Choosing Your Growth Path

There will be times in the evolution of your expertise business when you ask yourself: what’s the best way to grow? Should I scale this thing—and how?

A listener question prompted Jonathan and me to talk about the three typical business models experts use to grow and scale (and how to use them/when they make sense):

The role of leverage in scaling your expertise business.

Building a solo business model without leverage from products or employees.

Growing as a solo but adding leverage to scale: products (books, memberships, workshops, licensing) and/or people (contractors).

Building a firm with traditional W-2 employees—and the two key activities you’ve got to love to make this work.

The challenges—and opportunities—to grow and scale in each business model and how to decide which is right for you.

Quotables

“There are certain kinds of industries and certain kinds of expertise where when you combine them in the right ways, you can actually build a million dollar plus solo business with no leverage.”—RM

“Anything that allows you to do more with less is leverage, whether that’s your pricing model or anything.”—JS

“Contractors are usually contractors because they don’t want to be employees.”—RM

“You’re using a team of people to help you produce new income streams, new lines of business that are more highly leveraged.”—JS

“Having contractors first is a really good training ground for having employees.”—RM

“It’s (having employees) like being married to 10 people and you’re worried about 10 mortgages now.”—JS

“If you’re gonna have employees, it’s the equivalent of baby birds saying “give me a worm”. You’ve got to keep them busy.”—RM

“As soon as you get into product, then you can have a real hit—like you can really have a hit.”—JS