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Intro: I’m Paul Higgins, an ex-corporate executive turned business owner who, for five years, struggled to grow a cloud Consulting business whilst battling a chronic disease. With the help of mentors and experts, I got the business model right, built a sales and marketing engine, and developed a high-performing team that ended in a successful exit. I received a kidney transplant from a mate, and now on my second life, I dedicate my time to helping other Cloud Consultants go quickly with less effort to enjoy life. Detecting an accent, I'm an Aussie working globally from Melbourne, Australia. I interview successful Cloud Consultants sharing their scaling story to give you inspiration and practical tips. I have dedicated experts for Cloud Consultants on the show to save you time and money by working with the right people. If you want to scale quickly with less effort to enjoy life, you're in the right place. Let's get started.

(0:55): Hello, I'm Paul Higgins. And welcome to the cloud consultants solo Show, Episode 476. Do you feel like you're paying everyone else except yourself? Well, if that's the case, this podcast is perfect for you today. So today's topic is stop short changing yourself. If it's your first time, welcome. I share my learnings of scaling and selling a cloud consulting business and mentoring hundreds of other cloud consultants and SaaS partners. And the show is typically 10 minutes, there'll be about that today. Check out past shows, just search cloud consultants show and check out the interview shows as well. My guests are brilliant. And if you love what you hear, please subscribe. If you're a regular thanks for your support. I always love getting emails from you, right? It sounds like something so simple for you to do, which is a minute, but it just makes an enormous benefit for me who does a lot of this, you know for free giving my knowledge away. It's just great to hear from you, Paul@Paul Higginsmentoring.com. And also let me know any topics you'd like me to cover. 

(1:51): And before I start, I'd like to talk about the world's only revenue focus collective for cloud consultants. Forget YouTube, Google ,ChatGPT, just hear from people peers that have already been there, done that before they got first hand experience. It's fast. And it's free. Try it out for yourself at the cloudconsultantscollective.com. 

(2:10): So first, quick disclaimer, I don't give personal financial advice or tax advice. Right. I don't also know your personal circumstances. And you should always seek the professional advice of others, whether it's a financial adviser, an accountant, whoever is best for you. But I will talk today in general terms, given my knowledge, and what's my experience, while I've got a bachelor in accounting, mind you, given my age, it was a while ago, but I did complete that. And also had an enormous training at Coca Cola, where I used to do you know, billion dollar acquisitions in m&a. And effectively most of us been directors had fantastic training and grounding on accounting. But that doesn't mean I know your personal circumstances. I've also been in business for 28 years, and I'm pretty sharp in numbers. So that's the context I'll give you. But once again, it's not personal advice. 

(2:58): Alright, so now we've got that out of the way, let's get to the meaty parts. Recently, I started with a new client to protect her identity, let’s call her Anne. And I go through a Profit Loss and find where the immediate winds up, right, so number one thing I do so normally, pricing is the biggest one, which we'll talk about a bit more. But I always look at pricing. And most people aren't pricing, what they really should, whether the structure of the pricing is right, or the value. So we have a look at that. And the top of the profit and loss is the most important, right? If you get that right, it means a lot less work down the bottom. And then we look at the cost of goods sold. And always look at the number of team members that you've got the capability of those team members how much scope creep there is. And there's always savings in there in some ways, right. And that's why it's really good, because sometimes it's hard to see the label of the jar when you're in it. So I hope you're looking at that. And then we look at our other costs, right. And it's normally subscription costs, other things that we can always save a little on, but nothing will offset the increase in revenue. And when it came to her costs, it was sparse, really sparse. And, you know, there was nothing in cost of goods sold. But I knew that she was doing a lot of work in delivery. So I'm like this isn't right. And she was taking a small owners wage, as I said, was pretty sparse. 

(4:14): She was getting very little profit distribution right out of the company as well. Now she had some personal expenses in the p&l, which, you know, I won't go into detail there. But you know, sometimes we do that, as I said, you know, if anyone from the IRAs or taxes listening, I got into detail. But I did a quick calc on what she was paying herself, and how many hours she was working. And it was less than an offshore developer, right. It just didn't make sense to me. And why is that important? I think you've heard this before, but it's the opportunity cost, right? She had all the risk of running her own business wasn't getting the reward. She was paying all of her team, right and not paying herself and she was so by account that our books looked okay, but I'm like they don't, right. You're not paying yourself A commercial wage. And therefore, you also aren't taking money out of the business to invest in other asset classes right outside of your business to protect you. Because let's face it, running your own business is one of the riskiest things you do, like I know for me always have that fear of my kidney might fail. And and I might be able to do my business, which, you know, for years, and it hasn't, but always make sure that I protect my family and my assets. In case that happens, right. So what we did was put in a market salary for her. And it was an eye opener, right, which was a good burning platform to help her make some changes. And that's typically how it goes. 

(5:34): But before I go into what we did, are you a SaaS partner and struggling to scale your business, then you won't want to miss our FREE scaling blueprint. I've interviewed hundreds of cloud consultants, as I said, at a successful except myself, and I've taken all those tips and put it in an easy to digest ebook for you. Right? I share all that experience all that learnings, so you can make the right decisions for you and the people that you love. You can go to it. It's a free ebook at PaulHigginsmentoring.com/blueprint. 

(6:03): So Anne is just one example, fictional Anne is one example of many clients I mentor, who are shortchanging themselves, right. And in Anne’s case, in some way, we did five key actions, but there was a burning platform, because she actually put in the commercial wage and actually saw how much she wasn't making what the opportunity costs. So one has really encouraged her to increase her pricing. Right, which, you know, everyone's fear is you're going to drop clients, I think she'd lost about 1% of a client work, but ultimately didn't make a big impact. The second was new offers to existing clients. Right. So the easiest thing was asked people, you know, how many offers you're doing on your mailing list? I haven't got a mailing list. Okay. Well, you know, let's get people on your list. But if you do have a list, how many times you actually offering people more even the clients that you work with all the time? Do they know that you've got all these services? What are they constantly asked for that we know we could provide, but we're not right. So that was the next one, which is fairly low risk new offers to existing clients. The third was LinkedIn outreach to new clients, let's bring in so about 25% of the new revenue to pay her a commercial salary came in from bringing in new clients complete new clients, right. And we've got ways of doing what she's still leverage the network. So you might call it word of mouth, but it really wasn't. But we found those people on LinkedIn, and then introduce from people that she already knew. 

(7:23): So we've got number one was increase a pricing, two his new offers to existing clients, three his LinkedIn outreach for new clients. Number four was reduced her delivery days for projects, right. So we looked at how many delivery days, a standard project was working. And then we looked at ways to reduce that, which meant that he got a result for a client quicker, but then she could also take on more work. Right. So that worked really well. So that was number four. And the last one is we offshored, some labor, right, so as the work increase, we didn't actually just increase the onshore resources to match that. And that actually also removed some bottlenecks and helped us reduce the delivery date. 

(7:59): So in summary, one, we increase the prices, two new offer to existing clients, three, LinkedIn outreach for new clients, four reduced delivery days for projects and five, we offshored some labor. So this got a back pain yourself and de risking herself for running the business. If you think you are like Anne, now remember, as a real person, I've just given her a name to protect your identity, please reach out. It is not your fault. And it is so common, right? It's actually nearly every person that I work with has got a form of this, my experience at Coca Cola, and the help of many great mentors helped me to realize this early when I started my own businesses. And what I want to do is help you. And please don't bury this, right. It's real, it's there. And if you've got a tax season coming up, or you're going to tax debt, right, it just compounds it. 

(8:49): So what are the key actions from today one, looking at what a commercial rate would be for you to speak to your accountant. Three, get a financial advisor or speak to them. And for us, reach out if you need help. Please follow me on LinkedIn to get content specifically for cloud consultants. If you know someone who you think would get value out of this, please share it with them. They'll think you're a rockstar but they'll also know that you actually really care about them. And if you're a cloud consultant, please join our cloudconsultantscollective.com. Take action now to make your ambitions turn into reality.

Outro: Learning is just one piece of the puzzle. it is now time for action. Head to Today's show page at paulhigginsmentoring.com/podcast, get the links, and put it into action. Head to your favorite podcast platform, subscribe, rate, and review the show. Suggest topics for me to cover at [email protected], and don't wait one more minute to gain access to content, especially for you, a cloud consultant at paulhigginsmentoring.com/newsletter. This could be the difference between wasting time figuring it out yourself or scaling quickly with less effort to enjoy life.