Scale and Information

I had an interesting insight about scale when delivering help.

This is (or can be) an impediment to delivery.

If I want to deliver help to others, my initial cost of delivery (ICD) is going to be the highest it will ever be. And yet, this is the point at which innovation is most critical.

The delivery costs can go down and down the more times I do it, as well as the quality improving.

But this flies in the face of my ideas about being “worth it” as a professional to deliver my one-on-one service for a high price, so that I can preserve my value. The idea being that people will only perceive something as valuable when you charge a lot for it; or that I am “worth” that much and must not “undervalue” myself, at all.

The interesting thing I saw is that as you take the one-on-one knowledge, it becomes easier and easier to scale that information into other services that you can then offer at smaller and smaller rates through more and more diluted forms—if you want to—for example, online group coaching programs, or fully video-ed trainings, and so on and so forth.

Why this mattered to me enough to get out my laptop and start typing—I suppose it’s because I really want to smooth the process from idea development to testing to maturation.

The idea in my head was that I would love to have a business that helps and coaches very small business owners to become able to hire help. This would be an invaluable service, if people wanted it (a critical question, right?—but still…).

There might be all sorts of ways of remedying this issue, such as having a deliberate series of alpha and beta rounds, where you were “legitimately” offering it—let’s say, for three people for free, and then for $40, then for $75, and then, for full price. Something like that. Alpha = $0. Early Beta = $40. Late Beta = $75. And then, we are at full price. Perhaps 3 sessions or so in each round, or at least for the alpha round.

In a very similar way in which you can be a full-priced design agency, and still not dilute your value by giving away free work—if you do it as “pro bono” work for nonprofits—in this same way, by creating up this value and delivery structure, you can streamline the pricing and create an incentive structure for people to test out the process, while you get to test out the process.

Please be apprised that this in no way precludes you from gaining testimonials from this process!

This relates directly to my leapfrogging ideas.