Working Out Your Business Model

How are you creating value and making money in your business?

While there are almost infinite ways to do this, they do tend to fall into a handful of categories for expertise/authority businesses.

Jonathan and I discuss those authority business models and how you can structure the ideal business for you:

What exactly is a business model (and how to think about yours)?

The difference between your business model and how—and what—you charge.

The four most common business models we see in the expertise space and how to make each one work for you.

Considering hiring employees? How to think about growing with—and without—employees.

Sidestepping the slippery slope that is hiring specialized help—from mini-me’s to social VAs—to grow your business.

Quotables

“How are you gonna create, deliver and capture value?”—JS

“If we’re not creating value, we’re not going to make money for very long.”—RM

“You could use value pricing to increase the amount that you can charge, increase your profit margin.”—JS

“If you do want to scale with employees…you have to create a job—actually define very specifically what this person will do.”—RM

“’I’ll just hire someone good and throw them to the wolves.’ That’s what happens.”—JS

“Membership models have some very specific operational kinds of things that impact how you market, how you sell, whether you do ads, whether you don’t.
”—RM

“A product line could take off and cause you to make a decision to say ‘oh, you know what? I would rather have customers than clients’.”—JS

“You think when you build a business (at least in the U.S.) that you have to have employees, but it’s about thinking past what we’re “supposed” to do and getting clear on what it is we want to build.”—RM