Business
Carissa Hill is a natural born entrepreneur who had her first successful business at the age of 21. Within 4 years, Carissa turned a home spray tanning business into a chain of 3 beauty salons with 9 staff and had her own range of wholesale hair extensions and mobile services around Brisbane Australia -- all without working in the business and exclusively focusing on growing it with Facebook marketing. Since 2014, Carissa has been helping thousands of entrepreneurs to master the art of successful Facebook marketing. She runs a successful Facebook group of over 16,000 members called "Coffee With Carissa" and is the founder of the Wolfpack Mastermind. Her current mission is to increase the percentage of female millionaires, after discovering that only 2% of female-owned businesses ever make it to 7 figures. Carissa is the bestselling author of the book "I Like Money - The Secrets To Actually Making Money With Facebook" and has been featured in publications such as Forbes, Inc, The Huffington Post, Entrepreneur Magazine, NBC tv, and Funnel Hackers Radio. She lives on top of Tamborine Mountain (and even owns her own rainforest) in the Gold Coast Hinterland, Australia with her husband Travis, her son Jayden, her toy Pomeranian, Pebbles and her black cat, Pepper. Today, I’m really excited to have her sit down with us and share some of the secrets to how she’s managed to grow her business in this really impressive amount of time. Born Entrepreneur “Being a business owner is a part of who I am,” Carissa says. In fact, she has always joked that she was a born entrepreneur who has been starting side hustles since she was in the womb. She may have started her first successful business at the age of 21, but she said she has been selling all sorts of things as far back as she can remember. She eventually fell out of love with that business and subsequently developed an interest in consulting instead. She then started her coaching business at the age of 28 and has since managed to grow it into a business that generates income in the seven-figure range -- all from the comforts of her home. The Path That Led to It Contrary to the stories of many successful entrepreneurs who managed to build their businesses through a mix of business acumen and sheer hard work, Carissa sheepishly admits that she owes part of her success to her laziness. Being the creative type who is always bursting with new ideas, Carissa said she has a tendency to either be really engrossed in or distracted from managing her business, so she hired someone who can bring more consistency to it. She then realized that the business thrived with the person she hired doing most of the legwork and her focusing on marketing the business on Facebook. She figured she could turn this into another business venture, and so she did. Venturing Into Coaching Looking back at it, Carissa said that venturing into coaching was “a natural kind of evolution” for her. She’s always been better at hatching ideas, building systems, and delegating tasks than implementing them, so that she later found herself treading this path came as no surprise. She initially started with making Youtube tutorials, sending out newsletters, and doing FaceBook Q&A’s (which she all did for free for a while) before eventually transitioning into full-on coaching. Now, her Facebook group, “Coffee with Carissa,” has over 16,000 members and contributes the bulk of her income. Expressing Gratitude Carissa said that she believes that you attract the things that you’re grateful for, so she “always remind myself to stay grateful for my team and clients because without them I won’t have a business.” Tips for Other Entrepreneurs If anything can be learned from Carissa’s experiences in growing her business, it’s to always trust your instincts, take time to listen to other people, and always have systems in place. She says don’t let your fears get the best of you. Prepare yourself for the worst-case scenario but always hope for the best. She also cautions people not to start a business with the pure intention to sell. Think of how you can provide real value to your customers instead and the earnings will naturally follow. It would also help to have a clear plan of where you want to take your business and how you want things done before you start thinking of expanding. Carissa says that there are many digital tools that can help you with just about anything from managing your schedule, to developing system manuals, and marketing your business through every platform imaginable, so make full use of them. Favorite Book Carissa credits Bob Burg’s “The Go-giver” for changing her perspectives on online businesses and, therefore, greatly recommends it. She’s also a big believer of following random interests wherever they might lead her, so she’s now currently reading books on palm reading. Resources If you want to know how to double your business and set it up to run without you, Carissa encourages you to take advantage of her free Wolfpack Mastermind training by going to her website, http://www.wolfpackmastermind.com/. She also gives away free eBooks, videos, and training on her personal website, https://carissahill.com.au/, so make sure you check it out. Additional Resource I promised Carissa that I will be sending her the title of this book that I really loved but can’t remember the title of during our conversation, but I want you to be able to check it out as well, so do try to add “The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row” by Anthony Ray Hinton on your reading list. Highly-recommended, including by Oprah herself.