11 Steps To A Million Dollar Consultancy In 14 Months

One funnel away.

Instant riches.

Nice claims.

When the success story is told they miss the bit where someone struggled against the odds.

In that time they accumulated the skills, knowledge, experience and reputation to enable the success to look 'overnight'.

For me it was the best part of 6 years.

Dabbling with websites, working for other people, taking any client, making money in fits and starts but never achieving momentum.

The biggest problem with the overnight promises is they attract people who don't have a base.

Of those who haven't taken the first step towards mastery, let alone on the long, long road towards it.

If you're one of them, this is your hopping off point.

Go and get some skills. Get good at something. Anything.

Then come back to these steps and all will unfold :)

If you've built up said skills, experience and reputation, the sequence you take your next steps is important.

As temping as it is to chase after clients and fame tomorrow, theres some foundational steps you need to take if you're going to make it to the elusive 7 figures while keeping your sanity and reputation intact.

They say your first million is the hardest and they're right.

When I repeated these steps in my second agency we hit a million faster.

These are the steps I learned:

1. Choose one client. One problem. One common goal. Look inside your client base and choose the one who's your ideal. The one you know you can help and would quite happily hang with outside business. I choose small ecommerce businesses who had their own product lines.

2. Put your clients in a community. The hopes, dreams, problems and experience of your clients are largely the same. When clients can share knowledge among themselves it creates a compound effect. More knowledge AND more significance through sharing. The transparency also creates huge transparency and accountability for you.

3. Package your knowledge. I moved from emailing back and forth to Google Drive docs to e-learning with videos. Making your knowledge available to your clients 24/7 empowers them and massively reduces their reliance on your for all the answers. This cut my client service time by 90% AND they got better results.

4. Brand your IP. When you have a framework you are seen as more credible. You move up in status from practitioner to expert. Put your cores ideas in a framework. Name it. Graphically represent it. I created Ecommerce Engine.

5. Define your sales process. I moved to 45 minute calls. No matter where a prospect came from, referral, cold outreach, marketing, they would go through the same process. Qualification that you can truly help AND they are a personality fit is crucial.

6. Increase your NO's. When you transition to a leveraged model you will still have opportunities from the 'old' generalist you. Say no to them. If you get stuck between two models it will drown you. I said yes to too many old opportunities while I was building the new ones for purely financial reasons and it almost drowned me. Say no more than yes.

7. Share your best stuff. I started making videos and sending almost daily emails with my best ideas and strategies in them. Most people don't know how to get results with them or don't have time. They are your customers. I have over 20k on an email list and 1156 Live videos. Those are huge assets.

8. Refine, don't revolutionise. Once you see some success there will be temptation to add more products or start a new business. Don't. You've only got V1 of your product. Constantly improve it. My first product went through 14 iterations and improvements. Make it better and both new and existing clients will benefit.

9. Become A Master. You will have plenty of time on your hands. Study. Invest. Learn. Machines benefit from sharpening and improving. Dont feel guilty that you spent the whole morning reading a great book.

10. Reinvest. Don't be greedy. You will have new found cash. The temptation is to spend it. Don't. Build better systems and team that free you up from the delivery and keep you in your zone of genius.

11. Sharpen the saw. Your next roadblock isn't strategic, it's internal. Your mindset, body and relationships need more attention and care than your business. Neglect these and all the money in the world wont save you.

If you don't embrace the process and deploy patience ALL of that is too hard.

Overnight success?

It won't happen overnight, but it will happen if you take the right steps.