I’m a joyful business growth strategist. Coaches and consultants often ask me where their focus should be as they grow their businesses. And a big question—a big concern—of many coaches is how can they get to that magical 10K/month number?
Why 10K a month as an income goal? Well, just do the math—$10,000/month in revenue means $120,000 in revenue per year. If you’re a coach or consultant you’re a small business owner. You know that hitting that 6-figure number means that your business is on track financially and paying you well. (Even after businesses expenses. Even after taxes.)
Lack of aligned and intentional focus when building a coaching or consulting practice results in exhaustion, frustration, and low revenue.
We’ve all been here. If you are currently experiencing any of these symptoms, know this: With just a few strategic tweaks and a bit of clarity, you can turn things around rather quickly.
Getting to 10K months as a coach or consultant is entirely possible. I’ve worked with many online coaches and consultants just like yourself how to achieve this goal in their businesses too.
Making Less than 10K/Month? Do this.
If you are currently making less than $10k/month revenue, then the #1 thing you should be focusing on is getting sales calls on your calendar.
Your aim should be to book about 8 to 10 calls per week and achieve at least a 40% conversion rate. So, on average, you’ll be aiming to book ten calls which will yield 4 new clients.
I know that sounds like a lot of calls. And I know that sounds like the conversion rate of your dreams and not of your reality. But let me show you the way…
Getting to those numbers means that you’ll need to start attracting more ideal clients to you—that’s how you’ll get to 10 discovery calls per week with a 40% conversion rate.
3 problems, 3 solutions: Filling Your Pipeline with Ideal-Fit Clients to Get to 10K months
After working with 1000s of coaches and consultants, I’ve found there’s 3 things that hold most businesses back from attracting their ideal-fit clients.
Problem #1: Vague Messaging and Too-Big Target Audience
Solution: Get radically specific in your messaging and niche down even more than you ever thought possible
Your messaging is the foundation for everything you do.
And if your messaging is not specific, your perfect-fit clients cannot hear you. The marketing messages you are putting into the world simply will not stand out in all the noise.
Here’s a specific example: About a year ago, I began working with a health coach whose main message was about losing weight and “getting healthy.” Both of these messages are non-specific—which health coaches couldn’t say these kinds of things?
We re-positioned her messaging to focus in on what made her business unique and specific: emotional eating, and specifically how understanding what type of emotional eater you are gives you lots of clues as to your overall health and wellness (or lack thereof). She already had this as a core element of her program—she just wasn’t telling anyone about about it in her marketing! This simple shift helped her reach a whole new audience, and she was able to “elevate” the conversation around food and emotions, which is huge for most of us, whether we realize it or not. It resonated in a way that her previous message of “losing weight” and “getting healthy” didn’t.
After this health coach picked up traction with her new messaging, we honed in on her ideal client even more. Instead of just talking to “women,” she niched down further and started to talk to women CEOs who wanted their health to match their wealth. This was a true tipping point in her business—because she saw ears perk up. Client inquiries started flooding in.
The lesson here is that messaging matters.
You cannot spend too much time thinking about and refining your positioning and your messaging. And it’s worth it to hire someone to help you see what you can’t see. There is a power to niching—my proven approach is to niche down so small that you wonder if anyone will be left to serve.
Master your messaging and you will almost immediately increase in the number of people reaching out to work with you.
And then you’ll easily get to 8 discovery calls per week. And those people will be exactly the type of people you serve best, making that 40% conversion rate super-attainable.
Which brings me to the next common problem—maybe you’re just not marketing at all?
Problem #2: Ineffective (or Non-Existent) Marketing Strategy
Solution: Choose a marketing strategy that aligns with your content personality and brings you joy. Avoid shiny objects.
I will pick marketing strategy over marketing tactics every time.
When you have a solid strategy that is specific for your coaching and consulting business and is built upon your strengths, magic happens. Your energy increases. You will experience more joy and flow in your business (and bank account).
You understand how many sales you need to make, and what kind of marketing leads to those sales, and what you should be doing each week, month, and quarter to attract your ideal clients with ease.
The problem I am helping many coaches and consultants correct is that they are trying all kinds of tools/tactics without having a strategy. The newest “craze” emerges and people jump on the bandwagon. These tools and tactics will never work to build you the long-term, sustainable business you are dreaming of. What’s needed is a solid strategy.
However, you need to make sure the business you’re building is the business you want…
Problem #3: Misaligned Business Model
Solution: Redesign your coach or consultant offers so that you want to sign on new clients.
But what if:
- Your messaging is laser specific.
- You’ve niched your audience down super small.
- Your marketing strategy is rooted in your strengths.
And you still don’t have coaching clients beating down your virtual door? And 10K months remain elusive?
If this is your situation, then perhaps you’re in the position of many coaches and consultants who have a business model that is out of alignment with how they want to be spending their time and energy.
When this happens it’s hard for you to sell your service to yourself—let alone others!—because the thought of helping and serving more clients in the way you have been doing up until now just drains you.
I get it. You are not alone.
Here’s a specific example of what it feels like when you’re not hitting 10K months because of the misaligned business model problem: About 10 months ago, a business coach signed on with me for help with her messaging & marketing strategy. When she called me up, she was sobbing. She couldn’t figure out how she was going to build her business to beyond 6 figures without burning out. Nothing felt joyful.
As I began working with her, we realized a few things:
- Her messaging was great.
- Her marketing strategy was brilliant. She knew her ideal clients and where to find them.
The problem? She hated how she was serving her clients!
All of the 1:1 business coaching work she was doing with clients was draining her mental and emotional energy. She didn’t have energy left to joyfully spend with her two boys after her workday had ended. She didn’t want to sign on any more 1:1 coaching clients because she wasn’t enjoying the delivery of the service. She wasn’t hitting 10K months because she was holding herself back out of pure self-preservation.
So, we got to work. We revamped her offers to serve the stage she was at in her business and to align with how she wanted to live her life.
She discerned that what she really wanted was to phase out her 1:1 work and begin hosting more retreats and group programs. Within just a few months, she had implemented the plan in her coaching business. She was way more joyful and had more energy inside and outside of her business. She graduated her 1:1 coaching clients, transitioned all her new coaching clients into a retreat with group coaching model and her revenue skyrocketed. (Well past the 10K/month goalpost, by the way.)
You designed your business and your offers, so you can redesign them too. There are so many business models for you to choose from. And if there is a way you want to be working with your clients, but haven’t figured out how to do that yet, it’s possible, I promise!
My approach is to helping you take the lifestyle you want to be living and then build your business around the things you want to be doing when you are not working.
Now, back to how all of this leads to consistent 10K/month in revenue…
This can’t be done living behind your computer, posting memes and weak engagement questions on your profile. While these are important for other parts of business building, they WILL NOT lead to sales calls and more revenue.
Here’s what many people won’t tell you (especially the guru marketers).
A lot of marketing is trial and error of the above activities until you find the method, messaging, and content that works for you.
Please don’t fall for “proven” systems, paid advertising, cold outreach (aka spamming people in messenger), ChatGPT-powered social media content calendars, magic pills or any of the other stuff that is touted as the solution for growing your business.
Great marketing is all trial and error. Have fun with it. Get creative.
Work with someone who understands organic business growth–the joyful way–and will support you through the normal ups and downs of growing an online business.
Having trouble figuring out which of the problems above are your problems? We can help. We’ve created a business expansion scorecard to help you identify which specific problems you’re facing so that you can get to 10K months… joyfully.
