“Keap helped me grow my business from a quarter million to $16.5 million.”

From writing memoirs to coaching small businesses

Donald Miller was an accomplished memoirist, having finished his seventh book, when he felt drawn to make a big change.

“So I wrote a business book, and at that point of my career, really pivoted from being an artist to being a business coach. I wanted to grow that business, so Keap was the CRM platform that we used to create a lead generator and start collecting leads.”

His new company, Business Made Simple, showed promise at first, making around $250K with coaching programs built around his first book, Building a StoryBrand. It was a good foundation, but with only Donald and an assistant on the team, the possibility of sustained growth seemed daunting.

While Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing features seemed like a lot to learn at first, Donald jumped in, learned the basics and started building quickly.

“After about 30 minutes, you start to figure it out and get hooked on it,” Donald laughed.

Growing significantly, while coaching others to do the same

For Donald’s business, the main thing Keap helped with was keeping in touch with customers and identifying them beyond a name and email address. It took Business Made Simple from word-of-mouth marketing to controlling every aspect of the company narrative.

The results were clear over time. Steady growth took the business from $250K to $16.5M. Donald was able to build a qualified lead and client database, instilling trust with his audience every step of the way. By any and every metric, his business was thriving.

“What I really liked about Keap was its ability to take me from a solopreneur company, essentially, to 30 employees and a database of half a million users seamlessly.”

While Covid protocols should have disrupted Donald’s business model (and Business Made Simple’s consistent growth), his team was even able to build new revenue through an online product, consisting of livestreams and virtual classes. The keys to this quick pivot were the data stored in their Keap CRM and automations built for other marketing efforts.

“I was able to sell different products to different people using the CRM. And instead of my 30 employees being laid off and us probably not surviving, we actually had our largest growth year, our largest revenue year, and our largest profit year.”