Lisa Johnson is a self-made multi-millionaire business strategist specializing in helping entrepreneurs scale their businesses using passive income from memberships and courses. During the pandemic, Lisa had a £1.7m launch as well as several others from £60k to £300k.
After a tough childhood spent in social housing, Lisa went on to have successful careers in law, banking and the entertainment industry. Her background in overcoming obstacles has helped mold her into a bold, straight talking coach, who is never afraid to be an authentic and outspoken truth teller.
She has spoken on the BBC’s Women’s Hour and is a Thrive Global Contributor. She has been featured in national newspapers and magazines including Psychologies, The Guardian and Red. A recent feature on Lisa in Forbes magazine garnered over a quarter of a million views in a week.
Lisa is a huge believer that everyone can become a success no matter their background and is known for her anti-bullying campaigning online.
Lisa lives in Hertfordshire, UK with her Husband and 9-year-old twin sons but coaches around the globe.
What is Lisa Johnson Coaching all about?
The company helps entrepreneurs add in passive and semi passive income streams into their business through memberships, courses and group programs. We essentially teach how to grow an online audience, create an asset and launch it well.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you started your company?
My childhood was quite difficult because I was bullied for being in a single parent low- income household. At the age of 16 after a particularly bad incident of bullying, I ended up quitting education altogether and trying instead to get a job. I started in office junior jobs and worked my way up. I eventually decided to get a law degree remotely whilst working full time and spent 4 years studying every evening after work. It was worth it – I got my degree and found my self-worth after years of not feeling like I could do anything worthwhile (and being told I couldn’t!).
I then worked my way up the corporate ladder and eventually became an analyst in an investment bank in London. Things were going ok until I found myself pregnant with twins. I went back to work when they were 5 months old but I was going through a divorce too and it just wasn’t working. I decided to quit the job I’d worked so hard for to be able to bring up my children and went back to being an assistant in an office at a 5th of the salary so I could be near the twins. In that first year I was so bored at work I decided to start a business on the side despite knowing nothing about business. I started a wedding planning business, where I made every mistake in the book and at the end of the first year I was $30k in debt. I knew I could do it better, so I went on a mission to learn everything about business. 6 months later I had turned the business around and it became known as the biggest urban wedding planning company in the UK. People started asking me for help with their businesses and so 4 years ago I started my consulting business. This time I knew about business from all the mistakes I’d made and it was successful. After the first year I had made over $250k but I was burned out. Then I learned all about semi passive income and it changed everything. A year later I was working a third of the hours and was well over $1m in revenue.
What would you say are the top 3 skills needed to be a successful entrepreneur, and why?
Resilience – There are so many times that you need to just get back up again! Things won’t always work out and you will feel like things fail. 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. This is true from things I’ve launched to trying to get PR. I just keep trying!
A thick skin – Not everybody is going to like what you do. There will be trolls out there on social media, competitors willing to say anything to ruin a reputation if it means they’ll get more clients and people close to you who feel uncomfortable with your visibility. Once I started to care less about stranger’s opinions and really focused on my business and my family, things started to work out really well for me.
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 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.
How do you separate yourself from your competitors?
I think I stand out by keeping things honest. Showing that things can go wrong sometimes in business and you’ll still be ok! I like to show the realities behind what it takes to have a multi 7-figure business. Instagram shows us a very curated version of that, but my clients trust me for telling them the truth. I’m all about organic reach too. I didn’t spend money on ads until I’d reached 7 figures.
What were the top three mistakes you made starting your business, and what did you learn from them?
I didn’t bother trying to niche. I was against it for so long because I felt like I was pigeonholing myself and turning away clients by niching. I then realized that by not niching I was only ever going to compete on price, which I really didn’t want to do! In both of my businesses (wedding and business consultancy) once I decided on a narrow niche, I started making money.
I didn’t do my due diligence. In the first year I hired a coach and a Facebook ads manager without checking out their testimonials or speaking to anyone who had worked with them. I lost over $60k between them and it made me so wary I never used a Facebook ad for 3 years! Now I’m really good at checking that people know what they say they know!
I waited too long to hire people. I didn’t hire a single person in my business as an employee until I had reached 7 figures a year. I kept telling myself that nobody could do it as well as me, which was ridiculous. I now know that, not only can they do it better, they can do it quicker and since I hired my little team, things have grown much quicker.
Tell us a little bit about your marketing process, what has been the most successful form of marketing for you?
We bring clients in using a really simple funnel – quiz to email list and Facebook group with a small offer on the way to make back our ad spend. This has always worked well for us – first organically and now quicker with ad spend. That’s pretty much the only marketing we do. I spend a lot of time on social media but don’t jump on the new trends that pop up. I know that people want to work with me after seeing me on Facebook so I stick to doing one thing well.
What have been your biggest challenges and how did you overcome them?
I think worrying what other people thought of me was a huge thing. Because I was bullied in my life, I was very wary of putting myself in a position where it could happen again but visibility is hugely important for a business. I’ve had to work on it and now feel much more comfortable, although I still feel sick before standing on a stage!
Another challenge was my own mindset. I was constantly telling myself things like ‘people from where I come from don’t make this kind of money’ which was stopping me from taking action to make the money! I had a lot of baggage around rich people and limiting beliefs around what I thought they had to be like. So I worked with mindset coaches and continue to now so that I don’t repeat patterns.
What is the one thing you wish you knew before starting your business?
You can make money in a million different ways. They’ll all work if only you do something consistently. I went after every shiny new thing instead of just doing one thing for a longer period of time.
The book that has helped me the most is The E-Myth and I absolutely love the podcast On Purpose by Alex Beadon. A course I’ve really enjoyed is Denise Duffield Thomas’ Money Bootcamp (it really helps if you have mindset issues around money).
If you only had $1000 dollars to start a new business, knowing everything you know now, how would you spend it?
I would use it to hire a tech VA and start to build my list a lot earlier. It’s a numbers game at the end of the day.
What is your favorite quote?
“And this too shall pass.”
It’s got me through many tricky times!
What’s your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?
Don’t expect instant results. We see all the time online that people seem to have overnight success. It just isn’t true and it makes new entrepreneurs think they’ve somehow failed if they haven’t made 6 figures in the first couple of months. Be consistent and patient and you’ll get there.
How can we get in touch with you?
I am often on Instagram and Facebook speaking my truths to my audience. You can see the most of me there. On Instagram I am @lisajohnsoncoaching and on Facebook, I am also Lisa Johnson Coaching. You can read all about me at lisajohnsoncoaching.co.uk.
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