The biggest mistake entrepreneurs make isn’t choosing the wrong business model. It’s building the business they think they’re supposed to have instead of the one that actually supports the life they want.
Lori pulls back the curtain on her own journey of chasing the “successful” coaching business, only to discover she had built a business that looked impressive but wasn’t delivering the freedom she wanted. She breaks down the most common business models, what they really require behind the scenes, and why simple often beats complicated.
If you’re building your Dream Business Blueprint, this conversation will help you choose a business model that aligns with your goals, your lifestyle, and the way you actually want to work.
What You’ll Learn
-
Why the best business model is the one that fits your life, not someone else’s definition of success
-
The hidden demands behind courses, memberships, group programs, and recurring revenue
-
How to evaluate your business model before investing time, money, and energy into the wrong path
Schedule a call to discuss personalized coaching at TalkWithLori.com
Schedule your Profitable Path Blueprint call. If you’re considering working together and want to see if it’s a fit, book a Profitable Path Blueprint Call. It’s a simple, no-pressure conversation to decide whether working together makes sense.
Resources:
Click HERE to receive your free gift – Get Clients to Say “YES!” The Ultimate Social Proof Checklist Every Business Needs to Build Trust and Boost Sales
Join Lori’s private Facebook group – The Midlife Business Academy. A Facebook group for The Typewriter Generation! A community to share business growth strategies that work for us! Join now!
Connect with Lori Follow me on social media – grab other free resources of book a call – it’s all right here!
Apply for a “Hot Seat” coaching session to work through your business challenges live:
Chapters
0:00 – The Dangerous Business Model Trap
1:57 – Welcome to the Midlife Business Academy
2:16 – Continuing the Dream Business Blueprint Series
3:09 – Lori’s Honest Confession: Two Sets of Books
6:00 – The Moment Everything Changed
7:26 – What Makes a Business Model “Best”
9:19 – The Pipeline Every Business Model Requires
11:52 – Simple Model: One-to-One Coaching
12:43 – Simple Model: Speaking
14:28 – Simple Model: Affiliate Marketing
15:15 – Less Simple Models: Courses
16:25 – Less Simple Models: Group Programs
19:17 – Less Simple Models: Memberships
20:26 – Less Simple Models: Licensing
21:44 – Understanding Recurring Revenue
24:05 – This Week’s Blueprint Challenge
26:07 – Next Week: Finding Your Point of View
The Dangerous Business Model Trap
The most dangerous business model isn’t the one that fails. It’s the one that keeps you just busy enough to never stop and question what’s actually working.
Most of us in midlife get trapped on a content treadmill, constantly chasing algorithms, filling massive pipelines just to feed a complex business model we didn’t even want. Today we’re looking at why a simple boutique business model will outperform a chaotic empire every single day. So let’s get real.
Welcome to the Midlife Business Academy
I’m Lori Lyons, and welcome to the Midlife Business Academy. If you’ve ever felt like your business is running your life instead of supporting it, you’re in the right place.
Around here, I believe a dream business isn’t measured by its size. It’s measured by the freedom and the life it makes possible.
Continuing the Dream Business Blueprint Series
So we’re in week two of the Dream Business Blueprint. And if you haven’t listened to episode 342, the one right before this one, go back and start there. Because everything we’re doing in this series builds upon the episode before it. And today is no exception.
Last week, we started with the life. We asked the question most business coaches skip entirely: what kind of life do you want your business to make possible? Today, we’re going to take that next step. Because once you’ve designed and decided on the life that you want, it’s time to design the business that supports it. And that starts with your business model.
Lori’s Honest Confession: Two Sets of Books
So here’s something that I really don’t share very readily. When I thought about morphing my business into a full-time coaching model, the vision I had looked exactly like what I’ve been taught success should look like. Groups, retreats, live events, hundreds of followers. I remember even telling my coach I wanted to be the Pied Piper for midlife business owners. That was the model, and that was what everyone around me was building for. And I followed it. No judgment and no questions asked, by the way, because that’s what we do. We model what we see. And I became very busy doing just that. Very, very, very busy. Busy planning, busy creating, busy doing all the things I thought I was supposed to be doing to build the business I thought I was supposed to want.
But here’s the thing about busy. Busy is sneaky. Because when you’re busy enough, you never stop and ask whether any of it’s actually working.
So here’s where I have to be really honest. Between my website design business and sneaking coaching into my maintenance plans — I was actually calling them strategy sessions — I was billing six figures, but the six-figure business was coming from the website business. And the coaching business was still finding its footing. And I was spending a lot of money chasing the model I thought I was supposed to build. So those real numbers, the ones my accountant saw, were very different from what I was telling myself, because I was spending a lot of money to have a six-figure business.
And I had two sets of books. Not that mob kind where someone’s cheating — I wasn’t cheating on my taxes. But the kind where the numbers in my head were different from when the coaches asked me how things were going. And they did. Every time I got on a call with a coach, they asked me what my numbers were. How many sales calls did you make? What was your profit? And what was your revenue for last month? They always asked me revenue. They never asked me profit. Always revenue, never profit. And I lived in terror that one of them would say, “Great, now send me your P&L,” because that conversation was never going to go well, because I was kidding myself. I didn’t have a six-figure business. I had a six-figure spending business, but not a six-figure business. And that’s one thing we have to really talk about at some point in our sessions here.
The Moment Everything Changed
But one day I stopped asking myself, do I really want what I’m building for? And that was fairly recently, and the answer was no. And here’s the irony: what I actually wanted was exactly what my accountability partner had been telling me she wanted for years. Private clients, intimate, personal, boutique. The model I had been talking her out of was the model I actually really wanted for myself, years later.
And the moment that I admitted that, it was like a weight was lifted. Not because I gave up, but because I finally got honest about what I really wanted. And what I wanted was simple. Not easy — there is no easy — but simple. And as it turns out, simple just might be the best kept secret in building a dream business.
What Makes a Business Model “Best”
So let’s talk about your business model. Your business model is simply the way your business makes money, and there are a lot of ways to do it. But there’s something nobody tells you when you’re picking just one: the best business model isn’t the biggest one. It’s the one that supports the life you want to live.
So instead of teaching you how to build each model — because that’s a whole different series and a whole long conversation — I want to talk to you about what fits. Does your business model actually fit the life you designed in the last episode?
To make this simple, and we’ve already talked about the difference between simple and easy, I’m going to break it down into two categories: simple and less simple, because simple is absolutely achievable. And for a lot of us, it’s the foundation of the dream business we actually want.
The Pipeline Every Business Model Requires
But before we get into those two models, I want to talk to you about something that applies to both of them. And it’s something nobody mentions when they’re selling you the dream.
Every business model requires a pipeline — a consistent, constant flow of potential clients who know you exist, trust what you do, and are ready to buy when the time is right. That means an email list. It means social media. It means content. It means showing up consistently enough that the algorithm, whichever one you’re trying to appease that week, decides you’re worth sharing something new. And that alone is a full-time job.
Because here’s what nobody tells you about bigger models — groups, memberships, anything with recurring revenue that has seats to fill — the larger your model, the larger your pipeline needs to be. So if your goal is hundreds of members in a group program, you need an engaged email list of at least 2,000 people, minimum. And I mean engaged — people who actually open your emails and click your links, not just sitting in a database collecting dust.
To build and maintain that kind of pipeline, you either need to love social media and be good at it, be consistently showing up with content that attracts the right people, or be very comfortable with the Speak to Sell model — we’ll talk about that in just a second — because you have to be constantly filling that pipeline. Constantly. There is no coasting.
And honestly, that’s the moment I realized it wasn’t what I wanted anymore. I didn’t want to have to worry about all that stuff. I didn’t want to spend my time chasing algorithms and filling funnels for models that didn’t fit my life. What I wanted was my podcast. Something I genuinely love doing. Something that attracts exactly the right people — the ones who are already aligned with what I believe about business and life. My podcast is how I fill my pipeline. And the business it feeds is small, exclusive, and boutique. I don’t take everyone as clients. And that’s exactly the way I want it.
So before you fall in love with any business model, ask yourself: am I willing to do what it takes to keep the pipeline full for this specific model? Because the answer to that question will tell you a lot about whether that model actually fits your lifestyle.
Simple Model: One-to-One Coaching
All right, so let’s start with the simpler models. The simplest model is one-to-one. This is coaching, consulting, done-for-you services. You work directly with a client, you deliver the results, and they pay you. It’s the most straightforward model there is. And it’s what a lot of midlife entrepreneurs, including me, find is the best fit right now. It’s personal, it’s flexible, and when you price it right, it doesn’t require a massive audience to be profitable. One great client paying a premium rate can do more for your business than 100 followers ever will.
Simple Model: Speaking
If you love being on a stage, virtual or in person, speaking can be a great model. But I want to be really clear about something here, because I think there are two very different conversations happening today around speaking.
The first is getting paid to speak. It’s kind of the holy grail of speaking — I’m going to go speak on a stage and somebody’s going to pay me what we think is a lot of money. And yes, it does exist. But building a business around paid speaking engagements takes years of positioning, a significant reputation, most times a book, and a very specific niche. And it’s not where most of us start.
The second model — and this is where I see the most opportunity for my clients — is the Speak to Sell model. This is where you speak for free or for a small fee with the goal of converting the audience into clients or customers. And if you have a well-positioned talk in front of the right audience, it can fill your practice faster than months of social media. Speak to Sell is a strategy, and it’s one worth exploring if you love being in front of people.
Simple Model: Affiliate Marketing
The third simple model is affiliate marketing. We’re seeing a lot of this these days. Think about all of the Amazon shops you see. Think about every Instagram influencer with a common word and a link to what they’re selling. When someone recommends a product, you click their link and they earn a commission. It’s simple to set up. It’s simple to maintain. And when it’s aligned with what you already talk about, it really doesn’t feel like selling at all — it feels like you’re just sharing your favorite stuff. It’s not going to replace your primary income, but as a supplemental revenue stream, it can be a natural and easy fit.
Less Simple Models: Courses
So the second category is less simple models. And again, less simple doesn’t mean wrong. It just means there’s more to it than the Instagram ads gurus want you to believe, because you’re seeing a lot of stuff about “do it this way, it’s so simple, I built my business…” And no, they’re not really lying, but they’re not telling you the whole story.
So let’s talk about courses. Everyone told us that courses were the answer. It’s passive income. Build it once. Sell it forever. It’s the evergreen model. And while courses can work, building one that actually sells requires a significant audience, a strong message, and consistent marketing. It’s not set it and forget it. It’s not even close. I’ve watched incredibly talented people spend months designing a course that launched to crickets because the audience wasn’t there yet. The course wasn’t the problem. The timing was.
Less Simple Models: Group Programs
Next is group programs. Let’s talk about those, because I think that’s where a lot of coaches and consultants get into trouble.
First, you have the expectations. Usually group programs are a higher ticket program. And when somebody pays a high ticket price to be in a group program — and I’m talking thousands of dollars — the expectations are enormous. And honestly, they should be. If I’m paying somebody $20,000 for a year for a group coaching program, I’d better be getting my money’s worth. But that pressure lands squarely on you.
I know more clients who’ve been completely disillusioned by group programs — both as the person running them and as the person paying for them — than almost any other model out there. The promise doesn’t always match the reality. And when it doesn’t, you know it.
Then there’s the personalities. You’re not just delivering content, you’re managing people. You’ve got the overachiever who wants more than you promised. You’ve got the one who goes quiet after week two. And then you’ve got the one who dominates every call. And the one who asks the same darn question over and over again because they’re not doing the work. And then you’ve got the one who wants a refund because life got complicated. So managing all of those dynamics while delivering results for everyone in the room — it takes more than most people plan for going in.
And here’s the real scoop. When I talk about groups, my vision isn’t a program with dozens of people. My dream is a mastermind. Ten, maybe twelve carefully selected clients who share the same vision of what a dream business looks like. It’s intimate, it’s intentional, it’s boutique. And if that’s you, let me know, because that’s the version of a group that excites me — not a revolving door of participants, but a curated room of the right people.
If you want to go deeper on the state of the coaching industry and some of the things I’ve talked about here, feel free to go back and listen to episode 329. It’s called “Why the Coaching Industry Is Broken,” and it’ll give you a lot of context for this conversation. And I’ll step off my soapbox now.
Less Simple Models: Memberships
Memberships. Let’s talk about memberships. Some think this is the holy grail of recurring revenue, and it’s very popular right now — according to every online business guru, and virtually every client who comes into my coaching business talks about wanting to build a membership.
And yes, recurring revenue is the goal. We all want money coming in, whether we’re working or not. It’s nice having money coming in while you’re on a cruise or on vacation. But a membership requires constant content, constant engagement, and constant attention. It is not leave it and forget it. And the churn alone — the people who cancel every month — can make you feel like you’re running on a treadmill. It is one of the most demanding models there is. And most people who start one underestimate that significantly, ’cause nobody tells you the truth. Yes, it can work beautifully, but go in with your eyes open.
Less Simple Models: Licensing
Another business model that’s starting to become pretty popular — I’ve heard of several clients and several other business owners who’ve started doing this — is licensing. This is where you allow others to use your framework, your curriculum, your methodology, and they pay you for the right to do that.
Now, this sounds really incredible, because you think it’s kind of a hand-it-off-and-forget-it model, but it’s really not, because it involves legal arrangements, it involves training, and it involves quality control, because you want to make sure that people who are out there selling and teaching your product, your words, your courses, stay consistent with what your course believes and what you believe. And it does take ongoing support.
It’s actually kind of a later-stage model. I don’t consider it a starting point model, because you really have to have a library of work you can fall back on to do this. So file it away for when you have a system that others are already asking you to replicate or talk about.
Understanding Recurring Revenue
So I want to take a minute and talk about recurring revenue, because I throw that term around and I want to make sure that we’re on the same page about what it really means.
Recurring revenue is money that comes into your business on a predictable, consistent basis without you having to start from zero every single month. It’s the difference between wondering where your next client is coming from and knowing that a certain amount of money is on its way.
And it could look like a lot of different things. A retainer client who pays you monthly. A membership plan that renews automatically — you don’t depend on somebody paying the invoice; it renews automatically, and they have to physically cancel it to stop it. A group program that has a payment plan — and a lot of coaches do this because, hello, how many of us have $20,000 sitting under our mattress? An affiliate commission that hits every month because people are clicking your links. It’s a lot like the licensing and Amazon models. And in a lot of cases, it’s social media, although that’s kind of an unpredictable income based on views and all the other stuff.
But the point isn’t the vehicle. The point is the predictability, because predictability creates stability, and stability creates freedom. And freedom is the whole point.
So if you think about your business model, ask yourself: where is the recurring revenue in this? Where is the consistent, predictable income that doesn’t require me to hustle for every single dollar every single month, or dance on TikTok every week? That question alone can change how you structure your offers. So go back and really think about that question — where is the recurring revenue — because that could be the difference for you in a lot of things.
This Week’s Blueprint Challenge
So this week’s blueprint challenge is section two of your Dream Business Blueprint. If you haven’t downloaded it, the link is in the show notes — it’s midlifebusinessacademy.com/blueprint.
And there’s one question in there I really want you to think about: if nothing changed over the next three years, would your current business model still be the one you choose? Not the one you started with, not the one you thought you were supposed to build, not the one some guru told you was the path to passive income and freedom, but the one you would actually choose today for the life you want today.
And I want to add one more question that’s not in the workbook, but I think it’s worth asking yourself: are you building the business model that fits your life? Or are you building someone else’s version of success?
Grab your Dream Business Blueprint from the show notes if you haven’t already, and complete section two.
Next Week: Finding Your Point of View
Next week we’re moving into something I think a lot of business owners skip entirely, and it might be the one thing that makes everything harder than it needs to be. We’re talking about a point of view — what you stand for, what makes you different. I get that question a lot: “I don’t know how to make myself different.” This is what will make you different, and why it matters more than a lot of other things we do in our business.
So if you’re working through this series and realizing that your business model needs more than a little tweak — that it needs a real conversation — I’d love to coach you through it. Head over to talkwithlori.com and book a Dream Business Design Session. Let’s figure out what model actually fits the life and business you want to build.
And until next week, remember: it’s never too late to build the business of your dreams. We’ll see you next week.