We were lucky to catch up with Jonathan Goldhill recently and have shared our conversation below.

Jonathan, appreciate you joining us today. How did you scale up? What were the strategies, tactics, meaningful moments, twists/turns, obstacles, mistakes along the way? We’d love to hear the backstory the illustrates how you grew the firm

It was March 2000 when the Internet bubble burst, and the doors closed on a brief chapter of my entrepreneurial life. The digital media events company I was the Chief Operating Officer of fell apart amidst declining advertising sponsorship dollars and ticket sales. We were unofficially broke. All the employees except me sued the founder in court for back payroll. I closed the doors. Shut the lights out for the final time. After a 10-year stint of building a fledgling business consulting and economic development firm into the most successful in all of California, I left to go “gold mining” among dot-coms. Since those selling the tools to gold miners made most of the money in the Gold Rush, it made sense that joining the Internet Rush and hosting events to usher people into the New Age was where money was to be made. The opportunity to be a COO of a growing firm brought me back to my experience in the event marketing and management business.
And then it ended. All the discussion then was, were you a B-2-B or B-2-C play?
By May 2000, it was B-2-C for me as in back-to-consulting. Within a month, I was up and running from home, having landed a first minor assignment. My business plodded along year after year. Getting clients was never easy. It took a TON of networking and online searching for gigs. I launched a website in 2000 to promote my practice. I hired coaches to mentor me. My first coach taught me how to do a mirror exercise, stating my hourly rate. “I charge $125/hour,” I would repeat without flinching. That seemed like a lot at that time.
Another coach suggested I become a coach. So, I searched online for small business coaching keywords thinking that’s how I would announce I was a coach. And that’s how I found a franchise teaching business coaching. Six weeks later, I bought the franchise. I was the first franchisee west of the Mississippi River. It got me started, but I didn’t stop there. I quickly realized I bought a “lemon” and had to learn to make lemonade from it.
I ventured out by starting CEO Peer Groups and Professional Roundtables following a model perfected decades earlier by The Executive Committee (rebranded as Vistage). That started my scale-up. When 2009 hit and the bottom fell out of some of my construction clients in the group, I disbanded the group and hired a coach who mentored me on how to market, sell and deliver one-on-one coaching over video calls. My monthly recurring revenues tripled in 3 months by following their system of coaching.
A mentor I met in a yoga class about fifteen years ago, who seemed five years ahead of me in his consulting practice, once said to me, “You have to reinvent yourself every 3-5 years.” And that has always stuck with me.
Another five years passed from the real estate bubble bust, and I was humming along with a one-on-one coaching business. Revenues were consistent and steady. Clients came and left. Some stayed for 3 months. Others stayed for 8 years. I decided to join a firm to get certified by a coaching organization called Scaling Up, which developed the Rockefeller Habits. That firm was a revolving door led by a very difficult individual. I left that firm and its founding partner after a fifteen-month stay and resumed my solo practice.
As business coaching became increasingly popular, I hired yet another coach who helped me identify my ICP (ideal client profile) and then encouraged me to write a book to speak to that ICP. I wrote my book Disruptive Successor: A Guide to Driving Growth in Your Family Business, and that same year launched my podcast by the same title.
Today, my hourly rates are many multiples of the $125/hour rate. I attract my ideal client profile – next-generation leaders in family businesses as clients. I don’t do any networking. I work from home except when I go to see clients for our quarterly and annual offsite planning meetings. I enjoy a TON of free time to read, write, coach, take long beach walks, swim and play racquet sports while splitting my time between the beaches of Southampton, NY and the canyons above Los Angeles when I’m not traveling to a foreign country.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

See above followed by this …

I solve the problems of intergenerational business transfer between parent and child.
I coach next generation leaders in the skills they will need to take over the business
I provide a playbook to get everyone on the same page – with a simple one page business plan, developing the leader’s vision, implementing a set of best practices and processes that include setting quarterly and annual goals, priorities and metrics that ensure accountability in the business, create more efficiency and effectiveness and level up the leadership skills and build cohesive behaviors among the leadership team.

My services typically begin with one-on-one coaching and often expand into or include team coaching.

My clients come to me with the desire to 2-10x their business’ revenues, profits and enterprise value. Not all accomplish it, but I always leave them better than I found them and promise a 3:1 return-on-coaching investment.

What’s been the best source of new clients for you?

When I wrote my book, I had an avatar or ideal client profile identified. I referenced a real client who came to me because he wanted to get coached by an expert in business so he could lead his family’s business to become a larger, better run business.

I’ve been coaching him and his family and leadership team members since 2015. His business has grown more than 8x in revenues, employee headcount and enterprise value. It’s been a phenomenal ride for him and me and his entire company.

He and his brother have accounted for some significant referrals. I gave them a case of my books to distribute to other entrepreneurs, which has created a nice lead flow from this one client.

Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?

Yes, There are many books I have recommended to clients over the years. They include The E-Myth, Becoming a Strategic Business Owner, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits, and Scaling Up: Why a Few Companies Make It…And the Rest Don’t, Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Death by Meeting, Jim Collins’s Good to Great and Built to Last, Jack Welch’s Straight from the Gut and more.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.TheGoldhillGroup.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jonathangoldhill/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheGoldhillGroup
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thegoldhillgroup/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/Coach2CEOS
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/TheGoldhillGroup/videos