Transcript

Sigrun:
You’re listening to The SIGRUN Show, episode number 399. In this episode, I talked to Lisa Johnson about how to create leveraged income. Welcome to the SIGRUN Show. I’m your host Sigrun, creator of SOMBA, the MBA program for online entrepreneurs.
With each episode, I’ll share with you inspiring case studies and interviews to help you achieve your dreams and turn your passion into profits. Thank you for spending time with me today. Building an online business takes time. I share with you proven strategies to help you get there faster. You’ll also learn how to master your mindset, up level your marketing, and succeed with masterminds.
Today, I speak with Lisa Johnson. She’s a seven figure business coach who helps entrepreneurs scale their businesses by generating leveraged income from memberships and courses. She has been featured in newspapers and magazines, including the Guardian, Psychologies, and Red. A recent feature in Forbes magazine got over a quarter a million views in one week. In this episode, we talk about how to create leveraged income.
Before we dive in, I want to share more about the special episode that I’m releasing next week. It will be the 400th episode of The SIGRUN Show, and to celebrate this special episode, I want to turn things around. Instead of asking questions, I will answer them. If there’s anything you’ve ever wanted to ask me, whether it’s business related or not, now is your chance. In the show notes, I will link to a page where you can record your question. Please state your name at the beginning and keep your question short and to the point. To access this link, go through the show notes at sigrun.com/399. There you will also find all the links to Lisa Johnson.
I am so excited to be here with Lisa Johnson to talk about passive income. Welcome on the show, Lisa.
Lisa Johnson:
Thank you for having me. I’m really excited to be here.
Sigrun:
Well, I’m excited because we were introduced by a common friend, Selena Soo, and anyone she introduces me to is amazing. So I have been looking forward to talking to you, Lisa. Also, we’ve been watching each other on Facebook and we were saying before I hit the record button, it feels like we know each other, but at the same time we don’t.
Lisa Johnson:
Yeah. I feel like we’ve been following each other for a while and knowing everything about each other, but isn’t that the power of Facebook? It’s amazing.
Sigrun:
It’s amazing. Yeah. We can kind of hate it and love it at the same time.
Lisa Johnson:
We can, we can. And we will always hate it a little bit.
Sigrun:
A little bit, yeah. So I know that you are known for passive income and that’s what we’re going to talk about today, but obviously we cannot start to just dive into that topic until we know a little about you. So how come that this is your topic today? How long have you been an entrepreneur and what did you do before?
Lisa Johnson:
So I haven’t been an entrepreneur very long, actually. I started a wedding business about five, six years ago, a wedding planning business. Because I was working in corporate and I got pregnant with twin boys kind of unexpectedly, and so knew that I couldn’t stay doing what I was doing. I was working 80 hour weeks. I was in an investment bank and it was busy. And so I got a nine to five job near my house, just like as a PA, so that I could at least see them when they go to bed and when they wake up.
The problem with having a PA job is A, I was bored and B, I was earning a third of what I was earning in an investment bank. And so I decided on a whim to start a new business. And I didn’t know anything about business, but I was like, you know, I’ll start a wedding planning business because I’m really organized and because there’s probably going to be cake involved and it sounds [inaudible 00:03:57].
There I was with this wedding planning business, and at the end of year one, I think we worked out, I’d made one pound 15 an hour in this wedding planning business. It was ridiculous. And I’d been working really hard on it. And I realized it was just because I didn’t have those business foundations, like the stuff you teach. I just didn’t know any of that stuff. And so I got a business coach, learned everything that I could about ideal client, money mindset, how to actually put a marketing plan together, all of that kind of stuff. And within five months I turned the business around to be the most well known UK urban wedding planning company. And we had great, great clients for year and a half, fully booked in. Raised my prices three times. It was amazing.
And so then people started coming to me and saying, how have you done it? You’ve been in this industry only a year and a half. And so I realized that I had this knack for talking to people about really complex jargon, you know the jargon that there is around business, and just breaking it down into something that makes actual sense to normal people. And so, they started listening to me, they started making more money. And so I realized that actually, maybe business coaching was the thing for me after all. And three years ago I started a business coaching company and it took off very quickly. I made the six figures in six months, multi-six figures in the first year kind of thing.
But I still wasn’t very happy, because all I had done was traded in a nine to five for a six in the morning to 11 o’clock at night, because I worked more on my business because it was my baby. The problem was I still wasn’t seeing my kids. So, realized I needed a completely different business model. So I had a look. Heard about passive income semi-passive income. Learned everything I could. Literally poured over six figures into learning everything I could about the subject through courses and coaches, and started to change my business model. Started with a few courses, membership, new passive income streams in there. Until a year later, here I am earning over a million dollars a year and it’s passive or semi-passive. I don’t do one-to-one’s really anymore.
Sigrun:
Yeah. But that’s the thing about passive, right?
Lisa Johnson:
Never passive.
Sigrun:
It’s never passive.
Lisa Johnson:
Yeah. Let’s get rid of that myth right now. You will be working so hard to set things up at the beginning, but then it becomes more passive as it goes on because you’re using the same materials, the same things that you’ve found, even the same marketing. But yeah, we can’t go to sleep and money rains down on us. Unfortunately. That would be nice though.
Sigrun:
Well, that’s what the sleazy marketeers tell us. You just go on the beach with your laptop, or actually no laptop, just with a drink, and money is flowing in. No.
Lisa Johnson:
It doesn’t work that way. And especially at the beginning. I think people who I teach passive income to are really surprised actually how much work goes into it in the first few months. Because in the first few months you’re building an audience. You need an audience to make passive income. And people are taught everywhere, you don’t need an audience, and actually that’s not true. You need that audience. And that takes work.
Sigrun:
Why do you think that you had this knack for, let’s say, taking complicated subjects and making it simple when it comes to business? Was there something about your personality or background? What you did before in corporates?
Lisa Johnson:
I think it could be a mixture of what I did before, because I’ve had lots of different jobs. So I was an NVQ, a national vocational qualification trainer. I was an actress, a TV presenter, a lawyer, an investment banker and a PA. And I think that all of those skills together make me a good business coach, because I’ve had to use everything, like how to explain something really simply to people. But also I don’t like complicated things. I’ve never liked complicated things. And I always try and break things down into an easier way of thinking about it. And that’s all I did.
And I only knew I could do this when somebody came to me and said, can you explain sales funnels to me? And I explained it and she said, I have listened to sales funnels like 10, 20 times and I’ve never understood it and I get it now. And so I started teaching it and people started telling me that it’s easier now.
But yeah, there were still some things that I hear all this jargon on, especially online on the internet, and people are using phrases, feed magnet, freebie, opt-in and they all just basically mean the same thing, but people try and complicate things and it doesn’t need to be.
Sigrun:
No. Okay. So, let’s dive into passive income. We have already cleared out the myth. You are not going to just lie on the beach and money is going to rain over you. It takes some heavy lifting to get there. So let’s say someone is listening and they’re like, okay, I’ve been in business for a while. I would love to do some shifting around and start to earn some passive income. What is the first thing you suggest that someone does?
Lisa Johnson:
Oh, that’s a really good question. So I have a system that I use, which I’ve called the CASSH system. I realized that as I was teaching people passive income, I was telling them to do the same thing over and over again. And this is whatever passive income. There’s loads of different passive income streams, from book shipping, being an affiliate, I have a jewelry range that is completely passive, to courses, to memberships. There’s so many different ways. But each one of them, I found you needed to do the same thing in the same order. So I’ve trademarked it as my CASSH system. And the first thing you do is the C.
The C in CASSH stands for client, customer. You need to know who you want to serve. Even before you think, oh, I’d love to have a membership, or, I’d love to have a course. First of all think, who do I want to help? Who do I want to serve? That’s the first thing you need to know.
The A is then audience. Once you know who you want to serve, start growing an audience of those exact people, using a sales funnel or speaking on stages or any of the other ways that you can, Facebook ads, that you can grow an audience. And then when you’ve got the audience need to nurture the audience. And the audience bit is in two parts. You can’t just grow an audience. You need to nurture that audience. And that’s something I know you’re brilliant at because I’ve been watching you.
And then the first S … I’ve got two S’s in my CASSH system, even though that doesn’t make sense. I’m afraid that’s just the way it is. But the first S is all about structures and systems. How are you going to deliver it? What kind of platform are you going to use? Are you going to do video? Where are you going to do it? There’s so many different places now that are really easy to use. The tech is no longer the thing that we can use as the excuse not to do that.
And then the second S is selling it. So that’s all about launching. I love launching. It’s my favorite thing to do. And launching, for me, takes six to 12 weeks. It’s not just a case … Like people come to me and say, well, I launched my course to my audience and it didn’t work. And so the cost must be [inaudible 00:10:48]. And I ask them, what did you actually do? And they say, well, I just told them about it. That’s not how it works. It’s bigger than that. You need to be doing things like challenges, bootcamp. You need to do masterclasses and fun things like that to get people’s eyes on you.
And then the last, the H in the cash system is happy. If you’re going to do passive or semi-passive income, you need to make sure that you’re remarketing over and over again and that you’re retaining people in your membership. And that’s about actually getting people the results, actually having happy clients, not just having clients that you have once and then they disappear. Because we all know that it costs a lot more to get a new client than to sell to a client over and over again. So, yeah, that’s exactly what I do each time. I just follow that system.
Sigrun:
So, because you talk about launching, which is also my favorite thing to do, a lot of people think passive means I’m not launching.
Lisa Johnson:
No. And it doesn’t. Well, you can. You can have an evergreen, which means you don’t have to launch at all, but even I’ve never seen somebody do an evergreen course without actually doing some form of launch. Even if it’s just coming on social media a few times, it’s still launching in some way.
So with me, how I think of passive and semi-passive income, rather than not launching, it’s no longer trading time for money. That’s how I see it. So for instance, if I normally take on a one-to-one client and make, let’s say, 10,000, if I then decide to do something semi-passive … So let’s say that I already have all of the materials. I’ve written the presentations in PowerPoint, I’ve written the workbooks. They’re all there. I’ve done it five times before. I’m using the same marketing on social media. I’m using the same masterclass. I’m using the same challenge. I’m putting all the out there. And then I get 200 people on my course for a thousand pounds each. So I’m making 2000 pounds instead of 10,000 for the same amount of time.
And I used to have everything completely passive. So what used to happen is, I’d put a course out there, it was DIY. People would go and do the course themselves so it really was passive. But now I have realized over the past year that my clients get much better results if I deliver live. And so I have a course that runs over 10 months. I will go on live for one hour per month and deliver the training and do a Q&A, and the rest of the time they’re doing it themselves. But just for that 10 hours of work that I have to do, I get 30% better results for them and so it’s worth it for me. So there is the option to do it completely passively, DIY. But for me, there’s an integrity piece where I want people to get the best results possible. If that means a tiny bit more of my time, I’m going to do it.
Sigrun:
Yeah. And this is what I found. I had a course that I was always thinking of having completely passive. The modules are great, but I realized without a Facebook group and without me actually at least showing up and doing a call from time to time, it was just not going to lead to the same results.
Lisa Johnson:
Yeah. And those results are so important, not just for them, but for you. Because we want sustainable long-term businesses, right? We don’t want those quick flash in the pan, do a big launch and then you disappear forever because nobody got the results. It needs to be sustainable. And I try and teach my clients that. You want a sustainable business. And they’re so taken up with this whole, you can make six figures in the first two months just by doing this thing. And that’s great. You probably can. I’m not saying that that doesn’t work. Is that sustainable forever? And to me, that’s what’s important.
Sigrun:
So once again, dispelling this myth of passive. Because that isn’t really passive when you show up, even if it’s just an hour a month, or 30 minutes a week-
Lisa Johnson:
It’s not passive.
Sigrun:
That’s not passive.
Lisa Johnson:
No, and I think the word needs to change to leveraged, maybe. Leveraged income. And I think there is a problem with the word passive, being passive. But people generally in our industry know what it means, but there are people not in our industry that don’t know what it means, and that’s where the problem can occur. And we’ve actually stopped using it in all of our Facebook ads. We’ve started using recurring revenue and a leveraged income, because it really is just about not trading time for money and that doesn’t mean you do nothing.
Sigrun:
Yeah. You still have to show up. For me, it’s really important that … It doesn’t matter if people are in my $3,000 program or in my $50,000 program, I show up. I’m present.
Lisa Johnson:
Yeah. And you should be. And people say, yeah, wouldn’t it be nice if we didn’t have to do that. But actually you should be. It’s a point of integrity that you should show up for them. If people are paying your money, you shouldn’t try and do always the easiest path. There are ways of doing that. Once you have that audience and once you are a personal brand, if you like, then you can turn your hand to things that are truly passive. I have a jewelry range that I do wake up in the morning and have 500 pounds extra in my bank account and I’ve literally done nothing. All I did was design it at the beginning with a jeweler. But I still had to build the audience. The work still went in to get the audience to buy the product.
Sigrun:
Yeah. So let’s talk about something like that, jewelry. You worked with a designer and you put still your own ideas into that jewelry.
Lisa Johnson:
Yeah. So I found that I was always wanting to buy jewelry for my clients, just saying something really inspirational. And I couldn’t find anything that said what I wanted it to say. And so I contacted a jeweler who was a client of mine who was making passive income herself and said, hey, what if we collaborated on something? If I told you what I wanted something to look like, could you make it? So she did. And all the packaging is my name, my logo. And so my audience buy it for their clients. And so we have different things like unstoppable, be you, with some wording in there that means something to people. And now people buy that from my website daily.
Sigrun:
Yes. But that’s still like … Somebody needs to ship it.
Lisa Johnson:
Yeah. But not me.
Sigrun:
No, not you.
Lisa Johnson:
The designer. The designer ships it. The designer invoices, does all of that, and just sends me money at the end of the month. Yeah.
Sigrun:
But that’s still … If you are in a service-based business, this is more like an extra nice income. It’s fun. It’s more like a fun project.
Lisa Johnson:
Definitely. It’s not the thing that’s going to make you rich.
Sigrun:
No.
Lisa Johnson:
No, it’s just a fun thing to have on the side. And for me, it’s about experimenting. Because I love anything that’s to do with recurring revenue, I experiment with things. I experimented with having a membership, which I now still have, that makes me 30,000 a month. And I spend two hours in there. I experiment with courses. I experiment with drop shipping, with e-books and stuff, to see what works. And not everything does, by the way. There were things that I’ve done that haven’t worked and I’ve had to pull. And I think it’s important to talk about those things, because it’s not all sunshine and roses over here. There are hardships in any kinds of business and it’s the same for passive.
Sigrun:
So you would say leverage, that’s obviously when you sell a program that’s maybe 10 weeks or whatever, 10 months. And then recurring is your membership.
Lisa Johnson:
Yeah.
Sigrun:
Do you do the launching or do you have it open all the time?
Lisa Johnson:
No. We did have it open all the time, and now we do open close, and we’ve found that it is so much better. So I get many more people coming in. But we put a cap on that. So I’ve seen lots of memberships out there where they just want to make it bigger and bigger and bigger. And the one thing that I wanted to differentiate us with is, I want to know who every person is in the membership, so we capped it at 500. So now there’s just always a wait list, so I never have to launch that program. People will come in as people leave. Because I just don’t want it to be one of those faceless memberships where no one knows anybody else in there.
Sigrun:
That’s a good idea. I love it. I love it. Yeah.
So your business model today is a membership, a program that also takes some time, and you have the jewelry. What else? Just to give our audience some ideas of what you can do to build that business?
Lisa Johnson:
Yeah. So mine is basically, I take on five one-to-ones a year and that’s like my high ticket. So I wouldn’t take on more than that. I don’t enjoy one-to-ones. I know some people love them, but it’s not my thing. I then have two or three different courses. Some are over weeks, some are over months, that are already written so I’m just delivering as and when. And some are completely passive, as in, do it yourself. I then have a membership. And then I have a mastermind for 20 to 25 people that I run just once a year. A couple of retreats. And then I get paid to do speaking gigs, workshops for other people. I’m also an affiliate for people like Selena and her Impacting Millions program, so that makes me money as well.
So it’s a real mix of different things. All of which mean I don’t have to spend too much time on it. So I generally work four days a week between nine and three, because I have eight year old twins. I want to spend as much time with them as possible. We take off two months in the summer, two months over Christmas, and travel. So by having this kind of semi-passive income streams, it makes that doable. Whereas before, when I was just doing one-to-one, I was working all hours. I was making a third of what I make now.
Sigrun:
You talked about, you do launch certain things in your business, but there are also other things that are completely passive, people just go to your website. What about some sales funnels that actually lead to a completely do it yourself product?
Lisa Johnson:
Exactly. So I’ve had those before and they can work really well. What I would say is, when you’re having a sales funnel, whether that is a recorded masterclass or different nurture sequences running in, it’s about testing and tweaking. Because lots of people do it and it doesn’t work. Or maybe it brings in exactly the same amount as … To me they’re not paying for their ads or that kind of thing. What I’m learning at the moment is just tweaking a few things can change the game. So at the moment we’re playing, we’re testing with this and testing different webinars and testing different nurture sequences and seeing what is the highest rate we can get for an actual evergreen product. But part of me thinks evergreen is a myth.
Sigrun:
We’re going to dispel more myths here.
Lisa Johnson:
I’ve talked to lots of people that have evergreen and that say it works for them, but when I’ve actually spoken to them in depth, it doesn’t bring in anywhere near the amount that it would when you’re launching. And so for me, because I like launching, I feel like it’s okay to have one there, but it’s never going to be my focus.
Sigrun:
I think it’s good we’re dispelling it. Evergreen is something that a lot of people feel like, oh, then I don’t have to be on social media, then I don’t have to launch. And what I’ve found, I think you can do it well in the mix.
Lisa Johnson:
Yeah. In the mix. That’s absolutely right. But actually, even if you look at people that say they have an evergreen product, they have an evergreen as in, they’re not doing one big launch for a week, but they’re on social media selling that product every single day. So for me, I’ll try to come off social media a little bit and do one big launch. But I think it’s takes the same amount of time, whichever way you do it. But yeah, it’s funny because we all hear these things about how you can get evergreen and you can literally just do nothing in your business and this money will come in, and it’s just not realistic and shouldn’t be either.
Sigrun:
I don’t think so. I think we’re doing our clients, or potential clients, a disservice to paint this picture of how easy everything is, that you can just get rich overnight, which we know of course doesn’t work.
Lisa Johnson:
Get rich overnight in a few years.
Sigrun:
In a few years time. I am a huge fan of launching and I think that’s really the only way to get [BUS 00:00:22:59]. And if I had never launched in the last six years, I think people wouldn’t know my name.
Lisa Johnson:
Yeah. Because it gets eyes on you. So it raises your profile anyway, which is what we need in business.
Sigrun:
Yeah. The more people know about you the better. And even if they’re not buying that time, they’re like, oh, I need to listen to this person’s podcast or check out her website or go to her conference or whatever it is.
Lisa Johnson:
Yeah. I think it’s really important. What’s your favorite way to launch? Do you do challenges?
Sigrun:
No, webinars.
Lisa Johnson:
Ooh, you do webinars. How fun.
Sigrun:
Live webinars. I love it.
Lisa Johnson:
It’s really fun. Mine’s challenges. I love challenges. But that’s the great thing about launching. There’s so many different ways that people can do things. And you can use whatever you’re good at to launch the way you like. Some people love [inaudible 00:23:44] and they do five week boot camps and that works really well too. Festivals, online summits. There’s so many things we can do. And these people are like, oh, I hate launching. I never want to launch. I often think, but are you doing it right? Are you doing the thing that you’re actually good at in your launch? And are you prepping things in advance so that you’re not having this really stressful couple of weeks? So, yeah. I’m a big fan.
Sigrun:
Yes. Lisa, what’s next for you? You say you’re tweaking and testing and…
Lisa Johnson:
Yeah, and at the moment, all of that kind of stuff is on hold because I just got a TEDx talk. So now I’m trying to write a TEDx, which seems to be harder than any other talk I’ve ever written.
Sigrun:
I know. I’ve been there.
Lisa Johnson:
So hard. So I’m off to Necker Island to meet with Branson in June. There’s a lot of things going on. But yeah, for me, I am not a big believer in, so now I’ve got to seven figures in three years. Now I need to get to 10 million in the next four years. I really am not bothered about that kind of thing.
For me, it’s about, okay, am I living a life that I’m actually really enjoying? Do I have enough money to do the things I want to do and to help the causes? Because for me, my big why is, I’m an anti-bullying crusader, online and offline because of things that happened to me in my childhood. So I do a lot of fundraising for Bullies Out, which is a charity in Wales. And I want to spend my time doing those kinds of things. I’m going to Uganda in April for a project there.
These are the reasons why I need passive income. I can’t be there all the time. I want to do this other stuff that I want to do. And so the more I can make in my business, the more I can do this. But for me, it’s no longer about … It used to be about money, because I grew up really poor in council housing in England and we never had anything. So at the beginning it was all about, I want to feel secure. I want to know that my kids won’t feel like I did. And now that I have that money, it’s about more than that.
Sigrun:
Yeah. That’s exactly what I found myself and also with my clients. In the beginning it’s about taking care of yourself and then it becomes about your mission. And I love your mission. Anti-bullying, that’s beautiful.
Lisa Johnson:
I’ve got an amazing inspiration day coming up where all the proceeds go to Bullies Out in London on the 30th of March. And it’s just a load of speakers talking about how they overcame adversity to have their own businesses. And that kind of stuff lights me up.
Sigrun:
Yeah. Well, that’s a beautiful ending to a great interview, Lisa. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Where do people find you online?
Lisa Johnson:
The easiest way is in my Facebook group, which is called The Fabulous 5%. I’m always in there.
Sigrun:
Okay. Thank you. We’ll link to all of that in the show notes. Lisa, thank you for coming on The SIGRUN Show.
Lisa Johnson:
Thank you for inviting me.
Sigrun:
Next week will be the 400th episode of The SIGRUN Show and to celebrate this special occasion I want to turn things around and answer your questions. If there’s anything you ever wanted to ask me, now is your chance. In the show notes is a link to a page where you can record your questions. First, state your name at the beginning, and then state your question and keep it short and sweet. Go to the show notes at sigrun.com/399 to access the link to this page where you can record your question. And also in the show notes, you’ll find all the links to Lisa Johnson.
Thank you for listening to the second show. Did you enjoy this episode? Let me know that you listened by tagging me in your Insta story or Instagram post using my handle sigruncom and the hashtag sigrunshow. See you in the next episode.