The Business Model Behind My 6 Figure Months [Ep 19]

Welcome to the Thriving therapyneur podcast. The show for ambitious therapists who are ready to unapologetically make more money, scale their impact and build their dream coaching business. I'm Carly Hill, therapist turned coach turned CEO of a seven figure online business. I created the Thriving Therapeutics podcast because I'm obsessed with helping big hearted therapists outgrow the office and build successful and sustainable online businesses. So if you are wondering how you can continue to make an impact without sacrificing the life you love, welcome therapreneur. This is exactly the place for you. Think of it like the business school we never had. I am so excited to dive in with you. Let's get started. Hi friends. Welcome back to another episode of the Thriving Therapeneur podcast where we dive into strategies and stories behind successful therapeneurship. That's what I like to call it. Therapists, entrepreneurs. I'm your host, Carly Hill and today I'm excited to share some personal insights on the business model that has consistently delivered six figure months for my coaching practice. So from a bird's eye view, I'm going to pull back the curtains and give you an overview of this model, of this system, of this business, step by step to help you eventually get to the place of six figure months, if this is a desire of yours. So whether you're an aspiring coach or a seasoned entrepreneur, this episode is going to be packed with actionable advice that can transform your business approach. If we can just change the system, we can make tweaks in the model that you're using. It can really make or break and differentiate your income level between 5 to 50k months, 10 to 20k months. Like we can take massive leaps here when we change the system and the model that we're using. So before we dive in, I just wanted to quickly say thank you from the bottom of my heart. I was just laying on the couch reading all of the reviews that you guys have given me on this podcast and you guys motivated me so much, I literally got my ass off the couch and came and sat here at the desk to record this episode for you guys. And it made me emotional. Reading through these reviews, I think sometimes I don't even realize the capacity of the lives that I'm impacting. Um, I remember when I was first switching from therapist and coach and healer to full time business coach, I felt guilty. I actually went to therapy for this and I told her that I felt guilty that I was almost not doing this here healing work. And I use the word healing because, yes, I'm a therapist, but I was doing a lot of Reiki at the time. I was doing a lot of hypnosis and energy healing, tarot readings, neuro linguistic programming. Like, I had created my own proprietary process to get people really fast results, and my clients were giving me awesome feedback. And I just felt like I was really in the groove of the healing work that I was doing. And I was implementing these said business models that I'm gonna go over. I was creating courses, and I was leveraging my time, and I. It was at the point where I actually had flexibility and freedom, and that's where I got the itch to teach this to other therapists. I was like, this is it, y'. All. This is how we can have this freedom. But when I moved away from this healing work, again, I felt guilty. And she said to me, she was like, you know, we did this meditation. She was like, carly, close your eyes. And she's like, do you recognize the capacity of this ripple effect that you were having on so many therapists who are impacting so many more lives than they would ever be able to do, and helping them make more money unapologetically and have more freedom and have more flexibility, like this? Ultimate win, win. And I was just moved to tears because I don't think I realized. And I think sometimes I get so caught up in. In teaching this. This work is very close to my heart. This was my own lived experience. And if you can't tell, I pour my heart and soul into this work. And so it feels good to have the recognition and read the reviews, is what I want to say. So don't be shy. If you're listening to this podcast and it has moved you or you've gotten a gold nugget, feel free to leave me a review. All right, so let's dive into the business model behind these six figure months. How the hell, Carly, do you make six figure months? I remember when I first made my first six figure month. This was back in June of 2023, and I was in the Bahamas for July 4th. I usually do that every year. And I forwarded an email from my Stripe Income. That's my credit card processor. And it was like, you just received a payout of. I don't know, it was like a hundred. Over a hundred grand. And I send it to my husband, and I was like, babe, we did it. Dot, dot, dot. Like, I'm almost like, I'm struck for words right now. Like, just bringing myself back to that moment. Like, it was eye opening. To say the least. And I was like, damn. Like, I did it. Like, if I can do this, like, I can do it again. Like, I have really. I've nailed this down. And since then, you know, I've been, I've moved on to make double that in a month. I've made multiple 200k months, which is insane because my first job out of college, like, I was making 18 an hour with a master's degree. When I was licensed at my 9 to 5 therapy job, I was making 50 grand. I lost that job and I was making, what is it, like 30 a session on BetterHelp when I frantically moved on to get a job with them because I was like, oh my God, I'm going to be like, homeless. I don't have a job that only lasted like two months. But the point of me saying all of this is like, I understand that this can seem really far out of reach for you, and I too have been there. But I am proof that this is possible. My clients are proof that this is possible. And if you follow this system, you follow this method, this business model, you will see that this is absolutely possible for you. And even if it's not a six figure month, okay, let's chop it in half. Wouldn't it be bombed to make 50k months? Like hell yeah. Right? So whatever you can conceptualize and get behind, pick a number that scares you and let's make that your monthly revenue goal. And then we can reverse engineer from there. So let's talk about this business model. How does this work, Carly? Okay, there's three components. So this is a hybrid model. And the first component is your recorded course. Okay, so this is just PowerPoint slides, a recording of you teaching it, whether you're on camera, whether you're off camera, whether these are 5 minute trainings, they're 15 minute trainings, they're 45 minute trainings. Whether there's PDFs to go with them or not, like whether they're pretty or they're just black and white, it does not matter. So do not get caught up in the nuances of all of those things. I mean, I do guide my clients through all of these questions, but stay with me. Just know that the first part of the this hybrid model, number one, is having a recorded course. This is going to be an asset in your business that's going to help you reduce your hours. This is how I can be on vacation in the Bahamas and my clients can still be learning from me. Let me know if you've ever been sick of repeating yourself. Like, if you have all the same ideal clients and you're like, wow, I wish I could have just recorded my session yesterday and what I said to them yesterday and have them listen to that. So when you're doing a lot of psychoeducation in your sessions, you can easily leverage your time technology and you can turn that into a training. All right, so how can we work smarter here, not harder? Having a recorded course, which again, is just you teaching psychoeducational components. It's almost like you're a teacher. The second component is coaching calls. So usually this looks like Q and A coaching calls, where your clients would come in a group setting. Okay, so we need to move out of the one to one model into the group model. So out of one to one into the one to many. This is also how we're going to leverage our time. This is also what I like to call osmosis learning. So clients learn from each other. They learn from each other's experiences and questions. It creates this really rich interactive learning environment. They're going to future pace each other, they're going to bring each other back to the basics, because everybody's going to be at all different spots. And we're going to talk about that here in a second because we're going to talk about the difference between open enrollment and cohort. But I'm going to save that for a minute because I want to come back here to talk about the Q and A calls. Okay? So you can have one to two Q&A calls a week. Maybe when your group is really small, you just start with one, right? And then your group is growing and maybe you need to add a second Q and A call. But regardless, this is going to be one to two hours of your week where you're answering questions about what your clients are learning inside your recorded course. They get stuck, they have homework, they hit a roadblock, they have a challenge. They need to work through something in lifetime, and they're going to come bring it up on the coaching call and they're going to ask you a question. So some of your clients may not even have questions, but they're going to show up to the coaching call and they're going to learn so much just from the other clients asking questions or person who is in week two of the program versus person who's in month two of the program. This is where I was saying they can either future pace each other or they can bring each other back to the basics. Because month two person in the program is going to ask much more powerful questions than person in week two. But week two may bring them back to the basics and have some good friendly reminders. So this is where the osmosis learning comes in. Okay, so so far, record it course, just PowerPoint slides, recording of you teaching it. Don't get caught up on the nuances. And then you have Q and A group coaching calls and know that you don't have to go straight into group. Like you can start off with one to one clients and you can easily move them into group. A lot of my clients do this, but also at the same time. Usually my clients are seasoned therapists. They have a very successful private practice oftentimes and they're sick of one to ones. So they would like to move into group as soon as possible. However, when you're first launching your coaching business, sometimes the clients don't come in all at once. And so naturally you would have a one to one client. But set the expectations that as soon as person two or three comes in that it would be a group. Okay, so there's many different ways that this could play out. But if you do want to start one to one and then move into group, that's completely fine. All right, moving on to number three which is some type of at IT support. So this can look differently for different coaches. I recommend a private Facebook group just because it's easy. The clients love it. They're in a hub of people on the same exact journey as them. They can post their questions in between the coaching calls. And it's also great for organization like you can post all of your replay calls inside this group. Everybody can post their wins inside of this group. You can post friendly reminders. But oftentimes coaches do voice memo support. So they do voxer support. Maybe they just have email support. Maybe they want to use a different platform. They don't like Facebook, but maybe it functions similar to Facebook. So there's platforms such as Circle Market, Mighty Network Tribe. These all function very similar to how a Facebook group would function. Okay, so many different options here, but some type of adit support. And these are the three components. This is what the top 1% of coaches are using is this hybrid business model where you're leveraging your time, you're tapping into the one to many model and you're providing a high level scalable support. And clients love it. It's interactive, it's this beautiful rich learning environment and you don't have to sacrifice your freedom for this. We also, when we think about systems, you're like well, where does my course live? It needs a home. How are clients going to get their logins? The very first time I created a course, it lived in Google Drive for free and I legit emailed it to my clients. Okay, so if you've been hanging around along me long enough, you know I'm a huge fan of not overcomplicating things. Oftentimes we can, it's just a little simple thing that we need to do to move the needle forward. This is why I always revert back to the 8020 rule too. Like we're 80% sure and then we move the F on. So if it's too complicated to figure out, like let's just go with the very simple step. Okay, so how do you record your course? Like people get caught up on this too. And you could open up a zoom session with yourself and you could hit the record button and you could download it. Then you could put that into a Google Drive and you could email it to your clients. Now this is kind of like a janky way to do it, but I kid you not. Like when I was first learning I did this and guess what, it worked. I was getting thousand dollars clients and this is how I was running the show because I didn't want to overcomplicate it. There is systems that you can use where they can have a login. I would say teachable is the most affordable and I could list off a laundry list of other platforms. So if you are truly stuck on this, like send me or my team a message and I got you covered. I've probably used every single platform that's out there. But there's free ways to do it, there's affordable ways to do it, there's ways to do it when you want to have like a one stop shop, which is what I have now. Like I have a platform I pay $200 a month for and I host my course on it. I do my email marketing, it has my calendar, it hosts my website, it has all my automations that I already say email marketing. Like it literally does anything and everything that I want it to do. Okay, this is a CRM system, a customer relationship management system. But this isn't always necessary at the beginning because the CRM system doesn't really equal paying clients, it just equals organization. So somehow some way record yourself and then get it to your clients whether they have a login and it's fancy or not. It's, it doesn't really matter as long as you're helping them get the transformation. Also the very first time that you're doing this, this is your founding members round. This is your beta round, and they're getting it at 50% off in exchange for feedback. So you have time to figure out all of these kinks. But let's just nail your messaging down. Let's just get proof of concept. Let's just get people into your program. Let's just get some testimonials and. And then we can figure out all of these tedious, nuanced details later. And when you need direction, I got you covered. All right, let's talk about open enrollment and cohort. Cause I was kind of hinting at this earlier, so maybe you've heard these words before in the coaching space. Maybe not. But cohort is open, close, open, close. So it's open cart, close, cart. It's usually like, every three months. Let's say if that's how long your program is, then you're usually live launching every single three months. So if you want 10 people in your program and you're launching and then cart closes then. And you only get five people, you gotta wait another three months until you launch again, until your cart opens again to get 10 more people. So this business model has its cons. One, you're constantly live launching, which is annoying as hell, honestly. It's a lot of hard work. It's annoying. And it's not good for business because you're gonna have a wait list where the impulse isn't gonna be there. Like, they're gonna go find another coach, or suddenly all of their problems are gonna magically disappear. You know, sometimes when you get, like, a call for therapy and it's so urgent, and they leave you a voicemail, and then the weekend rolls around, and you call them on Monday, and all of a sudden, they don't need help anymore. Okay? The impulse isn't gonna be there, or they're gonna go find another coach. You're going to constantly have to launch. So if your program is three months, it's like, all right, you're month one in your program, and now you have to start preparing for your next launch again. It's a lot of work, okay? And it defeats the purpose of the osmosis learning, where everybody's going to learn from each other. So this brings me to open enrollment. So open enrollment is. Client can come in at any time. So you never have a wait list. This is what I use. This is what I recommend. So you can take clients throughout the whole entire year. You never have to worry about live launching. So people like live launching. And live launching does work because Sales Psychology 101 is urgency and scarcity. Hurry up, get in now. Card is closing. It's ending. Only one day left. Okay, only two spots left and then you get in. Not available until three more months or six more months if you only lost launch twice a year. But you can still use urgency and scarcity and you can still have visibility and launch strategies without having to only rely on live launching when you're doing open enrollment. And trust me on this, because this is exactly what I do myself. And I enroll clients every single month, every single week, every single day. Okay? And I don't do cohort. Another thing I see often is coaches wanting to create new programs all the time. And they're spending a lot of time creating new stuff and this fuels their entrepreneurial mind and they're like go, go, go all of the time. And this fuels their creative energy. But their bank account is not reflective of all of their hard work. So when we analyze our time allocation, it's easy to see that focusing on one offer just one, this is the power of one. That's what I like to call it is key to success. So every single therapist who can teach something of value, they can package their expertise into a high ticket program and they can hop on two group coaching calls a week. You can. And a lot of therapists, they don't start their coaching business or they poo poo on the thought of creating an online course because they think they're going to be stuck building content for the rest of their lives. But this is not the truth. They think they have to create like this new course every single month or create new social media content every single day for God knows how long. So yes, you want to stay top of mind with your social media content, but. But you can absolutely repurpose your content and there's systems to set up where it can make it a lot easier so you're not constantly creating, creating, creating, creating. The thought of that gives me a headache too. It sounds horrible. Actually, it's the exact opposite of what I teach. So again, like many therapists think that this model of creating more will help them reach their goals. And we live in this society that teaches us that more is better. Someone once told me that the magic is in the subtraction, not the addition. And I so wish I could remember who told me that because it absolutely changed my life. At the time of hearing that I was in that more more mentality, I was chasing after every single idea that popped into my Head spreading myself thin and left without a sustainable profit in the end. And it's really common. So when you're in this more mentality and you go off and you create courses in all the areas of your expertise, it seems like you're doing the right thing. You have something for everyone. You're in that constant creation. You love that it's ambitious. It feels like you're doing a lot of stuff. So in theory it seems good, but in reality it's the perfect recipe for burnout. It looks like hustling with no reward. Plus it creates confusion and overwhelm for your audience, your buyers. There's too many choices, confused buyers don't buy. So your coaching service suite, your offer suite, it should not be comparable to a Chinese menu. So you don't have to constantly create new stuff, you don't have to constantly relaunch a new course. No, it's exhausting, it's annoying. Okay, so the power of one. This means one niche, one offer, one funnel. That's it, just one. And you can repackage this one program over and over and over again in many different ways. That's exactly what I did. I made a million dollars off of one program. And when you can just focus all of your energy on one and you can do it really well, this is how the magic of subtraction works. And then later down the road, yes, you could have a backend offer, AKA like a graduate offer or you could have a mini course, but I wouldn't start there. Let's get your one high ticket offer up and running like a well oiled machine. Because there's an order of operations that should be followed. And now is the time to tap in. I will tell you that the coaching industry is a 20 billion industry. And according to Global Market Insights, the E Learning projection is 1 trillion by 2028. That is insane. Okay, so this is not going anywhere. The coaching industry, the elearning industry, it is only rising. The rise of the digital economy is here to stay and it has been growing exponentially. The time to get in is now. It is not too late for you. Yes, it's saturated, but it's saturated because there is a need. There is a market need. It's saturated for a reason. And just because the market is crowded doesn't mean that you can't succeed. The biggest determinant of your success is not the market, it's you. It's literally you. So your time to dominate and take over is now. Like we are in gold mine times. I promise you I see it. So let's talk numbers for a second. This is fun. I've always hated numbers. I really don't like math. I'm not good at math, but I'm good at money. So let's talk about numbers. Understanding the true value of high ticket is really key to unlocking your financial dreams. And we're talking about six figure months here. Okay, so again, maybe it's not six figure months like we talked about at the beginning of the episode, but whatever you your revenue goal is per month, these are your financial dreams. And selling high ticket is how you can transform your own life while simultaneously transforming others lives. It's a win win. So high ticket is the best ticket and low ticket or trading dollars for hours is old news in my opinion. So what exactly is high ticket? So high ticket usually starts at $2,000 and sky is the limit. I have seen plenty of coaching programs and courses that go from 15, 20, 50k even higher. Low ticket is usually 500 or less. So let's start with your revenue goal. I would say the vast majority of online coaches make less than six figures a year. And so while you may be very comfortable generating 8 to 10k months and that is probably where you'll start, it's definitely where you'll start. I'd like to future pace you to bigger and better revenue goals to show you what's possible. So let's start with the revenue goal of 500k, half a million. And I know that might seem crazy to you right now, but stick with me, we like to dream big around here. So 500k a year means that you need to be making roughly 40k a month. So reaching 40k a month with back to back one to one sessions is nearly impossible unless you are charging high prices, which you definitely can. But regardless, you'd still be trading dollars for hours. So I'd say the average going rate for one to one sessions is approximately 150 bucks. So if you saw eight one to one sessions five days a week at 150 bucks, you'd still only be at $24,000 a month. Plus I'd imagine you'd be extremely exhausted. Perhaps this is already a life that you're living and if it is, I hope it's not for too long. So instead, how about if we decided to package your knowledge into a course, leverage your time and you priced it at $497. Sounds fair, right? That's usually where people think about, oh, I'm going to do a mini course and I'm going to price it up, you know, 1 97. 4 97. How many people do you think that you need to sell into your course at 497 in order to make 40k months? It's 80 people. 8. 0. That's a lot of people. Selling 80 people into your course every single month is incredibly hard. You would have to have a massive following to do this successfully. Studies show that standard conversion rates are 3%, which would mean that you have to get this 497 offer in front of almost 3,000 people. And let's say even if you have 3,000 followers on Instagram or in a Facebook group, doesn't really matter. All of them. Okay? Not everyone is going to see your offer. Usually only hundreds would see it and then only 3% of those hundreds would convert. So this model works well for people who have really big followings, but not for the masses. So instead, how about we decide to package your expertise into a high end, high touch, transformational and supportive program and let's sell it at $5,000 instead. How many clients do you think you need to hit to hit half a million a year? With $5,000? It's eight. So that's two new clients per week. That's it. Two new clients a week. I think you could handle that, especially when you're following a proven lead generation strategy to call in those perfect fit clients. Now most coaches won't tell you that two high ticket clients a week are actually pretty hard to get when you're first starting off because you don't have your system in place. They're gonna trickle in at all different times, to be quite honest. But once you do have a well oiled machine and you're getting booked calls in your sleep and, and you have proof of concept and you have testimonials and you have a marketing plan and your messaging is bomb com. Getting two high ticket clients a week is very doable. These are the numbers that make sense. And then I want you to dream bigger and even double this. So if you could get 16 new clients per month, you could be a millionaire in one year. So at this point you might be like, all right Carly, this sounds freaking great, but who's gonna pay for this? Who's gonna pay me $5,000 for my signature coaching program when people expect me to be free or covered by their copay or you're thinking about your friends and well, they wouldn't pay for this. So let me tell you a quick story, okay? There was once a flea in a jar experiment where researchers placed Fleas in a jar, and there was no lid. And then the fleas jumped out. Then they placed the fleas in a jar with a lid. So the fleas jumped and they hit the lid over and over and over again. But then the researchers removed the lid, and guess what happened? The fleas only jumped as high as if the lid was still on. They were conditioned by an invisible ceiling. So I need you to ask yourself, seriously, ask yourself right now, am I putting an invisible ceiling on my income? You might be. This might just be a mindset shift. And that's why I'm crunching these numbers for you. Because I want to show you what's possible. We do not have to have a ceiling on our income. Sky is the freaking limit. Sky with a money sign. Sky, I want you to think about this question. How much do you charge? What you do is priceless. You can't even put a price tag on it. So you can absolutely sell high ticket. Your fee has nothing to do with what you think you're worth. You're putting a price tag on it because we have a life to live and we live in this 3D world. But you're quite literally transforming someone's life. It has nothing to do with your experience or how many certifications you have. You do good work, and I know you know that. And you have to own it. It has nothing to do with how long you've been a therapist. It has nothing to do with giving back. Like, you can give back, but you have to come first. So we need to do the math. We need to reverse engineer, and we need to shift our mindset. That way you can hit these revenue goals that you decided at the beginning of this episode. And P.S. there's 7 billion people in this world. Somebody is waking up every single morning ready to pay you eagerly. They're ready to pay you, I promise. I put on my vision board. It's actually still here. I always look to my left. Cause that's where my vision board is. I printed off something that said, sign me up. And it's like a cartoon and it's holding a wad of cash. And I just taped it on there. And that was the indication to me that it was easy for people to say yes. Like, I was manifesting them being like, yes, Carly, sign me up. This is exactly what I've been looking for. Like, where have you been my whole life? Thank you for doing this. Yes, sign me up. So let that be your reality, too. Let it be easy for people to pay. You believe that there is Somebody out there waiting, wishing and praying for you right now that would love for you to help them transform their lives in whatever way that is. Because you know you can do it and you do good work and you own that and you're worth it. So it's not just about the strategy, the systems, the method, the business model. It's also about your mindset and being in alignment and integrity with your values, what you're offering and having this energy come forth through you and letting people see that, letting them see your excitement and letting you shine. This is how you're going to attract those ideal clients into your world. So let's recap because we want to start simple and this is just an explanation of the business model. So we have these three components. The hybrid model, we have our recorded course, we have group coaching calls which are just Q and A and then we have some type of ad at support. We don't get caught up in the nuances of the tedious little systems and where the course is going to live. That can be figured out later. And you have the right mindset that you can charge high ticket and you can make a million dollars off of one program, one in all caps. The power of one. We learned also that open enrollment can be much more powerful than cohort and we talked about the pros and cons of that. So I hope this episode was helpful, eye opening to you. I wanna thank you again for tuning into the Thriving therapyneur podcast. I want you to remember that the path to success is about progress, not perfection. So keep pushing forward, keep refining your strategy, keep learning, keep investing and I'll be here to guide you every single step of the way. My love is with you and I'll see you in the next episode. Thank you so much for listening to the Thriving therapyneur podcast. I hope that this episode has inspired you to reduce burnout, work smarter and see the freedom potential you have as a therapist. We would love to have you inside the Therapist to Coach Accelerator Facebook group where we have live trainings and cheat sheets on all things marketing, sales and adding coaching ethically and legally. I am here cheering you on and I'll see you around. Sam.