Without these, you will only get so far, and with them you are not only scaling your business but growing your authority brand.

Starting out, every business starts by serving one to one, providing direct feedback and bespoke opportunities to adapt and change your service to suit the client. But there comes a time when you have run out of hours in the week.

At this point, you can go one of two ways:

1. Start employing a team to spread the workload.
2. Get strategic with your time and what you sell.

I recommend every service-based startup works on point two first; and to do this, there are the following three keys to use to unlock limitless growth and build an authority brand...

Key 1: Signature Solution

The first and most vital key to craft is understanding what your unique signature solution is. This is the major reason why your clients come to you, as they want to follow the proven pathway that you have developed to fast-track the transformation they are looking for.

Your Signature Solution shows your value simply, so people remember you. The goal is for you to stand out from the crowd, share your unique angle on your industry. Crafting this into your bespoke framework is the springboard for success for a thriving expert business.

This solution brings together your expertise, your values and voice into a methodology that describes how you do what you do. How you take people from A to B, your way.

Every business, in every niche will have created their own process through serving multiple clients, and transitioning the inner process into a mental model, a proprietary process that can be shared widely will naturally bring more people to your door.

Once you have established what makes you unique, drawn this out into a visual framework with a unique name (look to trademark this solution), it becomes the north star of every element of your growth strategy.

You are then set up to develop compelling, scalable offers which is the next key.

Key 2: Scalable Offers

To grow your wealth, creating scalable offers that facilitate the transformations promised and can be served to many; from group programmes to books to talks on stages is the best way to create a highly profitable service based business.

In the digital age there are multiple ways you can serve at scale and also hit different price points in the market. Where one-to-one bespoke services are often high ticket due their time intensive nature, once you’ve mapped out your process, this can move into recorded step by step training.

The online course economy is not slowing down and there is a huge thirst for on-demand training that can meet the needs of your audience.

AI may be the latest hot topic, but at the end of the day, we still need the experts to share their lived wisdom, and online courses or memberships are a fantastic way to serve at scale, with embedded humanity!

Utilising AI tools to speed up productivity and efficiency, run the basic admin tasks will be an element of your scalable offers, but success comes when there remains a human element. Any client wants to know that they will be able to connect and ask their questions to the expert.

Support can take a variety of forms, from asynchronous to live Q&A forums. Connection is key to facilitate the promised transformations, as most humans by default will be looking for the easy, lazy way to success. Those of us who run successful businesses, know that there is always hard grind and tenacity that got us here.

Once you have compelling scalable offers in place that follow your Signature Solution, the next step is to become a constant creator of Distinctive Content.

Key 3: Distinctive Content

Courses and memberships do not sell themselves! In fact, for all my clients I recommend that they pre-sell any courses in advance of pulling the elements together.

For this you need distinctive content, an audience that recognises and loves what you stand for.

To become a recognised voice, an authority brand, it's imperative to develop strong, consistent personal branded content that inspires, sparks conversations and gets shared widely.

Content creation does not happen overnight, but develops and builds with time. Every business owner will have their own unique lens on the world but also a natural affinity for one style of media over another.

You do not need to be everywhere. Picking one main place to focus your idea-generating and wisdom-sharing content is best. This could be a Podcast, or a YouTube Channel or Articles (a blog) on your website or inside a platform like Substack.

The important element here is to show how you think differently from your competitors, what your values are, and how you love to serve. Have an open-door policy that allows clients to connect with you and respond through your main platform.

This year, I have started my YouTube journey, as I create short, high energy, colourful episodes that share tips on how to scale your service business.

From a 10 minute episode, I can then repurpose this into clips, shorts, reels, blogs, graphics, podcasts and more. And AI totally helps me achieve this - but only once I have established my tone of voice, my branding palette to allow it to replicate my message in multiple places.

One piece of long form, original content can easily translate into over 20 pieces of marketing that can bring clients to your business.

The Authority Brand Framework

The Authority Brand Framework by Susanna Reay shows how the 3 keys to scale your service business successfully combine for maximum impact:

• Your audience grows when you have both a Signature Solution and Distinctive content in place
• Your income grows when you have both Distinctive content and Scalable Offers in place
• Your results grow when you have both a Signature Solution and Scalable Offers in place

Having these three keys established before you expand your team to scale your service business further provides the solid and strategic foundation that will take your business to the stars.