Step 1.

Solve a pain and do it well within a solution that scales.

Step 2.

Find and hang out with the people you solve a pain for (Your Audience)

Step 3.

Create a place you own for your audience to hang out with you.

Step 4.

Over deliver value for free pre-sale

Step 5.

Create a high converting sales process that relies on scripts and templates not sales talent.

Step 6.

Crank up the volume of leads through paid ads.

Step 7.

Recruit a commission-based sales team.

Step 8.

Develop a partner programme and client referral system.

Step 9.

Implement a Profit System and start to accumulate founder wealth alongside company growth.

Step 1. - Solve a pain and do it well within a solution
that scales.

As an expert you will have a unique feel for an industry sector, yet it’s vital to not fall into the ‘be everything to everyone’ trap at the start of your journey. The most successful expert businesses know exactly who they help, the result they help clients to get and how they do so.

Before starting any campaign for new clients, you should dive into your ideal client avatar and understand exactly the pain you solve for them.

Go deep with these pains; the more you understand, the deeper you can develop your solution and the better it solves the pain for your clients.

Ultimately if you solve the right pain for the right person, they will invest considerably to work with you.

A client once described how they felt picking a target market and a specific pain as having ‘niche claustrophobia’. They simply believed their world was becoming too small and wanted to market to the two or three other potential client avatars they thought might be good.

I encourage them to hold steady and focus on building out their sales and marketing systems (go deep not wide). Once they deployed the templates and training we provided to them and kept consistent over a number of weeks, something triggered. Like touch paper they set ablaze and scaled so rapidly they had to slow their funnel to keep up with the speed of growth.

We never discussed moving away from their target client niche again.

Many experts find they already have worked with their ideal client avatar or are (or used to be) their ideal client. Targeting this type of audience is strongly advised as you know yourself incredibly well and can go deep with the solution you are about to create.

For experts changing audience or just starting out, it is sensible to sell two or three clients into a one-to-one consultancy programme or ‘hands on’ done-for-you service first, so you get to know intimately the problem you solve before building a scalable solution.

Creating a scalable solution means that you understand the hours that you would be willing to give to your solution and you craft your business around this. The skill is not to be stuck within the delivery or sales systems of your businesses (as the founder) so you can sell to 100’s of clients and still not conflict the volume of hours you are willing to work.

For example, many experts see one-to-one coaching as their high-ticket solution then they add a group and an online course into the mix as a bronze, silver, and gold style product portfolio.

This is a recipe for disaster as you are pulled between spending time trying to make 3 solutions work.

Similarly, agency owners who offer a variety of done for you solutions, which they get stuck within the delivery of the service as well as having weekly client meetings and lengthy reports to write.

Its far easier to sell THE solution and just THE solution, this way your potential clients have a binary decision if they want to solve the pain (yes) or if they don’t (No).

NOTE: Solving the pain does not always mean the founder doing the work.

We call this an expert’s Flagship Product.

For most Flagships, the sweet spot is to offer Leadership (L), Community (C), Routine (R) and Personalisation (P).

For example, to make this system work for a Coaching business the common shift is as follows:

For most Coaching Programmes, time with the expert is vital, but the ideas and the core syllabus does not have to be delivered live and certainly not one-to-one, so it can become online learning modules, giving 24/7 access to the client to be able to solve their pain (L).

Now we have removed the reliance on the expert to deliver the content live, we now want to give back access to the expert. This can be achieved through drop in Q&A clinics, so the expert can help, mentor and support clients (L) at whatever stage they are within the programme, answering specific questions and so personalising (P) the journey for them.

These ‘drop-in clinics’ can be three times a week (for example) for one hour moving up to daily for larger volumes of clients. This abundance of access creates a habit for the client to complete a module, share progress, then complete another module and again share progress. It gives the programme rhythm and generates the all-important routine (R) as well as a community sharing their journey together (C).

For most, working on a pain solving journey alone can be lonely, so the best solutions add a community element into the system (C). Having a VIP community just for clients as well as smaller accountability groups with weekly check-ins and tasks (R) keeps the tribe engaged and active, supporting and helping each other (P).

When you nail the above system, there are automations and delegation opportunities throughout it, leaving the expert entrepreneur with 3 to 6 hours flagship programme delivery time per week, even at over 100 high ticket clients and a million in revenue +.

Rolling out the above system has many small repeatable details that our training teaches with templates and methodologies for every part of the L, C, R, P Million Dollar Audience Shift™ system.

*Agency owners have a similar model and can achieve a ‘0’ hour delivery time per week – contact our team for a demo on how this works.

To find your audience you must think of them as one singular perfect client. Close your eye now and picture that person in your mind. Who is he or she? What age are they? What are they wearing? What role do they have at a company? How big is that company? How affluent are they? How new to their current role are they? etc.

Once you have a feel for who, now apply the pain you solve to them, what do you help them to do faster, better, cheaper, stronger?

From growing their personal wealth to helping them get healthier, entrepreneurial experts apply their knowledge to a pain an audience has and helps them to overcome it.

If you cannot see that person in your mind, you simply have not thought hard enough about the pain you solve.

One creates the other – the pain is linked to the person and the person is linked to the pain.

As a simple formula: Pain (Pa) + Person (Pe) = Opportunity (O)

Now you know ‘who’ you are selling to and ‘what’ you are selling, now it is time to find ‘where’ they are hanging out.

The most common locations are social media platforms, be that Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, etc…

…but which one do you focus on and how?

Let’s be honest – we all overcomplicate things, which is why focusing on just one social platform is the fastest way to a million in revenue.

I have been running marketing focused businesses for over 15 years and I have seen so many social media fads come and go. I have tried, tested, vetted, invested, and danced the funky chicken all over them.

From:

- Clubhouse (that came and went quickly!)

- SnapChat (does anyone even have it on their phones?)

- SEO (not even sure you need a website these days)

- Google+ (I went to town on this – who even remembers it!)

- Meerkat and Periscope (Livestream social)

- TikTok (no one needs to see me dancing)

- Twitter (drink from the fire hose!)

- MySpace (I’m not that old – really)

- Podcasts (Wait, I don’t get to know the names of people listening! - or even any way to contact them! – sounds a lot of time for no leads)

The truth is, in the entrepreneur space there are a ton of ‘Gurus’ who jump on a new platform, get early success from it, then sell everyone the definitive course for scaling using it.

For them it works because they are piggybacking off the wave of interest in the new platform, they got there first and built their success quickly.

They also sell the course about it and so do not really need to apply it to a real business and/or real marketing campaign.

Others who follow buy their course, then get overwhelmed because they are ‘trying’ a new thing and don’t have the early success or staying power to make it into the top tier of users who are getting all the audience and all the attention.

They simply are trying to do to many things at once.

It’s a big bag of overwhelm.

Step 3. Create a place for your audience to hang out

Now you know your ideal client and you are interacting with them daily through social media, the next step is to start to transfer the audience into a location where you own the communication stream.

Typically, this has two forms:

The first is the classic email list, a database of subscribed target audience members who you have permission to share your thought leadership with and continue to prospect with away from social media.

To harvest these connections from social media and into your list, a classic ‘info-swap’ is usually the best format. This could be a checklist, eBook, value bundle, mini-course, etc, which you exchange in return for their name and email.

The downside with this method is it very much one way traffic and relies on them reading and acting on your content.

Nevertheless, an email list is vital, and it will help to fill the sales funnel over time.

The trick is to keep this list ‘warm’ through a series of emails giving even more value. We call this the ‘Long-Term Warming Up Sequence’ (LTWU) and we recommend that experts schedule an email every five days to prospects who are placed within this sequence.

The beauty of every five days is it keeps the sends random from one week where two emails will be sent and the following where just one will be triggered.

If you are reading this, you may have already found yourself as part of our warming up sequence which will usually begin a week and after you join our list.

*Templates for email sequences and ideas can be found around the web, yet Million Dollar Sprint clients access a library of reusable content and drag and drop templates to increase the deployment speed of this marketing asset.

The second place you create for your target audience to hang out is your:

The Open Community

This is a community that is available for anyone who you feel fits your target audience. It should have a weekly content rhythm designed to create engagements at certain times to optimise the volume of attendees at its ‘weekly moment’ (See Step 4).

The open community, usually delivered via a Facebook Group or Slack Channel, is immersive and value driven. It hits many of the key elements of the Million Dollar Audience Shift™ by creating, Leadership (L), Community (C), Routine (R) and Personalisation (P) within a complimentary environment.

It’s designed to help new leads warm quickly to your expertise and value.

New community member onboarding processes are vital and can be automated to generate email details and prospect qualifying information in the process of their acceptance to the community.

Done well, you will see new members onboard over the first three days and arrive in a Discovery Call booking (Step 5) using a system of tagging and direct messaging, adding value on the first and second day before starting a personal messaging conversation on the third day.

We call this the 1,2,3, Disco Community System™ within the Million Dollar Sprint. We supply templates and guidance including a free project management software, all pre-populated so it can be easily and quickly delegated to your team.

Step 4. Over-deliver value for free pre-sale

Once you have a client in your eco-system you want to let them binge on your content. The tactic is to help them do this as quickly as possible, so throw a kitchen sink’s worth of value at them when you are front of their mind, which usually is for a limited time at the start.

Once you have them on your list and part of your open community, the next stage is to get them into an event that you host each week.

Enter: The Weekly Moment™

The weekly moment is the focal point of your consideration activity, it’s where marketing easily transitions into sales and can be done in a value driven non-sales-y way.

For most experts it will be a short event that is delivery digitally and usually takes no longer than 45 minutes and is constantly run weekly (R).

You invite new prospects to it, demonstrates value for the first part (L) usually for circa 15 minutes, then answer questions, give specific advice and foster debate between the attendees (P) (C) which takes you to the end of the 45-minute session.

During the session and just before the last question is asked by the audience, you as the host offer a 1:1 Strategy Session (Step 5) to any attendee who has joined the call and wants to see how some of what has been covered will work specifically within their business (P).

If done correctly, and ideally following the Weekly Moment Success Script (part of the MDS Programme), most hosts find bookings are made directly into their diary from the audience before the event is even over.

For attendees that need a further nudge a follow up set of emails and phone calls are conducted to yield the full volume of sales meetings from the session each week.

*Graph: Example client weekly moment registrations of 23

Typically, each week clients target 20 – 30 weekly moment registrations with a 50% show up rate and a 10% conversion into sales meeting of registrations and a 5% sales conversion rate.

The above percentages are always over the fullness of time as a lead-to-sale conversion time tends to be longer than a week.

In the example from the graph, the founder would expect from the 23 registrations, 12 attendees, 2 sales meeting and 1 sale.

This creates an exciting model for the client in question, as an effective ads strategy (See Step 6) will scale attendees of the weekly moment and the sales volumes will then scale with them.

Step 5. Create a high converting sales process that relies on scripts and templates not sales talent

Running your weekly moment and cultivating your community of perfect clients (Step 4) is a beautifully rhythmic and repeatable process.

Each day you will know what you should post and where, testing and measuring for engagement as you go, but keeping to a clear and well-trodden path.

You sales process should be no different.

To start, you must continue to add a ton of value to prospects within the sales process, in a similar way you did within the awareness and consideration stages.

As experts we are not ‘order takers’ we are advice givers and its vital to keep the conversations aligned to this value.

Remember, you are a hot commodity and your time is increasingly valuable, so before long it’s important to start unpeeling yourself from sales.

The trophy is an entirely delegated sales function, which is a beast that just needs feeling with leads, and your business will scale to the moon!

The first way to ‘unpeel’ as a founder is to add a ‘Discovery Call’ before your ‘Strategy Sessions’.

This 15-minute phone call (Discovery Call) is a fact finding mission which asks qualifying questions to make sure that the prospect is a potential client and worth spending longer with.

If they are, then you progress them to a Strategy Session which is usually 45 minutes to an hour of value and a demonstration of your product.

Following the Strategy Session, you either close on the call or if the prospect needs thinking time, you progress to a final ‘Decision Call’ (again just 15 mins) where final questions are asked and the ultimate ‘yes’ is given.

This process is a beautifully crafted system and not pushy in any way.

It also has many elements that can be automated such as the bookings, reminders, pre-meeting warm up material, etc…

…most vitally the system and all the calls are completely template-able so a salesperson can pick it up and run with it as you expand your team and scale.

Many hyper successful experts spend 50% of their coaching time with a team of their own salespeople helping them to close deals as opposed to doing it all themselves.

Picture this, a team of commission only or majority commission salespeople all chomping at the bit for new leads into the funnel (Step 7).

That’s your funnel and the sales they make are of your Flagship - #exciting!

To achieve this, you need to set clear parameters and training on how to sell using your template, which makes taking on and training new salespeople a repeatable and scalable system in itself.

So start now and build your sales template ahead of the team arriving (Step 7).

With a repeatable sales process (Step 5), a repeatable salesperson onboarding system (Step 7) and a ton of leads (Steps 2,3,6) the sky truly is the limit.

The Million Dollar Sprint Programme has templates that create the Discovery Call and Strategy Session Scripts for our clients as well as sharing our own as an example to follow. Our training also includes Reporting, Targets and Management (RTM) Dashboard Templates for commission based sales teams.

Step 6. Crank up the volume of leads through paid ads & automated outreach

Now you have a system that generates opportunities through organic outreach, moving prospects from other communities into your own environment.

You also have a process for warming them up within that environment via daily content and your weekly moment.

Next, you’ve built a templated sales script so you can start to delegate every part of the sales process.

Now it’s time to flood your funnel with leads. – Let’s face it, that’s all your sales team need to succeed – an abundance of opportunity.

Paid ads

What better way to create an abundance of opportunity than to turn on the flood via paid ads?

Most expert businesses mistakenly try to start here (step 6) but as you have read, there’s a ton of work required before you move to ads.

Those who jump straight to it usually end up making these statements:

“Ads just don’t work for me” or “Ads are too expensive”.

Declarations like that come from experts who don’t understand how valuable a lead is and how important it is to have a warming up funnel and a team to work each and every lead as they move through your eco-system.

Paid ads are an art and are not solely dedicated to one platform or type.

From our experience you want to create a focused campaign that uses inexpensive ads to build your audience, then hyper-direct ads to move them further down your funnel into bookings for either your weekly moment or into a Strategy Session.

If they are booking directly into a Strategy Session with you, remember to heavily qualify them through a questionnaire or Discovery Call before they get to the calendar booking system.

If a prospect booked into your weekly moment such as a Round Table Event, make sure you offer them the one-to-one call during the event where again they go through the qualifying questionnaire or Discovery Call, so you keep up the quality of your Strategy Session bookings.

Alternatively, if they have attended and not booked a Strategy Session, follow them up via a call (ultimately from your prospecting team when you grow) so that you get every booking possible from attendees of your Weekly Moment.

You may also use a targeted VSL (video sales letter) as the destination for the ads with a booking link for a Strategy Session at the bottom of the video. These micro webinars (VSLs) can be hyper effective at creating trust quickly with your audience then getting Strategy Sessions booked off the back of them.

Image: Example VSL training session on the Million Dollar Hour™ which we send paid ads to. The ‘Let me show you how’ button goes straight to a Strategy Session application form.

When it comes to ads, you want to alternate the creative using a A/B testing methodology, but why stop at ‘B’ keep testing A/B/C/D/E/+++ variables so that you see a trend and style of ads that work and keep moving in that direction.

For example, you can keep the ad copy the same but try a variety of images. If the images with pictures of you on them work better than other more graphical style ads, then start making further variants with images of you, so you drill down deeper and deeper on that creative style.

Image: Our current Ads variations to promote our Marketing Round Table all feature an image of me as it works better (currently) than different more graphical variations.

The most important part is to find the ads that work, then crank up the volume so the funnel fills with opportunity and that opportunity goes on to convert into calls at an acceptable ‘cost per strategy session’ rate.

Of course, using your newly created scripts your strategy session close rate will stack up to, so you get a great volume of sales for the right level of ads investment.

Do this and it’s a simple case of the more you spend the faster you grow. *

*Training and templates for creating paid ads, weekly moments, VSL’s, qualifying questionnaire and Strategy Sessions are all part of our Million Dollar Sprint Accelerator which will help you bypass the learning curve of creating them as our clients tend to drag and drop our templates and scripts into their campaigns.

When it comes to ‘Automated Outreach’ the system works in a very similar way to paid ads, you simply use tools that manipulate the social media platform to show your message to more people within your target audience.

With a platform like LinkedIn, you can use tools to create connection requests and direct message outreach without you needing to be actively working upon it. This way you will find opportunities connecting and messaging you back even while you sleep.

There are a ton of tools on the market that can conduct automated outreach. We feel that we have partnered with the safest and most effective one that our members get privileged access to.

When you book a strategy session with our Million Dollar Sprint team, we can walk you through this highly effective process further.

The key point here is to use paid ads and automated outreach tools to manipulate the volumes of leads you can produce daily from the social media platforms to feed your hungry funnel.

A funnel that in the next step (7) will need an abundance of opportunity to keep a growing team happy.

Step 7. Recruit a commission-based sales team

When most clients think about sales teams, they are thinking about it too late. Not only should a sales team be started at the same time or very soon after you start (Step 6 paid ads & automated outreach) they should also be thought of as ‘skill-set specific’ and dedicated to just part of the funnel and to be done so part-time at first.

Specific roles and part-time third party contractors = agile and cost-effective resources for a micro expert business.

For example, your ‘Prospector’ can be emailing and direct messaging members of your audience early in the process to qualify and progress them into Strategy Sessions.

In short, they find ‘Prospects’ for you, hence ‘Prospector’.

Your ‘Closers’ can then be taking the Strategy Sessions for you on a commission only basis and closing them into paid clients for a cut of the deal.

In short, they ‘Close’ deals for your, hence ‘Closers’.

With these two skills sets you are totally out of the process and can sit back and watch the business grow.

Add in the magical ‘Rainmaker’ who both prospects their own deals and closes them (slightly harder to find and train – but we can help you with that), the more rainmakers you find the faster you grow a hungry pack of sales agents working within your brand guidelines and ethos - i.e. not pushy salespeople but ethical and attentive.

Many experts have an inherent issue with staff and employing people which is why we tell them not to manage them directly, but to use an RTM (Reporting Targets & Management) dashboard to do that for them.

A strong RTM dashboard like the templated version supplied to our Million Dollar Sprint Clients, will let the Prospectors, Closers and Rainmakers know exactly what is expected of them and how they can ‘win’ at their role.

Image: a section of the sales RTM Dashboard

Step 8. Develop a partner programme and client referral system

Once you have a working flagship product that is giving clients Leadership, Community, Routine & Personalisation (Step 1), you will have a ton of delighted clients that are ‘winning’ at your product and getting the results they desired when they first started working with you.

If you do this part right your clients will be excited to tell others about it and move into the Advocacy stage of the process (see below):

Advocates of your brand will tell others and draw attention to the service or programme. When they do you need to have a well formatted and easy to understand referral and partner programme.

A referral programme can be as simple as a nice hamper or bottle of champagne to say thank you for someone introducing you to a new client.

A Partner Programme is more official and financially rewards clients who promote your services and draws attention to you.

Done right you can set up a rewards system that gives your happy clients a special perk for referring new clients to you.

Or, if you sell a digital resource (like an online course or other membership programme), you can host an affiliate programme to encourage partners to share it with their network.

To really support your scale efforts, especially when launching a new service, programme or event, recruiting ‘influencers’ to promote your product or service is exciting and lucrative. By offering a cash commission on new clients generated, you can bypass many of the marketing steps. There is no better marketing than word of mouth.

There are several online tools that help automate this process, allowing small business owners to set up their own affiliate partner networks. With software, you can provide unique, trackable links to track leads and conversions, and manage pay-outs when they’re due.

Million Dollar Sprint clients have a drag and drop templated referral system to deploy this powerful step quickly for them.

Step 9. Implement a Profit System and start to accumulate founder wealth alongside company growth

When you achieve sustained business growth and perceived success you must also focus on creating sustained personal wealth. All too many times have I seen entrepreneurs of expert businesses make ever increasing turnovers and yet at the end of the month there’s not enough cash to pay their own personal bills, let alone the holidays and the Lamborghini.

It should be simple, you take your sales, minus the costs that it takes to run your business and whatever is left is yours to take as profit and blow at the weekends!

The trouble is that as entrepreneurs we are emotional beasts and driven by ‘shiny thing’ syndrome, so a bucket full of cash each month gets quickly spent on all the ‘things’ you think your business needs and the last ‘thing’ you remember is to pay yourself.

Enter the ‘Pay yourself first’ system – inspired by the excellent book Profit First by Mike Michalowicz, we have adapted a system for guaranteeing you scale your personal wealth alongside your company turnover.

Wealth strategy highlights include:

Creating 6 bank accounts to immediately allocate income into the key areas as an expert business.

Income, VAT (UK & EU only), Owners Cash, Tax, Profit, Operation Expenses.

Paying yourself twice a month and usually 50% of all income directly into your pocket – that’s 50% net - i.e. personal tax is already covered via the ‘Tax’ bank account, so all the money is yours.

This formula stays that way even when you scale to a million in revenue netting you 500k personal income after tax, which is why you must have a wealth strategy for your business and yourself.

For your own personal wealth, adopting a similar multi-bank account approach to move money into different pots such as: Investments, Disposable, Bills, Holidays, Cars, Schools bring the system to life.

Knowing that every £1 or $1 you earn in your business means income that trickles down into every part of your life, from private school fees to Investments that secure your income for the rest of your life and ultimately multi-generational wealth is mind blowing.

Knowing this makes scaling your business personal and success vital.

Knowing this and implementing all 9 steps guarantees that you will be successful.

9 Step Summary

Now you know the 9 Steps there are two routes:

Route #1 get cracking; you have this map to help you so nothing should stand in your way of a Million Dollar Business within the next 12 months.

Route #2 you can see there are nine very clear stepping stones laid out ahead of you, but you know that to step from one to the other quickly and without fail is best done with a support team around you and fellow expert entrepreneurs journeying with you.

It’s for the route #2’ers that I have created the Million Dollar Sprint.

From scaling to a million in revenue twice before and having helped countless entrepreneurs to also grow using the nine steps, I want to help and partner with you on this journey.

I do not take this responsibility lightly, in fact for my Million Dollar Athletes I am available every day to ask questions live.

That’s daily zoom calls for face-to-face questions and ‘build along with you’ style support (not just BS motivational speeches) …

…but enough of the details, let’s get back to the core question.

Do you want to become a Million Dollar Business?

If yes, then book a strategy session below and let’s talk about how you can:

If you don’t, good luck and catch you on the flip side.