024 – Launching an Innovation Workshop and Coaching Business with Tom Heffner

The Entrepreneur Ride Along Podcast - Online Business and Niche Site Ideas for Entrepreneurs

Today, I am excited to interview Tom Heffner of Tomheffner.com.

Tom is an executive and leadership coach, he helps organizations accelerate decision making, collaboration, and innovation through his coaching and workshops.

In today's episode, Tom breaks down his business and takes us behind the scenes describing how he built his business selling innovation workshops and executive coaching.

Tom Heffner Case Study

Tom is featured in chapter two and chapter three of my business ideas book. Below is the case study from the book where Tom is featured. This comes directly from chapter two of the book:

Online business is incredibly profitable. I love online business because you can charge a premium for high ticket items. You can sell an online course for $400. You can sell coaching for $1,000 per session. You can sell a training workshop for $10,000.

Think about that. Sell ten online courses per month, that’s $4,000. Book five coaching clients and you have $5,000 per month. Sell just five training workshops in a year and you have a business generating $50,000.

Not to mention, your profit margin is nearly 100%. There are almost no expenses, there is no overhead. Your only necessary expense is paying for a domain and website hosting (as we discussed above).

My profit margin is typically around 80%, and that’s because my businesses are big enough that I’ve expanded to hiring contractors and investing in automation. Most entrepreneurs that I coach have profit margins of 90% or higher. That means, the business is operating with limited expenses, and the owner of the website is keeping 90% of the revenue as profit.

When I say highly profitable, I do not mean Jeff Bezos $200 Billion profitable. Though, you can be. When I say highly profitable, I am talking about starting small when you start. I want you thinking about how you can make $5,000 per month from your first online business. Just $60,000 per year. That is achievable to start with. And that is much easier than you think when starting an online business.

Tom Heffner, of TomHeffner.com, is a great example of how profitable this type of business model can be. Tom helps people and organizations accelerate decision-making, collaboration, and innovation through his training, coaching, and workshops. Simply put, Tom is a coach that hosts a workshop teaching employees how to be more innovative. Tom charges $9,500 for his services plus $6,000 for each additional day. If Tom books one workshop, for two days, he’s making $15,500. If he books just seven clients per year for this two-day workshop, he’s making over $100,000 for the year! To put this in perspective, Tom took on his innovation consulting practice full-time in 2018. By the end of 2019, Tom brought in $173,000 in revenue, almost all of which was profit. Not bad for hosting a couple of workshops!

Don’t get me wrong, Tom is one of the hardest working people I know. There is a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes, creating his workshop and booking clients. He has perfected his craft, and fully deserves what he is paid. But let that sink in, think about how this could be you in just a few months. You can copy Tom’s business model; it is highly profitable. That is online business. That is why I love online business.

This Interview

This interview is part of a series of case studies that I will be publishing to The Entrepreneur Ride Along Podcast over the coming weeks as I interview successful entrepreneurs in the online business space. These interviews and case studies will be featured in my newest book "business ideation" (still available for pre-sale).

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