Episode #318: Ascension Business Model for 7-Figure Businesses

 Welcome to the Make Money as a Life Coach® podcast where sales expert and master coach Stacey Boehman teaches you how to make your first 2K, 20K, and 200K using her proven formula.

Hey coaches, welcome to episode 318. Today I’m gonna continue, I’ve been on a little bit of a roll talking about seven-figure business concepts. And so I have two more episodes I wanna do and two more concepts I wanna talk about. And I wanted to say I was really surprised as I released these episodes because I know that a lot of my students that follow me may be in the 2K room or the 200K room and it doesn’t always apply if you’re not currently scaling a seven-figure business and you’re listening. But I’ve been really surprised at how many people have reached out and told me these episodes have made them, if they’re in 2K, want to get into 200K so much faster.

They’re so much more excited about growing their business. And so I don’t know if that’s the fact that I’m kind of sharing the vision or you’re starting to see the tools and processes that will be there for you even at the million-dollar level, but I’ve had a lot of positive feedback and I’m on a little bit of a roll with ideas. And so if it’s all right with you, I want to keep going, especially for those of you that are in the six-figure, multiple six-figure range. I think this is so good to hear and really like think about and contemplate as you’re thinking about your growth and maybe if you’re in 200K doing your three-year plans, these episodes can be really helpful.

So this episode today, we’re going to talk about the type of overall business model that I personally have for my multimillion-dollar business that I’ve sold my $40 million of coaching in. And it’s called an Ascension Business Model. So I’m going to talk about what that is and what it’s not and why I love it so much and how it really serves my values and my overall vision for my business and has really helped my students get deep results. Like not fractional little results here and there or you know, how you take a program and learn a skill and then you move on. You take a program and learn a skill and move on. I really love to mentor my clients and take them all the way from nothing to everything.

And so we’re going to talk about that in just a minute. But before I do, I do want to do a little bit of a disclaimer before we dive into this, which is if you are listening, I know what happens sometimes is brand new coaches will hear these seven-figure concepts and their brain will get so excited. They’ll be like, well, yeah, that’s what I want. Like people come into 2K all the time and tell me, oh, yeah, I want a program like you, Stacey. I want to just do a 2K program. I want to skip all the other things. I just want to go straight.

This is what I’ve always wanted to do. I want to just offer that this has been tried and tested and proven by me, by my data study, like anecdotally just by the 10,000 coaches I’ve worked with over the last six years, there really are, there’s skill stacking that has to happen along the way on the journey to make it possible to do an Ascension Model and to do it really successfully, to have a program like 2K for 2K.

And so I really measure readiness for this type of business model based on your level of sales skill and your audience size. So I think when I started this journey, I had a very small audience compared to most people that are making several hundred thousand dollars. I think when I started, I was actually at $300,000. I went to $800,000 that year. And people typically at that range have thousands of people in their audience.

I had an email list of about 2,000 people. So that’s on the low end. Like a full email list of 2,000 or 2,500 people, that is the low end. But I was also converting on consults at like 80% and 90%. Everybody I was getting on the phone with, unless they just weren’t a good idea or weren’t a good fit or, you know, I would say like maybe some people get lost on the Internet.

I would have people that would sign up for a consult with me and it would be not at all what I coach on or what they were looking for. And every once in a while something like that would happen or just wouldn’t be a good fit. But I was selling at an extraordinarily high rate. So my sales skill was on point and I had a big enough audience size to accommodate this.

When you try to go to a program and the smaller, the one to many model where you have a smaller priced offer, a membership. I’m going to talk about what a membership is in just a minute as well. But when you try to go to these like high volume, low ticket offers, and you have no audience, it is so hard to make money. It is so hard.

So I really wanna do that disclaimer because I know people will tell you in the industry that the courses are the way to go, memberships are the way to go, groups are the way to go, but if you don’t have a track record for being able to sell a large amount of people without getting on a console, which means your emails have to be really good, your webinars have to be really good.

If you don’t have it, come into the industry with an existing audience that you can sell to already and you’re just starting out from scratch like I was and like most coaches are. Like the typical coach is starting out, they don’t have giant audiences, they didn’t come from network marketing businesses or huge friend groups and network groups. Most people are just having to build all that from scratch.

And so that’s my disclaimer is as sexy as it sounds, the least sexy thing in the world is to try to sell a program or a membership and you have no one in your audience and so you’re selling a $97 offer and it takes you six weeks to sell eight people into it. There’s nothing sexy about that.

So I think you should still listen because I think it will be an extraordinary thing to add to your like energetic vision board. I think it will be really powerful to understand the decisions I’ve made behind my business. So many people make up those reasons for decisions I make or why I do the things I do, and I’m going to reveal a lot of them in this episode. I’m going to just take you through the whole reason behind everything I do and give you a really good inside look at my business, but also share with you why the Ascension Model works so well, what the overall benefit is, and what you really… When you’re scaling, the things that you need to consider if you choose this type of model, even in the future.

So I really recommend everyone listen to it, but I want to encourage you to stay in your current lane and build the business with the audience and the sales skill you have while developing them along the way until you get to the point where you measurably, it’s very easy for you to see yourself selling something like this. You want to be able to sell 200 people, 400 people, 1,000 people a year into a program like this to really get it off the ground. So you need a lot bigger audience to be able to do that.

Okay, so that’s my disclaimer, but let’s dive in and let’s talk about it. So I looked up the definition, AI is so great now. If you just like Google things, AI scans the internet and gives you the best of all of the definitions and all of the answers. And so I’m really loving that feature.

So I Googled and AI came up with these two definitions. One of these is an AI definition. The other, I think, was on a different Google search. Either way, I think these are both really extraordinary ways to describe it.

So the Ascension Business Model is a strategy that involves offering a range of products or services that build on each other from basic to more complex. That is the biggest point that I want to make here. It goes from basic to more complex. The goal is to guide customers through their entire growth journey, helping them identify what they need and when to upgrade and why. I added a little bit in there. But that’s the first one.

And the second one, the second definition is this is a business model where you will take your clients through a growth journey that is focused on their success. Okay? This is really important to me. This is the values in which my business is built upon. I really want to take my clients through a growth journey.

I’m not always interested in like teaching them, you know, one small skill and then, you know, one little skill here and one little skill there. I want to teach them all of the skills that are required to make a lot of money as an entrepreneur and a coach and run a great coaching business. I want to be there for the whole thing. Like, people come in and out of my world all the time and that’s fine, but I’m so invested in the people that want to be mentored long term. That’s what I’m into as well. And so I built my whole business upon that. And it really is a business model that was thoughtfully designed to help people have the highest amount of success and I’m going to explain why here in a little bit.

But first I want to say the difference or the opposite, not really the opposite, but another type of business model is a continuity offer. So you’ll hear those two things brought up a lot, especially when you go into scaling your business to seven figures. And for a long time I just like, it’s like, what is the difference?

And so the difference of an Ascension Business Model, that business model has a different products that build upon each other from basic to more complex, the continuity offer is something like a membership where you sign up once and then you just keep getting auto-charged as long as you want to continue in the membership. And typically that membership is going to be not always but focused on one idea or concept.

So maybe it’s, you know, for those of you that are listening that we’re in self-coaching scholars, that was a membership. Or if you’re in a weight loss membership or a business membership. It might be an overall, these are the concepts or topics we talk about, but we talk about them all the time. And there’s like a rolling topic, rolling topics that happen within the membership and within the community.

And you can have versions of continuity offers within your Ascension Model. So it’s not either or by any means. So just to clear that up, so mine, my Ascension Model is my 2K for 2K program. That is my foundational offer to teach the foundational concepts of selling to new coaches or coaches who want to learn how to sell.

Then I have my 200K mastermind, which only sells to coaches who already know how to sell, and how we know is they’ve made at least $20,000 of revenue in their business in a 12-month rolling period, in the previous 12-month rolling period. So they’ve shown an ability to know how to sell. They may not be perfect at it but they’ve shown an ability and they want to now dial it up and go to 200k.

And then my next offer is my 2 Million Dollar Group. So once students achieve the promise of 200k, they’re ready to learn something new. They’re ready to pick another big goal and go after it. So the goal, my goal as a coach, but also as a business owner is to take my clients on a continuous growth journey focused on their success.

So I’m going to show you how that works. So in the best scenario, like if it was, you know, the best of the best, the ideal person comes, signs up for 2K for 2K and they learn how to sell and they make their first 2K and then they take what they learned making their first 2K, because that’s just the beginning, and they go and they make 20K. And then they apply for the 200K mastermind immediately.

All right, this is the ideal scenario, when it works best, they apply immediately. Here’s why. Number one, momentum with growth and success. So growing and having success, momentum continues and even multiplies when you’re in a success cycle and then you’re also learning new things.

And then the second reason is as you’re growing your business to your first hundreds of thousands of dollars and then your first millions, you really want to take action as fast as possible to expand your mental and emotional capacity to grow your skill sets and your mindset.

Like typically over the years and me coaching 10,000 coaches and so much testing, like I’ve done so much testing in my 200K room. The number that I have seen where people are really, coaches come in and they’re really ready to expand their growth is when they have reached at least the $20 or $25,000 mark.

So we recently did a data study over six years since the conception of my 200K mastermind.

And we looked at how the median student performed that came in at the time the investment was a little bit higher. So our, what’s the word? Minimum, the minimum revenue required, revenue required, that’s what I was trying to say, was $25,000. We’ve lowered it to $20,000. There’s not that much difference in that $5,000, but it mattered when the investment was much higher.

So our data study revealed that the median student that came in at $25,000 in revenue in the last 12 months and came in for their first round of 200K, they experienced 248% growth in their first round. Now, I believed this from the very beginning and have been selling this the whole time, but when I saw the data, it really blew my mind.

This $20,000 to $25,000 mark is the ripest stage for growth for coaches. If you can get to that level and you can use 2K to get you there and then you’re willing to invest immediately, you are in that stage. It’s not a guarantee, right? That’s the median student. So there were students that had less than 248% growth, which is still ridiculous, right?

The minimum for them to make their money back was 100% growth. And we had almost 50% of the room, I think it was 49%, who did that. And even of the percents of people who didn’t, their growth was extraordinary as well, like 50%, 75% growth.

So this really is the stage and I’ve thought about this so much, why this is, and I’m only telling you all this because I want you to see how much thought has gone in to my extension model so that if you create your own, you also put this level of thought into it.

But I’ve thought about so much why this is true and I think because when you come in from nothing and you go in and you make your first $20,000 or $25,000, your brain is blown at what is possible. You start really seeing it as a business. This could be viable. This thing could actually pay me money. Like this is happening. And because you’re in that stage and you’re so hungry for growth, you’re so willing to try new things. You’re so willing and open to learn.

You’re so coachable. And that does kind of go away as you make more and more money. You get a little bit more set in your ways, a little bit more righteous, a little bit more I know what I’m doing, a little bit more afraid to lose the success you’ve created, a little more risk adverse, a little more afraid of being embarrassed and failing in front of your audience you’ve created. So it does actually get harder sometimes for people to grow as they make more money.

So this is the ripest stage. If you can come in and you can do it, you have such a beautiful opportunity to really grow very, very fast. So then if the student, let’s say the student goes right into my 200K mastermind, then they learn the skills, the tools, and the mindset to take them from $20,000 to $200,000 and even really beyond $200,000. You could use the same tools to get to $300,000 and $400,000 and then to even do $200,000 in one-on-one and then $200,000 in group and scale your time. So it really applies for quite a bit of time.

And it applies for quite a bit of time because there’s a lot more of those skills and tools and a bigger breadth of mindset to embrace from $20,000 to $200,000. Like a lot more skills that you’re learning, but the hardest thing is to actually go from nothing to $20,000. That’s actually why in 2K for 2K, I constrain the teachings down to only the absolute most important things because your brain is so overwhelmed by the absolute most important things, the only things that are absolutely essential, it can’t take anymore.

Which is also why I love an Ascension Business Model. An Ascension Business Model is designed understanding the brain can only learn so much at one time. And the more you give the brain, the harder it can actually be. It’s like, you know, imagine if, I don’t know, this is not a good analogy, because some of you may love it, but if I am ever at a buffet, like I do not enjoy any type of buffet ever for any reason, but part of it is like there’s just so much to choose from. I’d love to just see a menu, look at what sounds good, choose a couple of things, have them brought to me.

And I think that there’s something about people get overwhelmed with too many choices. They start feeling like they have to do it all at once. And when you’re in that zero to $20K model, like that zero to $20K result range, it’s just you really want to harness all of the energy of your brain into the things that matter.

And then as you get to $20K, there’s so much weight that gets lifted off your shoulders and so much confidence that gets created in taking your business from nothing, the hardest thing, to your first $2K, to your first $20K, that you become like a whole other person and your brain opens up and expands and is open to learning new things like crazy. And there’s a lot more of those things.

So this matters because the next phase, my 200K mastermind, in my Ascension Model is almost set up like a continuity offer. So I said continuity offers are where you sign up and then you just stay in and you keep paying as long as you stay in.

So I teach my students a concept called the three-year plan. And when they come into 200K, I break down in the three-year plan course the skill stacking I would do of all the skills that are available to learn inside the 200K mastermind, I break those down into here’s what I would focus on, here’s the three essentials that I would focus on in the first round, the second round, the third round, the fourth round, the fifth round, the sixth round. And if you do, though, if you follow that path, you will still stack yourself in to $200K.

And I’m going to talk about the difference of why it’s not a full continuity offer in just a minute, but I just want to take a break to say the three years is just a defined measurement. You could go from $20K to $200K in one year just like I did. That was my journey, $20K to $200K, especially if you are in that phase of capitalizing on momentum and growth and not letting grass grow beneath you and you’re fully committed to learning the skills in your business.

But the Ascension Model that you really want to build is one that is built for accounting for slow burns.

You want to account for the median student, the person who’s a little bit lower than the median student. You wanna think about the people that it might take like the absolute longest for. Now, it doesn’t mean I’m selling a three-year mastermind because I’m also not into that and I feel like committing to 3 years before you’ve ever done anything is a little bit much which is why it’s not an actual continuity offer where you just keep getting charged every 6 months. You have to decide every 6 months. You have to decide, I’m going for this again.

And I have my students re-choose their 3 essentials, re-come up with the next plan that we’re going to work on for the next 6 months. We re-decide actively every 6 months. Is this working? Are you working? Are we working together? Are we going again? I think that’s really, really important. But I love accounting for the slow burns and some people have – it’s not just slow burns. It’s like some people have growth edges where there will be certain things that are just harder in their journey than all the other things. And for everybody, it’s different.

So some places will take much longer than others. And so for example, some people will just knock out group right away. I had one student that came into a 2 Million Dollar Group and just sold 200 people in her program on her very first launch. It took me a whole year to sign 200 people when I created my program. I was like, what? But this student had other growth edges, other things that were a little bit harder. And so I see that. I see some people have a hard time with one thing and it takes longer.

And so you never know where that’s going to fall. Is that going to fall in the 2K journey? For some of you, it took you a lot longer to sign your first client than other people. But maybe you grow faster from there. For some people, that 200K journey might be the thing that’s like the growth edge and there’s things within those skill sets that take longer. And for some people, it’s the 2 Million Dollar journey where scaling is that growth edge and they finally hit that place where suddenly everything’s not just like easy and success is an inevitable and it’s not working all the time.

It happens for everyone at every different stage. So because some parts of the journey will be harder and take longer, also because life happens, right? Maybe you have, you come into 200K Mastermind and in the second round you have a baby and your goals and your priorities shift for a few years. And you were close to 200K and then suddenly you’re at 200K for a year as you kind of recalibrate your life to having a baby. I’ve seen this happen.

So I teach this idea and I offer this semi-continuity offer because a three-year plan gives people abundant time to make it happen. I also had the fast-paced people who come in and do $200K in one round. I just had someone apply for a 2 Million Dollar Group that said she came in and went from like $20K to $200K or something. I don’t remember the exact numbers, but it was like a 5x in her growth in one six-month period. And I’ve had that happen before. I just don’t build the business upon it.

So it’s not that they come into 2K for 2K, then they come into 200K, they do one round, and then they just have to figure it out from there until they get to $2,000,000. No, I stay with them. I encourage them to keep rejoining and to keep being a part of the mastermind and to have long-term mentorship because $20K to $200K can be a longer journey. Not for everyone, but for some people, we’re building sustainable businesses, not get-rich-quick schemes.

So the three-year plan and the way that I speak to my clients about it just gives them an abundant time to make it happen. Regardless, we’re focused on building a $200K business that’s sustainable year after year and ideally has a lot more room for growth. So the best ideal student stays with this process until they make $200K. That’s the goal. And the measurement really is that. Like how I know a student masters, because some people can stay in a container but they don’t master things. How you know you’ve mastered something is you have the result. This is something my coach taught me years ago.

And so when I look at investments that I’m making and goals I’m working on, if I want to make, say, $20 million and I were in a $20 million mastermind and I had done it six times, if I hadn’t made $20 million, I’d be like, there’s something I keep missing here. I better figure out what it is. I’m not quite there yet. Especially if I’m making a little money, I’m making money along the way. Ideally, that’s the goal. You don’t want to just keep doing something that isn’t working. But if I’m getting there, slowly but surely, I wouldn’t say at $15 million, I’ve graduated. I’m done. I learned it all. I don’t think there’s any more growth for me to have. I’m at $15 million. $20 million is obviously inevitable.

I would personally stay until I made that $20 million. That would be the goal and that would be the proficiency of I’ve got it. I know these tools. And so that also then becomes the revenue requirement to go into 2 Million Dollar Group. Because people will tell me all the time they’re ready to make $2 million. And they’re like, no, I’m ready at $100K. But what I know to be true is if you have $200,000 of proficiency in the skills I teach in 200K Mastermind, you would be making 200K, period. It’s just the most neutral way to look at something.

And this is the way I talk to myself even. So it never tricks me into thinking I know more than I actually do. The measurement shows what I know. And then I’m always really neutral and realistic with myself about that. So that’s the best ideal path. Not everybody follows that path, okay? So you don’t just like set a path for your Ascension Model and think everyone’s just going to follow it flawlessly. But the people that do, they tend to get the best highest results. They tend to grow the fastest. They tend to not get stuck and have income plateaus, they tend to not have years that they feel like they fell off the grid or got sucked into a low value cycle and stayed there. They tend to work through their low value cycles. So for me, again, this goes back to what’s the growth journey? What’s the success we’re working towards and what makes it easier, simpler, more doable in order to get there? And working on the skill stacks required to get there consistently and actively is the way to go.

So again, because this mastermind is not a program, it’s a program with higher proximity to me, it’s something that I recreate and bring fresh energy to every 6 months. I do have my students reapply and re-enroll each year. It’s not like my 2K for 2K program where they buy in once and they have lifetime access. It’s a bigger journey and I want us to both recommit each time and one of the things I’ve been thinking about a lot is that how important it is to continue to invest in results.

I’m going to do a podcast next week on lifetime access programs because so many people have asked me, especially as they’re thinking about doing the 2 Million Dollar Group room or if they’re in 2 Million Dollar Group or this has even come up in 2K. People have asked me my opinion about, you know, hey, you have a lifetime access program, what are your thoughts about it? And so I’m going to break down actually a whole prose, which is a very long list and con list on next week’s episode.

But one thing I’ve seen with my lifetime access program is that because students aren’t reinvesting and it’s not meant to reinvest, it’s meant to get in, learn the skill and master closing consults as fast as possible and then use it to refresh your consults anytime you need, but that’s it. It’s not meant to be an overall business mentorship.

So when people stay beyond that, when they stay in there and they don’t move up, they don’t grow as fast as others. There’s always the outliers who use it to make $100K or $200K and that’s amazing, but it’s not the typical student. It’s the very, very, very rare exception. Like I can probably come up with a short list of people that that’s ever happened for. The typical student doesn’t grow as fast as others when they stay put. And I’ve been thinking about why because I’m always trying to solve these things and motivate people and explain things differently. And I really think it boils down to there not being something on the line.

The more on the line, like the more you have invested, so I’m talking about money and time on the line. Because 200K Mastermind, the one thing people will say is it is a time investment. We do Mastermind Week, which is a week of five 90-minute calls back-to-back to break down the whole process and workshop it. We do calls every week. There is a five-step process plus a course on webinars. When you’re ready and you want to learn webinars, there’s a course on email marketing. There’s a course on launching. When you get to that phase, you don’t have to take everything at once, but you do have to learn these skill sets along the way, so it does require a time investment.

But really, I’m speaking mostly about the financial investment. So the more financial investment there is on the line, the more active and engaged you stay with the growth. And that is everything. Even for me, speaking like purely from me walking the talk, I invested $233,000 last year in my business. I have never grown so much and it was such a scary amount of money for me.

I have never, other than my first year of scaling, I think, and then my first year of making my first $20,000. That first year of… I think it took me a year of coaching one-on-one with a life coach. Then I started my business. Then I got certified. Then I started my business in July and that year I made $20K. And that was the hardest part. And then scaling from $325,000 to my first $2.5 million, like that next part. And then this past year, I have been the most active and engaged that I’ve been.

I just put so much money on the line, I couldn’t not be engaged. Now that has to work for you. Some people are comfortable throwing money away, but I’m not. I’ve never been that person. So when I make an investment, I stay active and engaged. And I have seen that that is a really important reason why I do a semi-continuity offer with my 200K. And even with my 2 Million Dollar Group, if you don’t scale to $2 million in that first 12 month period, then you can re-enroll and we’d go at it another 12 months.

But it’s very important to say, this is what I’m doing. These three essentials are what I’m working on this round. This is how it impacted my business. This is the growth I had. This is what I’m doing next round. Here are my three essentials here.

Next round, I’m going to start webinars. Next round, I’m really going to work on my PSPR within my marketing and I want to get off sales calls. Whatever it is, it’s like these are the specific things. I’m reinvesting. I’m recommitted. I’m going again. I’m clear that my next six months is going to be highly focused on this growth and this is the result that will prove that I have stayed active and engaged and done everything I can and then I’m going to evaluate, I have them evaluate at the end of every round and then I’m gonna go again until I get to $200,000.

So that’s what the clients with the most success historically do. They go from $2,000 to $20,000, they get into the $200,000 mastermind, they stay until they make $200,000, then they go in to the 2 Million Dollar Group. And that operates the same as 200K in that the process, it’s a different process, but it’s expansive as well. And so it also remains the same process once you learn it from $2 million to $5 million to even $10 million. You’re just building upon scaling skills and stacking revenue and creating your IP and your offer suites and getting your work to the masses. And all of this takes time. You do it little by little by little.

So I’m not going to spend a ton of time on that. I’ve been kind of talking about the 2 Million Dollar Group room. So you’ve gotten an idea of what those steps are and what that process is. But that’s my Ascension Model. So my job as the coach is to communicate the importance of moving up as soon as someone is measurably ready. And I start doing that from the moment someone signs up with 2K. I’m talking about them making their money back right away, then making that first $20,000. We’re celebrating them in the room.

When they make their first $2,000 and they go in the member portal and they click, they made their money back and they show us proof, they get a $299 credit for my entrepreneur series. Just as an extra motivation, we want to get them through that first small hurdle. Even though it’s the biggest hurdle they’ll take, it’s, you know, I understand that $2,000 is not a giant amount of money, but it really is the biggest hurdle. So I incentivize them to do that. And then we just start building upon that. Then we want to sign more and more clients. We want to get that first $20,000 cash in the door.

And then my job is to communicate how important it is to get into 200K as fast as possible. And then my job is to communicate the importance of staying in that room until you make $200,000. As long as it’s working and you’re making more and more money every single time. I look at that when people re-apply because I know there’s like people have thoughts about that. And if like people aren’t making any more money, like we measure that in the room as well. And that’s another value of mine. It doesn’t have to be yours, but it is of mine. And then again, educating them to get into 2 Million Dollar Group.

So that’s something that if you do an Ascension Model becomes highly important is really helping people move along so that they can have more and more success. So here’s why it works. This model allows me to meet my clients where they are at each level and speak directly at that level and tailor the process, what I teach, and the coaching to the most useful information at each stage exactly when it’s required and then teach new and different stages when that growth is required.

I’m in an Ascension model program or an Ascension program model now with my coach that is really focused on leadership. And so the first stage is really self-leadership and then the next stage is leadership of others and then the third is a mastery of mentorship. At least that’s how I would describe it. I don’t know if that’s how she would describe it, it’s how I would describe it. So rather than measurable revenue, hers is really defined by emotional readiness and willing to invest in your next level. So there aren’t like income requirements to go to that next level like mine.

That’s something you decide. For me, I just know because I’ve coached so many coaches, when it comes to making money and building skills at making money, that’s the measurable result. For leadership, there’s a lot of other results that aren’t necessarily tied to money. There’s a lot of intangible things that happen in your business that show you what level your leadership is at. Or it’s an emotional thing.

I have a lot of millionaires who I am friends with who we all have lots of thoughts about leadership and we’re always working on it. So that can be an emotional thing too. So it doesn’t have to be. I wanted to use that example because it doesn’t have to be an Ascension Model that deals with business and money. It can be any type of coaching at all.

You just need to decide what is the measurement? How will people know when they’re ready for more and how can I explain that to them and how can I break my offers down to where I’m giving them enough to get to the next level but not so much that they get overwhelmed? What’s the main purpose of each one? And then what are the tools, skills, coaching that I can give them that would allow them to be complete and move on to the next level?

So this model works because it also constrains learning. I’ve talked about that a lot already, but one of the things that I see just, and it’s worth repeating at every stage of the journey, is when coaches don’t constrain what skills they learn and master, and when they don’t focus on just the essentials of where they are, they tend to be all over the place with the results that are all over the place.

And it becomes really hard to evaluate and figure out what’s working and what isn’t and have like a really believable solid plan for moving forward when you’re trying everything all at once now, because you’re just trying so many things that you don’t know what it could be. So you end up learning nothing of substance, and I know this feeling of everything all at once now relieves that urgency itch. If you just give me access to everything.

People tell me that all the time. Will you just give me access to the 200K content? I haven’t made any money, but I just know it’s what I need.

And so there is that urgency and that itch to know all the things, but it’s not great when you have all that knowledge all at the same time to take small, actionable steps daily. It’s a little bit harder to do that or a lot harder to do that. So for me, the constraint that I create within my offers, I consider this like the greatest gift to my students. Each of my offers are built with so much thought and love from the deepest understanding and mastery of every step of the journey.

So when you’re scaling, this type of model is something to consider, is if you have a result that you offer that is continuous in someone’s ability to produce success, are there lots of levels of success they can have? This won’t make sense to everyone. If you teach a very constrained thing and there aren’t lots of levels and once they learn it, they have what they want and they’re complete.

So for example, maybe it’s you’re a divorce coach and you help people go through their divorce and you’re not interested or it’s not called for you or you’re not trying to also help them find a new person and re-get married and you’re like, no, I’m amazing as the divorce coach, then a continuity offer like a membership or a simple program could work. And then without having an Ascension Model, it could be if someone wants to do a deep dive with you, you have a deep dive option as well, but it doesn’t have to be like a 1, 2, 3 step situation.

But if you have something where you know there are defined levels and you can see that someone can, I have a client who does consulting and the first stage of consulting is to get your first $150,000 in the door and then the second stage I think is $500,000 and maybe the third stage is $1 million? So he says the process is very different at each one. If you know these are the stages and you know the process is different at each one, this is a really great model.

It allows you to serve your clients from beginning to end. I’ve said this, but I’ll say it again. I really love that. I love building strong relationships. I love getting to know my clients really deeply. The longer I coach them, the more I’m able to see patterns and belief systems that you might not catch right away.

And I just think the payoff of having a client come in at zero or only a few thousand dollars and actually make it all the way to $2,000,000, that has happened several times now and it is the absolute best feeling. Like there just isn’t a better one in my opinion. And it also doesn’t require you to spend as much of your time marketing as delivering.

So because returning customers or customers from my primary program, my foundational program, 2K for 2K, are roughly 50% of my client base always, I spend a lot more time creating resources for them and coaching them and creating course intensives for them, like refining the process. And personally, I prefer that. I prefer that coaching work over marketing. Not everybody feels that way, so you have to know that too.

If you prefer marketing, a membership might be the way to go because you’re marketing all the time for a membership. But I really love being able to focus on intellectual property and coaching and just like really spending, taking care of the clients I have. And then of course new clients come in and we love that too. And we do spend time doing that, but I love that the majority of my work is just getting in there and coaching my people and creating awesome courses for them and resources and things like that.

And I also think that having this type of model creates a strong community when new people do come in. They actually find it easier to catch on and apply the work. You would think that it would be the opposite of belonging, but I work really hard to create an environment where cliques and hierarchies aren’t prevalent, regardless of how many people are returning over and over.

I instilled in my community a love for serving their colleagues, creating a welcoming environment, and just owning the sense of belonging for themselves and then helping create that sense for other people. And because I foster that, there are always people stepping up to help new people and guide them and support them.

So the incoming students love the returning students. They always feel so helped, so supported by them. They don’t, sometimes they might feel intimidated in the beginning, but typically they just feel so honored to be in this space, especially if they’ve heard them on the podcast or they’ve met them and seen them out and they just feel so excited to actually be in the room with them. I have actually found that this speeds up. I’ve actually found that they get up to speed faster in the new programs they join than if it was new people every single time all the time. It’s not that they couldn’t get up to speed fast, but I’ve just found that I’ve created a really supportive environment where the returning people really add a lot of value to the new people.

So what you want to focus on, I’m going to end with this, what you want to focus on if you choose this model are clear, defined processes and philosophies for each stage. This is typically the things we’re doing in the 2 Million Dollar Group room. We’re talking through this. We’re planning this stuff out. We’re looking over it and seeing, you know, sometimes it’s hard to see it yourself and sometimes you have too close of a view. So we have like a bigger view of that in the room. I’m able to see that sometimes a little bit easier than my clients are even able to see it for themselves. So that’s something big that we work on.

But you also want to focus on selling. When you’re selling it actively, once you have each of your Ascension programs and your clear defined processes and philosophies for each stage, then you want to get really good at selling the what and the why for each of these stages. So you have to really build out messaging and communication and education so that your clients understand the purpose and they see the whole journey.

Then you want to also develop graduation markers. Give indicators to help students know when it’s their time to move up. And sometimes I’ve even found you have to like give little nudges to people who like to be cozy. And that’s actually what I’m working on now in my marketing and selling and delivering is really thinking about how I can help people move forward.

Like people I think at this point, if you’ve been following me for a while, you know what my offers are, but really helping my students know when it’s time to move up and to help give them that nudge and that certainty and that conviction that they’re ready. And so I’ve been thinking about all the different ways I can do that and that’s going to be really important when you create this model.

And then for mine, this is not required. I have lots of millionaire friends who have Ascension Models and they don’t have this same thing. But for mine, I do love having client filters.

So accepting people to the new levels is never arbitrary. We don’t have a hard time deciding if someone’s a yes or a no because we’re so clear on who the ideal people are. So you might want to decide is there a measurement for being ready to level up or is it based on buyer discernment? And there’s powerful reasons for both.

I do get the reason that you would let someone stay or keep going in an Ascension Model or a continuity offer even if they weren’t getting results. If you’re a really slow burn and it takes you three years to lose the weight, you might feel a little frustrated if someone said you didn’t lose the weight fast enough so you can’t continue on.

But for me, one of my values is teaching people how to be amazing investors and part of that is not letting people overinvest. So for me, especially with my 200K and my 2 Million Dollar Group, those are semi-continuity offers where they might do round after round. And for me, I have to see that they have at least broke even on their investment after the first round and then I want to see growth, considerable growth round after round.

So I typically don’t let someone just stay in even if they’re breaking even round after round. I want to see growth happening to feel really good about them continuing to invest. Like a $10,000 investment going to $200K if you’re making $25,000 and then you make $50,000 and then you make $60,000 and you make $70,000 and then you’re at $100,000 and then you’re at $125,000, it should get easier and easier to make that an investment, it shouldn’t be harder and harder.

And so that’s a value of mine. It doesn’t have to be a value of yours, but I love my reasons for it. It just ties into all of my beliefs around becoming a powerful investor and helping my students also grow in that area and see what it takes to be a powerful investor and how to be self-aware of investments and to not be over-investing and to be super essential with your investments and then use them really wisely and extract a lot of value, that’s important to me too.

So I have filters for that and revenue stages and things like that. It is a little more, you know, “controlling” and also it’s for the best reasons.

It’s really truly, when I look at the majority of coaches, it’s what helps me sleep at night really, really well is that I’m always accepting people that meet the requirements and I have a very strong belief that they can create the result. So I don’t have anybody ever in my programs where I’m like, I don’t really believe they can do it. If I have a thought, I don’t really believe they can do it, we don’t accept them. And that allows me to feel really powerful in my coaching.

So for me, it’s very important, something to consider for you. But when you join 2 Million Dollar Group, we talk through all of these things. We really dive in and get very clear so that you also feel very convicted and powerful along your journey.

Okay, so that is Ascension Business Models. And next week, we’re gonna talk about lifetime access. I’m gonna give you all the pros and cons and my thoughts after having a lifetime access program for the last six years. So stay tuned. All right, I’ll see you next week.

Hey, if you’re ready to make money as a life coach, I want to invite you to join my 2k for 2k program where you’re going to make your first $2,000, the hardest part, using my simple 5-step formula for getting consults and closing new clients. Just head over to www.staceyboehman.com/2kfor2k. We’ll see you inside.