your Service delivery
  • Your Marketing
  • Your Sales

Your business essentially shifts from being dependent on you exclusively to running on its own. 

It’s like Michael B Gerber said in his book “The E-myth” – “Systems run the business and people run the systems.”

Focus on your top clients and everything will run more smoothly. Build systems in your business to make sure they keep running smoothly. Then hire staff to run the systems for you.