How I transitioned from 1:1 work to online courses… #AskSunny

Time for another #Ask Sunny and this is such a good question! I get asked a lot how I’ve been able to pivot and shift my business model. So if you’re at a place where you hate your business, this video could very well be the thing that you need to hear. I’m going to get really in detail.

So I’m going to get into the question from Megan and she submitted it via our Secret Group, which is this family for you, for my community and it’s amazing. I hope that you join it!

Here’s Megan’s question: “Hi Sunny. So my question is, I believe prior to having your online programs, you were a consultant. I feel like that’s what you’ve said before. So my question is, was it a very clear switch, ending that business and starting the business that you have today with your online programs, or was it more of a slower transition from one to the next? And if it was a slower transition, how did you balance, essentially, running two businesses at once before stopping consulting period and just doing your programs?”

Such a great question and a very common question, and I can see how it can look very overwhelming from the outside. And I wanted to get into the details of exactly how I did this. So I was actually a consultant. I had an agency and I was a social media and marketing manager. I did it all for a long time. And I talked about that in depth in this video and how I’ve really adopted a more minimal approach in how I set up my business. And now this is the nitty gritty of how I executed on it. And I wanted to share this with you because I just created a brand new workbook. And it’s basically on how to take your experience, whatever that may be and turn it into a business model that is more scalable in terms of a six figure, seven figure online course, and it really walks you through it.

So let’s get into this. First and foremost, because I used to do a lot of one-on-one work, whether that was for companies or for individual clients, it oftentimes looked like one client equals one hour of my time. And you know that there are only so many hours in a day, in a week, in a month, in a year. So I was really capped out. And at this point when I was working individually with clients, I didn’t want to have a team. I really was happy to just be solo, but it was also really silly because I was constantly exhausted doing this. And I really couldn’t grow my business past a certain point. I was good at what I did. So I was getting a lot of word of mouth and new clients coming through the door. But at a certain point, I just had to start saying no to people because I just did not have the time.

Whereas now, my business model works like this. I have course, and I’m able to reach and impact thousands of people at once. And that has allowed me to separate my time from the impact and the results that I’m creating. I am creating even more transformational results now than I was when I was working one-on-one with clients because I was exhausted. My brain was exhausted. My clients had to wait on me all the time to get an answer and to get what they needed from me. And I had to manage my schedule, do all of the admin to try and make sure that I was appeasing all of my clients as well. That’s really the reason that I just knew this wasn’t sustainable and I really wasn’t all that happy. God, I hated it. So that’s why I switched to this model over here. So let’s get into how I did it.

The very first thing I had to do was realize that I had actually been applying pretty much the exact same strategy to every single client that I had worked with over the span of four to five years. I had to come to that realization after a lot of time feeling like each client was completely individual and I had to customize everything to each person, which left me very caught up in tactics and the nitty gritty detailed work. And also it got me stuck in this place of trying to learn all of the platforms and trying to learn everything because I was the social media consultant, so I was doing everything for everyone. And so, the big turning point for me and how I started to slowly transition was really identifying that I did create this signature formula. It doesn’t mean that you necessarily have to have a bunch of clients in order to figure this out.

What it really means is how are you going to transform your clients? That’s the thing. So I was focused on tactics and then I really focused not on tactics, but on transformation. And so when I focused on transformation, this is what it looked like. I realized that each client really has a hero’s journey they have to go through because everybody’s looking for results. People don’t want information, they don’t need a bunch of different tactics and things that you’re trying and doing and testing. They just want what is efficient and what works and what gets them to the hero situation. So they start here, this is why the client is coming to you. And then you’re taking them here, which is ultimately their zero and then they’re hero. So you are bridging this gap to make sure that you’re getting them the results that they’re paying you for and that they’re coming to you for.

And in order to do that, you have to find a formula or a methodology, basically in order to get them from zero to hero. I realized that I had a very structured set up and I was using the same strategy document for each client that I worked with. And I just had to basically boil that down and really recognize, “Okay, what can I subtract from all of the things that I’m doing to make this transformation and make my client results as effective as possible?” So when I started to transition my business, I really got out of the mindset of being the doer and the tactician and trying to learn everything about everything and then going into a space of honing in on really only the things that I was very good at and the things that I knew I could use to make the biggest difference and create the biggest results for my clients, because the better client results I got, the more clients I ultimately ended up attracting.

So I went from trying to customize my strategy to each person individually, to creating a formula and a curriculum that takes them from zero to hero. And on that note, it wasn’t like I all of a sudden went from working with one-on-one clients and doing management when it came to social media and marketing for clients, to switching to having an online course like that. What I really focused on was testing before I actually had built out anything, and this is a template and something that I live by and I help my clients with as well, because I really don’t think it’s a smart idea. And this is something I learned a long time ago to build something out and then wait to get people enrolled into it and prove the concept. So there are three C’s that really are vital to the success of your business and especially if you are shifting models.

So the C’s are cashflow. So this allows you to have a little bit of security in the business. And so you’re not feeling like, “Oh my gosh, I just let go of all my clients. And now what do I do?” You have a little cash flow in the bank. So you know that you can go a month or two months from this new offer, deliver it properly, get client results, and then start to scale and get more clients from there. And then the second thing is client results. So this is a big one. Too often, I see people try and shift their entire business model without actually proving the model itself. So doing it in a way where you can test your services, test your content, to actually start to get client results is so important because you need that social proof to grow your business and to attract more clients.

So that’s why I did the first round when I actually shifted my business model, I did the first round of my program live because I wanted to do it in a live setting where I could iterate and evolve and make tweaks on the fly. Because if I had spent months building it out without doing that, I would have made some serious mistakes and I wouldn’t have known if it actually was going to work for my clients. So testing it in a test environment for a short period of time in a live setting, creating urgency, getting clients in the door, getting cashflow, getting client results, so important. And the third thing is, and this is something that people take for granted, confidence. So if you’re starting to shift a business model or you’re starting a new business, and you just want to start from scratch, you really don’t have any confidence to go off of.

And confidence is built through doing and through action and through results. By actually getting clients in the door in a test version of your program, which is what I did, your online course, it allows you to build confidence in that offer and in selling that offer so that you can continue to grow it with time because you know what actually works. So that was really fundamental to building out my business and doing it gradually. At this time when I did this live test version of my program, my online course, I also had one-on-one clients. I also was taking on some consulting work because I knew that I needed to have a bit of a buffer and some cash flow in the bank to be able to sustain this and to test this out. Now, I don’t have any of those. And now I just have my online courses, but it was that transition that really helped me get to where I am today.

So the next thing is, as I just mentioned, I wanted to make sure that I didn’t just go cold turkey and all of a sudden start a new business without any real confidence in it. And a piece of that is understanding that when you’re going through any kind of transition with your business and your business model, you’re in a period of what I call growth versus scaling. So growth looks like this, and I’ve talked about this in other videos before. Growth is like that. Scaling looks like this. So this is when your gains and your expenses are the exact same. So you’re growing, but you’re not really creating any profits. So growth is like this. These are your losses, these are your gains. Ignore that that’s on an angle, just pretend these are totally even. So you’re really not making profit.

You’re generating revenue, but you’re not making profit. Scaling looks like this. So this is where your expenses stay here, but your revenue and your profits continue to grow. And so when I was going through the transition, and if you’re going to do this, you have to accept and surrender to the fact that you may not see a lot of scale because a lot of your cashflow is going to go back into the business and also be a buffer so that you can smoothly make this transition into a new business model until it starts to grow and scale on its own. So understanding that, I’ve minimized expenses, I was really cautious of where our money was going, how much profit and revenue we were bringing in on a monthly basis, what our P&L looked like, so that I could understand how much of a buffer I had and also set a deadline. That is a huge piece of this.

So I knew I wanted to transition out of one-to-one work with clients, and that was going to require me to create a plan and set a deadline of when I wanted to be completely done with my clients. And I actually mentioned this in another video with one of my clients who successfully closed down her entire website design agency and created an online course instead on website design. And she scaled it and generated more money than she did an entire year in four months doing that. And she did the same thing. She set a deadline of April 1st to get rid of all of her one-on-one clients. And she did it. So setting that deadline allowed me to create a work back plan and to slowly start transitioning some of my one-on-one clients into my online courses and also just to notify them and be totally transparent.

I remember sending emails and saying, “Hi, there. Just wanted to let you know, by X date, I’m going to be transitioning out of one-on-one work. And I’m going to be moving into more of a consulting and online course model. I just wanted to make you aware. Here are your options of what you can do, either enroll in this program or we just part ways.” And that’s okay, but being honest and transparent and having a clear deadline for everybody involved, whether that’s your clients, your team, or yourself makes it really clean as to when things are going to fully transition over into more of a scalable model.

And you get out of that strange little transition growth phase, if that makes sense. So the last thing to touch on is something that Megan asked me, which I think is really important is how did I navigate my time during this period of when I was transitioning my business? And I won’t lie, it was challenging, but the biggest thing that I will recommend for any entrepreneurs to understand that your business is always going to come in seasons and there are going to be pull seasons and push seasons, or internal, don’t mind my horrible writing, and external.

So what this means is that you have to understand that everything is temporary, in everything, but really in business. And so I knew, “Okay, I gave myself the deadline. I know by that deadline, I want to be fully transitioned into my new business model. And I’m just going to have to surrender and lead in to the chaos that these next couple of months are going to be.” And I basically blocked out anything that wasn’t necessary. So embracing it as a season, but not something that is completely permanent is super important because everything comes in waves. And so understanding that there’s going to be times where you need to be more behind the scenes in your business. I talked about this in this video and when I took a few months off of everything to rework things internally in my business, and then there’s going to be seasons where, okay, your new online course is ready to go and your new business is ready to go.

That’s when you got to start doing an external season to get it out there, promote it, tell as many people as you can, get as many clients in the door as you can. And then pull seasons are more internal. It’s like when things just start working out and coming to you and you can sit back and things are really starting to scale. Whereas, a push season is any new business, you got to push it, you got to get it up there, you got to prove it and you have to get, like I said, those people in the door. So embracing the seasons is honestly what helped me manage my time and just being super on top of how I navigated my one-on-one clients, who I still wanted to do a great job for, giving them my attention, but also proving this new business model could work.

And just understanding that in that few month period, it was going to be full on and that was going to be my main focus. Anything outside of that had to be sacrificed a little bit. And I talked a lot about that in this video when I talked about the three marriages because it does, it ebbs and flows. Sometimes my personal relationships are going to be at the forefront, sometimes work’s going to be at the forefront and sometimes myself, I’m going to be at the forefront. And you have to understand that it’s never a perfect balance. So just giving yourself that grace, as you go through that transition and knowing that it is temporary, as long as you have a clear deadline. If you watched this video and it really resonated with you because this was a super specific topic, so thank you, Megan.

I created a workbook specifically for this and it’s called How to Scale Your Experience into a Six Figure Online Course. No matter what you’re doing right now and what kind of service you provide, or you want to provide, this is the step-by-step guide of really how I did it and how you’re able to do it as well.