As an entrepreneur in the online space, it can sometimes feel like your business has to take priority, even at the expense of your family or your own health.
But that’s simply not realistic for most human beings and we certainly didn’t get into business to ignore our bodies or our loved ones.
Circuit Sales System student Lisa’s story proves that you don’t have to choose between being a successful business owner or actually enjoying life. You *can* have both.
Working with teenagers might not fill everybody with excitement, but Lisa has been supporting teens (and their parents) for over 30 years as they navigate the complex college-bound journey.
She has a passion for helping her clients make informed decisions about what comes after graduation, while moving families from feeling overwhelmed and confused to motivated, clear, and confident about what comes next.
Starting out as a teacher, Lisa went on to become an independent college counselor in 1999 as she started her first company LEAP, which specializes in test prep, academic support, and college coaching.
The Genesis of Lisa’s Online Course
For many students, their time in college was being extended due to the fact they were switching their majors. As a mother of five saving for her own children’s time in college, Lisa recognized the significant financial impact that would have on families.
In 2008 she set out to solve that problem for families so that they had better outcomes financially. (Plus, which kid would want to stay in college longer than they have to?!)
She was able to develop and hone a step-by-step 1-1 program which saw great success. But after landing in Forbes as an expert interviewee for an article about three steps to increase the ROI on your college investment, all of a sudden she was no longer coaching just locally to her greater Cincinnati area.
While her newfound national reach was fantastic, there was still only one Lisa, who also needed to be a mother and partner. She knew she was helping people and needed to widen her reach, but she also knew she had to still be able to live her life.
And so Flourish Coaching was born in 2020–a program which is flipping the script on the college admissions process and helping to ensure an on-time (and on-budget!) graduation and a career that teens will love.
Live Launching Limitations
Lisa piloted her course in the fall of 2020 and then in 2021, she live launched. After going through four live launches, she learned a lot—not only the pain points, but things that made her course better, and helped her to refine it.
However, time soon became an issue again—not only for Lisa, but for the families she was serving. When she was live launching, Lisa found it difficult to meet all of the time zone needs, as she served families all around the world.
But the limitations of live launching didn’t end there. In the middle of one live launch, Lisa had cellulitis in her arm, which caused huge panic ahead of a live webinar that same night. Like many business owners, she struggled to prioritize health as an entrepreneur, and was instead focused on trying to hustle to make it to her evening webinar–despite being sick and exhausted.
Live launching during the pandemic also meant Lisa had an underlying anxiety about getting Covid, which would prevent her from showing up live.
Lisa needed to find more of a balance. But when she was only live launching twice, she found that many families simply weren’t available at those times. She knew her program was having a positive impact, but she had to start making it available at a time that worked for her families, not just when it works for her. When we try to shoehorn our potential clients into our timelines, it only ends up penalizing them for having lives.
Exploring Evergreen
Lisa set out to figure out how to switch to evergreen. But she found there were limited resources available to teach you how to do it. While many courses offered robust, step-by-step guidance on creating a course, the information offered about evergreen was extremely limited.
Evergreen also lacked the sense of urgency that Lisa had seen work so well in her live launches. With no sense of urgency, she knew people wouldn’t respond, and was already aware that industry conversion rates were much lower for evergreen than with a live launch. Uninspired by the shortcomings of evergreen, Lisa did not start to build anything out.
Discovering A New Way of Selling
After listening to podcasts and searching on Google, the algorithm guided Nicki and the CSS team to Lisa’s Facebook stream. However, Lisa entered the CSS funnel at the beginning of a week where she was working away on a business trip.
Due to her work pressures, Lisa was not able to watch the CSS training all at once. As she watched it in pieces, it started to resonate with her. She realized that the busy families and teenagers she serves would also only be able to watch her webinar in pieces (at the time that works for them).
Knowing that the CSS brought together the urgency of live launching, with the consistency of evergreen, she purchased the course while on her business trip.
Circuit Saves the Day
“What happened this summer, I would’ve had to scrap my launch, had it happened while I was live launching.”
Lisa enrolled in the CSS in March, and worked to an aggressive timeline, with the goal of turning her Circuit on in June—when families have more time, and teenagers have fewer demands.
Lisa decided to test her Circuit out first on her wait list of around 130 people. She was thankful she did this as it allowed her to identify a tech glitch in the first few days. Despite that, she got sales right away and saw it was working. Although Lisa was out of action during her recovery, she could still watch on as her Circuit continued to make money. Her wait list converted at an impressive 12% and in the first month of turning her Circuit on, she generated $12K in revenue.
That was when Lisa realized the impact of automating her sales: “As I had the luxury of listening to my body, doing my PT, doing all the things, and I watched sales come in, there was no better feeling and I thought ‘this is what was missing’.”
Unlike when she had cellulitis, or every time she did a live launch during Covid, she was no longer stressing about ill health affecting her business. She could prioritize her health and her business, while making sales every single week, despite dedicating a whole month to her recovery.
And now that she has proof of concept, she plans to turn on Facebook ads, and put her list through the Circuit.
Building out the Circuit
Because Lisa’s live launches were successful and she had B2B sales coming in from high schools and homeschool groups, she was in a financial position which allowed her to have such an aggressive timeline when building out her Circuit.
This meant that she had the budget to be able to outsource some of the work to allow her to reach her June deadline.
Lisa hired one of the CSS recommended copywriters to work alongside her and help write the script for her webinar, as well as her email sales copy, and other pieces of copy that she needed support with. She also hired a graphic designer. Collaborating as a team like this saved her tons of time and made her tight deadline achievable.
As Lisa says, “One thing that I would say to people who are considering this, first of all, don’t consider it, just do it. But how you do it might look a little different depending on your budget and the amount of time you have and things like that.”
The Freedom of Automated Sales
Although Lisa’s nest is empty, all of her kids live locally and she wants to enjoy the freedom in the evenings now in a way that she wasn’t able to when she had teenagers and younger kids at home. Lisa and her husband are at a stage of life where not only do they want to travel, but they want to have more capacity to hang out with their family and friends.
Automating your sales is not only beneficial for when those emergencies happen; it’s about creating a life that you can enjoy.
Now that her Circuit is up and running, Lisa can spend more time working on her business, rather than in her business (as well as making sure she’s prioritizing her health).
“I didn’t mean to be an entrepreneur, I did it because I wanted to help people. And I’m still a teacher at heart and I’m still supporting the same audience that I have for over 30 years. But I do have all these business and entrepreneurial ideas and now I feel like the Circuit allows me time to work on ideas like that because when I was live launching, you’re always planning for the next live launch.”
Read More
Lisa brought people in to help her achieve her goals faster. Here’s what to consider if you’re looking to hire the right people for your team.
Watch More
When life changed in a way Lisa could never have predicted, she did not have to sacrifice her business. Thanks to her Circuit, Lisa could continue watching the sales roll in (at a 12% conversion rate!), despite not being able to work.
In this episode of the Energize Your Online Business podcast, Nicki is joined by Circuit Sales System student Lisa, whose story is proof that you don’t have to prioritize your business over your health. Listen in to hear about her newfound freedom now that she no longer relies on live launching.
Your Turn!
Does Lisa’s story resonate with you and your experience selling your online course or program? We’d love to hear from you! Comment below!