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Meet the MasterMinds: Michael Port Goes Beyond Booked Solid

Michael Port is the author of Book Yourself Solid and Beyond Booked Solid. He’s the founder of Michael Port & Associates LLC, which runs online distance learning and coaching programs for professional services providers and small business owners.

We talked to Port about Beyond Booked Solid to find out how consultants can take their businesses to the next level.

McLaughlin: What motivated you to write Beyond Booked Solid?

Port: Well, I often write about what I’m most interested in learning for myself. I had reached the point where I was getting a lot of clients, but I needed to refine and redesign my business.

When you start a business, the main question is how do I get clients? For those who have figured that out, I wanted to help them determine what’s next.

Second, I wanted to address the big issue for service businesses, which is how do you create new mechanisms for generating revenue? And third, I was very interested in the idea that we need to focus on pursuing mastery.

McLaughlin: When you set out to grow a business, you can’t be certain about achieving your goals. Any tips for managing that uncertainty?

Port: Whether it’s project management or innovation, one of the principles of doing anything great is to embrace uncertainty. I think it was Niels Bohr who said “Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.”

If you focus only on a particular end goal, then you miss many opportunities for improvement along the way.

If you were certain about outcomes, you might create something far less remarkable than if you allowed yourself not to know. If you focus only on a particular end goal, then you miss many opportunities for improvement along the way.

McLaughlin: Given the many options for growing a business, how do you advise people about setting the scope for that growth?

Port: This may be surprising, but I think often you should look at what’s good enough. What will be satisfactory? The never-ending search for something better can bankrupt you, both financially and emotionally.

That’s the quandary Barry Schwartz writes about in Paradox of Choice. He says that the more choices we have, the less satisfied we are, and the less we commit to what we’re going do. And unless we’re willing to make “nonreversible commitments,” often we don’t follow through.

After significant reflection on your current situation, consider your alternatives. If there are three, four, or five satisfactory options, what’s wrong with picking one of them?

McLaughlin: If you pursue a small number of options, do you think that facilitates mastery?

Port: Yes. If you’re in the pursuit of mastery, you don’t dabble in 400 different things. You choose one. You know that you will dislike some aspects of that choice, but that is part of the pursuit of mastery.

Often, the deeper you go into something, the more you find there is to learn, and the more you realize you don’t know.

If you’re in the pursuit of mastery, you don’t dabble in 400 different things. You choose one.

Sometimes we don’t realize the gift that exists in the pursuit of the specific. You may think that the opportunities for learning or exploration are finite, when, in fact, the deeper you go into one area, the more infinite your experience becomes.

McLaughlin: Consultants have opportunities to generate income from their intellectual property—the so-called passive income. Are they making the most of those opportunities and, if not, what’s holding them back?

Port: One self-limiting perspective is that many people think of each new revenue-generating opportunity as a whole new business in and of itself. And that’s not always the case.

Before you can develop ancillary streams of revenue, though, you must be very clear on your core business. What is your primary revenue driver? Where do you focus your attention? You may change your method or model for delivery, but the focus on your core business should stay consistent.

You can consider the various business building blocks that I discuss in Beyond Booked Solid and see which of them might be complementary to your core offering. But you don’t necessarily need to be the one who delivers that product or service. The more you think about partnering with others, the more you realize that you can do big things with other people better than you can alone.

Before you can develop ancillary streams of revenue, though, you must be very clear on your core business.

But whatever you choose must complement your core offering. If all of a sudden I started selling a cure-all for headaches, it wouldn’t make sense. But if I introduce products or services related to marketing, operations, or development that my clients need, well, then it all fits together.

McLaughlin: When it comes to partnering with others, many consultants struggle to make strategic alliances work. Do you have any advice for developing productive alliances?

Port: Yes. I love strategic alliances—for marketing and also for production and delivery. From a marketing perspective, we need each other to spread our messages. So alliances are essential for marketing.

Of course, you should never be transactional about it, as in I’ll do this for you if you do that for me. That’s a very unsophisticated approach to strategic alliances. You need to really collaborate with others.

Another point is that you don’t need to share your company to team up with others. Again that’s typical of the way people think. Doing projects with other people? They say, oh, are they business partners? No. You can have your own company or entity and still work, project by project, with other people.

You don’t necessarily go into every project 50/50, but can share revenue according to what each person brings to the equation. For most projects, there will be four primary areas to cover: content creation/production, administration, marketing, and delivery.

You need to agree on a relative value for each of the four sections. Let’s say you decide that content creation is worth 30 percent, administration is 10 percent, marketing is 30 percent, and delivery is 30 percent. Now you have a structure for determining how to split up the work and the eventual revenue. Of course, you can always change that. But it gives you a rational starting point.

McLaughlin: What systems or capabilities to support business growth do you think we need?

Port: Well, obviously basic financial and contact management systems are essential. But instead of just considering systems, I think you should also look at waste.

In a services business, waste doesn’t usually come in material form. It comes from overstaffing, understaffing, waiting time, loss of creativity, yours and the people you work with, and so on. So instead of looking at more systems, I think you should try to find the waste inside your organization in the areas for which you already have systems.

McLaughlin: Last question: If you were to give an entrepreneur one piece of advice, what would it be?

Port: I would say don’t take yourself too seriously. Sometimes I feel that we are just so too serious about everything. And you know what? Things are going to go wrong. You just have to figure out how you deal with that and continue to build your business.

McLaughlin: Thanks for your time.

Find out more at www.michaelport.com.com. Look for Port’s new book, The Contrarian Effect: Why It Pays (Big) to Take Typical Sales Advice and Do the Opposite.