Transcription
I burned down my million-dollar coaching business, and in this video, I'm going to tell you exactly why I did it, how I'm building back to a million dollars, whilst I'm playing golf. So, to start the story, I have to take you back all the way to 2020.
In 2020, I started my personal brand, Cigaram, and I was giving away all the value—as much value as I could—and I grew the page from 0 to 100,000 followers organically in a space of about 9 months. Now, on the surface, it would look like, you know, I was going to be a millionaire, um, you know, and that every person would want to work with me and pay me thousands to learn from me. The reality was, it was anything but that; it was the complete opposite. I launched a $50 coaching membership, and um, I struggled to get about 20 people in there at any one time, you know. So I was earning, you know, probably around $2,000 per month across that membership, a few other sort of calls, and other things I was doing. I was very much unfulfilled, very unhappy with the result of, you know, this big audience built but not able to monetize it as well as I wanted to. But I knew I could do more.
And so what happened was, in 2021, I launched my first high-ticket coaching program, got my first mentor, and long story short, things took off. Now, across 2021 to then 2023, end of 2023, sort of start of 2024, I'd scaled a business massively. I had, you know, 5 million client wins, um, 1.5 million of sales myself, you know, six team members, um, sales calls every day, a client success coach, you know, you name it—the business was thriving. The business was simple; it was scalable. But there was one thing that it was, and it was stressful. I'm getting out of breath; I'm walking up and down hills, but it was stressful. And that's not why I started my business. I didn't start this business to be stressed, um, you know. I started a business to have freedom, to have flexibility, to enjoy the work I'm doing, and to not be stressed, right? But ultimately, that's what it was. And I got to a turning point in my business where, at the start of 2024, I sat down with a mentor, I sat down with my wife, even traveled to Japan to a mastermind to even have these conversations, and I realized that I couldn't keep building the business in the way I was, and I had to make a change.
Now, to make matters worse in personal life, me and Liv, my wife, we were—had been trying for a baby for about 3 years, and unfortunately, we'd suffered four miscarriages in that time, multiple failed attempts at pregnancy. We were essentially giving up hope, you know; we were really struggling with the idea that actually this might not happen at all, and you know, we felt at a time that the business and the stress of the business—no matter even though, you know, no matter how much we're earning—you know, we felt the stress of the business was playing quite a big role in, you know, our struggles with getting pregnant and maintaining pregnancy. And so, you know, it's a tough decision, but I then decided that, because we're going to be starting the IVF process, to burn the business down.
Now I was left with a bit of a dilemma. I was in a situation where the business was earning a lot of money, you know; we were doing 75k cash months, um, profit margins were good, things were running smoothly, clients were getting results. But like I said, as much as it was simple and it was scalable, it was just barely stressful all the time, you know. And back in, you know, even the start of last year, absolutely no chance I'd be able to do—be doing what I'm doing right now, you know. It's uh, Wednesday afternoon; I've got no calls and the kind—and had no calls today at all, and I spent most of my time just here playing golf. Not a bad shot, you know. Absolutely no chance. And so, for me, you know, I had a decision; I had to make it. It wasn't about money; it wasn't about—it's lost me—it wasn't about money, you know. It wasn't about trying to take over the world, you know. It's simply I wanted to live a life and build a business that fitted around my life. And as the business got bigger, life got better, you know. And for me, the opposite was kind of true: that as the business was getting bigger, my life was getting worse because of how it was structured, you know. And it was a case of I had freedom in many aspects, but I didn't have freedom of mind. And for me, you can have time freedom, you can have location freedom, you can have financial freedom, but if you don't have freedom of mind—and what I mean by that is that if you go to bed and you know the last thing you can think of is your work, and you wake up and the first thing you think of is work, and you can never switch off, and you feel guilty when you're not working—then how are you free? You know, even if you have the other freedoms, you're not free at all. And that's kind of where I found myself. And so it had to make a big change.
Um, and so at the start of 2024, or around March 2024—so pretty much a year ago now—I fired my team members. I went from a team of six all the way down to a team of two. I now only have a team of one. I closed off my calendar, stopped taking sales calls completely, um, you know, I kind of refined and restructured my coaching process, so I was doing less calls, less kind of intense one-to-one stuff. And I also made a very big decision to say I'm only going to sign clients who come to me, right? I'm going to stop chasing people; I'm going to stop DMing, stop doing outbound DMs, and I only work with people who actively reached out to me first. Now, the reality of doing this, you know, and doing it suddenly, is that my business more than halved in size in terms of income practically overnight, you know. But like I said, that's something that I was willing to do, you know, um, and obviously now I'm very, very happy I've done that. And so March 2024, that kind of started then the journey to building a business to the point where it is now, where I can go out and do stuff like this and still make money, right? Um, just quickly look at this shot. I am there; the pin is there; I just came from up there. Now I'm a fairly new golfer, so for any pro golfers who are watching, you're probably thinking, "Ah, crap shot," but for me, that's a really good shot; I'm happy with it. Um, but anyway, so I had to change a lot of things. And so essentially, you know, this is not going to be a very long video; it's more a video to say that I was struggling to scale my business, you know, and I realized at the start of 2024 that I'd hit a barrier with my business, and it wasn't to do with strategy, you know. It wasn't to do with the sales strategy; it wasn't to do with my skills or my tactics; it wasn't to do with the pricing or the offers or the funnel, you know, all the usual things that people say that's, you know, what you need to fix. It was—it was nothing to do with that because I spent the best part of that previous year stuck really at a plateau and trying to scale beyond it. And once I really dug deep and—and kind of a little bit of inner work to be honest, um, which I hate saying that stuff; it's a bit—bit wishy-washy—but a bit of inner work, and I realized that the reason I wasn't scaling for a very, very simple reason that most people overlook, and it's the fact that I was trying to scale someone else's vision. I was trying to scale someone else's business. And ultimately, the business that I was trying to scale—consciously, I—I wanted to scale it because consciously that's what I believed I wanted to scale; that's what I was marketed to and sold to and believed that that's how you need to be building a coaching business in that way—but subconsciously, deep down, I didn't want to scale it. I didn't want to be taking more sales calls; I didn't want to be coaching more clients; I didn't want to have more stress and anxiety; I didn't want to be doing more of these things that fundamentally I did not enjoy and were ruining my quality of life. And so what did it mean? It meant that, without even realizing it, I was sabotaging my growth. I would—I would then be spending time on activities that wouldn't be growing the business—rebranding content when it didn't need to be rebranded, you know, working on messaging to the point where I was spending hours doom-scrolling and trying to find ideas, looking into my funnels and sales process, trying to find the small 1% details that would make a difference. And ultimately, that was just a form of procrastination that happened because subconsciously my brain was doing everything it could to stop me from moving towards this pain, towards this danger, essentially, that it knew that subconsciously I was aware of, but consciously I wasn't aware of.
And so, yeah, like I said, this video is—there's—there's no tactics; there's nothing else for me to say here, you know. I'm not going to tell you exactly how to go and build the business that I now have, you know. I'm very, very fortunate now. It's been a situation where one offer sells through—sells through DMs only—only to clients who reach out to me; no outbound, no hard selling, no convincing, um, amazing clients, self-led clients, self-motivated clients who get wins on their own who don't, you know, nag me every day and ask me questions all the time, as much as they're allowed to. It's a—you know, it's a world—a complete world away from where I was. Um, and like I said, the actual strategy behind that—that's a video for another day. This video is more to say: if you're stuck, and you—you're not—you're not growing, just pause and just have a think: Is it really the strategy? Is it really the tactic? Is that really what you need to fix? And yeah, for some of you, obviously, of course it is. Or is it that you're trying to scale a vision and a version of a business that ultimately you don't actually want—that you only have been trying to grow that because that's what your coach told you to do, or that's what—you know—successful million-dollar coaches have been doing? Ask yourself that question; sit down with it for as long as you need to. And when you're ready and you understand—actually, you don't want to try and take over the world; you don't want to have a gazillion clients; you just want to have 50, 60 clients per year who help you make a million dollars a year where you're having fun, you have freedom, you have profit, simplicity, fulfillment, passion in your work—when you realize that that's the type of coaching business you want to build, then that's a sign that I'm the coach for you. I can help you make the money; I can help you get the clients; I can help you scale like crazy because I've done it before. And if you want that, I can still help you. But if you also want the alternative, if you want to have the best of both—to synthesize the best of both—and that's the key word I use now: "symphysis"—in what works on both sides of the equation—the broad-scale way, the basic-scale way—if you want the best of both and to synthesize that into a system that works for you and a system that is designed by you and made for you, not just built for a launch but built for life, then that's when you know that I am perhaps the person to help you to do it. So yeah, little self-plug there, um, but that's it for today's video. Just want to give a bit of an insight into my journey, what's happened so far, and obviously what's ahead—scaling now to getting back to that 1 million per year run rate—um, but doing it in a peaceful, enjoyable way where I can play golf every week, build my Lego, play with my son, enjoy time with my wife, and finally not feel—not feel guilty when I'm doing that. So yeah, what—a reminder more than—is a lesson. I hope you found this at least insightful and thought-provoking. Uh, feel free to drop in the comments your thoughts and kind of where you're at with your business. If I can help at all, uh, there's a link down below with a video that explains a bit more about my system and how it works. Um, ultimately, that's it. I'm back to play some golf, hit some shots, hit some—hope some—some good ones as well, and uh, I'll see you in the next one.