How my client went from $500/month to a Million dollar business in 2 years!

Founder of School of Motion – Joey Korenman

Joey Korenman

Joey and I started working together just over two years ago. When we first met he was only making about $500/month from his site and made most of his income as a freelancer. This year he is set to do over $1M! Joey shares his pivotal moments, advice for weathering the storm, and tips on what you can do this week to work towards your goal of $1M.

What is your business and how did you hit your million in gross revenue?

I run a company called School of Motion, which is an online company for motion designers-which is kind of a subset of animators. So we do design for advertisements, explainer videos, cable networks, etc. So my website is made up of a bunch of content and intense training we call “boot camps,” where people can sign up to get a hard-core, in-depth education on motion design.

Joey is such a talent and developed a business based around his true passion and is CRUSHING it! You can check out some of Joey’s animation here.

Tell us about your trajectory and your pivotal moments that got you from where you started to where you are now.

When I started, before I was in Millionaire Hustlers, I was trying this business model that I had seen a lot of other people do where you put out free content and videos and then developed a plugin for motion designers. As it turns out, I do not like developing software and marketing and updating that when a new version comes out. So I really had no clue what my business model was or how I was going to get it to work. So when I signed up for Millionaire Hustlers I was only making maybe $500/month, although I was also a successful freelancer.

At that point, I was just trying to figure out how I could use the website and the list that I had built to create enough income to replace what I was making. One of the things that really hit me when I was in Millionaire Hustlers was my passion for teaching. So I developed this hybrid of passive and interactive learning. And you [Jaime] had to push me off the ledge to pre-sell, which was the scariest thing I had ever done in my life at that point. And I ended up doing like $10,000 in 2 days from that.

Things started to really pick up and you had me on the call with your mastermind group. And it was creating quite a buzz because of the way the courses were being run. And then within a year after Hustlers, the company did $500,000 in sales. That is when you told me about the next level and I knew I needed that extra push to make it to a million.

What was the first learning point from not have a business model to $500K in one year?

The journey from $0 to half million to a million is not a straight line! It is peaks and valleys and they are REALLY high and REALLY low and I have learned to weather those better. Now I understand why everyone in your interviews talks about meditating, exercising, and doing the miracle morning because if you don’t do those things you will go crazy!

So tell me what you did to weather the storm?

I tried everything. I tried and am still trying to meditate and practice mindfulness. The thing that helped me the most was just connecting with other people that are going through it. Nobody in my geographic social circle is doing anything like this, they are successful, but at bankers or senior VPs at big companies, so their path is smoother than mine. So just being able to connect with people that are going through the same things is really huge. I like to have a model of someone who has done it, and not just listening to them but to be able to ask them questions. And also being really strict with myself, exercising, eating better, because I can’t have a day where I can’t function.

So tell me about all the vacations you have been going on.

This happened because I read The 4-Hour Work Week. That whole mentality that you don’t wait till you’re retired to do the things you want to do. The whole reason to start this business and work this hard is so we can do that stuff. We have designed our whole lives to be able to pick up and go somewhere. (With 3 children all under age 6) we went to London for 12 months, to Salem for Halloween, going to Texas for Thanksgiving. We set it up so I can work from anywhere and we have the capacity to do that and to show our kids the world. I would rather spend money on travel than fancy cars or cable because that is what is important to us.

So many people hit a plateau and you didn’t, tell me about the pivotal pieces from $500K to $1M

At the beginning of my starting Hustlers, that is when I brought on my first hire. She started part-time, then went full-time, which was really scary because now I had someone depending on me to pay their rent. I was also terrible at managing, luckily I got someone that was self-motivated and didn’t need a ton of direction.

We had the systems in place to know that we could make a few 100 grand per year, and that is when I realized that I needed to start taking myself out of some of the things I was doing. That is when I restructured the courses a bit and started hiring contractors, or what I call teaching assistants-which we now have 10 of. They are now doing all of the contact with students in our courses, which freed me up to go out and find talent to develop new products. All of this is what brought us to half a million.

In order to go from there to $1M, we needed to scale the operation. And this is really cliche, but I am more of the idea guy. I can see things and lay them out but then I get lazy when it comes to the details. So I knew I needed someone who was meticulous and detail-oriented, and I knew that person what gonna cost more. Someone that expected more out of me also.

So when I first started Six Figure Mastermind, that is the first thing I did was hire a project manager. And since we hired her, things have just slanted up. And anytime I hire, I always ask the mastermind group that I am in because it scares me to do it. Everyone in the group had already done it and the advice was amazing.

So it was really getting comfortable and hiring a team and letting some of the small things go. Being a perfectionist is a bad thing as an entrepreneur. And after I got out of my own way, we had the second-highest registration period we had ever had.

What is one action listeners can take this week that can help move them towards their goal of a million gross?

If you haven’t read the 4-hour Work Week, go read that! Find something that inspires you to do something that scares the crap out of you. Then do something that scares the crap out of you. For me, it was making my first video tutorial and putting it on Reddit, and telling people about my blog.

To hear more on the 7-Figure Mastermind, submit a coaching application HERE!

Resources Mentioned in the Podcast:

• FourHourWorkweek.com
• https://vimeo.com/84484193 Joey’s animation reel!
• Check out SchoolofMotion.com for more info.

Thanks so much for listening!

Tags: BUSINESS, business actions, Business Growth, Business Scaling, business strategy, Joey Korenman, marketing, millionaire interview

Categories: All, Business, Business Model, Entrepreneurship, Goal Setting, Goals

Hi I’m Jaime. Each and every week I bring you the top business advice from the people who know best.

Learn More