Ep. #1193 - How to Scale Your Consulting Business

Matt DeCoursey  0:01

And we’re back, back for another episode of Startup Hustle. Matt DeCoursey, here to have another conversation; I’m hoping it helps your business grow. So how do you scale a consulting business, so many people are consultants, and they end up being a one-person kind of shop or maybe a small team, then you run into the challenges of scaling that to a much larger operation. There are a lot of tricks, pitfalls, and tips that we’re going to have for you today. Before I get into that today’s episode, Startup Hustle is powered by FullScale.io. Hiring software developers is difficult, and Full Scale can help you build a software team quickly and affordably and has the platform to help you manage that team. Go to FullScale.io. To learn more, there’s a link for that in the show notes. With me today is Ihor Bauman. And Ihor is the CEO and co-founder of Workee, that’s spelled W, O, R, K, E, E. You can find a link to Workee.net in the show notes as well. Straight out of San Francisco, California, Ihor, welcome to Startup Hustle.

Ihor Bauman  1:07

Thank you both. It’s amazing to be here. Thanks for having me. And let’s make it productive for everyone.

Matt DeCoursey  1:13

Yeah, I’m interested in the subject and what you do at Worker. For those of you that are listening, once you scroll down to the show notes and take a click because what Ihor built is a platform to help many independent contractors or consultants, or people do a better job. Now, Ihor, let’s get the conversation started today with a little bit about your backstory. So lay it on us.

Ihor Bauman  1:38

Uh-huh? Yeah. So everything to you know. You never know what’s waiting for the grounds. The coordinator said it was the same story with a startup. You always knew that something in Scotland, but like how it will come to you. You never know. For me, it was a story from the pandemic. Because a lot of people lost their jobs. It was really hard to move online. And it’s a real challenge for a lot of professions. And it was the same story for my mom, who lost her therapy job in one Byron Hospital, you to call it; it was not ready to operate at that point in time. And my mom, having called clients already throughout her career, was asking me questions about how to work with them, how to create a personal website, how to manage a management system, how to manage payments, and how to pay taxes. And it’s a real nightmare for a lot of professionals who already have clients, though, right? But you still need to manage them somehow; you need to still manage not only your clients but your business operations. And admin things are always pretty annoying. And that’s why we decided to create Workee to empower professionals to work directly with their clients at the same time to manage business routine, like, it was his accounting and taxes out of the box. So this is what we do.

Matt DeCoursey  2:53

Yeah, I think that’s a useful tool for so many people, you know, whether it’s consulting or just all forms of a small business. So many people will kind of get into business accidentally, you know, they pick up a client here and there, they got a side hustle. And next thing you know, they want to go full-time, and now they get to run a business, which isn’t usually what they’re trained to do. So, like you said, your mom, will you said she was a therapist.

Ihor Bauman  3:18

Yeah, yeah.

Matt DeCoursey  3:19

So she’s got a dab she might not be. She would school for that and get certified for Yeah. Yeah, how’s all that? But what you don’t get without is an MBA or business management. So yeah, I’m a big fan of tools that help people with whatever it is that they do. Now, when you talk about scaling a consulting business. You know, as I mentioned, at the top of the show, there’s a lot of consulting companies out there that, you know, give you advice on, gosh, pick whatever, you know, there’s a consultant out there for it. You don’t usually run into big firms that have a ton of consultants. There are some out there, but I think that’s because scaling these things can be difficult. If we talk about scaling a consulting business in general, like, where’s where some of the first things that that what are some of the first problems that someone’s likely to encounter?

Ihor Bauman  4:11

Yeah, I guess, starting from the basis. First of all, before scaling the business, you need to know specifically what you are going to scale. Right? What’s your product? Do you know your product is already in place? Is like already packed somehow? Do you have an audience? Do you have the newsletter? Do you have email communication with customers? Do you know how to sell this product? Do you know who’s gonna buy this product? So all of those questions you need, like, to have this as your homework before anything can come to teach. So, first of all, define your specific product market fit and your specific value proposition; this point is now number one. Secondly, you should define how you’re going to sell this. Is it like private sessions? Is it maybe some handbooks, playbooks? Maybe some through consultations, whatever you have. Secondly, like, what results this product will give to your customers? What they will achieve, after what sessions give them expectations, just to be clear about your relations and how the process should look like. After that, you can have different tools, multiple tools, okay? Build your personal website, build that SEO for a personal website, so you can be searchable, and your domain authority will go huge. So, first of all, everything starts from your personal website, especially for professionals who want to build and scale their business. Build your personal website, and invest in some basic tools for SEO for your website positioning for your key branding. Secondly, see, think about how you can sell your products. Should you connect it to your personal website, or should you connect some third-party systems that should build something for you, like how the process will look for operations for yourself? Secondly, think about the communication channels with your customers. Okay, your customers have your website; what are they going to do with this website? Because locations do you subscribe to the newsletter, subscribe to your communication materials, call you back, whatever. Just make sure how your customers can reach out to ask your questions and how they can book you for your time. And I guess they’re the fourth part before we go into really deep details; I guess it’s gonna be how their CRM system should look like. Their communications between you and your customers? Is it about like calling crazy about SMS? If people are not responding, how and why should you reach out? How should you build referrals from your current clients? How your current clients can bring you new clients? So this is another important question about the scale of your business.

Matt DeCoursey  6:52

Yeah, and that now there’s a lot to unpack there. So, you know, the first part, I mean, standardizing your services. And let’s talk a little bit about that. Well, first off, like, it’s, it’s amazing how many service businesses and consulting as a service don’t have standardized services. They don’t have a menu that you can choose from. And like you mentioned, if you don’t have that, like, what are you selling? Like? Are we just going to sell anything we want? Or it’s too general, I think, overall when, when a potential prospect or client is in that exploratory stage, and you’re there at your site? And I don’t know, man, they come out of it, and they’re, like, what does this person actually do or sell us? So like, you know, come up with? All right, well, let’s go create a fake consulting business here. And let’s just say we’re going to teach people in shoe stores how to sell more shoes. We should define that inventory management, product selection, like, you know, like data analysis, you know, I mean, I’m just making these up on the fly. But these are examples of standardized services where you can gain some kind of expertise and begin to move forward. Now, if you are so many, you mentioned the personal website because a lot of consultants are a one-person show. You can’t scale yourself; you have to build a team. You have to be that’s where that standardization of services, that development of that material that goes with it, and other people to do it. And I know this pretty well because at Full Scale, we, in some ways, are a consulting company, although people contract our employees through our platform. But, you know, like without, you know, we’ve got a very, very narrow service offering that’s very defined, and we don’t get outside that. I think if you want to scale, you got to like to stick with what you want to do and how you want to do it. Now. You know, also on my list here, you’ve got leveraging technology, you know, that’s a little bit of your platform helps do that. What are a couple of things that work you does that an independent consultant or you seem to have a lot of a lot of like language tutors and stuff that you’re I like a lot of people you have people use the technology to scale because overall that kind of whether it’s just CRM or everything else, that kind of stuff is a huge time suck that you could be instead going out and getting paid to perform services.

Ihor Bauman  9:18

Yeah, it makes sense. So you know, for a lot of people, it’s really hard to start because you need to start somewhere, and you need to understand, okay, what should they do? Where should I start, how to build my personal website, all that stuff? So he’s worky what problem we are solving, resolving, and how you can actually start once you sign up, you just give cost your name, surname, profession, and your picture, and we help you to create your personal plan automatically originated technology. So we are creating all the content for you or the website layout, all the designs for you automatically. You can change it every time just simply by editing this and that section. But the thing is that we help you to get this aha moment. Wow. Okay, so this is where I should start. So we get in here, ready this like initial picture of your personal website. Secondly, we help you to keep all your business operations and all infrastructure that you need for your business already out of the box. Built-in payments, built-in booking system, built-in projects, client management solution, video call. So all those tools are already built in for your convenience; you do not need to think about them, choose the providers, etc. We already like to pick the best things for us; it could work already under the hood. So you already have your infrastructure ready to go, your personal website ready to go. Third-party helping you to put your products, your services in place, we help you to describe your services, we help you to define pricing for your services based on market average, we’ll help you to define duration, which should be delivered within your services, and already sees a picture of how your business could look like in minutes, just to have like everything prepared for you specifically. And after that, you can scale those things, you can add it, you can improve those skins things, but at least he has his base, the infrastructure that you can use.

Matt DeCoursey  11:17

Yeah, and I liked that onboarding template because everything you mentioned is, I mean, those things. I mean, it’s nice to have, you know, any, any platform or any tools or anything that can walk you through that because there really is, like, it gets moving. And you know, one of the things I like about I’m a little biased here because I’m also the founder of GigaBook, but scheduling is, look, we’re in this, you know, ever since Amazon came out, we’re in this one-click kind of culture. And, you know, like, I want to thank you for putting that in there for people because that’s that missing component you need it. Like, if you listen to one thing what I’m going to say from this episode, this might be the one thing that is going to help you scale, you have to make it easy for people to buy stuff from you. Absolutely. You cannot make it difficult. Like, I mean, if you’re a consultant, and I need a short amount of time, I don’t want to fill out your contact form. I don’t want to wait for you to call me back. I want, like, and if and I and there’s someone out there that’s like, Yeah, but my clients love the personal interaction. No, they don’t. They want to go somewhere, pick a time, hit a button, pay the schedule, and then show up on time they need it. So like all that back and forth. I mean, that’s why I built GigaBook, ten, you know, almost 10 years ago was you get all these emails, Hey, are you available? Then? Are you available? Man, it’s like it ends up being all you do. So if you feel like you’re chained to your business as a service provider because you’re emailing and texting, and then guess what, while you’re providing service, you can’t answer a call, you can’t do this. That’s when you need the technology to scale. And, you know, and by the way, like, you know, I’m sure you guys prevent this, but you know, like double-bookings and stuff like that, nothing’s gonna piss off the client more than them showing up or being batty. And you’re like, Ah, great. There are three of you here because I wasn’t organized. So you know, there’s the complexity, and scheduling is remarkably higher than people think it would be. Because when you start calculating payments, notifications, reminders, you know, invoicing, like all that stuff, it becomes exponentially tougher. So, you know, for those of you out there looking at stuff, have an appreciation for the scheduling part, it is what drives the business. So

Ihor Bauman  13:43

Thank you, Matt, for highlighting this. And actually, actually, two lessons that we learned. And yeah, especially for those people who are starting their business. Two lessons that you should like, really invest in your business before you will be alerted. This first one is, as it was really, the day when we changed our mindset when our customers told us that actually, our you clients, like you, that’s why we are with you. Because our clients like is their experience by booking me by having business with me. And that’s why I’m using you guys. So as a moment when we’re live, their end customer actually pays you, then you need to understand where you should focus. Because it was the end customer pays your bills, right? If our clients don’t, if our users don’t have clients, they will have no money to pay for us, for our service. Right? So this is a mindset, and yeah, so that was lesson number one and lesson number two, you’re just out of my brain at the moment, but yeah, when you are building things for people with understanding like what products you should sell, like what is units you should provide, this really makes sense for scaling the business for understanding the product. As more similar, you can make the product for other users so they can feel the potential results of the product they can feel, what to expect, and how they will change be changed up to the product you deliver. So there’s this huge.

Matt DeCoursey  15:19

Yeah, I think one thing for those that are getting started is, you know, you talked about you got to get started somewhere. And, you know that for someone that’s trying to get a consulting or a solopreneur business off the ground, a lot of the costs can feel a little overwhelming at first because there’s this and that, and you know, like all these different things. First off, there are enough free tools out there to get started in some regards. But, you know, everyone talks about, hey, let’s measure the data, let’s do this, let’s do that. What data doesn’t tell you is the value of the opportunities you miss because the kind of people that go to your site, and they look at, and they’re like, this is confusing, this is terrible. This is too much this is that. And you know, so you look at I’ve had people say like, you look at like GigaBook, which are like $15 a month for just some basic booking and collect payments and some stuff like doesn’t do all that. It connects to some of the things that you have built-in. But you know, some people owe $15 a month, I’m like, that’s nothing like unless you have no value. Yeah, you can’t class; you can’t class that return on effort. But the main thing is, it’s about those missed opportunities. It’s it’s about the ones and that’s the thing; that’s why data analytics has a very difficult time measuring what someone’s thinking when they’re not buying. Data Analytics will tell you what people buy, maybe how fast they buy it, how often they buy it, and what the lifetime value of a buyer is. But yeah, you need to sit back and think about that. Because you know, a lot of, like, you talked about consulting if I’m if I hire a consultant, it’s my hour to talk to this lady. I don’t want her answering other calls along the way and taking appointments of what I’m doing. So that’s where a lot of these tools are out of sight, out of mind, and I just really like I felt this way 10 years ago; I feel that way even stronger now. Like if someone sends me a meeting, like I asked for time to talk, and they don’t send me a booking like I’m kind of offended by this point. I’m like, yeah, my time.

Ihor Bauman  17:30

It’s really early, clear difference between, like, how it was before those tools and how it goes right now? Because right now, yeah, numerous companies are doing book and renewables payments. And when people are kind of just thinking, Okay, it’s like, not important for me for my business, as he pointed out, to get there, you’re already losing your application file because your competitors are already starting from that point. And everything starts from the user’s experience, right? You like why people buy coffee because they can like coffee, feel, smell, and see nice pictures. And that’s marketing; they’re selling you the product, right? The same goes for other products that you like for your business. And, yeah, you just have to be on the same level as your competition just to survive. If you are not doing something, it means that you are already behind. And that’s a pretty bad sign.

Matt DeCoursey  18:29

Well, I think the technological improvements, if you think about it from a consulting standpoint, I mean, I’m not gonna hire a consultant or a coach that doesn’t have a website. I work in tech, like, you’re in San Francisco, there’s probably higher expectations for what someone’s going to come up with, like, I expected, I expect some kind of technological solution. Now look, if you decide not to use GigaBook or Workee or whatever it does, go get a frickin Calendly account at a minimum. Go do so now. It’s not going to do the same kind of stuff. But make it easy for people to book to schedule with you. Because I’m telling you, if you don’t, you are losing meetings, or you’re just burning up a whole lot of time doing it. And you know, I want to talk about a couple more growth hacks with that. And before we get into that, I want to remind everyone that finding expert software developers doesn’t have to be difficult, especially when you go to FullScale.io, where you can build a software team quickly and affordably. Use the Full Scale platform to define your technical needs and see what available developers, testers, and leaders are ready to join your team. Go to FullScale.io to learn more. That’s how we get, so we are kind of consultants at Full Scale. Granted, we do sell the services of our own employees, but that’s where it begins with us and everything I just mentioned about, like going to our site, you know, this is the technology we built for ourselves. And we did it all in the spirit of efficiency. You know, like, qualifying the customer, asking specific questions. I don’t know if Workee does this. But one of the big things, even for this podcast, is that you use GigaBook to book. We are able to put it in GigaBook, you’re able to put in a lot of custom data collection. And we went back years ago because, you know, this podcast comes out five days a week, and we started looking to expand the number of episodes. And when you can just look at your business and say, where are we spending a bunch of time manually? Now, the podcast first came out, and it didn’t have a huge listenership as it does now; we were a little more hesitant to maybe make the lesson or do a bunch of work. But now we’re like, hey, you know, we’re gonna put someone on a big stage, we’re gonna promote the show, we’re gonna give them airtime, the least that they could do is answer a couple simple questions. What are those? Your name, your business, your website, your social handles. Just these little things that we would have to go and try to do manually. And then maybe your Instagram isn’t connected to your name or whatever, like, these are things. So being able to do that and have all that saved, saved us, you know, 30 to 60 minutes per guest times hundreds per year. And then also, like, the reminder factor, like, because you still need, this is transactional as well, I need you to show up to be a guest. Same kind of feel. So people forget about things, and, like, this kind of automation is back to that whole thing of preventing. I think too many business owners are there; they’re safe, they’re saving money, is making money. And if someone doesn’t show up, you can’t remind them, or you don’t make it easy, or your billing sucks, or whatever. And, you know, like, it’s like, and by the way, here in this modern age, if you don’t take credit cards, you’re not going to make more sales. You know, like some of them just don’t make it overly complex to do stuff. No, I don’t know.

Ihor Bauman  21:52

I’m on every

Matt DeCoursey  21:53

box now. go ahead, Ihor, but there’s, I mean, there’s gonna be really if you’re not using basic technology, you’re doing it wrong. You don’t look credible; you’re not like if you don’t look like you’re in the business of whatever it is that you say you do, I’m not hiring you.

Ihor Bauman  22:09

Every day, every saved penny is the pennies that you earned, right? So everything that you can do for your business today, just do it. About data points, about the understanding your customers, this is, like, a huge topic we can discuss here. As more data you can have about your customer, who they are, why they’re here, what they do, what they want to do, why is it bookings or calls, et cetera. As more data you’ll have about your customers better, you can build your value proposition, as better you can build your product, and as better you can acquire more and more of your potential customers. Do your product, do your business. So yeah, everything’s the goal is from us us us asking questions before the call, during the call, after the call, sales and sending surveys, don’t forget to reward your users. You know, every feedback, especially when we are big companies or companies, whatever size you are, you have, every feedback for you is a gift that your customers can give you. Because that feedback can navigate you through the waters can show you the right direction for your business, for your product, for your sales, for your customer support, and for everything that your company touches and operate in. So it’s very important to make sure, okay, hear, hear what our clients will see once they will find our company website. Hear what they will see when they will try to make the decision about the product. So make sure the product is precise. You have plenty of descriptions of the product. You have testimonials of other customers who use the product, who have good results, who have better results, who can, like, also recommend your product to other clients. Then, make sure that the booking flow makes a super easy experience. Remember why people like Apple? Why else are people buying Tesla right now? Because customer experience is really big, a big portion of your products at inspection, right? All that nice boxes, all the nice flows, clear picture results, like, too many data points just making your clients too eager to buy your product better. And then also more sales, more clients, more revenue, more value, more place to improve the product itself.  secondly, when you meet to increase your when you use interactive user products, why they’re doing this? Because they want to achieve how’s the service going to be delivered to your customers, what they should expect, then what feedback they will share, you know, every client support call you to have it with some companies they always ask you, please stay on the line give us feedback. A lot of companies appreciate big companies appreciate this. It means that it values customer feedback. So don’t lose this chance to ask as many questions as you can. Just to figure out who your customers are, what to sell better, and how to scale, scale your sales.

Matt DeCoursey  25:11

Yeah, you said something when it comes to sales. So I have this, I always talk about FAB: features, advantages and benefits. You need to keep in mind that people buy things because of the benefits that they provide. So if you find yourself talking about a feature, you need to describe the advantages and the benefits, which are similar. So you should come out of a session with me with this, and that, and, and so on, that’s back to the standardization of services. And I think that being able to put that in there, you know, this, this type of session is good for people that need X, Y, Z, A, B, C, the typical person that participates in one of these sessions, you know, experience experienced the following benefits. And, you know, when you mentioned advantages, there’s other people out there that probably do what you do, why are you better? Why are you? Why are you better, faster, cheaper? And those are the things that speak to the buyer. One thing I can tell you when it comes to sales is that a confused mind almost always says no. So, clarify what it is that you’re selling, like, people shouldn’t come out of it, you get, and this is a tricky thing, man, because you also can’t write a 2000-word white paper about your services because no one’s gonna read that either. That’s why I started a love video for that. I think video is a great way to scale everything from marketing to certain support or FAQs; some people just don’t like to read the long explanation. You’ll find that you can even have a video that said the exact same things that the word, you know, they teach you that to not read all the boards right off the PowerPoint to your group, you could actually do that with the support video because some people just would rather watch or listen to it. So this is back to technology. And the same thing as you know, you can, I don’t know, those videos can be useful. We’ve got a whole lot of them. With a lot of different things that we do now, how do you determine what to build? And how you take the questions that people answer that ask you that people ask again and again and again. And again. And again, that’s what you need to clarify.

Ihor Bauman  27:28

People just get used to the video content, right? All social media, if all of us, just like get used to spending like 5, 10, and 15 seconds on video materials. And we’re just scrolling. So people get used to scrolling over it. Right, it’s just part of our power, part of our fingers just to make installing sync right on your smartphone. That’s why it’s really, for companies for a lot of businessmen. And for photo startups, it’s a real challenge to be on the same page with big companies who are actually building trends, right? Because, like, Apple just recently released Apple vision glasses, right? In one year, people will start getting used to different types of content to watching content this way, right? To have this available. And people who and people and companies who can think about content that’s gonna be in trend in one year, but they’re already thinking about the content right now, those companies will lead the market, right? That’s why it’s, it’s about our human behavior that was a very people behave to some behavior to some things, do some testimonials to some use cases. And as more clearer and more precise, and more like and have made, if you’re going to be with those use cases, you’re those use cases, as more like wins you can have for your business. I know one friend of mine who was building a WhatsApp company, maybe early into solid nine. And when they were building their application, all designers, all developers who are iOS developers, will stick to using the iOS app. All those who use Android will stick to using Android because why it’s looked like sign applications, but they behave differently. And you should really feel the behavior to make the proper decisions. Same content, same with sales, and the same payment process. You should really behave and feel that behavior to make it better and to make it more appreciated by your customers.

Matt DeCoursey  29:37

Fewer steps. Yeah, let’s do the last steps, everyone. Less number of steps to get to the X on the treasure map. And look, there’s a reason that Amazon spent who knows how much to get to the one-click Buy. Push this button is gonna show up at my house. Also, the next day or two, but that is a representation of why it’s important to have fewer steps to make it easy for people to buy from you. These are problems you need to solve if you’re going to scale. Now, you know, I think one of the things, it’s kind of interesting if you talk about consulting businesses and content, I don’t think you can, I mean, I think it’s difficult to run a modern consulting or services business and have no video content. Research shows that with current trends, by the year 2030, 80% of everything consumed online is going to be video related. You know, some form of video that could be AR, VR, videos, shorts, reels, YouTube, stuff like that. And you know, like it, I think you talked about consulting, so much of consulting is about trying to help a person or a business improve or do something better. Take some shortcuts and stuff like that. I, you know, as, as someone who’s written three books on this podcast, I get a ton of social content, both for Matt DeCoursey, and Startup Hustle. And here’s the thing, like, people Google you. People are going to Google your business and who you are like it. There’s a saying it’s old said nobody gets fired for buying IBM, meaning people that go out and want to find consultants or service providers, they want to find them, especially if they’re buying them at someone else’s business. Meaning, like, they don’t want to bring the cheapest worst, most, like, because if they made the wrong decision, they don’t want to have to explain later. Oh, yeah, I pick this guy. He’s got no website; he has no content. He, he said he was an expert. Because that’s kind of what you’re gonna sound like. So the more of that stuff that you, people ask me, they’re like, well, why did you write? Why did you write books? I’d always wanted to write a book. But I knew that writing books would make me more of a subject matter expert. Just, you know, get out there and create some of it. I was talking to a contractor yesterday who had Googled me, and between me giving them work and him coming to do it, he figured out who I was. And he was, which means he always wants they always want a bunch of tips. And he said I’d really like to have more videos on social media. He’s, I don’t know why we haven’t been successful with that. And I said, how many videos do you record every week? You said, well, I haven’t been recording any. I’m like, well, there you go. If you don’t ever Yeah, you’re never gonna post one, you’re never gonna get better at posting them, and you’re never gonna get anybody to pay attention. So somebody’s gotta get up and do it.

Ihor Bauman  29:56

By the way, these are amazing points that you just touched on; I made a big analytical post about all the recent changes in consumer behavior and also sales. And more, most companies are now having more sales from content that has been using Instagram. Instagram, yeah, TikTok is bigger, but Instagram makes more money for the business. And right now, companies who have interaction and who have a mix of social media accounts and different content to be produced in, like video type, they are actually making more sales right now at the moment, as of q2 this year. So the most recent information, so yeah, content and the video is just like a way to be, and when you said it’s going to be a 2%, I’m really not even surprised at all. It seems like

Matt DeCoursey  33:39

It’s been trending that way. And you know, it’s in some of that these platforms have made it a lot easier to publish content. Like, I swear that raw, transparent, authentic play is so much better than trying to overthink your production. You, if you have a smartphone, you have a recording studio, and you have a video studio, you have an editing, so you have all of it. You really

Ihor Bauman  34:07

It’s really easy to start, right I remember I watched the video of Mr. Beast and said okay, what should you do and first 101st 50 videos that you will do will be crappy. After 100 videos, you will figure out how to do how to make it better. So you should do at least 100 different videos, and just like with one rule simple rule, just improve a bit every next one. Yeah, and don’t

Matt DeCoursey  34:41

Don’t make three and then call me up and tell me that you tried, and yeah, other than the audience is getting views because everybody there, that’s where a lot of people start quitting. Yeah, I used to work in the music industry, Ihor, and in the musical instruments world, and the number one reason that people would quit a musical instrument is because they weren’t good fast enough. That’s not how it works. Folks like Dave Matthews weren’t immediately. He wasn’t Dave Matthews on the guitar the first day he picked it up. You know, like you got to practice, you got to put in the reps, you got to figure out how to do it better. And I couldn’t agree with your statement more. So Mr. Beast is obviously Mr. Beast, but we have a friend that Startup Hustle, Eric Perkins, the Perkins Brothers, who’s coming up on a million subscribers for a construction-related channel. And he’d say, told me the same thing. He said he said, you know, you know, I made 100 videos before anybody started paying attention. And even to the point when then, at 50, he said that his wife was making fun of them. She was like, I don’t know, is anyone ever gonna start watching? He’s, like, I’m gonna keep doing these. And he looked; I don’t know if he had heard that somewhere else. So I’m gonna keep doing this till I get to 100. And as it gets, it was weird because nearly as he got near 100, it started to get some traction. It wasn’t necessarily just because he had that many videos on the channel. It’s because he got better at it; he stayed consistent with it. And he learned how to provide content that matters, you know, like things. You’ve talked about, like, if you have a 32nd video, please don’t make 15 seconds of it being an intro for your business with your logo because someone already left on that one. So, okay, yeah, I don’t want to get out of this episode without talking about this. Because I think people that are trying to scale a business become remarkably obsessed with new client acquisition. And don’t spend enough time on retaining the clients they have or doing simple account-based marketing. Like it’s way, way, way cheaper to keep the users and clients that you already have than it is to find new ones. And then, if you’re doing a good job as a consultant, that business should be growing. They like what you’ve done with them; they want to buy more. Boom, there you go, it’s a good way to scale, it’s good, it’s a good basis and foundation to begin building a team with, too, because you can get other people to come in and kind of help with some of the things the standardized service offerings and stuff like that. I mean, you know, remember, you can’t forget about the people that are already on the boat trying to pull everyone else in the boat because if you tip the whole thing over, then everyone’s out of the boat.

Ihor Bauman  37:29

Great thinking, you know, people never switch banks. Right? Because why? Because it’s like, anyway. Yeah, and you can think about every new bank that is currently on the market trying to acquire a new customer. So it’s like thousands of thousands of dollars just to acquire a new customer, right? That’s why. Yeah, it’s an amazing point. Every time making more money from your current, current customers is much easier compared to acquiring new customers. So you should visit this specific how to engage them and how to be kind of part of your business. How to work with them, how to reward them, right, how to keep them warm. And keeping clients warm, just for our business. How are we doing this? Emails, always sharing, always asking for feedback, always sharing them with them like first insights about the product. If they have something to do, we ask them to prepare the review, and we’ll reward them with some free accounts, with some Amazon gift cards. A lot of businesses just even don’t think about the simple things you can give right now. It’s a $5 Amazon gift card. For any feedback, people will believe me; people will do a lot of things for those $5 on Amazon. And it’s the easiest way to acquire feedback, to have some testimonials, to have something for your business. It can boost your current relations, it can boost your new sales, and it can boost your revenue. So just think small, nothing like an ASIC in the middle. $5 Amazon gift card, keep clients warm, improve your sales, employee acquisition make more money easier.

Matt DeCoursey  39:20

Yeah, now with that at the same time, and this is one other thing I want to make sure we get in here; you need to be preparing for scalability too. I am involved I’ve seen a lot of pitches, a lot of investment pitches, a lot of just pitches in general, and talk to, Oh my God, so many founders over these years, especially because of the show, and everyone seems to be working on preventing the sky from falling. But don’t necessarily prepare for a sunny day. What happens if everything goes right? What happens have everything that you thought, or even most of it, goes right? Because if you’re not prepared for that, you’re not going to scale either. You’re just gonna you’re, I mean, there’s that that’s going to be a different solution. And maybe the consultant needs to hire a consultant about that, that they’re. You know, like, what would happen, if everything you did went really, really well? Because if you’re not prepared for that, I mean, in some cases, it could take weeks, months or years to, you know, be prepared for that. So, are you ready if everything goes well? I don’t think you’re going to scale if you’re not prepared for it. So you got to start thinking about what you might need. And in the same way, you would do contingency planning. And so, with contingency planning, you’re just trying to you’re trying to imagine and create as many potential outcomes as possible. And here’s the amazing thing about that, you throw most of it away. Because you’re just being prepared. But the earlier you begin to think about that and consider it, the more of an informed decision you’re going to make later when it’s time to scale. I think it’s not if you’re not ready.

Ihor Bauman  41:05

It’s a real problem of chicken and egg. If you really prefer scale, you can, like, lose a fraction of your current business, and vice versa. So yeah, I guess there’s, there’s like, no, a perfect answer to this question. I guess, like, this is their life, lifestyle, and mindset of being an intrapreneur. You just need to make sure you’re taking care of everything. If you’re not ready to take care of it ever since I guess it’s pretty hard to be at the printer for you. But so yep, that especially think about your current product. Think about how you’re gonna scale this you. It’s your role. At the end of the day, as a business owner, your responsibility is not to be Chief Executive Officer; you need to be chief everything officer.

Matt DeCoursey  41:55

That’s my title. That is my exact title, Chief Everything Officer, down to the email.

Ihor Bauman  42:00

We’re on the same page.

Matt DeCoursey  42:03

Oh, yeah, yeah, if you’re not ready to do what I have done at all, then that creates a whole different problem. If we’re really talking about scalability in that regard, you need to not be the person that does everything because everything becomes too dependent on you. And you can’t be the traffic way for everything that occurs. And it’s tough for a lot of people to get rid of or move away from. Alright, so once again with me today is Ihor Bauman, he’s the CEO and co-founder of Workee. Go to Workee.net. There’s a link for that in the show notes. As a quick reminder, today’s episode, Startup Hustle, was brought to you by Full Scale; there’s a link to FullScale.io. We can help you scale your team and your business; that’s why, Full Scale. So I recall what I recalled, and you know, I really, I really liked the platform you’ve built, Ihor. It’s got you, really did. I’ve seen I’ve seen things like this over the years, and they’re they’re always missing a couple of things that kind of make me tilt my head sideways with the booking thing is always missing. It’s because it’s difficult, man. It’s not straightforward. It’s not as easy, but that’s it. Your calendar dictates everything if you’re a consultant. I mean, time will tell you need to tie you do all of it. So having that in there. And then yeah, and you know, I just think that ease of use, you know, even just like a simple booking page, or like, like you at work, you get, I love, so we have like a little mini-site kind of page that we can do. We have a lot of different ways for you to present your booking link at GigaBook because there are, I mean, there are a lot of different use cases; a lot of people don’t have a website. And by the way, if you don’t have a website, I’m gonna remind you it’s 2023. Yeah. If you don’t have a way, like, I mean, yeah, yeah. If you don’t have a website you’re serious about. I think the only way you don’t need a website is if you’re a caveman that services caveman. Yeah. There’s probably, they even have websites now.

Ihor Bauman  44:13

By the way, you know, the funny thing is that about 10 years ago, Mark Zuckerberg said that, okay, if you don’t have a social media account, you do not exist. And right now its 2023, as you said, and if you do not have your personal website, you just don’t exist. Right? Your people can’t find you. You don’t have this; at one point, you have your business, and you just don’t exist anymore.

Matt DeCoursey  44:34

But from a consulting business, you have to have that presence. You have to be online because I, you know, one of the biggest, I get on calls a lot with people that are interested in Full Scale, and they often have listened to the podcast, and I gotta tell them about what we do, and I listened to the podcast, but look at that. That’s someone that already feels like they know me. And that makes my job of working with them. I don’t have to call. It, it’s efficiency. But that’s you know, so keep that in mind, folks. If you want to scale a consulting business, you’ve got to be visible. You got to be like me; you can still be humble and talk about the things that you’ve done. Well, you know, like there’s, there’s ways to do it, but you gotta be findable. You got to be searchable. Ihor, there’s so many things we could keep talking about, but we’re out of time. So I’m going to catch up with you down the road, man. I’ll see you next time.

Ihor Bauman  45:28

Thank you for having me. Appreciate it.