When I went into business for myself after working in traditional corporate roles, I was overwhelmed by how much more there was to do. Even though my business (career coaching) was directly related to my former corporate life (HR), there was all this additional STUFF that I never had to worry about when I was just an employee. Where before I had resources, equipment and people, now there was me and my business partner, trying to do the work, sell more work, and keep a business running. All of these things needed to get done, and outsourcing everything wasn’t realistic for our budget (nor was it ideal for our development, especially at first when we wanted to hands-on know our business). Since everything still had to get done, and clearly we couldn’t add more hours to the day, we started looking for ways to leverage the work we already did to serve multiple purposes.
Leverage marketing. A lot of our blog posts are based on questions we get from prospective customers. We need to respond to customer inquiries (that’s good service), and we also need a blog (that keeps our website fresh). Now we have a steady stream of relevant topics without having to do the extra work of creating them from scratch.
Leverage relationships. Networking is a great way to learn more about the external market and to let people know what you do. But you still need to keep in touch with all the people that you meet. The best way to keep in touch is by giving and putting the other person first. When I meet new people, I try to connect them to other people I know (where it makes sense, of course). In addition to helping people and positioning myself as a connector, I get to follow up with two people in one interaction.
Leverage income streams. Remember that blog post based on a customer email? You can record that as a how-to audio or video. You can create a checklist or exercise out of it. You can string together related blog posts and create a book. You can develop a talk based on the book and create a workshop. You can create multiple income streams from a single product or idea.
You don’t have to build everything from scratch all the time. You probably already have something created or packaged that can contribute to building your business. Even if you didn’t initially approach your work with multiple purposes in mind, you can do that from now on, and get leverage for yourself using work you are going to do anyway.
-Caroline Ceniza Levine
Six Figure Start
@SixFigureStart
***This was Best Business Tip #87. Read the other 99 Best Business Tips.***
