My Coaching Business Makes $48K/Month With 96% Profit
Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?
Hi there. My name is Neal Oates, Jr. I am the founder and CEO of World Renowned Coaching and Consulting which I started in 2022 after recognizing a greater demand for coaching and consulting services I was already offering in the real estate industry.
Today my primary business has expanded to small and medium-sized, service-based businesses in approximately nine industries that specialize in serving affluent clientele. The business is currently generating $48,000 monthly via a mixture of group and executive one-to-one coaching services and has experienced growth for three consecutive quarters.
What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?
I was born and raised in a town of 1,100 people in South Alabama. I then moved to South Florida at the age of 23 and soon entered the real estate industry. I was blessed to join an amazing team whose niche was luxury sellers and global buyers. This was my entry into a new world full of possibilities that were until then foreign to me and beyond my wildest imaginations. Thanks to fantastic mentorship and a hunger to excel in this new realm of affluence I poured myself into learning everything I could about the business and, most importantly, the people I would be serving.
My tenure with the team lasted 8 ½ years after which I decided to launch my brokerage, World Renowned Real Estate to fill a void of client-centered, world-renowned service. I did not arrive at this decision easily. It was only after being encouraged by two clients, Ivan and Peter, that I realized there might be an opportunity to separate myself from other real estate agents.
During our conversations and my follow-up with these gentlemen, it became clear that my focus on their needs and desires above my own was not the typical attitude of my colleagues and competitors. This became the starting point for me to truly discover what each of my clients and customers needed to gain or feel from our transactions. I made it my business to not only meet but exceed their expectations by emulating world-class service brands known for pleasing their clientele.
Once this became my standard, word-of-mouth referrals began to come to me frequently. Building on the years of working with my previous mentors I quickly began thriving in the luxury real estate niche; working with some of the world’s most affluent and discerning individuals.
Through diligent effort and continued learning, while striving to exceed client expectations, good fortune knocked on my door in the form of teaching and speaking opportunities at my local real estate association. The education director, Letty Oliver, and our COO, Deborah Boza-Valledor, recognized talent and skill in me that I didn’t see myself. Following their guidance and advice, I opened the door for connections to leaders at the state and national levels in the real estate education world.
Initially, I viewed my teaching, speaking, and consulting as a form of “giving back” to the industry that helped change my life and the lives of those around me. It wasn’t until I began to review the feedback forms and listen to the testimonials of attendees in training sessions and classes that I realized there was a larger opportunity to utilize an underused gift.
Always feeling like an outsider or a fraud I spent too much time and energy focused on overcoming my weaknesses and minimizing my threats. As I began teaching and listening to the mentors and people in my life who saw something special in me I started using MY STRENGTHS.
The greatest moment of clarity for me was the first invitation to share my ideas at a national level after an event organizer attended one of our local events. He was the first person to introduce the idea of coaching and consulting as a business and not an act of charity. At that moment I once again had my eyes opened to a world that I had heard about but didn’t think was a reality for me. I started to understand that while I was doing very well at selling luxury real estate, there was another opportunity to level up and earn without having to rely on the economy, buyer/seller emotions, and interest rates.
Take us through the process of building the first version of your product.
The first services I created were very basic. Since I only knew group teaching environments in the real estate world and discounted my personal experiences with mentors as nothing more than “normal conversations with a few added tips” I couldn’t fathom the idea of one-to-one, executive coaching programs charging tens of thousands of dollars monthly.
My limited understanding of running a coaching and consulting business meant that I was still trading my time for money. My mindset was still very much tied to the teaching and education format from my years in the real estate industry.
The only service I offered was virtual group coaching via Zoom and the prices were ridiculously low. In an attempt to “serve everyone who needed coaching,” I charged each participant $600 for 6 months of coaching with calls taking place twice per month. I erroneously focused on servicing a lower-end customer (newer agents) with a high-value product (affluent servicing strategies). When I later began to compare the investments I made into coaching programs that exceed $2,000 per month for a 1-hour call I immediately realized the disconnect.
While I knew the information and services were extremely valuable, I didn’t understand why my coaching clients weren’t experiencing the level of results I knew were realistic and almost predictable. It took four months of analyzing client backgrounds and personalities to finally realize that I was catering to the wrong audience.
For example, the mindset training and “exceptional service” ideals that were responsible for the majority of my success did not result in generating the same number of referrals, closed transactions, or income in the four-month period that they should have. I knew that the lack of results wasn’t due to anything exceptional about myself or my personality.
The best advice I can offer to any entrepreneur is to be genuine and care about the consumer or client more than the income.
The methods I was using were taught to me and others in my network so I sincerely believed there had to be a missing piece or something that I didn’t execute properly in the delivery. Besides, the entire basis of my coaching program was to help clients double their revenue in 18 months while doing half the amount of work (transactions) by increasing the price points of the properties they sold. Understanding that my entry into the service-based business world was unusual, I revised my ideal client and began seeing the client success rates and results I initially expected.
My initial mistake in choosing how to coach clients to work with affluent individuals and increase their income was believing that all “new” agents had the same motivation, desire to grow, and commitment to excellence that I did. It wasn’t until a conversation sparked during a group coaching session 3 months in that I realized this was not the case. A participant named Alyssa remarked that doing the mindset work and making a commitment to delivering excellence in everything she did was too much work and that it would be easier, and in her mind better, to continue working in the lower price points of the industry.
To my surprise, the other six participants agreed with her point of view. At first, I was almost insulted that while I poured three months into helping people “improve” and deliver more value than I was being paid for they felt like it was easier to stay the same. Later this was the pivotal moment that opened my eyes to the realization that not everyone is committed to improving and those who are will pay well for the systems, coaching, and accountability to aid them in doing so.
Describe the process of launching the business.
My decision to officially launch a consulting business came after a discussion with yet another mentor and coach. Until then, I was okay with “playing consultant.” His ability to paint a clear picture around scaling, credibility, and taxation made the decision a no-brainer.
There were relatively low startup costs as I already had business licenses in place and real-world experience in servicing affluent clientele. In total, with licenses and insurance, the business was “official” at a cost of around $1,200. This didn’t include services and products that I already used for my real estate business that I would also use for the consulting business.
Some of those services included Zoom, internet, cell phone, and appointment scheduling apps like Calendly. The greatest challenges in the beginning involved breaking away from the “typical” real estate instructor pricing to move into a viable executive coach and consulting price band as I shared earlier.
Having no knowledge of website creation or SEO, I started with a Facebook business page and later created my first website using Wix. In hindsight, my launch was horrible in the sense that I did not have a strategy or plan other than to tell education directors, past luxury clients, and colleagues that I was offering consulting services that I believed would help them achieve similar results that I had experienced in my career.
While I couldn’t promote my services during my classes at local associations and brokerages, I could share my social media profiles where I had my “list of services” (only group coaching initially) for the class attendees to view. Within my first two months of launch, I had 35 clients in group coaching with each session limited to seven participants.
As previously mentioned, my real estate sales and brokerage were successful so I used commission income to cover the small startup costs. The best “financing” was the reputation I amassed for 15 years as a genuine individual, focused on improving the lives of those I worked for and with. These deposits into relationships made the poorly executed launch of World Renowned Coaching and Consulting successful. The result was that I was able to see profit within the first two weeks of starting enrollment into group coaching.
However, three months into the first round of coaching, after hearing Alyssa and her peers’ perspectives, I elected to refund slightly over half of their 6-month fee and paused the program as I reworked my strategy. When asked by one of my clients why I wouldn’t simply continue coaching the clients that I had and improving the quality of my coaching service I retorted that the service isn’t the issue and neither are the clients. The issue was that I was offering the WRONG service to the WRONG client and no matter how much it was “improved” it wouldn’t work.
Briefly, there was a question of whether or not my coaching “idea” was truly valuable and whether or not I should bother retooling the service offerings and seeking to better understand my desired ideal client. Would it be easier to stick to selling luxury real estate, working with affluent clientele myself, and only teaching real estate classes that were guaranteed income for me regardless of the attendees' application of what was taught or not?
These thoughts lasted for only minutes because I remember my four pillars of success: Excellence, Service, Leadership, and Growth. They have been foundational in any success I’ve experienced and violating any of them at any moment was incomprehensible. I resolved to deliver results to people willing to do the hard but necessary work and who were willing to compensate me for helping them achieve these results.
Besides, I was proof that transformation through intentional action was both possible and probable. I knew there was a market for it because I was in the market when I was starting and I still am in the market as I pay for coaching today in numerous areas of life.
Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?
The best advice I can offer to any entrepreneur is to be genuine and care about the consumer or client more than the income. Without a doubt, my greatest driver of success is the fact that people feel valued while working with me and are willing to tell others that I have positively impacted their businesses and lives. This required me to slow down and consider the quality of each interaction and touch-point throughout my service delivery. Like many other business owners, I had the SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis method drilled into me even before I knew why it was important at a practical level.
Always feeling like an outsider or a fraud I spent too much time and energy focused on overcoming my weaknesses and minimizing my threats. As I began teaching and listening to the mentors and people in my life who saw something special in me I started using MY STRENGTHS to combat OTHERS’ THREATS. This helped me get new business and positive interactions. Everything changed for me when I began using MY STRENGTHS to fully capitalize on MY OPPORTUNITIES. This single, profound shift has greatly impacted my client attraction and retention because now my desire to excel is amplified to new heights.
I believe that the easiest way to earn new business is to consistently exceed the expectations of those who currently buy from me. More than 70% of my current business results from current client ascension or word-of-mouth referrals. This has kept my marketing and advertising budgets manageable as I learn to implement lead-generation systems to reduce the time necessary for me to touch each lead.
Leveraging my extroverted nature and personality, I still utilize teaching classes and keynote speaking opportunities as a way to create “one-to-many” audition/pitching scenarios. I’m currently teaching six different courses specializing in luxury and global real estate as well as diversity for about ten days each month.
Keynote speaking opportunities present themselves about twice per month. I’ve been blessed to present to audiences more than 120 times over three years. Since starting my coaching and consulting business the number of keynotes decreased as a result of performing more workshop-styled presentations and events for executive coaching clients.
At my peak, I had 91 coaching clients. 87 of them were enrolled in group coaching with a maximum of seven participants in each bi-weekly session. Since I am the only coach, I found myself spread too thin to conduct this volume of coaching sessions with excellence and knew that I had to adjust. My choices were to either increase the number of participants in each session, reduce my total client count, or a “riskier” third option that I ultimately decided to take.
Ultimately, while I do still offer group coaching, it only runs for six weeks at a time and is used as an “intro to executive coaching.” This is how leaders can gain exposure to my coaching style while also trying me out to determine if they want to make a more significant investment in themselves.
At the time of this interview, I only run 4 six-week group coaching sessions allowing seven participants. I’ve also capped my executive coaching clients to 10 at any time. This allows me to focus deeply on being true to my four pillars of success with each coaching client while also having a waiting list of potential new executive coaching clients if a spot becomes available.
Following methods that work well for me with successful real estate clients, the primary driver of client retention is VIP client appreciation events that involve exclusive experiences. These typically include featuring one of my client’s services to the other group members and a luxury goods or service demonstration from an industry leader. Each event is captured by a professional photographer and videographer for the attendees to remember each outing. We then use these images and content to demonstrate additional value to prospective coaching clients.
How are you doing today and what does the future look like?
Success leads to greater success IF you are willing to learn and adapt accordingly. So far my business has been profitable except for the first two months of getting the setup completed.
In what I still consider a relatively short period, I am generating almost a 96% to 97% profit. I expect these margins to decrease slightly in the next 12 months as I increase ad spending to target more new business opportunities.
Of my monthly revenue, one-fourth is derived from the six-week group coaching enrollment. As mentioned earlier, I use this to fill my funnel with qualified candidates for my premium value offer of one-to-one coaching. The remainder of the monthly revenue is a result of the executive coaching program.
Due to my lead generation methods relying heavily on word of mouth and repeat business my acquisition costs are about $1,100 per new client with a lifetime value of slightly greater than $74,000.
As client retention increases and the length of client relationships expands, the goal is for the lifetime value of each client to double in the next 18 months as I have a great number of group coaching clients seeking to become one of the 10 executive coaching clients.
Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?
Being coachable and willing to learn skills necessary for success has been pivotal for me thus far. Putting myself in environments that allowed me to see possibilities outside of what I previously knew also made a huge difference in what I was willing to attempt. Intentionally seeking out individuals to align myself with so I could learn from them is something I wish I had started earlier.
Starting, I undervalued my experiences and expertise which resulted in my not identifying my correct client base. Had I seen more value in myself and what I had to offer, I would have experienced greater success earlier and would not have “missed” opportunities to connect with my audience. Removing limiting beliefs about what the right client is willing to pay was and still is a hurdle that I overcome each day.
What platform/tools do you use for your business?
I currently use very few platforms and the ones I do utilize I am looking to increase my proficiency with. Calendly is one of the most important tools for my scheduling and organization of meetings. It easily integrates with my Google calendar and makes it possible for potential clients to schedule a discovery consultation with me.
My next most utilized tool is YouTube. I have been creating and uploading videos for almost two decades, but I’m just beginning to understand how to effectively use it as a business lead generator. Currently, it’s the best and easiest way for prospects to be exposed to my philosophy, and personality and see examples of my press coverage and social proof. I am still working to leverage it as a revenue source through monetization by meeting the criteria.
Once again, much like the classes I teach or the speeches I deliver, it is another way for prospects to interact with me, my methodologies, and philosophy in an unobtrusive way and determine if they want to go on a journey to “Be World Renowned” with me as their guide.
Recently, at the advice of a colleague, I began experimenting with Teachable to deliver online content. At the time of this interview, I’ve only been exploring its usefulness for about two months with positive results. This is where I’m offering promotional content for prospects to test and utilize before purchasing an intro-level service of group coaching.
What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?
I am a voracious reader and credit much of my success to the decision to learn everything I can from those who successfully did what I want to do. Understanding that communication is the most valuable and highest-paying skill on the planet I began with The Art of Public Speaking by Dale Carnegie. Regardless of how life-changing any idea is, if I can’t effectively communicate it to others it is useless.
The two other books that have recently had a profound impact on my business and what lies ahead in my immediate future are both written by Daniel Priestley. Key Person of Influence and Oversubscribed are terrific at breaking down the science and practical methods that any business owner can implement to achieve extraordinary results faster than normal with less effort.
Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?
I encourage every entrepreneur to find a mentor immediately AND listen to them. My willingness to heed the advice from those who either saw something in me that I didn’t or those who had more knowledge and experience than me made all the difference. Take a chance to learn from someone as I did when I started in the real estate industry. The 8 ½ years spent working for two gracious leaders changed the trajectory of my life and business story. Without that time spent learning the proper way to conduct business at extremely high levels my current efforts would be in vain.
Don’t be afraid to start exactly where you are; lacking the perfect plan, unsure of what’s possible, and somewhat afraid of failing. The great mistake I see others making is believing that it takes perfection to be profitable. This false belief keeps them from starting and they never bring their greatness to the marketplace. As a result, the individuals they were meant to serve must look elsewhere for assistance toward fulfilling their destiny.
One of my best qualities is my willingness to turn thoughts into actions faster than others. Getting into the game of “producing” allows me to succeed greater because I fail faster than anyone can remember. Instead of attempting to perfect service before presenting it to the marketplace, I present good services and then refine them after client feedback. Even if the feedback is that the service does not meet their need I can improve the service until it meets and exceeds expectations.
Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?
I learned early on to always hire talent even if you are not looking for them. If I find and hire the right people I can always create a role for them to help me and my business grow. For THE driven individual who can help World Renowned Coaching and Consulting reach new heights, email me at [email protected].
Where can we go to learn more?
If you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!
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Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
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