Reading Rich Dad Poor Dad at 16 years old was one of the best decisions I ever made.

It set me on the path to becoming my own boss.

But it also made working a 9-5 unbearable, which I did for over a decade. That book made employment feel like enslavement.

I landed "good" jobs, but it magnified my frustrations :

• I always had a lot of grunt work, even as I became more senior.
• I couldn’t get away from being in the office 40+ hours per week.
• My raises were rarely greater than 3% (and I persevered more than most my colleagues).

And this barely scratches the surface. I became increasingly annoyed from:

• Working under fluorescent lights all day
• Having no access to a grill or stove to cook lunch
• Hearing my coworker Karen's constant complaints

The list could go on forever. And all I could think about was getting out and owning my own business.

For years it was only a dream because I didn’t take action. I read books but didn't know where to begin.

In 2015, I dove into the online world head first. I bought a high-ticket course and spent years trying things that didn’t make much money (although I learned a ton).

Then, I invested in coaches. I found better strategies for learning, creating, and monetizing my skills online.

Things finally started to click.

It took longer than it should have. Way longer.

Because I didn’t have a good plan.

But now my strategy is clearer than ever. I recently created a 6-figure coaching business within months of starting it.

And now I have a clear path to turn that into a 7-figure business in the next couple of years.

Below I’ll show you what that path is and why I like it so much.

The Downside of Online Coaching

Making money online is all the rave these days.

Promises of:

• Financial freedom
• Choosing the work you do
• Control over your schedule
• Free time to work out, be with people you love, and do what you want

And it's hard to argue against it.

Heck, even I help frustrated 9-5ers and aspiring online entrepreneurs quickly build a 6-figure coaching business.

But I’ll be honest — coaching can feel like you’re trading one 9-5 for another.

Last May, I finally left my 9-5 to work on my online business full-time, yet:

• I still trade time for money
• I don't make more money than I did at my 9-5
• Instead of appeasing bosses, I have to appease clients

And I’m not the only one. I’ve met many coaches who experience the same thing.

It may seem like I made a mistake, but it couldn’t be farther from the truth.

This is only the first phase of my online growth. And coaching is the stepping stone to getting me where I want.

Things you can do with a coaching biz:

- Scale it
- Change lives
- Do what you love
- Control your schedule
- Achieve financial freedom

There's a reason I chose this business model

— Rob Riker (@robertgriker) April 4, 2022

As you’ll soon learn, this was a calculated decision. It will give me the opportunity to grow from six to seven figures while reducing the time I spend working.

A Sexy Future (to Me)

In the next few years, I want to create a business where:

• I love every component of my work
• I only need to work for 2 hours per day
• I have a significant impact on the people I help
• I make more than enough money to live the life I want

That’s it.

Here's what my work life will look like:

• Create content that resonates with readers and grows my brand.
• Build low-maintenance offers (like info-products and communities) that help people at scale.
• Take a few coaching clients per year at very high-ticket prices (or none at all).

You may wonder:

Why am I coaching right now if I don’t want to do much of it in the future?

There’s a good reason for it.

And if you want to help people learn, grow, or transform at scale, you should consider it to.

Let me explain.

The 3 Keys Formula

Good offer + Credibility + Distribution = $$$

If you want to make a lot of money helping people, you need the 3 Keys Formula:

1. A good offer - You need to be good at helping people achieve a meaningful goal with your product or service.
2. Credibility - People need to believe you can help them.
3. Distribution - You need to get the right eyeballs on your content and offer.

Most people screw this up.

They create a mediocre course with a small audience and no proven results.

• They get few sales
• Their customers don’t get great results, so they don’t tell others about it or provide testimonials
• They don't receive quality feedback to know what's working and what's not

If you’re a beginner (you haven’t helped many people achieve a specific goal), you start with:

• Few skills
• No scalability
• Little to no income

Even if you have some skills or an audience, you can't scale until your skills reach a certain threshold. Your methods must be good at creating successful students.

Coaching solves this problem. It's an efficient path to leaving your 9-5. You can make money while building the foundation for a low-maintenance 7-figure income.

(If you want to see how this applies to other businesses and career paths, I discuss it more in the summary at the bottom.)

8 Reasons Why You Should Start with Coaching

Before scaling, you need to get good at helping people achieve a certain goal. And people need to know this.

You need skills. And you need proof.

Coaching is the fastest method for making this happen.

Here are 8 reasons why you should start with coaching if you want a 7-figure lifestyle business:

(If you want to help people achieve personal goals.)

1. Deep market knowledge

Scalable info-products help a specific group of people achieve an important goal.

With coaching, you work directly with the people you want help.

You quickly learn their goals, struggles, frustrations, and desires at a much deeper level.

These insights help you dial in your:

• Positioning
• Targeting
• Marketing
• Offer
• Program
• And more

Coaching gives you quick feedback you can't get elsewhere

2. Develop high-value skills

Knowing which problems to solve is step one. Getting good at solving them is step two.

By working with people 1-on-1, you quickly learn what works and what doesn't.

You can then develop effective methods for helping people.

3. Create evangelist clients

When you have regular 1-on-1 coaching calls, you build deep relationships.

They're ecstatic when you help them achieve their goals.

These evangelists give you social proof and word-of-mouth marketing.

This is a key to growing and building credibility.

4. Testimonials and case studies

You create powerful transformations faster when working 1-on-1. If something isn't working, you can solve it.

With courses, if your method has a flaw, the customer doesn't succeed.

These successes create testimonials and case studies for your brand.

Your credibility rises. And you're one step closer to creating low-maintenance offers that sell.

5. Create a full-time income in little time

To succeed with info-products, you need distribution (access to a big audience or paid ads), credibility, and product/market fit.

This is difficult for beginners to achieve.

With 1-on-1 coaching, you can test your offer by talking to people in your market.

You can land a few clients at low prices to improve your program and gain credibility.

Then, you can increase your coaching price to thousands of dollars. Now, you only need a few sales per month to make a full-time income.

And it can happen in less than 6 months.

6. Faster social media growth

Your audience needs to know:

"Why should I listen to you?"

This requires market knowledge (knowing your audience inside and out) and credibility.

As mentioned above, coaching helps you develop these in the fastest way possible.

By creating successful clients through 1-on-1 coaching, you gain credibility. You become an expert in your field.

This helps you grow an audience faster by giving people a reason to follow you.

7. Easy transition to scalable offers

With everything mentioned above, you are set up to scale and make more money with less effort.

You now know what people want, who you can help, and exactly how to do it.

You now have proof, credibility, and a bigger audience.

You now have options to help more people with less effort using products and services like:

• Communities
• Group coaching or cohorts
• Info-products (ebooks, courses, challenges)

By starting with coaching, you set the stage to scale later.

8. Reduce work time and increase the price of 1-on-1 coaching

As you grow your scalable offers, you can move away from 1-on-1 coaching.

This creates a significant increase in free time (yay!).

It also makes your 1-on-1 coaching more valuable and rare.

You have a few options here:

• You can drop 1-on-1 coaching for good.
• You can take a few clients per year at a much higher rate.
• You can use 1-on-1 coaching to test and develop new programs.

These options are priceless. They set you up to create the exact lifestyle and business you want.

Learn, Act, and Assess

It should be clear by now:

If you want to help people make personal transformations — and build a scalable lifestyle business — coaching is the fastest way to do it.

Like any business, it takes some work upfront. But it sets you up for life.

And guess what? This concept isn't for coaches only. It applies to other business models as well.

If you want to build an agency:

Start with freelancing to develop the necessary skills. Then create processes and hire others to do that work.

If you want to climb the corporate ladder:

Solve important problems for high level executives and managers on your own. Then build a team to perform these functions (or get promoted to a position that does).

Whatever you want to do, find a way to develop the skills to achieve those goals on your own.

Then leverage automation, investment, or other people’s time to make it happen at scale.

Here's a quick way to make sure you get the skills you need. It only requires 3 key habits:

• Learning - a way to continually learn new skills and better ways to do things
• Acting (or creating) - a way to use what you learn for practice and results
• Feedback - a way to immediately learn what’s working and what isn’t

If you have all 3 of these, you can excel at whatever you want to do.

You will develop the skills necessary to make an impact.

Then you can package those skills into a process that you sell or use to manage others.

After reading this, you may want to build a 7-figure lifestyle business that helps people at scale.

Younger me would have.

If so — and you want to start that journey by building a 6-figure coaching business — I have a program that gets you to $10K/month in 6 months.

Want to learn more?

Click here to learn about my Online Coaching Business Mentorship Program.

Or reply to this email if you have any questions.

Best of luck on your journey to creating the life you want.

- Rob Riker