Hustle with Heels Podcast

Ep 26. What It Really Takes to Build a $5K/Month Coaching Business Without Quitting Your 9 to 5

• Cindy Excell

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You don’t need to quit your job to build a real business.

You just need to start with the right focus.


In this episode, I’m sharing what it actually looks like to build a $5K/month coaching business while working full-time, and why that number matters more than you might think.


I talk about what to focus on, how to use your 9 to 5 as your safety net, and the business model I used to start from scratch with 10 hours a week.


If you’ve been wondering whether you can really do this with the time and energy you have right now, this episode will help you see the path.


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Resources:

Free eBook: $5K/Month Side Coaching Business Blueprint

Connect with me on LinkedIn here

Check out my Instagram here

 Welcome to the Hustle With Heels podcast. I'm your host, Cindy Excell, a corporate girl start, hustler wife and a mom of two in 2020. I started my first start hustle as an online fitness coach while working in my corporate job as a private wealth manager. Over the years, I have been leading proof that a corporate career.

And aside, hustle can absolutely coexist in harmony. Today I'm helping corporate women and early stage entrepreneurs create wealth beyond that nine to five jobs and build an online business on their terms. On this podcast, I'll share my knowledge, strategies and the stories that will help you start and grow your start hustle.

Whether you are ready to diversify your income streams or are looking to build a startup business that aligns with your goals, I'm here to support you every step of the way. Now, let's get started. Hey, friend, welcome back to  Hustle With Heels  podcast. On today's episode, I want to talk about something that's been coming up a lot lately in my dms and in conversations with people in my community Now.

The question is how do I actually build a coaching business that brings in consistent income without actually quitting my full-time job, and the more specifically cannot actually really get to the 5K per month while still juggling my work, my family commitment, my personal life, and everything else? The short answer is.

Absolutely. Yes. Well, in today's episode, we are going to talk about this specific topic. So I built a five figure coaching business working just on average 10 hours a week. And I did that while working full-time in my corporate job, raising my two girls, and showing up for my life. So if you are in the season where you know that you want to start something on the side, you want more income, and you want to work towards the flexibility and the freedom one day.

But you are not willing, ready to quit your corporate nine to five yet, then this episode is for you. Now, let me just say, if you are still in a nine to five job, that now is the best time to start a startup business because this is one of the biggest myths out there. So many people think I have to wait until I have more time, or maybe after my promotion, or maybe once I go on maternity leave or take a sabbatical leave, et cetera.

But the truth is, the best time to build your coaching business is while you are still in your nine to five. Why? Because business building is a skill like any other new skill, if you haven't done it before, it takes time to learn and even takes longer time to get a good at it. Not only you are learning to coach or learning to consult.

You are also learning how to market, how to position your offer, how to articulate your messaging, and how to sell without sounding pushy, without sounding salesy. And you are learning how to price and how to deliver the real transformation to your clients from a corporate employee to a business owner, to entrepreneur.

It is a whole new identity shift and way you are. When you've got your nine to five income to support you in the background, that is your cushion. That is your permission to explore, to test, to experiment, and to grow without the panic of, I have to make this work now, or I can't pay my mortgage type.

While you start your coaching business while still in your nine to five, you get to test your business ideas out, explore business models, et cetera. You can take messy actions and from there you collect the data, you get the information. You got to make those strategic decisions, not fear-based ones. And if you're like me, you probably have a strong sense of responsibility because you don't want to make reckless financial moves before you even prove that your business idea is profitable and that your offer is sellable.

That's why when you are still in your nine to five, that's the best time that you can use your job to fund your dream. You don't need to rush the process you build when you learn. Now, I want to give you some idea on what a 5K month coaching business actually looks like and why that is the sweet spot. I want to get really clear on this idea of 5K per month because you might be thinking.

Is that even worth it? I see so many other coaches talking about the 10 K per month or hitting six figures, seven figures, et cetera. Look, I get it, 5K per month might not sound fleshy in this online space especially. There are so many coaches out there. They promote six figures, multis, six figures, even seven figures, et cetera.

But I want you to see the differently. The 5K per month isn't just a random number. It is a strategic milestone, especially if you are building this business alongside a full-time job and other family commitments. Here is why to get to the 5K per month, you don't need to be working extra, you know, 20, 30, 40 hours a week in your business.

You don't need a big audience or a complicated sales funnel or product suite. You don't need to hire a team or invest in those expensive systems. On the other hand, if you want to reach six figure sustainably, you will need systems. You will need a team and a highly likely automation creating funnels, et cetera, and you will need to invest a lot more time in your business to work out what kind of funnels you need to build.

What are kind of systems you need to put in place in order to sustain. Those six figure or multi six figure revenue, and while you are working full-time, maybe even raising kids, juggle your other personal responsibilities, that can be quite difficult and overwhelming. However, the 5K per month, those five figure business is a lot more easier to achieve if you only have five or even 10 hours a week to spare to work on your business.

And it is also enough to test your ideas and to test the market without you burning out because you can literally build a 5K per month coaching business with two to three profit clients per month, each paying you between one and a half thousand or two and a half thousand dollars. You only need one clear offer, which allows you to help your clients solve one specific problem and help them get from point A to point B.

And you also only need one simple marketing system and learn how to talk about that offer in the way that clicks with the right people, which is your ideal clients, and that I also teach in my framework. And you only need about five to 10 focused hours. Per week. And then that's it. So this is the sweet spot because it allows you to earn meaningful income without burning out or compromising your nine to five performance.

But more importantly, the 5K per month actually gives you the space to learn. It gives you the time to experiment. It allows you to build real business skills, like how to market, how to sell, how to coach, how to deliver the real transformation, and that's the phase I call proving your sellable concept.

You are not trying to scale yet. You are testing your offer, validating your idea, building your confidence, and saying what works while having the safety net of your full-time job. And once you've done that, once you know that people actually want what you offer and that you can constantly bring in clients that you enjoying this work and it fits your lifestyle, and then sure, you can build out your product suite and go for that 10 k per month and even turn that into your full-time job if that's what you want.

And turn that into your full-time business, if that's what you want. But let's not skip steps yet. Five years ago when I first started my startup business, I loved both fitness coaching and the business coaching. The only problem back then was that I never built a business on my own before, but I had my personal transformation in fitness, and I also just attended my personal trainer certificate.

So at that time, I started my first start business in. Fitness, nutrition, and the mindset coaching. I knew that I was short on time. I had zero interest in trying to scale that business into six FIG or multiple, six fig at that time because deep down I knew what that would cost me. And at the time, I didn't have the energy.

I couldn't spare at that time. And honestly. A budget. I didn't want to stretch, so I made a conscious decision to cap it. To cap it. I intentionally designed my fitness coaching business to grow to five figures and stopped there, and I was okay with that because what I was really try to do there was to provide a concept and learning, because what I was really doing was to proving a concept.

Learning the skills of business building and of entrepreneurship. I wanted to test if coaching and the business model even worked for me. I wanted to prove to myself that I could package my knowledge and sell it and create the real results for my clients. And once I knew that, once I had that validation and learned those business building skills, then I knew, okay, now I can move into the niche I always wanted to do, which is the business coaching.

And that was mid last year. That time around, I had the skills I needed to build this business. And when the time is right, I'll be also ready to scale and to even go all in. So let's not put the pressure on your business to be your six figure solution in month one or to replace your nine to five salary yet because you will be ready for that.

But what you need right now is the momentum, clarity, and the proof, and the 5K per month is actually your foundation. It is your soft launch into today's entrepreneurship, and trust me, it is more than enough to change your life, to shift your income, to give you that additional income and the flexibility and to give you more options.

Now, let's talk about one of the most overlooked things when starting a coaching business on the side. You need to be strategic with your time because here's the truth that no one really says out loud. You don't have time to waste as a side hustler. You don't have money to burn, and you are most likely building this as a part-time solopreneur and you don't have a team to support you and to look out for you.

And that hustle mode, 12 hour or 14 hours workday, entrepreneur approach you see on those YouTube, no, that's not your land either, and it doesn't even need to be. So my friend, as someone who spent the last five years building two start businesses, working on the average of 10 hours a week, I want to tell you this.

If you've only got a few hours a week to dedicate to your business, the question isn't how much can I do? The real question is, what should I actually focus on that it will actually create results for me and my business. Because if you spend your golden hours tinkering with your website, updating your camera templates, or even rewriting your Instagram bio or LinkedIn about section for the 15th time, you're not building a business.

You are procrastinating with style. So you need to be strategic, be focused, and don't try to do everything at once. Your number one thing at this stage to focus on day in and day out is income generation activities. Now, if I could go back in time and give my beginner self one piece of advice, it would be this, treat everything in your business as an experiment.

I. Like seriously, I wish someone had a drill face into me earlier on, because here's what happens to, to so many new business owners and early stage entrepreneurs, especially those of us coming from those high performing corporate careers. We are so used to having a plan. We are so used to knowing the right way to do something.

We like structured deadlines, roadmaps, KPIs, et cetera. So when we try something in our own coaching business, like posting about our offer, running a free session or messaging someone on LinkedIn and it doesn't work, we start spiraling. Maybe I'm not cut out for this entrepreneur thing. Maybe no one wants what I'm offering.

What if this means I'm just wasting my time? The truth is it doesn't mean any of that. It simply means that particular version of what you tried didn't work, and that's all. And instead of doubting yourself, I want you to start thinking like a scientist. Try something, watch the data, analyze the data.

Tweak one variable at a time. If your content isn't landing, try saying it in a different way. If nowhere is booking your free call, maybe your message isn't on point or isn't clear. If people are lacking your post but not engaging, maybe shift the call to action or to even start more conversations in the dms.

This is what I wish someone had told me when I started my start coaching business. That entrepreneurship isn't about getting the right for the first time. It is about testing, refining, and evolving over and over and over and over again, so there is no one way to build your business. And then no one, not even the biggest names online, got right from day one.

The difference is they kept going. They kept showing up, they kept experimenting, they kept talking to real people, and that's exactly what you need to do as well. I. Talk to real people. Talk to your ideal clients. Testing your messaging. Don't get a caught in your head. Get feedback from the market from real people.

Because business isn't built in isolation, it is built in real conversations with real humans and solving real problems. So give yourself the freedom to experiment and drop the need for everything to be right or to be perfect. Because if you keep chasing what's right, you will stay stuck, but experimentation will move you forward.

Okay. At this point you might be thinking, okay, Cindy, this all sounds great, but what are the actual steps to go from those ideas to income? Well, I was actually going to do this in this episode. If you. Listen to my last week's podcast. I didn't say I'll do the step by step, step by step in this episode, but then I realized you probably want to sit with it.

You will probably want to map it out, walk through it on your own time. So I decided to turn the step by step into a free PDF document. You can download it. It's called the first 5K per month framework. Inside. I will walk you through how to figure out what problem you solve, how to package that into a high ticket author, how to start attracting your first few clients and how to validate your idea to make sure that it is sellable.

It's going to be short focused and actionable. It'll save you months of confusion and second guessing what you can offer. If you wanna grab your free copy, if it's not already in the short note below, then just send me a DM on LinkedIn at Cindy Excell with a double L. I will send you the link for the free download.

Now, before we wrap up today, I want to leave you with this. You don't need to go full time. To be taken seriously while you're building your business. You don't need to have the 10 K followers on the social media to make your first 5K per month. You totally don't need to quit your nine to five or sacrifice time spent with your family and the loved ones in order to start building something off your own.

All you need is a willingness to start. To take the first step to cover the time and to believe that what you already know is valuable and that someone is out there waiting to learn from you. So know your nine to five is not your obstacle. It is your springboard. It's your safety net. While you learn the skills, you learn how to build a business, test your ideas, and build something real.

When you are ready to go bigger, you will be ready because you've already built that foundation and you've already proven the concept. You've already seen what's possible, and here's your quiet permission. Sleep, my friend. You don't need to go full-time to build your business. You just need to start where you are and grow from there.

Now, I hope this episode has refreshed your perspective on what it really means to build a 5K per month coaching business, especially while you're still in your nine to five. It's not about go all in overnight. It's about starting small, building the real skills and proving that your ideal works. It's about the creating income and options.

If this episode lands with you, if it sparked an idea or shift something for you, send me a DM on LinkedIn at a Cindy Excell, and I genuinely love hearing what stood out for you, what you are dreaming about, and where you are feeling stuck. I read every single message and I reply every single message until next week.

Remember, you can build a coaching business on your terms, in your time and in your way. And I'll see you back here next week. Thank you so much for listening to the Hustle with Heels podcast. I hope this episode has inspired you to take action towards your sad hustle dream. If you en enjoyed this episode, please take a second to rate and review it.

Each review helps me help more corporate women and early stage entrepreneurs. Just like you, don't forget to take a screenshot, share it in your Instagram stories. All on LinkedIn and check me at Cindy Excell. I will see you next week.