Episode 415: Why the Traditional Business Model Fails Experts – and What to Do Instead

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Hey everybody, welcome to today’s episode. I am thrilled that you’re here. Hey, in this one I wanna talk about a little bit of my journey around moving into the Scalable IP Business model and why it’s different than the traditional model that’s out there.

So when I started my business, a long time ago now, I, the model that I knew was I went from my corporate job to going out and freelancing and and contracting, and then from there very quickly shifted into owning an agency. And I went into the sort of that business ownership mindset because that’s the direction that I was headed in. [00:01:00] I didn’t necessarily just want to contract or freelance meaning, do hours for dollars work or take on, you know, hourly projects for companies. And if you’re in that model, that’s great. If you’re happy, that’s wonderful. But that wasn’t for me. I knew I wanted to actually grow something beyond just the amount of time that I could put into companies.

And, and so that was great. I was very clear on that. In fact, I remember over the years being like, well, why, why am I different than my colleagues who are contracting and freelancing? Like, why do I think differently? And it’s only like actually in hindsight, right, that you, that you realize what was actually happening. But overall what I did was, I went out on my own and I said, okay, great, I’m now a business owner. Great. Like, what does that look like? It’s sort [00:02:00] of like when you have kids and you’re like, great, now I’m a mom. Now what? There’s no instruction manual that tells you exactly how to do it right. And so I went out and I’m like, okay great, so I’m gonna read all the books. I’m gonna join all the groups. I had an MBA, so I had the business acumen around like, okay, here are the five core parts of the business. I had all of that, right?

And, and so I’m like, this is great. Like, I have the experience, I’m following the models. I’ve joined the groups. I was in some sort of high level business groups and I am like, awesome. But what happened was, I would get into these groups and they would all be talking about how they were running their businesses and I was like, interesting, I’m running my business totally different. My business looks different. It’s doing different things. I’m more immersed and involved in my business and I’m not exactly sure [00:03:00] how to take what I was doing and apply what I was hearing from the groups that I was in.

I remember sitting in one of, one of kind of my high level mastermind groups and there was like six of us in a small group, and one guy was talking about how, as he had grown his business, he was able to build this like enormous house with, it had like a race track behind it. And it was fascinating. And he was talking about how the business had done so well. And then another guy was talking about kind of the same thing, just a little bit different. He owned a product business and so he talked about expanding his product line and how that it had increased the volume to a certain level and dah, dah, dah, dah. And so then he was able to do X, Y, and Z. And then there was a couple of other people there [00:04:00] and they were in different, different sort of, levels of business.

But all of them were in a place where they were starting to shift out of their business. We had all kind of gotten to a specific level of business, and so they were thinking about shifting out of their business or, you know, really going into a leadership role with their team, exiting, all these different kind of places that people were in. And I just kept saying that, that’s not my model. Like I, it’s not working in the way that, that they’re talking about. And I really struggled with that because I thought, well, I’m doing something wrong or I need to be shifting to do it in that same way.

And so it never really fit and I always just felt like, okay, well I’m, I’m revenue-wise at the same level that they are, but something is different [00:05:00] around what I’m doing versus what they’re doing. How do I adopt that? How do I start doing that? But I couldn’t really articulate how or why or what was going on.

And the challenge I had was that I was so involved in the business, so involved with my customers and my clients and the projects, and pitching the projects and working on the projects and closing the projects and building long-term strategic partnerships with other people and building partnerships with my clients that, that I was like, how do I extract myself and continue to build profit around all this revenue that we were making, and still serve in the way that I wanted to as the expert in the business, right? I would do the conferences where I was speaking about our [00:06:00] methodology. I was serving the clients. I was building relationships with new customers, with new clients, with partners, like I was doing all the things. And I was like, okay, so I can’t imagine not doing these things. And so I went down the traditional business model route, right? I hired a team, I hired salespeople, da, da, da, all the things.

And then, I’ll never forget we were in my office and my whole team was in the conference room working on a new client, like kind of the beginning of a project. And to be honest, it’s like my favorite part about all of it, right? Because I’m more of a strategist, so I like to uncover the big picture, the problem, and then kind of work on what’s a good solution. So to me, that’s my favorite part of the whole process. But I was watching my team and they were going through and doing this process, and they’re like, Tara, like you are good, go and do business owner stuff. You don’t need to be [00:07:00] in here anymore because you hired us and we’ve got this and we can take care of it. And I was like, great, that’s awesome. I trust them. They were doing awesome. They were doing great things. But I stood outside of that conference room and I was like, huh? Like, I wanna be involved, right? I, this is my passion. This is, I love what I was doing, and it was my expertise, my passion, my love for the work that created and drove and ultimately allowed for the success of the business.

And so when I hired people, it was great ’cause I thought, okay, great. Like I have help now to do that. I’m not doing it by myself. But that moment shifted something in me because I was relieved and happy that I had all these great people to help me [00:08:00] but I had just replaced the part of the work that I loved and put myself in a position of doing things that weren’t necessarily in my zone of genius and weren’t things that I loved.

And so I felt, in that moment, I felt a little disconnected. But moving forward I realized that what was left of the business for me to do were things I didn’t enjoy. And fast forward I ended up actually just getting so burnt out in that business. And ultimately at the end of the day, ended up dissolving the agency. I didn’t even sell it because I was just at the point where I was ready to do something different.

But I think in hindsight it was really [00:09:00] trying to shove myself into a traditional business model and do the things that I was supposed to do as a business owner, and not stepping into actually owning and growing my own scalable IP business and taking my expertise and being able to package it in a way that allowed me to make a bigger impact without exiting my business, without outsourcing my expertise to a team or without it maxing out my calendar where I had so many things going on that I couldn’t actually serve my customers at the level that I wanted to serve them, right? And so that’s when I realized that there’s a different business model for experts who want to scale their expertise beyond their calendar. And so [00:10:00] as I started to grow that new concept, as I started to step into building that for myself, everything started to shift. I was able to stay in my zone of genius and make a bigger impact and make a bigger income without losing the very thing that I came into the business in the first place. And that changed the game.

So if you are in that position where you’re like, golly, you know, I just, something isn’t working or I don’t actually really want to become the manager of all of the things, I wanna stay connected to my customers and to my body of work and the things that I do, but I’m not sure how to do that without actually losing my mind because I am need to be in all of the different places, I gotcha. There’s a new business model, it’s called a Scalable Expert Business model, and it is the way to go from being an expert operator [00:11:00] to a Scalable Expert, so you’re able to take your expertise and exponentially and infinitely grow it beyond your calendar.

For people who have an expertise, think about Donald Miller and StoryBrand. Think about Mike Michalowicz and Profit First. Think about Brene Brown and Dare to Lead. There’s lots and lots of different examples of people who have an expertise, they’ve come up with a way to package it, and then they grow it into a brand, a business that lives beyond them, but allows them to show up and still be the expert. They are not looking to exit their business. They’re not looking to become the CEO and sit in an office and do business owner CEO activities all of the time. Right? They are growing their business in a different way. They’re [00:12:00] leveraging their expertise and exponentially being able to offer different experiences so people can get the result that their framework provides.

So if you resonate with this, I would love to hear from you. And if you feel like that, I see you, and it’s probably a pretty good indication that you are on the right track. So I’d love to help you through that. Give me a shout, but definitely let me know have you been in that experience? Have you felt that, because you are not alone in that?

And so I hope that this episode serves you. It just gives you a little glimpse of the fact that, as experts we can actually grow a business differently that serves us, our expertise and our passion, and also allows us to build something without maxing out our calendar and burning out and doing all of the things right. So it allows us to scale our business and not our calendar. All right, there you go. Until next time, I hope you have a great week.