3 WAYS YOU CAN SCALE YOUR BUSINESS (and only one of them is an online course)

“Scaling” is the sexy new buzz word everyone just… says.

Every webinar/Insta post/training these days seems to be like, “this will help you scale, I can help you scale, my program will help you scale!”

What the hell does that even MEAN?

Stop trying to make scale happen.

So I’m gonna make like MC Hammer and break it down…

“Scaling” just means:

Having assets in your business that you can promote, sell, generate revenue from, etc. without trading time for dollars.

Cause ya time is limited, which means ya dollas is limited too.

Anyone? Anyone?

Foooooooor example…

I am a copywriter and marketing strategist, and when I do that for clients…I trade hours for dollars.

I charge a project fee, they pay me that fee, I work to deliver the copy. Lather, rinse, repeat. (jk this isn’t boring, it’s literally my favorite thing to do (after naps, of course.))

The better I get, the more I’m able to trade more dollars for fewer hours.

Just a few more years of this gig and I’ll be able to charge $5,897/hour (that’s a thing, right??)

But at the end of the day, I can’t scale that because there is a limit to my time.

And do not even come at me with Beyonce’s 24 hours.

  • She is god, not a human, so it doesn’t count
  • Yes, I have the same 24 hours as her but I do not have…her nanny, personal assistant, cleaner, chef, stylist, personal assistant #2, Blue Ivy’s personal assistant, personal trainer, personal dress fluffer, and hair brusher, and butter warmer…

I don’t work more than 30 hours a week (not because I have some amazing life figured out, but because I’m at home in quarantine with a two year old and my husband needs a break.)

I can’t work more than that. Full stop.

Sooo I can’t really scale my services. I can raise my prices and only take on high ticket projects (yo, Bey, you need a copywriter? I gotchu. That will be $500k please and thank you), but at the end of the day, there’s a cap…

If you’re a service provider or coach, ya know the deal.

And when there’s a cap, it always feels like you’re leaving money on the table…which makes stepping away from work harder than not eating that 3rd piece of pizza (and by 3rd, I mean 5th.)

Which is where our new word friend comes in…

SCALING.

So, ya, scaling can be magical for your business, and your time, and your mental health, and will probably make your skin look amazing…

But that doesn’t always mean it only looks one way, or that you have to do it the same as Sir Launch A Lot, Madam Podcast Guru, or Captain McMarketing Yellington.

So imma give you 3 tools you can use to both grow your revenue AND help you reach more people and grow your impact (aka grow deeper and wider.) ← that’s what she said

SCALING THROUGH ONLINE EDUCATION

Courses are really, really, really big in the online education industry right now.

And I work for course creators – I see the impact it has on their business. I love courses, I have literally learned how to do my business by taking courses, I looooove the course creation industry.

But at the same time, a lot of service providers use courses to stop doing what they do best and just teach it instead. So everyone is transitioning to a coaching or teaching model (and usually charging a pretty penny.)

If I had a bunch of copywriting courses but I stopped copywriting and just launched courses…then I’m not, well…copywriting.

I fully reserve the right to eat my words, stop writing and make one bajillion dollars launching courses and Scrooge McDucking in my coins until the day I die. So don’t @ me.

A lot of entrepreneurs have made that transition very well.

But your goal might not be to stop doing your job and to teach other people how to do it.

So, I want you to think about the possibility of creating some digital education in a way that works for YOU.

For me, I really enjoy writing for my clients. I love the marketing strategy. I love studying their voice, studying their audience, listening to the audience and finding the message that’s going to bridge the gap between what my client wants to say and what their audience needs to hear.

That’s my idea of a good time, but so is home renovation so my judgement is questionable.

I want to stay sharp in my copy skills, I want to keep studying the ever-changing online marketing industry so that I can teach others and write words for my clients that kick ass, take names, and make a lot of money.

But like we said, my services aren’t scalable, cause I can’t add more hours to the day. And there are a limited number of people who are able to or want to invest in my services.

If your goal behind creating some additional streams of revenue and some digital education is to do less client work to get your time back to stop trading hours for dollars, then that’s great.

I say, hell yeah! Go do it, and let me write your launch copy, and we’ll take over the world.

Buuuuut at the same time, we have the option to continue doing what we’re doing in a very sustainable, enjoyable way that lights us up that allows us to serve our audience in a diverse number of ways.

Because at the end of the day, courses aren’t always accessible. Especially ones with premium pricing. A big part of diversity, equity, and inclusion is accessibility…so if those are things you dig, maybe think about adding one of these options to your line up.

(And if you don’t dig those things, ew. Go home.)

If you are a service provider, a coach, you’ve had success in your industry and could help someone else achieve the same, or you have a system or process you could duplicate…I would really encourage you to think about how you can create some additional streams of revenue.

With these tools, you will be able to scale your business so you have multiple sources of income, you’re not always trading dollars for hours, and you can serve more people in a diverse number of ways.

OVERVIEW: DIGITAL EDUCATION TOOLS

There are 3 different types of digital ed. offers, each with a different level of transformation.

📚 The digital download. This transformation is a start to finish transformation, instantly, with the download. They get the information and benefit immediately.

📚The paid workshop. This is something that’s going to deliver a process or a framework that is going to completely transform the way that they do something that they want to do. It’s gonna give them a quick, more efficient and effective way of solving a problem. It’s a complete framework, but it’s not a huge time commitment.

(I recently wrote about how to create a paid workshop in just 2 weeks. So if you want to know more about this, just go swipe my project plan!)

📚The online course. This is something that is going to deliver an entire roadmap to one complex topic for a complete transformation that results in a big win. The more times the student goes back and duplicates that process the bigger transformation they’re going to see.

TOOL #1: DIGITAL DOWNLOAD

This is your quick win.

These are the things that someone can go into an online shop and instantly buy and download, and it’s probably going to be less than $200, most are usually under $100.

This will give you the solution to your problem within hours (if not minutes) of downloading.

So, an example of a digital download might be something like a preset if you’re a photographer. The second someone gives you $19 and downloads that preset into their phone, they can immediately put the filter on their images and all of their Instagram photos look the same.

Boom. Quick win.

It could be a swipe file. For my business that might be things like Instagram story starters, email subject lines, launch copy swipes, headlines templates, that kind of stuff.

There’s so many ideas for this! SEO checklists, Canva templates, instructional videos, travel guides, anything.

TOOL #2: WORKSHOP

Think of this more as a framework that they can learn in the workshop start to finish, and they can repeat it themselves later. They may not get that immediately by the end of the workshop.

I recently wrote on how to do a two hour workshop. There are always exceptions to the rule, but usually workshops are going to be about $100 to $300 range, so a little more than a digital download.

The student will probably have some immediate “aha!” moments and solutions, but they’re gonna have to go back to the framework you taught them to get that complete win.

So you’re taking a very dialed in, very specific, very narrow idea and teaching them a complete framework for that idea.

This could be a 2 hour workshop delivered over zoom, a mini-course a student could consume in an afternoon, a live recording of you completing a process, you could even make a mashup and combine a live workshop with digital downloads.

The options are endless…kinda like quarantine.

TOOL #3: ONLINE COURSE

This is one you probably know the most about. For an online course, you take what you do, package it up in some way, and deliver it to someone else so that they can do it through your instruction.

There is a huge range of pricing for courses, all the way from $300 up to $3000+ for big courses that help you achieve a big outcome.

A course is an entire roadmap, so the transformation is going to be ongoing. They’re going to be able to watch the course over a significant period of time, maybe it’s a week, maybe it’s two weeks, maybe it’s 12 weeks, but they’ll be able to digest the information over this time.

They will be able to work alongside it at the end of it, and the more they go back and do it, the more they go back and learn. The transformation gets bigger and bigger.

To sum up…

👉 The digital download is like a quick little guy, a little hit of dopamine for the buyer.

👉 The workshop is a narrowed and really focused initiative, specific topic, a start to finish framework.

👉 The course is an entire roadmap of a start to finish transformation.

So, my friend, go forth and create some education. Who cares if it’s shitty? Most people are afraid to ever try!

Let me know what you’re going to create! Just pick one thing and just do it – just sell it and break that seal. And then you can sell more and more.You can fine tune your marketing, offer, and copy. There’s no such thing as failing. We just keep learning and doing different and better.

Don’t know where to get started? Just swipe my step-by-step project plan for teaching a paid workshop and plug, play, teach, and get paid!


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