It took me just under 4 years but I did it.

I hit my first milestone of a million dollars in top line revenue generated.

This episode gives you my top lessons and takeaways from the journey so far.

Transcription:

Hey, I just hit a super exciting Milestone in the red anchor marketing. One hour funnel. Cody builds a business. This whole idea, the odometer just rolled over. Since I officially launched my business in 2017. So far I have cumulatively as of today made over $1 million and that’s something worth celebrating. Every time I hit a milestone in the business, if it’s a certain number of podcasts,

downloads, or reviews or people in a membership site or sales coming in, or revenue or profitability or whatever it is we’re celebrating. And I think I’ve got a good reason to celebrate today. So to celebrate the official seven figures and problem solved and revenue generated, I’m going to be jumping into behind the scenes of what worked and what didn’t work on that journey.

So you can accelerate your learning on your path as well. I’ll see you there Wouldn’t know what it really takes to build a thriving profitable business from the ground up. Hey, I’m your host Cody Burch, and this is the Cody builds a business podcast, your unfiltered front row seat to watching me build a seven figure online business from scratch or die trying let’s get started.

Hey, what’s up Cody Burch Here. Hope you had an amazing weekend. And I am very excited. Obviously this is an interesting milestone to be able to proclaim, and it always feels a little bit weird to talk about money. Maybe it’s just how I was raised in a small town, in a small church, in a conservative family to not really talk about that.

And so I feel like I’ve got to get this out of the way and get it off my chest that this post or this, this content, this podcast is in no way to flex or to say, look at me. I can’t believe I did it, but more as an important milestone, that’s worth celebrating something I’m not very good at. I typically just keep going high something.

Cool happens, hit a big milestone and keep going back to the next thing the next day, the next month, the next promotion, the next funnel, the next client. And so it’s important. I think to stop and pause and recognize what we’ve done. And one of the mini lessons I’ve learned over the last four years, just under four years since starting my business.

So I’ve got to get that out of the way. Please don’t take this as, as any kind of boasting or anything like that, because a lot of my friends do way more than a million dollars in a year. And if you’re listening to maybe that’s you and you’re like, dude, no big deal, a million bucks. Like I did that 10 years ago,

that’s fine. And maybe you’re on the path on the other side and say, well, I’m just getting started or I’m still at my nine to five trying to see if I can turn this side hustle into a full-time thing. That’s fine as well. So wherever you’re at on your journey, all of our journeys are unique. Our timing is unique and it took me,

you know, just under four years since I started my agency officially on February 1st, 2017, I had a couple of side hustle things, looking back through my QuickBooks and accounting software here. I had a couple of side hustle things right before I launched, but it was, you know, a thousand bucks, 500 bucks here and there. So in the six months leading up to me leaving my full-time job,

I made like $3,000. It looks like. So I wanted to walk you through those early days in the next few episodes, I’m going to share with you some big lessons and takeaways that I learned on my journey to a million dollars. If you episodes ago, we talked about several milestones. You can hit in your business. The first is making your first sale,

right? Having your idea sayings, anybody want this? And here’s how much it costs. Here’s where to go to buy it. That’s a really important milestone. Hopefully you’ve hit that and you should celebrate that. The next, I think is the one comma clubs. So making a thousand dollars is really cool. The next is making $10,000. And at that point you you’re like this,

this works, I’ve sold $10,000 eventually of my products and services and this thing might have legs. The next thing I think is where you start to hit some financial freedom and independence is $10,000 in a month. That was my goal, right? When I started thought, if I could get to 10 grand a month, which was more than my salary, I made about 7,000 a month at my nine to five job thought,

man, 10 grand a month would open up all the doors for us financially. So let’s get to that as fast as possible. And I’ll walk you through what that journey was like. So getting to 10,000 in a month is really interesting. That’s for a lot of people, if your expenses are low, 10,000 a month is more than almost anybody in the world needs to be able to pay the mortgage and pay for your car and pay for your groceries and stuff like that.

So 10 thousands of cool all these milestones, it seems like a pretty arbitrary, but it’s still fine. 10,000 a month. Next is a hundred thousand dollars. It’s kind of a cool milestone. The next one, and just kind of joking with my Canadian friends. The next one I’d say is a million dollars Canadian, which is like 650 K U S something like that.

So I hit that milestone last year, but this year I’m make a million us in revenue. And so that’s the next milestone to me in my head. There’s no rules here, but it’s a million eventually. Now you could do a hundred grand a year for 10 years, be at a million bucks. And then the next is, you know, a million in a year and then a million in profit.

And knowing that the bank and then a million and a month, I guess, I don’t know. That’s just where my imagination stops. And so I just pass the milestone of a million, eventually two comma club, you know, eventually it took me four years to get here. So if you’re doing the math, like it’s about 250 K a year in revenue,

my business generated, of course that’s not all profit. There’s a lot of business expenses and travel and masterminds and coaching and events and courses and things like that. But it’s been a really, really interesting journey. And so today I today I made a list with my wife of all of the lessons and takeaways that I’ve learned. Some of them are great.

And I say, I figured this out and I want you to win as well. So here you go. Some of them are not great to say, Hey, I really messed up on this one. This was a huge pitfall for me and caused me a lot of pain and strife. So make sure you skip this part and don’t do that. And so I’ve got to for you today,

one is about how to price yourself. And the second is about the sidecar strategy, the sidecar strategy. So let’s dive in to the first thing I wanted to tell you about how to grow a seven figure business, which is what this podcast is all about, all about my journey of doing this. So you can follow along and go all the way back to episode one,

you know, 320 something episodes ago, say, what was that like back in April, 2018, when this thing launched, where was he? What has he tried since then? And since then I’ve written books and hosted events and done masterminds and coaching programs and membership sites had done for you funnels and high ticket and low ticket and free stuff and tens of thousands of leads.

And it’s just been crazy. So let’s talk about the first step, the first point, the first takeaway on how to price your services. When you get started. My first tip for you is to start high ticket. Now, I don’t know what that means for you exactly. But when I got started, I was able to procure a $5,000 a month client now,

full disclosure. I’m sure I’ve said this on the show eventually, or like in the past at some point, but that was my former employer. I had this script in my head when I was starting to transition out, which is a whole different story. I said, Hey, there are obligations that you have to your coaching clients that I would typically fulfill.

How would you like to proceed with that? I just kept saying that over and over and over again and through the awkwardness and the weirdness of trying to leave a job that you’ve been out for 11 years at the time, there was only three people working there. And so I was going to make it too. And then I was going to be a contractor.

So I just kept saying, there are obligations you have to these high ticket coaching clients. I think we had, I don’t know, 10 or 15 coaching clients. And they were relying on me through my boss to like build their funnels and ads and marketing and things like that. That’s part of the reason I quit. I thought, wait, I got to build our own funnels and ads and marketing and these coaching clients.

I wonder if I could get clients like this doing services like this on my own and make more money. But that was my, that was my theory, which obviously proved to be true pretty quickly. So I was able to work out a deal with that. My former employer, I think we went for either four or six months. I forget if five K a month to continue to fulfill on his coaching clients.

And for him is a no brainer he’s making, I don’t know what the amount was, but way more than 5k a month on those coaching clients. And now having me fulfill a lot of their marketing stuff, it’s still worked out great for him. And for me, as I said, I was trying to get to 7,000 a month and pretty much from month one,

there was some uncertainty there for a few weeks, but in that first month I made about 7,000 bucks and thought, Oh cool. I’ve proven that I used to make 7,000 on salary. And now I’ve got to make 7,000 on my own. I wonder if I can get to 10. So I’ve got my finances pulled up here from 2017. And so yeah,

that first month was 68, 4,460 bucks shy of where I wanted to be. And then in the month of March, I made just under 14,000 bucks. So that was in month. That was my second full month in the business. It was pretty exciting to make 14 K in a month for me. Then now twice, this is my second month on my own to have the $5,000 retainer.

And then with high ticket services, thousand bucks here and there for a funnel, maybe that’s not high ticket. Now I charge, you know, usually 5,000 and up for custom funnel builds. So to be, you know, a couple more funnels now when I was at my desk job, I thought, you know, I’d build funnels almost every day and thought,

well, yeah, I mean, I can knock this out and you know, by lunchtime, if I could do it for a couple hundred bucks, that’s awesome. I used to make 50 bucks an hour roughly at my job. If I can get paid, you know, 75, an hour, that’s a 50% increase. So that’s the wrong way to think.

And that’s not my advice right now is I’m not selling you, telling you to trade time for money, but that’s what, that’s what my mentality was. If that makes sense, then you realize, gosh, people really value these funnels. They’re pretty complicated. Facebook ad campaigns are complicated. I just need one or two more clients to be well over the $10,000 Mark.

Now we hit a little dip in April back down to 6,000 bucks. So a little, little rollercoaster there for the first 90 days out of the gate, the month of may 18 grand, June 19,000 July little dip back down to 10,000 and the month of July. And that’s when I think that contract was out that $5,000 retainer I think had gone away by then.

And then August, it jumped up to close to 35,000, September was a 20. And then a couple other months to Jayden that first year at 239,000 bucks. So if my memory serves me correctly, I had made about six figures in revenue by August. Again, not saying that to boast saying that to say a couple of high ticket clients can really serve your business.

So if you’re just starting out, I’m not recommending you sell a little courses. I’m not recommending you sell $17 workshops or $7 shirts or $5 free plus shipping book funnels. It’s very tricky to make those work. And so those first few months I was word of mouth. I had a little bit of a network from working at advance, your reach and being the right hand guy to Pete for so long,

this guy, Pete, there were a lot of people you don’t know, people Argus that’s who runs that company. And his, his star was rising. His rocket was taking off as it were. And a lot of people knew me through that and that I was the guy behind his marketing and his funnels. And so I got a few referrals. Oh,

you know, just, just by being known and being seen and a handful of people reaching out saying, Hey, I I’m, I loved your work when you were there. I heard you’re on your own. Are you up for hire? So yeah, for sure. Here’s how that goes. I forget my pricing back then. Let’s just say it was 2000 for funnels and a thousand a month for Facebook ads.

So again, in my quest and my little tiny vision of try to make 10 grand a month, I just needed a handful of clients and had a bit of a runway there with a relationship with my, with my former employer at advance your reach to help get that thing off the ground. So that’s my advice to you. Is there any version of your services and your products?

You could package it up and go, gosh, if I just got one or two clients a month, I’m good to go. I don’t know what your financial needs are, but for a lot of people, if you could make over 5,000 a month, that’s 60 grand a year, keep your expenses low. That’s great. Make 10 K a month,

keep your expenses low. That’s amazing. So quite frankly, those are probably my most profit months because I had no idea. I had no team. I had no accounting. I had no software. I had nothing. I didn’t have any expenses looking back at these. Like I’m not going to go super detailed on my QuickBooks, but they were very profitable months.

Now in August, a couple of things happened because I had a high ticket offer. I had a 1500 a month retainer for like marketing consulting, a 3,500 a month marketing consulting retainer, and a $7,500 a month marketing retainer. And I set that top level higher than my previous salary, just as kind of a, I don’t know, just a, a motivation.

Okay. And the other reason I said it at that price was, it’d be a nice anchor thinking. Nobody in the world will pay 7,500. They’re all gonna pay 3,500. So that was true. I had a referral and had a call and he’s like, how do you help people? I said, I got small, medium, large, and larger 7,500.

He was like, Whoa. I was like, yeah, I know. But you know, for some people it’s a no brainer. And then he chose the middle level, like, great, this is working great. That happened again. And same thing. I sold the middle package. Then I had a client that I came across at an event.

Think it was in may. And I told him the three levels and he said he was with his wife. He said, I obviously need the top level package. And I about fell out of my chair and it made a ton of sense for his business. He needed so many things to happen in his business and what we ended up doing. So he paid the state of her a hundred a month.

That was in August. And that’s the month I’d said I made, I think about 35,000 bucks, which was amazing that put me over the six figure Mark right away as like, okay, this thing is going to work. I don’t need to go back for my job back. I don’t need to go apply for stuff like another job I’m going, gonna make this work.

Like I, I’m going to be able to cut my ties mentally of thinking, like wondering if I can make this happen or not in that month now for the 7,500 a month client. And he was my client for like nine months, which was amazing. And in that amount of time, we turned his business into something that was making, he already had a very successful business,

as you can imagine, but we moved a lot of his courses online, made a membership site. I feel like he was making either 20 or 30 K a month or more with his membership site that I helped him build over that nine months. So if you’re thinking seven and a half thousand a month, it sounds expensive. Depends on your perspective. Cause if it,

if you use that investment to make 35 K a month, it’s paying out five to one, it’s a no brainer. So make sure you think of it that way, but that’s my recommendation. That’s like big takeaway. Number one, big point. Number one, what can you do that would move the needle the most where you have the most amount of Slack in your pricing,

that if you get a client it’s just amazing. And so then for me, I was getting three clients or five clients or seven clients. And it was really, really working very well for me and my business because I had a high ticket offer. If you don’t have one of those yet, I think you should finish listening to this podcast and then go make one and think,

yeah, I can add more support. I can add more phone calls. I can add more access. I can add more speed. I can add this additional layer of service. I can add something to make it a more enriching experience to help them go faster, get a better result with less pain. And you can just charge more. That is takeaway number one and big takeaway.

Number two, we’ll talk about next. And it’s the sidecar strategy. When was the last time you saw a motorcycle with a sidecar? I think for me, it’s been, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen one, honestly in real life, seen them online before obviously, but not in real life. So here’s what I mean. If you’re sitting in the sidecar of a motorcycle,

you’re attached to another person, the person’s driving, they’re kind of deciding where they go and how fast they go and all that stuff. And if you’re in the sidecar, you’re kind of coming alongside and you’re not really in control. You’re not driving, but you’re you’re with them. They’re going somewhere. They’re doing stuff. And that’s my big takeaway. So I went for me and it was in a couple of phases.

First was with my previous employer, advance your reach. I was kind of in that sidecar, like I’m the marketing guy then that was it. There was no other marketing guy. So we would go host events and they’d say, cool, I need help with marketing. And I would then go do that for those people on a referral basis or something like that.

Right. And it, it, it didn’t go great. That’s one of my biggest regrets is like leaving that jettison jettisoning off of that company more quickly because I was very timid and was just kind of still under that wing. Like I think I’d meet people in September and say, Hey, like, by the way, I quit like seven months. Cause they’re like,

you quit. I thought you still worked there. Why don’t you say anything? Like I know I just kind of kept it to myself. I was trying to respect, you know, my former boss and didn’t really want to make a bunch of noise about it. And it was kind of awkward. Didn’t know what to say. And I thought that was kind of funny.

So I won’t, I wouldn’t recommend that again. That’s one of my regrets is leaving quickly and loudly and politely, but not discreetly and secretly that didn’t serve my business longterm. It probably helped him out a little bit, but didn’t serve me long-term but my point is for the next, you know, four months or so, however long I worked with,

with him, I was kind of in the sidecar, he was doing stuff blowing and going and going to events, hosting events, like doing a bunch of stuff. And I was kind of there with him and growing, growing the business. So that’s a really fast way to grow your own business. Is there somebody that you can temporarily attach your sidecar to say,

Hey, do you mind if I just go with you? Like you don’t have the skillset that I have and I’d love to come alongside and serve your audience and help them out. The second example of this is right when I quit in February, my wife was at an event, one of her clients, Nicholas Koosman, she’s a Facebook ads guru. He’s still a friend still in touch with him.

In fact, I’m in his coaching program as well. And it’s just awesome. So Nick for several years, so he knew my skillset with Facebook ads and funnels, and he was looking for kind of a right-hand person to come to his two day workshops and help supplement his teaching and then help people implement on breaks. And then also to get clients because his model at the time,

he didn’t want any clients. So he would teach a two day workshop. He was like, if you’re waiting for the pitch, there isn’t one. This is it. If you want to hire me, you can’t. But the handsome fellow in the back there is named Cody and you can hire him if you’d like. And so February mid-February Christy was at the event with Nick and just kind of chatting.

He said, how’s Cody doing? And she’s like, Cody’s doing fine. Actually. He just quit his job after 11 years. So that’s interesting. He was like, no way do you think he could possibly come to these workshops? And he had another one happening, I think the next month. And so it was either February or March, but I flew out to the next workshop.

He was hosting. I don’t recall the details, but I got a couple of clients from that. And then he was doing workshops about every two months, probably. So I had to coordinate a way to get, you know, babysitting for our kids and help get my mom and my wife’s mom to help out and get friends and family to help out.

So I could go to some of these workshops every month, every other month. And then Nick and I had a really great arrangement where he just literally didn’t have an offer for people on the backend to serve them. And I was there and I did, and we had a really like slick way of integrating it. I just, I showed up, I played full out.

I served Nick and his audience. I was kind and helpful. And, and to be clear, like I was in the sidecar, it was his event. He had to fill it. He had to market it. He had to put it on. He had to hire my wife. I didn’t get paid to be there. I paid for my own travel.

My wife already had a hotel room. So I just crashed with her obviously so that my expenses were low. And then I would just get a couple of clients. So I don’t know what that’s like for you as you hear those stories. That’s kind of my secret, you know, one of my secrets on how I grew so quickly and had a six-figure business and the first six months by August another six figures by November,

I went on to do 240 or so K in revenue in that first year, those are two of the strategies. And I got a lot more. I’m going to share with you the next couple of episodes. So make sure you hit subscribe. So you don’t miss anything coming up. When I just peel back all of the secrets of how I did this,

I’ve got about 12 more on this sheet here. So I’ll be releasing more content a little bit more frequently about how I did it, but that’s my big two takeaways for you today. Looking back, how did I get started? How did I leave that company? Prove that I could make it work and then make it happen. And that’s how I did it.

That’s the, that’s the first part high ticket offer sidecar strategy, high ticket offer sidecar strategy. Now you might need to work out some details with the person that’s actually driving the motorcycle. In this example, maybe you pay them a referral fee or some kind of commission for those like whatever you need to do to work on that. But to be clear,

you find somebody with a complimentary skillset. That’s not a competitor that they’ve, they’re assembling a crowd of people online or offline. And you say, Hey, I’d love to come alongside you and serve you with that and create an offer special to your people. Some people will say, that’d be awesome. Just help my people save like 30% on your cost.

That’d be great. No, no commission needed. Some people might say, Hey, charge what you normally charge, but pay me that 30% like in a commission either way. It’s the same thing to you. It’s, you know, they helped you assemble the people and get the clients so hope that serves you today, wherever you’re at in your journey.

If you’re way ahead of me, congratulations, I’m trying to catch up if you’re way behind where I’m at so far, I’m so glad you’re here. So you can listen and invest in yourself and your business and put the pieces in place to be able to grow and serve more people and respond to your calling and help those that you feel called to serve.

So I’ll see you in the very next episode, have a great day.