Here's How I Operate A $6M / Year Coaching Business
KPIs, department structures, org charts, prioritization frameworks—it's all in here.
Hola from CDMX 🇲🇽 (and happy Super Bowl Sunday 🏈)
I just published a video that I would have killed for when I was just starting my business.
It’s a full breakdown of our entire company “Operating System” - including:
Top-down department bucket structure
KPIs & how they connect to one another
An org chart with 28 full-time team members
An overview of how we decide what to work on to both keep the business running and make it grow faster
I’m enjoying making these in-depth business videos because I think there’s a dramatic shortage of people showing the “how” and “why” they do what they do. Not every video going forward is going to be business-related, but I’ve got a ton more to say on the topic.
Next week I plan on switching it up with a video breaking down the different “lenses” you can use to see the world - and how the choice of that lens can make or break everything you do (and especially how you feel about it).
But for now, let’s talk business 💰
For those of you who learn best via video, here’s the link:
And for those of you who learn best via audio, here’s the podcast link (Spotify & Apple Podcasts)
And for those of you who like to read, here’s the text version. Keep in mind, this was an off-the-cuff outline for the video, so I go far more in-depth over there.
I operate a group coaching business with over 1200 clients, 28 team members, and $5m per year in revenue.
And in this post I’m going to give you a full behind the scenes of the business, how it operates, and how we decide what to work on so you can apply it to your business as well.
So whether you’re just starting out or operating something similar, there will be something relevant for you here.
What we’re going to cover
An overview of the different departments of our business & their respective KPIS
An org chart with each person that helps us run this business
An operational framework for goal setting and choosing what to work on with examples of how we do it
Let’s get into it.
1. An overview of the different departments within the business and their KPIs
Now before we look at the departments here is a 60-second rundown of our business:
PGA is a 1:1 + group coaching business that helps freelance writers reposition themselves as ghostwriters
The offer includes 16 weeks of 1:1 coaching to walk through an 8-module curriculum with everything you would need to land your first client as a ghostwriter
It also includes a Slack community + 5 weekly group calls covering every aspect of the solo ghostwriting agency process
After 16 weeks, clients have the option to continue their 1:1 coaching and unlock additional educational resources to help them scale their business
The way we break down the business is as follows:
There is a hierarchy from the top of the business all the way down to the individual contributors
At each level, there is a corresponding ONE METRIC KPI that department is looking to improve that bubbles up to the improvement of the business as a whole
On top of that, there is one department head who is responsible for the performance of that number & the individual contributors underneath it
At the top level, we have the business
It’s sole KPI is the total amount of cash that hits the bank account
From there, we break the business down into 3 subcomponents:
Acquisition (getting new customers)
Success (fulfilling and retaining those customers)
Operations (making sure 1 and 2 happen consistently & compliantly)
For the purpose of this video, I am mainly going to talk about the revenue-generating parts of the business which are Acquisition and Success
We think about operations as just general support that is not KPI’d but simply allow us to run the business smoothly.
At our size, the amount of scope these departments have is relatively limited.
Finance: We have one individual contributor for finance/HR + a bookkeeping agency
Legal: We have a fractional lawyer on retainer for contracts/copyright/general questions
Tech: We have a tech operations assistant who works with our head of marketing who also run our general tech operations
The Acquisition and Success departments have their own KPIs that bubble up to the main KPI
Acquisition: Total new frontend revenue generated
Success: Total backend revenue generated
The revenue of the entire business either comes from a new customer (acquisition) or from renewal from a current customer (success)
From there, we can break each of those departments into more sub-departments, each again with their own KPIs that bubble up to the department above it
Acquisition: Total new frontend revenue generated
Brand: Total number of new leads
Marketing: Total number of offers made
Sales: Total number of new enrollments
Success: Total backend revenue generated
Student Experience: Client NPS score
Backend sales: Total number of backend renewals
Now as you get more granular, there are sub-KPIs within each of those:
Brand: Number of new leads per platform for brand
Marketing: Number of offers made per platform
Sales: Number of enrollments per enrollment advisor
Student Experience: NPS score per CSM
Backend Sales: Number of backend renewals per CSM
So at the most granular level, each individual contributor can tie their performance to the subdepartment KPI, which bubbles up to the department KPI, which bubbles up to the business KPI
This allows each employee to clearly see the impact their performance has on the business as a whole, as well as clearly incentivize them on their performance because we can measure its impact on revenue
I operate the business from a dashboard with each of these metrics posted front and center over various time horizons - 7 days, 30 days, 90 days, etc.
And my job is to deploy my efforts to whatever is the constraint of the business, based on those numbers.
Now that is how I currently operate - but I’m only able to do that because I have heads of each of these departments that are responsible for the performance of each of these KPIs.
During the building of this business, I was trying to operate as the CEO while also running as the head of sales, head of marketing, and head of success.
That meant I was very much “in the weeds” and unable to do the type of strategic resource allocation I am doing today.
But speaking of team, let’s take a look at who powers the performance and achievement of these numbers
2. An overview of the org chart that powers this $5m per year business
We have 28 total team members broken down into each department
At the top you have me and my Co-Founder
Our main job is to identify whatever part of the business most needs improvement & deploy our efforts there accordingly
On top of that, we maintain the culture of high performance + create content that builds our brand & ultimately leads to more revenue for the business
Below that we break things down into Acquisition and Success
Rather than name us as heads of these departments, we defer to the department heads below it to work together in tandem to improve this KPI
Looking underneath Acquisition, we have 3 subdepartments:
Brand & Marketing
These departments have significant overlap as many of the people who work on
We are not at the scale where we need to have a hard cutoff between those who work on marketing and those work on brand
Brand Only
Mackenzie - Long-form Video Editor. Her main responsibility is producing high-quality long-form YouTube content on my co-founders channel. My videos require significantly less editing than his, so we have our short-form editor handle mine.
Terence - Short-form Video Editor. Responsible for shorts / clips / ads across platforms + lightweight editing for videos like this and our Espresso Hour podcast
Vitor - IG brand coordinator. Exclusively runs my and my co-founders Instagram.
Marketing Only
Daniel - Head of Marketing. Oversees the retargeting ads + email campaigns + webinars we use to turn leads into booked calls
Viggo - Media Buyer. Responsible for uploading ads, setting up campaigns, and analyzing performance across our various advertising platforms.
Colin - Email Ghostwriter. Responsible for writing our daily and weekly email broadcasts with the sole goal of driving more booked calls
Marketing + Brand overlap
Ash - Head Ghostwriter. Runs the social content posting across my and my co-founders social platforms, creates lead magnets and giveaway assets, writes ad copy for new ads, and audits our email performance
Hana - Content Operations. Handles things like manual posting and content analytics tracking across platforms.
Sales
Kacper - Head of Sales. Runs the day to day operations of the sales team, recruiting, onboarding, and coaching our sales reps, corresponding with marketing on calendar availability, and iterating the sales process.
Sales team is made up of:
Tristan - Senior Enrollment Advisor
Nick - Enrollment Advisor
Tommy - Enrollment Advisor
Artia - Sales Coordinator + Setter
Summarized, we have 3 closers, 1 setter, and 1 operations assistant
Looking underneath Success, we have two department heads with our entire CSM team reporting to both of them given the different responsibilities they have
Katie - Head of Student Experience. Responsible for making students as happy as possible with their PGA experience such that they can’t help but tell their friends and want to stay working with us
Andrew - Head of Backend Sales. Responsible for retaining clients to continue working with us after their
Our success team is made up of 6 individual coaches who work 1:1 with a handful of clients to walk them through every step of the ghostwriting journey
Mitch - Client Success Manager
Oli - Client Success Manager
Brandon - Client Success Manager
Bueno - Client Success Manager
Sydney - Client Success Manager
KC - Client Success Manager
From there, we have our Operations department which we break into 3 categories
Finance / HR - Organizing the money & accounts receivable
Chris - Finance Controller. Runs the day to day finance operations + handles lightweight HR responsibilities like onboarding employee contracts & payroll
Bookkeeper - Better Bookkeeping. Mostly used for tax accounting at the end of the year with lightweight bookkeeping done to stay organized throughout the year
Legal - Making sure we do things by the book
We work with a fractional law firm on retainer to handle things like employee contracts, IP protection, compliance audits, etc.
Tech - Helping us make decisions & save valuable time
Daniel - Head of Operations. On top of running our marketing department, Daniel handles everything to do with all tech operations from Zapier to Typeform to Airtable to Calendly to Samcart
Jamie - Operations Assistant. Helps out wherever is needed on the operations & customer support side, handling dozens of small details that help us continue to run the business smoothly
So that is our entire team broken down into departments
We have the departments & their KPIs
And we also have the people responsible for hitting them
Now - how do we effectively manage those teams to optimize the numbers they’re responsible for?
3. An operational framework for goal setting and choosing what to work on with examples of how we do it
High level in business, there are things that keep the business running and then things that help the business grow faster. We think of it like a rowing team:
Boat maintenance are all the things we have to do to keep that department running
Discretionary effort projects are where we do things that make the boat go faster
So with everyone on the team, we regularly perform this exercise:
Define all the things that we think are required to run the business
No filter here, just listing all the things that person believes they must do on a daily/weekly basis to fulfill their job duties
Audit our current calendar to make sure we are not doing anything that is not on that list
From here, they compare that list to their calendar to make sure they are not wasting time on things outside of that list
Often times, little activities “accumulate” on the calendar that we never question whether or not they’re worth continuing
Audit each item on the list asking if we even need to do it
Once we’ve stopped doing anything that isn’t on the list, we look at the items that ARE on the list and ask if they are actually required or we just think they are
Again, there are often things that we think must be done but could be completely skipped, like certain meetings or reports
Align the time blocks for those activities to batch them on either certain days or certain times of the day to free up space for discretionary effort projects
Now with these required activities, we want to align them on the calendar that lets us accomplish them most efficiently
This will vary by department, depending on the scope of work and size of the team
Marketing for example is mostly a deep-work intensive department.
So we batch all of the marketing meetings on Mondays that allow for entire deep work DAYS the rest of the week
Student success requires more collaboration - both within the team and with the team speaking with clients
So for them, we first try and push their daily meeting as far back into the day as possible to allow for as much focused project time in the morning
We then look for ways to batch their client calls on 3 days per week that frees them up from direct fulfillment for 2 afternoons
We then look to batch their Slack communication to the beginning of the day and the end of the day, such that they are not “open door” to the entire world
I do this exercise with our department heads, who then look to run a similar exercise with each member of the team
THEN, with our calendar aligned, we work on prioritizing where we spend that discretionary effort time
This is my primary job - resource allocation across the entire company. It’s only by getting clear on all of these various activities and when we do them that we can see how much time and attention are leftover for the things that make the boat go faster
Now with our calendars aligned, how do we decide what to work on?
I use this 5-part operational framework broken down into 5 questions.
What
What is the main KPI & focusing question of the department?
Where
Where are we trying to get that KPI?
How
What are all the projects we could take on to get there?
What is the most impactful project?
Who
Who is going to be responsible for its achievement? And who is the supporting cast?
When
When is it going to be 1) worked on and 2) estimated completion
With our discretionary effort, we want to apply it toward the activities that have the most impact per unit of time on that department’s KPI.
So to perform this exercise, we get together as a department and brainstorm everything we could do to improve the metric we are focused on improving.
This is a free-flowing creative exercise where we just get as many ideas out there as possible.
For example, if we were the marketing team and our goal was to increase the number of booked calls on the calendar, we could…
Run cold traffic ads on Facebook
Run a monthly webinar to our email list
Run retargeting ads across all platforms
Post most consistently on YouTube
Hire an affiliate director to build relationships with other people
And on and on and on
Now, all of those could DEFINITELY work to help us get more customers.
That’s the beautiful part about business - there is no shortage of things to go work on.
But the biggest mistake I’ve made in the past here is thinking if I do a little bit of all of these things at the same time, I will quickly accomplish the goal.
However, that couldn’t be further from the truth. When you try to make a little progress on a lot of things, you end up making zero progress on anything.
Instead, we then go through an exercise of stack ranking every single potential project on that list, in order, such that if we could only work on one of them, we would work on the first project.
And once that project is decided, we invest all of our discretionary effort time toward moving that project forward UNTIL IT IS COMPLETED. Then, and only then, do we move on to the next one
At first, this will feel like you are making slower progress than if you were to try and move a little bit forward on all of the projects.
But that’s because you are picking the easiest things within each of them, which feels productive but is not really moving an of them forward.
Instead, the best allocation of time and attention is to do many tasks on one project.
So to recap - we covered:
An overview of the different departments of our business & their respective KPIS
An org chart with each person that helps us run this business
An operational framework for goal setting and choosing what to work on with examples of how we do it
And that’s it! That’s the full breakdown of how I run this $5m per year coaching business, as well as how we’ve built the system for resource allocation to get it to $10m+ per year and beyond.
That’s it for this week - feel free to drop a comment with any questions or hit reply to this email. I read and respond to all of them.
That’s it for this week - enjoy the Super Bowl and I’ll see you back here next Sunday.
- Dickie
PS… If you missed last week’s edition, I summarized my vision to build the world’s writing education business. Inside I walk through our Company Ethos doc that I share internally for every employee. You can check out that full breakdown here:
This week’s beats 🎧
Cozy melodic house mix for some deep work.
(Pair with espresso for maximum flow.)
My Businesses & Social Media Links
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Write With AI — Turn ChatGPT into your personal writing intern
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My experience creating new business structures started back in the early 90s. Starting from the Mom and Pop family business I created an industry leading manufacturing representative business that ended up becoming the number one company in our industry in Chicago. When that industry died I evolved myself into what's next which was for me insurance. Then I got out of that and into marketing technology working for VC backed social data companies like Networked Insights and Optimine that used crowd wisdom to help companies like Samsung beat Apple and Overstock win the Google War. That led years later to creating a Virtual Global sales outsourcing company using talent around the world. Learning the content and social game over the past 5 years got me into another model which I call the Entrepreneur Experience built on a video metaverse platform with a team of independent experts in partnership with Welo. It's interesting how it's easier to do these things today, significantly cheaper, and more fun. the barrier for me has always been needing to innovate on the technology platforms. It's possible!