Table Of ContentFrom Single
to Scale
How a Single Person, Small
Business, or an Entrepreneur
Can Grow Their Business to Profit
―
Michael Killen
FROM SINGLE TO SCALE
HOW A SINGLE PERSON, SMALL BUSINESS,
OR AN ENTREPRENEUR CAN GROW
THEIR BUSINESS TO PROFIT
Michael Killen
From Single to Scale: How a Single Person, Small Business, or an Entrepreneur Can
Grow Teir Business to Proft
Michael Killen
Honiton, United Kingdom
ISBN-13 (pbk): 978-1-4842-3813-4 ISBN-13 (electronic): 978-1-4842-3814-1
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-3814-1
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018956407
Copyright © 2019 by Michael Killen
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part
of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations,
recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmis-
sion or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or
dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
Trademarked names, logos, and images may appear in this book. Rather than use a trademark
symbol with every occurrence of a trademarked name, logo, or image we use the names, logos, and
images only in an editorial fashion and to the benefit of the trademark owner, with no intention of
infringement of the trademark.
The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even if they
are not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to whether or not they are
subject to proprietary rights.
While the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of
publication, neither the authors nor the editors nor the publisher can accept any legal responsi-
bility for any errors or omissions that may be made. The publisher makes no warranty, express
or implied, with respect to the material contained herein.
Managing Director, Apress Media LLC: Welmoed Spahr
Acquisitions Editor: Shiva Ramachandran
Development Editor: Laura Berendson
Coordinating Editor: Rita Fernando
Cover designed by eStudioCalamar
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This book is dedicated to my Mum, Miranda.
Thank you for teaching me my love of writing and
using the English language to help others.
And my partner, Olivia. Thank you for making coffee
at 5 a.m. and listening to me dictate at 2 a.m.
Contents
About the Author vii
Acknowledgments ix
Chapter 1: Why You Need to Scale 1
Chapter 2: What’s Stopping You From Scaling? 25
Chapter 3: Types of Single-Person, Scalable Businesses 43
Chapter 4: Developing a Scalable Product from What You’ve Got 65
Chapter 5: Creating Content for a Scalable Product 91
Chapter 6: Building a Larger Audience 111
Chapter 7: C onnecting More of That Audience to a Scalable
Product 131
Chapter 8: Why Process Is the Key to Scale 153
Chapter 9: Outsourcing the Scalable Process 169
Chapter 10: Growth Optimization 185
Chapter 11: Profit and Money Management to Scale 203
Chapter 12: Scale and Growth Are Just Around the Corner! 213
Index 215
About the Author
Michael Killen currently runs his own consul-
tancy, where he coaches businesses on money,
scale, finding customers, and making sales. In
2017, Mike sold his first business to a larger
media agency. He has a background in digital
marketing, having worked for a large global cor-
poration as a lead, developing digital marketing
strategies for small to medium-sized businesses
that fit their business needs.
Acknowledgments
I’d like to give special thanks to Anita Henderson (www.i4design.nz),
who edited the first ever draft of this book. I’d also like to thank my Mum for
working through the first edition with me and helping me clarify my ideas.
A massive thank you to Laura, Rita, and Dulcy at Apress for helping me
bring this book to market and for putting up with my embarrassing lack of
knowledge as a first-time author. Also, thank you to Shiva who reached out to
me to talk about a book deal–that was awesome.
Thank you to everyone at Sell Your Service, both members and colleagues,
who believed in my blog content enough to help me put it in book form!
A huge thank you to the team at The Generator co-working in Exeter, my
office, who let me talk their ears off about writing the book and then keeping
dozens of copies around the office. And not minding when I forced people to
take home a copy!
Thank you to my fiancée, Olivia. She helped me get up early to write and stay
up late to write some more.
Finally, thank you to you the reader for taking a chance on a new book from
a new author. I know your time is precious and it means a huge amount to
me that you’ve read my first book. If I can ever help you, please email me
C H A P T E R
1
Why You Need
to Scale
I want to give you a better quality of life. There are many lies and preconceived
ideas that consultants and freelancers tell themselves. All of these are killing
your business and perhaps even making you unhappy. In this chapter we’re
going to explore why scale isn’t just about a bigger office; it’s about helping
more people and giving you more freedom.
Recurring Revenue
Growing businesses are allowed to exist because they generate recurring
revenue. It’s as simple as that. If you want your business to grow, you need
recurring revenue. Recurring revenue is a specific type of income that not all
businesses can create. It’s not necessarily related to offering a product, service,
or craft; instead, it’s about how your customers use your products and how
you sell them.
For example, a car manufacturer makes a sale and it’s a large lump sum of
income. That’s a one-off sale and chances are that same customer isn’t going to
buy again anytime soon. Also, with the manufacturing costs and staff costs, that
one-off sale probably doesn’t provide much profit. Manufacturers realize that
recurring revenue comes from repeat customers, so servicing, maintenance,
and check-ups are how most garages and retailers generate recurring revenue.
However, that can only grow with staff and space. If you had 1,000 people ask
© Michael Killen 2019
M. Killen, From Single to Scale, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-3814-1_1
2 Chapter 1 | Why You Need to Scale
for servicing today, chances are they’d have to wait or you wouldn’t be able to
service them at all.
So you also need a scalable product: things you can sell that can always keep
up with demand. When it comes to your consulting or coaching business, or
if you build web sites or one-off solutions for customers, you’re selling the car
at the moment.
The job of this book is to get you to a scalable position with your business.
Often, as entrepreneurs, we’re trapped in a cycle of project-based income and
then months of nothing. Growth comes from recurring revenue, sold with
scalable products and services. Recurring revenue gives you more than these
two options:
Work more hours or charge more money. When your business needs
to generate more income, you can be left with limited choices as a solo, micro,
or small business. You have two options: Either increase your fees per project
or increase the number of projects you take on. Both of these are double-
edged swords. In one respect, it makes sense and it’s easy to increase your
fees. If you’re working per hour, just increase the number of hours you work.
However, how easy is it to increase your fees? Surely there’s a saturation
point. When it comes to adding more hours to your working day, aren’t we
trying to work less? Besides, there are only so many hours in the day you can
work; you still need to eat, sleep, and relax.
This is the fallacy that so many micro and small businesses fall into, that there
are only two options when it comes to generating more income and revenue.
Surely the answer is just “get more customers,” right? Wrong. Your best
option is a third choice that hardly any small business goes for, the option to
generate recurring and scalable income.
Sure, we could move customers onto retainers and monthly packages.
Coaching and consulting is a great way to build recurring revenue, but it’s not
scalable. All we’re doing there is guaranteeing our income, not scaling and
growing it. I want to show you how to scale and grow your income, rather
than just securing it (and yes, you can do both). I want to show you how the
opportunities are larger than you think:
The market is bigger. The first mind-shift you have to get over is that you
think your market is small, because you’re only able to service a small area. It
becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you’re only able to work with 10 clients a
month, it leads you to think that there are only 10 clients a month out there. If
you’re working on project-based income, there is a finite and limited number
of clients you can service per month.
When we look at scalable and growth-based products and services, our
market becomes massive. It becomes so much larger because we’re able to
From Single to Scale 3
sell, deliver, and interact with so many more clients in the exact same space of
time. Think about one-on-one coaching. If one person wants to hear you talk,
why wouldn’t 100? If you could get 100 people to pay the same amount and
be in the same room at the same time, doesn’t that sound more profitable?
There’s a myth that if you scale up the number of people listening, you need to
drop your prices. This is not true. If one person is willing to pay, then everyone
else who attends can pay that, too. If anything, what you’ll find is a select few
people want to pay more just for the opportunity to sit one-on-one with you.
I know some coaches who keep bumping up their prices for one-on-one time
(because they don’t want to do it), but people still keep offering to pay.
In summary, the people that you’re helping now exist all over the world. There
are hundreds of people in the exact same position as your current clients who
also need help. You’ve got an opportunity to sit with all of them in the same
space of time.
Scaling is easier than ever. The beauty of the Internet is that it brings
technology, power, and community to a laptop. You have access to all the
communities out there who can automate and execute for you.
There are powerful and free cloud apps and software that let you create
products and content and easily distribute it to people you’ve never met.
Finally, there is an infinite amount of knowledge available from social groups,
search engines, and blogs. This gives you the power of all those resources; all
that research and all that experience are right at your fingertips.
Single-person businesses can set up a blog and drive thousands of visitors to
a page in less than a day. We can capture leads and e-mail addresses within
minutes and automate every single e-mail that gets sent to customers. PayPal
handles payments and WordPress handles pages, memberships, and sales.
Google lets us get in touch with drop-ship businesses, manufacturers, and
suppliers. We can ask fulfillment companies to deliver goods and all we have
to do is drive traffic and write content.
With e-mails, Slack, Facebook groups, and post comments, you can reach
out to an enormous audience and put awesome content in front of them.
It’s so exciting to me that we have this huge potential for reach with our
content. We can use simple screen capture and writing apps (Google Docs,
PowerPoint, Camtasia) to create content and products that last forever. The
beauty of those types of sales are that the supply never runs out.
Is it hard work? Of course it is, but it scales and grows so much faster than
any other type of business. Even the best bakeries in the world have a queue
of people lining up who can only be serviced one at a time, assuming there is
enough supply. We’re going to build a business that can scale, serve as many
people as it needs and be run with just one or very few employees.
