The 7 Elements in Every Truly Sustainable Business Model
[Image description: A symbol saying “free” leads to a stick of bubble gum, which leads to the core of an atom, which leaps into a hot air balloon, the core also shows arrows leading to a château and a unified group of dancers, who lead to a megaphone pointing back to the “free” symbol.]
Your business isn’t just a way to make money. It’s a journey of trust building with the people who pay you money. Understand this and you know the secret to business. As you know well, generosity is a crucial aspect of building trust. We want to take the skill of generosity and build it right in to our businesses. If you do this well, you’ll be able to take your clients on a beautiful journey and make plenty of money while doing it.
1. Free
I want you to think about your business from your client’s or customer’s point of view. The first step on their journey is to learn about you. Their first impression is important. The best way I’ve found in working with hundreds of businesses is to create something free to offer your prospective customers and deliver it in a way that makes sense for your business. If you’re a therapist that may be a free consultation. If you sell water bottles maybe you offer free stickers.
The free thing has to be:
something people actually need or want
something that takes them from not knowing you in to one level of trust closer
Do this and see your business grow!
2. Bubble Gum
Bubble gum is my favorite name for a central element for anyone’s business model. It’s a great name right? OK, but what is it? Imagine you’re at the grocery store checking out, and you see the rack of bubble gum sitting there. It’s only $0.99, and you know you like gum, so you just grab a stick and check out.
Here’s the key: it’s an easy yes.
It’s so easy you barely even notice that it is a singular transaction. That’s what I want you to create next. Create a bubble gum offering that makes sense for your business. If you’re a yoga teacher, your bubble gum might be a $5 downloadable morning meditation or yoga video specifically for folks with low back issues. If you sell $10,000 live-edge wood tables, maybe your bubble gum is a $100 set of 2 beautiful cutting boards/serving platters. As always, it’s got to be something your people actually want, and it’s got to be related to your offering.
3. Core
Let’s talk about your client’s journey moving through the offerings of your business. In your clients mind, your core product or service is the central thing your business offers.
MeUndies’s core offering is a product: underwear
Seth Godin’s core offering is a service: altMBA
Sunbreak Massage’s core offering is a service: massage sessions
Knowing your core offering is crucial, but just as important as knowing how to articulate and position that core offering next to the rest of the services or products that you offer. Give your audience a clear way to understand what you do and how they can experience various levels of your products or services. What’s your core offering?
4. Leap
So far we’ve gone from free to bubble gum to core offerings. These go from little to no investment all the way up to moderate investment. Now we’re going to talk about the offerings you have for your clients who either want to get closer to you or more VIP access if you offer a service, or clients who want the premium package if you offer products.
It’s important to note that there are always people who will buy the cheapest option, there are always people who buy the most expensive option, and there are always people who will buy the Goldilocks option in between.
Now let’s focus on your leap offering, which is the first step outside of your core offering. It’s either for people who already know they want a bigger investment, or it’s for people who have been buying your core offering for a while and enjoyed it, and now want to take the leap.
For yoga teachers it might be a workshop or day long retreat outside of the core offering of weekly classes.
For a cosmetic store it might be a subscription to a monthly or quarterly basket, which is more investment than just buying a jar or two of lotion.
Whether or not you sell very many Leap offerings, it’s very beneficial for you to create and articulate one if for no other reason than to position your other offerings.
5. Château
Of all the elements in a business, chateau is perhaps my favorite. Maybe it’s because I’m a total sucker for luxury, or because my favorite thing in the world is to create profound experiences for people. But what I know is that creating a chateau offering will absolutely level up your business, even if it’s not your main source of revenue.
But I’m getting ahead of myself, let’s talk about what a chateau offering is anyway! The Château offering is the biggest or most expensive thing that you offer. Remember how I said that there’s always somebody looking to buy the cheapest thing you have and always somebody who’s looking to buy the middle-priced thing you have?
Well, you guessed it, there’s always somebody who wants to buy the most expensive thing you have. And there are many reasons for that, it might be that they want to have a close personal attention, it might be that they want to feel completely taken care of, it might be that they love to invest big.
But the power of a chateau offering doesn’t stop there, it also helps elevate and position the free, bubble gum, core, and leap offerings you have. When somebody knows what the most expensive thing that you offer is, and the least expensive thing, you give them a full picture in which to make purchasing decisions.
The great part about that is you get to create that picture. So now it’s time for you to scheme up your most luxurious offering. Is it a retreat? Is it the ultimate version of your product or a special package? Is it VIP access?
6. Unified Platform
In your business you need a way for your customers or clients to hang out and become friends. Why? Because if people bond with each other over your product or service, they'll become extremely loyal to your business, and see it as a community building place, not just a business.
This is the most powerful element to apply when it comes to stabilizing your customer base. With the previous 5 elements you've already got a solid funnel for bringing complete strangers in and turning them into engaged customers, but this is where you fulfill your business's bigger purpose, and any organization's bigger purpose: to build community.
This could look a whole number of different ways:
Creating an online group for your customers to engage with each other
Creating regular events for your customers to come hang out with each other at
Setting up physical benches in your yoga studio for people to hang out on and chat (pre/post COVID)
7. Megaphone
Are your customers also your cheerleaders? The final element to any good business model is the megaphone. The idea is that you're giving your customers a megaphone through which to tell new people about your business.
The secret is to find ways to do this where your customers don't feel like they're advertising for you. Your customers should feel like they're simply so enthusiastic about your product or service that they can't wait to tell others about it when the opportunity arises.
The most obvious example of this is the way musicians can blow up very quickly. Because going to concerts and listening to music is such a community gathering activity, if you love an artist, you'll likely share it with your friends, or invite them to a show. That can quickly expand.
So how do you build it into a coaching business or a handmade jewelry business?
1. Quality
First you need to spend several months really reflecting on, obsessing over, and fine tuning your customer's experience so that at every turn they experience super high quality and have a powerful if not transformational experience working with you or purchasing your product.
2. Memorable
Go above and beyond to create something remarkable or offer a remarkable service. For example with a jewelry business, your packaging is extremely important because it's the first thing your customer will ever see. If your packaging is exciting for them to open, then you've literally set them up to be excited about the new necklace they bought.
3. VIPs
Identify your VIP customers and reward them. There are two kinds of rewards: expected and unexpected. The most loyalty-creating rewards are unexpected because your customer receives an unexpected reward as an act of real generosity vs. planned generosity. So give things away to your best customers!
4. Built for sharing
If you send out promotional products or VIP rewards, send out enough for your customers to share. Send 3 body butter samples, not one. Give them 3 codes for free sessions, two of which they have to give away. The more sharing you can generate the better.
In conclusion
Take these 7 elements to heart when considering how to showcase generosity within your business. If you build trust with your clients and community, the giving will become mutual!
