#8 Ex-Retiree Makes $12,000 Her First Month Consulting

This week I've gone into the archives and pulled a very special recording for you. What you're about to hear is the first interview I ever did for Consulting Tycoon back in 2010.

I'm talking with Liz Canney, and ex-retiree who accidentally started her consulting business and made $12,000 her first month.

Now, some of the specific tactics we talk about might have changed, but the underlying principles of how Liz became so successful so quickly, remain the same.

In this interview, Liz reveals exactly how she did it.

In this episode:

* How Liz “accidentally” got her first offline consulting client.

* The simple 4-step system you can use to close 75%-80% of free consultations into paying clients — without ever hearing a “no”.

* How Liz gets around the fact that she is a complete newbie and has no “proof”.

* A remarkable outsourcing tip (Liz outsources most of the work) for getting cheap, reliable local workers.

And much more!

Transcription:

Kyle: I’d like to welcome everyone to today’s call. Today I have Liz Canney on the phone and she recently started her own consulting website and consulting business. Liz, good to have you on the line.

Liz: Thanks, Kyle; it’s a pleasure to be here.

Kyle: Let’s start off with your story. What were you doing before you started your consulting business?

Liz: Well, about three years ago, I guess (maybe a bit longer), I retired and within six months, I started to realize that you can only play so much golf, do so much patchwork and gossip about your friends over lunch, so I wanted to do something else. So I got into network marketing. It didn’t take too long for me to realize that there was an awful lot of pressure from up line.

I really wanted to just sell products full retail and make a 20 or 25% commission, but unfortunately, the people at the top didn’t really like that and in the end, I sort of said, “Well, you can keep your business and I’ll go elsewhere.” I got out of there. I did that a couple of times with a couple of different companies to find exactly the same thing.

So I finally decided to try Internet marketing because people said, “Oh, there’s lots of money in Internet marketing,” so off I went. I did have a certain amount of success. In fact, as far as affiliate marketing was concerned, I do quite well. I had what I called plenty of “running away from home” money, so that was really good, but it was just recently that I discovered that there’s a huge market for offline businesses.

When I say offline businesses, I’m talking about your brick-and-mortar businesses, your traditional stuff. Everyone has a website but no one’s making any money from it, so that’s why I decided to do something in that area.

Kyle: What was it that tipped your hat to that market? What was it that led you to the consulting business?

Liz: I read a book by Andrew Cavanagh called “Online Gold from Offline Business,” and also something written by the Rhodes brothers.

Kyle: Matt and John.

Liz: Yes. I really liked what they had to say. As it turned out, one of the things that Andrew said in his book was, “If you’re going to do this, get off your backside and do it.” My husband and I just dug up our front yard because with the watering restrictions we have in Canberra we had no grass, so I went up to the local gardening shop.

This guy has been my gardener for 15 years, so off I go. It wasn’t really in my mind to talk to him about his business or Internet marketing or anything like that. It just happened that during the conversation I asked him, “Do you have a website?” He said, “Well, no, I don’t, but I’ve been really thinking about getting one. I had one before. It was really terrible and I didn’t have time to maintain it.”

Before I knew it, something like 30 or 40 minutes later, he’s still talking to me about getting a website but he said,