My path from $0 - $4 million in 61 steps :)
My business recently crossed $4 million in revenue from online courses. It took 3 years.
In this post I brain dump the 61 steps I’ve taken to get to this point.
Here’s how I’ve done it:
Work hard at my day job - back then my income was an important part of our family’s livelihood so I couldn’t afford to quit and go all in on something else that may/may not work out.
But I really didn’t enjoy my corporate job - I wanted to be doing something more creative and I hated not having control over my time.
In 2012 I start a hobby blog on the side - this is for fun without the expectation of anything in return. A creative outlet from what I do during the day. I call the blog ‘The Little Design Corner’ (if I knew in advance where it would all be headed I definitely would have chosen a different name LOL!).
Not long after I start an Instagram account. But I have no idea what I’m doing. I just start to share stuff and iterate over time as I learn more about it.
I start telling people I know about my hobby blog and new Instagram page. Some start to follow me (that is scary as I feel like a complete imposter and I also worry that my ‘serious’ business colleagues may find out and think I’m being ridiculous!)
Friends from my eldest son’s school come over for play dates etc. and they like my house the way it is styled. They also start to see my Instagram/blog posts.
A few start asking me to help them style their homes.
For the first job I get asked to do I charge about $1000 and end up taking about 40 hours to get the job done (for those doing the maths that works out at about $25/hour haha!). But honestly I am thrilled and I can’t believe someone is actually paying me to do something I would have happily done for free!
I continue to write blog posts in the evenings, on weekends and during my lunch breaks at work.
My design blog and Instagram started to get attention - it was easier for these things to grow back then.
I did some more work for free for other friends as well as for other family members (e.g. I helped my Mum and Step-Dad restyle their house for sale). This is great experience for me and gives me some images I can use on my website.
With the encouragement of a few people (including a real estate agent who sold one of our houses for us) I started to charge (extremely low!) fees to help other friends who were recommended to me by the first group who I had helped for free.
I now had some images and a portfolio of small projects I could put up on my website as examples of previous work.
I also started to collect some testimonials to use as well.
All of these free and low paid projects were being done in evenings and on weekends while I was still working in my corporate day job.
I was loving what I was doing and people started saying I should do this as a real business.
I was REALLY scared about the idea of this. Massive imposter syndrome kicked in.
But I realised I only live once and decided to give it a go.
So I start doing more active lead generation activities to try and find ‘real’ clients (i.e. people I didn’t already know who would pay me to help them!).
For that initial lead generation I used Houzz and a few clients started reaching out to me to help with small styling projects.
[Side note: I don’t recommend Houzz as a good lead generation tool these days but it worked OK around 9-10 years ago when I was getting going]
I couldn’t believe people were paying me to help with work I would happily be doing for free - I was loving every second of it!
From word of mouth plus leads from Houzz, Instagram and my blog I started getting a more steady stream of clients.
I was now working full time in my corporate job, had three young kids and now a side business as well. It was pretty full on.
Here’s how I managed everything:
I would get up early before work and exercise to stay on top of my health
Once the boys were at daycare/kindy I would go to work for the day
I wouldn’t waste any time - lunch times were spent calling clients back or doing emails or client work. I would listen to business podcasts on the bus on the way to the city for work.
In the evenings after the boys were fed and on their way to bed I would go and have client meetings - many clients preferred evening meetings anyway as they also worked full time (they didn’t know I was working in another job by the way!). I did this a few nights a week. My husband minded the boys.
I would also meet clients on weekends and I would also do my client work on weekends as well. My husband would take the boys to the park or on an outing for a few hours so I could get this work done. I am extremely productive so put my head down for these quiet hours and got most of my work done.
Eventually after living this somewhat crazy life for about a year or so I had got close to replacing my 6-figure corporate salary with my design business side hustle.
At this point my husband and I discussed it and we agreed that if I had more time to spend on growing my business and finding more clients that I would likely have more success with it, plus it would obviously be less stressful on the family as I would be more flexible with my time.
So I quit my job and went all in on my business around 12 months or so after starting my hobby blog.
That was around 2014.
I then worked as a designer and grew my design business for the next 5-6 years or so. Most years I managed to achieve a 6 figure salary from my design work, which was the same as what I was earning in my corporate job.
But I quickly realised I wanted to stop trading time for money so much so I could be more flexible in my schedule. I also found some clients incredibly painful to work with and at times it felt like I had replaced my corporate job with a different kind of job I didn’t enjoy. Parts of the design work were great, some of it wasn’t enjoyable at all.
I also wanted to scale my business and make more money.
I knew I didn’t want staff as I had managed staff in my corporate job and I knew I didn’t like that.
So I looked at what digital products I could create to help my growing online community.
I spent a long time thinking about all of this and trying to come up with ideas of digital products, courses or membership programs I could create. Long time = years of procrastinating and not taking action on this (which I regret now!).
I also did a lot of up-skilling over those years - e.g. I took a lot of online courses, listened to heaps of podcasts and read lots of business books. I wanted to learn about this stuff as fast as I could from people who were ahead of where I was.
Over the years I’ve probably spent close to $100K on professional development programs/books etc.
I started paying close attention to what people were asking me about in my DMs and comments on Instagram and in email.
I noticed lots of people were asking me about the SketchUp projects that I was posting on my Instagram account. These were posts of client work that I was doing - but the focus was on the software I was using.
So one day I (bravely) posted and asked my community if they would find a SketchUp course helpful. I had no idea what that might look like - I just put myself out there and decided to see if there was interest.
My community said yes!
So I put up a sales page (still not having created any of the course yet) and got pre-payments for my soon-to-be-launched online course
People started paying for the pre-payment so I then had to get the course made!
I will never forget that first course sale that I got - I still have the screen shot of it on my phone to remind me how far I’ve come (you’ll never forget the first $1 you make selling something digitally!).
I launched my first SketchUp course in August 2019
The first ever pre-launch sale for that course made nearly $40,000 and was the start of the online courses business that I have today.
For the next few months I did a few other open/closed launches (no longer the model I use) and got up to about $100,000 in revenue from the course during that period.
At this point I wasn’t using any paid advertising to attract leads - it was all from my organic marketing on social media and via my email list, plus word of mouth from students who had already taken the course.
In early 2020 I engaged a paid advertising company to help me implement some Instagram and Facebook ads.
I also created two other signature courses during 2020 - an intermediate SketchUp course and a business course for designers (that is no longer available for sale).
The products sold well and the advertising was effective and over the coming year after my first course launch my business generated $1 million + in revenue.
By 2021 my business was consistently generating more than $100,000 each month.
My husband decided to “retire” from the corporate world as well and come and work with me in my business.
He was confident he could teach himself how to do the paid advertising on Instagram and Facebook so I finished up with the advertising consultants that I had been working with and we brought that function ‘in house’ for Paul to do.
Since that time I’ve launched lots of other courses, done many things right, made lots of mistakes along the way and made more than $4 million in sales in 3 years from the different the online courses I’ve created.
I have also recently now launched a program that helps other people create and sell their own online courses as well (find out more about it here).
The money side of things is fantastic obviously but the thing that I have benefited from the most with my business growth is the time and financial freedom it has given my family.
Paul and I both work as much or as little as we like each day. The core tasks that keep my business ticking over take me less than a few hours per day. Some days I’ll work longer hours if I am creating something new or working on a new strategic project - but it’s completely up to me how much/little I do each day.
Paul also started doing his own thing - e.g. he’s working towards his Black Belt in Jiu Jitsu and he now has his own YouTube channel where he teaches about finance and crypto.
We also have lunch out whenever we want to and spend our time however we want. We are both home for our boys every afternoon after school. We can also drop everything whenever someone is sick and we are able to both attend any school even without the stress of having to ask for permission from employers or juggle things.
Overall online courses have changed my life - and my family’s life as well :)
And that’s my path from $0-$4 million in 61 steps! :)
It seems quite simple when I write it all out like this but it’s taken a HUGE amount of hard work to get to this point and it hasn’t been something that’s happened by accident over night.
So if you’re keen to start your own business then my strongest recommendation for you is to not make excuses of doing it ‘when the kids go to school’ or ‘when you’ve saved up and left your job’.
Instead I recommend you just get started now and work on little steps and actions that could ultimately add up to something fantastic.
Build things up as a side gig while you’re still working so you don’t have any financial pressure from it. You can also see if you like running a business and if you actually have a service or product that people want to buy from you that way as well.
Once you’ve got your side gig to the point of making enough money that you feel confident you can go all in - this is the time to quit your job and throw yourself in to it full time.
Good luck and I’m here to fully support you! ⭐️🥳🥳⭐️
Thanks for reading and catch you in my next post :)
Clare x
Dr Clare Le Roy
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