System optimization slapped me in the face one day in 2017, and changed the course of my business forever. Here’s how it went down.
My client, a successful business coach earning north of $400k per month, had a simple business model: Run Facebook ads to an automated webinar. The webinar’s CTA was to book a discovery call, and the discovery call was the sales vehicle for her $8,000 flagship course.
She managed her ads in a Google Sheet, and the first time I saw that spreadsheet, everything clicked for me.
- Spend more on ads = more webinar attendees.
- More webinar attendees = more discovery calls.
- More discovery calls = more sales.
That was the spark. The real revelation came a bit later when I realized every business—mine, yours, the laundromat down the street—can take advantage of the same systems optimization plan.
And I don’t have to run ads to make it work.
I can optimize my content to increase traffic to my lead magnets.
I can optimize my email campaigns to get more eyes on my sales pages.
I can optimize my sales pages to create more sales.
Every system can be optimized in its own way. I don’t have to add another social channel or create more courses or pump out 17 pieces of content every day. I just have to make strategic improvements to what I’m already doing.
That’s how I work less and earn more, and how you can, too.
To begin, I’d like to introduce you to Sarah. I think you and she have a lot in common.
Sarah’s story
Sarah runs a coaching business. She is good at what she does, and she’s successful in her business (meaning she earns a full-time living), but it’s not without stress. Some months she feels like she’s barely scraping by, and some are far more abundant.
For the most part, Sarah is a true solopreneur. She has contractors for occasional projects, but no permanent team members. Everything from email scheduling to client onboarding is on her personal to-do list, and she’s mostly okay with that—for now.
Sarah has a lot of systems in place to help potential clients find, follow, and ultimately hire her. I asked her to list them, along with their purpose.
- She’s podcasting weekly to increase visibility.
- She’s appearing on other people’s podcasts, also for visibility.
- She sends a weekly newsletter to engage with her audience.
- She posts on Substack and Medium several times each week to attract a wider audience.
- She’s active on Instagram and LinkedIn, mostly because that’s what everyone says to do.
- She hosts a free Facebook group to engage in real time with her potential clients.
- She has a variety of lead magnets and follow up sequences (funnels) to convert subscribers to clients.
- She invites potential clients to book a free discovery call, which is how she sells her coaching programs.
- She has several courses for sale, but she’s not doing much with them right now.
Are you thinking Sarah is spreading herself a little thin here? Because I was, and it only got worse…
When I met Sarah, she told me she wants to scale her business, and is considering adding a membership to the mix. But here’s the thing: she’s already working more hours than she wants to work. A membership will only add to the workload.
Sarah believes, like most of us, that if she wants to earn more money, she has to work harder. Do more. Create more. Offer more. It’s always more.
But what if more isn’t the answer? Coaches who scale learn quickly that the real gold is found when they go deeper, not wider.
My advice to Sarah might sound odd, but I told her to ditch the membership idea.
Yes, I know. Recurring income and all that. But a membership is work. More time and energy than she can imagine will go into setting up, launching, and marketing a brand new membership.
Understanding ROI
You’ve probably heard the term ROI. It stands for Return on Investment, and we most often think about it in terms of money. If I invest $10,000 in a coaching program, how much will I earn as a direct result of that investment? Ideally, more than $10,000, right? That would make for a good ROI.
But there’s more to consider than money when thinking about ROI in your business. There’s also your time and energy.
If Sarah goes ahead with her membership plans, she can reasonably assume she’ll spend at least a few weeks getting ready for launch. She’ll need to set up a platform, create a sales page, write emails and social posts, create graphics, build an onboarding sequence…the list of tasks is looooooong, and that’s without creating any new content or training for members. It also doesn’t take into account ongoing maintenance and marketing tasks.
Sarah told me she’d love to onboard 100 members at $50 per month. That’s $5,000 per month, and at first glance, that seems like a sweet deal. But is it? With a conservative estimate of 80 hours to set up and launch a membership, Sarah would earn $62.50 per hour.
Sarah currently earns $300 per hour of coaching. The math speaks for itself, don’t you think?
Ongoing, this number would go up, of course. She’s not going to spend 80 hours managing a membership every month. But she will easily spend 20, which makes her hourly rate $250. That’s much closer to her current hourly coaching rate, but it also assumes the membership maintains those 100 users, which is not a given.
Once we calculated the expected ROI on a membership, Sarah decided it isn’t the right move today. She does still want to scale, so we looked at how she could instead earn an additional $5,000 per month doing what she’s already doing, simply by optimizing a system or two.
Systems are the levers of scale
Let’s take another look at Sarah’s existing systems, but this time with data:
- A weekly podcast that averages 1,000 downloads per week.
- Monthly podcast guest appearances that sometimes result in a trickle of new email subscribers.
- A weekly newsletter sent to 6,000 subscribers, and that is her primary call-booking vehicle. She currently books four discovery calls per month.
- Substack and Medium accounts with a few hundred readers each.
- Instagram and LinkedIn accounts that seem to be growing, but Sarah doesn’t have any data to know if those followers turn into email subscribers.
- A Facebook group that’s growing, but doesn’t result in discovery calls.
- Lead magnets that range from ineffective to somewhat effective in converting site visitors to email subscribers.
- A discovery call process that converts at 25%.
- Courses that sell “occasionally.”
Sarah’s primary offer is a $10,000 coaching program. For her to increase her income by $5,000 per month, she’ll need to onboard one additional client every two months.
Working backward with the data, we can see two ways to optimize and sell more coaching programs:
First, let’s look at the close rate for Sarah’s discovery call system. Across all coaching industries, discovery calls typically close at 30% to 35%. Sarah is converting just one in four calls, leaving lots of room for improvement.
If Sarah raises her close rate from 25% to 35%, she will sell an additional five coaching programs per year, for a $25,000 annual increase in revenue, with no additional calls or marketing required.
Another option is to increase the number of discovery calls booked. Since one client requires four calls at her current 25% close rate, she would need six calls per month to sell one additional program every two months.
Her primary call-booking system is her email newsletter, which she sends to 6,000 subscribers every week, and which results in (on average) one call booked per week. Given those numbers, Sarah can take several approaches to increase the number of calls booked:
- She could increase the number of subscribers.
- She could increase the number of emails she sends.
- She could improve her calls to action.
Keeping ROI in mind, which of these options offers the best opportunity for Sarah to increase her revenue by $5,000 each month?
Here’s my take.
Sarah should do two things. She should both improve her discovery call process to bring it more in line with current industry standards, and she should work to improve the calls to action in her emails.
Why? Because these two approaches have the potential for helping her reach her goals without adding more work. They are her levers of scale.
She won’t have to create new lead magnets, or increase her social posting to grow her list. She won’t have to write twice as many emails as she’s currently writing.
Scaling isn’t about doing more. It’s about doing better.
In part 2, I’ll invite you to look at your own business with through this systems lens. Don’t worry, it’s easy once you get the hang of it. I’ll see you next week.
