How I Transformed My Ho-Hum Coaching and Consulting Practice Into a 7-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.

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?