Leverage Your Expertise: Create Virtual You’s
October 20, 2008 by Elizabeth Potts Weinstein
Do you sell your services and products one-on-one? If so, you are inherently limited in how much money you make. You are trading hours for dollars and can only generate as many dollars as the hours you are willing to work. To take your business to the whole world, you must deliver to more than one person at a time.
The first way to deliver your advice to more than one person at a time is to teach your expertise to groups of people. This could be a one-hour class, a weekend seminar, a 4-week teleclass, or a virtual webinar. The idea is that you already have a system that you use with your clients, one-on-one, and you can deliver that advice or teach people how to use your system, en mass.
The simplest way to start is with a one-hour teleclass. You can obtain a bridge line for free (under 100 participants), and advertise the teleclass to your list and via various calendar services (newspapers, websites, seminar listings). You may even want to start with a free seminar and use it to deliver your marketing message en mass, just as practice. (By the way, record your teleclass and have it transcribed, and you have a free Special Report to offer your prospects and clients.)
Yes, It Does Become Easy
My first teleclass, How to Avoid the Top 10 Money Mistakes, had 12 people sign up, and only 1 person showed up (6 downloaded the file later). I was scared to death, and practiced my presentation 3 times before the class. I was worried about the bridge line not working, or that I would screw up the recording. After the call, I was a wreck for the rest of the night.
Now I feel comfortable enough to do teleclasses, radio interviews, and my radio show with just a few bullet point talking points, and I’m fine with thousands of people listening to the sound of my voice. Just like riding a bike, it takes a bit of practice to get used to it. It eventually becomes easy.
An even more powerful way to deliver your advice to more than one person at a time is via information products. Books, E-books, CDs, downloadable files, home study kits, seminars-in-a-box — these are products that teach your system or gives your advice. These products are infinitely scaleable; you can deliver your advice to a million people via a book, with no additional work on your part (except for the marketing).
As you are thinking of expanding your business, set aside time to explore leveraging your expertise. Yes, there will be an initial investment in time to create the content or train assistants, but the potential long-term upside is infinite.
Tags: free seminar, information products, leverage, Marketing, Passive Revenue Streams, teleclass, webinar
Elizabeth,
I can sooooo relate to your description of how your experience with your first teleclass. That was me, all the way. I can laugh at myself now but it wasn’t funny that first evening, I was terrified! But I’m so glad I pushed through and did it any way. It turned out to be a pretty big threshold to cross and allowed new things to flow into my business.
And you DO flow like a pro these days - I caught you on a great interview call with Sandy Martini a few months back.
Excellent point about moving away from time for dollars. I started out that way, partly because I needed to “feel” certain that I was giving people enough value. It soon became clear that the one getting the short end of the value stick was me! No more time-for-dollars in my world.
Lisa -
Thanks, it’s great what a ton of practice can do to my “flow” in teleclasses and the radio show.
Glad to hear you are moving to leverage your expertise!
~ Elizabeth