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- 🏔️ Solo CEO skillset: Minimum Viable Pipeline—Your first step to building a $10k/month consulting business
🏔️ Solo CEO skillset: Minimum Viable Pipeline—Your first step to building a $10k/month consulting business
(this is how you stop throwing spaghetti on the wall...)
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SO MANY talented coaches absolutely struggle with lead gen.
They try everything:
Sending out DMs and emails
Creating content on LinkedIn
Going to networking conferences
And yet, the whole game of lead gen feels TOO BIG a beast to conquer. You are always left with way too much energy spent, too few leads to show, and constant feeling of, “Is this what being in business feels like?”
Trust me, the answer is NO.
If a business feels like a prison (and lead gen feels too much like a slog), you might just be STUCK playing the wrong game itself.
Today’s newsletter is about the Minimum Viable Pipeline– a concept that’ll shift the way you approach lead gen without doing ANYTHING from the above lead gen activities! (yes– the problem is somewhere else)
Let’s start with a story.
Sarah joined Solo CEO to take back control of her high-performance coaching business:
Sarah (not her real name FYI) was great at her job.
She had years of experience, she had a TON of specific expertise, and she loved working with clients. All great signs for an experienced solopreneur.
But Sarah was struggling with her business, as it was absolutely sucking the life out of her.
Big uncertainty, constant hustle, and almost no freedom.
So I started asking her questions:
What’s your pricing → $375/month for 6 months (total $1500)
What’s the goal of your business → $10,000/month (fair!)
Do you get leads on a sales call → Yes
What’s your close rate → ~35% (above industry average)
I stopped asking. The problem was clear already!
Sarah’s business had a BIG problem: ECONOMICS
Here’s the GAME she was trying to play:
At $375/month, Sarah would have to serve 27 clients to get to $10k/month
At 2 calls/month, that’s 54 hours/month serving clients (13 hours/week)
For every client, she’d spend 2 hours outside calls to prepare (13 hours/week)
That takes the tally to 26 hours/week.
Now to get the 27 clients:
How many sales calls?
How long are these sales calls?
How many DMs/emails/posts do you need to create these?
Adding everything up, this was easily a 80-90 hour weekly commitment.
Was it hard to believe that Sarah was stuck being pulled in 100 different directions, and feeling like the business was running her (instead of her running it)?
Minimum Viable Pipeline: A Solo CEO’s first step to designing a simple-to-run $10k/month business:
Your first job as the CEO of your business is to design a business model that serves YOU.
Most consultants skip this process and then end up getting overwhelmed in trying to win at a game that’s NOT worth playing in the first place.
Here’s how you design your minimum viable pipeline:
Strategically design your business around 4 metrics:
Your Offer Price – How much do you charge with your intro offer
Your Average Retention Price – How much do you upsell
Close rate – What % of clients you close on sales calls
Leads needed/year – How many leads you’ll need to reach $240k/yr ($10k/month)
Here’s an expanded version of what this looks like:
(Keep in mind, this example is still using pricing that is nearly 3x greater than in Sarah’s example above)
Offer Price | Average Retention | LTV | Clients per year (to hit 240k) | Close rate | Leads per year | Leads per month |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
$4,000 | $1500 * 4 months | $10,000 | 24 | 25% | 96 | 8 |
Some key terms:
LTV (lifetime value of a customer) → Offer Price + Average Retention
Clients/year → Goal ($240k/year) / LTV
Leads/year → # Clients/year / Close rate
And here’s what this specific business means–
Every month, you MUST hop on 8 sales calls. That’s the game you’ve designed for your business to hit its goal ($10,000/month). “8” now becomes a north star towards which you need to plan.
Now, even before you start, you as the CEO MUST ask yourself ONE critical question:
“Can I bring this number DOWN so that WINNING becomes simpler?”
What if you just needed to do 6 or 4 calls per month?
How much more comfortable would that goal be?
What’s the “Minimum Viable” version of this pipeline?
The stronger your strategy for this question, the easier it becomes to build a $10k/month business!
So, how can we bring the # Leads/month number down?
3 strategic decisions that’ll help you design a winnable Minimum Viable Pipeline.
There are ONLY 3 ways to design a more effective pipeline:
1. Increase your Offer Price
What if you found a way to 1.5x the price of your intro offer?
Here’s the new pipeline:
Offer Price | Average Retention | LTV | Clients per year (to hit 240k) | Close rate | Leads per year | Leads per month |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
$6,000 | $1500 * 4 months | $12,000 | 20 | 25% | 80 | 7 |
See how the number slowly starts reducing now–
You need 4 fewer clients in a year
You need 16 fewer leads in a year
And your leads/month downsized to 7
Don’t have a proper intro offer yet → Read this skillset newsletter and create one NOW.
2. Increase your Retention
What if you also increased your monthly retention price?
Here’s the new pipeline:
Offer Price | Average Retention | LTV | Clients per year (to hit 240k) | Close rate | Leads per year | Leads per month |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
$6,000 | $2500 * 4 months | $16,000 | 15 | 25% | 60 | 5 |
The number decreased even further. Now you only need 5 leads/month!
3. Increase your Close Rate
Finally, what if you focus on only one channel and improve your close rate?
Here’s the new pipeline:
Offer Price | Average Retention | LTV | Clients per year (to hit 240k) | Close rate | Leads per year | Leads per month |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
$6,000 | $2500 * 4 months | $16,000 | 15 | 35% | 43 | 4 |
There you go! Now you ONLY need 4 sales calls per month– That’s ONE call per week. To run a $10,000/month business.
Seems unreal, doesn’t it?!
This strategy is the difference between a Solo CEO consultant comfortably making $10k/month, and another solopreneur consultant slogging their way to $2k/month.
The more premium your clients, the higher the quality of your work.
From every angle, your business will COMPLETELY transform if you just do the CEO's work!
So, don’t wait anymore.
Go block a slot on the calendar named – Minimum Viable Pipeline.
And get back to me with how you’ve designed your business.
Can’t wait to see you win,
Kasey
PS– If you also want a fresh start along with this analysis, I HIGHLY recommend going through my FREE educational email course– $10k client blueprint.
You’ll build the foundations of your business from the ground up!
Whenever you’re ready, here’s how I can help you become a Solo CEO:
Want to land your first (or next) $10K+ client—without relying on referrals or working 24/7? Get my FREE 5-day email course, The Solo CEO $10+ client blueprint, and learn how to build a high-ticket, repeatable business.
Ready to see your business with total clarity? My recent workshop recording + workbook suite has earned 5-star reviews, with one participant calling it 'the best training money I've ever spent…worth 10x the $100 investment.’
Get the complete system that helps you assess every part of your business and build your 90-day optimization roadmap for just $47 ($50 discount) with code: SOLO50
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