Episode 404: The Scalable Expert Path: Are You Building a Legacy or an Exit Strategy?

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Tara Bryan: Hey everybody. Welcome to today’s episode of the Scalable Expert Podcast. I am so thrilled that you’re here. Hey, in this episode I’m gonna talk about a couple of different things, but I have to just give you a life update, right? So no time in history has been more important for me to be the scalable expert than the last season, as I have been primarily on the road traveling all over the place for different things. So it’s such a great reminder of why it’s so important for me to be doing this work, to share with you The Scalable Expert business model, and so then you, you also, when you’re in the season of life where you can’t be chained to your desk, you have to be out doing other things, as life calls that are not revolved around your business and still have your business run and function and grow and do all of the things. So I’m [00:01:00] excited to share that a little bit of that journey with you and then also kind of how it’s helping to frame really more, even more clarity for me on the scalable expert, and how to become a scalable expert and why it’s so very, very important. So if you are listening in for the first time, welcome, I’m so happy that you’re here and that you’ve found my little corner of podcast world. But listen, we help business owners, coaches, consultants, and agency owners primarily who are doing service-based businesses, who have built a business on their expertise, start to look at how to grow and scale differently. How do you grow and scale by getting yourself out of the day to day? Not from a operational perspective, but from a time and attention perspective. And so we’re all focused on how do you grow and scale your business without maxing out your calendar? How do you do that without adding a big team? How do you do that without adding [00:02:00] complicated infrastructure and really start to professionalize your business in a totally different way than the traditional model?

So I was just recently at a conference and it was a scalable business conference. It was super great and very interesting to sort of drop back into the world of growing and scaling and exiting a business. For those of you who don’t know my story, I’ll just quickly let you know that I owned and operated a digital learning agency for, you know, 19 or so years, and I grew it by like, you know, grit and determination and really by just maxing out my time and my calendar. So, the scalable expert conundrum or the expert operator before you become a scalable expert, conundrum is the more successful you are, right, the better you are at doing your work, around your [00:03:00] expertise, the more it takes up all of your time, right? So you grow your business based on how great you are at what you do, and then all of a sudden you have all these clients and you can’t deliver on them anymore because you are completely maxed out.

So you’re kind of always chasing how do you get above that? How do you get beyond that time, and still grow your business. So the traditional method, and this is what I was taught both in my MBA program and then with groups I was in, was, great, that’s a great problem to have. You increase your capacity by getting more clients. So then you just hire a team and then you need a place to put the team. And then you need, you know, all of the things that go along with having a team and all that’s great. Like I am a huge proponent of having a team. But what happens is so often we’re just like, oh my gosh, we’re so busy. We need to hire helpers to help us. And we still stay in the middle of the business model, right? So it’s [00:04:00] our body of work, it’s our expertise, and then we hire people to kind of take off some of the things that we’re spending time doing, but we never can get ahead of that problem. So I had hired a team, great people. I had a lot of specialists, a lot of professionals, a lot of people who were able to kind of take the ball and run with it, but it still required me to be doing sales and marketing and fulfillment and management and leadership and all of the things. And so I found myself not, you know, I had hired because I was out of time and capacity, and then I hired and my time and capacity just then multiplied, right? And so I was doing more than I was by myself. So I had that dream, I don’t know if you’ve ever had this dream where it’s oh, if I could only just do it all myself, I, you know, all the other things would be eliminated and it would be so much easier. Trust me, I did that. It [00:05:00] actually is not easier. It’s unlocking the right business model that helps you explode your growth without all of that sort of crazy and chaos, one before you’re ready. Two, making sure you’re setting up the right systems and infrastructure when you are hiring team. And then sort of ascending who you are, becoming your identity to go from the expert who knows all the things to manager, to leader, to founder, you know, as you’re going through that process.

And so anyway, this conference was really for entrepreneurs who were growing and scaling and eventually exiting their business, which means that the whole goal was to get them out of the operations so that they could sell the business and it would thrive without them. Which is great and that is a great way of doing it. If you are a serial entrepreneur and you wanna sell, you wanna create and sell a business, it is a great model. Most of us who are experts [00:06:00] in our industry, in our fields, don’t necessarily have that same vision, right? We just really wanna make an impact. We wanna make a comfortable income for ourselves and our family. And be able to serve and help clients at a totally different level. For me, when I left corporate, it was about having more freedom of choice in terms of who I was helping, how I was helping them, and then what was I doing with my time. And so for me it wasn’t so much like I wanted to build a company and sell it. But the mechanics of that obviously are sound. So I went to this conference knowing that one of the things that I wanted to do was push against the scalable expert model. How was it different? How do we scale to a seven eight figure level while still keeping it in the spirit of the scalable expert, which is you are scaling your expertise and not scaling, um, you know, kind of beyond with a complicated team and infrastructure and all the different things.

And so it was a great conference. They had a lot of really key insights that are helpful when you are thinking about, how do you go from one level to the next, right? So what gets you from zero to $1 million in revenue won’t work when you’re trying to go from, you know, one to $10 million in revenue. And so how do you make that shift? And so I have a lot of great insights from that, that I’m gonna apply to the scalable expert and share with you in future episodes of what does it look like when you’re first starting out versus when you are trying to get to, you know, maybe a $10 million level, maybe a hundred million dollars level, whatever that looks like. But to do it around The Infinite Scale Method, which is where you are packaging and productizing your expert framework and then creating an infinite [00:08:00] opportunity for how are you delivering it, right? Instead of building a very complicated, complex business with lots of offers and lots of, you know, sort of random things happening that’s growing the business. And then how are you doing that without maxing out your time and attention?

And so the conference was great. It talked about an operating system. It talked about how do you really look at, again, operationally, and professionalize your business so that you can get yourself out of kind of being the middle of the matrix. And so a lot of good stuff there that I will be really diving into as we go.

One of the things I wanted to talk about specifically in this episode, however, is really that definition of being a scalable expert. And it’s really, you’re taking your expertise, you’re packaging it into making it more of a [00:09:00] product, right? Something tangible. It’s something that you are able to create your proprietary framework or your intellectual property, your methodology, whatever you wanna call it. You create that, and then that is what you lead with. So if you’re doing one-on-one work, you’re leading with that. If you’re doing group work, you’re leading with that. If you’re doing leverage programs, you’re leading with that. If you’re creating a book, you’re leading with that. You’re creating a certification and licensing program, you’re leading with that. And so what it does is it helps you have a super strong foundation and then add additional revenue sources on top of that foundation without then, you know, kind of recreating the wheel with a whole different focus in your business.

You probably have seen those people out there in internet land, right, who constantly are launching new offers and you’re like, wait, what business are they in? What are they an expert in? What is it they’re doing? And all they’re doing is just chasing money, right? So there’s not a strategy involved with how they’re growing and [00:10:00] building a business that doesn’t lead to more chaos and complexity as it continues to grow. So my focus in working with people is really let’s set that foundation. Let’s make you an authority category leader in your space by creating and owning your proprietary methodology, which we call the expert framework. And then that is what then allows you to build the business so you can deliver it in an infinite number of ways. The power from that level of focus in your business will completely change the game for you. And that’s what we’re doing here at Scalable Experts. So I am so happy that you’re here. Hopefully you get some good insights and nuggets from not only this episode but from episodes coming up in the future and all the episodes that we’ve done in the past.

And so today I really wanna dive into that framework and how do you start looking at that? I’ll tell you [00:11:00] back when I was in the agency, one thing that’s really interesting is most industries, most disciplines have some sort of standard framework that they use. And so when you are learning, whether you’re learning formally or informally, you’re learning, there’s sort of a rules of the road, if you will. So you always start with something. For us, in the instructional design space, it’s the ADDIE model. That’s the traditional model. We learned it in school. It’s been around for a million years. And that’s the model that most people start with. And so you go through and, you know, A is for this, D is for this, D is for the, you know, like all the things you go through and you’re like, okay, this is how it’s gonna work. And it’s sort of the standard model. What happens when you develop an expertise, right, when you get the reps in and you’ve done this over and over again, you come up with your unique way that you show up and help the people that you serve, right? Your customers, your [00:12:00] clients, whoever they are.

And so one of the things I challenge you to do is think about what that pattern is within your business. When you’re serving clients, what are the things that you’re always doing regardless of the ask that the client has. So if you are doing one-on-one work or project work, for example, and you’re like, I always, every client comes to me and they want something new. They want something unique, they want something custom. And their problem, or their need that they have is, you know, is totally different than a different client that I’ve worked with. That is from a client perspective, right?

They’re all shiny, special unicorns. And so the first thing is recognizing that, right, is usually there’s a method in the madness. And your job is to find that method in the madness, right? They’re hiring you because you’re the expert. They’re hiring you because they know that you can give them the fastest path to success. You are gonna take them from point A to point B. [00:13:00] And so they’re looking to you to provide that answer for them. If you are in a position where you’re like, people just hire me to come in and help them, so they pay me an hourly rate. I come in, I do a little, you know, project or some work, you are probably in a role that’s called an extra pair of hands, right? So you are just there to help them because they don’t have either that talent on the bench or the capacity on their team. And so they’re hiring you to come in and do work. That is fine. That is a great model if that is something that you’re interested in doing.

Here’s what I’m gonna tell you though, as a warning, is you are gonna be doing that, say you do that, you know, independently for 20 years and what happens is you’re gonna wake up in 20 years and go, I didn’t do anything with my expertise. Maybe not, but those experts that I’ve talked to have been disappointed because it feels like every project is [00:14:00] a one off and they’re not owning their authority. And so a lot of times there’s disappointment because it’s, I could have done something else, I could have, you know, written a book. I could have used this to build a legacy for myself and my family. So when they’re not, they don’t wanna do that hourly work anymore, there’s something there that’s still generating income for them based on their expertise, right? So if you’re kind of in that position where, oh yeah, that’s kind of what I’ve been doing, just think about what the future looks like for you and how you maybe want to script or design your future a little bit differently. And if not great, like you keep going and doing your thing and that’s awesome. But extra pair of hands work is very hard, right? Most of the time, you’re sort of competing to the bottom of the pricing barrel, right? Like they’re just trying to find somebody to help and then they’ll pay the least amount for that because it’s not [00:15:00] at the level where they need somebody to lead the process.

So as a scalable expert, like I always say, you wanna be the one leading the process. You want to say, here is the path, here is how we get the fastest path from point A to point B. And then here’s how I help you do that, right? So then you’re owning the process. And I’ll tell you, once we did that in the agency, we owned the process. We said, here’s our model. It’s a five D model. This is how we do it. Here’s how much time it takes. Here’s the budget that it takes to do this. Here’s what the outcome looks like, the transformation, all the things, right? So when we owned that process, when we packaged it into something called the five D model, the game changed. People came to us, they paid a premium, because we could show that we could get within an on time, on budget outcome they were willing to pay for that. They were willing to not only let us drive the bus, but also trust that we [00:16:00] knew the process and that we could help get them to the outcome that they were looking for. It shifted the way that we were showing up in the market. It shifted the way that clients were coming to us, and it shifted the obviously the size and complexity of the projects that we could get.

And so that’s the first thing is recognize the pattern of all your customers, whether you’re using kind of a traditional industry standard or you wanna come up with your own, package it. Look at it as if it were something that had to fit in a box, right? Like it’s got some physical component to it. And then start to lead with that with your current customers that you have, that starts to shift how you spend your time. Instead of everything being custom, you’re reinventing the wheel, everything is ad hoc. You start to shift into being able to use assets strategically to help your customers. So you’re not recreating the wheel. [00:17:00] That is the first shift that you make as an expert who’s delivering services for your customers. So if you haven’t done that yet, get started with that.

So if you’re struggling a little bit, like it’s totally normal, don’t stress. And if you do want help with that, my information is somewhere on this episode, in the show notes. And so reach out to me. I’m more than happy to help, you can’t really read the label from within the jar. Totally a common thing. But that’s the first step. Then you look at it and you go, okay, awesome. Now I have this sort of packaged methodology that I use with all of my customers and clients, and so the next question becomes, how do I deliver this without it taking my time and attention? So not, I mean, you’re still gonna spend time, right? Like you, our goal is not to check out of our business. Our goal is to create leverage with our [00:18:00] time and attention so that we are spending the right amount of time with our customers. Like the time that actually moves the needle, not the like random show up, I just have a question or whatever, right? Like the time wasting interactions that we have. And so our job is to create that leverage.

So then that’s the next question, like how do we do that? How do we take what we’ve created and start to even create more leverage in our time and our attention? And so that’s the next step. And then from there it gets super exciting because then it’s okay, great, now how can I deliver this in an infinite number of ways? How do I really start to not only help the people that I have start to help people in a completely different way? Maybe it’s moving into sort of some type of leveraged, hybrid program, which is what we teach our people to do as they’re getting started. And then from there, sky’s the limit, right? [00:19:00] And so you start this evolution, but don’t kid yourself. And I think that when we look at people online and they’re like, oh, you just do this and then you can make a million dollars in four days, that’s not realistic, right? You and I know that as business owners. And so make it easy on yourself. Don’t try and, you know, do everything in one day and think that it’s gonna totally transform everything. Take it in these steps that I just talked about, because once you get that foundation, that methodology that you have designed and documented and then packaged, then that becomes the foundation of your business and everything else then stems from that. So you no longer are like, what offer should we create? What should we do today? How do we get more customers? Well, what should we ask our customers to do? There’s no more guesswork, right? So your systems, your delivery, your fulfillment, your customer ascension, all of the things that you’re doing [00:20:00] are all following a more simplified path and process versus, you know, kind of like, and it may be you or it may be your friends, but that business that’s put together with duct tape and paperclips and all of a sudden something happens — they go viral on YouTube, or they speak at a conference and they get like a hundred customers or a thousand customers, and all of a sudden their business blows up because they had, you know, everything was sort of put together with smoke and mirrors and duct tape and paperclips, and they weren’t ready for a simplified delivery system. So then everything went nuts, right? And so if that’s you or someone you know, there is a different way and it’s a way that we just haven’t really been taught as we were, you know, kind of starting this game. So I invite you to continue the journey to become a scalable expert with me.

[00:21:00] I have been doing this work for a long time. I have now started to package it in a different way. And so you’ll hear more and more about how I’m gonna be delivering that. One is I will tell you that we have a new home for the brand. It’s on scalable dot expert. So go check that out, thescalable.expert. And it’s not a dot com, it’s a dot expert, which I think is kind of fun. And so go check us out. That’s our new home. And then we do out there have a wait list for finding out news and information about Scalable Expert book that is coming out hopefully at the top of the year. And so I invite you to continue this journey with me, continue this journey with yourself and your business and everyone else who is here on this journey with you. In the meantime, go ahead and start thinking about your business in just a slightly different way and see how you can create more leverage, more leveraged time, more leveraged attention [00:22:00] as you continue to move forward growing your business.

Alright hey, if you love this episode, I would love it for you to share it with a colleague and give us a rating. We, this is how we grow, this is how more people find out about this movement, The Scalable Expert. And I invite you to continue to listen and continue to engage either on the YouTube channel or on our podcast. Alright, until next time, have a great week.