In the final installment of “The Time Chronicles” series, James and Phoebe discuss how you can take leveraged action so you can make more impact in your business, with less effort.
Leverage can be defined as “to use something to its maximum advantage.” James says using leverage will allow you to put just one thing on your “to-do” list, and have it get you multiple results with no additional time or work required.
“Do it once; use it again”
He used a lot of hacks in college to make the experience easier for him. He gives an example of doing a business profile on Walmart for a business course, and reusing most of the content for papers in courses the following year.
“I just started realizing over time that most people don’t do things like that”
Three examples of how James uses leverage in his business:
1) “The Outsourcing Mini-Course”
James needed a video edited and hired a video editor overseas to complete the job, adding music and animation. In order to make it a leveraged activity, he recorded the entire process, including the Skype call with the editor.
The recordings became a course on its own, as well as becoming content within his membership community. He also started offering the mini-course as a bonus to any launch he and his team did, giving the original activity multiple uses and providing many benefits to him and his clients.
2) “The Launch Lab”
James was doing a promotion as an affiliate for Marie Forleo’s B-School, and decided to offer a live, 3-day workshop, as a bonus.
This generated extra revenue, as the bonus for someone else’s program, and resulted in him getting new coaching clients from the people that attended the event. He then recorded the event and turned it into an online course, “The Launch Lab.” The course then became another bonus that he has used, as well as becoming the framework for his newest program.
3) Video case studies
Video case studies of Inner Circle Mastermind members highlighted their success stories, and became content for other members of the group. These videos will remain in the vault for use by future members, and were used to create PDF content for James’ membership site, Reel Marketing Insider. By adding the videos to the membership site, the Inner Circle Mastermind is indirectly being promoted as it’s introducing more people to it, and the case studies give others something to aspire towards.
Four ways to have leveraged thinking:
1) Leveraged content – Podcasts, videos, screen captures and more can be reused or repackaged. As an example, James is turning a powerful excerpt from a previous podcast into a video, with animation, and pushing it out on Facebook and other platforms in order to promote the podcast. He and Phoebe also created a podcast equipment guide and provided it to members of the membership community who would be interested in started their own show.
2) Leveraged training – You can use process maps, standard operating procedures and instruction manuals to train new team members, both locally and virtually. It takes time upfront to do this, but saves you in the long run by making the onboarding process for new employees much easier.
3) Leveraged promotions – If a previous promotion already worked once, you don’t need to “reinvent the wheel” and create something that is brand new. James’ program “48 Hour Film School” used much of the same content for both launches, but generated about $600,000 in sales.
4) Leveraged assets – What are the things that you own or rent that could be used in multiple ways? James’ office is one example and is used for work by the team, as well as meetings with clients and as an event space. It also houses their film studio, and can be rented out and used by other entrepreneurs.
