EPS 82- Multiply Your Revenue without Exhaustion with Samantha Hartley

Erin Austin: Hello, ladies. Welcome to this week's edition of the hourly to exit podcast. I have a wonderful guest for you today, Samantha Hartley. Welcome Samantha. Thank you, Erin. Well, thank you so much for joining us. You know, we have a lot to talk about, but before we dive in, would you introduce yourself

Samantha Hartley: to the audience?

Samantha Hartley: Yes. I'm Samantha Hartley. My business is, uh, samanthahartley. com and I'm also known as Enlightened Marketing. And I have a podcast called Profitable Joyful Consulting. So those are the brand family and I am a consultant to consultants. So I work with, uh, women management consultants who are working with businesses anywhere from 2 million to multi billions.

Samantha Hartley: And usually they are experiencing the revenue roller coaster. And sometimes they're so slammed with work in the business that it's impossible for them to grow. So I help them to multiply their revenues without exhaustion, working with perfect clients on transformational engagements. Those are year long, multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Samantha Hartley: So when they do that, they start to experience more profit and more joy in their businesses. Sounds

Erin Austin: perfect. Sounds great. So before we get started, I wanted to talk about, well, myself for a second. So I'm about to be an empty nester. Oh, I'm counting the days. And so thinking about, you know, where next I know I'm not going to stay where I am, which is in, um, kind of the excerpts of Washington, D.

Erin Austin: C. And so I'm asking people about, you know, where they live and what they love about it and might it be a place for an empty

Samantha Hartley: nester. Oh, it's well, uh, Martha's Vineyard is where I live year round. It is a fantastic place to live nine months of the year. And so I highly urge you to go and visit it. It's a great place to visit.

Samantha Hartley: I would say get an Airbnb for a month and just check it out. In the summertime, it swells to 150 to 200, 000 a month. people. And in the wintertime, it shrinks to about 15, 000 to 20, 000. So we have a huge bustling tourist economy, but it's a tiny island, a proper island, no bridges, no anything like that. You get there by a boat or by an airplane.

Samantha Hartley: It's only 45 minutes off the coast of Cape Cod. So you can see the shore from The island. And, uh, you may have a lot of people have not heard of Martha's Vineyard, but may have heard of Nantucket or Cape Cod. That's all the Cape and islands are all a thing. Uh, and it's a wonderful place to live right now, though, it has a very long yucky spring.

Samantha Hartley: And so I'm actually in Arkansas where I grew up, Arkansas, I can tell you, and especially the town I'm in right now, Conway, Arkansas, Conway, Arkansas is a college town. There's three colleges here, um, including the university of central Arkansas. So there's tons of wonderful things going on, and it's, um, uh, has four seasons, also one of which is unbearable, so our friends that we live with right now come and visit us during the summertime, and we come to them in the spring, so we're having 66 degrees while they're having a snowstorm that's closing down the vineyard.

Samantha Hartley: Oh, that is great. So I recommend two locations. That's my, that's my empty nester suggestion is always have two locations where you can experience the best of both worlds.

Erin Austin: Well, I will say that one of my, I guess it's my bucket list is to just always be in summer, just, you know, spend, you know, summer, summer in the northern hemisphere and winter, summer in the southern hemisphere and never I'm.

Erin Austin: I am so over four seasons. I don't ever need to have any season other than summer for the rest of my life of my life. And yeah, so I've been to Martha's Vineyard, but only in the summer and only during the tourist season. And I will only go when I can fly there directly from Nashville because I, so I've never done the, the, um, ferry, although I think that would be an adventure.

Erin Austin: So I should, I should try that sometime. So thank you for that. I wondered what it's like. They're, um, off season and I don't know why, but for some reason I thought because of the, you know, whatever the currents, whatever that you didn't get snowstorms, but you do. Okay.

Samantha Hartley: All right. Oh, yes. We don't get anything as bad as they get on the mainland.

Samantha Hartley: So it's cooler in the summer than on the mainland. And it's the, all the weather's always milder there.

Erin Austin: All right. Well, good to know. I'm taking notes here. Right. So tell me about your typical client and, uh, how do you help him or her and how do they know that they need you? Like what pain are they experiencing?

Erin Austin: Like I need to go talk with Samantha.

Samantha Hartley: She's a her usually and her business is somewhere in the low six figures and she aspires to have a business in the low seven figures. So usually one to 2 million is what they're looking for from their business. And, uh, what they're experiencing is revenue rollercoaster means they, uh, uh, you know, they have wonderful high months, but they also have some terrifying low months.

Samantha Hartley: And that kind of inconsistency of revenues is super stressful. And they're not quite sure how to fix that problem. They also might be experiencing that they don't have revenue roller coaster. They just have all slammed all the time. And the owner is, um, you know, this is usually a business that's, you know, 500 to 750, 000, and they can't imagine a way to grow.

Samantha Hartley: And that is, I can't imagine it. So that those, uh, particular consultants. Need me sometimes they're agency owners, but most often management consultants and they're working with sometimes businesses. You've heard of like the, you know, fortune 500, but a lot of times it's just kind of, um, midsize manufacturers or other kind of like mom and pops who are near them.

Samantha Hartley: And I think what happens for a lot of us, a lot of my clients are like me, ex corporate. So we came out of corporate and we have a set of skills that didn't necessarily include figuring out how to run a specifically consulting business. And so when they come to me, I'm like, well, there's just some stuff to know.

Samantha Hartley: And it's this, this, and this. And so really quickly, they can, we can turn their business around. So for example, one of my clients has, um, she's a fashion consultant. She works with high fashion brands to help them. do visual merchandising. And when she came, came to me, her business was doing really well, but she had, um, it was very much a time based, so hourly business and went from month to month with those clients.

Samantha Hartley: And she didn't necessarily, again, it's like smart people, but there are certain things that just don't occur to them. So she hadn't thought of like, Setting up contractual relationships with them where she works long term and there are certain commitments from her side and from their side. And so we just put a lot more structure and formality around her business, improved her selling ability, other, you know, just basic skills like that.

Samantha Hartley: She doesn't actually even need marketing. She has so many clients coming to her, but being able to enroll clients at higher value and for longer term, it just immediately took the bumps out of her business and evened out her revenues. And Just yesterday, we were talking about it and the, the kind of relief that she's feeling the ability to go away from the business and come back and just knowing that those revenues are stable.

Samantha Hartley: She finds she feels more passionate for her own work, excited about the business. And so that's been, um, really gratifying to see that result. And it's not an unusual result. Like so often I'll be talking with a client who's been working with me for a while, and they're, they just have that peace that you have when you have stable revenues.

Samantha Hartley: Yeah,

Erin Austin: absolutely. Yeah. I mean, that making that transition from hourly to something other than hourly is a big stumbling block for lots of people. And I was having a conversation with someone a couple weeks ago where they were coming directly. They referred to me as a lawyer to help them protect their intellectual property, but they were still billing.

Erin Austin: Hourly. And I'm like, well, you know, first of all, like everything was just kind of an extra set of hands, you know, very, they're a technology based. And so they could, you know, program things, they can do implementation, they can do strategy. They did all the things, um, for, you know, their clients, whatever the clients asked, we can do that.

Erin Austin: Like, and they were very proud of the fact that they can do whatever it is that you need to do. And I'm like, I don't think you're quite ready for me because you need to figure out like a way to kind of. You know, uh, put your stake in the ground about doing something in particular and like, you know, what, what's the point of making you more efficient with intellectual property when you're building by the hour, like.

Erin Austin: That just means yes, you're gonna bill less , you know?

Samantha Hartley: Yeah,

Erin Austin: yeah. Exactly. Yeah. You know, so let's, uh, you know, let's get you to a business coach first to get you Yeah. You know, to get you, uh, that's, yeah. We'll talk to business coaches, uh, to get you like, you know, figuring out your business model and then let's, you know, talk about how we make sure that we start building,

Samantha Hartley: um.

Samantha Hartley: It's right. But who taught business models when we all started? Like, uh, when you, when you kind of put out your stake, you're like, usually, especially in professions that are traditionally built by the hour, like even the visual merchandising, like most people, they think, well, how would you bill if it wasn't that way?

Samantha Hartley: So interestingly, I've worked with it consultants who came to me with that situation and they were like, um, uh, it's, they were earning really well, but it was like, they would have like a. 50, 000 a month and then like a 20, 000 a month. So there's just these peaks and valleys in their billing. But the problem was when, when they have team members who are billing by the hour, they couldn't allocate that, those team members properly because they didn't know the fluctuations.

Samantha Hartley: Like who's going to, how much are we going to build this month and how much are we going to build that month? And so what it required was saying to the client, you know, you were working for you, you know, 40 collective between all the, um, partner, uh, Partners and team members. We're working for you 40 hours this month, and then 10 this month, and then 30, and then 20.

Samantha Hartley: Like, we can't, we can't schedule our people. We can't figure things out. So let's do this. We're going to chart out the work. We'll schedule the work, and you'll know when we're going to be there, and we'll know what we're going to be doing. And we're just going to be doing it, um, with this kind of a schedule.

Samantha Hartley: So we give them like a project implementation plan of how we're going to work. And no matter how many hours that is, we'll levelize this building so that it's a flat. Whatever the number is, for example, 40 K each month on that way, you'll know, um, how much it's going to be. You won't have lumpy expenses because even big companies don't want lumpy expenses, and then we'll have the predictability of where our people will be and when.

Samantha Hartley: And so when they did that, they just charted it out. We think the project is going to take us this long. It was 12 months. We were going to do this. Now you may see us more, you know, more one month and less another month. It'll all come out in the wash. We're just going to deliver on these specific deliverables.

Samantha Hartley: Um, and so we put that plan together. They went and sold it and it was immediately, that was a 40 K a month. So it's a 480, 000 engagement that immediately after we set it up, like within a week, they had sold that one in. And then they did that with their subsequent clients. And the pushback is always, but, but how, what if they're like, what, how much is by the hour?

Samantha Hartley: And what I taught them to say was, that's not how we work. That's not how we work. We don't work by the hour. We don't, we don't sell anything by the hour. And that is not how we work. And if you can begin to transition your clients to where it's about outcomes and not about the hours, then you. Then they'll come to you when they'll need you.

Erin Austin: Yeah. And that brings us to, you know, becoming more effective and more efficient because then that, of course, increases your profitability. But just to back up to the example that I was talking about, like what he did is that he had subcontractors. So he would bring on, but he could never like, obviously get any more profitable because he could just sell more hours.

Erin Austin: And then, you know, okay, he was building the client X and then he was getting billed by his subcontractors Y. And then all he ever had was that differential. It could never get anywhere. It's like, I can't get anywhere. Well, because Yeah. You know one, because your business model's broken. Yes, exactly.

Erin Austin: Exactly. Alright, so, so let's get to, uh, becoming more efficient and effective with our delivery so that we can increase our profits. So you've already introduced the topic and so how do you. Help people get comfortable with that transition. Cause that's it, you know, it's, it's great to say, you know, we don't build by the hour, you know, but that's really scary.

Erin Austin: Uh, when you are there with the client and feeling comfortable with, I can actually scope this out in a way that I know is going to be profitable and that I'm not going to, cause you know, the clients are going to come in with changes and they're going to want this. And then suddenly it's like a totally, you know, so how do we, how do we get from, from

Samantha Hartley: there?

Samantha Hartley: I think, I mean, there's a lot of client management in this. There's also the expertise of knowing, like, if we, if we plan this out, we can tell how long it's going to take. So if you're new in your business and you don't know, then it might be better for you to do more hourly pricing or, uh, flexible or flat rate pricing.

Samantha Hartley: And whenever I've had a client who's done this and there's been like massive overruns. Well, then they can go to their client and say, listen, you know, we budgeted it for this and this, we're having these massive overruns. I mean, just because we said it was going to be this, it doesn't mean it can, you know, we can, uh.

Samantha Hartley: Allow for this kind of whatever to be out of control so you can have and I call those grown up conversations like you can have a conference, a conversation with a client. I was about to say confrontational, but it doesn't have to feel confrontational, meaning you can just address the situation. But when you're mature enough in your work, and this is usually within the 2nd or 3rd year.

Samantha Hartley: You know, if I come in and I do this work, like my clients in the situation, like here's, we're going to have 14 members on this, they're going to, it's, they're going to be giving it, it is time based for them. They're going to be each be giving it five hours, uh, or five days of their time. It's going to add up to this much.

Samantha Hartley: Um, so they could mix and match that according to their expertise from the client side, though, it can seem like, well, the client isn't interested in this. They don't want to overpay per hour, but it's anytime we play, we pay anything. I've estimated what the hours are, and, uh, it doesn't really matter what the time is.

Samantha Hartley: What the client cares about are either deliverables or outcome or both. What they really want is like, just solve my problem. And especially if you're doing complicated You know, digital transformation, which I team might do or for a lot of my clients. A lot of my clients are leadership consultants or culture consultants, and they're going in and they're trying to make massive organizational change, transformational change.

Samantha Hartley: So figure out what are the. Uh, what are the specific changes that we want to achieve? Like, what's the goal of this initiative? And then, how will we know it's been accomplished? So what kind of behaviors do we want to see? What kind of conditions in the work environment do we want to see? So you're teaching the client to measure according to that as opposed to the number of hours you put in.

Samantha Hartley: Now, one of the things that, um, I think is important for consultants in general is to, is to know what outcomes you can promise. So very often when we're doing hourly work, we're just saying, I'm just going to show up and, you know, forgive me, but like run my mouth, you know, be in my genius, but you know, you just show up and you like do your thing and then you get paid for that.

Samantha Hartley: It's a very different level of responsibility, but also level of fulfillment when you can say, No, actually, let me take the lead in this instead of like, we're going to do 30 hours. And at the end of it, you'll, you know, you'll have 30 hours of access to me. And I don't know what's going to happen with that, but probably we'll accomplish your goals in this situation.

Samantha Hartley: You're saying like over the course of a year or whatever, uh, time duration, we're going to make these transformations in your organization or in your business. And again, like, like to me, there's more responsibility with that, but like. I'm excited to do that. Most of my clients are like, they want that challenge.

Samantha Hartley: So it just changes the, the dialogue from like showing up to perform not presence, but performance. Yeah.

Erin Austin: Yeah. And I'm not a business coach, but I try to pretend to be one every once in a while. Somebody asked me, I'll tell them what I think, because I listen to people's podcasts like yours. And so, uh, in, in, you know, in the, When I was talking to this person about like, how, like, I don't know how I can possibly flat fee something because I have no idea.

Erin Austin: And I'm like, it sounds like you don't really know your clients that well, but you don't know who they are. You don't know what their problems are. You don't know how to, you know, you're just kind of going in there and turning in hours because otherwise you would. They have a pretty good idea about what needs to be done in order to get the result that they want.

Erin Austin: And then you could put a price on that. And so, you know, so, um, yeah, so that maturity thing, you know, and having, you know, doing some figuring out either. A, a niche, you know, type of client that you can have or a specific problem that you solve so that you can kind of get really good at it and, and develop a program around that.

Erin Austin: And

Samantha Hartley: then, and that's where your signature system is also going to come in because in the first year, you know, it's, it's easy for me to say, and, you know, and then go in there and do your process. But I do work with plenty of people who are like, Oh, I don't know that I really have a process. And as you and I both will say, They, they do.

Samantha Hartley: They just, it might not be obvious to them yet. So what I usually say is, you know, spend a year or two in your work, see which things get repeated, see what kind of challenges you enjoy working on, and then you're going to develop solutions to that. So year two or three is when, what I noticed with my clients, they start to say, okay, I see what I'm doing.

Samantha Hartley: And then their signature system begins to emerge and sometimes we'll help them with that. And sometimes that's the thing that like they can, they do on their own. Then that signature systems job is to get those outcomes. So efficiency and delivery comes when you're working according to that. It's not trial and error anymore.

Samantha Hartley: It's like, also, I feel like. People feel consultants feel like they can't promise outcomes because they're like, I don't know. I mean, it depends. Once you have a signature system, you can make bigger promises because, you know, that this is the way to get those results.

Erin Austin: Yeah, and as consumers of services as well, like, we want to know, okay, what am I going to get for this?

Erin Austin: Like, I don't want, you know, like, my website, which is, you know, frankly, um. Has a ton of content on it, just because I write all the time and, and, uh, but none of it is, you know, there's no SEO. There's no tech, all this stuff, you know, that you're supposed to do. I don't have any of that stuff. And so I was talking to someone and, and he had a proposal for going through and categorizing and.

Erin Austin: Inventory and tagging and then, and I'm like, okay, well, what, what am I going to get from that? Like, well, I can't promise, you know, like I have a pretty long sales cycle, you know, between people coming and hanging out, you know, and like, well, you know, I'm like, well, it just feels like a deliverable to me and not like a solution.

Erin Austin: So yeah, we want, we, as consumers, we want to know what's going on, what we're paying for as well. So yeah.

Samantha Hartley: And in our work, I think SEO and PR are similar to what you're talking about in that they're like, you know, I mean, we cannot guarantee results in this cause like whatever happens happens. Now I can't also cannot guarantee results to my clients because they have to take action and like.

Samantha Hartley: It's there are joint accountabilities. So this to me is part of a mature working relationship is that I say, here's what I'm going to be responsible for. This is what you're going to be responsible for. And we both do our parts. The likeliest thing, like the biggest promise that I can make to you is you're probably going to experience results like my clients have.

Samantha Hartley: Uh, and somewhere along the way, if we're not trending towards that, one of us will know and we'll course correct. But you can make big promises in, in those situations. So what your SEO person can say is what we found is when we've done this for people's websites in the past, here's what usually happens.

Samantha Hartley: That's what I would look for as a kind of comforting thing. Because again, as a business owner, I know, I know who can promise me results and who can't promise me results. Uh, and so in, but in that situation, I think. You still want to hear, like, what's the closest thing, what's the biggest promise you can make to me in integrity?

Samantha Hartley: Right,

Erin Austin: right. Yeah, I am still thinking about that one, but we'll see what happens with that. So, you, uh, recently, uh, well, I saw it on LinkedIn, but I think you did a, uh, A podcast episode about it as well about partnerships and I've been talking a lot about collaboration. So very similar, you know, obviously, from an intellectual property point of view and a legal point of view.

Erin Austin: I have my caution sign, you know, when we're thinking about going into collaborations and partnerships from a business perspective. What are you seeing as. Best practices, things to be worried about and what's the best we can hope from from our partnership.

Samantha Hartley: Uh, well, I took a super dim view in the first episode about them because nine times out of 10 in my personal experience with clients and I've been in business for over 20 years, they almost always.

Samantha Hartley: fail and fail extremely, like really badly, like people in court, people trying to figure out how do we divide this business loan that we took out together between ourselves individually. Um, someone, a partner decides to just stop working in the business, but we still receive full salary because apparently that piece didn't get worked out.

Samantha Hartley: Um, women in Uh, just rev share partnerships will go into business with men and give away their power to them. And I'm, and I say this because I'm an advocate for women. And so who I was really, um, wanting to caution were women, because I think in a lot of cases they have, what I have noticed is like, I don't understand how all these big, powerful women get into, uh, Working relationships with, with men and then are like, become small in that, that situation and, and again, have seen it.

Samantha Hartley: And so I'm very much cautioning everyone in general against, uh, any situation in which you feel like, well, I'm hoping that person will do sales. I'm hoping that person will do, uh, the P the parts of the business that I don't want to do. If you don't have that explicitly outlined, then you're, you are inferred.

Samantha Hartley: Terrible surprise. Um, they're, uh, they're going into committed relationships, working relationships before they've done dating. This is what I would say. So like, why don't we partner on a few short term projects before as, as revenue share partners before, you know, why don't we collaborate before we, um, form a legally binding agreement with one another?

Samantha Hartley: Uh, and, and then one of the things that I urge them to do is think about all the things you don't want to have a conversation about. So, um, Aaron, like, uh, what if I. Get sick of the whole thing. And I decide to go to Mexico for two years. What will, what will you do? What if you get sick of it and you decide what will I do?

Samantha Hartley: Um, what if we do this and the business really fails and we only make 50, 000 between us, then what are we going to like say all of the things that you hope nobody says or asks or whatever, what if you're, um, you know, your, uh, cousin suddenly wants to get involved in the business and you. Decide that's a good idea.

Samantha Hartley: What, what if I don't want that? So how will we make decisions? How are we going to, um, choose clients? How are we going to divide up expenses? And what if I want to, um, pursue, uh, an angle in the business that you don't choose to? All of that, I think doesn't get discussed enough before someone goes into business with another person.

Samantha Hartley: And so that's what I really cautioned against, um, this week, the episodes antidote came out where I interviewed, um, a. Couple of partners who happen to be, um, Martha's Vineyard, um, Martha's Vineyard based business. There were also the first two partners that I reached out to. So I was looking around and I was like, well, gosh, there's gotta be somebody who has a good partnership.

Samantha Hartley: Uh, not in any of my clients. And so I saw them and I thought, Oh, are they partners? And. They were like, yes. And I thought, Oh, well, this'll be a great chance to kind of show like, Oh, the good and the bad. And like, uh, with a real life example, and we'll talk about the, you know, there'll be really great. They don't have any negatives.

Samantha Hartley: There's not, they're like the happiest couple you've ever seen in your entire life in terms of a business partnership, which is great because guess what healthy people make for happy partners. And you can hear the way they both have happy marriages. So what it says to me is. Uh, who are the healthiest people that you know that you work with?

Samantha Hartley: Like, you just don't get conflicts. They don't misunderstand you. They take responsibility, like self responsible. You trust them implicitly. You can have any hard conversation about anything. It just shows you the extent to which having a healthy everything is going to make this financially based relationship work.

Samantha Hartley: Yeah, you know, it

Erin Austin: sounds like, you know, kind of the 1 plus 1 equals 3 kind of, you know, like, are you coming to it as like a whole person? I guess it's kind of in a relationship thing and not as someone who wants someone to complete them. Like, I have these deficiencies and I am coming to help you fill in my deficiencies versus I have this strength and you have this strength and together Boom.

Erin Austin: Right. And so the same applies there, you know, I'm thinking about kind of tech startups, if I'm wanting and the kind of the common understanding is that, you know, you kind of need, like, that finance guy and you, the tech guy. Right? And so they have, uh, complimentary skills and I'm wondering with the, an expertise based business, like, what are the complimentary skills?

Erin Austin: Is it another. Expert. Is it someone who's like the operations person versus the, the delivery? Like, how does, how do the best partnerships work in that space?

Samantha Hartley: Having again, having seen so few of them that are working successfully, I have another example that I can draw on. And in that case, there were 3 partners and.

Samantha Hartley: 2 of them were rainmakers and 1 of them wasn't, but the 1 that wasn't was such a deep expert in the work. Uh, for more of an academic sense that she would do a lot of the, um, IP creation, um, content, things like that. So she was really able to kind of like drill down into the kind of, you know, the, the, the meat of the work that they would give to clients.

Samantha Hartley: Uh, the other two also were very strong in that area, but she was, um, significantly stronger. And then the two other partners. were equally good at rainmaking also had those big, um, kind of client facing personalities. So one wanted to travel and present this one didn't want to travel so much, but she was really great in client relationship, um, management.

Samantha Hartley: So it's kind of the thing that you're saying, where it's a lot of whole. Partners, whole individuals, like any single one of them could have had a business. Although I think the one who was the deep subject matter expert probably would have belonged more in academia than in private business. But because she had these other, um, the other two out in front, it, it really worked out for her.

Samantha Hartley: So, um, To me, the killer is when not everyone is rainmaking because then there starts to be resentments about like, well, I brought in all this business and how are we dividing this up? The partners that I profile, uh, this week on the podcast, they have a 50, 50 partnership and they just don't even. They just don't even dig into things.

Samantha Hartley: They, they both are bringing in clients. They both are doing delivery and they're not kind of like nitpicking about, about the money, which I think is as, as long as you're paying close attention to the money, you don't have to nitpick. I just want there to be kind of like transparency and, you know, uh, awareness of it.

Samantha Hartley: Uh, but in, in the case of those three partners, like they felt good about all of those, the divisions of things, what's interesting is when I first went in and, um, worked with them, they had an employee, there was only one actual, I mean, they may have all been employees, but there was a full time employee on their team, one team member full time, always got paid.

Samantha Hartley: Guess who didn't always get paid? The partners, right? So this is my, this is why I'm like, gosh, you have to watch out for this stuff. Um, in terms of like, uh, women classically will want to make others whole before they make themselves whole. And here was a trio doing it, that kind of thing. So, you know, it won't be surprising to hear that I, I, I recommended and they did do, they did let him go because, um, that just was not the right, the right thing for them.

Samantha Hartley: But, uh, And in general, I think successful partnerships have trust, they have complimentary skill sets that are, as you're saying, 1 plus 1 equals 3, not 3, 4, 3, 4, 3, 4, and, um, everyone is dedicated to sales and marketing

Erin Austin: and they enter a partnership agreement. I'm not going to get it because I'm, I'm not a, you know, a corporate structure person, but I will say just generally with the general partnership that each partner can bind.

Erin Austin: The partnership unilaterally, unless you have something, you know, in writing to the contract. So you want to make sure that you have all that stuff, uh, figured out

Samantha Hartley: and. Absolutely. You want to have a key person insurance in case something happens to your partner. You want to have a buy sell agreement so that if something happens to them, you're not in.

Samantha Hartley: One of the things I mentioned is you don't want to be in, uh, find out that you're suddenly. Your business partner is your, your dead partner's son. That is exactly right. Which can happen if you don't have these things spelled out. Exactly. You know, all of the stuff that you don't, people don't think about until it happens.

Samantha Hartley: And then you're like, Ruh

Erin Austin: roh. I have a law school, uh, friend who like her, literally her entire practice was breaking up partners, like partnerships that went sideways. Like,

Samantha Hartley: it

Erin Austin: is a cottage industry, like trying to unravel, uh, partnerships that go sideways. It really is, can be quite a mess. It really can.

Erin Austin: All right. So, well, that brings us to, you mentioned, um, you know, having one partner who digs into the IP more and someone else who, who does other things. So talking about intellectual property, you know, I was, I've been currently, uh, I've Starting to track ways that business coaches talk about intellectual property without saying intellectual property,

Erin Austin: And so like, now they, they use, you know, kind of scaling or, um, you know, uh, and, and a scalable offer. Or they have different ways that they talk about, I should have my list here. And uh, so I'm gonna, at some point I'm gonna write about that. But, um, but at the end of the day, like. You know, if we are going to decouple our income from our time, we have to be selling something other than our time, which has to be an asset of course, of course.

Erin Austin: And when we're experts that that asset is intellectual property. So when you are working with your clients, like how are you talking to them about intellectual property? What kind of questions are they asking you about?

Samantha Hartley: I will usually talk about having a signature system or a proprietary approach to the work that they do.

Samantha Hartley: And I'm doing that. Less from the point of view that you are, although, uh, it is important to me that they have, uh, IP and that they have, um, something that, uh, that it is an asset that is separate from themselves and can do some of the work for them. I will use it in terms of standardizing their work so that they get, um, consistent results.

Samantha Hartley: That's part one. The second thing that I want is for them to bring in subcontractors so that they don't have to work as hard because the subcontractor doesn't need to, um, bring their own ideas and IP. They can merely follow the IP that my clients have. I can teach you to do it. The, you know, the Acme Inc way or the Jane Smith consulting way that is.

Samantha Hartley: Uh, the, the, our proprietary approach to working with the clients. So my subcontractors can come in and do that. And then I think a really good thing here too, is that you can, um, give this to the client and they then can also implement, um, according to your IP. You can turn that into e learning or e courses or whatever, which means that your work is accessible by clients who might not otherwise be able to afford you.

Samantha Hartley: It can scale where you cannot. So there's. I'm sure, you know, I'm just repeating things that you're saying all the time. But those are the things that I'm teaching my clients to do with IP. And specifically, um, they're very often with me at the stage where they have to kind of like extract. I always do this, this, um, this motion as if they're like pulling the skeleton out of the body.

Samantha Hartley: Here's the structure, which I feel like I intuitively show up and do, but then I realized in a little while, Oh, hang on. I do have like a seven step system or my, you know, my five, um, part, whatever that piece is critical to them, uh, experiencing leverage in their business. So, um, signature systems are under, in my world, that's under the, the.

Samantha Hartley: Um, heading of leverage, like ways that we make more of our time and, um, pulling that IP out and working with it independently is, is one of them. Now, my favorite example of clients who did this were these, um, consultants who just believed so strongly that their clients wanted to co create, they co created the workshops or the.

Samantha Hartley: If they were going to come in and work with a client for six months on something, they would co create that approach of what they were going to do. And at one point I said to them, do you, like, why are you co creating this with the clients? Like, they don't know anything about how to achieve, let's say it was culture.

Samantha Hartley: They don't know anything about how to achieve culture change. Like, why are you co creating this with them? Now they really like to do it. I was like, do they really? And they were like, yeah, we feel like, oh, well, maybe not. And I said, And do you believe that there's like a, is there like a right way to do this?

Samantha Hartley: And they said, Oh, yes, definitely. I was like, well, then why did you let the clients get in here and muddy that up? It turned out it was because they were billing by the hour and they wanted to, to pack in the hours that they worked on the IP, because if they didn't have all of that time that they spent co creating their approach, then they weren't charging enough.

Samantha Hartley: And I said, here's the deal is if you're charging 138, 000 for this. That's what it's worth. The client doesn't want to do all that nonsense and you don't want to recreate your thing. Just charge 138, 000 for the engagement. And they were like, mind blown. Um, and it's not, it's just not obvious to people that like, they're saying it's this valuable.

Samantha Hartley: So that is, I think the, the way that you can get to I, to IP that is separate from your own value. And one of the first things that I'll do with my clients to help them double their revenues is to say, if you come in and you're like, well, uh, it's a, whatever long engagement, and it's usually, you know, 50, 000 charged separately for the IP and my signature program, the Jane Smith approach to getting whatever benefit is 25, 000.

Samantha Hartley: And so that's. 75, 000 engagement so that they, that we as consultants learn to charge for the IP and clients learn to go like, Oh, the system itself has inherent value. I love

Erin Austin: that. I'll say the last time I billed hourly, I wish I could say this was, I'm just going to say that it was, cause there was another time, but the time I said, It was, um, when someone came to me and it was, you know, I have done a lot of work in market research and so they've been using other lawyers and they always had to explain everything, blah, blah, blah, you know, and they come to me and I like just knew the answer.

Erin Austin: Just did it done. Took me a couple hours, like, oh, that's great. And I was really I'm like. Wait a minute. I just saw their entire problem for two hours worth of billables because I knew the answer already, you know, I'm like, okay, I know,

Samantha Hartley: didn't make you so cranky. You are penalized for efficiency and expertise.

Samantha Hartley: Yes, yeah, that was the tax on being brilliant and fast.

Erin Austin: It was. There's so many times. So, well, thank you for sharing that. So, as you know, this is a very meta broad podcast. You know, I'm a female founder of an expertise based business that I am hoping to have some saleable assets at the end of it. How about you?

Erin Austin: You're a female founder of an expertise based business. What is the plan for

Samantha Hartley: your business? So like an exit strategy and creating assets. I mean, I love the idea of creating assets in my business. I do have, I'm a teacher by kind of like, uh, personality and archetype. And so I, I just create numerous programs.

Samantha Hartley: I have a program on, um, signature, uh, a program, a year long program about how to do things, one of which is a signature system. So I do have a signature system about how to create signature systems. Like that's speaking of So, um, I just think in those terms and though any of those could easily stand alone as a program, and it's possible that in someday in the near future, they, they will and I'll either market or sell those individually and right now.

Samantha Hartley: I, I, I haven't done that yet. So I don't know if those want to be books or what those want to be, or if the whole business wants to be sold, but I feel like I'm, I'm such a place of like, enjoying where I am in the business and that I love it. And I have, you know, I really like a high intimacy business. So I have private clients.

Samantha Hartley: Um, and then I have group coaching clients and. It's just really so fulfilling that it's not that I don't think about that kind of time horizon and sometimes sometime in the future, but it's not, um, it's not an urgent thing for me yet. All

Erin Austin: the good news is that when we are doing things that create a scalable business, we're also doing those things that create a saleable business because that is creating that independence from the owner.

Erin Austin: And, uh, and, you know, not relying on time. So that's fantastic. So, yeah. So as we wrap up, as you know, um, I believe that wealth in the hands of women can change the world and working on creating a more equitable economy. So I'd love to share with the audience organizations that are doing great work in that space.

Erin Austin: And is there someone that you'd like to share?

Samantha Hartley: The, my, my go to on this is Kiva. I just, I remember the first time I heard about microloans and I just thought it was the best idea because I think, you know, uh, when we're doing all these massive like country loans to somewhere and I was like, well, who's doing something like right here.

Samantha Hartley: Uh, and so I have supported Kiva for, I mean, probably as long as they've been around, as long as I've heard of them. And, uh, I'm always choosing like a woman owned business. Who's, uh, I usually have like an equal amount of ones that are like North America based and then ones that are in exotic countries doing things because I, I so completely agree with you and what I can tell you is in my international travels and having lived overseas that when women are thriving, everybody's thriving and it's very often the women who are the backbone of the economy and when I've lived in places where I've Oh my gosh, it didn't seem like this country had its act together.

Samantha Hartley: There were women who were like, getting up, making things happen, before everybody got up and after everybody went to bed. And if she just had a little bit of money to invest, then she could make wonderful things happen. And, uh, for other users of Kiva, you know that Occasionally someone will default on a loan, but it's like so almost never that I feel like it's, it's, their stats are really incredible.

Samantha Hartley: And it's, it's just a great investment to me.

Erin Austin: Yeah, people, I think people underestimate the power of even small loans, small investments. It's not, doesn't have to be a million bucks, you know, and, uh, and it can go very far. I mean, I'm just thinking about closer to home. This is not a key book type of thing, but, um, when.

Erin Austin: I think there was a city. Was it Houston? Maybe that was giving a thousand dollars a month to people and the big difference that it made in their lives. Just it's it's, you know, that's

Samantha Hartley: UBI. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's universal basic income and they're doing experiments all over the world with universal basic income.

Samantha Hartley: And I am a. Personally, just a huge proponent of it because as you're hearing, like, I think the problem that we feel like is, uh, the first barrier to it is, well, nobody's giving me and nobody gave me, and I feel like, okay, but we're trying to do better. Now, the other argument that we hear is like, well, they'll probably just spend it on, and I'm like, what they're spending it on their bills.

Samantha Hartley: And when we look at what people actually spend it on, it's just like I was saying, but the default rate, the people who abuse that program are. Almost none ever, even though we might imagine that they would and it, uh, just funny things happen like suddenly the, all of the basic living conditions and quality of life increase and it's for such small amounts of money.

Samantha Hartley: So the experiments I've seen have been like 500 a month or up to 2, 000 a month and it's like you can lift people out of poverty for such a small amount of money. And I feel like. If we can, why not? Yes, exactly.

Erin Austin: Exactly. And we will put the, uh, link, uh, to keep it in the, in the, uh, show notes. And so while we wrap up, uh, I know you have a fantastic offer.

Erin Austin: Um, can you tell us about it?

Samantha Hartley: I have a document I put together. It's called, um, the definitive guide to winning six figure clients. And I put it together. Cause a lot of people are like, what? Six figures. That's crazy. I want to, uh, I mean, I'm. Yeah. Only doing a few hundred six figure business in my business.

Samantha Hartley: Like, how could I have that in a single client? And I'm like, I have a lot of clients who have six figure clients. So, um, this is basically a case study of some of my individual clients. So you see a lot of different kinds of businesses where they're doing it. And then it's. Actually, just a how to step by step guide of how to make these transformational offers that are, um, uh, based on having, you know, a specific outcome, charging a specific amount of money for that.

Samantha Hartley: And so that you as the individual consultant, you have money coming in on the books for months in advance, as far as you can see into the future. That sounds fan. Oh, and you can get it at, um, yeah, you can get it at six figure clients. com. So it's six, the numeral six figure clients. com.

Erin Austin: Fantastic. And then where can they find you generally

Samantha Hartley: by me at Samantha Hartley.

Samantha Hartley: com and, uh, I'm Samantha Hartley on most of the socials. Facebook, Instagram,

Erin Austin: your Facebook person to, what are you doing on Facebook?

Samantha Hartley: So legacy on Facebook, you know, I wouldn't be on Facebook if I wasn't for work.

Erin Austin: Well, thank you so much. We will have links to all of that in the show notes. It has been fantastic to have you here. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us and I hope we can do it again.

Samantha Hartley: Thank you, Erin. I have learned so much from you over the last several months, so it's been great knowing you and I love being able to be here with you and your listeners.

Erin Austin: Awesome. Thank you.