YouTube Transcript:
The Business Model Secret Nobody Tells You

Skip watching entire videos - get the full transcript, search for keywords, and copy with one click.

Video Transcript

Available languages:

View:

Not too long ago, I found myself

wrestling with the question of how

should I grow my small business? Should

I start an agency? Should I offer

courses? Should I start a membership?

Should I do training services? Should I

productize? Should I do VIP days? What

is the right model for me? Now,

unfortunately for me, when I was

wrestling with this question, this video

didn't exist. And so I spent the last 7

years going through these business

models, experiencing them, and coming to

find out the good, the bad, and the ugly

of each of these ways to grow the

business. So in that vein, today I'm

going to be breaking down five different

common personality types that you might

have as a leader or a founder or a small

team organizer. And for each of those

five personality types, I'm going to

match you with one of the business

models that I think would be the best

match for you, having been through

offering these myself. To get us

started, let's go through the five

common personality types of founders and

leaders and see which one you fall into.

First one up is the architect. The

architect might sound like, "I love

perfecting experiences, building

something that I know when someone is

ready for it, they can navigate through

at their own time. I feel like a museum

curator. I don't need to see everyone's

smiling faces to know I've done a great

job because building something beautiful

gives me the satisfaction I need to feel

good about my work." Next up is the

fixer. A fixer might sound like, "I love

diving deep to solve new and unexpected

challenges. Each one feels like a fresh

adventure." Kind of like Indiana Jones.

I know there's going to be surprises

along the way, but I kind of love those

surprises because when new things come

up, there are new opportunities to

learn, to help, and to fix. You think

you might be a fixer? Let me know in the

comments. But let's move on to the third

personality type, teacher. A teacher

might sound like, "I love the art of

translation. I love taking advanced

concepts and making them simple so

people can understand, but it's not

enough for me to just put that out in

the world." When I see those reactions

of people just getting it finally after

all this time, that's what makes my work

worth doing. That brings us to number

four, the craftsman. I don't like

starting from scratch over and over

again. What I really love doing is

perfecting my craft. As I go from one

client to the next, I just get better

and better at doing what I do. My goal

is to be so good at this one thing that

I am good at doing that I can become a

leader in my space and beyond. I know

I'll never be perfect, but pursuing

perfection in my craft is what motivates

me to keep going project after project

to get 1% better every time. Last, but

not least, we have the host. I don't

feel like I do anything special, but I

do get motivated and inspired by

connecting one person to another. When I

see the interaction between two really

smart people I know, I feel like the

work I do matters. I'm all about

creating meaning through friendships and

connections and networking, both in real

life and also online. To me, impact

isn't something I want to do in

isolation. All right, now that we have

all of our business models and all of

our personality types, it's time to

start matching them up. As I go through

matching these out, I'd love to have you

write in the comments below what you

expect the matches to be because I'll be

curious if we reach the same outcome.

With that out of the way, let's talk

about the architect. Which business

model sounds like the best fit for them?

Write yours in the comments. But my

answer, it's the course creator. If you

are someone who is a tinkerer, who's an

engineer, who really likes designing all

the nuances of an experience, and you're

comfortable with the distance of not

seeing that customer, you are perfectly

made for online products and so on. Does

this mean you'll need to learn marketing

in order to get the volume necessary to

sell these kinds of things? Most likely.

However, your personality type equips

you very well for building out this kind

of business. The wonderful thing about

online products of any kind, whether

they're courses, templates, knowledge

products, or software, is that it's all

fixed. You're designing your Mona Lisa

and then you're just selling it again

and again. An example offer might be

having a $397 online course about how to

use Photoshop as a wedding photographer.

Because architects have a tendency to go

deep and really focus in on designing

and fine-tuning technology and things

behind the scenes. This business model

gives you the most freedom of any of the

ones we'll talk about today. In a

typical week, your calendar might look

something like this. And as you can see

here, it is a large amount of time spent

on lead generation, building that list,

and getting attention, and very little

time on client commitments. You have

control over your own schedule, which is

both a pro and a con because there is so

much freedom in this model. you don't

have calls or other demands. The

challenge is really keeping yourself

motivated. This is the type of path to

only choose if you are someone who is

really good at self-direction. You love

marketing and the idea of just

consistently working to build traffic

and holding yourself to your own

deadlines does not feel challenging.

This is most definitely the path for

you. This schedule freedom tends to

attract a lot of people, but it is a

double-edged sword and I would say the

most difficult part of this model. When

you are in the architect lane, you need

to be self-driven. Just like an

architect working on a building, you

could have multiple years being spent on

perfecting one product or one

experience. And no one is holding you to

those deadlines generally speaking. But

if you don't meet certain deadlines,

your revenue is going to suffer. So, the

best architects are ones that are very

self-motivated, self-directed, do not

struggle with the freedom of

open-endedness, and can just keep

driving towards perfection little by

little by little. If that sounds like

you, you're going to enjoy so many

advantages down this path in that you

can have sales while you sleep. You can

have generally a low touch fulfillment

with just some minor support and no

ongoing client work. And a lot of the

things you do can be asynchronous, so

you can do them from anywhere at pretty

much any time as long as you keep things

moving. However, in my experience, there

aren't a lot of earlystage business

owners that are actually this

comfortable with this much ambiguity and

open-endedness. So, let's talk about the

next category. Next up, we have the

fixer. And of all of these business

models, can you guess which one the

fixer is going to be? Write it in the

comments. But for me, the answer is

definitely a custom service. If you are

someone that loves to help, that loves

to solve new things, to dive under the

hood, I think you're really going to

love the fixer lane. Because you're in

the land of custom services, every

project is going to be a little

different. You'll typically have some

kind of sales process where you have

discovery where you're figuring out, oh,

what could I do? And then you're

creating a custom bid or a custom

retainer in order to accomplish some

kind of custom thing. This makes your

sales process more intense, requiring

some good communication and diagnostic

skills, but it also ensures that you're

always getting novelty and something new

to solve. Because of the novelty of what

you offer, it's also a lot easier to

sell this type of business model because

you can kind of adapt to any problem you

have the skill set for. You don't have

to market a particular way. You just

have to attract a person that you were

able to help in some way, shape, or

form. Common offers for this business

model might be a monthly retainer where

you have a certain number of hours or

tickets or widgets that you are getting

in that month. Or it might also be a

flat bid project such as a custom home

renovation where you're making a quote

and working through it that way. You

might also see some VIP days fall into

this category where you say, "Hey, you

get to pick my brain for eight hours on

anything you want." Even though it's

somewhat productized, because it's so

open-ended, I would still consider it a

custom service. Now, with that, let's

talk calendar for this one, because this

is definitely the most calendar

intensive of any of the business models.

A typical week for you might look

something like this. If you went the

fixer route, as you can see, you might

have a handful of sales calls, a handful

of client calls, and a lot of deep work

focused on your clients. Because you're

working in a custom environment, you're

going to have a lot of communication

with your customers as well, because

things are going to come up along the

way. Like, if you're doing a home

renovation, oh no, lead pipes. uh we

have to figure out what that looks like.

Expect a lot more communication here

than some of the other models we're

talking about. What makes this model so

great is that you don't need to have a

big audience in order to have a big

business. You can grow this up very

easily, and it's why most people start

with this model. I know I did. It's also

very hightouch, so you're able to

customize everything to each person,

building a real relationship with your

clients. And you don't need many clients

to have a successful business here.

Assuming you were one person show, one

to five clients would be all you would

need to get through your year and have a

successful business. Whereas the

architect might need 1 to 500 clients to

reach the same amount of revenue.

However, the challenge with custom

services, and the fixer kind of likes

this, but it's still something to be

aware of, is scope creep. Because things

are going to come up along the way, it

can be easy to spend too much time on a

project, particularly if your brain

wiring makes you enjoy that. You can get

caught with shiny objects. It can also

be a bit of an intense service both on

the sales side because there's a lot of

work to create those custom proposals

which may or may not get uh approved and

also it can be emotionally intense from

the delivery perspective. You are going

to get to know these clients really well

if you only have one at a time. And so

if they're unhappy with something, if

they're struggling, it's easy for it to

become personal, which for some people

is a pro, but in general can be a con

because it can really start to drain you

if you don't have good boundaries, which

is the key to making this model work.

You have to love helping. You have to

welcome surprises, and you have to be

able to hold those boundaries even when

it's a little challenging. Next up, we

have the teacher. And of our remaining

business models, any obvious guesses as

to which one? Yeah, I know this one's

not really much of a guess. The teacher

is an obvious fit for the training

approach. Training is very similar to

custom services in that it is a human-d

delivered service. But here rather than

having a custom methodology and custom

deliverables, we've fixed both of those

things. We're always doing the same

thing in the same way for the same type

of person. But when we do it, unlike the

architect who's delivering it through a

platform, we're delivering it through a

human typically. So, we will have a

trainer or a team of trainers educating

clients on a set thing again and again

and again. Training is a less customized

form of a productized service, which

we'll be getting to soon. And a example

training package might be something like

this, where we have a $6,000 one-day

on-site training where we teach your

whole company how to make toast. Now,

going down this training route, assuming

you are oneperson organization, you will

typically have one to four events per

month. And in a week where you have an

event, your schedule might look

something like this. Now granted, in

weeks where you do not have an event,

your schedule will look a lot more free

because you will have that extra time to

spend on marketing or on the business

work. But as you can tell, this is a far

cry from the schedule we were used to

back in the fixer and even more

different than what we saw for the

architect. If you enjoy a predictably

irregular schedule and you like to mix

it up a little bit about how you spend

your days, it's probably a good sign

that you will like this training route.

And of course, that's not the only

benefit of going this training route.

With training, you also have the benefit

of having reusable materials. So, as you

can see here on the calendar, we're not

actually spending a ton of time on

client work each week because we are

reusing the same materials and

presentations and just tweaking it for

each client engagement, making this a

little bit more profitable than what we

might have expected from the fixer.

We're also able to incorporate fixed

processes in this because just like the

architect, we are designing an

experience for delivering a training and

we are just wash, rinsing and repeating

it every time. Now, it's not all roses

and sunshine in the training land, the

main challenge with this is the pressure

of performance because at the end of the

day, just like a teacher showing up for

class, being a teacher in a business

context requires a certain level of

professionalism and frankly endurance.

While you might be able to work wonders

with your contracts, if you really want

to go down this route, my suggestion

would be be sure you are someone who is

good at honoring your commitments and

you are able to commit to a schedule. It

is very hard to have this business model

when you are unable to perform on

demand. For example, if you are

scheduled to present a 6-hour lecture in

Vermont on Tuesday, but you don't feel

like it, if you are someone that would

go anyway, that's probably a good sign

the training route is good for you. If

you are someone who is more emotional

driven and you're like ah if I don't

feel it I just can't perform and that

this is probably not the right space for

you. Oh quick sidebar here. I'm showing

you calendars on this view assuming you

are a one person or one in a few

contractors kind of business because

ultimately if you are that small you are

signing up for this journey. Over time

as you hire these calendar commitments

will be spread around throughout your

team. I'll tell you today as I am

running uh four I think of these

business models simultaneously at

process driven I don't have calendars

that look exactly like the for me

personally but if I were to combine all

of my team members our calendars do look

pretty much like four of these all

mashed together. I'm purposely not in

this video talking about team growth and

what your team org chart would look

like. But if you'd like to see a part

two on that just write the word uh org

chart in the comments. But as you grow,

just recognize you can hire people onto

your team that have balancing

personality types to expand your

repertoire. So my personal personality

type here, which you might have

gathered, is the teacher. That is where

I want to be. That's what I want to do.

But my team that I'm surrounding myself

with, I have people who are hosts. I

have people who are fixers. I have

people who are architects. Even as a

small team, I am purposely balancing out

these personalities. And guess what?

Because of that, I'm able to expand to

multiple business models if I want to.

So, in this case, I have a YouTube

channel here. I have courses and I have

my person who loves being an architect

in charge of those courses. And then I

have a community, our membership

community, the process-driven

membership. I have somebody on my staff

who is a host personality type. And

guess what? He's in charge of that

community. I don't want to get too far

into the team building side of things

because I know if you're at this point,

it's probably premature. But just know

that our decision today is focused on

you because you are the one constant on

your team. But just know that this can

grow, particularly if you're looking to

hire full-time employees down the line.

Next up, we have the craftsman. You can

probably guess which one that's going to

fall into. But if you are a craftsman,

productized service is where you'd want

to be. I define productized service as a

fixed method with custom deliverables.

So, for example, if I had a $5,000 brand

redesign package, that could be a

productized service. in that I have a

set way of doing things. I know roughly

what the deliverables are like a logo, a

website, and so on. But every time I'm

doing it, I'm doing it a little

differently because I'm working with a

different company. If we were to put

things on a spectrum, the product high

service would be kind of in between

training and custom service in terms of

rigidity. The week of this perfection

motivated craftsman might look something

like this. This schedule looks most

similar to what we saw with custom

service, aka the fixer, but with the

notable exception of fewer sales calls

because if you are offering a

productized service, you're selling the

same thing every time. So, typically you

will have things be selfch checkout or

very, very simple of a sales process

because that's why you are productizing.

The fun thing about productized service

is that this is really the best of all

worlds of all of the services we talked

about because you can design it to pull

from any of the other examples. Some

people will have productized services

where there's a course in it and then

there's a coaching component basically

pulling inspiration from the architect

and the teacher. There are other

productized services that have a fixed

teaching and training component that's

the same every time just like the

teacher would like and then also has

some kind of custom deliverable in there

which is something that the fixer would

like. I designed the schedule assuming

that your signature program your

productized service had at least one or

two calls in the program experience. But

the nice thing about this is that this

is kind of like Goldilocks. You can make

it right in the middle for whatever you

find interesting. So choose your own

adventure. Now, not to fan girl too much

over productized services, but there are

some additional pros that you should be

aware of when it comes to this lane in

that with productized services, you are

also able to sell it more easily. It's

just so much easier to sell, hey, I will

redo your brand, rather than, hey, I do

brand stuff. How can I help you? That's

kind of what the fixer would say. So

being able to position yourself as the

person that helps solve a specific

challenge in a specific way for a

specific person, that's really helpful

when it comes to selling, which allows

you to again automate this and reduce

the amount of work you have to do to

sell because no proposals for the most

part, which I guess is kind of a second

benefit in of itself. No proposals. So

you're not spending a bunch of time

doing things for free that may or may

not lead to client sales. However, there

is a dark side to productized services,

too. namely that you need to have strong

processes to do this. You need

consistency. If you are delivering your

signature brand design and service, make

sure that signature service has a really

good flow. As you start increasing the

volume here, which you will typically do

compared to the fixers, you might have

three or four clients at one time. And

to keep track of all of that stuff

without reducing quality, process is

going to be your best friend. So, you

know, maybe subscribe to this channel.

Um, but that's going to be key. And the

second key component of this is make

sure you pick a good promise, a good

outcome. Uh productized service is about

saying, "Hey, here's the outcome. I can

get this specific person in this

specific way." If you pick the wrong

specifics, it can actually make selling

harder. If you ever find that your

productized service is more difficult to

sell than a custom service, that might

be a sign that you've stuck your flag in

the wrong patch of sand, maybe picked

the wrong niche, or maybe you're just

not communicating to people who are in

that niche yet. But either way,

something to pay attention to and

definitely something to watch out to.

But no need to stress about this. You

can always change your niche by changing

one sentence on your website. So, it's

not a huge commitment if you get it

wrong. But just be aware of this and

don't let it be wrong for years and

years. Not like I'm speaking from

experience or anything here. Last but

not least, we are left with the only

remaining choice, which is the host and

the online membership/group program.

Kind of obvious here because these are

our only remaining options. But if you

are someone that gets joy from

connecting others together, that's

absolutely what you should be doing in

your business itself. This group program

and membership model is defined by

having fixed methods, fixed deliverables

and all of it being delivered through

human interaction. So kind of like

training except rather than me giving it

to somebody, I am connecting others for

them to experience it. But otherwise

very similar in that it's always the

same thing for each person. Some common

offers that would fall into this

category could be something like a $200

a month membership or a $50,000 a year

mastermind or a $5,000 a ticket event.

As you can tell, there is a wide range

that can all fall into this connecting

and matchmaking category. When it comes

to the calendar, I have assumed in this

case that you were going the high volume

membership route, but of course there's

a wide range here, so I could probably

have a bunch of different calendars, but

your week would probably look something

like this. Note how there aren't really

a lot of client calls except for maybe

one client meetup or event that you're

hosting, but a lot of your time is spent

asynchronously interacting in your

community. But for all this hard work,

what you're getting is a lot of

flexibility. You can do this from

anywhere. You can do this at pretty much

any time. You're able to reuse content.

And all you need to be able to do to get

consistent recurring revenue is keep

driving that engagement and making sure

your people are connecting and getting

value. But this can also then become a

challenge because it's very easy to get

on the content hamster wheel with

memberships where you're just creating

Paste YouTube URL

Enter any YouTube video link to get the full transcript

Most transcripts ready in under 5 seconds

Get Our Chrome Extension

Get transcripts instantly without leaving YouTube. Install our Chrome extension for one-click access to any video's transcript directly on the watch page.

Add to Chrome — Free

Works with YouTube, Coursera, Udemy and more educational platforms

Get Instant Transcripts: Just Edit the Domain in Your Address Bar!

YouTube

←

→

↻

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc

YoutubeToText

←

→

↻

https://youtubetotext.net/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc

YouTube Transcript:The Business Model Secret Nobody Tells You

Video Transcript

Paste YouTube URL

Transcript Extraction Form

Get Our Chrome Extension

Get Instant Transcripts: Just Edit the Domain in Your Address Bar!

YouTube Transcript:
The Business Model Secret Nobody Tells You