THE 9-STEP PLAYBOOK TO SCALE YOUR COMPANY

Skillionaires Podcast

Episode 15 – Business Modes

[Angela Thomas]

Hello and very welcome here for a new episode of the podcast Skillionaires, where I storystick and strategy scale. And today, after the last single episode, I'm gonna make another single episode, because a lot of people gave me kind of a really good feedback. And I thought, take this chance, where we are still in the New Year's vibe, and the guests are only slowly showing in, to make another podcast here on a single session.

So let's start. For all of you that only listen to the podcast, you should look to the YouTube channel, because today I'm gonna showcase a little bit, I'm gonna put something in the slides here, and make this very educational, because a lot of people ask me, Angela, what is actually this word scaling? And you talk about scaling, business growth, but what it means in actually practice, what it means in real life. And I tell you a little bit the theory about it, and also where you put this on life.

And then you can merge it with all the fantastic podcast guests that we already had, and that we will have. And this episode is about the theory and the combination of practice, how to scale. So let's dive into a deep version here.

I have brought my secret plan of how to actually scale in nine steps, okay? So we have different steps in scaling. You should actually look at it as three different major aspects. You should look at the front end and the back end.

Let's say the front stage and the backstage area, and also the revenue that is coming in. So these three aspects are actually diverted into nine steps after all. Let's start with the most important one, how to build actually your value proposition.

What is this value proposition actually? You should basically think how a value proposition best way build it up. To first get into an interaction with your client, it is mostly important that you make it as easy as you can to get in contact with you, okay? Or with your entity, with your business, with your service, with your product. So to build your valuable value proposition, your value chain basically, is something really important to do it in the right way.

Because I often see people, entrepreneurs, who are actually in our educational programs, in our skill unit program, that are going some kind from the backside onto the horse, as we say in German. And they just jump into the game of want to sell something in a backwards way. And then they wonder, why is it not working? Why I'm not making any revenue? Why I cannot scale? And where is it? So you should basically think about four to five things.

First of all, you need to, as I said, make it as easy as you can to come to contact with your client, to get in contact with your client, your client to make contact with you, basically. And then you should think of your entire service, entire business, product, whatsoever you wanted to exchange for money, you know? So the first thing is you have to ask yourself, are you desirable? Is your business, your product desirable? Is it something in the market that you want to share, that you can actually sell? Or is it something that is only because your ego wants it, because you have your own story with it, because you really like this product or service yourself, and then you think it must be applicable in the market. Sometimes it is not, especially when people coming from Europe to Middle East, I find often this mistake, which I did in the beginning myself, they think that they can pass and copy the European business model onto this market, which is totally not possible.

So that's why you have to overlook that. Secondly, you have to look of if it's profitable. Is it a good margin behind it? Is it possible to sell it with a margin? Is it possible to apply this service with a good profit margin that you're going to build up your revenue with? Thirdly, is it the feasibility that you have taken in consideration? So can you really do it technically? Can you really do it? Do you know about it? So for example, you wanted to open a beauty clinic.

Do you know technically not only how to open a clinic, find real estate, find the property, but do you know physically and technically what is behind all of these treatments? Are you technically not able to look deeper inside this business model? So that's what you have to take in consideration. Last but not least, number five, is it adaptable to actually the whole market? As I said earlier, is it adaptable to the market? Is it tangible as well? Can you scale it? Can you on one point detach your labor from the whole work environment, from the whole ecosystem that you build up? Is this possible or is it only build it up on your name, on your service, on your knowledge? So if you, let's say with the beauty salon or maybe a clinic that you have, if you have a clinic and you're the doctor, is the whole environment only built on your knowledge or are you able to delegate on some stages, some of the activities, some of the treatments, some of the duties within the company? These are the actually situation where is front end, front stage and backstage connected with this value chain and building up this value chain is something really, really crucially important that you intelligent, wise, think this through in the shoes of your clients. So let's say you wanted to make your client make it as easy as you can to get in contact with you, to come to your clinic.

You see this sometimes when Carrefour or any big company has some of those, I'm saying, phishing offers. You make it them or they make it the clients very easy to come to you. They want only, the only purpose is to bring the clients into the store, even if they have a loss, because that's the front end on one of these products.

So they put a commercial on a certain product, which is on a very undeniable good conditions for you to get. So you run into this store, you run into this entity or the clients do. So it's made very easy for you to get in contact with in order to put this client, in order to bring this client throughout your value chain.

So if he or she bought a certain product, a certain service, then it's your duty where we are navigating to another important point on these nine points, the list actually, to get your customer relationship done. And therefore you can calculate or navigate your client to the next step in having a good customer relation. You will be able to navigate the client towards the next stage of your value proposition, of your value proposition, of your value chain.

Having a good customer relationship enables you to upsell, cross sell or even downsell something to keep the client in your environment. For example, Apple has a really good customer relationship. They build basically kind of a circle around their entity.

They make it hard for you to get into this environment of Apple. But once you are there with some offer, it's hard also to get out. It's expensive to go into the circle, into the universe of Apple, but it's much more expensive to actually leave the universe of Apple.

So once you bought an Apple device in any kind of shade, it's often seen or it's probably quickly seen that you cannot adapt it with any other wires, utensils, other devices of you. So that makes you buy another Apple product or another Apple device. And so you have finally your whole universe built with Apple, which makes it actually hard to get it out.

It makes it actually hard to step out of this universe. So that's why there's a good customer relationship that Apple builds around his products, around his clients. And that's something very important because then the tangible revenue will be built up because of course, there's another update, there's another device, there's the latest version of X, Y, Z. And of course, all of the wires, all of the adapters, they are extra costly and to be purchased.

So that's actually some kind of business model. And of course, the vibration, the look and feel around this company is outstanding. So they build customer relationship as well, very much with all of the service and all of the environment that you have around this company.

This is just one example. There are many other examples, but let's look deeper. So you have to understand in order to get the client to the next step, you need to have a good customer relationship, right? You got this one.

This one point is the second point amongst these nine points that I'm going through. Let's move to the next one. The next one in the front stage is the channels.

What channels are you using to reach your client? Is it the channel of social media? Is it the channel of a magazine? Is it the channel of a podcast? Is it the channel of any other portal that you wanted to reach your clients? And even if it's some mailings, yeah, in the Middle East, it's not much. In the Middle East, it's not very common, but in other countries, for example, in Germany and Europe, you have still mailings that are physically dropping into your post, which can be very powerful. But that's one reason why you have to differentiate and look into the market, into the adaptability.

As I said before, you have to put this with your value chain and with your value proposition, as I explained to you in the very first stage of this podcast. So let's move on. You have the channels you have to choose.

You have to find a way how to play these channels and how to actually make you look good on these channels, make the client. Don't forget you around this channel. So also it is very, very much important that you understand the environment of these single channels.

So whether it be a podcast, whether it be YouTube, LinkedIn, whatsoever, you have to understand that you bring from those channels all of the clients into your universe, onto your playground, on your little entrepreneurial company real estate playground that you have to build them on. And from there on, you can foster your own channel. You have a community situation.

Maybe you have a community where you build on your own channels, where you're not dependent on. There is an algorithm. We saw it some time ago.

I think it was last year or two years, I don't even know. When was TikTok just switched off and all of these entrepreneurs that built this strategy on only TikTok was lost and everything was quite ruined. And those who was actually fostering and bringing the clients on their value proposition into the next channel, for example, email marketing, had actually a different outcome of the whole crisis, which should be taken care of because you can foster the customer relationship with an email follow up and an email relationship much more better than any other channel out there, which is good to get the customers in, but to bring them to the next step of the value chain is important that you bring them onto your business ground.

Okay. And one thing is very important, which I'm always seeing that my clients are not doing it very well or even not being very aware, they're getting actually their business funnel stacked up by clientele, by customers. They are not yet ready to buy, to purchase.

And then the outcome is that they have actually stacked up their funnel of revenue. So to avoid this, you should actually segmentize your clients. It sounds for a lot of people kind of awkward to say you are an A, B and C client.

It doesn't have anything to do with the value of your client per se as a human being, but with the clientele value for your business, you should really segment very strictly how much you wanted to give this client of an intensity of your time, how much time you wanted to give this, how much intensity of your time you want to give to one client. Who is not bringing any kind of any kind of revenue where there are clients who bring very easy revenue, very willing revenue, because they might be already in the value chain on a totally other place than the others. So people who just got in touch with you are obviously clients of category C, unless they are making actually faster decisions or building up quite fast revenue.

If they taking longer to build up trust, which is totally normal today, you should categorize them as well as such. And the definition of your categorization is very individual, as individual as you, your preferences and your business. Be free to categorize them, but as you want to be free to categorize them just as you want to.

But categorize them so you not getting stucked up with the people who are bringing very late only the revenue and you have to die of thirst. Yeah, we are here in the desert, yeah, you are in Dubai, it's a little bit more water required to send out your entrepreneur caravan. So that's why it is important that you put your attention to those who are building up the revenue easy and that is something that you actually evaluate with your clients.

What potential has the client, it doesn't have anything to do with how valuable a person is. They can be very valuable, but in my courses, in my selling classes, I always explain also how to categorize a person, how fast he can make decisions, how easy he can make decisions, where and how he get triggered, with what kind of trigger points he has in order to lead him to a target made decision towards your business and towards your products and services. So that's just something very normal.

You see, everything here has a structure and everything is structured. That's one big point that you should have as an entrepreneur to build structure around your business, which then is only scalable. No business with no structure is also not scalable.

So let's move on here. What else we have? So we have the value proposition. Let's just wrap it up for a second.

We have the channel, we have the customer relationship and we have the customer segments. This is basically the front stage of your business. Let's move to the backstage and what we have there.

Let's start with the key activities to build up your business, to scale your business. You have to have key activities. So if you wanted to bring a product on a market, you have to find out what key activities are important for this.

And that's what you have to figure out. So in the backstage, you have to have defined what are your key activities. And secondly, you have to find out what are your key resources.

What are your key resources? What is your ability? Do you need to have any key resources actually gotten from outside? We come later to it and I explain you how to do this or where to put it then if you have to get something from outside, if you don't have any key resources. What can be key resources? That can be your knowledge, that can be actually the environment. In my company, the devices, this podcast basically has the key resources, all the machines, all the technology behind it.

These are the key resources, maybe an entity, maybe in real estate. These are your key resources. My key resource, for example, in in my office is the parking place, because as I'm operating at this moment for Marina, parking places are really important to receive clients.

So one of my key resources is the parking place, besides all of the technology that I have. And of course, also my team. My team is also a key resource.

So segment this, write this down, and then you have it clear in front of your eyes and you see exactly what's missing and what you maybe have too much or maybe what you have and didn't even see. Because so often entrepreneurs underestimate what they have already in the basement or in their backpack of knowledge of resources, what they have actually forgotten. Sometimes entrepreneurs, they just don't see what resources they have because they take it for granted or they took it for granted.

So writing it down brings you much clarity. Clarity brings you direction and direction brings you speed. So let's speed up because slow is the new expensive.

Let's move on to the next point here. Do we have some time? Yes, we do. The next resource that you have to take is the key partner.

As I already mentioned, when you are evaluating your key resources, that you cannot do it all the time by yourself. So you need to have key partners on any kind of stages. You need key partners.

For me, as a podcast host, for example, a key partner is the podcast studio. So in order to deliver this podcast on a really good, listenable and quality scale, top notch kind of thing, I need to have a good key partner. Would I cooperate on my desk only? Would you listen to this podcast? Would it be already in charts number 49 of business podcasts in the UAE? I think not.

So see, key partners are very important. Evaluate who is your key partner here. Can be referral partners.

It can be networks that you have. And Dubai is full with possibilities to get a good relation to your key partners, which we also have to have a good relation on the key partners. Do you remember you have to have key partners on the one hand and also customer relationship? So the same relationship that you build to your customers, you have to also build to your key partners.

For example, I invite my key partners regularly. There are any festivities like Christmas or New Year's or whatever. I invite them to actually foster the relationship with them in a group or even single wise.

So my business is running. My business is very much reliable on the key partner, for example, on Podstar. So I have sometimes nuggets for them to foster also the relationship to them.

As I said, maybe you have a key partner is a bank. If you are a real estate agent, for example, you need a bank who is a key partner for you to maybe roll out mortgages or open up an account or transfer the money seamless for you to operate even you should actually write down who is your key partner, evaluate and think and even put down who could be your key partner that you wanted to have and don't have yet. So that's something very important.

Ha! Key partners. I really love that and I can get very creative on it. And that is most of the times also where I extend my business and scale my business because with good key partners, you can have a really good scalable position.

So it's really worthy to look into this point. Make sure that you write me in the comment who would be actually your dream key partner. My dream key partner would be, for example, the next podcast guest.

The next podcast guest I'm working on it is actually the CEO of Asta Pharmacies. So if you know this guy, please write in the comment and connect me to it. Because he had actually a really good scaling point and he had a really good structure.

And I'm looking throughout the UAE for exactly those clientele on picking their brains to bring them to you to find actually out what is going on and how they scaled so we can learn from it. That would be a good key partner, for example. OK, so my key partners are different as well because we have different business opportunities also because we have different business segments in our ecosystem.

For example, I also have this one project where I bring German doctors to Dubai. So my key partners are, for example, the licensing Dataflow entity or the company Dataflow, who is verifying the documents from all these doctors. So it's very important for me in this business case to have a good connection, a good relationship with my one key partner of this business case.

Let's dive deeper into it. And now it's getting interesting. We had already the key resources, the key activities and the key partners here.

And now we come to the bottom line. I put this in the YouTube. If you only listen to it, just imagine a sheet and maybe you go into the show notes here.

I think I can manage to put this down as a download here so you have it right in front of your eyes and can work with it. OK, so in the bottom you have either the cost structure and the revenue structure. You should actually note down what are your cost structures.

What is the cost structure of A, B and C? What is the cost structure of building up all of these value proposition? What is the cost structure? For example, for me, the cost structure of the podcast studio is really important as I am doing this on a long run. I do not want to buy session by session. I'm always investing in bigger packages in order to have my margin much more better.

So that is, for example, a cost structure that I have to take in consideration. If you do paid ads, for example, you should also segment your cost structures. What are subscriptions and what are investments that you need to do in order to move forward? And that's very important.

And a lot of people, they are just go ahead in their podcast. Oh, let me see. We have to finish.

Oh, I think we make a second session for it. Let's do it. We have a little bit more time.

Do we have a little bit more time? I think we have a little bit more time. So the cost structure, where we was, it's very important to get this down because you have to get also a clarity on it. If you don't know what's your cost structure, you also cannot navigate your revenue.

You need to know your numbers. Your KPIs are very important. So that's why note it down, even if it's a very uncomfortable place, even if it's very an uncomfortable point to look at, what is your cost structure is most important.

If you don't have that, you just don't have an idea how to create your cash flow and your revenue. So, for example, to take this podcast here in this podcast, we have two kind of guests, those who have actually scaled already, who are I'm investing in to bring this knowledge to you and have a good reach and all this work and this passion in building up basically this environment around this community, about this ecosystem. So these people I'm investing in and the cost structure of the podcast, for example.

But also there is a possibility to be on this podcast on a paid version where you can actually also get our media package with pictures, with magazine, with the pictures, with the magazine, with reels, with the magazine publication of our scale magazine. So you build up your footprint with a lot of benefits. Yeah.

A lot of my founders who start in the market here, whether they've been already long an entrepreneur or not, they are coming here in the market. It's required that they have built. It's required that they build actually their digital footprint and we help them with this.

And that's their investment then to be in a podcast like that, to be seen, to ride on the wave that all of these great founders that we having on this podcast already creating for you and then they can benefit. So that is on one hand a revenue and on the other hand, a cost structure. So that's what you have to build out and that's what you have to lay out in front of you and see of where and how you can put your client through this value proposition, which we build up this value chain that we build up and build a lot of a lot of trust.

So, for example, in the business case that I have with the doctors that I already explained to you a little bit, the value proposition is that they are basically loading down a guidance how to get actually a doctor here in Dubai, how to get the license here in Dubai. Then they download an exchange of the download and of these tips and of these instructions. Of course, they change the data.

This is the first step where they get in contact with me on a very minimal exchange of trust. There needs to be a little bit trust. If there is a guard up with the client, of course, he was also not putting in his data.

So having that done, of course, you foster a relationship with your client and you send out some email marketing, follow up emails to educate, not to bombard, not to get anybody on nerves. You know, you do not want it to come around the whole time, advertise a little bit and that's why you have to really work on a good copywriting, work on a good structure, make it valuable for the client. OK, so we equip in our email follow up with a lot of tips that go beyond the download that they have.

And also we invite them into a community so they can have actually fostered good information that are also, again, beyond the download, beyond the emails. And then if they think Dr. Angela is somebody trustworthy, we can make an appointment to have a consultation with her. So we sit together, have a consultation.

They let their guard down, of course, because also our product makes a lot of sense for them. And then they buy the first time. If they buy the first time, then they are connected with us in this business case for one year, which then enables them to build up the trust us and also them often.

Our clients even renewed their contract with us after a year. Not necessary to get their license, but also because they have understood that we know how to do the marketing, that we know how to create visibility, that we know how to build their digital footprint. So now you're getting it.

The environment of Sklena with another business case is all coming together. You see, it's all thought through. And that only comes from these nine steps that I explained to you.

So you see, this business case is something really good and it's all coming together. The environment. You can do this for yourself and you can do this as well with all and every business cases, whether you wanted to have a podcast studio, whether you want to have a business case of coffee shop or a cleaning company, anything.

And that's how I make strategies like that for all kind of companies, for all kind of individuals. Is it a coach? Is it a jeweler? Even airlines have asked me to build up structures like that. And that's how my industries are very diverse.

Because the strategy is always the same, even if the product is something different. So now I'm curious to find out whether. So I'm curious to find out in what kind of industry you're moving.

And do you think this strategy that I told you is applicable for your industry? I am very looking forward for your for your comments here. And if you feel this has brought some value to you, please send it to some of your friends, some of your business owners, to people who just wanted to start a business. Doesn't matter.

Just imagine how big of a favor you do them if they have a structure like that. This is actually something that a lot of people can apply. This is something that you can help actually with as a friend, as a friend entrepreneur.

If you see somebody struggling with scaling or maybe starts with the wrong price category, with the wrong product to start to get in contact with your client. So I hope this was something valuable for you. And I put it some strategies in your business that scaled and left it with it with the story that might have sticked this time.

Was it very educational? I say bye for now. And although we have some time, but as I said, I'm ready for your questions. Talk to you later.