213: My 3-Step Formula For Scaling Any Business

Melissa [: 00:00:00

Hey, guys. In this episode, I cannot wait to walk you through my build, grow, scale model on a really high level, give you perspective of the method and process that I have used over and over again with each offer that we have brought to the market over the last 5 years. So listen in and take notes my friends. Need some effective tactical advice that actually helps you get results and makes a real difference in your life and business? You've come to the right place. If you're finding yourself here today, it means you're getting ready to gain serious traction in your business, rapidly multiply your income and impact, and you're ready to make it happen while living all out. Guys, I'm Melissa Henault, your trustworthy corporate dropout turned 6 figure business burnout turned happy and healthy CEO of a multimillion dollar online business. And you're listening to the Burnout to All Out podcast. On this show, we're serving up innovative growth strategies, simple implementation methods to put them into practice, and action stimulating inspiration tailored specifically for the modern entrepreneur.

Melissa [: 00:01:21

Let's dive in. Alright, guys. Welcome. Welcome to another burnout to all out episode. So excited today. Speaking of burnout to all out, I am gonna be chatting with you today about the development of the build, grow, scale method and framework that we are bringing to the public, to the market, actually, as I speak, as we're recording this podcast. It is really taking a look back at how we have built each offer in my company to scale where we are today as a multi 7 figure a year company. And it's not by chance, it's through strategy.

Melissa [: 00:02:10

Right? And it's through the build, grow, scale model that I'm gonna walk you through today that has really proven process for us as we continue to grow and teach our clients to grow and scale their businesses. So this is the first time I'm actually going public sharing this outside of my internal paid community. So what do I mean by that? We have our foundational flagship program, the Lead Gen Academy. But from that Lead Gen Academy, as my podcast listeners who may be only listening to my stuff for free, you're probably not even aware that I have an ascension model on the back end where clients ascend from our flagship from lead generation into our business coaching programs, build, grow, scale, and all the way up to my higher ticket mastermind. And so I've never actually gone public with the internal structure of what we teach inside with the build, grow, scale method. So that's what we're talking about today. And here's the thing. Most entrepreneurs know they need a strategy in their business.

Melissa [: 00:03:22

But where does that strategy come from? A lot of times folks come to market as entrepreneurs with a really great idea. And they bring it to the market. It sells a little bit, but they don't have a formula to build their offer and their network, to grow their offer, and to scale it at large, like we've done. Right? And the thing is if you lack focus in your business, that becomes a huge problem as far as being able to actually scale a really awesome product or service that you have. Right? And that's why I've consolidated the only strategy that you need into just 3 phases. Okay? And here's where I'll uncover for you where to start, where to go, and how to actually layer upon over and over and over again. So the build growth scale that I'm gonna walk you through, it doesn't matter if you already have an offer and you're making a $100,000 a year and you're listening to me, or if you have a brand new idea, or if you're making a half half a $1,000,000 a year with an offer. Our build, grow, scale model really is a rinse and repeat with each offer that makes it stackable.

Melissa [: 00:04:32

Right? And that's the thing that I really want to talk about. So with the build gross scale, right? So what do I mean build gross scale? So let's just get into the 3 step method for today. Let me start with the bird's eye view. Build, what do I mean when I say build? We have to build a strong foundation in our business. It needs to be made of steel so that we can layer, right, layer more offers on it without it crumbling. Right? Where it crumbles is when we're, like, duct taping and piecemealing and throwing spaghetti against the wall, trying to get a business up and off the ground, and we're building on sand. What happens when you build on sand? It falls apart, right? So we teach really how to build traffic at top of funnel. How do you build a targeted audience that you can begin to layer a larger and larger and larger and broader audience to build this top of funnel because you have to do what? Build community before you build your bank account, right? So that's top level build.

Melissa [: 00:05:47

Then we move into the grow and I'm gonna get into the nitty gritty of this. I'm just giving you the 30,000 level view right now. Then we get into the grow of the build grow scale method. Right? With grow, it's all about conversion. You've built your top of funnel. You've got traffic coming in. Right? Now, how do you convert these people? How do you convert followers into sales? What is your customer journey to conversion? How are you moving them over to the sale? Number 3 is scale, right? Number 3 is we've created the funnel, we have a customer journey to convert. But now that we're generating sales and we've got some profit in the company, how can we scale this bad boy? And how can we scale it without burning out? How do we have systematic expansion? And with scale, what we really talk about inside of build, grow, scale, inside of our program is retention and ascension.

Melissa [: 00:06:45

Right? So I'm gonna say that again, retention, one way you scale is to keep clients instead of them falling off a cliff when they're done with your program. Right? And the other is Ascension. How are you ascending and creating additional offers to keep your clients for life? Some of you don't, but it is a whole lot easier to keep a current client than it is to find new ones. Right? So many of you are leaving so much money on the table by not having offers for your clients to ascend and stay with you. Right? And here's the thing, no matter where you are in the process of build, grow, scale, and listening to this podcast, the foundation you may start if you've listened to my previous podcast episode, you may have chosen 1 social media channel to get started on, right, from a top of funnel for building. And you may then move through that to grow and convert sales and then scale it for ascension, build grow scale. Now, this is what I love about our method. It is a rinse and repeat, you're building a solid foundation with one channel of your funnel.

Melissa [: 00:07:59

You've got one offer moving all the way through that scaling. Now, you can go back to the top with the build and expand your channels, layer on another social media route, layer on an email marketing, layer on there's so many things that you can do top of funnel, right? You can invest in ads. I'm gonna get into that in a minute. But the bottom line is super simple. If you follow the method of build, grow, scale, and then rinse and repeat, right, you can create an empire. Because why? Because you've started with a solid foundation made of steel, and then you stack upon it. Right? Instead of building and building with duct tape on sand and your empire falling apart. Because what I see is people don't spend enough time on the foundation with the build, and then they're jumping all over the place with a shiny object syndrome and trying to sell everything and the whole thing falls apart.

Melissa [: 00:09:02

Right? Because they built on sand, and that's what we don't want to have happen. Okay. So let's do a little bit of a deeper dive in what I mean around build, grow and scale. I'm gonna kind of skid across the top of what these topics really mean inside of our coaching program. And know that we have depending on when you're listening to this, we've got a totally free masterclass coming up on May 13th, where we're gonna take you into the weeds of this. We're gonna go deep for 7 days in these topics so that you've got actionable items to take back to the growth of your business, but also identify the holes in your business. And maybe some restructuring that needs to happen in your business. Maybe for some of you, you might need to burn the bad boy down and just build a new foundation.

Melissa [: 00:09:50

Right? And some of you just need to patch holes. Right? So let's start with build. Right? So let's start with build. What do I mean again by build? Let's go deep dive here. Traffic, top of funnel, right? So let's go through some of the items that are gonna be really important with traffic when you're growing your business. Number 1 is going to be your network growth strategies, right? How are you filling what we call that top of funnel? I see so many people create things to sell, and there's nothing at the top of the funnel. What I mean is you spend all this time creating something to sell, and then there's no one to buy it. You're walking into an empty stadium because you haven't done the work to build build the top of funnel.

Melissa [: 00:10:37

So what is important in the build phase of your business, it is creating your personal brand through messaging through what that messaging looks like and what it sounds like meaning visually how you're showing up. And literally your words, right? I have a very particular brand voice is yours recognizable, right? And then the network growth strategies, growing that top of funnel network so that people are seeing your authority. Right? Other things that we can do with building traffic and building that top of funnel are opt ins and lead magnets. Right? So many of you may have clicked on or opted into my 6 steps to scale past 6 figures. If you listen to my recent podcast, there's a freebie out there for you to download. If it brings you value, you get on to the email list. That email list is another layer of traffic that you are building to bring people to see your offer. Right? Now, what else is in the build phase? It is media nurture.

Melissa [: 00:11:43

It's not enough to grow the network. It's not enough to create an email list. Now you need to market to it. Right? We need to market our brand voice and content on social, and we need to create content in email marketing because we need a nurture between sells so that when we're ready to actually sell something, people are interested in buying it right. Now another thing you can do in the build phase is podcasting, right? Within podcasting, this is a great way. I mean, you guys are listening in right now. Right? Like, you're listening in to this podcast, which is a form of creating top of funnel marketing. Right? I hope this makes sense.

Melissa [: 00:12:34

Alright. Next is the grow phase. So, that was kind of a quick run through for those of you that are new at the build phase. But listen, here's the deal, for my existing entrepreneurs who are listening and you're like, yeah, I've started building. I've started building, like, I've got some traffic top of funnel. Right? There's probably cracks in your foundation, where at the top of your funnel, your marketing strategies could be way more consistent. Just by being more consistent in just 1 to 2 to 3 channels top of funnel can completely change the output of the conversion to sales, which is the next level, what we're gonna talk about in just a second, the customer journey. By just fine tuning the cracks in your foundation, optimizing that build phase of really wringing out how many eyeballs you can get in front of the content you're putting out, you're going to fix the cracks in your foundation.

Melissa [: 00:13:41

Right? Now, how to know if you need to be focusing on the build phase? If you're putting things out there and no one's buying it. If you're creating master classes and workshops, and no one's signing up, I'm not gonna sit here and rub your back and keep you stuck. You have an a funnel problem. You have an audience problem. You need to go back to the build phase and you need to look at your top of funnel channels and ask yourself, where do I need to commit more? Where do I need to really understand my client and grow my audience more so that I can convert them to the next level, which is the grow phase. This, my friends, is the conversion phase. This is the customer journey to the sale. Right? I'm biased, but I also have the evidence.

Melissa [: 00:14:41

We are ninjas with this. We convert like mofos, right? We know how to drive traffic to a conversion event and close people. Right? So conversion is the customer journey through and to the sale. What are your conversion strategies? How are you getting asses in seat? How are you getting people to see what it is you have to offer? Secondly, in the grow phase is offer creation. What kind of offer is out there that you've created? Is it priced appropriately? Have you branded it and articulated it in a way that people can recognize that they need it, and that they want to invest in it. Right? So we have to be sure that we're creating offers that actually convert to a sale. Right? What I see people do is build something and then go try to sell it and it doesn't convert. Right? I am a huge fan of selling it and then building it.

Melissa [: 00:15:42

Okay? So we have to have offers that actually convert. But we also have to have strategies to get people in front of our offers. Right? Now, we also need to make sure in the grow phase, we can have all of those things right and still miss the mark if the pricing is off or if the packaging is off the way you're offering it is off. I see this too many times that entrepreneurs have the right offer, but they're pricing it inappropriately, or they're marketing it and packaging it in a way that their audience actually doesn't want to invest. Right? This is all customer journey to the sale. Right? Next thing is really to up level your email marketing strategies. It is one thing to have an opt in and build the email list. But it is another thing to create enough value that when you get to invite someone in an email to a sale or to a conversion event that they actually say yes.

Melissa [: 00:16:54

Right? This is where kind of as you're listening, I hope you're listening in and doing a self audit of where there may be cracks in your business when it comes to what I call the grow phase, right? Some of you may be totally new to creating your first offer. And so running through this list is gonna be very comprehensive. For existing entrepreneurs who've already got an offer or 2 out there again, what I love about our build, grow scale model is you can come back to it with every offer, right? You can run through our checklist and do a deep dive on pricing on marketing on the conversion strategy because here's the deal. Here is the deal. Each one of our offers is very different and the conversion strategies are different, which is why the build grow scale method is so important to come back to with every offer and assess down the line if each is optimized. For instance, we have a $5,000 6 month lead gen academy program. That's all virtual. Right? And then we sell it through an online conversion event.

Melissa [: 00:18:10

Very different than our $25,000 high level mastermind that gets sold in person from stage and sells out within the day. Right? A very different conversion strategy, psychology pricing program. Right? And so coming back to the build, grow, scale, what I call checklist and method is gonna force you to analyze each offer differently. And ground you back to not just sticking with, hey, well, the way I priced this and marketed this worked. So I'm gonna do it again with this next thing that I bring to the market. Well, you may have a really great offer to bring to the market. But if you repeat what you did before, and it's a different audience or a different price point or a different experience, it's not gonna convert the way you're expecting it to. Right? Okay.

Melissa [: 00:19:05

So I hope this is helping for those of you who may need to come back to the grow assessment and build grow scale is if you're having issues converting your audience, right? You have people in the funnel, you have eyeballs showing up, but no one's buying, or you're getting the wrong buyers. Right? This is when we need to revisit the grow step in the build grow scale. Now, let's talk about phase 3, which is scale. Right? Scale is about retention and ascension, but then also business operations. Right? And I could wow. Could I go down in a rabbit hole around business operations? And inside of our build, grow, scale program, we do. We've got all of the technical aspects of scaling digitally from a tech perspective. We've got you covered on the training on that.

Melissa [: 00:20:02

That is not what this podcast is about today. This is more of like a CEO business organization assessment. Right? With scaling, I wanna talk about a systematic expansion without burnout, right? Do you have a process to optimize retention strategies with your clients? Do you have an Ascension model to retain them as they evolve and want more? Right? Or are you giving up your clients to someone else Once they're done with your offer. There's also ways to expand and scale through affiliate programs. Do you have an affiliate program for your business? This is a game changer for organic lead generation to scale a proven program that gives results. Right? And then also, I hit on the back end business operations. Right? Scaling takes technique. It takes technical savviness on the back end when you bring in more clients.

Melissa [: 00:21:13

It is basic math. Right? So again, just top level with scaling that you need to revisit the scale checklist. If you have an offer, and it's converting really well, but then when you're done with the offer, your clients leave. It is time for you to look at scaling in a way that how are you optimizing retention? How are you incentivizing your clients to stay? What type of email sequences and follow-up strategies do you have as they're nearing their end of your program? And what type of renewal offers do you have. Right? So in some of our programs, we offer a 50% discount for people to renew. We know that clients who renew aren't nearly as heavy of a lift as our brand new clients, and we'd love to keep them. Right? So there may be some awesome ways to retain clients and that sell is a lot easier than finding new clients. And not only is it easier, but you already love them and they're easier to manage because they're familiar with your content.

Melissa [: 00:22:17

And then secondly, you know that it's time to revisit the scale stage of your business, if the offers you have don't have an ascending step. So not only just renewals for clients to stay with what you have, but what are you offering them to stay for the next level with you instead of seeing them on their way? So these are just some really good temperature checks. If you are at the place where you really need to be assessing the holes or the cracks in your scale process or opportunity. Right? So let me recap what I've covered with you today. I know you probably felt like you're drinking water out of a fire hose because this is my top level build, grow, and scale a business that you love checklist that I run through every time we bring a new offer to the market. It's not something that we've just done once. So to recap, build what we're doing in the build phase and what we're looking for in the build phase is traffic. Right? Top of funnel, what strategies are you implementing to grow your top of funnel? And then grow.

Melissa [: 00:23:38

Right? Once you've got the funnel built for that particular offer, what types of strategies are you implementing to ensure that the customer journey lands with a sale? Right? How are you converting people to a sale? And then lastly, the scale aspect. Once you've converted sales and you're retaining clients, how can we scale this even further through simple modalities and steps for retention and ascension and technical back end operations that allow ease of expansion without burnout. Now, I am only skimming the surface here in this podcast. If you want to take a deeper dive where I'm actually gonna be going through each little bullet point that we talked about today on my podcast, to go with me hand in hand and do a full audit of your business. You are not going to wanna miss my totally free masterclass around the corner, build, grow and scale the business you love. We start on May 13th. Grab the link in the show notes and get your ass registered and get ready to find the cracks in your business so that we can create a more solid foundation for your empire building, or maybe just optimize what you have. And some of you may be just burning the damn thing down and starting from scratch and that is fine.

Melissa [: 00:25:06

You'd rather start from scratch with a solid foundation, then build on sand and watch the whole thing fall apart. You guys can always count on me to not rub your back and keep you stuck, but to give you that love shove. Cannot wait to see you till my next episode. Thanks guys so much for listening in on today's podcast episode. And I can't wait for you to see my upcoming guest in the next episode. You are going to love this keynote speaker. Hey, here's the deal. If you like this, please subscribe and leave a review.

Melissa [: 00:25:43

And you want the latest online business growth strategies and exclusive LinkedIn pro tips sent straight to your phone? Text the word update 318-2285. Can't wait to see you guys. Come find me over on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, wherever you like to hang. Cannot wait to hear how you are enjoying and applying what you're learning. You guys reach out to me over on social because I love hearing what's resonating with you. When you reach out to me and you send me those personal DMs, they really do impact the content I continue to bring forward to you. So again, come find me, melissa_henault over on Instagram, Melissahanault over on LinkedIn and Facebook. Can't wait to see you guys over there.