Pay for Skill, Speed and Structure

Pay for Speed
Bang for Your Business Investment Bucks

Let’s face it – as an entrepreneur there are a million things you can invest in to help grow your business.  How do you choose among them?  In my businesses, I have found that I get the most mileage out of investments that are focused on paying for skill, paying for speed or paying for structure.

Pay for Skill

There are two ways to think about paying for skill.  The first is when you want to acquire a body of knowledge that will help you succeed in your business.  Parents think nothing of spending tens of thousands if not several hundreds of thousands of dollars for their children to earn a college degree – this is no different for you as a business owner.

When Stacy and I were founding Custom Built Life,™  we knew we needed help on the marketing side of things.  We have been long-term participants in the Client Attraction Business School and have also taken specific coaching programs and coursework related to Branding, Social Media and List Building.  Learning first hand from these experts has been a major contributor to the overall success of our businesses.

You can also think about paying for skill in an area that you want to delegate so that you can stay more focused on revenue-producing business activities.  If you haven’t already, consider hiring a Virtual Assistant to help you with administrative tasks.  Many highly skilled VA’s will start working with you for as little as 5 hours per month, which will be five more hours that you can spend growing your bottom line!

Pay for Speed

Another category of business investments for you to strongly consider are those that will help you make things happen much more quickly.  Again, using Custom Built Life as an example, Stacy and I knew that we needed to grow our newsletter subscriber list to help generate interest in our private coaching packages.

We could have chosen the grind it out approach of going to networking events, talking about the business at parties and relying on word of mouth to slowly grow our newsletter subscriber base over a period of several years.

Instead we went out and found people who had already gathered thousands of our ideal clients for us and paid them to market directly to these people.  This enabled us to accomplish in two weeks what would have taken two years for us to accomplish on our own and we now have a list of hundreds of potential clients that are interested in and excited about what we have to offer.

Pay for Structure

Finally, consider paying for structure when choosing what to invest in for your business.  Look for programs that offer specific, step-by-step instructions, particularly when you are trying to add a new, complex capability.  In addition, look for providers who not only tell you what to do, but also have resources available to help you do it.

Stacy and I are currently considering working with a Product Launch expert to help us build out entry point products and services for clients to consider before signing on for one of our private Custom Built Life coaching packages.  We’re excited about one expert in particular who not only teaches you about product launches but also has support staff available to help with the executional details.

Your Assignment

Look at your business objectives for the next 6-12 months.  Review each one and ask:

  • Am I missing any knowledge to make this happen?
  • Are there things I could delegate so that I can stay more focused on making this happen?
  • Who can help me make this happen more quickly?
  • Is this complicated? Who can break this down into simple to follow steps for me?  Who has resources available to help me implement this?

For your highest priority business objectives, make a commitment to pay for skill, pay for speed and pay for structure to accelerate your progress and help you achieve business success!