Where’s the Money? Crafting Strategy to Scale Smarter, Not Harder

Welcome to Your Business, Accelerated! Digitally remastered with AI, Your Business, Accelerated! is the go-to podcast for entrepreneurs ready to scale smart. Hosted by Attorney Shaune B. Arnold, it delivers strategic business insights, legal frameworks, and real-world solutions to help you operate with clarity and confidence. Get actionable guidance to protect, grow, and optimize your business—one smart move at a time.

In this dynamic episode of Your Business, Accelerated!, Attorney Shaune B. Arnold breaks down essential business strategy—from building profit-centered business models to maximizing margins and unlocking powerful growth through corporate partnerships and SMART goals. It’s a masterclass in sustainable entrepreneurship for service providers ready to scale with precision and purpose. 

Transcript

Well, hello, everyone. …Welcome my good friends …this week …and every week …to your business accelerated. I am your host, attorney Shaune B Arnold, and I am reminding you, as always, to maximize your competence, to get the confidence you need to succeed. What do I mean by that? Well, I am a California business attorney, and it is my mission in life to get you celebrating your successful business.

Let's deal with a couple of housekeeping matters before we go any further. If you are a regular listener, you have heard these things before. If you are a brand-new listener, I want to welcome you, and I just want to make sure that you are aware I'm a California business attorney. And so, to the extent that we are talking about business law, we are talking about California Business Law. If you live someplace other than California, I encourage you to take whatever you hear here, …and take it to an attorney in your jurisdiction who can clarify for you whether there are any differences in the law between my jurisdiction, which is California, and your jurisdiction, wherever you are.

I want you to take advantage of all of the hardcore business knowledge that we are sharing here on your business accelerated. We're going to be digging in even deeper as we go along.

And I also invite you to join us on legal biz Café. That’s another podcast where we deal with the mindset of the entrepreneur. If you find yourself struggling on an emotional level in your business, and we all do at some point or another, then you can go on over to legal biz Cafe, and I offer you some food for thought on a weekly basis.

Tonight, we are talking about implementing a business strategy in your business. There are a couple of different kinds of strategy that you might employ in your business. If you think about it, there's marketing strategy and business planning, but I'm talking about something that's a little bit more basic.

Way before you get to the business planning, you really start with some smart goals, and you start with your business model. And so tonight, I'm going to take you through some principles that I believe you if you think about them, they're going to give you a lot more clarity on how to get started in your business and on how to actually tweak things if you're in business but finding that it's not quite working. Maybe there's a hole there, something you haven’t yet considered.

If you are just contemplating a business, I would suggest that you really think about what kind of business you want to have, what is it going to be? What are you going to provide to the marketplace? And you know that can sometimes be a very complicated question when you have, say, an engineering degree. I spoke with an entrepreneur about a week ago. She’s a CPA living in Texas. She has a master's degree, and she wanted to talk to me about how to onboard a couple of new clients to help her business be a little more sustainable.

And we got on a discussion of what she actually wants to provide in the marketplace and how she can leverage her talents, time and knowledge so that she can actually serve more people. It led to a discussion about how to create audio products and video products and how to get herself situated in a speaking career.

That is not what she normally would have thought of when she graduated with that accounting degree and the MBA. Frankly, she was thinking about being an entrepreneur, but she wasn't really sure how she was going to go about it.

We started talking about her business model. And you know, frankly, that comes down to where's the money, right? Show me the money. So we talked about the different avenues of profit potential that she has in her business, and working with clients one on one is one potential way. She's a CPA, she does their taxes, and that's fabulous. That really is wonderful. And when we have finished scaling her business model up, she's really going to be thinking in terms of hiring two or three associates and not two or three new clients to make the business more sustainable. We're really shooting past all that, and we're really looking at where's the money, and the money is in leveraging her time, leveraging what she's doing in the marketplace. So I really encourage you to think about that. No matter what it is that you are doing for a living, and what you're thinking of doing in your business, I really want you to think how you can serve more people - because that's where the money is.

You can actually create a product and make it really affordable for people. If you're then marketing it properly, you're really going for the numbers of people. You're leveraging your time across a number of people so that you can actually drop your per unit price. That really shows you the money.

Think about that as you consider your business model. If you are still thinking traditionally, look around you. Google people who are doing what you want to do. Google people who are doing what you are doing if you're already in business, and see what the competition is up, to see what they are doing that you can add to your business. Also look to see where they are missing something, because that's your huge opportunity to take them on and make more money.

Let's talk about your gross margins in your company. I really want you to consider very carefully what it costs you to do business. A number of my clients have sort of cheated themselves over the years, because they were there were costs involved in doing whatever it is that they were doing for a living that they weren't considering. For example, what's the cost of training employees? What is the cost of answering requests for proposal from municipalities and from large corporations?

What are the hard costs involved? How are you going to fold those into your proposal costs? See, so many of us are afraid to bid what we're worth, that we wind up undercutting ourselves, and then we don't have a sustainable business.

We wind up disappointing the client, all because we didn't really consider what it costs to be in business. So how much is it going to cost you to create, market and ship that widget? How much is it going to cost you for the insurance to ship that widget? Really sit down with your budget and understand where all of your costs are coming from, because those are going to control your gross margins, your gross profit margins, they're going to press it downward.

I want you to be really aware of what all of your costs are, even the soft costs, not just, how much does the wood, glue and nails cost, but what about labor costs?

Think about all of the costs that it takes you to run your business. Did you have to buy a computer? Things that you wouldn't normally think are involved in pricing your widget or pricing your service, but all of those things are going to literally take money out of your pocket, and since that's happening, then you need to consider those things in the first instance, so that you don't wind up basically working for free.

I also encourage you to think about all of your other expenses, for example, what are your automobile and gasoline costs? What are your travel costs as you seek to get these contracts? All of those things matter, and you do need to take them into consideration.

When you're bidding for new business, consider what you want your operating profit to be. A good rule of thumb to use if you really don't know how to price your goods or service is to really map out what all those costs are and then add a certain percentage over and above those costs.

I can't tell you what percentage to add because I don't know what your business is. And so, all of those operating costs and expenses, are going to press down your gross margin, and will control the money in the long run.

So, you know, I mentioned a little while ago about you answering requests for proposal from corporations and public agencies. That's a very important strategy, because in this day and age, if you are chasing individuals as your clients, you're going to wind up suffering. 

Do business with corporations, banks and government entities. That's where the money is these days, not that you should ignore individuals, but that you really do need to consider corporate partnerships, find somebody who has a business that is very complementary to your own, and figure out a way to package yourself with them and then offer your combined services to corporations and to municipalities in their bidding processes.

You can also look for sponsorships. When I say corporate partnerships, I'm also talking about sponsorships, where, if you are meeting a certain demographic with your business, there are corporations out there that are seeking to meet that same demographic.

So, you can seek to get them to sponsor you in business, especially if you're a small business, and especially if you have a tribe as Seth Godin calls them. Tribes is a very good book on leadership. I can recommend it to you. Seth, Godin, G, O, D, I N. The name of the book is tribes, and it's all about you finding your voice and understanding that you should not delay in starting building or fixing your dream business, because there are people out there that need to hear your voice.

So how are you going to reach those people? What are your channels of distribution for your product or for your service? I don't want you to forget the internet. Really consider having your website be more than just a business card. You want it to have a shopping cart so that you are actually actively engaged in Internet commerce with your website, giving you an instantly global business. Isn't that exciting?

Consider what channels of distribution you're going to use, and how you're going to establish those channels. Are you going to go negotiate contracts? Are you going to find affiliate partners that are going to sell your goods and services on your behalf? How are you going to establish those channels, and when are you going to establish those channels? These are your manufacturing deadlines.

Here's another question for you, what are your significant risks involved in your business? I have a client who is a public adjuster. She goes into businesses and assesses their risk of being put out of business in the event that there's a disaster. And she shows you how to build in a six-month contingency plan to make sure that if a 911 situation occurs, you do not lose your business. That is so critical.

So, what are the significant risks involved in your business? Consider those and then consider getting insurance to safeguard against those risks.

I could go on to talk about some manufacturing and production strategies, but I actually did talk about quite a lot of that in an earlier module of your business accelerated. So I encourage you to go back and listen to those past shows, especially where we talked about pricing your product, developing your product, manufacturing your product, and distributing it and getting it out there.

So, let's talk for just a brief moment about your five year goals. All of the business strategy that we discussed tonight, including your business model, your gross margins and expenses, your level of operating profit, all of those corporate sponsorships and partnerships that you have in the marketplace and those channels of distribution that you are establishing and considering the risk all of that is enveloped in your SMART goal. Remember, your smart goal must be specific, measurable, aggressive, but attainable, risky and time oriented.

I encourage you to consider all of these questions that we talked about tonight as you work your way through those issues and setting goals. In response to having worked through those issues, make sure that you are setting three to five year goals and that each one of those goals is a SMART goal. It's a very specific goal. It's not I want to make more money, because if you make $1 more. You made more money, right? Do you want to make $50,000 more this year? Do you want to make $100,000 more? How about $1 million?

Be very specific. It needs to be measurable. $1 is measurable. “I want to make more money” is not measurable. So, you want to make sure that it's something you can measure.

It needs to be aggressive, but attainable. So, to say I want to make a million dollars is really wonderful. But can you do it if you're a tutor and you're only doing one on one, and you haven't reached out to me yet to show you how you can leverage your time and leverage your talents to serve more people and make more than a million dollars doing what you already do.

Ladies and gentlemen, I want to thank you for joining me on this week's episode of Legal Biz Café as we allow success and abundance to flow easily and uninterrupted to and through every corner of our life and our being.

I will see you right back here next week on Legal Biz Café. In the meantime, I AM attorney Shaune B. Arnold, reminding you, as always, to MAXIMIZE your COMPETENCE to get the CONFIDENCE YOU need to succeed! Follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. My moniker in all of these places is s-h-a-u-n-e dot Arnold. You can call directly at (213) 718-3468. We can work through these issues together.

I'll see you next week, my friend, on Your Business, Accelerated! Bye-bye now.