You don’t have to look like the other businesses in your industry to learn from them. Justin and I talk about how to apply software metrics to service businesses & how to identify the right opportunity at the right time.
Listen NowMaggie Patterson and I talk about all the different things she's tracking, how she tracks them, and how she's integrated what she learns into her growth strategy. We also talk about how she gets over the mental hurdle of “but, I don't wanna” and gets herself to actually track data.
Listen NowI talk with Kathleen Shannon about how to approach data when you identify as more of a creative person and less as someone with a data-first mindset. We talk about how making space for growth is such an important aspect of actually growing. And we talk about how sometimes making space for growth can just mean letting the universe know you're prepared.
Listen NowKaryn Kelbaugh is a squishy data specialist. She helps small business owners learn what their clients think by capturing their stories. Owners get feedback, insights into their clients' dreams and frustrations, and their exact words describing it all. In other words: research you can use. Key takeaways: - How Karyn collects all that squishy data goodness and gets it into a useable form that's easy to keep up to date - How frequently you should be looking at the data, what should they be looking for, and how should you use that data to drive decisions - How actively collecting your clients’ perspectives helps paint a more accurate picture of what's really going on with your business and how to integrate that perspective in a meaningful way - How one of the biggest mistakes you can make is collecting data you don't have a purpose for
Listen NowRob Howard has one simple metric for measuring the financial health of his business: profit per hour per client. Tracking that metric has changed how I evaluated and measured my own business and has become something I incorporate into my clients’ businesses as well. It's not something you have to look at every day, but keeping track of this one metric will help you grow in a sustainable and financially healthy way. Key Takeaways: - What Rob considers to be the key metrics to measure for service business owners and how he determined which metric to measure the financial health of a business - What's happening behind the scenes for Rob to actually get to this profit per hour per client - How the number of dollars you made and the number of minutes you spent are data points where there is enough quantity to make real decisions based on them - What tools Rob is using to collect data or measure his metrics - What metrics he has consciously chosen not to track or pay attention to and some of the mistakes he has made with tracking metrics
Listen NowToday, we’re going to pull all those ideas together and look at the downstream impacts of making that switch from hourly pricing to value-based pricing. We’ll look at how it affects your sales process, your proposal process, your profit, your cash flow and, yep, even the other software you might choose to use in your business. To illustrate my point, we’re going to look at how these decisions have played out in a real business. My guest today is Rita Barry, the founder of Rita Barry & Co, a relationship-driven company, focused on metrics. Key Takeaways: - Why tying your work to an hourly rate can really start to hurt as you gain efficiency and experience - Why she uses results as the basis for her pricing structure and why pattern recognition has become one of her most valuable skills - How value-based pricing allowed her to scale her agency without having to step away from doing what she loved - Why making the switch to value-based pricing helped her find more joy in what she does!
Listen NowPractice Ignition is a tool I use in my own business, and with most of my clients because it makes onboarding a client and accepting payments so easy. My guest today has been using Practice Ignition for the last few years. Jaime Campbell is the co-founder and CFO of Tier One Services, a firm of outsourced, year-round CFOs and complete accounting departments. Key takeaways: - How Jamie transitioned her firm from Bill.com and Microsoft Word contracts to Practice Ignition - Why that move impacted her workflow and ability to scale her firm so dramatically - Behind-the-scenes of how I’ve built Practice Ignition into my own workflow at ScaleSpark - Some live consulting with Jaime about how she could improve her own workflow
Listen NowGetting paid by clients is the #1 most important part of the workflow in a service business. If you don’t get paid, eventually, you won’t have a business. But how you go about getting paid – now that’s where some magic can really happen. Today, we’re talking with Kate Strathmann about the process of getting paid by your clients and how to make it easier. Should you accept credit cards? How about checks? Do you charge your clients the credit card processing fee? What about payment plans – should you offer them? How you decide to answer these questions can affect not just your workflow, but also your cash flow, and, ultimately, your relationship with your client.
Listen NowDana Kaye and I talk about how she went about making that transition from an hourly pricing model to a value-based model. We talk about how the change affected every area of her business operations and the impact that thinking about the administrative costs of pricing your services can have on your business.
Listen NowGreg Hickman realized that the systems he developed behind-the-scenes to streamline and productize his own service were actually much more valuable if he transformed them into a system that he could actually train his clients on. Instead of doing the work for his clients, he moved into a model where he teaches them how to do the service for themselves–a done WITH you kind of service. Basically, he realized that it's better for his clients if he teaches them to fish instead of doing them the fishing for them.
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