The Work of Your Hands That Doesn't Scale: Getting New Clients, boring. brutal. better.

What is your time worth?

I am not asking what an hour of your services cost.

What is your time worth?

Here’s a quick example:

Let’s say you charge $200/hr for your service, coaching, etc. You may think your time is worth $200/hr, but it’s not.

To determine what your time is worth, you need to take the total revenue generated in a month and divide it by the total hours worked.

So let’s say you generated $10,000 in one month.

But let’s say you grind six days per week, 12-hour days. In a 30-day month, that’s 26 working days at 12 hours each or 312 total hours.

Now, what’s your time worth?

$10,000/312 hours = $32/hr.
That’s pretty far from $200.

And if we did the math only using profitability at 50%….?

$10,000x50% = $5,000
$5,000/312 = $16/hr.

So why are we doing this math?

Have you ever said, thought, or heard someone say, “It’s not worth my time.”

That statement begs the question, “What is your time worth?”

Most of the time, to grow my businesses, I’ve had to do things that are “not worth my time.”

In my experience, I’ve had to do things that don’t scale to scale my business.

Today, I’ll go over three things I’ve done to get customers that aren’t sustainable but helped me grow my business.

Things That Didn’t Scale: Getting New Customers

When I started as an entrepreneur, I valued my time at zero.

I still struggle with this today. It’s not that I don’t value my time these days. It’s more that I am willing to do anything to succeed. Nothing is beneath me. There is no job I am unwilling to do, but there are things I probably should just let someone else do.

And here are some things I had to do to get my business going.

Thing #1: Worked for Free

I worked for free A LOT. When I first started in the fitness space, I had two jobs. I was a writer, and I was a coach. At first, I made more money writing than I did coaching.

And I gave both away for free…STRATEGICALLY

As a writer, I wrote 50 different articles for free for other syndications, popular blogs, etc. These were in-depth pieces, each with thousands of words. It took a lot of time.

As a coach, I tested a lot of ideas and programs. I would get 5-10 people at a time to agree to go through my new programs in exchange for a video testimonial at the end of the program.

It took a long time, but I eventually started winning some “Top Writer” and “Top Blog” awards, and the word started to grow slowly, and traffic to my site started to increase.

Likewise, my athletes started to see results, they told their friends, and I marketed their testimonial videos on my website (which was gaining traffic). As a result, I began to get more athletes into our programs.

Today, I’ll never tell you to work for free because people don’t respect free.

But, if you think about it, the free coaching I provided wasn’t free. I had an agreement with these people to provide a video testimonial. So that’s their image and the time they are trading for mine.

In writing for free, I was actually exchanging that for impressions and traffic to my site.

Question for you:

Free doesn’t scale. But what FREE value can you provide that could give your business a strategic advantage? For example, is there a strategic partnership you could set up in exchange for free services? Will the unscalable act of doing it for free lead to actual scale in your business?

Thing #2: Learned SEO

When I started my business, I had no money. I couldn’t scrounge up $20 towards advertising or anything else.

But I had learned about SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

I decided that would be my strategy.

I read and implemented everything I could about SEO and was not a fan. It was pretty technical and took some of the enjoyment out of writing for me.

But I did it anyway.

I learned so much about SEO you would think I was trying to get a job in the SEO world.

This was an unscalable act.

As my business grew, I needed to spend the time doing the WORK; I.e., I needed to coach, market, and lead. I couldn’t sit around and learn SEO forever.

But it 100% was worth my time.

Question for you:

You don’t need to learn SEO, but what could you learn to help you grow your business right now?

Thing #3: Like/Comment Harvesting

Lastly, I did something I call like/comment harvesting.

This is not only a strategy I have used, it’s one I have taught clients to use with great success.

I’ve coached people with Instagram followings nearing one million people who had the “it’s not worth my time” attitude… and didn’t even make that much money but were super proud of the size of their following.

And I’ve also coached people with a few thousand followers who would do anything to succeed.

And I’ve seen more success with the latter. Your attitude is everything.

We often forget that every like, view, and comment is a real human being. So when you post a picture on Instagram and it gets 27 likes and you think it was a waste of your time, that’s 27 people who did not believe it was a waste.

So what’s the strategy?

Treat every interaction as a meaningful interaction.

I started when Facebook Business pages were the place to be. Then, as I started to get more “fans” to my page, I would reach out to each of them individually. I would shoot them a message and learn more about them.

Whenever someone liked one of my Facebook posts, I would find out who they were. Then, I would thank them for liking my post and try to provide some free value.

Same when I started an email list.

Whenever someone signed up for my free thing, I would email them directly. Nothing automated. I would thank them and ask questions to learn more about them.

Slowly… these people turned into customers. And it grew my business significantly.

It’s not sustainable.

It’s not scalable.

But it works.

Question for you:

How could you better interact with your current fans/following without always focusing on MORE fans and followers?

Try Harder…

Moral of the story:

Get off your high horse.
Do the work that doesn’t scale.
Scale your business.

Once your time is so valuable it doesn’t make sense, hire it out or delegate it down.

Try harder,