7 Tips to Grow and Scale Million-Dollar Businesses in Record Time

If you want to discover how to grow your business 10X faster then it helps to know what other successful entrepreneurs and business owners have done in the past.

Because by looking at, studying, modeling, and then most importantly taking action and incorporating some of their best strategies into your business, you give yourself what could almost be considered a kind of unfair competitive advantage.

This was my secret at least, and the path I first took when I started my first business and pretty much every single business or venture after that.

I would decide on a rough course of action, and then set out to learn everything I could about what the best in the business were doing; through books, conversations, courses, coaches, and mentors. And the investment of time and money always paid off.

After all, even though the best teacher is experience, that can also be a slow and often painful way to grow. You’re much better off accelerating your business growth by learning from the mistakes of others who have gone before you. Avoiding the mistakes they made, and applying the valuable lessons they’ve learned and have been kind enough to pass along.

As the old saying by Benjamin Franklin goes:

“an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”.

Now, in the quote Benjamin Franklin was actually talking about fire safety and how preventing fires was a whole lot easier than trying to fight them after they’re already burning the place to the ground, but the same principle applies to business.

Ignorance is?not?bliss.

And achieving big goals like 10X’ing your business requires big thinking, big actions, and a big plan.

Big goals also force you to stretch and become someone different. Someone stronger, more capable, and more confident.

They force you to think different. Act different.?BE?different.

A thought experiment that billionaire Peter Thiel likes to run is as follows:

Take your 10-year life plan and ask, Why can’t I do this in six months? … sometimes, you have to actually go through the complex, 10-year trajectory, but it’s at least worth asking whether that’s the story you’re telling yourself, or whether that’s the reality?”

So let me show you 7 tips and tricks that I use anytime I want to 10X a business. Use 1, or use all 7, depending on how fast you want to scale up.

But first, let’s quickly cover the only 3 ways to grow a business.

Growing a business comes down to 3 things:

According to?Jay Abraham , there are only 3 ways to grow a business.

1. Get more customers. (Increase Sales)
2. Get customers to spend more each time. (Increase Price or Volume)
3. Get customers to buy more often. (Increase Frequency)

So each of the following steps will correspond with one of those 3 things.

Now the perfect plan involves all 3 of these; getting more customers, getting them to spend more, and encouraging them to buy more frequently, but the most important advice I can offer at this stage is to keep it simple.

As I mentioned, you can use 1, or use all 7 of the following, depending on how fast you want to scale up. The key is that you take action and don’t allow yourself to become overwhelmed in the sea of opportunity.

Let’s dive in.

1. Craft Your 3 Offer(s)

I was at a marketing conference years ago and I saw there was a breakout session on how to design the “Perfect Price” for your offer. Naturally, I signed up, sat in the front, and mentally prepared myself for all of the new riches I was sure to experience once I finally cracked the code on pricing.

What the speaker said next has stayed with me to this day. And while at first I was disappointed, underwhelmed, and maybe even a little frustrated, I now see the beauty and power in the simplicity and this simple concept has enabled me to generate millions of dollars in additional revenue for myself, my clients, and my students.

Every business needs 3 offers:

1. Something free
2. Something paid
3. Something more expensive

Something Free

This is your free content. Your lead magnet. Or anything else you use to inform and entice potential customers into giving you a chance.

It’s an opportunity to provide value upfront and prior to money ever exchanging hands and it’s there to build trust, authority, and expertise.

Something Paid

This is your core offer. The main thing that you sell. The offer that has the best margins, attracts the best customers, is the most fun (and easiest) to fulfill or deliver, and is maybe what you’re known for. This is what you build your business on.

Something Expensive

This is your back-end offer. It’s typically what you sell to people after they have purchased your core offer (i.e. Something Paid) and can be a one-time offer, or a recurring subscription or membership style model.

The goal here is to have roughly 20% of your customers make the upgrade and there is no reason that your back-end offer can’t provide an additional 20% to 100% in additional revenue for your business.

Of course, having your offers in place is one thing. Filling them with happy customers is another entirely which is why the next step is to optimize your marketing funnel.

2. Optimize Your Marketing Funnel

A marketing funnel (also known as a sales funnel) is a visual representation of the steps that a prospect would need to take in order to go from having no idea who you are all the way through to buying and becoming a customer.

As marketing changes and new and improved platforms, software, and tactics continually get introduced the marketing funnel will continue to evolve. What works in one industry, may not work in another. And what works today, may not work tomorrow. But that’s what makes this interesting. And the ability and desire to keep coming back and making things better is what separates the pros from the amateurs.

All that said, for the past 10 years I’ve found there is one simple marketing funnel that continues to beat anything else I test against it.

I call it the?CASE Funnel??(coaches/consultants, agencies, service professionals, experts) and it looks like this:

Traffic -> Opt-in -> Authority Amplifier Video -> Application Page (Segmented) -> Calendar Booking -> Client

Once your funnel is built the next step then is finding the areas that need optimizing so you can get more bang for your marketing buck.

3. Plug The Leaks

Every business is different and will have different places along their funnel that need fixing or optimizing.

For example, if you send people to an opt-in page and offer them a lead magnet but nobody wants it, then you need to focus there first by improving the giveaway or copy on the page.

On the other hand, if you have an application form and calendar link but find that you’re either getting poor quality leads, or nobody is booking a call, then you need to work on segmenting things better, or possibly putting the calendar link first to encourage people to book a call.

Or if your funnel converts well and is proven to turn?clicks?into customers then the next thing you want to focus on is driving more traffic to your funnel.

The point is, there is always a place in the funnel that can be further optimized to provide faster growth and a higher ROI (return on investment). But once you’re happy with the results of your funnel it’s time to focus on driving more people to it. Something I call “Filling The Tank”.

4. Fill The Tank

This is where things start to get exciting because once you have a proven machine that’s able to do the equivalent of turning $1 into $2 by effectively creating clients the main focus becomes driving as much traffic to the funnel as possible.

…and traffic is everywhere.

From social media platforms to online paid ads, to joint venture partnerships, to guest posting, to blogging or blogging or podcasting, or anything else you can think of.

My approach to traffic is a combination of “more is better” and “better is better” meaning that I want to get in front of as many?relevant?people as possible.

5. Stay Top Of Mind

There’s an expression in marketing I first heard from Frank Kern that goes “most people won’t”.

In other words, most people won’t click. Of the people that click, most people won’t call. Of the people that call, most people won’t buy. Of the people that buy, most people won’t buy again.

Rather than being defeated by this marketing truth, better instead to plan and prepare accordingly.

Depending on what business, market, or industry you’re in, a rough and general rule is that only 5% of people will buy immediately, 10% will buy within around 30 days or so, and the remaining 85% will buy anywhere from 30–90 days all the way up to 18 months or beyond.

What this means is that the fortune really is in the follow-up.

Continuing to nurture, engage, and provide value to those who are interested, but not yet ready to buy. And the best way to do this is through good old-fashioned email marketing.

Email is cheap to send, easy to deliver, and is still most customers' preferred form of communication with a business.?Even amongst Millennials and Gen Z.

6. Retain At All Costs

Once you’ve made the sale, the real work (and real profit) has just begun.

According to a study conducted by?Invesp

Acquiring a new customer can cost five times more than retaining an existing customer.

Increasing customer retention by 5% can increase profits from 25–95%.

The success rate of selling to a customer you already have is 60–70%, while the success rate of selling to a new customer is 5–20%.

Long story short, keep your customers happy and watch your business grow.

And the best way to do this is to obey what I call the “Marketing Platinum Rule”.

7. The Platinum Rule

The Marketing Platinum Rule is to treat customers how?they?want to be treated. Not how you want to be treated.

Just because you like listening to podcasts, doesn’t mean they do.

Just because you like reading blogs, doesn’t mean they do.

Just because you like YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, or whatever else…

Well, you get the picture.

The key then is to go where your people are and avoid the places that they are not. This not only helps you stay more connected and appear more caring and responsive, but it also saves you a ton of time, money, and energy, by avoiding what I call the “Marketing Wasteland” which is made up of all the channels and platforms and media options that none of your customers actually use.

?? ?P.S.?Before tactics and tools can work, the single most important thing is to get your business’s overall marketing strategy right. This?One Page Marketing Cheatsheet?will help.

???You can grab your free copy right here.