How to Build a Coaching Business That Runs Without You | Davis Nguyen

In this episode of Success Leaves Clues, host Pedro sits down with Davis Nguyen, founder of Purple Circle and My Consulting Offer, to discuss the realities of scaling a coaching business without sacrificing your lifestyle.

Davis shares his journey from building a side business to creating multiple seven- and eight-figure coaching companies. He explains the four levels of business growth, the biggest mistakes coaches make when trying to scale, and why many business owners focus on the wrong problems.

You'll learn how successful coaches generate consistent leads, improve sales, build systems that create time freedom, and develop businesses that can eventually operate without their daily involvement. Davis also provides an inside look at Purple Circle's coaching framework, including the Vision Planner, the 72-Point Assessment, and the four growth tracks that help coaches increase income, impact, and freedom.

Connect with

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iamdavisnguyen/
Website: https://joinpurplecircle.com/

Transcript

Davis Nguyen 0:00

What's the vision that you want to have? The second thing that we do is we take a diagnosis of the actual business itself because we want to know where you are. For example, little things like how many offers do you have? What are your offers? What are the price points? What's your conversion rate? Are you the only ones doing sales? Do you have a CRM? Do you have an admin assistant? What's that leadership team structure? How would you rate the team members? Because we want to know, politically, call it the 72-point assessment of where the where the company is. And ultimately two things for us. One, it allows us to focus on one, where's the focus of the business that's going to help you get to the goal? Oftentimes people think that their problem is they're not a good enough coach, but really they just don't have enough leads. Right. And so they think, ah, I'm going to get more certification. In there, done that. I know that for you, Fair Joe. Like, I got I gotta sharpen the stall. I'm like, well, if we get the stall, you literally have so woods that no one knows about it, you're selling trees. Like, we're gonna get that, right? Hilarious. Okay. And so that's the first thing we want to do. Vision planner, making sure that you have the diagnostic tool so that you can know where to focus on the business to get there. Welcome to Career Coaching Secrets, the podcast where we talk with successful career coaches on how they built their success and the hard lessons they learned along the way. My name is Davis Wayne, and I'm the founder of Purple Circle, where we help career coaches scale their business to $100,000 years, $100,000 months, and even $100,000 weeks. Before Purple Circle, I've grown several seven and eight-figure career coaching businesses myself and have been a consultant at two career coaching businesses that are doing over $100 million each. Whether you're an established coach or building your practice for the first time, go discover the secrets to elevating your coaching business.

Pedro 1:30

Welcome to Success Leaps Clues. I'm host Pedro, and today I'm with Davis Swin, founder of My Consulting Offer, Purple Circle, and has been helping coaches around the world with over moving from five figures to six to seven and eight figures even. So I'm excited to have you, okay? I know you recorded already an episode with Carol a while ago. So right now, what we're gonna do is talk a little bit about Davis, um, specifically on Purple Circle. So welcome to the show, man. Thanks, Pedro.

Davis Nguyen 2:02

I know uh we're here at this beautiful retreat for our Purple Circle members retreat, and of course you're like, hey Davis, gotta squeeze in a podcast about Purple Circle. I'm like, oh Pedro, sure, why not? It was the same thing with Carol actually in the first episode. I thought the podcast was gonna highlight other coaches, right? Over coaches we've helped get to six figures, seven figures, eight figures, nine figures, and also just other coaches that have amazing stories who might not be in the purple circle system. But of course, you convinced me, so happy to be here this morning. It's also beautiful right there.

Pedro 2:28

Yeah, well, I'm excited to have you here. Um and yeah, we're gonna get a little bit more into detail of purple circle, that's the whole point of it, right? So, first of all, first question that pops into my head is why the name? Why purple circle, man? No, I I get that a lot. So purple is this.

Davis Nguyen 2:44

The purple and the circle are two different factors in the typical mind. So, first off, the color purple, in order to make it, it doesn't come naturally in nature. You can't just find purple, so you actually have to take two colors. You have to take red pigments and you have to take blue pigments and be able to combine them and transform them into purple. So purple becomes a result of a transformation. And so for me, when we work with coaches, when we work with ourselves, we want to be able to transform the lives of the people in Purple Circle, but also the lives of the clients that our Purple Circle members will, for example, yourself, your career coach, the clients that you serve, you want to transform their lives as well, right? And so we're all about transformation of ourselves and of our clients. And a circle represents a community because I always wanted to create a community of people who wanted to transform themselves and the people that they serve. So hence the name Purple Circle.

Pedro 3:28

We're a circle of people who transform lives. Interesting. Transformation, key word it sounds like. Okay, now at this point, usually what I do is ask about the shift, right? When someone is like helping people up there and they're creating their business, so what happens? It's like, is it the first invoice or even the first paying client? That that shift, you know, when they change the identity to a business owner, but for you it's kind of different, right? We're coming from my consulting offer, pretty well established, you know, 78 figures, 40 coaches, and all of that has a CO of its own. So my question to you is what made you shift from okay, I'm happy here at my consulting offer, and now I want to create purple circle. Like, walk me through that. Sure.

Davis Nguyen 4:12

Um I'll share the brief line in case anyone hasn't seen the previous episode, which is I started my consulting offer when I was in my early 20s, and the reason being was that I had a medical bill that was $21,000 and I couldn't pay it off. I didn't have the funds to pay it off. And so on the weekends, I just started building it by helping people with their resumes, their cover letters, their job interview skills. And eventually I made $249,000 that first year, just as a weekend business. And of course, the following year went full-time, hit my first seven figure, which is a million dollar year, and it just skyrocketed from there. And along the way, eventually I passed through what I call the four levels of a coaching business. Level one is you're just a pioneer. You do everything yourself. I was in the room, my first year side business, working on all the resumes, working on the interview prep. If a client had a question, it went straight to me. And eventually I went to level two, which was a pacer. So you're no longer a pioneer pushing the wagon, but you're a pacer. You get to set the pace of the work, which means that you're managing the work, but you're not doing all the work yourself. And so that was level two that I achieved, which was I had a small team, just very small, but we were able to get a million dollars of course that second year. I didn't have to do all the coaching, I didn't do the admin, but it was ultimately my responsibility. And eventually I got to level three, which is we hit multi-seven figures. And at that point, we were, I was just a pilot. Level three is a pilot, which is you do one thing you do really well, which is I was the face of the brand. I was the one leader, the thought leader, the one building up the curriculum, things that I enjoyed doing. But everything else was managed by other managers. So I was no longer even managing the work, I was just being the one thing I do well. And eventually we got to level four, which of course you mentioned there when team grew, where I had a general manager, basically the CEO of the business who runs it, and that allowed me to free up my time. In fact, at level four, you're basically a passenger of your business. You're like, all right, I just want to go here, just I'm enjoying the ride. And of course, yesterday at our retreat, I talked about the problems that came that people asked me, hey, what problems do you have at level four? So, for example, one of them was I got bored. And then I was single at the time, and so I had to train my assistant. I was like, okay, have you ever used Tinder? Have you ever used Bumble? Have you used these? She's like, he's never used these dating apps, she's never had to. Oh my god. I was like, well, I'm bored because my consulting offer leadership team doesn't want me involved because anything I say is gonna take the business back because they have their own cadence and everything. But I'm bored. And so I train her, I built an SOP because I built the SOP to build the business, right? I train her on how to run my dating profile on these dating apps. This is before AI, a couple years, well, before AI agents, I should say. And so at online, we were talking about 45 minutes and she's just swiping. I was like, no, no, I wouldn't reject that person. No, no, no, no, no. I wouldn't accept that person. And we built this SOP up, right? And so she's running it. And I thought, hey, you know what? My consulting offers, cash flowing a lot, we're doing a lot, we're great. I have a lot of free time. Let's just focus on my dating life, which was missing at the time. Right. But eventually, I guess SOP, she's running it. I have a couple conversations on these dating apps, but what else do I do with my time? And so at the time, I got reached out by a couple of friends I knew who were coaches and they were struggling. They're them were leadership coaches, executive coaches, business coaches, and started reaching out to me and they said, hey, look, I don't need a $10 million business. I don't need what you have, I don't want a 40-person team. I just literally want more than what I have and I want more time freedom. And so I ended up taking on four coaches at the time. They were the best one was doing six figures, the rest of them were doing five figures, like under 100,000. I said, Look guys, I'm not a business coach. I literally was a career coach who built my business to become a freedom business for me that cash flows really well and at the same time gives me that time freedom I want. I'm not a business coach. And they said, well, you know more than other coaches out there, all these other gurus and whatnot, because you've been a coach and you know what it's like. And I was like, okay, look, no promises, I'll work with you for a year, I have time anyways. And so I ended up working with them. And the I'll tell you where what happens. The first one was a woman who lived in the DC area, and she'd been renting her entire life, and she was the main breadwinner of the Fifth Five. And her husband worked with a government job in DC that didn't pay very well. And she was the main provider for their family of well, seven, including the both parents. And she was working crazy hours during that time. And I remember the transcript Davis, I've tried so hard to grow my business. I feel like we're always stuck here, we are always stuck. Just feels bad. And so after a year of working together, I remember our our call of the year, she was crying because while we were there, her husband was actually packing in the back, and the kids are also packing because they were moving to their new home. It wasn't a rental home, it was like a home that they bought with the money they generated. Because she broke the million dollar mark within that year. Not not in cash col not in profits, but in revenue, which again has high six figures in cash flow, which was more than enough to be able to make that down payment on the home. And her husband's moving, and she said, Davis, you know what the best part is? Is that this is the first summer I get to spend with my kids. Like when we first started, I had an assistant who I had to micromanage, had no sales team, no marketing, nothing. And you helped me build this from like one woman shop to a small team that's making over a million dollars a year. And this year, for the summer, when my kids are home from school, I actually get to spend time with them versus being on calls all day. And to actually she cried because he's like, we have a home and a time for you. And I was like, that's exactly why we built this business. And so that was the first one. The next person was a never entrepreneur when he first started. You can find his story online on our website, but he basically said his business was a dumpster fire. He was like, he was ready to throw it all away. He was like, I can't figure this out. And we built it up to the system where at the end of the year he crossed the million dollar mark by selling his business.

Pedro 9:56

Oh wow.

Davis Nguyen 9:57

So he there was a strategic buyer who wanted to buy his business, and he decided that was enough money for him to basically retire early in his 30s, and then he became a farmer for two years. I was gonna tell you he hated farming. He hated farming. But when I saw him in person a couple years later, super buff, when he was like, he eventually became a coach again, but he was like, yeah, farming life. No, this, this, this is I'm gonna stick to coaching. And uh the next one was a couple from the UK. They grew their business. You can find your again, you can find your stories online on our website, but they went from about $100,000 a year all the way up to $2.5 million. And eventually they would sell the business. And when they sold the business, it became this way for them to be able to have this time freedom and this money freedom that they had never experienced before. And so they were able to sell their business there. Obviously, they're making $2.5 million in revenue. You can imagine how much they're paying it for. And then the last person grew his business from $100,000 to $2.6 million. And he was at our last retreat as well, sharing, sharing his story. And so he still runs the business on it because he just loves it. And that was the sorry Purple Circle. It was just the me getting out of my own business where it's cash flowing what I need, it has a leadership team, but also at the same time, I wanted something to do with my time, and I just love coaching the coaches because it was it was a way for us to grow our impact, and that's when Purple Circle formed. I was like, well, I would love to have a community, a community that I had when I was starting my coaching business, which didn't exist. Like you had other communities, but they weren't coaching specific. They weren't meant for leadership coaches, executive coaches, career coaches. Like we're very specific about what we do, right? They weren't for business coaches. It was like I wanted a community just for us, and that's how Purple Circle came to be.

Pedro 11:43

Interesting. Okay, so first of all, side note, honey Davis didn't show that SOP for dating apps. Okay, that's not gonna happen here. Take it easy, it's all good. Now the second part is like I want to do a quick exercise with you, if you don't mind. Um for example, marketing-wise, right? I'm a coach, I'm I'm literally your ICP, your client profile, right? I'm in front of you. But let's pretend I wouldn't, I didn't knew you. I'd be able to find you in the first place.

Davis Nguyen 12:11

How typically people find me on in the beginning it was just referrals from Purpose Oracle, it was like those original four coaches and others I knew who I who knew, right? Most coaches, you you start off with referrals. I knew I had to evolve past that, and so I started speaking at conferences and that's how I got through. But eventually now people find us through a lot of podcasts, which you're listening to right now. A lot of people just find us through the podcast. Obviously, I'm still speaking on it, and we're always capped at how many people we take on at Purple Circle, so eventually we can do more marketing channels, but I always believe in like what's that one channel does really well. And for us, the podcast is quite well because it's just a good way for coaches who are too early to join Purple Circle to learn from other coaches, hence the name Successfully's clues, to be able to find out how to get to the level where they qualify to join Purple Circle. And for a number of people who are looking to grow a business that doesn't control them, it doesn't have to be a massive business, but they're looking for a business that either serves their lifestyle or can serve the income goals that they have, they do find a way to connect with us. And that's how we're that's how we're doing now. So and I still enjoy speaking at conferences. So every now and then when I travel, I'll speak at a conference, and like prefer right before this conference here or our retreat, we're speaking at a conference, and then people find us through that way, through a podcast, and of course we still get referrals, but we don't rely on referrals. As you know, one of the things that we teach in Purpose Oracle is that if you're relying on only referrals, you can't control that. And that's just a prayer, that's not a plan.

Pedro 13:33

Okay. So going on with the exercise, right? Let's say I I saw your website, I watched some podcasts, I you know, a buddy of mine told me, hey, you gotta talk with Davis, a referral even, you know, and I'm like looking at your stuff, and I'm like, hey, this resonates with me. Sounds like like like it's cool. So I went through the sales process, okay? However, that looks like. And uh there's alignment there. I'm qualified. I'm like, I want to work with you, Davis. I want to work with Purple Circle. So can you walk me through how does it look like to work with Purple Circle and the potential outcomes I can expect out of it?

Davis Nguyen 14:07

Yeah, sure, absolutely. It's just funny because you you literally went through the same funnel. Obviously, you got a career coaching business and you're one of the hosts, which I love because we get to work with you on both sides of it, right? And so you can see the front and the back, so that's pretty cool. But for for anyone who's not as lucky as you to be a host and to find us through both ways, well, it's the original path that you went through, which is when people find find us, let's say it's word of mouth, let's say it's through the podcast, wherever it is, is let's say and they go through the sales process. Well, we don't even call it a sales process, like we call it an enrollment process because there's no hard sales. Is we want to make sure that we can actually get you results. Like there's certain criteria you have to meet. For example, we're not trying to get coaches, they're first kind. Like, if you are, you've never done any coaching at all, like, and you have no experience, you're working, let's say you're working a corporate job, and you're trying to transition, you're thinking about it, that's not us. Like, we'll refer you to other people, but we're working with people who already know they want to be coaches. I don't want to have to convince you to leave your job to do coaching. It's like you should already have some momentum going, right? So that's the first criteria. Second criteria is you have to want to grow your business, grow your impact. And the growing doesn't mean you have to have a hundred person team. It just means that you believe that you have a talent and that more people would be impacted if they knew about who you are on it. And so that's important to me is that we make sure that we can actually get results. So it's a lot of friction if you haven't started like done any coaching at all, right? We have purposely motors who we help them get their first paying clients, but they've had clients, even if it's free clients before, where they've done it on a smaller scale. They want to grow, right? But I'm not trying to teach you how to coach, I'm not trying to teach you all that, right? That's the first criteria. Second criteria again I mentioned is you have to want to grow. And third, you have to be coachable. So that's why we have the enrollment process beforehand, just to meet a member of the team, just to get a pulse check to see if it is something we actually want to work with. Are they able to get helped? And can we help them? But let's imagine that you do and you're like, hey, great, love to enroll in one of purposeful course programs, and let's say you join. The the first thing that ever happens is we have you fill out a vision planner. So this vision planner is where you want to head the business. So the reason why it's so important is that everyone has a different vision for what they want their business to be. Some people want to be able to grow it to the point where they can sell the business for 10 million, 100 million. In fact, tomorrow we have a panel of coaches who did sell their business, so they'll be able to talk more about that experience. They chose to sell it, right? And then we'll also have another panel of people who decided not to sell, even though they had a choice to sell. They decided, you know what, like me, they're just gonna hire a CEO or general manager, CEO with your title to be able to run the business while they just continue to cash flow it and continue to do the other things that they want to be able to do with their lives. Whether that's dating or whatever it is, spending time with family. So we'll have that. So depending on what your goal of the business is, whether it's just to cash flow a certain amount, $500,000 a year, or sell it for $100 million, whatever it is, that's the first thing is what's the vision that you want to have. The second thing that we do is we take a diagnosis of the actual business itself, because we want to know where you are. For example, little things like how many offers do you have? What are your offers? What are the price points? What's your conversion rate? Are you the only ones doing sales? Do you have a CRM? Do you have an admin assistant? What's that leadership team structure? How would you rate the team members? Because we want to know, politically, we call it the 72-point assessment of where the where the company is. And ultimately two things for us. One, it allows us to focus on one, where's the focus of the business that's gonna help you get to the goal? Oftentimes people think that their problem is they're not a good enough coach, but really they just don't have enough leads. Right. And so they think, ah, I'm gonna get more certification. In there than that. I know that for you, Freddie. Like, I gotta sharpen the stall. I'm like, well, if we get the stall, you literally have so woods that no one knows about it, you're selling trees. Like, we're gonna get that, right? That's hilarious. Okay. And so that's the first thing we want to do. Vision planner, making sure that you have the diagnostic tool so that you can know where to focus on the business to get there. And what it also does is allows us to pair you up with a coach in Purple Circle. And the coaches in Purple Circle are coaches who've been there and done that. And so, if you're, for example, trying to exit the business, we want to have someone who has experience with that or has the kind of offer. And if you want to lifestyle the business, we want to make sure someone who's living the lifestyle. If you're trying to live in three countries, we want to pair you up with a coach who's living in three different countries and spending time with their family so that they can actually they've been there, they've done that. And so that that's the process of onboarding. Once you actually start on Purple Circle, we have multiple tracks that people start. And my goal is that we work together for 12 plus years, but before 12 plus years, we just want to even get 12 months. And even before 12 months, I just want to get 12 weeks in. Like, because if we can't get you results in 12 weeks and it's not a good relationship, I'd rather just part ways. And so in those 12 weeks, we pick a track. For example, let's say that you don't have consistent leads, we want to focus on the lead track, which is how to get consistent leads going. And then by the end of 12 weeks, you should have so many leads, you're like, all right, what do I do with these leads? How do I convert them? Then we move on to the other track, which is the sales track. Like, great, let's formulate a process so that you're getting consistent revenue coming in from the leads. Because there's it makes no sense to work on the sales track if you don't have leads, right? Right. So we start with the lead track, usually, let's say people have leads. If you already have leads, but their sales are so bad, like we uh won't call anyone out, but there's there's a purple circle member who uh gave testimonio. Basically, the thing stopping him from going from $5,000 a month to $70,000 a month was literally his sales process. And so we worked on that for three months, and he obviously he talks about this. We went from $5,000 to $70,000. We even increased his prices on the way. And after that, we work on the results track. So the results track is all about how do we remove you away from the results and the operations of the business so that you can actually have the time freedom. So oftentimes there's coaches who come in and they already have the leads, they already have a sales process, but what they're missing is the owner's involved in everything. Every decision, every escalation, every refund request, everything. The ownership you can't step away from the business. And so we want to work on making sure that you have clean operations and results so you can step away from that. And eventually, forever members, they want to get into the exit track. This is where you're starting to exit the business, whether that is hiring a general manager CEO to run it, or you actually want to sell the business. And that's like the fourth track once we get everything in. So those are the four primary tracks that we have at Purpose Circle. And obviously, with Windows, there are subtracts in terms of like, for example, operations, there's like an AI to make sure that you can add AI to your business and whatnot and get smart on it. But that's primarily it. And over the time that we work together, I want to go through all the four tracks so that you get through all those four levels I talked about earlier. And so ultimately at the end of the day, we want a what I call a sovereign business, which is a business that runs because of you or runs for you, not only because of you. And a business that cash flows in a way that you don't have to sacrifice time, freedom, or impact in order to have the income that you want. So ultimately, it's more income, more time, freedom, and more impact.

Pedro 20:39

Okay, so that's interesting. Different tracks and one at a time, it sounds like. Okay, now one I was a closer. Now, one thing I'm I'm curious about, and that's like I'm not gonna even call it a curveball because a lot of coaches out there, Davis, they are advocating against burnout, right? And sometimes they're wearing all the hats. In your situation, it's a little bit different. You only you have my consulting offer, runs itself, and now you're running my uh purple circle. So, how do you manage your capacity so you don't stretch yourself too thin?

Davis Nguyen 21:26

It's all about focus at Purple Circle, even at my consulting office, where I came up with the term, I call it the OBT, which is the one big thing, which is at any given moment, there's always like one big thing that is going to fix everything else. So, I'll give you an example of this is that, and since you talk about closure, I'll use that as an example. We had a recent Purple Circle member who had their first six figure month, and it was a consistent they've had one six figure month before, but this was like three months in a row when they started that they had just consistency along it. And the issue was they thought, hey, I need more leads, right? So they thought they were reforward, they were like, hey, we just need more leads coming in, and then they were like, you know what, we need Better sales process. But really, what they didn't have was they didn't have really good people in the business. And so the ball was just so unless the owner was involved pushing everything, he thought he had a team, but his team was basically just a bunch of people who were just there trying to fage us. So we had to make sure that the team, and there's like replacing like people, and all of a sudden it went from wavy to like, oh my gosh, we're getting six figure months now on it, and the owner doesn't have to be involved. I remember he had the post like something's gonna go wrong. I'm like, no, something's gonna go wrong because you hired people who didn't know what they were doing, and you you tolerate that for years. So that was that was the change of it. So I call it the one big thing, and it's the same thing with Purple Circle as well. There's always so many things that people want us to focus on, and they're like, oh, what did you do this? What did we do that? But really, it's like what's the one thing that's gonna make the biggest difference, and we focus on that. And so that's how I prevent the burnout, is just thinking about it. Because if you're I'm gonna use a more concrete example, if in order to have a successful business at the minimum, you need consistent leads, consistent sales, and consistent results, right? Minimum three. Let's imagine that you're an amazing coach already, and you're focused on again, we're going back to this consistent results, and you think you're working results, but not enough people know about you, you should be working on your leads. I'm like, well, look, yes, could could your coaching be better? Let's say if you're on your program, yes, there's always room for improvement. But if there's enough people know about you, it doesn't matter. You can be the best thing in the world. You can have the cure for cancer, but no one knows that's kept secret. Exactly. You're the best kept secret in the world. It's like no one wants that title, right?

Pedro 23:23

If you want that title, you it's not for purple circle, right? We want we don't want you to be the best. Okay, that's interesting. Appreciate that you're sharing that. Now I'm curious about one thing. You know, I'm as a podcast host, I talk with coaches all day, every day, right? And I see they're so creative on the scaling part, right? Sometimes they're trying to avoid or hire someone or they're trying to avoid the first closer or even a VA. Now, I know we talked about this, but I want you to walk me through the possibilities of scaling, right? Is it do we need to hire coaches? Can I add an online component? Like, um, do I have to make videos? Is it one of many? I mean, it's pretty wild out there. I want to hear your thoughts on it.

Davis Nguyen 24:05

Sure. So scaling means different things to different people, right? Right. We have the vision planner about what you want. So I'll give you I'll give you some extreme intel where the spectrum goes, and I'll tell you where where a lot of people end up. Is we have a coach right now who's doing more than a million dollars per month, and he has a team of 30 people, and he wants that because he doesn't have kids, he has a significant other, but he they they don't plan to have kids while and they don't plan to have a party, so work for them is very important, and he just wants to get as much money as possible in terms of it because it's a game to him, right? When we first started, he was doing $100,000 a month, and now of course he's doing millions a month on it. And for him, he he's okay with having a massive team, but he doesn't manage the data. He's still just doing the one thing he does really well. For him, it's being the face of the brand, and he has the whole team configuration of it. But we threw with hiring first a virtual assistant. I remember before he had a virtual assistant, he he he came to me, he said, and we started we started our coaching process and added some documents to start off with. He said, Hey Davis, don't forget to edit the Google Doc to say edit access. I'm like, I was like, do you say that you're EA right now or your VA? He was like, Yeah. As a reminder, she I was like, Alright, I already know about the first thing we're working on. So eventually he scaled up and he has now he has basically three offers that he does for his coaching program, and each of them has a general manager and he's the CEO on top of all three of the general managers, so he meets with them weekly. And so that's all at one scale, right? But we also have a coach who when he said he's like, they came from corporate, did some coaching. I mean, it was sorry, it was his story's online and on our website, but he he started with actually both of them are, but he started $2,000 a month. His executive coach, $2,000 a month. And one thing he said is like, Davis, I left corporate so that I don't have to manage another 40-person team. And I just want the team to be maximum three people. And he's gonna give a talk later at our next retreat. But I'll tell you like we went from $2,000 a month to by mid of the year, we were already on six figures a year on it, and by the end of the year, he was already close to $80,000, so close to that million dollar mark. Fast forward the following year and a half later, and you can find his video again online so you prove all the numbers, and he was on track for four and a half million. Wow. And it ended up closing the year at five million, actually. So he actually overdid it, and that team was like three people. So you can get creative with how how you're doing it, right? In terms of it, and we'll talk about the tactics in a bit. But the but I'm gonna show you like what's the term of it. And we have another, so this year he's on track for 10 million with very strategic client acquisitions and so forth, and how we're able to do that. But again, his team is technically his team is now four. But one of them is like a personal assistant to buy back his time with personal chores and stuff like that. If you have that in the business of four, right? Four people there. So basically, head count is 2.5 million head count, which is its own beast. And we have another coach who just wants to keep it to her and one assistant. The assistant just takes care of a lot of it, she has a lot of AI as well. But she does, she she does north of $700,000 net profit per year, and she doesn't want to grow anymore than that. And but she what she really wants is a life freedom business with her and her husband to be able to travel. And so she does group coaching models, for example, and I'll go through the examples, but she just wants to keep it, she knows that she can have a multi-million dollar business. She doesn't want it because she's like, I don't want to hire anyone more, and it's just there. And so, taking a step back, how do you do that? If if I think about the different ways for you to get a scale, and I'll give you different flavors of what different purpose circle is. That's why, again, you asked me the question of the onboarding. This is why you and everyone that joins it's like you have to do the vision planner because if I don't know where you're going, it's you can go anywhere, right? I love that. So the first step is some people just wanted to keep the business just to themselves. And so, for example, I mentioned the executive coach who was doing $2,000 a month and is this year on track for $10 million. He does just one-on-one. He doesn't want to source it out, he does all one-on-one, but we have to figure out well, who's willing to pay you that much and what's the constraints so that he's not working 24 hours a day because he wants to spend time with his kids, and that's his constraint. It's his family and his kids. So he just does one-on-one, but we have to be very strategic about what how many clients you take on, which clients you take on.

Pedro 28:05

Right.

Davis Nguyen 28:06

Then you move on to another level where some people decide to branch out and they decide, you know, I still want to be myself, but can I do it in a group format? Similar to the person I mentioned who does $700,000 net profit, and she just wants to be able to have a lifestyle business, and that's good enough for her. She doesn't want to add any more staff, just her plus one virtual assistant. Then some people still want to continue the one-on-one or the group coaching, but they don't want to do it themselves. So we have coaches who eventually hire another coach within it, and they're able to do the same thing, which is how do you multiply your genius into other people? Obviously, I did that with my consulting offer. You don't have to do it to the scale I was doing it, but you can do it to others because people just want what they want. Because your your dad was in finance, so you know this is that you really wanted to make money. I tell people you should have been in finance. Like, what are you doing? If you wanted to maximize just purely how much money, then coaching isn't it. But if you just want a balance of really good income and also a really good life and high impact, then this is where we're at. Now, taking it one level further is you can also license out your genius. Like, we have a coach who's done that, and they'll they'll be talking about how they did that. Plus, I'm gonna share another example of someone who couldn't be here because he's actually leading his licensing program right now, the same weekend, which is really funny. But but for both of both both of them, they're like, hey, look, I built this legacy up, I know my system for privacy work, and I want to be able to have the legacy live beyond me. I don't want to manage a huge team, and so basically they just codified and just put everything into an IP, and so they train other coaches, license it out, so then the other coach pays them. But then the way that we do it is that you get paid in three different ways. One is when you do the training for them, you get paid. Second is when they want to renew and continue to have your license, they also pay. And the third is that if you're bringing them business or you can do it as part of the contract, is you also get a percentage of it. So if for example, if one of them, he if he builds a brand, as he's building up his brand, if he some of his coaches, because he's a license out, he gets a percentage of that as well on top of the other two fees that he's getting as well. And so that's another way, and they that's a way for them to be able to live. One of them is in their 30s licensing it out and late 30s, and then one of them is in their 80s licensing it out. So obviously two different age groups have proved that you can work on both sides. But both of them wanted to license out their genius because they wanted to live it to live beyond them and for them not to be the coach or have to manage a team of coaches. So different ways that you can license it out. So those are the primary. You can keep it yourself, you can group model, you can have other people run your coaching for you, or you can have other people pay to use your coaching model.

Pedro 30:34

I love how we're debunking some myths. Like sometimes I talk with coaches and they're when we're talking about scaling, they're thinking about, oh, I don't want 20 people under me. Not necessarily, right? You just told me we we could have multiple options, right? Now I want to get into a little bit more on the tactical side. I'm curious about one thing that I see a lot of coaches out there struggling. Sometimes they have an ICP that is more a little bit more vulnerable and all that. So, how to, for example, asking for testimonials, because it feels like that is such an important piece of a coaching business, is like the credibility part. So, how do we do that? Davis.

Davis Nguyen 31:11

Well, I'll tell you the first thing. Making up text testimonials and having text, that's complete crap. As in, it's like you can make it up, I can make it up. Okay. I I joke about this. This is why when we go to Purple Circle, you just people offer, hey, like, you know, these coaches who are very private, they have a sign NDAs that's why I can't mention their names. They're never gonna leave us a testimonial, but I'm not gonna even try to make a text testimonial. It's either for me, it's either video, audio, or nothing at all, just because I want the authenticity of it. And so I literally joke, and you know this too, when we were just sat, it's like if any of this is AI generated, I will personally pay you $10,000. Would you tell me which of our testimonials is AI generated? Because they're all real, right? So the goal is you want to be able to get them to actually be on video or be on audio, right? And so I'll tell you the problem I encountered with with my consulting offer. We help get jobs, students get jobs in management consulting. And who wants to, oh hey, I'm struggling in college, I need help on this, right? But yet we have hundreds of video testimonials and audio testimonials. So, how do we do that? Well, first off, it starts with building that trust in the beginning, which is you have to build like, hey, Pedro, you and I, we work together and love that this would mean a lot to me. But I'll tell you, most people still reject that. As in, we have success stories that my consulting offer in the thousands, but we only have hundreds, right? So you can see the ratio is off. And so you have to accept that not everyone's gonna leave you a testimonial, and that's totally fine. Like some of our best purple circle members, they hey, haven't left it. They're like, eh, yeah, it's just you see their you see them publicly, but you're not gonna ever say that they're and you see them at events, obviously, because you run into it. And it's okay. Yeah, it's totally okay. Like you accept that, right? It's not you're not gonna force anyone to do it. But it'd be two. One, I asked them for a video testimonial, and I just asked for it. And then second, if they're not comfortable with that, I was like, wait, would you be able to be a video testimonial that is like not credited to your name? So it's still a video, but there's no name. So if someone searches the name, Pedro's, they're not gonna automatically just see you and I'm like, okay, so Pedro's coaching me, but he needs a coach and he struggled with this. I'm like, do I really want Pedro? They're not gonna do that, right? We do we do video. And if we can't do video, we'll say, hey, can I do a video but I take out your name? If I can't do that, can I do audio on it? At least audio, you can feel the voice, right? There's no one's finding it. And then if none of that works, I also asked, hey, would you be willing to have private conversations with potential purple circle members who we think would be a good fit? And so we do that. We we protect our purple circle members' time, so we don't do that as an option, but if they're willing to do that, they'll go on stage, they'll talk, they'll create content for us, and they're willing. Like, we have one purpose circle member who never wants to be on video because he works with a very his own population is very sensitive, and so he doesn't want to be away. He's like, Davis, anytime you need me to talk to someone privately, if you ever need someone to speak at an event, I will be the biggest advocate you've ever had because you took me from nearly closing my business, owing the owing the government taxes, being in debt to literally having six-figure months that is consistent, and I can right now he's literally missing this conference because he's traveling with his family, he's taking the six-month sabbatical. But you kind of see like you built that trust in. But the worst thing is these text testimonials with a photo. I'm like, there's like every other coach. And you'd be like, I have testimonials. It's like, yeah, but yeah, how do I know it is even real compared to like all the other ones?

Pedro 34:23

Yeah, that makes sense. Okay. Now, I heard about something that got me curious, Davis, which is something you call evil plan. Okay? Oh yes. Walk me through the evil plan, Dr. Evil. How did that look like?

Davis Nguyen 34:39

Evil plan is that I want to work with you for 12 plus years because at some point, if you decide to sell your business, I hope that you'll consider selling it to Purple Circle or two. Because if at that point we work together, we built your infrastructure, you have something amazing. I don't want you to just give it up. Like for some of the coaches who eventually want to move on and do something else, we hope that you'll consider us as someone to potentially sell the business to or get investment from us. But there's nothing that you sign when you join Purple Circle that says you have to sell to us, or you have to sell it all. Like a lot of purple circle might be you've heard at the retreat, they just want to cash flow to the business and they just love it, right? They're not gonna this is their legacy, this is their baby. They don't want to give it up, and we never make it enough. We'd love to have them in Purple Circle. And for those select few who do, we've got to consider it as well. But we don't always take it, obviously. Like the the there was a couple that sold their business this year and a half ago on it, and they I was I was working with, I was working with them, and of course I'm like, you know, I don't know, I know your business, it runs on itself. I was like, aight. And then there, but just to be fair, let me introduce you to these other people who can actually source some buyers from you. So we made some introductions and they got other offers, and one of the offers was a strategic buyer in their space, so someone who runs a similar business who just wants to combine the businesses, so wants the email list, wants the assets, wants the IP, wants the license, wants everything. And the the cool thing was that he, this buyer, he also had connections to the thing that they want to do next. Plus, they he was willing to give them cash up front, they didn't have to do an earnout, which is basically you have to work a little bit in order to get out. I would have wanted them to have earned it out because there's transition that needs to happen, right? He was just like, no, look, I run a similar business. The sooner you get out, the better for me. And so it was a win-win for both sides. And so I was like, look, you guys shouldn't be considering any of my offer. I was like, forget this, I'm gonna help you because there's a couple terms that you need to renegotiate on these. Like, for example, your non-compete, what does that compete and so forth? And so just made introductions to CFO, to a tax attorney, to an acquisition attorney for them to just go to the paces. Eventually they were super happy and they got to travel for a year while they were waiting for their non-compete to run out and then they can start the next business. And so that was that was pretty cool to be able to see that through. But yeah, that's that's the evil pin. Uh hopefully at some point if you ever consider an exit that you'll consider us to invest in it, and again, nothing you sign that you do, but that that's that's part of it. I'm very upfront about that. So that I'll have, why are you building the business a certain way where I can exit it like so that I become replaceable? I'm like, Right. Oh yeah, because we have an evil plan.

Pedro 37:04

Okay. So before we wrap this up, right, we're gonna have all the links in the description. You already know that, but what's the best way to find Purple Circle, Davis?

Davis Nguyen 37:12

Just go to our website, join purplecircle.com. It's the best way to find out more about us and check out some stories. Obviously, we have events like the ones that we're at here, and obviously through our other podcast episodes, it's just get to know, and then if you're not quite at where it is to join Purple Circle, that's okay. We have plenty of free resources like the podcast to help you get there. And if you are someone, the the way I always think about it is that if people are thinking about is purple circle for them, this is the question I always ask on the calls or when I'm at a conference, is I ask, I'll tell you who purple circle is not for. Okay, you do that. If you're happy with your level of income, you're happy with your lifestyle, you're happy with your client roster, you're happy with the level of impact, you wouldn't change a single thing about your business. Like, you wouldn't want to meet other coaches, you wouldn't want anything else to change about your business. Uh-huh. You don't need us. Okay. But if you're a coach who thinks, you know what, I think I can I would want to have more income or more time freedom or more impact or more connection with other coaches, and purposely go might be for you.

Pedro 38:10

Okay. So I feel the need to highlight some stuff we talked today, okay? So, first of all, back to the origin story, right? Um, I thought it was kind of funny, right? You were like, hey, I'm not I'm not a business coach, I'm not a and I'm not a coach, and they're like forcing you. No, you're gonna help us, David. It's like haha, you you got this, and you kind of got this really. So it was you know, and so naturally, and the way you you ended up doing this, like it's just something that is preview of what you're doing, you're like start helping people thing that really caught my attention. The second I would say it's like some keywords that you throw out there, right? Impact, yeah, and and and you're so vulnerable at the same time. Sharing your what really drives you into doing this is not necessarily uh it's results over revenue, right? That's the motto. So that's one thing that really um it I think it's very like I I'm an insider, right? I haven't biased, but at the time I I'm really inspired about what I see here in the retreat, you the way you you conduct things on a day-to-day basis. So that's that too, obviously. I also last but not least, I think it's very important because there are a lot of programs out there for coaches and they're trying to fit them in a box, right? And the vision planner, how customized it is, you know, it's really designed to help someone at their current level meet that meet their expectations. And hey, it's not just about money or finding more people or whatever it looks like, it's about hearing you and where you want to go, right? So I would emphasize that. Now, Davis, this is my long-winded way of saying, Yeah, appreciate what you do, appreciate you being here sharing so openly today, okay? It was great having you on, man. Appreciate it, Pedro.

Davis Nguyen 39:52

As in, it's it's been great having you, and you know, we should call it call, you know, you don't I'm gonna ask the question too, as in because you shared you shared this win yesterday at our retreat and went through our circle of wins. But obviously, you're your coach and you have been our host as well because I love working on both sides of it. I'll ask this question like what's what's changed for you? And then I love the story for your son if you're open to sharing that.

Pedro 40:14

Yeah, so here's the thing, right? I was a high-ticket sales closer for a landscape business coach, and I opened my own business, right? I help developers, Brazilian devs, to land jobs in the US market. So I was doing that, I was reached out by Carol, right? Hi Carol, and what happened is that I was introduced to Purple Circle and I was exposed to the way of doing things, right? And the possibilities. Like, for example, the way of scaling, doesn't necessarily mean I have to have 20 people under me. And that was one thing uh that that is really impactful for me, and at the same time, being the podcast and having conversations like this and being exposed to cool people, I'll put it simply like that, right? So understanding that I'm in my dojo right now, I think that's the biggest win. And at the same time, building my business and being able to, you know, uh give opportunities for my kids, like my Otis is in a private school right now in Brazil. All of that combined, it's does money help? Yes. Is it that what drives me? Not because I wouldn't pack too. So that's one of the reasons I joined Purple Circle, and that's what I'm doing right now. That's super awesome.

Davis Nguyen 41:24

Well, thanks for thanks for making the time to do this because well, an event coming up and we're recording this in the morning where everyone wakes up. Right, editor, cut here, all right. That's it for this episode of Career Coaching Secrets. If you enjoyed this conversation, you can subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to this episode to catch future episodes. This podcast was brought to you by Purple Circle, where we help career coaches scale their business to $100,000 years, $100,000 months, or even $100,000 weeks, all without burning out and making sure that you're making an impact and having the life that you want. To learn more about our community and how we can help you, visit join purplecircle.com.