Owner of Lisa Johnson Coaching, Lisa Johnson, wanted to leave her unfulfilling life and start a new one. However, she didn’t know what to do, and she didn’t know how to change her situation.
Before coaching, Lisa Johnson started a wedding planning business. But it was clear to her that she still had much to learn as an entrepreneur. For example, she was making many costly marketing mistakes. To help her, she hired a business coach.
That’s when everything changed for her, and the seeds were planted for Lisa Johnson Coaching. While working with the coach, she “learned so much about business.” She changed her mindset, and “put into place a plan of action that saw me go from no clients to fully booked.” In 5 months, she got her perfect clients while raising her prices 3 times.
Within the first 6 months of Lisa Johnson Coaching, she was already hitting 6 figures. Within hours of launch, every single one of her programmes sold out. She was getting featured in the BBC, Red magazine and Psychologies.
But the work needed for Lisa Johnson Coaching was tiring. Lisa wanted to “spend more time travelling and with my family.” There had to be another way to do this. She knew she needed to work smarter—and that’s when she learned about passive income.
Now, Lisa Johnson Coaching offers an “8-step system to go from 1-1 in your business,” to “earning passively from courses and memberships that give you the life you really want.”
Check out more interviews with self-taught entrepreneurs here. You can also learn more from the Lisa Johnson Coaching YouTube channel.
I think the biggest thing is that I keep it real. Lisa Johnson, Lisa Johnson Coaching
Jerome Knyszewski: What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
Lisa Johnson: I think the biggest thing is that I keep it real. Right from the beginning, I wanted to show the truth about things. I saw all of these coaches with flashy cars, tiny bodies in bikinis and private jets and wanted to show that actually you can be a normal person looking after your kids and making bad choices and still make a hell of a lot of money! So I decided to be open. In the first year of my consulting business I lost $27k to a Facebook ads manager. Even though everyone told me not to talk about it to my audience, I decided to. I wanted them to see that business had its bad sides! It allowed me to gain a level of trust my audience wouldn’t have given me if I just kept pretending everything is perfect. I’m now known for my honesty. I’m all about organic reach too. After that incident I didn’t spend money on ads until I’d hit 7 figures in revenue.
Jerome Knyszewski: Often leaders are asked to share the best advice they received. But let’s reverse the question. Can you share a story about advice you’ve received that you now wish you never followed?
Lisa Johnson: I was told constantly at the beginning of my business that I must do 1–1 first. Every coach I had said it. But it meant I hit an income ceiling really quickly because there are only so many hours in a day! I realized very quickly that there’s no reason to do 1–1 first if it’s not the right business model for you and the life you want! I switched to one to many very quickly.
You just have to keep trying!
Jerome Knyszewski: You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
Lisa Johnson: Resilience — There are so many times that you need to just get back up again! Things won’t always work out. If you are the kind of person that doesn’t like to learn from failure, it’s going to be tricky! Every time I’ve failed, I’ve learned from the failure and picked myself up to do it again and again until it has worked. This is true from things I’ve launched in my business to trying to get PR. You just have to keep trying!
Patience — The online world would have you believe that if you don’t make 6 figures in the first month you’re doing something wrong, but so much is about patience. In the first year I started a Facebook group to nurture and give value to potential clients. It was like tumbleweeds and crickets in there for a while until new people found out about me. It took so much patience not to just quit talking to myself, but then after a few months the consistency paid off. All I did in that first 6 months of my business was go live on Facebook in a group. In month 6 that group made me $100k. Patience pays off.
Curiosity — I think one of the things that have made me successful is not just following the way others do things. I’m really curious. I’m always thinking ‘but what would happen if I did the opposite?’ This has allowed me to find new ways of doing things. We were always launching programs in our Facebook group because there were so many members in there, but so many people’s notifications were turned off. So I said ‘what about if we started a pop up group just for the launch but let nobody in until the night before so that Facebook has no time to meddle?!’ It was something I was just curious if it could work, but it doubled our launch figures. I think being the kind of person that wants to test and try things is a good thing!
Jerome Knyszewski: Which tips would you recommend to your colleagues in your industry to help them to thrive and not “burn out”?
Lisa Johnson: Stop trying to make everything perfect. I see so much of this. People spending 6 months writing beautiful course materials and professional videos before they’ve even made money. People just want the knowledge — stop prettifying it all. Get it out there and make the money then you can outsource making it look good to someone else and get your time back!
Outsource way before you can afford to — especially things you hate doing. If you hate it, that one thing could potentially take you all day, but could take someone else an hour.
Don’t spend $5k on branding before you’ve sold anything!
Jerome Knyszewski: What are the most common mistakes you have seen CEOs & founders make when they start a business? What can be done to avoid those errors?
Lisa Johnson: The biggest mistake I see is spending too much time on the things that don’t actually matter too much. Don’t spend $5k on branding before you’ve sold anything! I had no website for over a year and it didn’t make a jot of difference. Don’t get sucked into ‘networking’ on social media with the same people while telling yourself it’s a productive business thing to do. What you’re really doing is avoiding selling by doing all the things you think of as fun! It’s only once you start selling things that a business becomes a business.
Jerome Knyszewski: In your experience, which aspect of running a company tends to be most underestimated? Can you explain or give an example?
Lisa Johnson: The everyday things! It’s not all the sexy things that you see on social media that make a business profitable; it’s the unsexy everyday things. Things like picking up a phone to a potential client or writing a piece of killer content! People definitely underestimate the planning of what is going to happen and when and who is going to do it.
There is an element of being able to ‘wing it’ at the beginning but you’ll only really scale once time is taken to plan a strategy. I know it’s not the fun bit like doing an Instagram reel but it’s needed!
I would love to start a movement where we show that people with integrity and that are values-driven can still win. Lisa Johnson
Jerome Knyszewski: You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
Lisa Johnson: I would love to start a movement where we show that people with integrity and that are values-driven can still win. This myth that you have to be ruthless to get ahead, con people or be unethical is just that — a myth that too many people believe. Imagine what the business world would be like if we did things the right way. I’m already starting this movement and I really do think there are a lot of people out there that want to know that this can happen. Where ‘community over competition’ means something rather than ‘community over competition until the competition actually comes along!’ When we start being able to sell without shaming people for wanting to speak to their partners, without telling them their business will fail without us, without scaremongering marketing tactics and without putting morals over money, then this online business world will be a great place to be!
Jerome Knyszewski: How can our readers further follow you online?
Lisa Johnson: Follow me and Lisa Johnson Coaching on my website and social media:
Jerome Knyszewski: This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent with this!
