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268
[00:00:46] Hi guys. Welcome back to the show. This is episode number 268, and I’m so glad that you. With me today, this is the NextGen of the Sweet Life Entrepreneur Podcast. We are entering year number six, and I am [00:01:00] so excited to be working with you again, thank you to all of our amazing listeners for allowing me to take that year off and just recuperate and, and help to think of the vision and how this show can continue to be of service to you as we move into the next five years. So thank you to all of our amazing listeners and all the messages you guys have sent. I’m super excited about all the shows that we have planned. So this is episode number 268, and in this show I wanted to unpack a strategy that I teach to our private clients only.
[00:01:34] And I felt like it was time to introduce it to you guys here on the show. So we are talking about the 10 foundations of building a million dollar online coaching business. I know that sounds really, really big, but I’m gonna break it down for you today on the show and help you to see this clearly. In your business.
[00:01:54] As always, all of the show notes can by be found by visiting [00:02:00] sweetlifeco.com. Very simply, just click on the podcast and this is episode number 268. All right, if you and I don’t know each other yet, I’m April Beach. I’m an online business architect and I’m an offer engineer, and I help experts, coaches, and authors and speakers scale their business online by creating million dollar programs, courses, trainings, content license programs, and certifications for the purpose of high profit, deep impact lifestyle freedom. So everything you’re gonna get here is proven. It’s not pie in the sky.
[00:02:32] We deliver trainings and strategies, whether it’s through or our amazing dream team of experts to come in and work with you. And so I want to let you know that this is proven. This is not a brand new podcast, and I’ve been doing this with online business expertise for 17 years. You can trust it, you can take it to the bank.
[00:02:49] So let’s go. Number one. We are going to walk away from this episode with you knowing what the 10 foundations are. I created these years back, but I really [00:03:00] felt like it was time to introduce them because a lot of people are missing these. Number two, you’re gonna be able to identify which of these building block foundations you may be missing, or which ones maybe we have spread too thin on in your business. That’ll make sense to you in a second here. And number three, you’re gonna know how to take the first steps to actually fix some of the building blocks and the foundations in your business if you were spread maybe a little bit too. . So if that sounds good to you, let’s go ahead and dive in.
[00:03:29] So the beginning of this is, let’s talk about why we need business foundations. So, Whether you, you’re just trying to hit your first consistent 10 K months. Most of you guys are, are well past that here, that listen to the show now, but it doesn’t really matter what it is as far as how, how well you’re doing financially. Sometimes clients come to me when they had built a business and they, they kind of don’t love it. Or they’re making a lot of money, but maybe they had like a lot of offers cuz they listened to what [00:04:00] everybody told them and they launched all this stuff everywhere and it’s just really not working. Okay. So no matter where, what I’m saying is no matter where you are in business, we need to kind of come back to home base. And it doesn’t matter how much money you’re making in these 10 business foundations, I want you to imagine them like we are building a house. These are the bricks that go underneath your house and there are 10 of them and they have to fit well together. All right. If your bricks don’t fit well together, if they don’t play well together, if the, if the, well, I can’t even imagine to even know masonry words.
[00:04:38] So if the bricks don’t fit, your business is not going to be able to be built up structurally as high as it can be. Oftentimes, there are so many bricks laid in a foundation of a business that it’s spreading you thin as a business leader, and it’s causing you to, um, have things [00:05:00] that aren’t working well and functioning well in your business.
[00:05:02] So today on this show, I’m breaking down all of these 10 bricks, these 10 business foundations. I’m gonna define them for you high level, and the goal is for you to take a pause, listen to each one of these foundational bricks, and to determine whether or not your bricks are fitting together well. Or maybe you have too many bricks and we need to get.
[00:05:24] maybe you’re missing some and we need to pay attention to building some. So the 10 foundations that I have defined for building a million dollar online coaching business are as follows. The first foundation is, Business design. This is a unique term that’s unique to me. It’s unique to the Sweet Life Company.
[00:05:44] We actually call it strategic business design. What this is is awareness of your business model and your ecosystem of offers and how they play together, and how they come together to form [00:06:00] the life. Uh, that you want in your business. So what do I mean by that? We can’t just launch anything. Your business model is what controls your entire business and your life.
[00:06:11] Your business model is how you serve clients and how you make money. So your business model could be a membership, it could be. Uh, uh, a mastermind. It could be a combination of retreats and a subscription model. There are millions of different business models that we can customize for you, but the first foundation that you need to be aware of is the understanding of how to engineer your perfect business model with the culmination of all of your.
[00:06:40] Do they all play well together? And does your business model, is it designed to give you that lifestyle and the profit that you want? This is so incredibly important and that’s why it’s foundation number one. It’s the first thing we do with our clients is unpacking what we want their strategic [00:07:00] business designed to look like.
[00:07:01] Even if we don’t have a built yet, sometimes we’ve gotta tear things down to rebuild. All right, so if this isn’t thought about first, what happens is people just launch a bunch of offers because they could be profitable, and then we end up with a whole bunch of things that aren’t really strategically designed in your business, and that really sometimes maybe you’re overworked, maybe you aren’t making enough money, maybe you have too many teams.
[00:07:25] There’s just, it’s kind of a hot. So the first foundation to building a profitable million dollar online coaching business is understanding how to do and how to conduct strategic business design. But in your mind right now, for the sake of being in this podcast, I want you to think is, are my offers collectively brought together in such a way that is design?
[00:07:47] the business and the life that I want. Am I working the way that I want? Am I getting my time off the way I want? Am I making the profit that I plan to make when I launch that business? That is number one. So always [00:08:00] the first foundation and everything else goes out around that. The second business foundation is the engineering of your offers and your programs and your services.
[00:08:09] So the second. Foundation is making sure that your programs are engineered to give what I call predictable, transformational, measurable results. We have a very, very special proprietary process that we teach businesses called transformational program design. And it’s the process of extracting your genius and making sure that your offers are guaranteed people as long as they follow the steps as you have laid out, are going to achieve the results that you promised.
[00:08:38] So foundation number one is the whole design of your business foundation. Number two is the correct engineering of your offers. Did you just throw something up there, begin? I say this a million times. Nobody needs more content. They need a transformation. As a matter of fact, as we dive into all the shows going in the years to come, we’re really diving into the nitty gritty of offer engineering and how to deliver a [00:09:00] high value result, possibly in less time.
[00:09:03] So I want you to really, really think about that. Foundation. Number three is your branding and your messaging. Once we have your offers. and your business ecosystem is created the way that we want it designed. We need to make sure that you have made a strategic decision of what message are you giving, what are you known for?
[00:09:22] What do you want people to understand about your company? And that obviously holds hands with foundation. Number two, offer engineering. After your offer is engineered and your messaging is very clear, we also wanna talk about your marketing and your content. It’s an extension of making sure your message is clear.
[00:09:42] Many businesses are out there and they’re putting stuff on social media, but they actually haven’t nailed their messaging. Or what they wanna be known for. And so they are constantly posting things across social media that kind of seem like a hot mess because there is zero messaging or known for strategy engineered behind it.
[00:09:58] The marketing [00:10:00] and the content comes after identifying what you wanna be known for. And for some of you guys, this is such a review. I totally know that. Okay. But even those of us have been in business for decades. We come to these points of time where we gotta change up what we wanna do. We’re designing this next level of our business, and sometimes what we were known for before, we don’t really wanna be known for anymore.
[00:10:25] Maybe it’s something new. So stop and take a pause even if you’ve done a really great job of this in the past for where you are professionally and where you are personally. And make sure that your messaging and your marketing aligns with the where you wanna go for the next 10. If that is a review for you.
[00:10:45] The third thing that we wanna review and make sure it’s all aligned is your sales. Now, this is your sales process. This is how you’re bringing people into your ecosystem. There’s many different ways we can sell, right? We can just open up a shopping cart and somebody can buy it. You can hold [00:11:00] an application process.
[00:11:01] You can meet with people even face to face. You know, we’re kind of coming back to more of that personal relationship with people. You know, your sales process. Is a natural extension of your messaging and your marketing and what you wanna be known for and the offer you deliver. So that fifth foundation, your sales foundation should be strategically designed to play well with your marketing and your messaging and your.
[00:11:33] So to recap, we’ve covered five different business foundations that you need to strategize, or again, you’re welcome to apply to work with us. This is what we do strategize to make sure that they are playing well together. Number one is your business design. Number two is your offer engineering. Number three is your branding and messaging.
[00:11:51] Number four is your marketing, and number five is your sales. We’re halfway through. We have half of the foundation of that house that you’re [00:12:00] gonna build up. However big you want it, your house is custom to you. We have half the foundation laid. Now these Knicks five are equally as important, but usually businesses can’t come to the determination of how to execute these until the first five are answered.
[00:12:15] All right, so the next five are, number six is thought leadership and pr. Now, how are you then becoming known as a leader in your space? How are you going and sharing your message in changing the way people think? What sort of disruption of are you causing? We don’t, we don’t ever wanna cause disruption to be disruptive.
[00:12:39] Let me just say that, you know, we hear this like disruption all the time doesn’t mean you’re like some big jerk that’s gonna come out there and just like make everybody upset to get attention. That’s. That’s not you. You’re listening to this show. That’s not you. That’s not me. We all know that, right? But we want to challenge the way people are thinking because the way that you teach [00:13:00] is maybe better, more innovative.
[00:13:03] You know, we work with clients at the Sweet Life Company that are doing things that nobody’s done before or they’re changing the way things. , and those are also our podcast listeners, right? So I already know that because you’re listening to this show, you are challenging the way things have been done, or you wanna improve it or you want it to be better.
[00:13:23] You know, you have a methodology or a process that is totally different than what other people have, right? You don’t fit into that copy cat cookie cutter stuff. . So when we’re going back to your business foundations, how are we making sure that the world knows that and that six foundation, that thought leadership PR goes hand in hand?
[00:13:45] The strategy we use for that to get you out there goes hand in hand with the offers that we’ve engineered for you and the messaging and the sales process in your marketing foundation. Number seven is your tech stack. Okay? Here’s the. [00:14:00] Everybody loves their tech, but they love their tech that they know and they love.
[00:14:03] We don’t endorse any one tech stack, right? So I don’t kid your, I don’t care if it’s Cajabi or ClickFunnels or go high level or whatever it is. How you communicate, how you deliver your. Services in the, in the experience that you create for your clients should be a custom engineered tech stack to you and to your business.
[00:14:25] And just because something works for somebody else doesn’t mean it’s gonna work for you. So that Seventh Business Foundation is the strategy of building a tech stack that aligns with the experience that you wanna give people, what you wanna be known for, how your offers are engineer. And just aligns and, and speaks to your whole business culture.
[00:14:48] And by the way, it’s totally okay if you are not super techy. Not everybody has to have an app. You know, one of the trends that we’ve seen, especially over the last three years, cuz everybody and their cousin [00:15:00] has now decided they’re an online business coach, right, is that people are paying for more personal curated experiences.
[00:15:09] So maybe your tech stack is figuring out how to have a more personal curated experience. Foundation number seven is taking a look back at your tech stack and making sure it’s it’s laid out correctly. Two, accomplish what we’ve set out to do in business design, offer engineering, branding, and messaging, marketing, sales, and thought leadership.
[00:15:29] See how they all stack on each other and these bricks are fitting together underneath your house. The eighth Business Foundation is teams. Now with scaling businesses, usually we see around $30,000 a month when businesses hit that $30,000 a month kind of threshold, anywhere from 20 to 40. So we call it 30 in the middle, is that if we don’t have our teams in place and we don’t know how to delegate, we start running into some bottlenecks.
[00:15:59] I can [00:16:00] personally say that you guys, and I’ve said this a bunch, um, on the show in the past, I am not naturally a good. I suck at it. Okay. Let’s just be really, really honest. It is something that I’ve had to diligently work at stopping and thinking and, and deciding what I want things to look like before delegating it out to my team.
[00:16:22] So entrepreneurs, you know, we’re kind of control freaks. We kinda like having control, but when you get to that 20, 30, 40 K a month reoccurring revenue, if you do not have teams in place and you don’t know how to step into a leadership role, in a leader role, instead of a doer role, we’re gonna run into problems.
[00:16:45] So wherever you are in your business, we wanna have an assessment of that foundation, your team foundation, which is foundation number eight. And making sure that you have teams in place that are the right teams to start getting things off your plate. [00:17:00] Frankly, people that are better than I am at doing certain things, I should not keep things to myself, right?
[00:17:07] There are a lot of people that are much better than I am at doing things in in you, and that’s what leadership is. Foundation number nine, amla Air are your. . Okay. Do we correctly have your operational systems, your client onboardings, your client experience, your billing systems, your client off onboarding systems, your marketing systems, you know your bill paying systems, your financial systems are your systems in place to get your business to a million dollars?
[00:17:37] what systems are you missing? Literally, like systems are everything in your business. We have systems for everything. We literally have onboarding and off onboarding, podcast production systems, content marketing systems, coaching systems. Your systems are also part of. How you teach people to do what you teach them how to [00:18:00] do, or your strategy or consulting.
[00:18:02] So how well are your systems engineered and are they in place? And then the last foundation I do not teach on, but you need to have, and the last foundation of a million dollar online coaching or consulting business is lifestyle. That is the, in my opinion, one of the most important bricks, and you can only decide what that looks like.
[00:18:22] We talked about business design in the beginning of being the summary, the culmination of all of your products and services that you sell, working in a way that is, is going to get you what you want in your business. But the 10th Foundation lifestyle, this is all about. This is about making sure that you are continuing to grow as a leader.
[00:18:44] Are you getting fed? Are you getting mentorship? Are you getting coaching? Is your body well and healthy? You are the greatest asset in your company. Are you taking care of yourself? Are you getting sleep? Have you pushed yourself to physical limits in the most amazing [00:19:00] way? Are you in flow state? Are you adventuring?
[00:19:04] Are you spending time with people that light you up? That is lifestyle, and we have to very carefully make sure that your lifestyle is one of those 10 different business foundations. Otherwise, what we’ve done is we have built a business that might make a ton of money, but at the end of the day, the end of the day, Is that the way you really wanted to live your life?
[00:19:27] And so that 10th Business Foundation is not less important than marketing. It’s not less important than offer engineering. It’s just one of the foundations that you need to strategize. So let’s recap the 10 foundations of building a million dollar business. Number one is business design. Number two is offer engineering.
[00:19:44] Number three is messaging and marketing. Number four is, excuse me. Number three is branding and messaging. Number four is then the marketing of that. Number five is your sales, your sales processes. Six is thought leadership and pr. Seven is tech. Eight is teams, [00:20:00] nine is systems, and 10 is lifestyle. Now, what do we do with these things?
[00:20:05] You’re like, okay, bro, this is great. These are all good to know. So I want you to write each one of these down, and I want you to make sure that each one is playing well with the other. If you have a marketing campaign that is not an extension of your messaging, then something’s wrong. If you have messaging that is not an extension of communicating well, what you deliver in your programs or your.
[00:20:29] you’re gonna have trouble selling it. If your programs and your offers are just like a shot in the dark, cuz somebody told you you should, I don’t know, launch a certification program or whatever it is, and they haven’t truly been engineered as part of an overall business design ecosystem that’s gonna get you what you want in your life.
[00:20:46] You’re not gonna be very happy. Even if you make a million dollars, well maybe you’ll be happier for a little bit. . But again, where did that time go? The one thing that we really, really, really can’t buy is reversal of time. And so time in my [00:21:00] opinion is more valuable than all the money you can pay me, and I think that’s probably the same for you.
[00:21:07] So with that being said, all of these 10 business foundations have to fit together like a perfect puzzle to build. The ultimate million dollar online service consulting or coaching business. Can we build it other ways? Sure. But if one of the foundations isn’t well considered and strategically planned to fit well with the other one.
[00:21:33] If you haven’t really given yourself permission to unpack what you’ve done and what you wanna do and what you wanna be known for, if you’re to that place where you are designing the next level of your business, the next ecosystem of offers. That next level of who you wanna be in your space and to yourself and to your family, and to the world, then now is the time to stop and do that.
[00:21:59] I wanna [00:22:00] encourage you to do that because when these 10 business foundations are engineered to play well together, and they all are a function of the overall creation of a profitable, thriving, purpose-driven online business. I promise you, then you are finally going to be able to get exactly what you wanted when you first launched this baby.
[00:22:23] Okay? And this is how we do it, and I’m so excited to be able to unpack this for you guys. So if you found this podcast helpful, please share it. I decided to, like, again, I, this is what I’ve been coaching. Clients privately on for over a decade, and I felt like it was really time to bring this out here into the podcast to share it with you.
[00:22:43] If you’re at this place and you’re ready for next level business strategy and consulting, you can apply to work with us. You can go over to sweetlifeco.com, or you can visit the show notes for this episode by visiting sweetlifeco.com, clicking on the podcast, and this is episode number [00:23:00] 268. Or you can just very simply, Text the word apply to the number 8 0 5 2 5 4 0 8 8 0 and we’ll send you over an application and jump on the phone with you and chat a little bit more about this.
[00:23:17] Regardless of what you do with this, the awareness of the 10 business foundations should hopefully, Give you an opportunity to now assess where you are and make sure each one of the bricks lays well together so we can build your house up instead of spreading new thing. I hope this was helpful. Thanks again for tuning into the show and I’ll talk to you next.