Scaling Expertise

Money talks, but it sure can sound like a foreign language to some of us! Melissa Houston, CPA, owner of She Means Profit, joins me in this episode to demystify a few financial realities about running an expertise-based service business. She has 20 years of experience diving into the numbers with her clients and putting them in control of their 1, 5, 10-year plans to make their business scalable a...

How many of us who provide our services as a business actually think in terms of profit? The timing couldn't be better for my conversation with Patty Block. An expert herself, Patty works with female expertise-based service providers on being intentional in their business models, transitioning from transactional to transformative pricing structures, and better understanding how to integrate profit...

When it comes to copyright, there are a few rules that can make all the difference between scaling your business and getting tripped up by the counterintuitive rules of intellectual property law. You need to know who owns what, who has what usage rights, and what the consequences of misappropriation might be. This episode was recorded as a LinkedIn Live which I hold the last Wednesday of the month...

I have been eagerly awaiting the release of this episode!  Can I be so bold as to brag that Jessica Fearnley, of the “Seven Figure Consultant,” and I really do think alike. 😊  Jessica joined me and we got into the nitty gritty about how successful solopreneurs need to evolve to move from six figure incomes to seven. We didn’t quite finish each other’s sentences, but there was a lot of a...

Launching into Web 3.0 With Your Expertise Based Business I was so lucky to be joined in this episode by JoAnn Holmes, an IP expert who was able to provide some amazing insights into one of the biggest tech buzzwords: Web 3.0. Even those of us who practice in IP are still learning about this new frontier, which touches on finance, connectivity, asset-building, product creation – topics that are ne...

Do I Want to Franchise? (Hint: No) In this Episode I share a LinkedIn Live event that I hosted to talk about some important Intellectual Property (IP) concepts and concerns. If you have a professional services-based business, a clear path to scalability and salability is finding an effective way to license your personal IP. Simple right? Not in today’s world. Depending on the scope of the license,...

In this episode, I was lucky to have Shannon Paris as a guest on this episode. As a member of the Mighty Networks team, Shannon offers a SaaS product to help people to establish, foster, and expand online communities. Shannon shared her journey with the company founder who had monetized her network by creating a community and took the business to the next level by showing others how they could do...

In this episode, Leah Neaderthal from Smart Gets Paid got personal with us about the importance of humanizing yourself to your audience.  She talked to us about the expertise/humanity scale. Women, including myself, tend to stick too close to the expertise end of the scale, and this doesn’t serve us well when running a professional services business. She reminds us that every business opportu...

Listen in on this enlightening conversation with Natalie Gingrich, the creator of The Ops Authority, a director of operations certification program.  In this episode, we will explore, step-by-step, the journey of developing a certification program, from ideation to implementation. In this episode we will learn: How Natalie transitioned from doing to teaching The “scalable and saleable” aspect...

In this episode, Radiance Harris and I talk about all things trademarks, including--but not limited to:  A broad overview of trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets and patents The trademark registration process The nitty-gritty of trademark protection in your expertise-based business The many benefits of getting an experienced trademark attorney on your team early. Radiance W. Harris, Esq. is...

Ownership issues regarding intellectual property are very different from the ownership issues in almost every other area of law. In order to find out what we actually own, we need to do legal due diligence, which is a process that tracks a piece of intellectual property from its creation to its current owner (or owners--gah!).  In this episode, we explore whether you own what you think you ow...

Welcome to my conversation with Manja Horner. Many of us have been burned by poorly built courses in the past, or our own learning product flopped. So, what are the best ways to create a course? We’re going to talk about taking your intellectual property or thought leadership and leveraging it to generate peaceful revenue streams. How can we create a learning experience that transforms your client...

Join me as I talk with Katie Burkhart, founder of MatterPulse and self-proclaimed jargon slayer, about the direct connection between purpose, value and profit. Katie helps teams on a mission develop intentional strategies that maximize both their time and their impact. In this episode we’ll cover: Why there is no conflict between being purpose-driven and being profit-driven How to cut through the...

Join me today as I chat with Carol Cox, founder and CEO of Speaking Your Brand®, a coaching and training company that helps high-performing, purpose-driven women entrepreneurs and professionals create their signature talks and thought leadership platforms.  This lively conversation coverst: How women silence themselves Rethinking public speaking as more engaging and participatory The differen...

In this week’s episode, I visit with Alastair McDermott, founder of The Recognized Authority. Join us as we chat about the benefits of a niche, what horizontal and vertical niching and specialization  means, and why you shouldn’t be afraid of narrowing the pool of potential clients. Find out: Why being a jack of all trades isn’t helping you get more clients Why referrals are dangerous What yo...

There are a couple of key elements to creating a business that can be sold: exclusivity and predictability. Exclusivity means that you have assets that you own 100%, and you have your unique position in the market. Predictability means that the buyer needs to be sure that the business will continue to prosper after it changes hands. Licensing hits all of those markers. A license is a grant of righ...

Today, I’m visiting with Rochelle Moulton where we explore several of the concepts in her book, the Authority Code.  We start with the difference between “authority” and “expertise” and, yes, there are several meaningful differences. I also used the opportunity to have her help me think through how to articulate my point of view and the revolution I want to lead.  Your revolution--or big...

In my interview with business broker, Kate Vriner, we have a step-by-step conversation about selling a service-based business. We followed the path of a hypothetical woman who starts a lifestyle business to provide income and flexibility to one who makes the mindset and operational shifts required to create a saleable business.  In this episode, we’ll cover: How robust the current acquisition...

In this episode, we talk about how your mindset blocks--in the form of “inner villains”--may be sabotaging you. Jaclyn has a fun but insightful way of helping us identify our mindset blocks, by personifying them as movie villains:  Ursula from the Little Mermaid, Miranda from The Devil Wears Prada, and Regina George from Mean Girls.   Ursula takes away your voice by hijacking your though...

This podcast is for you if you are the founder of a service based business whose product is expertise, which has stable revenue, and you understand who your best clients are; if you’re doing work you love, but have hit an earnings plateau and are looking for ways to work through it; if you want to build a business that can thrive into the future.  This podcast is a place to get support, clari...

The transformation of an expertise-based business from an unscalable, income-focused business to a scalable and saleable, profit-focused business is a journey.  Host Erin Austin, attorney and consultant, and the Hourly to Exit podcast gives you a front row seat on that journey.  Through conversations with expert guests, other expertise-based business owners and the occasional solo episod...