There are two key factors that really determine the results you’re getting and how successful you are at generating clients and being able to scale the business.
One of those is obviously dependent on the volume of clients or the volume of work you’ve got coming in. This can scale between a low volume and a high volume. Ideally, we would want to have a high volume of clients. However, how we manage that volume and the amount of work we have to do is dependent on the other key factor.
The other factor is whether you are delivering one to one or delivering one to many. Is all your time spent working individually with a client or working one-to-some with smaller groups, or if you have scaled the sharing of your expertise across one-to-many? These two factors ultimately determine the results you’re getting and how scalable the business is.
Businesses that are delivering one-to-one and have got a low volume of clients are sitting in the Red Ocean. It’s red from the blood in the water from the sharks and the competition. These businesses are still trading time for money, competing on price, offering discounts, and in a race to the bottom.
Others have managed to move out of the red ocean by increasing the volume of clients, and they move onto their Sinking Ship. It starts out a bit better than when they were in the Red Ocean. But as the volume of clients increase, while they are still working one-to-one, they end up doing a lot more work. Trying to service a higher volume of clients, but still operating one-to-one, the workload increases. This can lead to burnt-out because they’re doing so much work, or the quality suffers which then means that they lose clients. As the service quality drops, the volume of clients drops off and they fall back into the Red Ocean, or simply go down with their Sinking Ship.
An alternative is when the coach or facilitator moves away from the one-to-one, toward a one-to-many model. However, if they are still generating a low volume of clients they move onto the Deserted Island.
They are hidden away, an untapped resource of value that no one knows about. They’ve potentially got a great product or service that they can provide, but they are sitting on this desert island because not many people know about them. They’re trying to scale trying to deliver one to many. But they don’t have the volume of clients, that’s needed. They are not standing out enough to be noticed and generate the volume of clients they need.
The ideal situation where we want to be is the Blue Ocean. This is where it’s away from the red ocean, with the sharks and the competition, where you’re able to stand up, be noticed, and scale. They are seen as being different in the marketplace, delivering one to many, generating their ideal volume of clients. They are in the Blue Ocean of calm, away from the stress and competition, living the lifestyle they love.
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