The Four Elements to Creating a Business you Love
How would it feel to own a business you actually LOVE to run? Rather than a business you created around something you love, but then end up surprised to find you don’t enjoy it as much as you thought you would?
There are 4 essential elements to think about – and you need to enjoy all of them if you are to genuinely love running your business.
Because – surprise! – it’s not enough for you to build a business around the “thing” you do with your clients. You actually have to love these other elements too, or you simply won’t want to do them. And that business that you started full of passion and enthusiasm soon ends up feeling like pushing treacle up a hill.
When I talk about this combination of 4 elements I refer to it as your “business model”.
What is a business model?
When most business mentors and coaches talk about your business model, they are usually talking about the delivery model of your business. For example, when you’re starting out, you’ll probably be working with people 121 because that’s the quickest and easiest way to get clients and get your income flowing from a standing start.
Then after a while, you might feel ready to leverage your time to run group programmes – there are also a whole range of different variations of how you can deliver your work.
None of them are “better or worse” than any other, they all have their challenges and advantages. It’s just about finding the one that works best for you – and your clients.
How I see your Business model
However, when I look at business models I take things a step further – I consider these 4 key elements you need to have in place if you are going to enjoy your business.
And don’t worry if you can’t figure it all out straight away – it’s normal that it will take some ‘trial and error’ when it comes to figuring it out. This is why Stage 3 of my Business from the Heart Pathway is called Finding your Flow. It’s also why, 5 years into running a perfectly successful business, I stopped running a high-ticket mentoring programme that brought in over £100,000 each year to start over with a low monthly investment membership model instead.
And you do have to love it – because if you don’t love doing something, you won’t do it consistently and you won’t want to do it for the long term. That’s sort of important for a sustainable business!
The 4 key elements
These 4 elements of your business model are:
1. Attraction
Client attraction is the point at which someone goes from never having heard of you before to now they’ve heard of you and they know what you do. It’s actually super simple – just letting people know that you exist and what it is that you do. There’s really nothing more complicated about marketing than that.
So now you know that client attraction is nothing more than letting people know you exist, the next question to ask yourself is: “What feels juicy, in flow, and fun for me as a way of doing that?”
(I talk more about the different ways you can market yourself in my blog The zillion million ways to market your business )
The most important thing that I can tell you today is that there is no one right way for you to get clients. The only right way is the one that gets you in front of the right people, and that you enjoy doing.
2. Nurture
Let’s pretend someone named Nancy has come across me for the very first time. Five minutes ago she didn’t know that I existed and now she does and she’s interested in what I have to offer…
What’s the gap going to be between the moment she discovers me and the moment she pays me money to join one of my programmes?
Well, the answer is that it might be infinite. Nancy might never pay me for anything ever!
Or the gap might be a matter of days, weeks, months, or years. So it’s important you find ways to stay in touch with people until they are ready to buy.
If you’re building a fully online business, you could nurture the relationship through email marketing, a Facebook group or via social media.
If you’re building a business offline, you might keep in touch in a more high-touch personal way:
When I worked in the recruitment industry many years ago, I used to pick up the phone to key contacts every three months because I wanted to make sure I was at the top of their mind and got the first call when they did need to work with me.
3. Sales
Sales is the thing that happens in your business that gets somebody to a point of saying, “Yes, I do want to work with you, and I’m willing to make a commitment and actually pay you money”
A lot of people run around doing lots of marketing without a clear system for how they’re converting that activity into paying customers. And I promise you, it doesn’t matter how many people know you exist – it could be 10 million – if you don’t have a process by which you encourage any one of those 10 million people to pay you money, you might be a little bit famous, but you still don’t have a business!
So what is that thing that you do that has someone say “yes, I want to buy from you and here’s some money to prove it”.
For most people in the early stages of their business, it’s usually a one-to-one sales conversation – and to tell the truth, this is the easiest way there is to make sales.
Then as you become more established and are able to attract a bigger audience, you may choose to switch to selling “one-to-many” like I do, via webinar, challenges, launches or a sales page.
Delivery
Once someone has handed over their money, now you are in the delivery phase.
In the same way, you will have a sweet spot for your delivery – a method of working with clients that lights you up, works for your lifestyle and gets the best results for your clients.
Pricing comes into your business model too – there is a huge difference between working 121 selling single sessions for £85 and selling 6 month packages for £6,000 (this is a transition one of the members of my community has made in the 17 months since she joined my membership).
There is also a huge difference between a membership where people pay you £47 per month and an online course you only run once a year where you charge £1,000.
No business or pricing model is wrong, right or better – it’s about figuring out the one that works for you, your lifestyle and for your clients.
Now you have a Business Model!
- A client attraction method that doesn’t feel like work
- A nurture strategy that fits easily into your business routine
- A sales method that works because you’ve put in the effort to master it
- A method of delivering to your clients that lights you up and doesn’t feel heavy
And this is what makes the difference between a business model that will burn you out and see you giving up after just a couple of years and a beautiful business you’ll be happy to run for the next 10 or 15 years (I’m in year 14 of mine and I’m still in love with it – though I also had my own false starts and needed to make some courageous changes to create the business model I have today).
Since I started my business 14 years ago I’ve seen countless other businesses come and go. Often they reach a level of success very quickly and then disappear off the scene completely because they started all guns blazing but soon burned out and fell out of love with it.
What I want for you is that you build businesses you can stay in love with over the long term – like I have.
Join me for Create a Business you Love Week
There will be a daily training, a task to help you apply what you are learning and mentoring/Q&A sessions with me. All of it designed to give clarity on what’s working for you, and what to change and add to create a business that actually works – so you can love it for the long term.
