After working with 200+ education businesses this year, I’ve noticed that growth tends to break down in three different ways:
- $0-500k: More
- $500k-$1m: Better
- $1-3m: Less
Knowing this, you can take a first-principles approach to growing your business to the next level.
- If you’re at $250k/yr, how do you get to $500k?
- If you’re at $500k, how do you get to $1m?
- If you’re at $1m, how do you get to $3m?
Let’s explore…
$0-500k: More
At the $0-500k range, your business is still getting off the ground.
You’ve hit on a groove.
Found something that works.
But the business doesn’t have enough “stuff” to support the potential yet:
- You’re running cohorts but don’t have anything to offer on the backend
- You’re still selling on DMs and haven’t figured out email marketing (i.e. automation) yet
- You’re doing customer support and community management yourself
These are all examples of major structural gaps in your business.
You’re leaving major $$$ on the table and working far too much in the day-to-day, meaning that the business is starved of oxygen and unable to grow.
Like turning up to a hot date wearing only one sock.
You’re doing well to get the date in the first place, but you’re not quite bringing the goods.
Hence: More
- More products
- More emails
- More team
This is a thrilling stage, because everything you add to the business has a tangible impact, you feel the growth in your bones, and cash feels like it grows on trees.
(Spoiler: It doesn’t.)
It’s hard to screw up at this point, providing that you live by what is probably the #1 growth rule in business:
Do more of what’s working.
The biggest thing you can screw up? Getting distracted by random s*** and losing focus.
Next.
$500k-$1m: Better
At this stage, your business already has most of the “stuff”.
You’ve spent the last few years putting it all together.
But everything’s a bit of a mess:
- Old courses that don’t fit any more
- Frankenstein email sequences that’ve been revised more times than a bathroom wall in a dive bar
- A team that’s full of holes and not fit for purpose
And you’re working 25 hours a day to hold it together.
Right now your business feels like you’ve just ordered a bunch of flat-pack furniture with instructions in Chinese.
Yes, you’ll figure it all out eventually…
But you know full-well you’re gonna put half the shelves in upside down, and not realise what you’ve done until you put in the final screw and cracked open a beer in premature celebration.
Hence: Better.
- Professionalise your team
- Write email sequences that are fit for purpose
- Polish up your products
- Cross- and up-sell more effectively.
It’s time to grow up – because if you don’t, the chaos will prevent you from scaling any further.
Biggest thing you can screw up?
Not being willing to (learn to) hire competent people.
(You can’t do it all by yourself.)
Last…
$1m-$3m: Less
It’s striking how, whenever I meet an entrepreneur at this revenue level, they rarely want “more”.
They’ve got money now.
They understand that money is an illusion and is never gonna give them what they thought it would. (Bastard!)
So now, they want something else:
- less revenue, more profit
- easier life
- stability & security
Consider these two businesses, which, on the face of it, are quite different:
Biz 1) $3m revenue at a 20% profit margin
Biz 2) $1m revenue at a 60% profit margin
In case you didn’t spot it, both businesses make the same profit.
Which would you rather run?
Hint: You can be sure that the $1m business is a LOT simpler to run:
- leaner
- more efficient
- no bloat
And this makes for a MUCH nicer life for the entrepreneur…
- Better lifestyle
- Less stress
- Fewer people to manage
Hence, my work with a $1-3m business almost always revolves around one word:
Less
For example:
- Finding the 80/20 of what drives profit in the business
- Setting a target for profit margins and taking it seriously
- Reoganising a bloated team
- Simplifying complex marketing automations
- Finding AI processes that make everything run better
- Orienting the business around one avatar
By doing less, in a more focused way, this is how you can keep revenue the same, but:
- 2-3X profit
- work 80% less
- start enjoying your life as an entrepreneur
Biggest thing you can screw up?
Not having the confidence to make bold changes.
.
.
.
So that’s it:
- More
- Better
- Less
Namaste,
Olly