Take a seat with me here and imagine your future business like this. Your future agency could focus on a particular audience, a who, a group of people who call themselves something like sports business founders.
You know that their major problem is selling their physical products to direct customers so you’re going to help them get more customer sales.
Imagine if you could offer them a method to do just that that didn’t require your physical work or input. If they did want one-on-one work, they had to pay significantly more and they’d even be happy to do so.
You invite them to a private community of other sports product sellers, so they can see what’s working for other businesses all the while seeing you as the expert in your industry.
Even better, you’ll provide them with a framework of what they can implement in their business, a structured program which is standardized across all similar businesses. Not only do they now have a roadmap, but they have peers who have done it, too.
You’ll charge an upfront joining fee of around $25,000 a year, then a monthly fee to stay in the group after that first year, all before doing a single piece of work.
Each Monday, rather than answering a hundred update emails, you post one live video to the group, asking them for their tasks for the week and updating them on what they need to focus on next.
Maybe you have office hours twice a week where people can ask questions, all of which are recorded and postponed for others to watch later.
As your customers get results, they post them into the group to inspire others to get results, too. Suddenly it all seems much more achievable.
The core framework you’ve sold them could be delivered via online course content. But if you haven’t built it yet, just record it live for a few weeks, posting the recordings in a separate section.
Slowly, you’ll have built a library of course material to sell to new members.
Finally, if you do have customers who want further help, you can offer more bespoke work for significantly higher prices, and it’s easier to sell because they know you.
You’re creating recurring revenue and upfront profitable payments. You have a scalable business and you becoming known as an authority in your niche.
Now, does this sound too good to be true?
Circle.so might be just what you’re looking for.
Back in 2016, I was becoming increasingly frustrated at the additional apps and platforms needed to run my business.
I was looking at Click Funnels, WordPress, Active Campaign, Facebook groups, forum software, Slack, Zoom for webinars and calls, project management tools like Asana. I even bought Quip which was a massive platform owned by Salesforce.
All of them were telling me that our platform combines all other platforms and I fell for it each and every time.
If you ask my wife, Olivia, about how much of a sucker I am. I was one of the people who got sucked into the new mattress marketing craze back in about 2016.
If you want to see how gullible I am, just ask her.
Even with something like WordPress, I needed dozens of plugins to build what I thought was a decent membership platform.
If you think about what it is that you really want from membership and a community platform, I wanted all my team and customers in the same place.
I want it to be able to teach coach, provide feedback and offer a library of content to anyone who I could help.
Now, it seems insane to me at the time that there was no platform to help with all of this.
Surely, I couldn’t be the only one who wanted a coaching community and content all on one platform.
That’s when Circle.so came across my browser.
Now, I’ll admit I was instantly defensive. Every single sales page I had read previously told me that their platform could do it all. So I wasn’t exactly easily persuaded this time.
What I wanted in a platform
I knew what I wanted.
I wanted to be able to PM my team in a chat room similar to slack, but I wanted conversations to also have comments like Facebook.
I wanted to be able to broadcast video into a forum, do the call live, record it and post it to my forum for later viewers.
I also wanted to be able to easily manage members and tag them or remove them and upgrade them depending on whether they were a customer or not.
Now, some platforms could do two out of three, but never all three, except for Circle.so.
How to use Circle.so profitably
I want to show you how your agency, even if you’re small, should be using Circle.so, and how to use it profitably.
The goal of your business is threefold. First of all, we have to make a profit. Obviously. We have to serve a community, which is to say that we have to find an audience and connect with them and we actually have to deliver good work.
Now, most agencies focus on number three, they focus on delivering good work and they actually neglect the other two points.
The number of businesses I’ve worked with who do outstanding work, but it also scraping by month after month, it’s genuinely heartbreaking.
DIY DFY spectrum
Now, this is a model taught to me by talking more of million-dollar coach called the DIY DFY spectrum.
It explains why agencies struggled to make a decent profit and how Circle.so could fix that.
DIY – Do-it-yourself
On the left here we have DIY meaning anyone you sell to does the work themselves.
Courses are an example of DIY, right? They do the work themselves.
Now, they’re really great for scalability and when they sell in high enough volume, they are profitable. But the level of commitment is very, very low.
I mean, how many of us have bought online courses that we then never, ever touch?
While they’re scalable, they’re not great for getting results with the customer.
Now, I didn’t want my business to be purely online courses. I have always really struggled to connect with that business model.
I don’t really like a high volume, low price sales strategy, and I wanted to connect with my audience more.
DFY – Done for you
On the right-hand side, we have done for you, which is what most agencies do.
Now, this is much more expensive. They get faster results, but it’s much harder to scale for the business. This is stuff like essentially one-on-one work. This is hard work for the business, but great for the customer because they get so much attention.
Now, I knew that I didn’t want to do one-on-one coaching or consulting, which basically falls into this category. Its hard work, has thinner profit margins and it means working closely with customers.
DWY – Done with you
What I wanted was done with you, DWY, which comes up to the top.
The ability to provide content through DIY material and provide feedback and insight from both myself and other members of the community.
That’s what I wanted with the DWY.
Done with you as profitable and scalable and blends, the best aspects of DIY and DFY work. It increases commitment and investment while also allowing higher profits and more scale.
The only problem I had was finding a platform that could deliver on all three without having to duct tape a load of platforms together, or create like a freaking Stein monster of apps and Zapier automations.
Circle.so however it does all three of these and much, much more.
Full disclosure, I’m not creating this blog out of the goodness of my heart. I am being paid to create this.
However, as you know, I never promote anything that I don’t use already and Circle.so is a key part of my business. If I ran an agency now Circle.so would be at the center of that, too.
Now, I’ve got a 14-day free trial available at https://sellyourservice.co.uk/circle, which means you can test it out, take a look and you can even start to invite people over to it.
I started Sell Your Service to help all business owners make as much money as they want while selling what they want and doing work, which feels like they’re doing meaningful contribution.
Finding platforms and tools that help you do that has been a core part of my business for a long time and I’m glad to have found Circle.so because they helped me do it and they’ll help you do that, too.
Head over to https://sellyourservice.co.uk/circle to claim your free 14-day free trial.
How could your agency or business use Circle.so effectively?
How exactly could your agency or business use Circle.so effectively to become more profitable and scalable and work fewer hours?
As I mentioned earlier, the mission of Sell Your Service is to help all business owners make as much money as they want selling what they want while doing work which feels meaningful.
The three aspects of a profitable scalable agency lie between these three methods of delivery, DIY done with you and done for you.
We can take the best aspects of each, ditch what doesn’t work, and build what we need to on Circle.so.
Content
Between DIY and done with you is content now. This is the learning portion of how you help customers. It’s courses, training, consulting, webinars.
If we teach our customers how to solve problems, using our methods and models, we not only grow our brand strength, but also help them reach their goals and Circle.so is the perfect platform for hosting training content.
You can host courses and training material broken down and categorized however you want. You can allow comments or disable them, provide materials and embed content.
As of 2022, you can now create Livestream straight into the group, record them and post them into a space or thread once they’re completed.
Now, launching your program is easier than ever because you can drive new members in, tell them all the times and dates for your live training, record it, provide that training to future members all on one platform.
That’s the content part of the platform covered.
Coaching
Between DFY and DWY is coaching.
Now, coaching is where we basically give feedback. We ask lots of questions and we challenge our members to take the next step.
Circle.so has some killer coaching options. First, as I mentioned earlier, the live stream functions allow for great group coaching calls. You can even have multiple people on screen at one time for like a meeting room style for masterminds.
Coaching also means feedback. I like my members to post their updates and next steps in the group. So I can ask more questions and uncover roadblocks. Because of how circled so handles posts and comments, I have lots of options for providing feedback.
You can also have live chat through with a big update coming later this month, that will replace slack chat rooms with real time style conversations happening between members with individuals messaging and group messaging, plus rich content for the gift and mean lovers out there as well.
Community
Finally, Between DIY and DFY is community.
Now, community is probably the biggest buzzword out of all of this.
Businesses love talking about community and engagement, but to me, it seemed really daunting to handle and grow a new community.
It doesn’t come naturally to me to lead a group like that but the evidence is clear, strong communities, foster greater results.
DIY, and done for you aren’t enough. You need a community for people to take on real change.
Communities also build stronger connections. Customers are less likely to leave a paid group. I something with like monthly recurring revenue or payments when there’s a great community tied to it.
People join for content. They pay for coaching, but they stay for the community.
Messaging, live calls, posted comments, sharing, content, getting feedback, all this builds community and with Circle.so it’s much, much easier.
Community is also about accountability. If you tell a group of people I’m going to do X by this date, then you’re more likely to do it. Plus your peers hold you to it as well.
I myself, I’ve had bullshit called on my friends and colleagues from paid communities because I’ve told them I’m going to focus on A and when I start posting about B they’ll tell me to get back on track.
Circle.so Community
On top of that Circle’s community itself is actually really good. They themselves are constantly posting updates. They have tons of training and a really supportive group of other community members.
I must check the Circle.so forum once a day to check in with other owners, see what’s coming up, train myself on how to better serve my community.
My Team
Finally, my team is a part of the community. We have a private space ourselves for updates, project management and content for my team. We talk to each other inside circle. We keep in touch. We share in connect.
We do use other platforms like high level and click up but circle is where the community really lives.
As I mentioned, I’ve got a 14-day free trial of Circle.so here https://sellyourservice.co.uk/circle.