How I Transformed My Ho-Hum Coaching and Consulting Practice Into a 7-Figure Empire – The Marketing Mentors
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How I Transformed My Ho-Hum Coaching and Consulting Practice Into a 7-Figure Empire

Adam Urbanski - How I turned my coaching business into a seven figure empire!

“How did you go from start to seven figures?” – it’s a question I get asked a lot.

People want to know what I did I go from looking for my first one-on-one client to selling millions of dollars worth of coaching and consulting services and information products.

And there are a lot of great lessons in my story. So to answer this question I decided to write this series of quick tutorials, sharing my journey. I will specifically focus on seven lessons I learned in the process of building my business. These are steps you can follow to take your business to mid six, and then seven figures faster and easier.

Here’s my story…

Seven Powerful Lessons I Learned In the Process of Building a Seven Figure Business (Part 1)

The first time I tasted the power of leverage in my consulting business was in mid 2001 and I had no idea what I was doing.

Sort of…

Like all start-ups my first goal was to secure a few paying clients.

And, like many people in that position, I figured I have to start networking.

It wasn’t going well for me at all. I didn’t like it. And I wasn’t any good at it at first.

I was attending a lot of local networking events and meeting a lot of potential customers. Many showed interest in my services, but my “hefty” price tag seemed to be a barrier stopping them from working with me. (At least that’s what I thought at the time. Later I learned that the problem was actually my own inability to put together attractive offers and present them powerfully. But I’m getting ahead of myself.)

Then, one day I had my first breakthrough.

I conceived this crazy idea to stop chasing one-on-one coaching/consulting clients and teach a group of entrepreneurs at once over the phone instead. My idea was to use email and phone people I met through my networking efforts and invite 12 business owners to a six-week program teaching them more effective direct-response marketing strategies.

(Don’t laugh. It seems to basic. But 13 years ago most people haven’t event heard of teleseminars yet. I had to call them “workshops over the phone” and explain to people what it was. This seems like a very simple idea today, but it was a pretty pioneering move back then.)

So I put together six modules that I taught every other week and called the program “The Ultimate Business Makeover: How to Double Your Business In 90 Days” …and it worked like a charm!

My first class sold out at $297 a seat.

Next time around I created three groups I ran simultaneously – they sold out at $497.

I continued to form new groups and kept raising the price for the next year or so – eventually selling it for $997 a seat.

Frankly, it was a pretty good cash cow. Thinking about it now, the reason I stopped was because I was being a typical entrepreneur and got tired of doing the same thing over and over.

The right “packaging” can make or break your business!

Even though, at that time, I still wasn’t fully grasping the power of the leveraged income I was now generating, I learned valuable lessons from this experience.

  • I discovered most people preferred programs that had a specific
    beginning and end time over an open-end consulting projects.
  • It was easier to promote and sell a program which promised
    participants specific objectives in a time frame provided.
  • It was easy to follow up with many people at once using
    Internet and email when I had one specific initial program
    I wanted to enroll them into.
  • Because I now had a specific program and information to deliver,
    generating leads became 10 times easier. Even people who didn’t
    immediately register for my class would leave me their contact
    information – creating a pool of quality prospects many of whom
    eventually became clients…
  • My rinky-dinky website I put up myself (which, frankly, looked like
    crap!) was generating registrations – meaning money in my bank
    account.(This was a welcomed change from the results I was getting from
    my main site for which I paid $4,000 to have built. It ended being
    an “online brochure” with flash animation and “Ginsu-knife”
    technology that did everything except for what mattered most
    – it never got me leads and sales!
  • Finally, if you do the math, even on the original $297 per seat I was
    generating an income of about $600 per hour teaching this class.

How to stop trading time for money and create leveraged income

This was a big aha moment! I promised myself to stop working with individual clients who were squeamish about paying my consulting fee – which back then was of a paltry $250 an hour – and to continue learning how to leverage all my income through group programs and other high-payoff activities.

Of course these discoveries didn’t all come easy. Frankly, I probably screwed up more things than I did right for a long time. Unlike today, there were no folks teaching this!

For example, I completely ignored the back-end of my business at first. So all the clients who took my six-week class were left behind! I still can’t believe I was such an idiot! Oh well, the school of trial and error isn’t cheap.

But, as I was eager to grow my business faster. I was also becoming more courageous with my “educational budget”. And I became an even more devoted student of marketing.

Which took me to my next big breakthrough:  Discover the biggest lesson I learned from my first $100,000 weekend!

I’d love to hear from you…

Did you find this helpful? What’s your biggest takeaway? Take a minute and comment below with your aha’s and share what were some of your biggest breakthroughs while growing your business?

Adam Urbanski
 

I'm Adam Urbanski, founder and CEO of The Marketing Mentors. Thousands of entrepreneurs world-wide call me the Millionaire Marketing Mentor and I'm the go-to guy experts turn to when they want to attract more clients and grow their businesses fast. Since 2000 I've helped thousands of people start and grow successful businesses. Many of my clients and students from dozens of countries on every continent now enjoy multiple six, even seven figure incomes. On this blog I share effective marketing strategies that are easy to understand and simple to deploy. You can connect with me beyond this blog on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

  • Yes, Adam great post for coaches on your evolution into creating a system that worked. And it’s so true, me and a number of my mentors have been guilty of switching things up even when they are working well in generating and converting leads. This is true for me with the group coaching which got great results for me and my clients in 2007 and now I’m circling back around to what worked! THANKS!

    • You’re so right, Ruth, the “creative-types” in us get bored and we search for new things. The truth is that by the time we are getting tired of our message and method, that’s just the time that are audience is finally catching on to our message and our methods. And we switch, we lose the momentum we’ve just stared building. ;)

  • Love this post Adam! I’m really enjoying your writing lately.

  • I guess wanting to always do something new instead of repeating what works to a new audience is the most expensive entrepreneurial habit and one I share!!

    • Haha! I just commented on that in my response to Ruth Anne. I haven’t read it yet, but I just heard or a book (and a method) that helps overly-creative folks like us to keep creating without losing momentum and getting overwhelmed. The book is titled Refuse to Choose, but Barbara Sher. She calls folks like us “scanners”. I imagine her ideas are a bit like what you wanted to with the “Da Vinci Code”. ;)

      P.S. By the way, great to see you here, Lisa. And thank YOU for your kind words. ;)

      • Lisa says:

        LOL – Refuse to Choose is a bible of mine and Barbara sher is my FB friend — I’m having her writer the foreward or a blurb for our Davinci dilemma book!!

  • Kofi says:

    Adam, great article. I’m currently in the chasing one-on-one clients cycle and I’m not enjoying it very much. Additionally, my income is dwindling and I’m at a cross roads. My biggest take away from your article was the group coaching/tele-seminar approach, which I’ve been giving a great deal of thought to lately. Your “valuable lessons” learned were real eye openers for me. I know I can do this! Thanks!!!

    • You’re right, Kofi – you can do this! And you’ll find my second part of this series even more helpful.

      Now, here are a few ideas how you can implement this for yourself.

      1. Host a virtual 1-day “workshop” or “intensive” to help people achieve a specific result, or solve a specific problem.

      2. Offer a three-, or five-call series that – again – focuses on solving a problem for your audience.

      3. Create a one or two day live program.

      In all cases make sure that…

      a) you focus on something a lot of people already want address (something people want to buy)

      b) make your price attractive. For example, for a one-day virtual experience you could charge just $97. Or even $47. With only 10 or 20 participants this is a nice little pay-day. Your costs are virtually zero – just your time. AND some of your participants will likely go on to do more work with you and pay you more money.

      c) you focus on promoting and selling first. Most people start creating content, but you don’t need content if you don’t have customers!

      Hopefully this gives you some ideas you can use to grow your business, make an impact and profit. ;)

  • Mark says:

    Wow Adam!

    There is a ton of proven marketing know how to chew on here! You offer several mini strategies that could probably easily be inexpensively tested and developed (over time) of course into stand alone profit centers!

    For ex: your one day virtual class idea, could easily be created based on (say) your top five to seven issues that your ideal customers and clients crave results to the most!

    And you could test selling them all five individual sessions, as long as they pre pay for three sessions etc! And give them a discount of course! And on & on!

    This was an excellent post! It really gets you creative marketing juices flowing! Thanks for sharing! I’ll keep you posted on this one!

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