Case Study: Andrew Doubled His Old Tech Salary Working For Himself
Andrew Capland runs a coaching and advising practice that serves the early stage tech startup community. We have worked privately together starting in June 2022.
Learn more about working with Greg:
What made you want to work with Greg?
When I reached out to Greg, my goal was to take my business, which I felt was a good business, and I wanted to transform it into a great business, but I just didn't really know how. In terms of what was going on, my roster wasn't quite full, but it was probably three quarters full.
I had some steady lead source and income coming in, but I just felt like there was an opportunity to go further. But I didn't really have the network that was further. I was looking for someone who had seen what the other side of the wall looked like, who could help push me and point out my flat sides and help me get to the next level.
There was two concerns that I had that I was grappling with when I was thinking about working with Greg. The first one is that I wanted to make sure that he had the skills and experience to push me to the next level. And so there was more of a tactical evaluation where I was trying to understand had he been to the place that I'm looking to go to and had he seen a few steps ahead?
And then the other side, if I'm being honest, I was nervous to bring someone into my business. You know, I've worked with a coach before. I know how personal that is. I know how vulnerable you have to be. And I wanted to make sure that I vibed with Greg. Was he someone that I could be vulnerable and honest with? Would he judge me? Would I feel judged? Would I feel uncomfortable or would this be an environment that would help me to do my best work?
What was the experience like?
When I first met Greg, I would've identified as an anxious business owner. I was always nervous the floor was gonna fall out - that I was gonna lose all my clients or I was gonna have to go back and get a real job. And so the biggest transformation of working with him is having a system that I feel really confident in.
My favorite thing about working with Greg is that he was able to point out stuff that I hadn't thought about yet. So when I first met him, I was really gung-ho on launching a group program. I didn't know what exactly it was gonna be - if it was gonna be some hybrid thing or mix of courses in coaching or just a one-to-one coaching program. But I wanted help figuring that out and then help launching it. And initially that's why I reached out to him.
He asked a bunch of questions and learned about my business, and then pretty quickly sniffed out that he didn't think I was ready. And so he said, look, you can go do that thing and I can help you do it, but I think you'll be much more successful first, if you improve your sales conversion rates, then if you can improve your operating system to gain more time back, that will allow you to increase your prices. And then I think you'll be in a much stronger place to launch your group program. And that was exactly what I was looking for.
“I no longer feel like I’m that anxious business owner waiting for the floor to fall out cause I have a system.”
One of the things that I'll always take with me is that Greg pointed out to detach some of my feelings about my business from personal identity. He talked about high intention, low attachment, is how he likes to phrase it. And I was high intention, high attachment. Basically every sales call that I had (and really every client that I had), I felt so worried that it wasn't gonna go well. And if it didn't go well, I sort of blamed myself and bring it home to my family dinner. I had a hard time separating my personal identity from my work successes or failures. And so the mindset side, that's something that we worked on a lot and I actually have it written down next to my computer ‘high intention, low attachment’. That's something that I think about almost daily at this point, and I think is helpful for every entrepreneur.
What specific results have you achieved?
The results are great. I have, candidly, doubled my full-time salary now working for myself, being self-employed, running this coaching and advising practice. And the way that we got there was through my work with Greg. The three things that made the biggest impact were:
✅ Improving my sales close rate. I was getting a lot of leads, but I was only closing maybe 10 or 15% of those in the new clients. We did a bunch of work to bump that number up to about 30, 40% at the beginning of our engagement.
✅ I hired an assistant, someone who could take a lot of the administrative stuff off my plate and allow me to serve more of those new clients I was bringing in. And a combination of both of those things allowed me to increase my price pretty quickly.
✅ And then the third thing that I'm really proud of is that I launched my group program. One of my main goals for working with Greg eventually was to gain more leverage, both through improving the conversion rates of what I just talked about, but also by detaching my one-to-one time from my income with some kind of one-to-one system. And so we launched that as well. It's been fantastic.
All three of those things had led to my best months ever, my most confident months ever. And I no longer feel like I'm that anxious business owner waiting for the floor to fall out cause I have a system. And so those are the things that stand out to me most about my time.
Would you recommend working with Greg?
If you're listening to this and you're thinking about working with Greg and you've got a good business and you'd like help creating a GREAT business - I think he's a great match. I mean, don't take my word for it. You should set up a strategy session. That's how I started. We set up a session and from from my perspective, it was clear that he was gonna be someone who could have a really big impact on my life. And so I'd encourage anyone who's listening this to get to know him, see if y'all are a good fit, and if he could be someone that could help you scale your business and take you to the next level.
