How Do I Develop a Business Model?

So before I dig into developing a business model, I want to zoom out and share my business philosophy, values and perspective. I think, when you’re asking a question like this, it’s vital that you also know the values of the person, CEO, or coach you’re asking. I say that because everyone is going to have a different answer, depending on their value set. Some might have a mindset of ‘money over everything’, and some might have a mindset of ‘community impact is the most important quantifiable success’.

For me, the mindset is that whoever I work with has the power to grow their business into a six or seven-figure business. So my process in answering these kinds of questions is based in that belief, and I hone in on what exactly it takes to create a business model for a multiple six figure and seven figure business. 

So now that you know my core business values and beliefs, I want to dig into answering this question of how to develop a business model. I’ve found that the most important factor in developing your business model is choosing and developing your signature service. Now, remember that this is based on my business belief that you can grow and scale your business to seven figures and in order to do so, you need a signature service or a signature offer. 

This offer has to be scalable from an operations standpoint, and I’ll tell you right now that my Get LaunchED Consulting™️ Program is my signature offer. When I say scalable from an operations standpoint, I mean that I can grow my signature service without my business and it’s operations breaking down.  

Let me give you an example from a school standpoint. As a principal, my administrative team had three admins, and we all came back every year. I had the same team one year after the other and we developed an unstoppable synergy as a team. Because we were aligned in so many different ways, it wasn't a matter of building new things, it was a matter of refining the processes we already had. For example, we were already all on the same page with mission and values and after working together for so long, we were also on the same page with operations. 

What I mean by that is that when it came time to handle certain things that would come up in coaching conversations or if I had to step out of the building, we all knew what to do. And that's because we had the time together to build the synergy, alignment and understanding of how certain things are done. 

I'd also had the experience of onboarding new team members to the admin team, and of course that’s the reality of our work, but I could instantly feel the difference. The pace of your work changes, and I'm not placing a judgment on it and whether it's good or bad. It just is what it is. But once we got that new team member on our same wavelength, we were back to developing and refining our processes. 

Now, that doesn't mean your signature offer is the only offer you have, but when you are starting in your business, you need to set goals that will allow you to test a few offers quickly so you can gain clarity on what your signature offer should truly be. Then, once you determine the signature offer that is right for you, you can double down on operations, so that you can scale and automate, to the point where your business could run without you. Once it hits that point, then you’re positioned to be able to potentially pivot away from that first signature offer and then build a second offer to grow and scale. 

I want to note that when you’ve first started your business, you don’t usually get that clarity on what your signature service should be. And while you want to test different offer models quickly, you don’t want to rush through the tests so quickly that you miss out on valuable data that can inform your decision. 

A while back, I posted something to the effect of “everyone’s trying to niche down too quickly!” And I put that out there not to judge, but to remind people to stop putting so much pressure on themselves. Honestly, you probably aren’t going to know what your signature service is from the day you start your business, and that’s good! That uncertainty gives you the opportunity to get some different contracts and try other service models to see what you genuinely enjoy. You have to give yourself permission to be in an experimentation phase, because that’s how you get data back and gain clarity on what your signature offer should be. 

Once you’re clear on your signature offer, you need to dig deep into the operations of the offer so that you can standardize it and automate as much of it as possible. You want to have a super tight operational strategy so that being able to make consistent revenue on your signature offer isn’t solely dependent on your physical presence. Your automations and trained team members can get some work done for you while you’re devising your next offer. 

I know this is a lot to absorb, so I want to give you another example. Let's say you're doing equity assessments that are a four part process. 

First you need to determine what portions of this process you can automate. If the first part is the pre-assessment, and your clients have to take that to determine where they fall within your framework a part of the automation and operational part in order to scale to seven-figures is that you:

a) have a process where you can standardize where people fall within your framework, so you can actually delegate that to someone else on your team. 

b) create a workflow, and when I say workflow I mean a series of tasks or emails that clients are put in according to their pre-assessment response. For example, is a client is determined to be in Category Two, they receive a workflow specific to that category, meaning they get a specific email, and directives to follow. This is what I mean when I talk about automations that allow you to scale. 

Your signature offer should be the offer you’re currently running that brings in the most revenue. You might be doing PD, keynote speaking engagements, 1-on-1 coaching and equity audits so take a look at all of your revenue streams and determine which offer is making you the most profit, because that one has the most potential to be your signature offer. Like I stated before, Get LaunchED Consulting™️ is my signature offer, but I still coach a principal (notice how i said one principal, because at this stage in my business, I no longer have the capacity to do more 1-on-1 coaching).😉

Just because 1-on-1 coaching is no longer my signature offer doesn’t mean I can never do it. I hold it in my back pocket. Because I can do it and I enjoy doing it, it's not my signature service. So I don't spend all of my time and capacity with 1-on-1 coaching. 

I still have my consulting business as well, and do occasional PD’s, and contracts I’m drawn to. Otherwise, I am focused on my signature offer. 

The last thing I want to mention here is that once you’re clear on your signature offer, you want to determine the different pathways that potential clients can use to get to your signature offer. If we’re continuing the example of a four part equity audit, where there’s a pre-assessment, then maybe a debrief and presentation of results, followed by some type of professional learning experience that includes some type of racial identity development, personal development, personal leadership (this could be 1-on-1 coaching), then the last phase can be focused on some type of sustainability institutionalizing within the organization. 

If that's your signature offer, then you need to think about what would it take for someone to be ready and positioned for step one (pre-assessment). And it might take a combination of a few of the mini-offers you have, or a 1-on-1, or a webinar, but you need to be able to create a runway to help prepare someone to be able to step into your signature offer because all roads should lead to your signature offer! 

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