There’s an order to everything. That includes building a 6-figure or 7-figure coaching or service business. But I found that out the hard way. 

When I started my business, I set my goal to make 6 figures. That sounds totally normal, right? Aren’t we supposed to set financial goals for our business? 

Certainly. But my problem was that I started listening to all of these “gurus” out there who already had six-figure businesses. They’d tell their audience to outsource this and that, pay for ads, create a course or group coaching program…

But none of that was applicable to me because I was just starting out. So I ended up wasting a bunch of time doing the right things at the wrong time for my stage of business! 

There’s no way I’m letting you make the same mistake. There’s an order to growing a powerful brand and business, and I’m sharing it with you: 

Step 1: Establish Your Personal Brand

Your personal brand is the first step to creating an absolutely magnetic business. A strong, clear personal brand allows you to connect with the right people, functioning a little bit like a business card. It tells people what you’re all about in very few interactions, and allows you to connect with people who have similar interests and goals a lot faster.

A strong personal brand also builds trust. In today’s world of digital relationships and instant gratification, a strong personal brand allows people to feel like they know you better. And when people feel like they know you better, they trust you more quickly, leading to more opportunities.

Finally, a personal brand makes making money easier! And isn’t that what we’re here for?! A personal brand allows you to highlight your strengths and passions and makes very clear what you bring to the table in any situation. 

We spend an entire module on clarifying your personal brand inside Ignite, my business accelerator program. So don’t worry if you don’t get this nailed down in only a few minutes. We’ll definitely be talking a lot more about brand in future blog posts and podcast episodes! 

Step 2: Create a High-Ticket Offer

When I was starting out, I heard a lot of business coaches online talking about creating a course or smaller product as your very first offer.

That is a huge mistake. 

Why? First, you can’t create a course without first testing your methodology on real people. As the expert in your field, you know a lot more than your audience does. Therefore, it’s hard to see the gaps in their knowledge, and really hard to predict their questions and sticking points if you haven’t tested your methods on anyone yet. 

How can you create a course if you don’t know what your audience needs?!

Second, smaller, lower-transformation offerings need a lot of volume to be profitable. And for a lot of people just starting out, they don’t have the audience size or working capital necessary to make that work. There is not a lot of money to run ads, and no organic audience in your niche to market your offer to.

The typical mindset tends to be: “I’m new at this, so nobody is going to pay me thousands of dollars. I’ll sell something lower priced to get the customers in the door.”

That works when you have a larger audience to start with, but the limiting factor becomes the number of people you’re exposed to. Most people simply don’t have the audience size starting out to make an appreciable amount of money with a lower-ticket offer. 

But a high-ticket offer means immediate cash for your business. You only need to sell one spot inside of a high-ticket offer to make a good amount of money, and you get immediate experience, testimonials, and referrals!

Need more convincing? Which of these sounds harder:

• Converting 5 people to a $5,000 offer for a total of $25,000, or
• Converting 250 people to a $100 offer?

To me, the answer is pretty clear. 

Step 3: Create a 7-Figure Marketing and Sales Process

At Coffee Date Media, my marketing agency, we use and teach a process–our unique methodology–called the C*4 Method.

It’s a way to conceptualize your marketing and sales process, and categorize your tools and strategies in the right order so you can tweak the moving parts of your marketing strategy. 

Simply put, C*4 stands for “Capture, Connect, Convince, and Convert. We named it C*4 not only for obvious reasons (each step beginning with the letter C), but also because each step exponentially increases the impact of the prior. And it leads to absolutely explosive results for your business! (ba-dum tsss)

In order to turn a stranger into a customer, you must: 

• Capture their attention, 
• Connect them with your brand;
• Convince them that their problem will be solved; and
• Convert them to a paying customer. 

No matter what marketing tools you use—Facebook Ads, Instagram Reels, LinkedIn posts, Google ads, email campaigns—the C*4 Method explains how your prospects become customers. This is the four-step process that every single customer you have ever had or ever will have goes through before they make their first purchase from you. 

The thing to remember about the C*4 method is that during the marketing process, your customer completes these steps in order. You can learn the full C*4 Method from Coffee Date Media. 

Step 4: Get High-Level Support

Getting the support of a Business Coach is actually a step I recommend at the beginning of your business journey. But it’s especially important right now at this stage of your business.

At this stage of your business, you’re transitioning from the growth phase to the scale phase. 

By this phase of your business journey, you’re tweaking your marketing and sales strategies, you’re learning new sales skills. As you get clients, you’re getting feedback about your offer and you’re improving your methodology. 

Right about now, client service, onboarding, offboarding, and internal process questions start coming up that you probably won’t have the experience to answer. 

It is so valuable to have the support of a coach to help you sort through all of that and keep you moving forward. The right business coach can help you structure your business to scale. 

If you’re at this step, you’re the perfect candidate for my Bizfluencer Mastermind. Check out the details and fill out an application to see if you’re a good fit!

Step 5: Get in the 7-Figure CEO Mindset

What I didn’t realize when I first started my business is that there is a difference between a service provider and a CEO. 

A service provider at the “grow” phase of business is serving clients and testing methodology in real time. They’re probably also performing all client service aspects of the business themselves.

In contrast, a CEO is shifting their mindset to scalability beyond their own capabilities. They’re leveraging systems and talent to create a bigger impact. 

Their job is no longer primarily client service. Instead, a CEO is in charge of things like:

• Business development
• Systems
• The long-term vision for the company
• Delegating tasks and/or outcomes and Quality control (which will eventually be outsourced to a project manager)
• Brand messaging 
• Exemplifying company culture
• Hiring and leading team members
• Becoming a leader in their industry

As a CEO, when you are planning for your business, you are not only thinking of the near future but years to come. 

To do so, you have to rely on your long term business vision. For instance, what kind of services, partnerships, and growth do you want for your business? What is the biggest version of this that I can see for yourself? What kind of impact would you want my business to have if there were no limits?

Long-term thinking will set your business up for long-term growth. This is in contrast to service provider thinking, like last-minute launching when you need a cash injection.

Step 6: Free Up Your Time

When you’re scaling your business and transitioning from service provider to CEO, time quickly becomes an issue. As in, there isn’t enough of it to go around.

So you have to start freeing up your time with outsourcing and automation.

Hiring team members can be a great way to delegate some of the work you no longer need to be doing yourself, but still needs to be performed by a human being. For example, things like social media strategy and management, client support, customer onboarding, web design, copywriting, and more can all be outsourced to external agencies or internal team members. 

There is also plenty of opportunity to use automation to systematize your tasks and eliminate human error altogether. With software automation, there is some initial cost and time to set up the system. But then it runs automatically! This is perfect for things like invoices, email automations, and opt-in delivery. 

Step 7: Expand Your Impact

Even if you free up all of your time as a service provider, there is only so much of an impact you can make on a 1:1 basis. There are only so many hours in the day. You can only have so many high-touch clients, and you will ultimately be capped with how much money you can earn.

This is where we can get into the mindset of “Scaling to Infinity.”

By restructuring your offers and expanding your offer suite, you can serve more people, which means making more impact. The goal is to build out an offer suite that is truly scalable–able to grow indefinitely without additional time input on your part. 

So the question is, how do you take your methodology and package it in a way that gets the same results for clients, but doesn’t require 1:1 access? This is finally the time to introduce group programs and courses! 

By working on these steps in this order, you can focus your attention on the proper projects in your business to grow and scale as quickly as possible. But more importantly, you’ll grow a sustainable business with longevity for years to come. 

Are you already making 6 figures and want to scale your business this year? Check out the Bizfluencer Mastermind! It’s an exclusive mastermind for the businesswoman who is ready to scale from successful six-figure service provider to Legacy CEO. We’re putting #BigBusinessEnergy all over your business and goals… and we’re ready for you to dive in.